The Red Queen (59 page)

‘Had you noticed the ground has begun to slope up slightly in the last hour or so?’ Ana asked, when she had returned from relieving herself. As on the black plain, there was no true privacy to be had, so discretion and a little distance had to serve, and when it was so near dark, the distance must be less. But Ana was not thinking of danger. ‘Maybe those buildings we can see are along the top of the slope we have been climbing, and the ground behind them drops away. That would explain why we can’t see any more of the buildings,’ she said.

‘We will know tomorrow,’ Swallow said, yawning widely. Ana yawned too, reflexively, and they all laughed.

I did not. I still felt unsettled. Perhaps it was because we were out in the open, without anything around us. I looked at the city, where the bottom part of the buildings now lay in shadow, the top in ember hues – orange and red and yellow – and felt simultaneously a revulsion and a desire to run to them. Disliking the feeling of being divided against myself, I glanced over to where the androne stood, silent and immobile as a statue between the fire and the city, its carapace reflecting simultaneously the sky and the fire and the darkness. It was a striking thing to look at, but I wondered what means it truly had to protect us from whatever predators might prowl the night. I knew it possessed the power to stun with its headlight and it could make flame, though only a small flame at the tip of its finger. Ana had said it had the means to protect us, but for how long, if we were attacked? We knew the androne lost its power at night, for it relied on sunlight. That must mean its power to use weapons was limited as well. Unless the weapons had their own power source. Ana had told me that Hendon had been given a special additional cell to power its memory and the bits of it that enabled it to think and remember, to match its enlarged memory space, and that it did not work on sunlight, so that even if the other cell ran out, his mind would go on working. Maybe the weapons could draw on that power as well.

But quite aside from its weapons, I wondered if it could truly have the wit to employ them usefully if we were attacked. It was impossible to gauge the level of its intelligence now that God had changed it and enabled it to think independently.

I let my eyes move beyond the androne to the darkness swallowing the sky, wondering what it was, if not dust or a storm, that had soaked up the last of the day. Then I thought how brightly our fire would shine, once it was full dark, and the androne too, if it remained close enough, but when I mentioned it to the others, none of them seemed much troubled by the idea of our being so visible.

I noticed Swallow was giving me the unfocused look that meant he was using his talent for seeing some part of the spirit with waking eyes, even as beasts did, as well as many gypsies. I wondered what he saw, but rather than ask and have him probe my mood and thoughts, I absently shifted my gaze to Dragon.

She felt it at once, and turned to smile a question at me. Suddenly it struck me that maybe I could get what I needed simply by asking her about her memories of the Red Land, rather than having to invade her mind and experience them.

‘Do you remember how it was in the Red Land?’ I asked her quietly.

Her smile faded into a pensive look. ‘I do. Some things. I remember my mother and her true death. But I do not like to think of it, even now that I know it was no fault of mine that she died and I survived.’

‘Do you remember much of the Red City? The place you lived, and the places you went?’

‘I stayed mostly in the palace,’ she said. ‘But my mother went out often among our people. She was much loved and never needed a guard to walk with her, though she let two go with her, to please them. She liked to walk the spiral walks with her greatcats when the floating gardens bloomed, and once, when the runs were set alight, she showed me the circles of fire from the window of my bedroom. There was a balcony . . .’

‘Did she not take you to many ceremonies outside the palace?’ I interrupted, ignoring the thousand questions her words provoked, but speaking casually, softly, so as not to break the spell of her remembering, for I thought she was seeing the Red City in her mind’s eye.

‘Sometimes she did, in her chariot,’ she said after a pause. ‘My mother liked to walk but when I was to go with her, she took a donkey chariot. The beasts adored her. All beasts did. The man leading them would get so angry because they would keep stopping and yearning their heads back to her. I remember there was a ball and my mother went to it dressed all in red, riding upon the back of a donkey that had been dyed the hues of fire. She did not like it being unnaturally coloured, but it was only a powder, and when she patted it, a cloud of red flew up and she threw back her head and laughed. I remember how she laughed, so that you could not help laughing too. Later I saw that her hand had left a red mark about my wrist.’ She smiled. ‘She wore a special mask for the ball. My mother said everyone had to wear one at the ball, and that someday I should have one. They must wear them unto she raised her staff and revealed herself their queen, and only then might everyone unmask. And there was dancing. Oh, but she was beautiful, like a flame dancing. She said one day I would carry her staff to the masked ball and offer it to the people as a sign that I served them as their queen . . .’

