The Rebellion (79 page)

After we consumed the last sweet crumbs of pie, Jak requested the promised song from Jakoby. The tribeswoman
laughed and withdrew a small flat rectangle of very pale finegrained wood from her shirt pocket. Three taut strings ran from end to end, passing over a raised ridge. Jakoby plucked three surprisingly somber notes before settling herself and beginning to sing. I had heard the tribes sing in Sador, but that had been a far more formal rendering of music. Now, her strong deep voice swelled in a less lofty way.

When she was finished, I asked her if she had sung in gadi. She nodded, explaining the song told of a man sitting in the desert night and pondering the battle he must fight the following day. I asked if she could read something written in gadi for me, but she gave me a peculiar look and said that she could not read the language.

Fian leaned across and asked if I had the piece of writing I had wanted him to translate. After a slight hesitation, I produced my copy of the rubbing. He leaned close to a candle to study it.

Jakoby bent over his shoulder. “What does it say?” she asked the teknoguilder.

“The lettering is not very well scribed,” Fian complained. “There’s something about a way, and that word means ‘need’ or ‘must.’ I think that is a name. Ka … Karada?”

Alarmed, I said quickly that a feast was no place to begin a translation and that I’d thank him to put the paper away until he was sober.

“I haven’t had any ale,” Fian said, giving me an injured look, but to my relief, he returned the copy to its wax pouch and slipped it into his pocket. I had probably overreacted, but I had feared he would translate aloud the name Kasanda.

“Where did you see these words?” Jakoby asked.

“I dreamed them,” I said lightly.

“What was the dream?”

“I was looking at … at a carving,” I said, deciding to stay as close to the truth as I dared. “That’s where these were scribed. When I woke, I wrote down what I remembered. I don’t suppose it will make much sense, but it irks my curiosity.”

“Maybe you saw words in the Earthtemple when you were there and remembered them in your dream,” Bruna said.

“I believe the overguardian would not have shown me anything I should not have seen,” I said, responding to her somewhat accusatory tone.

“That is so,” Jakoby said. “The Temple is very protective of its secrets.”

Bruna tossed her shapely head, making the beads and clips in her hair clank together, and I pitied Dardelan if he did care for the moody little hellcat. A strong longing for Rushton smote me.

Jakoby gracefully declined requests for another song, volunteering Bruna instead. The girl acquiesced with bad grace, but her voice turned out to be surprisingly sweet. Her manner might be brusque and arrogant, but her voice was pure sunlight and honey.

Rising sometime later, I asked Jak if we could see his workshop before we returned to Obernewytn. Harad and Bruna immediately protested that they were too full to move, and after some discussion, it was decided that the Sadorians would stay the night. I took my leave and followed the Teknoguilden back down the short hall to his museum room. On the other side of it, behind a long tapestry, there was a doorway.

“The tapestry keeps the dampish air I need in my workroom from getting into the museum,” Jak explained. His workroom
proved to be a small, dank cavern with one flat wall against which his workbench and a host of shelves were built. Clusters of bottles hung on hooks, filled with coruscating masses of glows. Their combined light was dazzling. “I am trying to breed them,” Jak said. He indicated a series of tanks, where more glowing insects crawled over several lumps of metal.

“What are they doing?”

“Feeding,” Jak said. “That is mildly tainted metal.”

“Tainted!” I drew back in alarm.

“
Mildly
tainted,” Jak stressed. “You would have to handle it a great deal before the skin would absorb enough to do any harm. And it is a lot less tainted now than when I brought the stuff in.”

“Where did you get it?” I asked disapprovingly.

“Ah, well. I got it from the ruins on the edge of the Blacklands, but they are not dangerous unless you spend a lot of time there. I am not so in love with the idea of my death to lie about that. I’ve too much work to do to waste time even being sick.”

“All right, let’s say for the moment that it’s true the ruins are not very dangerous. You should still not be there, because guildmerge forbade it.”

“I know,” Jak said, but he did not look contrite. “I wanted to see what would happen if I bred some of the insects to tolerate a drier climate—hardier insects that could live out in the open if need be. We could set them to cleaning up the Blacklands. The problem is that any sun is quite deadly to them, so we would have to breed them to be nocturnal feeders.” He gave me a penetrating look. “Years ago, I dreamed of the Great White destroying the land, spilling its poisons. It has haunted me since, and if I can help heal what has been done, I would count my life well spent.”

I nodded, understanding even better than he how much harm had been done. “You ought to put in a formal request to spend some time in the ruins.”

I asked then if I could look at the plasts his guild had unearthed that had any mention of flamebirds. He rummaged obligingly in a trunk under the bench and handed me a slippery pile.

“There are only a few mentions, and they’re scattered. Why don’t you just take the plasts back to Obernewtyn with you? Someone can collect them later.”

I said good night and, donning my cloak, farsent Gahltha. Outside, mist swirled along the ground, wet and heavy, and my breath came out in white puffs.

Gahltha appeared like a dark ghost.

“I am sorry I was so long,” I sent once we were on our way. “You must be worried about Avra.”

