The Dreamtrails: The Obernewtyn Chronicles

by Isobelle Carmody

  Ari-roth sang soothingly that the funaga saw only what they expected to see, but just in case, the sea would conceal our approach. Then she bade me hold my breath. Seeing her intention, I sucked in a lungful of air and tried not to be afraid as she dove under the water. Our speed was so great that I felt as if I had put my head under a waterfall. My ears began to ache as the weight of water above us grew, and I prayed that Ari-roth would realize my lung capacity was not as great as hers. Ari-roth heard and bade me calm myself, lest the song of my fear summon azahk. The image she offered told me she spoke of sharks. I would have felt frightened at their mention, but my need for air was too urgent. To my relief, Ari-roth turned back toward the surface, and we sped upward even more quickly than we had descended. Before I had the chance to gasp in a breath and register the looming bulk of the greatship and the smaller shape of a ship boat, I heard a voice say distinctly, “Did you hear that?”

  Without hesitation, Ari-roth twitched me from her back and leapt into the air, rising from the shadow cast by the ship into the moonlight. For a moment, she was gloriously limned in silver, then she dived back into the waves, only to leap up again. Someone cried out in delight, and a man shouted to someone else to come and see. A stern voice commanded them all to shut their mouths lest they wake every fool who slept on the Land. The men fell silent, but still Ari-roth leapt and cavorted so magnificently that I knew their eyes would track her.

  I caught hold of the edge of the little ship boat and was elated, if surprised, to discover that it had been lashed to the metal rungs of a ladder leading up the side of the ship. I soon realized why. A number of boards had been roughly hammered on to patch a splintered gash in the hull. This must be the ship whose shipmaster had miscalculated the gap when leaving the sea cavern. The ship boat had obviously been lowered and lashed to the ladder to offer a stable platform from which repairs could be carried out.

  I shivered and realized that I was growing cold without Ari-roth’s aura to keep me warm. Hunger and thirst were returning, too, along with the pain of my cuts and bruises and a deadly weariness. Ari-roth had leapt out of sight now, but the stifled cries of admiration and splashes told me she had gone around to the other side of the greatship to give me the best chance of boarding unseen. Unfortunately, I was much weaker than I had thought, and it took several attempts to lever myself up onto the edge of the ship boat. To my dismay, my grip slipped, and I slithered forward to land in the bottom of the boat with a distinct thud. Immediately, I reached for a crumpled canvas lying at one end of the boat and pulled it over myself, wrinkling my nose at the stench of fish. I was not a moment too soon, for almost immediately, I heard the sound of boots and a voice directly above.

  “… heard something?” a man’s voice asked.

  “One of the boards might have sprung free.” The answer came in a voice that sounded far too young for a shipman. Both speakers had the soft-edged accents of Norselanders.

  I heard someone else approaching, and the older Norselander said with stiff politeness, “The sighting of a ship fish augurs well, Master Herder.”

  “Superstitious nonsense, Shipmaster,” snapped another man in a sharp, disapproving voice. “There is only the righteous will of Lud for good or ill, and as we are his chosen and serve him, we have no need of omens to know that we will be victorious.”

  I caught my breath, for surely it was the voice of the old priest I had heard in the cavern. But I had seen him and the other Herder board the Black Ship, so Salamander must have come here to let the Herder transfer to this ship. Perhaps he had also set down his force here. I sent out a probe, focusing on the Herder, knowing that if I could reach and control his mind, I would be able to use his authority to prevent the remaining ships from leaving. To my intense disappointment, I encountered the unmistakable buzzing rejection of a demon band. The older Norselander was speaking now, and I tried his mind. It was barred as well, which could only mean that everyone aboard was demon-banded because of their closeness to the Land. On impulse, I tried their younger companion and was astounded to find he was unbanded!

  His name was Lark, and as I had guessed from his voice, he was little more than a boy. But not just any boy. He was the son of the Norse shipmaster who commanded the vessel! Delving into his mind, I found that he did not wear a demon band, because he had stowed away to be with his father, so no band had been provided for him.

  I turned my attention to the conversation between the two older men, reflected in the mind of the boy, and heard the priest bid the shipmaster come with him to look at a map. The older man gave the boy a quelling look, which the boy took in well enough for me to momentarily see the shipmaster. He was a tall, handsome Norselander with long, fair, side plaits; direct, very blue eyes; and a weary, troubled air.