‘What of your father?’ I asked.

Dragon frowned. ‘I don’t know . . . Tash asked about him, too, and it was the first time I ever thought . . . but I don’t remember him at all, nor my mother speaking of him.’

‘Do you dream much of the Red Land as it is now?’ I asked. I could feel the others listening as they drank their soup, but they did not interrupt.

Dragon hesitated, then said, ‘I see Matthew.’

That stopped me, for I was never sure if she had truly got beyond the passionate greenstick attachment she had developed for the farseeker when he was a boy. Yet so much time had passed and she must see that what had happened between them had no evil in it. Matthew had not been much more than a child himself when he taught her to use her power to save Obernewtyn, blind to the adoration he had roused in her until it was too deeply embedded to be easily uprooted. He had been embarrassed by her devotion and ended up being very cruel to her. Yet he had kissed her, too. I had not known that from him.
She
had told me of it. He kissed her in elation after she had succeeded in driving off the soldierguards snooping around, before the rebellion that vanquished them once and for all.

It seemed that Dragon was not thinking only of Matthew, though, for she suddenly heaved a sigh and said, ‘Oh, if only Maruman and Gahltha and the others are here.’

‘I am sure they will be here,’ Swallow said, looking at me. ‘Didn’t you dream of Maruman in a city? Did it look like this?’

I forgot all weariness then and stood up, uttering a curse so savagely that they all gaped at me in astonishment.

‘I am a fool!’ I cried. ‘We are here and I have not tried to reach them! I have not tried in all the time we walked here. The last time was when I was in Midland. Ye gods, I just got so accustomed to not being able to use my powers when I was in Habitat.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Try now!’ Dragon urged, eyes alight with flames and eager hope.

I was already shaping a probe to Maruman’s mind, and sent it flying out towards the city, but it did not find him. There had been several areas that had been opaque so I envisaged the black sword and felt my mind sharpen, my Talent strengthen. I strove again, long and hard, but to my bitter disappointment, the probe would not locate. Of course Maruman might very well be in the lower levels of Northport. I was about to release the probe when some impulse made me reshape it to Gahltha’s mind and send it spinning out.

It located him immediately and the black horse responded with such a forceful wave of relief and love that I staggered and might have fallen into the fire if Swallow had not leapt up and caught hold of me.

‘Elspeth, what is it?’ he demanded as the others jumped up as well. Dimly I heard Dameon telling them it was joy I was feeling, not distress, and potent enough that I had near knocked him out! I shut out their babble and enfolded Gahltha’s mind even as he cleaved to mine.

Oh the sweetness of that meeting was close to pain.

‘Gahltha, my dearest equine/friend/brother! I am so terribly glad to feel/find you!’ I sent, and felt tears brim and fall.

‘ElspethInnle!’ the black horse sent with such fierce love and longing that it was like a summoning cry and so potent that I might have set off towards the city at a run if hands had not held me. Oh how I wished now that we had not stopped to make camp! No wonder I had felt such a longing to enter Northport. Some bit of me must have known what lay ahead and that was the reason for my intense impatience, my hunger to keep going despite the sensible objections and plans of the others. Why had I not obeyed my heart, despite the feeling of unease the city itself roused in me?

I struggled briefly with the hands that held me but they did not let me go. Then Gahltha was speaking again, his powerful mindvoice cutting through the confusion of delight and longing I was feeling. ‘I feared you lost when we could not find you here/on the ground nor in the dreamtrails for all this long and weary time. But Marumanyelloweyes said you lived and would come and that we must wait here and keep watch for you.’

I felt another burst of joy at their faithful love, and a renewed surge of urgency. ‘Maruman! I have been trying to farseek him but I could not find him/feel him,’ I sent.

‘He is not here/he roams in the barud-li,’ Gahltha sent, using the derogatory beast wordsymbol for an inimical human place, and there was disapproval in his mindvoice. Then, imperious as Jes to his younger sister, he demanded, ‘Where have you been?’

