The Dreamtrails (98 page)

Contrary to my expectations, he had not told the Norselanders of his lineage in order to gain their trust. The news that the Faction had been overcome in the Land and upon Herder Isle had convinced the Norselanders to fight their oppressors. That, and the fact that the forceful if diminutive Per Vallon of Cloistertown had declared Gwynedd’s arrival to be a sign from the goddesses.

Although the Faction had been overcome, I had not told Rushton that the death toll had been horrific. Over a hundred Norselanders had fallen in the first half hour of the brutal battle on the cliffs and double that again before it was over. There had been even more deaths among the Hedra, especially in the encampment, for many of the warrior priests had been young novices and acolytes, and this was their first true battle. Whatever glory they had thought to find in fighting for their Lud was eventually lost in blood and mud and screams of pain, and they began to throw down their weapons. Some were slain by their own captains, true fanatics who believed that the only honor in defeat lay in death.

I shivered, remembering the ferocity and fanaticism of the Hedra master on Herder Isle.

As if he had heard my thoughts, Gwynedd looked over and saw me. He immediately excused himself from his followers and came to join me, apologizing for not yet visiting Rushton.

“He is still very tired,” I said. “You look tired, too.”

He sighed heavily. “In truth, I am weary to death of fighting. Yet there will be fighting in the Westland before the Council and the Faction are overcome, and if Rushton wins the aid of the Sadorians, we will sail across the sea to wage war on these slavemasters. Ye gods, I wish I could disbelieve the prediction of this Futuretell guildmistress, but I have seen for myself the power wielded by Mistress Dell, and I have heard her say more than once that the guildmistress of the Futuretellers is far more gifted than she.”

“I am not sure that would be true anymore,” I said. “But Maryon would never announce such a futuretelling unless she was certain that it would come to pass.”

Gwynedd ran his hands through his long blond hair, and I noticed for the first time the glint of silver in the gold. “You know, I ought to be celebrating our victory, and it was a victory, despite leaving the cloister under siege. But I keep thinking of the dead Hedra laid out in rows in the encampment. Most of them were young, and some seemed no more than children to my eyes. They would have grown up to be vicious fanatics, but seeing their youth, I understood that most of them would have been given no choice about what they would become. It was all I could do not to weep.”

“I am sorry for their deaths,” I said, “but I do not know what else you could have done.”

“That is what I tell myself, but it is a convenient answer, is
it not? I fear the faces of the dead boys will haunt me.”

“They should,” I said, and he looked up at me, his blue eyes questioning. I shrugged. “I mean only that if we kill, we ought to be haunted by it, else we are monsters.”

He held my gaze. “You are wise, Guildmistress, for all your youth.”

I laughed ruefully. “I feel as if I am a hundred!”

He smiled, but his eyes were serious. “One thing I would tell you. This ‘victory’ has taught me how much I have come to rely on the Talents of Misfits like you, not only to help me win battles but also to win them with as little violence as possible. This battle seemed utterly brutal, yet all battles were once thus. I have changed, because I have seen that battles need not be bloody and full of death. I have lived with the constant gentling desire of your people to cause as little harm as possible, and I find that is my desire, too. Because I have had around me Blyss and Dell and all of your people in the midst of battle, I was struck by the terrible waste of it, for nothing can be learned by corpses. The truest victory is the winning of hearts and minds.”

“
That
is a true victory,” Rushton murmured when I returned to my cabin and told him what the Norselander had said. To my consternation, he was dressed, but in truth he seemed much improved, and when I told him about the maps I had seen, he grew excited and sent me to ask Jakoby for permission to visit the map chamber. Gwynedd had not managed to obtain a good clear map of the way to the Red Queen’s land on Norseland, which meant that the information that could be culled from the ship’s map collection might be vital to the success of the journey to the Red Queen’s land.

