The Dreamtrails (56 page)

I bade the lad lead Rawen from the yard and dismissed him after erasing all memory of our dealings and inserting in its place the memory of having seen an older man with blond hair and a furtive manner hanging about the yard.

To my relief, Rawen knew the way to the main gate, which she said was much closer than the side gate. In a short time, we were approaching the city’s busy main entrance. I asked Rawen to stop and dismounted, pretending to adjust her saddle as I studied the best way out. A swift probe told me that the six soldierguards on duty here wore demon bands. Five were concentrating on the long line of incoming travelers while the sixth dealt with people leaving the city. He gave
only a cursory glance to each, and, reassured, I was about to mount Rawen again when a man leading two horses reached the gate. The soldierguard held out his hand, and the man produced what were clearly the horses’ papers. I was dismayed, and sensing it, Rawen asked what the matter was. I explained as best I could, but she assured me that no one ever asked for anything on the rare occasions when her mistress had taken her out of the city to exercise. This sounded so odd that I asked if I could enter her mind to watch a memory of her last departure from the city. She agreed, and it took only a moment to discover that her mistress was the daughter of one of the city’s more important traders.

I was appalled, but it was too late now to return the mare to her stable, and if I simply released her, she might come to harm. Then I would still have to find another horse, with papers, thereby losing all chance of reaching Halfmoon Bay by nightfall. I might even find myself locked inside the city. All things considered, there was nothing to do but go on boldly.

Once again, my fears proved groundless, for when it was our turn to go through the gate, the soldierguard looked at Rawen rather than me and advised gruffly that I had better be quick if I wanted to exercise my mistress’s horse and return before the gates closed. Under other circumstances, I would have been alarmed that the soldierguard had recognized the mare, but this enabled us to leave without papers. The moment the horse was reported missing, though, the soldierguard would remember me, so I needed to put as much distance as possible between us and the city.

Once away from the gate, Rawen willingly broke into a canter. It was wonderful to ride again, and I was pleased to find that Rawen enjoyed the gallop as much as I did. Mindful of the need to find the null swiftly, I bade her gallop
as long as she could comfortably do so, and as we progressed, I conveyed my recent adventures.

We alternated between a canter and a walk, but I had miscalculated the distance to Halfmoon Bay, and it was dusk before we saw the city in the distance. There was little point in entering after dark, so I told Rawen that we would camp near the city. She asked if I might ride her along the sand beside the water, for she liked the sound and scent of the waves. I agreed, and when we reached the sand, I bade her stop, and I dismounted and walked beside the mare. It was pleasant, and by the time we were close enough to the city to make camp, it was quite dark. But even as I removed Rawen’s tack, the moon rose and transformed the sea into a sheet of undulating silver that I stopped to admire. The horse rolled in the sand with voluptuous delight, and then she galloped into the waves, rearing and splashing like a child at play.

After she emerged and shook herself vigorously, she devoured the oats and hay I set out for her while I ate cheese and bread. We both drank sparingly from the water bladder. I had no means of starting a fire, and as it grew cold, I began to worry about Rawen, for she had told me that she had never spent a night in the open. Removing my cloak, I would have thrown it over her, but she suggested that she lie and then I could sit beside her, and the cloak could cover us both.

Lying against her warm belly, I gazed out at the sea, which unrolled its waves like silken rugs threaded with silver. My thoughts turned inevitably to Gahltha, for I had often sat in this way with him, sharing warmth and friendship. Where was he now? I wondered. Back at Obernewtyn or in Sutrium? And what of Maruman?

“You are bound to these beasts?” Rawen asked curiously, for she had seen their images in my thoughts.

“We are friends,” I sent. “But what of you/your friends?”

“An equine owned by funaga does not have friends,” she told me mildly. I asked about her life and learned that she had been bought unbroken as a filly by an owner who had trained her with care and gentleness. After he died she had been bought as a gift for her present mistress. Despite being feckless, it seemed the girl had not been unkind to her horse, for she regarded Rawen as a possession that enhanced her own beauty and value.

I asked how the mare thought her mistress would react to her loss. Rawen said that it did not matter how her young mistress reacted, for her owner was the girl’s father, and he would be furious. This disquieted me, for a furious and self-important trader might complain loudly enough that soldierguards would be sent to hunt the thief. Of course, they would search initially for a fair-haired, furtive-looking man, but it would not take long for the soldierguard at Morganna’s main gate to give an accurate description of me. And persistent questioning of those who had entered the city might reveal that I had departed in the direction of Halfmoon Bay.

The only way to prevent their finding me would be to enter Halfmoon Bay without the mare. I explained my concern and asked Rawen if she felt able to make her way alone to the other side of the city. I told her that I did not expect to be inside the city for more than a few hours, and when I left, I would summon her. Rawen agreed to the plan, and I decided that we must leave her saddle and bridle. If she was spotted saddled and riderless, she would be pursued as a runaway. It was a pity I could not take the saddle with me to sell, but aside from being too heavy to carry, it was distinctive, and its description might be circulating with that of the mare. I would bury the saddle in the sand, I decided, but the bridle
was small enough that I could take it with me into Halfmoon Bay and sell it. With the coin it fetched, I could buy a plainer bridle with which to lead Rawen, more food, a horse blanket, and a tinderbox.

I yawned and was about to close my eyes when I realized that I could send a general farseeking probe into at least part of the city because of the gaps in the wall. I sent out a coercive probe searching for recognizable mind signatures, just as I had done in Morganna. To my complete amazement, I immediately brushed against a mind I knew! I was so startled that I lost contact too soon to identify whose mind it had been, and try as I might, I could not locate it again. But I had not the slightest doubt that I had touched the mind of an Obernewtyn Misfit. Whoever it was must have either been on the verge of sleep or had moved behind a section of wall. The moment I entered the city, I would farseek again. The thought of being able to speak with a Misfit filled me with excitement, and it was some time before I could calm myself enough to sleep.