‘I was held captive in sleep for a long time, and then when I woke I was kept in a place beneath the ground so that I could not farseek you. Once, I managed to seek you on the dreamtrails, but I could not find you.’

‘It is well you did not go there again,’ he said, very seriously. ‘The H’rayka howled yourname over and over/soughtyou there long with terrible rage. Marumanyelloweyes fought/taunted the H’rayka. It was dangerous but the Moonwatcher longed for you/mourned you/kept faith, and sometimes madness filled him. Twice he vanished/I could not find his mind. Once I found him on the dreamtrails, and he was badlyhurt. I/Gahltha held his spiritform/soothedhim until the madness left him. He was angry then, and that was a different madness. Oh Marumanyelloweyes has always been difficult!’

I laughed at the weary affection with which he spoke of the old feline. ‘Well do I know it/him,’ I sent.

Being able to engage with his dear, strong, muscular mindvoice after so long made me feel dizzy with happiness, though it daunted me to know that the Destroyer had sought me so ferociously on the dreamtrails.

‘Do not fear it/H’rayka, ElspethInnle,’ Gahltha told me. ‘For a long time it was on the dreamtrails, seeking you hungrily, and then one day it did not come/never came again. Maybe it is dead, though Marumanyelloweyes says not.’

‘Maruman!’ The name burst from me in word and thought, carrying my longing and my fear that, after all this time, some terrible thing might have befallen the old cat before I could see him and hold him in my arms again.

‘What is wrong with her?’ I heard Ana ask.

‘There is something very strange in her aura,’ Swallow said.

I pushed their voices away so that I could concentrate, for Gahltha was sending to me. ‘Marumanyelloweyes will soon return, do not fear for him,’ he soothed.

I forced myself to calm down, letting the hands draw me down to sit. ‘Where is/did Maruman go/roam?’

Instead of responding in words, the black horse sent me a vision of a vast city where scrapers rose up like a forest of trees bisected by a complex black grid of roads. I recognised it as Northport only because of the onion-topped tower, which fitted Swallow’s description of a tower with a bulging tip. But it did not look much like the tower I had seen in my dream of Maruman, now that I seemed to be seeing it from another direction entirely, the whole city laid out on a vast slope running up to a hilltop along which scrapers rose against the skyline. Ana had been right in guessing we had approached Northport from behind a rise.

‘Where are you grazing?’ I asked. ‘Are the other horses with you?’

‘I/all equines/our herd are here/graze safe. There was great danger for a time, but then we came here because Darga said it would be safe and there was water/good grazing.’

I showed him the city as we saw it. ‘You are in Northport, but where?’

‘That is the barud-li
,
’ Gahltha sent. ‘Marumanyelloweyes is there, though the day/sun has gone. Sometimes he stays in/under the barud-li at night. It is madness but he says there are many places under the buildings where it is safe, even there. I/Gahltha will seek him in the morning and tell him you/ElspethInnle are safe.’

I was puzzled by the way he was speaking, as if Maruman was somewhere else, then it occurred to me that the image of the settlement that he had shown me was not only from another direction, it was
from without
.

‘You are not in the barud-li?’ I asked, wondering where they could be, and how they could be safe from the
rhenlings
. Then, ‘It does not matter. I will go into the city/barud-li and seek/find him now.’

Gahltha neighed then, a long whinny of horror that made all the hair on my head stand on end. For a moment I became aware of my body, of Dragon clutching at my hands, of her frightened beautiful face. But Gahltha’s fear was too compelling.

‘Gahltha!’ I sent. ‘What is it/what is the matter?’

‘You are in the barud-li?’

‘No, we are just outside it, camped on the plain . . .’

At that moment, all the feelings of the day coalesced and I understood what had been the matter with me – the reason for my unease and impatience, the sense of unbalance and wrongness.

Premonition.

‘Go back, ElspethInnle.’ Gahltha sent with desperate urgency. ‘Maruman foresaw this. He said there would be manydeaths if you came to the barud-li. He/we waited/watched to turn you aside but thislast day/s Marumanyelloweyes/his mind has been strange/unsettled . . . Maybe he is seeking you . . . Elspeth, there are rifts. It is your onlychance. Find one. Hide/bequiet/still. You cannot be out in the open/so close for this will be darknight.’