The Keeping Place

by Isobelle Carmody

  To my relief, the man grew still. Then he looked up, his face twisted into a dreadful parody of a smile. “Sky.” He sighed it as a prayer.

  “Come,” I said in the gentlest voice I could muster, and I held out my hand. “Let me help you to find the sky.”

  The man climbed unsteadily to his feet and stared for a long time at my outstretched hand. I kept on sending images. Day skies gray with cloud, dusk skies swirling with dramatic color, skies rent with lightning. Gradually, the crazed wildness in his eyes faded into a kind of devastated hope.

  “The others died, you know. They couldn’t wait.”

  “I am sorry we took so long,” I whispered, fighting back tears.

  The man nodded and put his hand into mine. It was so thin that it felt like I was holding a handful of dried twigs. “Come,” I said again, warning Wila and Tomash mentally not to do anything lest the man be frightened back into his witless state.

  Taking the candle from Tomash as I passed, I instructed him and Wila to see if there were other cells occupied by living prisoners.

  “There are,” Tomash sent in a shaken mindvoice. “I sent out a probe.”

  “Then try bringing them out. I will be back with help.”

  Leaving them, I led the man back to the stairs and, step by careful step, up to ground level. He flinched at the sight of the open door and the hallway beyond, and I tightened my grip on his fingers to make sure he did not pull free and hurl himself down the stairs.

  “Soon you will see the sky,” I promised over and over until it became no more than a soothing chant. After what felt like an eternity, I brought him to the outer door. He shuddered violently at the sound of a dog barking, but at last he stepped through the door and looked up.

  It was a brilliantly clear night. The stars were like diamonds fallen in a random spill over midnight velvet.

  The man gave a long sighing gasp, and his hand twitched convulsively in mine.

  “I thought I would not see the sky again,” he whispered. “I forgot how beautiful it is. I told my daughter stories of the sky, but I never got it right. We have to show her. She’s down there, too, you know. I was lying beside her, but she went to sleep.”

  I swallowed hard and could find nothing to say. He showed no inclination to move, and so I stood there holding his hand and farsent to one of the other Misfits to fetch Kella. Only then did I learn that herbalists had been summoned already, for I was not the only one to discover prisoners in subterranean cells.

  When I had left the man in an herbalist’s care, I returned to help Tomash and Wila search. I met them bringing out two young men who were crippled from what looked like a combination of torture and infection. I noticed that above the smell of filth and decay, there was a sweet acrid scent that reminded me of old grapes on the verge of rotting.

  There were many dead in the cells, and I wondered how the priests had been able to stomach descending into their self-constructed hell and how often the bodies had been cleared out. When we came upon a number of chalky skeletons, I understood with revulsion that perhaps they had never bothered. After all, what better way to break prisoners than to put them into a cell that was serving as an open grave?

  Of those we found alive, many were completely insane, or so close that there was little difference.

  In one cell, we found three people alive, but barely—one of them a child whose face was so wasted she looked like a wizened little woman. I could not believe even the Herders would condemn a child to such a fate.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, cowering against two women who stared at me in abject terror.

  “I am a friend, and I have come to bring you out of here,” I said. The last thing these people needed was emotional hysteria, and in the face of what they had endured, I felt my tears could only be a self-indulgence.

  Neither of the women moved, but the child tottered forward on spindly, black-streaked legs to look up at me. “You are so pretty,” she said, and reached out a dirty hand to touch my wrist. This reminded me so vividly of Dragon, touching my belly with her filthy hand when we first met, that I had to fight the urge to snatch the child up and run from that foul place with her.

  “I am only clean. But soon you will be clean, too, and your mother…” I looked at the women.

  “My mother went away with the gray men,” the girl said with owlish gravity. Her eyes had begun to water from the candlelight, dim as it was. “She didn’t come back. But these are my friends.”

  “Then perhaps you can help me to bring your friends out of this terrible place into the fresh air.”

  It took some persuading, but eventually I managed to get all three of them out, though they cringed at the sight of Tomash, and no amount of talking would convince the girl that he was a friend as well.

  “I suppose it was men who tortured them,” the farseeker said shakily after I had taken them to the healing center that had been hastily established under the trees. Gazing up at the pinkening sky, I could scarcely believe that a whole night had all but passed.

  There was a surge of flame through the trees, and I turned my head to see a shower of sparks fly up. More wood had been thrown onto the massive funeral pyre for the dead. There were far too many to consider an ordinary burial.

  By the time we had cleared the buildings of the dead and wounded, it was late afternoon. Altogether, we had brought out thirty-three people alive. Two were children. Every one of them was suffering from thirst and malnutrition, and most had been tortured.

  I thought it a miracle the whole place was not rife with plague and other diseases, but Wila explained that the Herders had used certain whitestick-based substances to disinfect the cells. This explained why so many of the survivors had strange, purplish burns over their bodies.

