Leopard in Exile (24 page)

remained, huddled on reservations little different from prisons, cowering in fear and despair while

sickness and poverty harried mem like starving wolves.

The living land dwindled, until only a few small islands of life remained in the vast sea of poisoned stone,

until even the European usurpers began to suffer as their victims had, dying as the land died.

This was the future, of which men spoke with such hope—the future in which war and disease would be

abolished, when all men would live in peace and brotherhood, and all the secrets of Nature would be

unfolded.

Sarah's soul recoiled in horror, revolted beyond measure by the visions she had seen. How could they

come to this? Not even Napoleon's legions, not even the hated House of Hanover, could be so

barbarous…

This is how Time ran in your own world, a
. voice spoke within her mind.
Before Men realized what

they had wrought, it was too late for many
…
so many
…

"
Who are you
?" Sarah demanded. The response was confused, a flutter of images, as though a million

voices spoke at once.
This is how Time will run in your own world
, the chorus of voices repeated,

and Sarah was overwhelmed by sorrow and loss, as though it was her own future that had been

destroyed. The contrast between the blackened wasteland of her vision and the pristine Arcadia she had

walked through only that morning was too heartbreaking to bear.

She struggled to close her eyes, to shut it out, but the magic coiled through her remorselessly, showing

Sarah everything—and more. It was as if she somehow understood the inward meaning of everything she

saw, and so she saw war follow war, and war turn to plague, until at last the sprawling cancerous cities

began to fall in upon themselves, like a fire that had burned too hot and fast.

It is too late for that world, from which magic was driven out so long ago. Without the knowledge

that the Hidden Wisdom brings, the people of that world have rushed into folly from which the

recovery will be long and painful. They have forfeited all that they might have been. But it is not

too late for this world
! Sarah hoped desperately. Surely she had seen what she had seen to provide a

warning to the people of this world to turn back before it was too late.

But what could one lone woman do?

You have power, if you will accept it. From strength comes balance that gives freedom to all

things…

As the last words of the Voice echoed through hawk-Sarah's mind, she felt a tide of weakness filling her,

dimming the terrible world of her vision and at last blotting it out entirely.

The strong sun of afternoon shining full upon her face roused Sarah at last. Her body still ached with

exhaustion, and each movement required a supreme effort. When Sarah opened her eyes, for a long time

all she could do was gaze passively about herself. She still lay in the clearing, between two blankets upon

a soft bed of pine boughs. All trace of the great magic done here the night before was gone. The only fire

was a small cookfire smoldering gently upon a bed of sand, a leather cooking pot suspended above it.

The Sahoya knelt before it, cleaning fish as though she were any woman.

At the sight of her, a strong surge of emotion welled up in Sarah, but it was so intermixed with puzzlement

that even Sarah could not put a name to it. The Seeking Medicine had not gone as she willed and

expected. The vision she had experienced had faded from her mind, leaving behind only its imprint of

sorrow and loss—but she did know that whatever else she had done last night, she had gained no word

of Mend's whereabouts.

Seeing her awake, the Sahoya rose gracefully to her feet and came to kneel beside Sarah. She brought

with her a gourd filled with water, into which she dipped a rag and bathed Sarah's forehead.

"The weakness will pass," she said. "Your spirit has journeyed far, and is weary."

"What… what did you do to me?" Sarah's voice emerged in a hoarse whisper.

"Forgive me, Sarah, but if I had told you what I purposed, your will would have worked against my

magic. I sent you to the Crossroads of the Worlds, to the land from whence your spirit came. It would be

a far harder thing for me to travel there than for you to return there, and so I sent you to learn what I

would know. It makes evil hearing, Sarah of Baltimore."

"I know," Sarah whispered, closing her eyes against the tears that memory brought.

"But you will speak for us to the English King who has made himself overlord of these lands." It was not

a request.

"I will do what I can," Sarah promised. "But what of Meriel? I owe her my help as well."

The Sahoya lowered her eyes in shame. "I promise you, I sought for your friend until the moon passed

below the Western Hills, but all mat I found was the image of a cup as green as spring leaves and as gold

as autumn leaves, that flamed as bright as sumac in winter. Your friend is cloaked by greater magic than

my own, whether for good or for ill I cannot say. All I know is that the one whom her heart seeks is still

in this land, and not beyond the sea as you feared."

"Louis," Sarah said. "Meriel must have gotten word of his location and followed the trail while it was still

fresh." She fell silent. Where in the New World could Louis be, if he were not in Baltimore?

"Louisianne," she said. Though it seemed a thousand years away, gossip about the volatile French

province had dominated London in the months before the Royal wedding, and so Sarah knew that the

rebellious colony was on the verge of secession from Napoleon's Empire—and who better to lead such a

rebellion than the man everyone would acknowledge as the true king of France?

Louis.

It was a hunch—a wild guess based on hope much more than fact—but the more she thought about it,

the more Sarah was convinced this must be her answer. If Louis had been kidnapped and not taken back

to Europe, Louisianne was his only logical destination.

"I think I know where to look, now—for both of them," Sarah said.

She tried to sit up, but was still too weak. The Sahoya supported her, and brought the gourd of water

once more to her lips. As Sarah drank, she felt strength return.

"If you go into French territory, you will need help. You cannot pass for one of the People, and the

French are at war with the English," the Sahoya said.

Sarah had not considered that, so used had she been to thinking of America as one great country, but

what the Sahoya said was true. Even if she could get to Nouvelle-Orléans, the Duchess of Wessex

would certainly not be welcome there. Yet she must go, and the only way she could go was overland, on

foot, as one of the People. The Duchess of Wessex could not sail to a nation with which her own nation

was at war, even if she could find a ship in Baltimore Harbor that would accept Nouvelle-Orléans as a

destination. But with the Sahoya as a guide, the journey would be a quick and peaceful one.