He tossed his head. “Avra had no fear/worry for the foaling. Maybe it is the mother/nature to feel so, but I am no dam calmed by nature.” I sensed he did not wish to speak of Avra anymore, and I looked up at the sky. We had come high enough on the winding forest trail to rise above the cloying mist, and I was pleased to see the spine of stars running across a cloudless night sky.

Gahltha interrupted my meandering thoughts to ask if I would mind if he galloped. When I agreed, he leapt forward, and for a time the pace was too great for any thought other than those connected with riding. I flattened myself against his back, my cheek pressed to his hot neck, and concentrated on becoming a part of his flowing movement. Time seemed to blur and ceased to have any meaning as we sped over the ground. We might have ridden hours or minutes before we broke out of the trees, but still Gahltha did not slow. We
galloped along the open path and plunged through the farm gate at a speed that would have been dangerous at any reasonable hour.

Outside the barns, Gahltha reared up and pawed the mist with a whinny of exaltation before stopping.

I slid from his back, laughing. “That was a wild ride!”

“There is no better way to chase fears away,” Gahltha sent, nudging me affectionately before trotting off to find his mate.

13

I
WOKE THE
next morning with Maruman patting a velveted paw against my cheek. My first thought was that Angina had succeeded in constraining Dragon’s mind, for my sleep had been undisturbed.

“You must not go back to sleep. Mornirdragon grows restless as feelmusic weakens,” Maruman advised.

I rolled over to stare at the old cat. He was curled into my pillow, his single yellow eye gleaming in the dimness of the shuttered chamber. “I’m glad to see you awake. I was worried.”

“Mornirdragon did not mean harm/hurt to Marumanyelloweyes,” he sent.

“But she did hurt you,” I sent. “You saved me and I thank you for it.”

Maruman made a sniffing sound. “ElspethInnle came late last night. I wakened.…” He sent a picture of Ceirwan and Freya, whom I’d asked to watch him in my absence. They were sitting side by side before the fire, their heads close together. The image shimmered with his irritation, but I smiled to see Freya’s head droop into the curve of the young guilden’s neck.

The picture vanished in another flash of irritation.

“Human mating,” Maruman jeered. “So longwinding.”

I lay watching him until I remembered what day it was.
Not only moon-fair day, but also the day Rushton would come home! Suddenly wide awake, I slipped out of bed and hurried across the room to open the shutters. The day was as fair as we could have wished, the sky blue and cloudless. I grinned and hugged myself.

Traditionally, on moon-fair mornings, Ceirwan sent some of the younger farseekers up with a special firstmeal for me, a mark of honor to the sender, even though it was truly my pleasure. But it was much too early to worry about disappointing them with an empty room. I slipped on my robe and padded in woolen slippers down the stairs and along the halls. The bathing room was empty, which pleased me, and although it usually meant I had to stoke the furnace and wait for the water to heat before bathing, it had already been done. No doubt Javo and Katlyn had been up since dawn and had sent one of their kitchen helpers to tend to it.

I turned a spout and undressed as the end barrel nearest the window filled up. Closing the valve, I threw in a handful of sweet-scented bathing spices and climbed in with a sigh of pleasure. I thought blissfully that any worry that could not be eased by a gallop with Gahltha or a hot bath must be truly grim.

I returned to the turret room with my hair wound into a sodden turban and pulled a seat into the sun. I forced myself to concentrate on toweling it, combing the tangles out and rubbing in a slippery herbal liquid Katlyn had given me as a gift to make it shine. Then I fetched the pile of plasts Jak had lent me, Tomash’s rough chart, and the heavy dream journal Dell had sent up. Settling myself so that the weight of my hair caught the sun’s direct rays, I grabbed the pile of plasts resolutely. I did not feel like reading them, but better that than worrying endlessly about Rushton.

He will come
, I told myself, and focused my mind on the plasts. A brief riffle through made it clear most were similar to other Reichler Clinic plasts, ostensibly advertising the Clinic while downplaying its successes. Written between the lines was the offer of friendship and help to anyone with Misfit abilities. They were cleverly composed missives, and I wondered exactly who had put them together.

I spotted a mention of Govamen and flamebirds.

The plast ended suddenly, indicating that it was part of a longer document. There was no telling who it had been to or from, nor its purpose.

I glanced over the other plasts until I found another mentioning the birds.

Petr Masterton! I reread the name in disbelief, thinking back to my memory dream. Seeing the name here was proof
positive that Cassy had lived at the same time as Hannah and the Reichler Clinic and that she had been connected to the Govamen that had kidnapped Misfits from the Reichler Clinic.

I flicked through the remaining plasts but found only one other mention of the birds, a description that confirmed conclusively that they were the Agyllians in the Beforetime, if I had doubted it.

I laid the plasts aside and turned my attention to Tomash’s work. Unscrolling his rough-inked map of the Land, I looked for the information he had added about individual Councilmen’s holdings. Radost’s sons, Moss and Bergold, were written in neatly, their territories marked out to show their common border. Tomash had written in tiny script that Moss had elected to extend Darthnor’s mining into his holding and eventually to open a smelter that would process his private mine yield as well as that of the Darthnor mines. Currently, Darthnor mines sent all their ore to the west coast to be processed.