The Dreamtrails (73 page)

Out of the elevator, Seely led me only a few steps to a gray door in a corridor filled with gray doors. She touched the door, and it slid open to reveal a small square chamber containing a bed, a table and chair, and a glass box about the height of a tall man in one corner. There was a single door in the room, and Seely said with a slight blush that it led to a privy where I could relieve myself. She pointed to the glass box standing upright in the corner. “You bathe there, and drying sheets and some clothes are there.” She pointed to a cupboard. She indicated a panel against the wall and said I had only to lay my hand on it if I wanted the lights out. Pressed again, the light would be restored.

After she left, the door hissed closed. I stretched out on the bed, knowing I ought to clean myself but feeling unable to face the intricacies of the bathing box. I thought of Domick’s claim that Rushton still served Ariel. He probably meant that Ariel had foreseen that Rushton would reject me, which would cause me pain. Despite the light’s brightness and my thoughts’ churning, I slept without dreams.

I woke groggy and needing desperately to relieve myself. I went reluctantly to investigate the small room beside the bed.
The light flickered on as I entered what was little more than a small cabinet containing a seat with a hole in the center. It looked like a privy, but it was so smooth and clean and sweet smelling that I sat down uneasily. When I stood, a great jet of water burst out and cleaned the bowl. The loud and unexpected noise made me stagger backward from the cubicle, trip over the threshold, and sit down hard. For a moment I sat there, gaping with shock, then I burst out laughing, thinking how utterly foolish I must have looked.

But I sobered as I remembered what Ariel had done to Rushton and Domick. I had felt too overwhelmed to make any sense of it before I slept, but now it seemed sheer lunacy that Ariel would prepare Domick physically and mentally to bring plague to the west coast if he intended only to taunt me. Surely he could have gone through the motions of sending Domick with plague, without infecting him. But Domick said Ariel was convinced that what he had seen would alter if he did anything differently. Yet he
had
done something different. He had told Domick the truth, and he had bidden him taunt me with it. I had long thought him to be defective, but Domick had called him mad. Perhaps his madness, like his hatred for me, arose from the knowledge that I was the Seeker and that he could not fulfill his destiny as the Destroyer without my first attempting to fulfill my quest.

I had never thought of it before, but Atthis had always said that
only if I failed
would the Destroyer have his chance. Perhaps what I had always regarded as a race was in fact a complex game in which the Destroyer must wait for the Seeker to make a certain move before he could make his own. Certainly Domick’s words suggested that Ariel intended to allow me to find the Beforetime weaponmachines that had caused the Great White and then prevent my destroying them. It was
little wonder he hated me, then, for it meant he must protect the very person who stood in the way of what he most wanted. I had always thought of him as my nemesis, but for the first time, I understood that I was also
his
nemesis. Even when he knew I would thwart him, he had to allow it, for fear that he might prevent my doing what I needed to as the Seeker!

The ironic notion made me shiver, because I could imagine the towering rage Rushton would have unleashed in opposing Ariel
with an image of me!

I became aware of a stale odor rising from my body, composed of human and horse sweat and sheer uncleanliness. Revolted, I sloughed off my filthy clothes and padded across the smooth floor to the glass cabinet. I stepped into it with some trepidation and saw three circles on the wall: blue, red, and yellow. I touched blue hesitantly and gave a shriek as icy water cascaded down. I slapped at the red circle, and the water became instantly a boiling torrent. Pressing myself to one side of the cabinet, I pushed the yellow circle. Deliciously warm water flowed out, and I stepped into it and hastily pulled the glass door closed.

I stood for a long time under the miniature waterfall, turning and sighing with pleasure, as the sweat and dirt of my long journey sluiced away down a small round drain hole in the floor. Marveling at the constancy of the flow and temperature of the water and wondering without too much urgency how to turn it off, I noticed three small transparent levers against the wall. Curious, I touched one warily. A gleaming blob of scented matter fell to the floor of the closet and washed away, releasing a soft cloud of perfume. Guessing it to be soap, I pressed the lever again, catching the scented blob and rubbing it over my hair and body. The scent of roses
enveloped me. The other two levers had different scented matter.