"•Will you aid me?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. For I think we will all need to learn to help one another in the times to come."

When Sarah was once more strong enough to travel, the Sahoya led her back to the Cree village. If she

shared the details of her dream-quest with anyone, Sarah did not know of it.

It took the two women three days to make their preparations. Where a European would prepare for a

similar journey with hundreds of pounds of supplies and a string of pack mules, Sarah and The

Daughter-of-the-Wind would go in little more than the clothes they stood up in. In addition to blankets,

flint and steel, and tinder, they would carry salt and a few days of trail rations. With the Baker rifle that

Sarah carried, they could easily live off the land, and shoot enough fresh meat to trade to the villages they

might pass through for the supplies they might lack.

There was a great feast made to see them off, and Sarah received many presents—a tinderbox, a good

steel knife, a buckskin sheath for her rifle, beaded and fringed and greased to keep moisture from

damaging the Baker's delicate mechanism. In return, she shared out all that she had brought, including the

gold sovereigns, which the People prized as much for their intricate beauty as for the value of the gold.

She wrote a long letter to Wessex, telling him all that she had discovered and where she was going, and

gave it to one of the Cree, an older man named White Badger, to take to her hotel, there to await her

husband's arrival.

In the dim light of morning, Sarah rose from her bed in the Young Woman's House and gathered her

possessions for the journey. Around her, the unmarried daughters of the Cree slept, and in that moment,

it was easy for Sarah to believe that the last few years had not happened—that her parents were still alive

and well, that she had never journeyed across the sea to an England far stranger than her imaginings.

She stepped through the curtain that covered the long-house door and looked around. The

Daughter-of-the-Wind was waiting for her, but another figure stood beside her. As she approached,

Sarah, saw that it was Meets-The-Dawn, her foster brother.

"I ask to accompany you," he said.

Sarah schooled her face to stillness. "This is not your journey," she said gently.

"You speak our tongue. You follow our path. I will have it said, when you go before the White King

again, that the Cree gave help where it was needed."

"Let it be as you say," the Sahoya said impatiently. "Come, Sarah. The way is long."

"I suppose you won't change your mind?" Koscuisko said coaxingly.

The two men stood on the deck, savoring the sultry September air and the bustle on the dock.

Day-dream
had slipped into Baltimore Harbor at first light. Though a far smaller city than either Boston

or New York, Baltimore was a thriving port. Wessex hoped with all his heart that he would enter the city

to find Sarah waiting for him, but he had another matter to deal with first. No matter how much

Koscuisko might pretend otherwise, they were not in New Albion on the same mission.

He was not even entirely certain that Koscuisko's mission was what he said it was—after so long in the

Shadow Game, Wessex distrusted everyone without prejudice. He regarded his sometime partner

unyieldingly.

"Our paths diverge," Wessex said. "I wish you would not go to Louisianne, Illya," he continued, surprising

even himself.

"But the women are beautiful and I hear the food is sublime. And I would be remiss, do you not think,

did I not to renew my acquaintance with the excellent Due d'Charenton, especially since he provided us

with such a splendid hunt for Princess Stephanie and her yacht?" Koscuisko said.

It was d'Charenton's sorcery that had led the
Queen Christina
into French waters in an attempt to seize

the Danish Princess before her wedding. D'Charenton could call upon formidable, unnatural powers if he

so chose, and Wessex's grim humor deepened.

"Are you refusing the assignment? You never have before, you know," Koscuisko added in a different

voice.

"I never took this assignment in the first place—and if we begin this game of hired murder, Illya, where

does it end? Shall the King and his ministers be forced to live behind prison walls, lest an assassin's bullet

end their lives? Shall we fill our armies from the gallows and let every rookery be a breeding ground for

future diplomatists? It is not a happy future you paint for us, my friend." The life of a political agent, who

must sometimes kill to perform his duties, was one thing. To become a casual assassin was quite another.

"Better any future than none," Koscuisko answered, equally grimly. "If Napoleon continues his

adventures unchecked, he will gobble up your country as he did mine, until only France is left, presided

over by the Great Beast and his Black Pope."

Wessex sighed. The reason they so rarely had conversations of this sort was that the arguments each

raised were unanswerable. "Tell Misbourne—should you see him before I do—that I did not find this

latest adventure to my taste, and so have decided to amuse myself elsewhere."

Koscuisko shook his head regretfully. The scapegrace sailor who had stowed away on the
Day-dream

was gone, and Koscuisko was his elegant, dandified self once more. "I hope, in that case, that the next

time I see you, it will be in circumstances at least as happy as these."

"And I'll hope that I see you again at all," Wessex said bleakly.

"Oh, you will," Koscuisko said, laughing. "For I was born to be hanged, and from all reports,

d'Charenton's tastes do not run in that direction at all. I shall be perfectly safe. For now, I see that my

trunks have made it securely to shore, and there is a gentleman I must meet in the city. His name is

Fulton, and the White Tower has been sending him money for some time. I suppose I will go and see

what use he has made of it."

Wessex raised his hand in farewell. Koscuisko was always mad for gadgets, from Babbage's Difference

Engine to the latest mechanical theories of the Royal Society. They worked as often as not, which was a

surprise, but Koscuisko's future plans had no bearing on Wessex's.

The Duke had kept his own counsel during the voyage over. If Koscuisko knew that Wessex was bound

for New Albion, he knew little more than that. Sarah's gambit had left her husband little choice of how to