The Dreamtrails (69 page)

Orys knelt down and pressed his ear to the ground, and he sat back on his heels and nodded. “Thirty riders, I’d say.”

“The Hedra who rode toward Murmroth, by my guess,” Merret said with satisfaction. “Now that they have passed, we can go more swiftly, for there will be no one to see our dust.”

Two hours later, Domick began to groan and strain at his bonds, and I knew that the sleep potion was wearing off again. We stopped long enough to check the ties, and Blyss reluctantly administered another small dose from Rolf’s bottle. When we rode on, the empath’s expression was full of anxiety, and she admitted that Domick’s fever had been mounting since morning and was now dangerously high. I suggested Orys ride ahead to warn Jak we were on our way, but Merret pointed out that Dell was likely to know exactly when we would come.

To take my mind off worrying about the coercer, I rode up beside Merret and asked her if Dell had dreamed of Matthew.

She gave me a sharp look of interest. “As a matter of fact, we have all dreamed of him at one time or another. Enough were true dreams for us to piece together that he is a slave in the Red Queen’s land and has been trying to rally the people there to rise against the slave owners who occupy the Land. Only they refuse to rise because they believe they must wait for their queen to return. But Dell claims that it is Dragon whom Matthew is waiting for.”

I took a deep breath, and on impulse, I spoke aloud for the first time of what I knew. “Dell is right,” I said. “Dragon is the daughter of the Red Queen.”

“What!” Merret cried, and the other two looked equally astounded.

“I went into her mind to try drawing her out of her coma, and I learned that it was the memory of her mother’s death and betrayal that initially sent her into a coma—or rather her need to deal with the memory that she had repressed. Inside her mind, I saw her mother betrayed and stabbed by her advisor, and then she and Dragon were given to slavers with instructions that they be sold or thrown overboard. But something happened. Dragon’s mother beastspoke whales that attacked the ship. She was dying even as she and Dragon entered the water. Then she summoned a ship fish and commanded it to take Dragon ashore. I believe the ship fish brought her to the west coast, and somehow she made her way to the ruins and lived there until we found her.”

“It explains her fear of water,” Orys said, shaking his head.

“Of course, that was a dream, so the real events might be rather different. Remember, she would have been younger and very frightened and confused. But my own dreams tell me that Matthew knows who Dragon is,” I said. “At first he wanted to free the Red Land and come for Dragon, but now he wishes to fetch Dragon to the Red Land to fulfill the legend so the people there will overthrow their oppressors.”

“We knew from Dell’s futuretelling dreams that Dragon had awakened, but it was not until you offered me memories of all that transpired in Saithwold that I understood that her memory was flawed,” Merret said.

“Kella and Roland say her memory will return, but even if it does not, I will ask Dardelan to send a ship to escort Dragon to the Red Queen’s land. Perhaps the sight of her true home will remind Dragon of what she has forgotten.”

Merret gave a shout, and I looked up to see the low broken walls of the Beforetime ruins.

After so long, it was strange to ride again into the grid of streets and piles of broken rubble remaining from the Beforetime settlement that had once stood here. Close to the edge of the ruins facing the Suggredoon, I noticed a square broken tower rising above the other buildings that I did not remember. It was ruined, yet surely there had been nothing so high when I had been here last. The others must have built it and made it look like a ruin, to serve as a lookout tower.

When I asked Merret, she grinned at me. “Fortunately, these west-coast folk are not as observant as you,” she said. “They still think of these ruins as haunted, and we do all we can to support the legend Dragon began with her coerced visions.”

As we neared the tower, I saw that there was a good solid lookout post atop a set of sturdy steps, hidden inside the corner where the two walls had been repaired. I farsought the lookout but found it empty.

The ground under the horses’ hooves was now sand, and I remembered that from Aborium to Murmroth there were patches of true desert like those in Sador, and from time to time, dunes drifted slowly from these like slow strange nomads. It seemed that one had invaded the ruins some time past, for our passage, slow as it was, raised a gauzy cloud of fine sand, which the wind and sun spun into an opaque haze of gold.

We entered a narrow street and traveled single file, Merret in the lead on Ran, followed by Blyss on Zidon, Orys on Sigund, and Golfur behind them bearing Domick. I brought up the rear on Rawen. We passed a corner that stood at about the height of the horses’ chests, the stone wall cracked and crumbling where a dry scrub grass had taken root, and it looked familiar. We were close to the central square where we
had first dismounted years past, when I had come here with Pavo. How the discovery of the vast, dark Beforetime library had thrilled and astonished me. Since then, Teknoguild expeditions had come many times before the rebellion to gather more books, and I knew they now believed that the library was the very top level of a building that went deep beneath the earth. How deep, they had never been able to say, because they had been unable to access the other levels.

Looking around, I saw no sign of any settlement, save the broken tower. Not a smudge of smoke existed, nor anything else that would prompt someone riding past the ruins to investigate, and this made me wonder if Dell and the others had made their refuge beneath the ground in the library level. Or perhaps deeper. I asked Orys if they had managed to find a way into any of the levels beneath the library.

“We have entered all thirty levels below the surface,” he answered blithely.

“Thirty levels of books!”
I cried in disbelief.

“Not books,” Orys said. “They were only on the first level. Dell says the building that housed the library was not a keeping place for books or a place to work, as most of the Beforetime buildings were. She thinks that the library existed only to hide the true purpose of the levels beneath, which were intended to house people in an emergency. There are sleeping chambers for more than three hundred, though they are very small, and there is a vast kitchen and eating area. Pretty much all the other space on the kitchen level and the next two is taken up with storerooms containing food enough for years.”