  Dardelan had arranged a work crew to clean out the largest of the halls and fill it with beds. Ironically, the cloister was to become Kella’s healing center. The young rebel leader had encouraged her to arrange it as she pleased and to consider herself mistress of the herbalists he sent. Kella had accepted the responsibility of leadership with surprising ease, and although I had been concerned that the herbalists would resent her being given control, it was quickly clear that this was not so. Under Council reign, none but Herders were permitted to heal or prescribe medicines, so most herbalists had practiced in secret and in constant fear for their lives. This meant they had much in common with our Misfit existence. And seeing Kella heal, they had come to regard her with genuine admiration.

  Brydda and Elii had found what they named the torture chamber. There was horror in the big man’s eyes as he told me this, and I was glad that he did not go on to describe what he had seen. Perhaps the most important discovery was a tunnel at the back of a locked cell, leading from the cloister right under the city to the seashore. Obviously, the priests had used their prisoners to construct the tunnel, and, of course, it explained the mystery of their disappearance. They would have slipped aboard Herder ships after night fell and been taken out to Herder Isle. We had no doubt now that the priests had fired the boats to prevent anyone coming after them. Indeed, Brydda was convinced that the whole elaborate banding ceremony had been no more than a cover for the mass exodus of the priests. He also suspected that it was the priests who had alerted the west coast Council to our plans.

  “Why didn’t they let the Council here know, then?” I asked.

  He shrugged and stood up. “Maybe it was simply a matter of timing, and they wanted all their people out before they did anything else. Or maybe they made some sort of deal with the west coast Council, which involved getting rid of their counterparts this side of the Suggredoon. I’m going to take a look at the head priest’s chamber now.”

  I rose, too, but he shook his head. “You’ve been up for two nights without sleep, Elspeth. You need some rest, or you’ll end up in one of Kella’s spare beds. The meeting has been postponed until tonight, and Gevan can sit in for you. You go to Bodera’s place and get some food and sleep.”

/>   It was not until he spoke of fatigue that I realized how bone weary I really was. Horror and pity and disgust had kept me going through the long night and day, but I was at the end of my strength, and so I agreed to Brydda’s suggestions without argument.

  Nevertheless, I went to see Kella first. She was in her element, moving from bed to bed, consulting herbalists and volunteer aides in her soft voice. She emanated serenity, and I wondered what I would see if I looked at her aura now. Surely in healing, she healed herself.

  Seeming to feel my eyes on her, she glanced over to the door, then hurried over, looking concerned. “Are you all right, Elspeth?”

  “I am, I just…” I stopped, not knowing what I had intended to say.

  She nodded. “I know. I cannot believe it either. I have never seen anyone in such a wretched physical state as these prisoners, and their mental state…” She shook her head. “Some of them will never recover.” She hesitated. “But you know what I keep thinking about?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is terribly self-centered, but I keep remembering when they brought Domick and me and Jik to their Aborium cloister. If you had not rescued us, we would have been like these people. I was so frightened back then, but I had no…no idea what the Herders were capable of.”

  Jik did, I thought bleakly. He knew, or suspected anyway. No wonder he had been so terrified.

  “You should get some sleep,” Kella said gently. “Or do you want me to drain you?”

  “I will let myself sleep,” I said. “I need to get away from all of this for a while. I don’t want to think anymore.”

  She touched my arm. “I will give you a potion that will help you to sleep, then.” I barely registered her going away and returning to press a small leaf pouch into my fingers. “Chew it and spit it out. Don’t swallow it,” she cautioned, and gave me a push toward the door.

  On my way out, I passed people carrying stretchers inside. The men and women on them were injured but looked too healthy to be prisoners from the cells. I realized they were probably bringing in rebels wounded during the various skirmishes.

  The streets were still virtually deserted, though there were more faces at windows now, and they did not draw back so quickly as before. I guessed that suspicions were growing that there was no plague. The burned ships and funeral pyres were probably the only reason there were so few people out. The smoke would have reminded them of the Herder fires once lit to cleanse plague-ridden houses.

  There was a great deal of coming and going and general bustle around Bodera’s dwelling. A rebel at the gate directed me through the building and into the central gardens, where a small path wound among the trees and bushes to a timber folly, open on all sides and furnished with a square table and several chairs. Dardelan was seated at one of these, surrounded by papers and squinting in the late afternoon light at what looked to be various maps. He stared at me blankly, then jumped to his feet.

  “Ye gods, Elspeth. You look near to fainting. Sit down and eat!” He burrowed beneath the mountain of papers to unearth a platter of sliced fruit. “I suppose you haven’t had a bite all day?”

  “I haven’t,” I admitted, sinking into the seat beside him. “But I could not eat right now if you paid me in gold to do it.”

  Dardelan’s expression became grim. “Of course. You’ve been helping clear out the cloister?”

  I nodded, and tears blurred my vision. “I think you would need only let people see what we saw last night, and they would vote for all priests to be weighted and thrown into the sea.”

  “They will not see, and, unfortunately, people have a way of doubting the veracity of anything they do not witness with their own eyes. Especially something like this. But we will have as many of those prisoners as can stomach it talking of their ordeals, and I daresay their stories will be harrowing enough.”

  I nodded again, weariness sweeping over me.

  “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you go in and bathe, then sleep if you cannot eat,” Dardelan suggested.