On my way back from speaking with the tribeswoman,
Brydda hailed me. Joining him at the side of the ship, I related the substance of my earlier conversation with Gwynedd. Brydda told me that the Norselander had been appalled by the number of his countrymen killed, all the more because the Pers of Covetown and Cloistertown had praised him for defeating the Hedra with so few dead and injured. He also said that the Pers had been on the verge of commanding the execution of their captors, for this had been the sole punishment dealt out to them by the Hedra for any misdeeds. But Gwynedd had forbidden it, saying only that the Hedra must be shackled and made to labor, for soon enough they would be needed. He had told Brydda that there was no use in pointing out the youth of most Hedra from the encampment or suggesting the possibility of redemption to the Norselanders. He had said only that the Hedra were going to be coerced and used to fight the slavemasters. That was a reason the Norselanders could accept.

I did not envy the fate of the priests who had shut themselves up in the cloister, for in refusing to surrender to Gwynedd, they had ensured that they would be judged and dealt with by the Pers, unless they managed to hold out until Gwynedd returned.

“And will he return?” I asked.

“He must, for he is their king,” Brydda answered.

“He agreed?” I asked as Dardelan joined us.

Brydda shrugged. “I do not think they see kingship as a question. Gwynedd is the Norse king, and that is that. It does not matter to them that Gwynedd announced his lineage only to ensure obedience when he forbade anyone to enter Ariel’s demesne.”

“How can he be king of Norseland
and
high chieftain of the Westland?” I asked.

“Gwynedd told the Pers that he had just sworn to serve a year as high chieftain of the Westland and that even before that year ended, he must travel to the Red Land with us to prevent the slavemasters from invading our lands,” Dardelan said. “Per Vallon merely told him blithely that kings were not ordinary men whose doings could be ordered by their people. Kings were always going hither and thither on kingly business, and it was left to the Pers to deal with the day-to-day ruling of the king’s land and his people.”

Gwynedd would come to them once he had fulfilled his oaths in the Westland and achieved victory over the slavemasters of the Red Land. In the meantime, he must choose a
kinehelt
to rule in his stead.
Kinehelt
, Dardelan explained, was an old Norse word for “king’s hand.” So Gwynedd had appointed Per Vallon of Cloistertown and Per Selma of Covetown as his kinehelt, saying a king needed two hands. Just before he had boarded the
Umborine
for Sador, the stooped and balding Per Vallon had produced the crown of the last Norse king, which his family had kept hidden through the generations. Dell’s foreseeing came to pass as Gwynedd knelt in the pebbles to be crowned.

I had not known this, and I pictured it as we were all silent for a time, gazing out over the sea. Then I saw that the water was so still it might have been made from glass, for the wind had fallen away utterly. The only thing that marred the glassy perfection was the spreading ripples running out from the hull of the
Umborine
as the deep currents of the strait drew it slowly along.

“We are becalmed,” Rushton said as I reentered the cabin. “What did Jakoby say?”

“She will bring some maps here later, though she says
none shows the way to the Red Queen’s land. We will have to hope that Gwynedd is right in believing that maps will be found in the cloister, once it is surrendered.”

I hesitated, contemplating whether to tell him about Dragon now or wait till he was stronger, but he limped across to the window and opened it to stare out moodily.

“You should lie down,” I chided him.

“I feel better than I did last night. It is just my head. The ache is constant, but Jakoby says that Andorra is mixing up a potion that will ease me.” He gazed out the window for a while longer, and then he came back to sit on the bed beside me, saying, “I mislike this stillness. I must not miss that meeting.”

“Jakoby says we will be there in time. Why not let Dardelan address the tribes?”

“I think it is important that I speak as Master of Obernewtyn, since it is Maryon who foresaw what will come,” Rushton said.

I did not argue, for I could see he had no strength for it. I coaxed him to lie down with me, and he slept a while then. I dozed, too, until Jakoby came bearing the promised maps and Andorra’s potion. The ship was still becalmed, but she assured Rushton that we were not far from the Sadorian coast, and even if we were becalmed all night, we would still reach Sador in time for him to make his request, for there was one full day of the conclave remaining. Only an hour later, the wind rose again. Spurred on by it, Rushton got up and asked me to fetch Gwynedd, Brydda, and Dardelan, for they must speak of what to say to the tribes. I knew him too well to suggest he ought to rest while he could, and when the others arrived, I slipped out with Maruman for a breath of fresh air.

