The Dreamtrails: The Obernewtyn Chronicles

by Isobelle Carmody

  “Did I not inform you that I wished you to send word that you had caught the Misfit? Did I not command that a messenger be sent if you intended to come here?” Malik inquired coldly. The light from lanterns hung about the encampment gave his face a sinister ruddy glow.

  Vos’s bluster about being Malik’s equal shriveled, and he said, “You did, however … ah … it is a dangerous Misfit that my men caught. Not just a beastspeaker but a powerful coercer.”

  Malik all but curled his lip in derision. “Your men caught her after they first let her escape and after you acted against my express orders to do nothing about Noviny or his visitors until I gave you leave.” Vos tried to speak, but Malik ignored him. “But I am sure Chieftain Dardelan will be most understanding when you expalin to him why you took Noviny and his granddaughter and their guests prisoner and interrogated them.”

  Vos paled. “But … if the freaks had used their powers to escape, they would have reported me to the Council of Chieftains.”

  Malik gave a bark of laughter. “Do you really imagine that the Council of Chieftains will be forever ignorant of what you have been doing here?”

  “You said I would have your full support if it came out,” Vos stammered.

  “So you would have, had you not decided to take prisoners against my orders. And now you march into my camp, though I warned you against it.”

  “I am sorry, Chieftain Malik,” Vos gabbled, unraveling with fear. “I hope that you will not take this … eagerness of mine amiss. I will take this creature and return with my men to my homestead.”

  “The mutant might as well remain here,” Malik said. He turned to look at me. He had glanced at me indifferently when we arrived, and I thought that he had not recognized me under the mud and dirt. But now, seeing the look of gloating hatred in his metal-gray eyes, I knew I had been wrong. He knew exactly who I was.

  A cold shiver of terror ran down my spine. I forced myself to seek the mind of the horse Dovyn, whom I had unbanded, but the probe would not locate. His missing band had probably been discovered and replaced.

  “Why are you here in Saithwold?” Malik demanded.

  My mouth was so dry with fear that I had to work my tongue to produce moisture enough to speak. “We had letters from the beastspeaker Khuria, who serves Master Noviny. The missives did not sound like him, so we—”

  Almost casually, Malik drew back his hand and struck me in the mouth. It was an openhanded blow with the back of his knuckles but hard enough to make me stagger sideways.

  He asked in an almost bored voice, “What did you know of matters in Saithwold before you came here?”

  “Nothing until a woman at an inn mentioned the blockade. She said that Chieftain Vos was trying to force people in Saithwold to elect him.”

  Vos let out a strangled cry of dismay, but Malik silenced him with a cutting gesture.

  “And the Black Dog?”

  “Brydda said the high chieftain knew what Vos was trying to do but that Dardelan didn’t want to act against him until after the elections. He did not want us to come here, but when I said that Zarak was determined to see his father, he offered to help us get past the barricade.”

  Malik sneered. “You would have me believe that despite knowing there was trouble in Saithwold, Brydda Llewellyn, a known friend to freaks, escorted here the guildmistress of Obernewtyn and doxy to its master, and left her without protection?”

  I heard Vos gasp at hearing my title, but Malik ignored him.

  “Brydda didn’t think there would be any real danger,” I said. “The worst we imagined was having to wait in Saithwold until after the elections, and in the meantime I would be able to stop anyone from doing anything rash, by telling them that Dardelan meant to deal with Vos.”

  Malik struck me again, this time with a closed fist that glanced off the side of my head and knocked me to the ground.

  “Get up,” he said coldly.

  I struggled to my knees with difficulty, because my wrists were bound. The blow had set off a great explosion of pain in one ear, and I fought a blackness that fluttered about the edges of my vision, wondering what Malik wanted from me. I was answering his questions truthfully, and he could have no idea that we knew of his bargain with the Herders.

  “Get up,” Malik said once more.