The night grew steadily colder, and I worried again about Rawen, but hearing my thoughts, the mare sent equably that she was content. Turning to look at her long face, silvered by moonlight, I saw her prick her ears at the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, and then she turned her head and sniffed the air blowing across the open plain. I was close enough to sense that her mind was truly untroubled, and I marveled yet again at the ability of beasts simply to be. Rawen was not wondering what would happen next or regretting the pampered life she had led in Morganna. She was simply
being
.

Envying her serenity, I knew that it was not in me to emulate it. I turned my eyes to the waves and found myself
thinking of the null. Lark and Elkar had both told me that Ariel chose his nulls from among the intake of novice boys, so I had to suppose that he had deliberately chosen an older null specifically for this task. It made sense, but why a null at all? Why not simply someone who could be infected by the plague? Or had Ariel wanted someone with no personal desires or intentions to interfere with whatever he had been bidden to do?

There were no answers, and at last Rawen’s warmth and the song of the waves lulled me to sleep. I woke not long after dawn, feeling deeply refreshed. Turning out the last of the oats, I left Rawen to her meager firstmeal while I set about digging a hole deep enough to accommodate the saddle. Once it was buried, I tied the ornate bridle under my shirt and ate an apple with pleasure, giving the other to the mare.

She crunched it up, then nuzzled me and bade me be careful before she cantered away along the beach. I watched her until the sunlit haze of sea spray swallowed her up, and then I rolled the empty saddlebag tightly, wrapped my cloak around it, and set off toward Halfmoon Bay.

“W
HERE HAVE YOU
come from?” the soldierguard asked the older man.

He was first in the short queue of people waiting to enter Halfmoon Bay at the gap gate nearest the water. Like the three before him, he had come from a grubber farm in the badlands, whose crops had mutated after a series of storms that had blown in from the Blacklands. I knew from conversations with Seely, who had lived most of her life on the west coast, that although the strip of land that ran along the Blacklands was slightly more fertile than most of the west coast, there was a high incidence of mutated crops and livestock. Anything abnormal was supposed to be destroyed, though in practice, life on these farms was harsh enough that many mutations were passed off as normal. When it could not be concealed, the grubbers had no choice but to burn their crop or livestock and abandon their farms to travel to the nearest city. Some never went back, but most tried to earn coin enough for new seed stock and untainted livestock before returning.

I had thought to be a grubber in search of work, but now I feared my tale would sound too similar, so I invented a sick grandfather in need of medicine. My story thus refined, I turned my attention to what I could see of Halfmoon Bay through the section gate, which was little more than a guarded opening between two sections of wall. Instead of the
well-stocked stalls and the bustle of trade inside the gate at Morganna, the open area beyond the gap was narrow and dirty, and the buildings appeared to be on the verge of tumbling down. A group of ragged-looking men playing a card game on the back of a cart stopped occasionally to cast furtive glances toward the gate, and a swift probe told me that they were keeping watch for a traveler wealthy enough to follow and rob in the maze of narrow streets leading away from the gate. I was glad my clothes were simple and that I carried only an empty saddlebag and cloak. Even so, I wished that I had gone into the city a different way, for clearly this gate led to one of the city’s poorer areas.

The older man was admitted, and as the soldierguard turned his attention to the two men before me, a group of soldierguards strolled up and lounged against the wall. I could not probe any of them because of their demon bands, but I needed no Talent to realize they must be drunk, for their eyes were glazed, and they laughed often and foolishly at nothing. I half expected the soldierguard on duty to reprimand them, but he merely cast them a frowning look before returning to his questions.

The two men claimed to be tailors from Port Oran come to buy special cloth from a weaver. The soldierguard admitted them and shifted his gaze to me. I offered him my story demurely, suddenly very aware of Rawen’s bridle tied around my waist.

“
Medicine
, she calls it,” crowed one of the drunken soldierguards. “That’s a good one, Pyper.”

“What skills do you offer?” asked the soldierguard, ignoring him. It was a question he had asked the others, and I had an answer prepared.

“I am hoping to cook in a tavern or maybe tend horses in
a public stable, for I am good with beasts,” I said.

The soldierguard nodded, and just as it seemed he would bid me enter, the other soldierguard said, “She don’t speak like any grubber I ever heard, Pyper.”

I was dismayed to realize that he was right. I had not thought to affect the slow, almost singsong speech of the grubbers who had gone before me.

“My mother was city born,” I said quickly.

“Did she come from Halfmoon Bay?” asked the soldierguard named Pyper.

“What is her name? Perhaps I knew her,” called one of the drunken soldierguards with a leer.

I ought to have been afraid, but suddenly I was angry. I was seeking to save the lives of these men as well as the lives of my friends, and I had no time for their foolish hectoring and sly hints. I gave my mother’s true name and said that she had come from Morganna. As I spoke, I reached out to beastspeak a thin, swaybacked horse standing placidly by the cart where the men were gaming. I identified myself as ElspethInnle and asked if she would rear up and create a diversion so I could slip into the city. She said that she would be beaten unless there was a good reason for her alarm, so I beastspoke a dog drowsing in a doorway. He agreed at once to help, and he even offered with a sparkle of mischief to froth at the mouth so the funaga would think he was rabid. Without waiting for me to agree, he sprang up and catapulted across the street, barking wildly.