The wind whipped at my hair as we made our way aft to the holding yard, and I glanced up to see the sails billowing scarlet against a bright blue sky. Once again, the
Umborine
was flying.

Reaching the holding yard, I saw that Gahltha and Calcasuss were at the other end attempting to instruct a group of small, hardy Norseland ponies in the rudiments of Brydda’s fingerspeech. I did not wish to interrupt them, and sunlight lay so enticingly on a bench alongside their pen that I sat down on it to wait. I was not there long before Maruman leapt onto my lap. When I thought he was asleep, I allowed myself the illicit pleasure of stroking him, acknowledging that it had been the right impulse to ask him to look after Gahltha, for he had spent most of the time I was on Norseland comforting the black horse and taking his mind off wave-sickness and terror, which had kept him from fretting about me.

Gahltha put his head over the barrier to nuzzle at my shoulder.

“You seem in good spirits,” I told him fondly, reaching up to stroke his nose.

He answered that he had liked the ship’s being becalmed but that he was also glad the wind had begun to blow again so his time aboard the ship would end soon. “My hooves want to feel proper steady earthfastness under them,” he sent.

Without opening his eyes, Maruman pointed out languidly that sand was none too steady under paws, let alone inferior hooves, which was why kamuli were called “ships of the desert.” Gahltha ignored this to ask about Rushton.

“He is bruised and battered, inside and out. But he will heal—is healing.” I looked into the black horse’s lustrous eyes with a rush of tenderness so potent that my eyes filled with tears. “I am glad that you and Maruman are with me.”

“We will always be with you,” Gahltha sent.

He withdrew his head, and I lay back and closed my eyes, enjoying the slight warmth of the sun on my face and the soft weight of Maruman on my lap. It was strange that, having faced certain death, my spirits were now as calm and glassy as the sea had been.
I am becalmed
, I thought, closing my eyes. Maybe I could hear the song of the waves so clearly now that its vast, encompassing serenity made me feel very small and insignificant. It was odd how some people longed to be important, people like Chieftain Brocade. Everything about the man, from his immense size to his manner and arrogance, spoke of his hunger for importance, yet what, truly, did he desire? To be significant? For what purpose? Did he understand that with significance came a terrible weight of responsibility? I felt that weight as the Seeker, but for the moment, I was utterly content to let the song of the sea show me how small I was.

A shadow fell over me, and I squinted against the sun to see Gilbert, whom I had not set eyes on since we had reboarded the
Umborine
. Like Rushton, he had been sleeping and healing. Now the wind tossed his side plaits and blew his thick red hair back from his handsome face, revealing an ugly purpling bruise on his forehead. But his eyes were clear and his expression tranquil, and I thought his was a face that a woman might easily love. I hoped for both their sakes that his Serra would see the change in him. Or that she would at least let his sons come to know their father. Gilbert was a man who would grow for having children. It would bring out his tenderness, which had begun to curdle.

“Jakoby sent me to tell you that we will see Templeport on the horizon within the half hour,” he said. “Is it true that not a single tree grows there?”

I hid a smile at the boyish curiosity in his voice. “There are trees in the isis pool rifts, and there are the ancient giant trees of the spice groves, which I have never seen but from which the
Umborine
was made. But other than them, there is not a tree or a blade of grass in all Sador. It is a true desert land and hotter than any place I have ever been. Jak says the heat comes from the land underneath, as in the Westland. He believes that great pools of molten rock lie at the burning heart of the world and that in the Great White, cracks opened that let molten rock flow close to the surface.”

“Do you believe the world has a heart of fire?” Gilbert asked, looking at me curiously.

“I do not know how something with fire inside can have ice and snow upon the surface, but the longer I live, the more it seems that life is full of the unexpected and impossible. Why should it not be so of the land as well?”

“That is neither a yes nor a no,” the armsman observed dryly.

I laughed. “I suppose the answer is that I don’t know. But the teknoguilders seem very sure.”

“You sound as if you don’t think their certainty is a good thing.”