  Trembling, I obeyed. When he stepped toward me, I instinctively lifted my bound hands to protect my face, but he sank his closed fist into my stomach. I doubled over, gagging at the force of the blow, and fell to my knees. When I managed to heave in a breath, he ordered me up yet again. I obeyed as slowly as I dared, tensing for another blow. Instead of hitting me, Malik asked what Noviny had told me. When I opened my mouth to answer, he punched me again in the stomach.

  I fell badly this time because of my bound hands, banging my head on a rock, and when Malik told me to get up, my limbs would not obey. I stayed curled on the muddy ground, praying that he would not kick my head or face. When he did not move or speak, I looked up to find him staring down at me, his features utterly empty. The moon had risen and seemed to ride on his shoulder. No wonder Maruman hated the moon, I thought dazedly. It was on Malik’s side.

  Malik turned to Vos, who looked frightened out of his wits. “Do the other prisoners know that you have caught this one?”

  “No,” Vos said in a thin voice. “They have not been questioned since the first interrogation, just as you ordered.”

  “Good. Go back to your homestead. Remove Noviny and his granddaughter to their homestead and have them kept there under guard. Do not speak of this Misfit’s capture to them. Offer no explanation and make sure your men are equally silent. The other two Misfit freaks and the crippled gypsy are to be questioned again. Edel,” he addressed one of his own men, “accompany Chieftain Vos and conduct the interrogation. Begin with the cripple and torture him until he dies, regardless of what he does or does not confess. Make sure the other two witness it, then begin on the boy. That will loosen the old man’s lips if they are keeping anything back. Find out why they came, what they have learned here, and what they intended to do. I will expect a report by tomorrow.”

  Edel nodded, but Vos stammered a protest. “The … the Council of Chieftains will want to know what happened to the Misfits, Malik. And if this woman is truly the bondmate of the Master of Obernewtyn …”

  “This is a freak, not a woman,” Malik snarled. “I will deal with her as all mutants ought to be dealt with. It is nothing to do with you. As far as anyone else will know, you saw her but once when she came to pay her respects to you, and then you had her taken back to Noviny’s property.”

  “But if she talks—”

  “You need have no fear of that.”

  Vos swallowed the meaning of this as if it were a stone. “But the other Misfits … Noviny and his granddaughter will say that they and the cripple remained my captives when they were returned to their home.”

  “If you are ever accused of anything, you will let it be known that Edel performed the interrogation of the Misfits at my command.” Malik’s tone was so indifferent that it sounded like boredom.

  “But the Council of Chieftains will—”

  “I will deal with the Council,” Malik said with cold finality. “Now go.”

  Vos hesitated, perhaps expecting something more formal to pass between them, but Malik made no face-saving speech. Finally, with as much dignity as he could muster, Vos commanded his men to mount up and ride back to his property. They obeyed silently, watched by Malik’s men.

  Malik was now speaking quietly to one of his men, and I closed my eyes for a moment, battling fear. My tongue found the jagged edge of a chipped tooth, and my lip stung where it had been split. I could also feel the drain of energy as my body tried to repair itself. There was no way to stop the process, for it was not activated by my will, and opening the locks had depleted me, though that fatigue was still coercively netted. I did not dare push the pain I now felt into the same net, because pain trapped in this way doubled a
nd tripled in a very short time.

  I was so intent upon my thoughts that I failed to notice Malik’s armsman circling behind me. When Malik abruptly ordered me to get up, I obeyed, relieved to find that my limbs would obey. But even as I stood, swaying slightly, I felt the cold metal of a demon band snap around my neck.

  TO MY HORROR, I discovered that my powers were trapped inside my mind like a bear caught in a cage. I told myself that this was merely normality, but the thought that this dreadful isolation and passivity of mind could be called normal sickened me. No wonder unTalents loathed us. At the heart of their hated must be bitter envy.

  I might have been better able to stifle my horror and fear had I not known that, in banding me, Malik unwittingly left me unable to play my part in the plan I had set in motion. I fought a suffocating wave of panic and tried to focus a probe to work the lock, but the taint emanating from the band was too strong. Desperately I tried to reach the black power at the bottom of my mind, but pain and the healing of my body drained me of the energy I needed to rouse it.