“It was meant to be a refuge?” I managed to croak.

“It was, only no one ever came here for refuge. We found the bones of a single person in one bedroom, and Dell said
that some bodies found on the upper levels were probably trapped when the Great White came. Jak thinks that is probably what happened to the man whose bones we found in the lower levels; he would have had no choice but to stay there.”

I felt as if one of the dust demons from the plain had blown into my head. I wanted to think about what I had learned, but we were now approaching the central square. The last time I had seen it, it had been at night, and moonlight had given the broken walls and streets a ghostly look.

Lost in memory, I gasped as a column ahead of us moved, until I saw that it was Dell. She had been sitting atop a broken pillar watching our approach. Merret called out a greeting as the lean futureteller slipped from her perch and approached us. I saw with astonishment that she wore queer blue trousers in a fabric and design I had never seen before and enormous black boots, rather than the traditional beautifully dyed sweeping gowns and tunics favored by those of her guild. And she had cut her hair very short. But her cool, tranquil expression was unchanged by her months of exile, and as her pale eyes settled on me, I felt the same shiver of apprehension I always felt in the presence of a powerful futureteller, half fearing that she would make some dreadful pronouncement. At the same time, I longed to ask exactly what Atthis had said to solicit her aid in saving me from drowning. She merely gave me a formal bland greeting.

“It is good to see you safe,” I said, dismounting and striving to appear at ease. She smiled and turned aside to watch as Merret and Orys took Domick’s pallet from Golfur’s back. I fetched out my clodhoppers, pulled them on, and straightened.

“Poor man,” Dell murmured in her soft voice. “He has suffered much.”

Seely appeared behind the futureteller, and I was startled to see that she wore exactly the same clothing as Dell, but her thin hair had grown, and now she had it plaited on either side of her face. Seeing me, she smiled and raised her hand, but her expression grew serious as her eyes settled on Domick, whose pallet the others had laid on the cobbles.

“Is Jak ready for him?” Dell asked.

“Of course,” said Seely without looking away from Domick’s gaunt face. Dell gestured to Merret, whereupon she and Orys lifted the pallet and bore it away carefully in the direction from which Seely had come. Dell suggested the younger woman go and help them with the doors, and she obeyed at once.

“Shall we go?” she asked me.

“We should tend to the horses,” I said, for they were all still saddled save for Rawen. “There is also food in the saddlebags.…”

Dell smiled. “Pellis will be here in a moment to give them fodder and offer them a rubdown if they wish it.”

“Pellis?” I asked, not recognizing the name.

“Merret found him. He is a Misfit. There are seven others who have joined us here since the Suggredoon closed, all children. They delight in tending the horses, for all except Pellis have learned Brydda’s signal speech. Pellis does not need it, for he is a beastspeaker. But you will meet them soon enough.” She strode away, obviously expecting me to follow, and I did so, wincing as the boots pressed against my blisters and realizing that, contrary to my expectations, Dell rather than Jak or Merret was leader of the library refuge. Her every gesture and word had the authority of leadership, and the others clearly accepted this. It seemed utterly uncharacteristic, for futuretellers were usually far too preoccupied by their
inner worlds to bother with the real world.

Belatedly, I sent a probe back to Rawen promising my return and asking her to tell Golfur that I had not forgotten my promise to send him to Rolf.

Dell turned into a long street, which brought us to a labyrinth of broken and tumbledown walls. After wending our way through them, we reached a doorway that was almost intact and was in a bit of wall that, when I looked closely, appeared to have been rebuilt. It had been done subtly so it would not immediately be obvious to passersby. Through the door was the great pile of rubble that I had climbed with Pavo so long ago. At the top was the trapdoor that had led us to the Beforetime library. We had simply come to it from another direction.

At the square opening in the ground, I looked down at the metal steps I had last seen with Pavo. I looked up to find Dell watching me. But instead of speaking, she again made a slightly peremptory gesture, and I climbed down the steps.

Only when out of the daylight did I realize that some eldritch light source was illuminating the stairs. They led to a passage with smooth white walls extending in both directions. I knew from the last time I had been here that the passage led in one direction to vast vaults of books. Pavo, Kella, Jik, and I had gone that way, but Dell turned in the other direction, passing me to take the lead. I followed, remembering with a shudder the bones we had found. Pavo had speculated even then that the complexity of the locking mechanism we had released suggested the building’s use as a refuge for the Beforetimers. From what Orys said, that had been the building’s true purpose. Obviously, the people whose bones we had found had not managed to enter the refuge before it had been locked.

Quite suddenly we came upon the others standing together in a group. At first I thought they had stopped to wait for us, but as we drew nearer, I saw their attention was fixed on a metal door set into the side of the passage. It met the edges of the wall so smoothly that I might not have noticed it if they had not stopped, but I wondered why the others did not open it. I would have asked, but even as I stopped beside Dell, I noticed that the metal door was humming softly. The metal split open, and each side slid into the wall to reveal a small chamber lit from above. I stared as the others crowded into the tiny space, arranging themselves carefully around Merret and Orys and the pallet they carried.

“Come,” Dell said, and I entered the chamber, where there was barely room to move, let alone do anything else.

“I thought we were going to see Jak?” I said.

“We are,” Dell answered calmly as the metal doors slid back to seal the opening.

I began to feel I could not breathe, being pressed into such a small space with other people, but Dell laid a hand on my shoulder. Then I realized that nobody else looked alarmed or even surprised. The chamber began to hum softly and vibrate, and I had the strange and terrifying sensation of falling. A heaviness filled my limbs, but before I could gather my wits enough to ask what was going on, the metal door split and slid away again.