The Dreamtrails (105 page)

I frowned. Once I had dreamed that the slavemasters were Gadfian, but I had not taken it seriously until I had begun thinking that Salamander had got his ship from them. “It is hard to imagine the Gadfians described by the Sadorians could have increased in such numbers.”

Daffyd nodded. “From what I have gathered, the Gadfians who stole the Sadorian women died out long ago. Those who invaded the Red Queen’s land were another group, and wherever they settled, their fertility was not affected.”

“But how could one people live so far apart?”

“The land of the Gadfians was vast, so perhaps after the Great White, some of its people fled in one direction and thrived while the rest settled on the tainted land, which destroyed their ability to bear healthy children.”

“You have learned a good deal about Gadfians,” I said.

He shrugged. “The Sadorians teach their children about them and the lost Beforetime.”

At the sound of an explosion and a flare of golden light, I
looked up to see a cloud of shimmering gold snowflakes against the dark sky.

“That is the signal that one successful hunt has ended,” Daffyd murmured.

“What happens if the woman doesn’t let herself be caught?” I asked, thinking of Dardelan and Bruna.

“Nothing. The hunters who strived for her will have their stones returned.”

“Daffyd!” It was Gilbert, hurrying across the sand. He smiled warmly at me as I struggled to my feet with Maruman in my arms. Daffyd had leapt to his feet at once, and the two men greeted one another with warm handclasps and many questions. Daffyd expressed surprise at Gilbert’s Norselander hair, and Gilbert laughed and said he was armsman to Gwynedd, king of the Norselands. Daffyd demanded to know how that could be.

“Come with me, and Gwynedd will tell you his own tale, for he has sent me to find you,” Gilbert said.

“Now? But it is not even dawn. How does he know of me anyway?” Daffyd looked almost comically alarmed.

“Rushton spoke of you just now, and when I said I knew you, I was promptly dispatched to find you. As to the time, it seems we have given up on sleep for now. Will you come?”

Daffyd looked at me apologetically. “I should go, for I can ask at once about joining this expedition to the Red Queen’s land. We will continue our conversation later.”

“Just one thing,” I said to Gilbert. “Is Dardelan with Gwynedd?”

The red-haired armsman shook his head. “I think he is the only one among us sensible enough to have gone to his bed, for I have not seen him since the feast ended. Shall I find him for you?”

I shook my head and said that I would see him at firstmeal. I bade Daffyd farewell for now, and Gilbert smiled at me as they moved away. Not until they had vanished into the crowd about the trade stalls did I remember my dreams of Gilaine and Daffyd’s brother, Jow, in the Red Queen’s land. I should have asked Daffyd if he had dreamed of Gilaine, since my dream indicated that she had dreamed of him. That would have to wait until later. I yawned.

“I/Maruman am tired,” Maruman sent.

“I am, too,” I admitted, draping the old cat about my neck. Yawning again, I made my way slowly across the sand to the cluster of sleeping tents, hardly able to believe that only a few hours before, I had been inside the labyrinthine Earthtemple receiving a mysterious communication from Kasanda. I reached into my pocket and felt the little memory seed, but I was too weary to begin another whirl of speculations. It was enough, for now, that I had gained what Kasanda had left for me.

By the time I crawled into my tent, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I stripped off the loose robe I had worn for my swim and stretched out luxuriously on my bedroll, lying gingerly on my beaded hair and pulling the cover over me. Maruman turned in several intent circles before settling against my waist, and in moments, I could hear his soft, purring snore.

I was so weary that I felt dizzy, but something kept me from actually falling asleep. Almost of its own volition, a probe formed and ranged, first over the tents, touching a few minds lightly, then moving out beyond the fires and press of people to the open desert. As had happened very occasionally before when I was extremely tired, my mind spontaneously produced a vague spirit shape, and suddenly I was seeing the
desert with spirit eyes. The desert’s aura was a shifting, liquescent yellow-gold and white.

I saw a dark form running across it, and curiosity sharpened my wits and bade me send my probe toward it. I could not make out the face of the shadowy human form with my spirit eyes, but I reached out to touch the person’s ice-blue aura and realized it was Bruna. My curiosity about her was strong enough to have directed my unfocused probe to her. I felt her surprise as she stopped abruptly, and I realized she had heard someone running toward her. She turned and ran on, and I followed her effortlessly.