  “Ye ken Vos will nowt keep his mouth shut,” grunted the man who had fastened the demon band about my neck as he poured a mugful of some dark liquid and handed it to Malik. The chieftain drank it off, then shrugged.

  “I have given him makework enough to occupy him for the time being, but the fool’s role is almost at an end.”

  “What about her?” The armsman nodded in my direction.

  “The freak is irrelevant,” Malik said dismissively.

  “Obernewtyn’s master might nowt agree if the woman is truly his doxy. He might come riding in looking for her with some of those coercer-knights of his, regardless of what Dardelan wants. It would be inconvenient if their arrival coincides with other matters.”

  He is talking about the invasion, I thought.

  A smile curved Malik’s thin lips. “I doubt Rushton Seraphim will be in any haste to get his woman back. After the priests had their fun with him, I am amazed that he could stomach her presence these long months. He might look like a man, but all that makes a man is gone. He is no more than a shell.”

  Bile rose in my throat, and tears stung my eyes, for what Malik said was true. Had Rushton not said as much to me himself? For Malik to know so much, the Herders with whom he had struck his bargain must have boasted of what they had done when they had Rushton imprisoned in the Sutrium cloister. I ground my teeth in fury, and some of the quaking terror left me.

  “If all is so well, Chieftain, why do ye have a troubled look about ye?” ventured the armsman.

  A flicker of impatience in the cold face of his master faded into a brooding puzzlement. “It is true,” Malik said slowly. “I am troubled. Something nags at my mind.” To my dismay, he turned to look at me. “How did that fool Vos manage to capture her, of all mutants? That is what nags at me.”

  My heart hammered because Malik knew me as only a former opponent can. Perhaps he was remembering the last occasion on which we had faced one another, when victory had turned to ashes in his mouth. I tensed as he took a step toward me, but he stopped, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves drumming. Malik and his men turned to face the road, no doubt imagining that Vos and his troop were riding back. But when the horses came in sight, they were riderless, though many wore saddles and even dangerously dangling reins. Malik and his men stared, perplexed and astonished.

  Malik was the first to regain his wits. “Shoot! Shoot them, you fools, for they are coming to save the freak.” His men tried to obey, but it was too late. The stampeding horses were upon the camp. Men screamed in terror and pain as they fell under flashing hooves. A few men shot arrows or threw a spear or knife, but not a single horse fell. I realized with elation that the men did not know how to fight horses, for their training had always focused on their human riders. Without warning, more horses leapt from the bushes. They were unsaddled and unbridled, which told me they were the horses that had been left in the corral back at Vos’s property. Gahltha had released them as I had requested. Then I saw him, black and powerful in the moonlight, rearing and stamping down hard, his nostrils flaring.

  Huts were trampled, lanterns smashed, and brief flames extinguished as the horses rampaged through the camp. Men who had not been trampled fled from the devastation, only to find their own horses, led by Dovyn, herding them back. An armsman who tried to attack the horses was crushed so savagely that others threw down their weapons at once. I had run to one side of the camp the moment the horses appeared. Now I saw Gahltha turning his head this way and that, clearly wondering why I was not beastspeaking him.

  I drew breath to call his name, but a hand closed over my mouth, and I was lifted from my feet. My captor turned and ran with me into the trees bordering the camp. I could not fight because of my bound hands, and I could not summon help with my mind because of the demon band, so I tried to bite the hand pressed over my mouth in order to scream. I was suddenly hurled to the ground so hard that I was winded. It was dark away from the campfire and lanterns, but a shaft of light, reaching through the trees, briefly illuminated Malik’s face, contorted with urgency as he used his kerchief to gag me. I could still hear the horses and men screaming and shouting when Malik threw me over his shoudler. Then he began to run, dodging trees and crashing over bushes and fallen branches. Gradually, the sounds of the camp faded into the monotonous thud of his boots and the snap of foliage breaking or swishing as it sprang back after we had passed. Malik was breathing hard but regularly, revealing his strength and stamina. My heart sank at the realization that he might go on in this steady way for half an hour. By then we would be far from the camp. Worse, I was sure that none of the horses had seen him take me.

