The Dreamtrails (93 page)

“Which of them used this one, I wonder?” Gilbert murmured, gazing at the bed hung with scarlet Sadorian double silk with golden embroidery.

I said nothing, but I thought it must belong to Salamander, for Ariel had always preferred to wear white clothing that set off his pale golden beauty. Whoever had slept in this room had wished to ravish his senses with beautiful fabrics and textures. An array of exquisite cut crystal bottles sat atop the hearth’s mantel. I opened one, and the sweet heady smell of pure incense filled the air. Replacing the stopper, I noticed that the fire was made up here just as it had been in the entrance chamber, and I wondered what this meant. The only reason I could think of for the carefully prepared hearths was that Ariel’s departure had been sudden and unplanned.

I noticed a book lying half hidden under the golden fringe of the bed covering and bent to pick it up. I was astonished to see that the words on the cover were in the coiling gadi script that I had first seen on the carved panels of Obernewtyn’s original doors. Since the Sadorians never scribed in gadi, this
book must have belonged to the Gadfian raiders who had preyed upon them. If I was right, this was surely evidence that they had not died out. Indeed, it seemed proof that there were still Gadfians somewhere with whom Salamander had some commerce that resulted in his acquiring a gadi-built ship.

A thought came to me that was so shocking it took my breath away. What if Salamander had not just traded with the Gadfian raiders
but was one of them!
What if he hid his face and form as fanatically as he did, not to keep his identity secret, but to hide the color of his skin! This would explain not only the resemblance between the
Black Ship
and the Sadorian spicewood ships, but also the slaver’s relentless viciousness, since ferocity and the need to oppress seemed characteristic of the Gadfian people.

I slipped the book into the bag I carried over my shoulder, thinking that when I was back aboard the
Umborine
. I would show the book to Jakoby and see what she made of my theory.

“Ye gods!” Gilbert muttered.

He had opened the door to a cupboard, and I went to see what had made him sound so astounded. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that the clothes on the shelves were not men’s. I reached into the cupboard and drew out a long gown of roughened silk, beaded in an exquisite pattern that mimicked the intricate shadings of some strange large-eared feline.

“One of them must have kept a woman,” Gilbert muttered. “An
expensive
woman. I suppose she went with them when they left.”

“Sandcats,” Andorra said, fingering the silk. “They live in the desert lands, and they are mad.”

“There are sandcats near Murmroth, too,” Gilbert said. He stooped to pick something up off the floor. “Here is another
one.” He opened his hand to reveal a small silver clasp fashioned into the likeness of a sandcat. It was a pretty, intricate piece and positioned so that only one eye showed—a tiny yellow topaz.

“It is one-eyed, like your cat friend,” Gilbert said. “Why don’t you keep it?”

I was revolted by the thought of stealing something that had belonged to Ariel or Salamander, but instead of putting it down, I found myself looking at the brooch again. Finally, I slipped it into my bag with the book. It did remind me of Maruman, but it was the exquisite craftsmanship, not the design, that made me take it, for such work might be tracked back to its source.

“You know what troubles me,” Gilbert said after we left the chamber. “I can’t see any woman leaving all those beautiful, expensive clothes and gewgaws if she was never coming back again.”

“Maybe they didn’t give her time to pack,” I said. “Or maybe she knows there is more where this came from and did not mind leaving it. Whoever lavished all of this on her was hardly going to keep her wanting.”

As we continued, I remembered that when Salamander had first appeared in the Land, there had sometimes been mention of a beautiful woman who spoke for him. Perhaps the room belonged to this woman, in which case she might be more of an accomplice than merely an object of love or desire.

I farsent Jak to tell him what we had found, and he told me that he and Hakim had discovered some animal pens, their size and stink suggesting they had recently been occupied by dogs. He sounded subdued and uneasy, and I knew that he was remembering that Ariel had taken particular delight in
using brutal and sadistic methods to train dogs to kill.

As I withdrew from Jak’s mind, Gilbert beckoned to me. He looked into a smallish chamber with a single large comfortable chair set facing an enormous window that overlooked the large central courtyard. Just outside the window stood a beautiful ravaged tree, which had either lost all its leaves to the savage wind or was dead.

“Looks like some sort of contemplation room,” Gilbert said, nodding to the chair. He shivered and I realized my own teeth were again chattering with cold. Gilbert suggested returning to the entrance chamber to warm ourselves, but Andorra gestured to a small hearth where yet another fire had been laid. I lit it while Andorra went back to raid a clothes cupboard she had seen, and Gilbert found two more chairs. He set all three to face the fire, but instead of sitting down, the armsman went to the window to gaze at the twisted black form of the tree outside. “A grim sort of place to plant a tree,” he muttered. “The soil would have to have been brought in, and the tree would never be able to put down deep roots. No wonder it died.”

My heart sank as he looked over to where I sat, for his eyes were full of yearning. I had thought our earlier conversation had ended any hopes he might have harbored, but clearly it was not so. I willed Andorra to return, for there was an intimacy in this small room that might better be avoided. Then I decided that it was cowardly to avoid being alone with the armsman, given that I had accepted Gilbert’s sincere offer of friendship.

“I meant what I told you aboard the ship,” I said, wishing that embarrassment would not render my tone so harsh.

He smiled sadly. “I know it. Only what I feel is not so easily set aside. But I will not trouble you with any declarations.
I, too, meant what I said aboard the ship.” He hesitated and said, “This might be a good moment to confess that I asked Gwynedd to send me with you.”