Once I had washed the bubbles from my body, I pressed the yellow lever again, and to my relief, the water ceased immediately. Pleased to have mastered the cabinet as well as rendering myself clean, I opened the door and took a drying sheet from the cabinet, noticing several pairs of the same blue trousers that Dell and Seely wore and three different-sized pairs of boots. I disliked the smooth stiffness of the cloth, but I could not bear my own clothes. Dressing in the queer trousers, I noticed a second pile of short-sleeved shirts made of some thin, very fine, white material. I put one of these on and pulled on a pair of soft thick socks. The boots looked heavy, but in fact they were light and very soft, and the sole was spongy to the touch. I found a pair that fit and put them on, marveling that something so ugly could be so comfortable. Then I worked the tangles and snarls from my wet hair with a comb I found on another shelf. Leaving it loose to dry, I undertook the difficult business of washing my filthy clothes in the water cupboard. Before long, they were squeezed out and hung around the room to dry. Seely had not come back, and after trying the door for a moment, I gave up and lay on my stomach on the bed.

I thought of Rushton with sorrow and guilt, knowing that he had been tortured simply because he had loved me. I could not bear to think how he must have suffered whenever he looked at me, despite suppressing the memories of what had happened to him. No wonder he had turned away from me. I shuddered to remember that Dameon had pressed me to force Rushton to look at me and speak with me and face me, so certain had he been that Rushton loved me! He had not known, as I now did, that love had been most cruelly bonded
to pain and fear and torment in the Master of Obernewtyn. Every time Rushton had to deal with me, it must have rocked his sanity. Perhaps Ariel had hoped that the sight of me would eventually drive him mad, and this might have happened, had I remained in the Land and taken the Empath guildmaster’s advice. Maybe
that
was what Mika had meant by saying that Rushton still served Ariel.

Before I saw Rushton again, I must think well and long about what to do.

I must have dozed, because I started awake when I heard a soft tap at the door. I called out as I rose, and Seely burst in, saying, “I’m so sorry, Guildmistress, but you need to come at once. The sky is full of smoke. Dell wants you to see if you can farseek Merret to find out what is happening.”

“Merret? But where is she?”

“She went last night to take the greathorse back to Half-moon Bay and to see if your friends are safe.”

“Last night … but wait! Are you saying there is a fire in Halfmoon Bay?” I asked as we went back out into the purple-lit passage.

“We do not know, but there is a great deal of smoke coming from that direction. Blyss is frightened for Merret,” Seely said.

“How long have I been asleep?” I asked as we hastened down the passage.

“Since yesterday afternoon. It is very early in the morning now,” Seely answered.

We were soon entering the elevating chamber, and I experienced almost as much nausea and alarm as on the previous day. Unable to help myself, I asked Seely what would happen if the chamber broke and we were caught between levels.
She gave me a slightly uneasy look but said that Ines would know how to fix it.

“Ines,” I echoed.

She gave me a measuring look, then said, “I know Jak does not like us thinking of a computermachine as being alive, but I find it hard not to do so. Ines speaks to me and responds to me. She remembers what I have said to her, what I like and do not like, and she asks many questions of me. When I ask
her
questions, she tries her best to answer me and to explain when I don’t understand. I feel like she cares about me.”

I did not know how to respond, for was it not a computermachine that had once tortured me and Rushton and that had helped Ariel destroy Rushton’s love for me? Was it not a computermachine that had caused the Great White? Had those computermachines all had names and soft, soothing voices that could be evoked?

The elevating chamber came to a halt, and the doors slid open; the scent of fresh air seemed intoxicating. I almost ran to the metal steps, and as I mounted them two at a time and burst out into the chilly sweetness of the predawn air, I thought of Hannah telling Cassy that the false sunlight that lit Newrome was not as sweet as true sunlight. I stopped to wait for Seely, relishing being outside. The wind riffled my hair, and I was glad I had not braided it.

Seely joined me and then took the lead as we wove our way through the ruins toward the watchtower. She told me that Alun had first seen the smoke.

