The Dreamtrails (27 page)

I dreamed vividly of the day my parents had died. I saw the soldierguards burst through the door of our home as my mother prepared nightmeal. One soldierguard grasped my mother about the waist, and Jes flew at him. The soldierguard swatted him away as if he were an insect, and Jes hit the wall with a loud crack and fell down, lying half stunned against it. I ran to my mother and tried to climb into her arms, but another soldierguard tore me away from her and hurled me over to where Jes was beginning to stir. My mother was dragged outside, and then two soldierguards pushed us after her. I heard her calling out to neighbors and friends to help us. But though people’s faces appeared at windows, no one tried to stop the soldierguards or the Herders directing them.

We were brought to the central square of Rangorn, where moon fairs and sevenday markets were held. Here a small crowd stood gathered about a man tied to a pole in the midst of a woodpile. I realized as we came nearer that the man was my father. He spoke my mother’s name with grief, and she cried out his name and then our names. Anguish crossed my father’s features as he saw us, and he cursed the Herders standing by, pale and gray-robed, their heads bald and gleaming in the sunlight. My mother only begged the priests to take us away so we would not see the burning.

The older of the priests answered her in a dry, fussy voice, saying that we were the children of seditioners and must see where our parents’ treachery had led so we would not follow
in their footsteps. Then one of the soldierguards held us while another daubed our cheeks and foreheads with the stinging dye used to mark the children of seditioners.

“Don’t let them do this,” my father cried out suddenly in his strong rich voice. “There are more of you standing here than these foul priests and the few brutish soldierguards that serve them. Rise up and bind them and let us begin the rebellion here and now, which this Land needs to cleanse itself.”

I looked at the Herders and saw unease cross the face of the younger one, but the older priest only gave a prim, cruel smile and leaned forward to light the kindling with his torch. I saw no more, because Jes pulled me to face him and held me tightly so that I could not see the burning. But I heard it and smelled it.

I felt my brother’s trembling, suffocating embrace, and days later, my upper arms still bore the hand-shaped bruises of Jes’s grip. I heard my father groan and curse the Herders and the Faction, and I heard my mother plead over and over with her friends and neighbors to care for us before her voice rose to a scream. When the screams and groans stopped and a terrible smell filled the air, I looked up at Jes and saw tracks of fire running down his cheeks, where tears reflected flame.

I wept then, too—the desolate weeping of a child deprived forever of her life and family.

I
WOKE BEFORE
dawn, hollowed out by the vividly detailed memory dream.

I was too wide awake to go back to sleep, for it was near morning. Resisting the temptation to farseek Maruman, I decided to find out what sort of mood the old cat was in without actually beastspeaking him. I lit a lantern, washed my face, and dressed before pulling on my boots and brushing my hair. As I left the room, a few intrepid birds were already giving out notes, tuning themselves for the dawn chorus. Rather than going straight outside, I decided to go find some food. Aside from being hungry myself, food was always a good way to coax Maruman out of a temper. If I could find some fish, the battle would be half won.

It took me a little time to find the kitchen, but it was not deserted, as I had expected at such an early hour. A young boy was seated on a bench before the stove, poking at the fire. He leapt to his feet when he saw me and began to stammer an explanation. His father had sent him to rake up the embers and stoke a fire for firstmeal.

“Good,” I said. “I need someone to give me directions to the larder. Do you suppose your father would object if we had a bite to eat before he comes?”

The boy said, “There is some bread we could toast, Da told me not to touch any food …”

“I will make you a bargain,” I said, hiding a smile. “If you
will toast some bread, I will spread jam upon it. And let us light a lamp.”

In just a few minutes, we were seated companionably before the fire, eating thick, half-burnt slices of bread smeared with a delicious tart blackberry jam. Gazing into the fire and listening to the boy tell me that his little sister had picked the berries for the jam, I thought of Jes and how tightly he had held me to stop my seeing our parents’ awful death. He had done his best for me. The strangeness that had come over him before I had been charged Misfit had been no more his choice than the repression of those memories had been mine. Our minds devised these responses to help us survive. And maybe Dameon was right about Rushton’s love being buried beneath what had been done to him by the Herders.

Hope stirred in me, small and frail, but hope nonetheless.

The sound of a door opening interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see Linnet enter. She said in a grave, urgent voice, “You’d better come, Guildmistress.”

I handed my plate to the boy and followed the coercer, my heart beating fast with apprehension. “What is the matter?”

“I’m not sure. One of Malik’s armsman offered us information in return for his release. He said the only reason he had continued serving Malik, once he had made his pact with the Faction, was because he would have been killed if he had seemed to waver in his loyalty. He has a woman up in Sawlney who is carrying his child, and he wants to go to her. I told him that we would get all the information we needed from his master, but he said that it would not come soon enough to save us from the invasion. I asked what he meant.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that the quickest way to prove he was telling the truth would be to let you probe him?”

“I did, and he agreed to it. But I made the mistake of putting
him back in his cell while we cleared another to conduct the interrogation. Another armsman attacked him, and he is so near to dying now that anyone entering his mind would be at risk of being taken with him.”

We had reached the steps leading to the cells, and I ran down them, past the waiting coercers. A big armsman lay on the floor in a pool of blood. I recognized him from Malik’s camp. I knelt next to him, noticing that his breathing had an ominous whistling sound.

“Can you hear me?” I asked. His eyes found my face, and I saw that he was able to understand me. I leaned close to his ear and said, “Tell us what you know, and we will find your woman and see that she and the child are cared for.”

The man’s eyes widened, and I saw the effort it cost him to move his lips. “Klah … los …,” he gasped. Rosy blood bubbled from his nostrils.