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged and said lightly, “Let us say that I am not too proud or foolish to see that half a loaf of good bread is still nourishing.” But immediately his expression became serious. “No, I speak too flippantly, a habit I am trying to break. You are far from half a loaf, Elspeth Gordie. What you have done is the stuff of tales told over and over around firesides; they set the hearts of everyone who hears them to racing and dreaming. In truth, I never had any right to aspire to you. What you did before—opening that lock and then reaching out with your mind to Jak—I realize you would never be satisfied with an ordinary man like me.”

I felt my face flame and wished he would stop. This was far worse than any declaration of love! I tried to get up, but he caught my hand. “Please, let me speak.”

I expelled a breath and said urgently, “Listen, most of my life I have been in danger of being burned for the Talents you seem to feel are special. I don’t think that I am better than you.”

“I think it,” he said flatly, and released me. “Yesterday afternoon, after we had spoken, I thought of my bondmate, Serra. I began to wonder if perhaps the mystery she had wanted from me was no more than the part of me that I had laid to rest when I thought I saw you die. Maybe she understood that I was withholding the best of myself, not only from her but from my children. I had felt myself cheated by life when I thought you had been snatched away from me. I never considered that you had not been mine in the first place. I got it into my head that you had been my shining destiny, and
your loss was another example of the ill luck that had dogged me all my life.

“But lying in my cabin last night, with the storm raging outside, I thought of all you had said, and suddenly I saw everything from another angle. I was not unlucky. Indeed, luck has walked beside me constantly. My mother died birthing me, but I lived. My father was a good and honest man who loved me, though I had killed his beloved bondmate. I was away from the Druid’s camp when the firestorm struck, so I was one of the few to survive. A plague came to the west coast, but I was not infected, and when there was the possibility of a second plague, which none would have survived, you prevented its spread. What have I to complain about? Nothing. I had acted like a spoiled child who could not have a toy that did not belong to him in the first place. I petulantly locked up all that was good in me. But last night in the midst of that raging storm, it occurred to me that I might die. That was when I realized that it was not too late to become a whole man again.”

“What will you do?” I asked to break a silence stretched too thin.

“I will continue to serve Gwynedd, for he gave me a purpose, and I owe it to him to fulfill it.”

“Are not children also a purpose that ought to be fulfilled?” I said softly.

He smiled. “They ought to be,” he said. “Maybe it is not too late for that as well.”

“You will go back?”

“I will see if their mother will give me a second chance. Maybe she will finally meet the man you met in the Druid’s camp, if he can be brought back to life.”

“I see him now,” I said.

He held my eyes a moment, and the silence between us became easy. When Andorra returned, he went out to let us change our clothes. I was grateful for the thick silk shirt and the gray felt tunic and shawl. Once dressed, I farsought Jak again and found that he and Hakim had discovered a kitchen and were also lighting a fire. He added that they had found more yards and some animal pens with bench seats in them. I shivered and withdrew from his mind, chilled at the thought of the hapless people who had been brought here and penned up to await whatever fate had in store for them.

“You are looking grim,” Gilbert said as he reentered the room.

I was telling them both what Jak had said when we heard a distant crash.

“What was that?” Gilbert said.

Andorra had drawn her knife and was listening hard, too, her head tilted. “It sounded like it came from the other side of the building,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. Closing my eyes, I farsought Jak. The probe located tenuously, as if there were too many walls between us or maybe one of the rainy courtyards.

“Did you hear that noise?” I farsent.

“We caused it,” Jak told me. “We found a trapdoor in the storeroom beside the kitchen, but it exploded when I tried to open it. I’m bleeding, but Hakim was knocked out.”

“What is it?” Gilbert demanded when I opened my eyes.

I told them, and we put a screen around the fire and hurried along the corridors.

“If there was a trapdoor in the floor, there must be some sort of underground chamber,” Gilbert said.

“You said that it would be impossible, given that this place is built upon solid rock,” I protested.

“I did, but why else would there be a trapdoor?” Gilbert asked. “The Beforetimers might have done it. After all, if they could truly fly through the air, it would be nothing to cut chambers out of stone.”

“Why do you speak of Beforetimers?” I asked, slowing to stare at him. “Ariel built this place.”

He shrugged. “I assume that this place is built on Beforetime ruins. After all, Gwynedd said his mother told him this knoll was cursed, and that is usually what people mean when they use that word,” Gilbert said. “I suppose it was they who honed the knoll to make it square.”

“T
HIS IS DEFINITELY
Beforetimer work,” Jak said, his voice trembling with excitement. His forehead and face were badly cut, and one of the gashes was so close to his eye that he was lucky he had not been blinded. Andorra, who had announced that she had some simple training in healing, was examining the teknoguilder, having checked that the still unconscious Hakim was otherwise unharmed. The force of the explosion had knocked him out. Now she announced that Jak had a cut on his shoulder and another on his chest that needed stitches, but he had brushed her away.

“The explosion looks as if it was the result of some sort of Beforetime device, but Ariel definitely knew of the trapdoor, because, as you see, the storage space has been carefully constructed around the trapdoor so it would not be blocked, but in such a way that it would be hard to see if you just glanced in. If I had not been scrounging for food, I would not have noticed it.”

I studied the hatch, which, despite being blackened and slightly buckled, remained intact. It looked very similar to the trapdoor that Pavo and I had opened to enter the upper level of the Beforetime ruins on the west coast, and I had no doubt that Ariel knew about its existence. It might very well be the reason he had constructed his residence here. But the question that remained was if he had ever managed to open it.

As if he had read my thoughts, Jak said, “This could be where Ariel got the plague seeds.” He looked at me. “Do you think you can open it?”