We crossed the square, but there were no signs now of the horses or the saddles and packages they had carried. Someone stumbling into the square would not have the slightest clue that people lived close by. At the watchtower, I followed Seely through a door and up the steps, thinking how cleverly
they had been constructed. The top platform was screened by the jagged outer wall, and here sat the beastspeaker and empath Alun, eating an apple. With an exclamation, he leapt to his feet and greeted me with delight. But I could only gape, for beyond him, an immense column of gray smoke was billowing into the pale blue sky.

“Ye gods, that looks as if a whole city is on fire!” I said, aghast.

“The amount of smoke suggests it, but it looks to me as if the smoke is coming from too far inland to be any of the cities,” Alun said.

I had been studying the smoke and said, “If I did not know better, I would say it was coming from the Suggredoon.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Alun admitted. “Except whatever was burning is still burning, and the shantytown that serves the camp of soldierguards would have gone up in less than an hour.”

“I will try to reach Merret, but if she has reached Halfmoon Bay, it is too far,” I said. I strove fruitlessly and shook my head. “Maybe I can use Kader and Orys in a merge.”

“Orys rode out last night, too, to let Gwynedd know you have brought Domick in safely,” Alun said. “Seely could go and get Kader, but perhaps you can use me, Guildmistress. I have some farseeking ability, though it is not as strong as my other Talents.”

I thanked him and linked with his mind. Again I cast my probe, shaped to Merret’s mind. I had not extended my reach much more than a furlong or two, yet the probe located. But it was not in the direction of Halfmoon Bay, and the contact was tenuous. Merret understood at once and poured her own energy into strengthening the connection as I told her about the smoke and asked what she knew. She had seen the smoke
from inside Halfmoon Bay and had ridden out to investigate.

“So the smoke is not coming from Halfmoon Bay?” I farsent.

“No,” Merret responded. “It is coming from the Suggredoon. In fact, it looks as if it is coming from the other side of the Suggredoon.”

“From Sutrium?!” I was so startled that I almost lost contact.

“I am not there yet, and there is so much smoke that I cannot be sure,” Merret sent. “Many soldierguards have galloped by wearing the colors of different cities, but I can’t probe them because of their demon bands. Some of the gossip on the road says that the Faction has invaded the Land and is fighting with the rebels, but that’s impossible, given what you told us,” Merret observed.

I felt a sick lurch of alarm. “It is not impossible,” I told her. “You see, when Harwood and the others left the Land to board one of the invaders’ ships, there were still hundreds of Hedra at large. Maybe they managed to avoid capture and regroup, or Malik might have had more support than we realized. How close are you to the Suggredoon?” I asked.

“I am within sight of the ramshackle village that has grown up near the barrier the soldierguards set up. But if I go another step nearer, I will lose you. It is taking all my concentration to keep contact.”

“You’d better go nearer, then, and see what you can find out, but first, are there any priests about?”

“I have seen quite a number heading toward the old ferry port, but they all wear demon bands. They look as puzzled as the soldierguards, which makes me think that the fire must be on the other side of the river.

“Oh, there is something else—I met your Iriny! She was
dressed exactly as Rolf had described when she left Halfmoon Bay. She felt me enter her mind, and it did not take me long to explain who I was. She repeated what Rolf had told me, that he had used his connections to get her out of the Councilcourt cells before the Herders could make enough fuss to get their hands on her. She said that she wanted to cross the river to give some important information to her brother. She said the smoke would provide the perfect opportunity to cross, and she must act while she had the chance. I bade her—”

Without warning, the probe broke free and rebounded with painful abruptness.

“Are you all right?” Seely asked anxiously as I staggered back.

I opened my eyes, and the radiance of the newly risen sun seemed to claw at the inside of my head. I squinted and looked at Alun, who was pale and sick-looking. He laughed shakily and said, “I hate it when that happens.” I apologized, but he waved away my words, saying that if Merret suddenly moved out of range, there was nothing I could have done. He asked if I really thought that the fire was the result of a Hedra force warring with the rebels across the Suggredoon. Of course, he had heard the whole exchange.