Then the desert changed, and Bruna seemed to enter a cave. When I saw the glowing aura of plants, I realized she had entered one of the rifts. She was moving deeper into it, and my curiosity was so intense that it drew me deeper into the merge so that, suddenly, I saw through Bruna’s eyes just as I had once been able to do with Matthew. I was elated, for it was rare to find someone compatible enough to manage this, but I was shocked, too. For standing before Bruna was
Dardelan
, but Dardelan as I had never seen him! Through Bruna’s eyes, I saw that he was naked but for a Sadorian loincloth and a dagger strapped to his leg. He was pale and slim, yet there was a wiry strength to his body not evident when he was clothed. But the most fascinating thing was his aura, visible to my spirit eyes as an overlapping glow. It was a blaze of yellow and gold with flashes of diamond white so dazzling as to be nearly painful. I had never seen an aura quite like it, and I wondered if it was why people had always found Dardelan so charismatic.

“You!” Bruna whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“Hunting you,” Dardelan answered. “You spoke once of loving a particular isis pool. So I begged Andorra to lead me
here, and I asked Hakim to place his own stone in the bowl and drive you in this direction. I do not know who the other man was, whose stone was in the bowl, but I claim victory. Yet I did not hunt you as a tribesman would have, so I will not send up the golden sign unless you will it.”

“You … have hunted me?” Bruna’s voice trembled with doubt, with grief, with anger. “Why would you bother? I am the same woman you let walk away in Sutrium without a second thought. I have not changed. I will never sit tamely at home while you go to fight. I will never obey orders without question.”

“I treated you as I did and said what I said not because I desired you to be anything but what you are, but because I believed that your mother was right in feeling you would be happier here in the desert lands. But after you left Sutrium, I realized that I had never given
you
the choice.”

“You let me leave.” Bruna’s voice had hardened, and I sensed her implacability. The ice lume of her aura shimmered around us.

“I did not let you leave. I deliberately drove you away and only then discovered that I had sent the sun into exile. I love you.”

I felt her shock reverberate through our merged aura, and a wave of hot dazzling red suffused the ice blue. “You … discovered that you loved me after I left?”

Dardelan laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, and bruised purple ran through the golden aura. “I was dazzled by the fire in you when you were nothing but a child, as sweet and golden and full of stings as fresh honeycomb. You shone like a flame before my eyes. I went about my duties, turning my eyes resolutely away from you, but I seemed to see the afterimage of your face and form everywhere. Maybe
it was because you made such a strong impression when you were still a child full of tantrums and willful pride that I failed to perceive that you had grown into a woman. Only after you rode away from Sutrium did I see you clearly, and when I thought of your last words to me, I was shamed. But even amid the shame, I felt pride in the lovely dignity you had shown. I knew I must come to you and beg your forgiveness.”

“My mother told me that you came here to ask the tribes for the sacred ships,” Bruna said in a stony voice, but I could feel that she was trembling from head to toe.

“I had made up my mind to come here the first moment I could, within a day of your departing Sutrium. But I am high chieftain, and I could not leave on the eve of the great ruse. As Jakoby’s daughter, you understand that a leader has a duty to those he leads that he must set above his own desires. My duty took me to the west coast, but then Gwynedd asked your mother to bear him to Norseland, and Rushton asked your mother to bring us here afterward. My duty required me to go with them, but I rejoiced, for there was nowhere else I desired more to visit. I was determined to find you and speak with you before I left the desert lands. But then … last night I heard some tribesmen speak of this hunt … One talked of hunting
you
and I …” He broke off and laughed, looking all at once younger. “I was filled with jealousy, and I put a stone into the bowl with your name upon it. I feared I would lose you to your unknown Sadorian suitor, and I knew it would serve me right, for I had been a fool and did not deserve you. Yet here we stand.” Dardelan took a deep breath. “And now all that remains is for you to tell me whether the love you once felt for me is utterly quenched, or whether there is a spark I can fan to life.”

Bruna gave a choked laugh, and her icy aura blazed hot
red-bronze. “My love for you could as easily be extinguished as the sun!”

