Wavesong

by Isobelle Carmody

  “It seems my master is not the only one who is ill,” I said with pretended alarm. An inspired thought came to me, and I added, “I pray it is not the plague that was aboard the Orizon.”

  A look of deep unease passed between the Hedra, and I made the priest clutching his stomach give another good long bellow of pain, then offered to take him to the healing center, since we were bound there.

  “You had better go, too, Gelt,” said the Hedra who had questioned Reuvan to one of the others.

  I saw from the expression on the other warrior priest’s face that he would protest, and I coerced him to nod obediently, then I went back to the mind of the groaning Hedra and jabbed at him again, causing him to utter another groan and double over. The Hedra Gelt stepped forward to take his arm.

  “Help them,” I ordered Elkar, who had been watching with openmouthed astonishment. He obeyed as the other Hedra marched away.

  “It’s all right,” I assured all of them when we were alone but for the two Hedra, both now silent and blank-faced. “I am controlling them.”

  “You did that to him?” Elkar whispered, looking at the Hedra who had been shouting and groaning.

  “He is not truly ill,” I assured him. “I just found a deep memory of a terrible stomachache he once had and grafted it into his conscious mind. Then I gave his muscles a jab to set him off. But let’s go on. We can’t stay out in the open like this.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Reuvan asked softly.

  “We will take them into the healing center, just as I said, in case their comrades come back to see what became of this one. This is it, isn’t it?” I asked, nodding to the building beside us.

  Elkar agreed, adding that the entrance was on the other side, facing sector three. Soon we were approaching the entrance. Mercifully, it was not guarded. I would have liked to leave the others to wait outside, but the door opened before we could reach it, and several low-ranking outer-cadre priests came hurrying out, so immersed in conversation that they did not even see us.

  We entered a windowless hall lit by lanterns hanging from hooks set into the walls. Two outer-cadre Nines standing outside a door a little distance along the passage broke off their conversation to look toward us inquiringly, so I made the Hedra begin bellowing and groaning again.

  “What is wrong with him?” asked one of them.

  “I do not know,” I said, keeping my voice and my head low, for I feared they would see that I was a woman. “I was on an errand for my master when we came upon a group of Hedra. He was in their midst, and I was ordered to bring him here.”

  Fortunately, the healer was more concerned with the bellowing Hedra than with me, but his companion eyed me suspiciously. Before I could shape a coercive probe to deal with him, an older Herder wearing the gold armband of an inner-cadre priest arrived and demanded to know what was going on. He had the harried air of a real healer, and though his face was much lined, it lacked the coldness I had seen in most Herder faces. Perhaps it was hard to be cold and remote when trying to heal sickness.

  I gave the groaning Hedra’s mind a hard tweak, and when the Herder bent to examine him, I said anxiously that I would have to go because my own master would wonder where I was. One final jab and the Hedra collapsed. As the three healers tended to him, I withdrew, ushering the others ahead of me. Not until we were outside did I realize the Hedra Gelt had followed us, because I had forgotten to command him to stay.

  “He will have to come with us,” I decided, and we turned back toward the compound gates. I farsought Sover as we walked, explaining briefly what had happened, and he promised to take care of it.

  “What will the healers do when they realize that there is nothing wrong with that Hedra?” Elkar asked softly.

  Before I could respond, Geratty’s voice scythed into my mind with a force that would have dropped me to my knees had Reuvan not caught me.

  “Geratty! What is it?” I demanded, clutching at my head.

  “Elspeth, the One…Ye gods, it is the shadows. They’ve killed him!”

  Suddenly, bells began ringing loudly.

  20

  I FROZE, BUT Elkar assured me that the bells rang only to announce the beginning of the evening acolyte prayer meetings. “The novice prayers will be in an hour, and then will come the bell for the rest of the outer-cadre priests….” He glanced at my face, and his own grewtense. “What is it, lady?”

  “Wait,” I said, and stopped. I had to farseek Geratty to find out what on earth he had meant by saying the One had been killed. And by shadows! But I could not locate the coercer. I realized he would have had to come outside to reach me, and no doubt he had now gone back inside.