“It must be the name of his woman,” Linnet said.

But I was looking down into the armsman’s face and saw his eyes move rapidly left and then right. No.

“Try again,” I urged him.

“Clos …,” he spluttered.

“Close?” I guessed. Again his eyes flicked left and right. A cloudiness in them indicated that we had very little time.

“Please,” I said. “Let your child be told that his father fought to keep the Land free.”

This time the tendons in his neck stood out as he spoke. “Clois … Kloh …” He sank back, his lips sheened with blood.

“Dead,” I said softly, and reached forward to close his staring eyes.

“Could he have been trying to say
cloister
?” Linnet guessed.

“It may be. You had better coerce the man who attacked him. I think we can say this is serious enough to warrant it.”

“I doubt it will do any good. The dead man claimed to be the only one who knew what he was offering to tell us. Indeed, he said Malik would have killed him for what he knew. The other armsman attacked him purely because he meant to collaborate with us.”

I looked down at the dead man and remembered Malik’s triumphant look as he rode off. “He said that any information obtained from Malik would come too late to save us from the Herder invasion?” Linnet nodded. “That makes no sense, for Malik will have been coerced by tomorrow or the day after, and Dardelan will send a force here immediately to prepare for the invasion.”

“It was before wintertime that Noviny overheard Malik, and the timing of the invasion might well have been changed since then,” Linnet pointed out.

She was right. “Then if the armsman spoke truly, the invasion would have to take place tomorrow or even today!” I thought again of Malik’s look of triumph. “We must organize our own defense immediately.”

“But what are we to defend? There are three places where an invasion force could come ashore in Saithwold,” Linnet said.

“We must put watchers at each set of steps and instruct them to send word the moment they spot ships approaching,” I replied. “That will give us time to move a force to meet them. In the meantime, we need to gather a fighting force.”

“We must send word to Rushton and Dardelan,” Linnet said.

“So we will, but we need something more than a few choked words from a dying man. I will ride to the cloister and look around.”

Linnet nodded decisively. “I will send out some knights to watch for ships at each accesspoint.”

“You might also send someone to investigate those caves Noviny mentioned to Zarak as well,” I said. “See what sort of force we could conceal in them.”

Linnet gave me a searching look. “You still intend trying to take the ships?”

“I think we must try,” I said. “With luck, Dardelan and the others will arrive in time to help.”

Linnet strode out of the cell, and I heard her instruct a coercer to summon Khuria and all the knights to the kitchen. I glanced down at the dead man one more time before going after her.

As we ascended the steps, Linnet said she would ask Khuria to gather the men and women nominated by Noviny to help guide Saithwold in his absence. “We will need their help to assemble a force big enough to deal with any warrior priests we take as prisoners,” she explained. “But we knights must be at the top of the steps to receive these warrior priests.”

“Given the sort of numbers we will have, it might be wiser to try trickery at the top of the steps, rather than force,” I said. “Why not coerce a group of Malik’s men to meet the invaders and lead them into a trap away from the cliffs?”

“The invaders are going to expect to see Malik,” Linnet pointed out.

“Then prepare for that. Have the coerced men claim to be taking the invaders to Malik. If we are right in guessing that the cloister is a secret armory, the Herders can be told Malik awaits them there.”

“Maybe one of Malik’s men will know,” Linnet suggested. “I will coerce the leaders among them as soon as I set the
others to their tasks. It is a pity your friend Kevrik left.”

“Talk to those of Vos’s armsmen that Kevrik said were decent people. One of them is bound to know which men Malik might have confided in,” I said, but I had no great hope he would have confided in anyone.

By the time we reached the kitchen, some of the coercers were beginning to assemble, but I did not linger, for I was eager to find out if we had been right in our guesses about the cloister. Farseeking Gahltha to meet me in front of the house, I fetched my greatcoat and went outside to find he was already waiting. I grasped his mane, threw myself onto his back, and in minutes we were galloping hard along the road. It then occurred to me that the slaves Noviny had seen might have been held in the cloister to be handed over to the Herders. Remembering the pitiable state of the prisoners we had found locked in Sutrium’s cloister cells after the invasion, I farsent Linnet to ask her to send Wenda and the carriage after me, just in case there were any poor wretches in the cells.

The sun was near to rising behind the trees as we approached the rutted track to the cloister, and I could see the pale, stone wall that enclosed it quite clearly. It stood as high as the tallest trees in the mist-wreathed forest that hemmed it on three sides, and had a secretive air.

I slipped down from Gahltha’s back, hot from the exertion of the gallop, and approached the enormous metal gate sagging off its hinges. I could feel the numbing buzz of the tainted walls, and my heartbeat quickened. Why freshen the taint in the walls, if not to keep something concealed from Misfit Talents?

I was about to go through the gate when I noticed Gahltha hanging back. Guessing that the taint was troubling him, I
stroked his soft nose and told him to wait outside since he could not come into the cloister buildings with me anyway. He agreed with relief, and I went through the gateway alone. But I stopped again inside, assailed by a premonition of danger. As usual, it was so vague as to be useless, save as a reminder that I would not be able to reach Gahltha’s mind until I came back through the gate. Then I chided myself for being a fool, for of course I could call out to him.

I took a deep breath and looked around. Cobbles ran from the gate to the front of the cloister, but on either side of the cloister building were green swathes of grass. On the south lawn apple trees grew in neat lines parallel to the side of the building. The sun had not yet risen high enough to cast any direct light on them, and it struck me that I had foolishly failed to bring a lantern or candles and a tinderbox. Since it was too dark to enter the building, I decided to look at the tools and piles of earth Zarak had mentioned until Wenda arrived, for there would be lanterns or candles in her wagon.