  I went inside. There in the kitchen, seated in the late afternoon sun, was Dameon. I felt a rush of simple joy at the sight of the empath, and he turned to face me as if I had shouted his name.

  “Elspeth. I have just been thinking of you. You are tired.”

  “Less tired now that I see you,” I said, and it was true. Just being in his presence sloughed away some of the darkness that clung to my mind. I crossed the long room to sit beside him. “What a mean welcome this is for you.”

  He reached out and took my hand, and I gasped to feel the full strength of his gladness, more vivid and lovely than any words.

  “Ah, Dameon, I missed you so. We all did. Obernewtyn was not the same without you.”

  “I missed you, too,” he responded softly, his voice sounding oddly sad.

  “You did not wish to leave Sador?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I belong at Obernewtyn, if I belong anywhere, though I came to love the desert—the strange fierceness of the Sadorians and their love of song and poetry. The peace of their land steals into your blood and heart.”

  “I wish you could have come home to us in a better time.”

  “I know that terrible things have happened, but some things have also been gained. The rebels have won the right to live without Council tyranny this side of the Suggredoon, and I believe in time they will claim the west coast as well.”

  “The cost of their win was very high,” I said bleakly. “Not just here, but on the west coast. So many of our people are trapped there now. And I have just been speaking to Dardelan and realizing how difficult it is going to be for the rebels to set change in motion.”

  “Difficult, yes, but not impossible, and Dardelan is young and idealistic enough to go on trying when others might give up.”

  “If anyone can establish a new order, I think it is he. But there are still those like Malik who will have to be restrained.”

  “I think Dardelan may well give them the task of guarding the borders and planning war against the west coast Councilmen, and they will not demur. Such men who are violent and warlike to their very marrow lose their sense of purpose in a time of peace.”

  The empath smiled a little, and I asked why.

  “I was thinking how strange it feels to be here. My senses are still too full of Sador, and the Land seems cramped and chilly and damp to me.” He sighed. “The overguardian died.” He spoke so mildly, it took me several heartbeats to absorb his words.

  “You were there?”

  He nodded, and I saw a shadow of pain cross his face. “I did what I could, but he suffered dreadfully. He had a vision in which he named his successor; I do not know if it was a true vision or a hallucination. But it was a good choice. At the very end, he was lucid, and he told me what lay behind the Temple guardian deformities. Sadorian women immerse themselves in the isis pools one year after their first child is born. The water carries a particular taint that causes no harm to the woman, but if they are with a second child, as some are, those children are deformed in the womb.”

  Horrified, I thought of the strange, lovely rifts in the barren desert where flowing water allowed a subterranean oasis to flourish. I even remembered being warned by one of the Sadorians neither to drink from the pools nor taste any fruit growing near them.

  “But who makes them do that?”

  “There is no force involved. Indeed, some women do refuse, and some men beg their partners not to go to the pools. But the majority of Sadorians concur with the practice. It is their repentance. Their sacrifice, if you like.”

  “Repentance for what?”

  “I wrote to you, I think, of a Beforetime device either found or brought by the Sadorians from Gadfia, which they used in their internal wars. The poisoning of the isis pools is one of the effects, and their immersion is the way the Sadorians share the harm they dealt to the Earth. The overguardian told me the practice would end only when they had the power to actively heal the Earth rather than simply to exi
st peacefully and lightly on it. He said he had seen that one would soon come to bring that means to Sador.”

  I shivered. “What did Kasanda think of the practice?”

  “I did not ask,” he said. “There were many questions in my mind, but the boy was dying and it seemed more important to care for him than to sate my curiosity.”

  We were silent, perhaps both thinking of the glittering isis pools and of the tiny Temple overguardian. At length, Dameon asked when I thought to return to Obernewtyn.

  “I want to know what the rebels plan to do about the west coast before I can make any decision about the future. I can’t just go back to Obernewtyn and forget about Merret and Blyss and all the others trapped behind soldierguard lines.”

  “Perhaps they are safe in this Teknoguild shelter that Zarak spoke of.”

  “I hope so with all my heart. Maybe Merret and the others got there. It is even possible that some of the rebels evaded the traps and are in hiding with them. The worst thing is not knowing.”

  “We know they are smart and resourceful, and they have their Talents to aid them. We know the hideout is beneath the ground in ruins where people seldom go. We know that the rebels were unaware of the shelter, so we can assume that the Council is as well. And our people will be aware that we are doing our best to get to them.”

  “If only we had not agreed to be part of the rebellion,” I muttered. “If I had not sent anyone to the rebel groups, we would all even now be safe at Obernewtyn.”

  “And perhaps Rushton would be dead,” Dameon said with uncharacteristic bluntness. He shook me a little. “Dear one, don’t crush yourself between impossible burdens. It is a conceit of yours, I fear, to see yourself as the center of things, but it is not true. You were not alone in making the decision to send our people to work with the rebels. Indeed, from what Zarak said, you had more than enough volunteering to go.”

  I laughed shakily, for he was right in saying I saw myself too often at the center of things. That was my secret fate, of course, distorting my thinking.