  Opening my eyes, I announced that we had to go back to the One’s chamber immediately. We retraced our steps along the misty path. When we drew near the laundry, Elkar suddenly announced that perhaps he ought to make an appearance in his master’s chamber. He would come after us as soon as possible.

  “What’s wrong?” Reuvan asked me softly when he had gone.

  I told him what Geratty had sent.

  He grimaced. “Why?”

  “Geratty didn’t say, and now I can’t reach him,” I said worriedly.

  Cinda touched my hand. “It does not matter if the One is dead, lady. You can make any Hedra or priests believe he is alive. And you still have the Threes.”

  I did not know what to say to her, for she seemed to have no sense of the wrongness of murder. She was considering only the consequences of the death, yet this was the death of the most powerful man in all the Faction—at the hands of shadows like her. How could she not be shocked?

  Minutes later, we were mounting the stairs leading up from the laundry. A shattered-looking Geratty was waiting for me.

  “What on earth has happened?” I demanded.

  “Harwood woke me to say he and Ode were gannin’ out to deal with some problem with shadows and a Herder priest. He took Grisyl. He said the shadows were feeding the One because he had been asleep earlier when they tried. I was just gannin’ a bite to eat myself when I heard a cry. I went to th’ One’s chamber. The two of them were…bending over him. Emaciated lasses more like children than women; they looked so innocent, but their hands were covered in blood.” He shuddered. “They had the knives from the meals they had brought. Poor blunt things, but…Guildmistress, they…they had blinded him and were trying to cut out his tongue!” He looked at me. “They seemed…surprised that I was so upset. Apparently, the One woke an’ saw one of them without their headdress. He started screamin’ for the Hedra to chop their hands off and put out their eyes…ye gods.” He faltered to a halt, suddenly seeing Cinda gazing at him in bewilderment.

  “Is he dead?” Reuvan asked quietly.

  The coercer drew a deep breath and shook his head. “I thought he was at first, but no. He lives yet, but he’s in a bad way. I tried to reach Harwood or Sover, but my probe wouldn’t locate. So I sent one of th’ shadows to the healing center. Not one of the two who…”

  “Where are the shadows who did it?” I asked.

  “In the other room. I…I sent them in there while I was cleaning him up.” He looked into my eyes. “Guildmistress, I’ve seen killing before, but nowt like this. Those pretty mild-faced girls with their bloody hands…”

  The sound of boots coming up the steps behind us brought us to our feet. To my amazement, it was Yarrow, accompanied by Asra and a rather bedraggled Zuria.

  “You found the shipfolk!” I said.

  “No. We found the Per of Gelan; that is the village on Fallo where your shipmaster dwelt,” Yarrow said. “Or at least, the Hedra Mendi sent out had found him and were torturing him when we arrived. He had fled with the rest of the villagers after one of them saw the Hedra take a prisoner off the ship. Apparently, your Helvar realized it was you and guessed that it was only a matter of time before the Hedra came for him, his shipfolk, and their families, so he warned the Per, who ordered the evacuation of the village. They did not w
ant to bring strife to the other villages, so they fled into the swamp. But the Per is old, and when he could not continue, they hid him. Unfortunately, the Hedra found him, and they were so engrossed in their foul labor that we had only to creep up on them and knock them on the heads.”

  He went on to explain that their rescue of the Per had been fortuitous, because it convinced the old man that they were no friends of the Faction. He had told them that his village had been abandoned, because Helvar had given aid to a young mutant from the Land. “I let him rattle on, because I wanted to see whether he or maybe this Helvar had any resentment toward you over what happened. They don’t, by the way.”

  “Where did the Per think you came from?” I asked.

  He grinned. “He was so relieved to have his head on his shoulders that it took him a good bit of time to wonder that. When he did get to it, I said we were friends of yours who had come aboard the ship disguised as Hedra. I explained you hadn’t known we were aboard any more than we had known you were aboard.”

  “I’m glad they’re not full of ire,” I said, for I could not truly have blamed the Norseland shipfolk for resenting me.