  Malik ran without stopping or slowing for what seemed an eternity. When he did finally stop, he was panting, but he clearly still possessed strength. He drank some water from a bottle on his belt, seemed to listen for a time, and then he set off in a slightly different direction, this time walking. I could hear nothing but the creak and rustle of trees and wondered where he was taking me. Not to the coast, as I had expected, to signal his Herder friends. As far as I could tell, we had traveled parallel to the road back to Saithwold town.

  A sickening hour of hanging half upside down passed before Malik stopped and hurled me to the ground. Sheer luck kept me from hitting one of the snaking tree roots protruding from the leaf litter, but instinct made me lie very still as if I had been knocked unconscious. I could tell by Malik’s breathing that he was weary now; if he felt safe enough to sleep, I might have a chance to escape, for my legs were not bound.

  I heard Malik moving and sensed that he was looking into my face. I kept my breathing slow and even, knowing he would not be able to see clearly in the dappled tree shadow. There was a long silence, but I continued to feign unconsciousness. I was just beginning to think I must have been mistaken in thinking he had been looking at me when I felt a knife’s cold edge against my face, and the gag fell away.

  I gasped and opened my eyes to find Malik’s moonlit face so close that I instinctively recoiled. He pressed the knife against my neck and gave me a cruel, knowing smile that exposed my hope of escaping as the foolishness it was. His eyes told me that I would never escape him. Not alive. I felt a shudder of terror as I suddenly understood that Malik had brought me with him not as a hostage, but to finish what he had begun in the camp. Madness glimmered in his eyes along with a pleasurable anticipation that told me he meant to take his time in killing me, exacting as much pain as he could. He wanted me to grovel in terror before him.

  He sat back on his heels as if the fear in my eyes had assured him that I understood his intentions. He took the knife from my throat and ran his thumb across the edge of his blade in a caressing gesture, never taking his eyes off me. His nostrils quivered as if he hungered for even the odor of my fear.

  “You are a monster and a coward,” I said, looking directly into his eyes.

  He laughed with real enjoyment. “You think I am that idiot Vos, to be t
aken in by feigned sleep or provoked to hasty action by an obvious attempt to anger me? No. I mean to take my time killing you, and nothing you do will hasten your dying. I have in mind to deprive you of all your senses first. Hearing, speech, smell, touch.” He pressed his knife in turn to my ear, my lips, my nose, my bound hands as he spoke the name of each sense, and then he lifted the tip of his blade and rested it under my eye. “But first, your sight.”

  “You are wasting time in which you might escape.” I tried to sound cold instead of frightened, but, oh, I was frightened. I had never been more afraid.

  He said very calmly, “What makes you think I need to escape?” He grinned at the consternation I could not conceal, for his words seemed to imply that there was something I did not know. Was he referring to the invasion, or was there something else? His look of terrifying concentration quenched my attempts to think. He lifted his knife and kissed the flat of it in a deadly salute.

  I closed my eyes and let terror roil through me and flow away. I turned my mind from what was to happen and pictured Maruman and Gahltha, Dameon, Dragon, Matthew. And Rushton. The memory of those I loved could not be cut out of me, I told myself fiercely. Even when I died, my vision of them would live on in the mindstream. I wished that I could harness my mind’s power and give myself to the mindstream, depriving Malik of the satisfaction of hurting me, but the demon band would not allow it.

  I summoned up a mental image of Rushton as he had been when we had parted last. I saw his coldness with compassion rather than disappointment and sorrow. I felt boundless gratitude that he had come into my life to show me how deeply I could love, and it was a little burst of light in that dark moment to realize that being able to love was life’s real gift. Without those people and creatures who had made me love them, I would be a lesser being. Even the pain of loving was a gift that had deepened me.