“Then you will be hunted?” There was humility and overwhelming relief in Dardelan’s soft question, but now his aura blazed red and gold, like flame, and even though Bruna could not see it, she swayed back, as if from heat.

“I was caught long ago by this hunter, my ravek,” she whispered, and she stepped forward and spread her long fingers on Dardelan’s chest. He stood immobile for a moment, and then he groaned and gathered her to him.

I wrenched my spirit form from Bruna, mortified to have eavesdropped on her and Dardelan, yet deeply touched by what I had seen and heard. This desert land was a fruitful place for love, I thought, perhaps because there was a nakedness to its bare undulant beauty that demanded truth. Suddenly I longed for Rushton to come to me. I was tempted to farseek him, but I resisted, knowing that he, too, had a duty to fulfill.

The lemon light of sunrise was now filtering through the tent, but perversely, I fell asleep at last. Instead of sinking into dreams, my spirit was so enlivened by what I had witnessed between Dardelan and Bruna that it rose, and all at once I was on the dreamtrails. All about me, the world was a shifting mass of shadow and light, waiting for me to summon up a memory or a dream to give it shape. But before I could do anything, a shadow fell over me, chilling me.

“ElspethInnle must not seek the dreamtrails alone,” said Maruman, appearing in his tyger spirit form beside me, tail snaking.

“I did not exactly choose to come here,” I sent, exasperated.

“ElspethInnle must choose
not
to come here,” Maruman
responded sharply. “Return to your body, for the oldOnes summon you to the mountains.”

I stared at him, wondering if this was the summons I had spent half my life awaiting, the moment in which the Seeker set off on the dark road. But then I realized it was impossible, for the ships would not journey to the Red Land for many months, and no one yet knew if the Sadorians would agree to take part in the expedition at all.

“Why?” I asked.

“Maruman does not know. The oldOne’s voice said that ElspethInnle must return at once to Obernewtyn. The oldOne’s voice was very weak.”

I shivered, suddenly remembering Atthis’s voice inside my mind when I had been trying to hold Rushton back from the mindstream. She had bidden me release Rushton lest I perish with him. I had refused and had begged her to help me.

“There will be a price,”
Atthis had warned.

“I will pay it,”
I had sworn desperately.

“It is not you who will pay,”
Atthis had answered.

All at once I was aware of the formless matter about me, darkening.

“ElspethInnle must leave the dreamtrails,” Maruman sent urgently, looking up, ears flat to his skull. I looked up and saw that the unformed matter of the dreamtrails had not darkened but that something enormous was circling overhead, casting a vast black shadow.

“What is it?” I asked, aware of an unfocused malevolence emanating from it.

“The Destroyer seeks ElspethInnle,” Maruman answered. “Fly before it sees you!”

I obeyed instantly, leaping from the dreamtrail and letting
myself fall like a stone. I fell so fast that rather than waking, my spirit form shredded and dissipated as I sank into the depths of my own mind. Before I could shield myself, a dream snared me.

It was a queer dream, for although it felt like a true dream, it could not have been so, for in it, Matthew was running along the tunnel that had appeared repeatedly in my dreams for as long as I could remember. It was filled with a thick, yellow mist, and through it, I saw the dull regular flashing of the yellow light and heard the familiar dripping of water into water.

“Elspeth?” Matthew called urgently. “Elspeth?”

There was no answer but his own voice whispering my name back to him over and over, growing softer and softer, until it faded into a barely audible sibilance.

I slipped free of the dream, but as I rose to wakefulness, I heard the infinitely mournful howl of a wolf.

I opened my eyes to sunlight and Rushton smiling down at me. He might have been a dream summoned by my longing, save for the utter weariness in his jade-green eyes and the mottled bruises that marred his face.

“You were with Bram all night?” I asked.

He yawned and lay down beside me with a heartfelt sigh. “A good bit of it. I know what I am to say now, but the way of speaking gadi is so difficult. I feel as if my tongue has been turned inside out. I fear that I will never manage to speak it well enough to be understood.” He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and yawned again. “These last few hours I was with Gwynedd and Daffyd; he said he had spoken to you.”