  Yarrow went on to say that although the Per did not know where the shipfolk and their families were hiding, he had only to tie a swatch of cloth to the topmost branch of a certain tree to communicate with them. A red swatch warned that the person flying the flag was summoning them under duress. A yellow flag, on the other hand, denoted that it was safe to return.

  “He said he was glad we had come along to save him the mortification of flying the red flag,” Asra added.

  “So you hung out the yellow cloth?” I asked.

  “A blue one,” Yarrow said. “That means that it is safe and to come in haste. But the Per said that how much time it took Helvar and the others to respond would depend upon where in the swamps they had taken refuge. He promised that as soon as they came out, he would send them across with tools to repair the Stormdancer.”

  “Did you tell the Per what is happening here?”

  “I told him that we had rescued you and that we had control of the gate guards and the wall watch, so the Norselanders need not fear an attack. I showed him how we could make Zuria dance a jig and a Hedra stand on his head, which was enough to convince him I was not exaggerating. I also told him we had control of the other two inner-cadre Threes and the One…What is it?” He was looking at Geratty, who had flinched at his words.

  My elation faded. I said tiredly, “Reuvan will explain what has been happening here. In the meantime, Geratty, you had better go down to the laundry and wait for the healer.”

  “The shadow said he would come along the wall passage, so I will wait there,” the older coercer said. He went through to the firelit audience room, and I followed him. It was easy to see which of the shadows had attacked the One, for they sat huddled against the wall near a blank-faced Mendi, watching us with huge, lost eyes. I went over to them. I saw with revulsion the blood on their hands and asked Cinda to fetch warm water so they could wash. I knelt down before them, seeing that both were little more than Dragon’s age when I had found her in the Befortime ruins. If not for the blood on their hands, I would have found it impossible to believe that they had done what Geratty had described. I reached into the mind of one, meaning to reassure her that she would not be punished, and I recoiled from a vivid, bloody vision of myself torturing her. I realized with horror that even though they knew we were allies, they imagined I would resort to torture to seek information or punish them.

  The words I had intended to say died on my lips, for I saw that I could say nothing about what they had done that would make any sense to them. They had spoken to the One in the language he and his foul brethren had taught them—the language of cruelty and pain—and it was the only language they knew.

  “Come over to the fire. No one will hurt you or punish you,” I told them.

  They obeyed, and as Cinda came with water and began to wash their hands, I tried to think of something that would allow us to bridge this moment. Nothing came to mind, and when Cinda sat back on her heels, I asked her rather desperately to tell me Elkar’s story, adding the inward request that she tell the story with her fingers as well as her mind. She looked puzzled, but she obeyed, and as I had hoped, the blank devastation ebbed in the eyes of the two younger shadows as her tale unfolded.

  Elkar had been born on Herder Isle, Cinda explained. Like so many other Norse boys, he was taken from his family to become a novice. He had resisted the training until he and the other novices had been taken to see the mine and demon-band works, and he had understood that this would be their fate if they did not succeed in becoming novices. Elkar had given up his rebellious refusal to cooperate and had tried to forget his family and believe the words of Lud, as expressed by his masters. He had worked hard, and when it was found that he had an aptitude for scribing, he was sent to the Herder scribes. Eventually, he had been assigned to his present master who, although devout, was one of the few Herders with a passion for something other than worshipping Lud. Although friendship was impossible, Elkar had come to respect his master’s ability to read and scribe.

  The boy had proven so quick and willing to learn that almost before he had realized what he was doing, the old man was teaching him to read and scribe. This was forbidden, but his master had known that Elkar would work more swiftly and efficiently if he could read and scribe, and his own eyesight was beginning to fail. Elkar was careful never to reveal his abilities, realizing that he would be killed if anyone learned that he knew how to read. In time, his master trusted him so well that he had given over the scribing of older scrips to Elkar.

  “Why rescribe older scrips?” I interrupted.

  “The reason given was that they were old and falling to bits,” Cinda explained. “But more often it was because a bit of the scrip had become unacceptable and needed to be altered. This was supposed to be done by Elkar’s master and merely copied by the scrip novices.”

  That scrips said to have come to the One in visions sent by Lud were altered and sometimes even reversed made it impossible for Elkar to believe in the Herders’ Lud. But he was older now and wise enough in the ways of the Faction to make sure he never revealed his disbelief.

  Cinda ceased her story as Geratty reentered and passed through the chamber with a blank-faced Herder priest carrying a healer’s bag. Instead of referring to the interruption, I asked her how she and Elkar had become friends. She smiled shyly and said that he had noticed the shadows’ finger movements. Elkar had studied the movements of the shadows, and one day, when Cinda had been serving food to him, he had made the signal that he believed was a greeting between shadows. She had started so violently that she had spilled hot soup on him, but the novice had said nothing. Frightened and confused, she had managed to stay away from the meal hall for some time, and when she had to go there, she had been careful to avoid him. Yet she had not been able to forget the movement of his fingers, which had expressed the word friend. Then one day as she was taking a tray to the One, Elkar had been outside the scrip cutting kindling. He had approached Cinda, again using the finger signal for “friend,” then told her aloud that he wanted her to teach him the signal language.

  “I was afraid at first,” Cinda said. “I knew that many of us would be killed if our masters knew how well we could communicate. Yet I feared to refuse him. I decided I would pretend to be very dull-witted and show him only the simplest language so he would believe we used it to communicate only what was necessary for our work. I hoped he would grow bored, but he was so clever and quick. He would make this or that signal and ask what it meant. My sisters told me that we must poison him, but I did not know whom he had told about me, and I wanted to know before I killed him. As time passed, I understood that Elkar had told no one what he had guessed. I asked why he wanted to know how to speak to a shadow, and he answered that he was curious and that he envied our freedom of speech.”

  The words Cinda used in her upper m
ind were less eloquent than the picture in her undermind, which was loud and radiant. Cinda had at first feared the white-clad novice, but she had soon learned that his regard was not unfriendly. Indeed, to her astonishment, it had dawned on her that it was the opposite: He was lonely and wished them to be friends. She resisted until, one day, he said that he would repay her for her lessons by teaching her to scribe and to read. Knowing that he could be killed for being able to read, she had taken it as an offering of friendship. But by now, her own feelings for him ran deeper than that, though she never dared let Elkar see how she felt.

  Then came the day that she had scribed her name for the first time with a thrill of pure terror, and Elkar had read it aloud. She had looked up at him in wonder and sorrow, for she had not heard her name spoken aloud since her brother had been dragged from her arms, screaming it. She wept, and Elkar had taken her in his arms and kissed her tears away. This gentle tenderness had shown Cinda that his feelings ran as deep as hers.

  When Cinda’s image spoke again, it was to say that Elkar’s feelings for her made him sympathetic to the plight of all shadows, whose lives he realized were much harder than any novice’s. He had become determined to find a way to help the shadows, but save for being as kind and considerate as he dared, he could not think how.

  Then one day, Cinda asked if he could scribe a note that would transfer a young shadow from one sector to another, where the girl’s sister labored. Since shadows were used as messengers, it was no difficulty for one to deliver the note Elkar had scribed, and soon the sisters were reunited. With this note, Elkar had proven himself to all the shadows, and thereafter he had become their secret champion.

  More requests followed, and Elkar came to recruit others among the novices and acolytes, and even one ranked priest, who felt as he did. The little secret group passed among themselves messages of hope, warnings, and occasionally books Elkar had stolen from the library. Some were from the Beforetime and told of a world that was nothing like the Beforetime of the Faction’s preachings, which passionately interested all of them. But their main task was to ease the lot of the shadows. And the shadows found ways of helping them, too. A novice being punished would be starved, but the shadows would bring him food; a note sent to command the punishment of a novice would be brought to Elkar, who would rescribe it and simply send the boy to another sector. Cinda assured me that there was little danger, because no priest could ever imagine anyone disobeying him, so he did not check that his orders had been carried out.