  Left alone, the boy turned to look down at the ship boat where I lay hidden. To my relief, he was not worried about an intruder so much as the hasty repair coming undone, for the Herders had refused to allow them to stop and repair the hull properly. If only they would let his father do his job! All would have been well if the priests aboard their ship had not insisted on deciding when the ship would leave the sea cavern, for the resulting damage was a good deal more worrying than the priests seemed to realize. Perhaps they thought their precious Lud would keep a holed boat afloat because of the righteousness of its passengers, Lark thought sourly.

  Underneath the boy’s concern about the damaged ship, I found a deeper fear arising from the knowledge that only his father’s refusal to allow it had stopped him from being hurled overboard when the Hedra captain had discovered him hiding in the hold. The boy’s mind told me that both the Norselanders and the Herder priests called the warrior priests of their order Hedra, and I remembered that the priests in the cavern had used the same term. The boy thought of how his father had defied the old Herder priest, saying bluntly that if the boy was killed, he would not master the vessel, and none of the other seamen had the skill for it. The Hedra captain, Kaga, had then proposed that Lark’s tongue be cut out as a punishment, but again his father had refused to permit it.

  I dropped beneath the boy’s conscious thoughts and began to scour his mind for memories of his movements about the ship to familiarize myself with its layout. In doing so, I learned that twelve shipmen and eight priests were on board, and six of these were high-ranking Hedra, with Hedra Kaga most senior. All of the Hedra but Kaga and the other five had gone ashore with the Hedra from the Orizon and the Black Ship before the latter had returned to Herder Isle to report to the inner cadre on the progress of the invasion.

  Lark’s fear of the cold, brutal Hedra Kaga was very strong, but he was far more afraid of the inner-circle priests, especially the inner-cadre Nine. Delving deeper into his fears, I discovered that the boy was terrified that the Nine would punish his beloved father for daring to oppose his will. According to Lark, inner-cadre members were proud and vengeful; if his father was arrested and taken into the Herder Compound on Herder Isle, it was unlikely that he would ever return.

  I shivered at the potency of the boy’s fears, and again I had to force myself to remember my own needs. I was lucky to have found him, and he would have access to his father, who was the shipmaster. Not that I had any illusion about who was master here. The Nine was the ultimate authority, but he and the other priests must rely upon the sea skills of the shipmaster, who would have some power until they returned to Herder Isle.

  I had always assumed that the Norselanders willingly served the Hedra, but from what I saw in the boy’s mind, they were an occupied people forced to serve and obey the Faction. This news would greatly interest the Council of Chieftains, but I had much to do before I could share what I had learned.

  The first step was obvious. I needed the boy to convince his father to remove his demon band, and then I would coerce the shipmaster to secretly order his men to remove their bands. Once I had coerced them, they could overcome Kaga, and as soon as they removed his band, I could use him to deal with the other five He
dra aboard. Then I would have the ship signal the Orizon and have the Nine command the ship to remain anchored. No seaman would be a match for a trained warrior, I reminded myself, so I must be careful not to incite any open confrontation. Now that I understood that the Norselanders were little more than slaves, I could not in good conscience put them in danger to further my own plans.

  Lark moved toward the foredeck, deciding he would go below into the hold to check the repair and see if the leak was worse. Delicately, I changed his mind and directed his attention to Ari-roth. He noted that she was still leaping spectacularly from the waves, glittering with phosphorescence, but she was moving steadily away. Lark observed that the leaping ship fish would make a fine image to render as an offering to the goddesses to ease his passage into the longsleep. I was startled at his use of the term that beasts used for death, and my curiosity again led me further into his mind. At a deeper, half-repressed level that connected with memory, he was thinking that ship fish were supposed to be the willing servants of the three goddesses of forbidden Norse myths, which his mother whispered to him at night. The myths were banned by the Faction. Once he had asked his mother why they must be kept secret, and she had answered that until the Norse Isles were free, the stories must remain secret, for anyone repeating them would be burned.

  Lark’s mind told me that his father and mother had been born on Norseland, and I delved deeper, seeking to understand how his parents had come to dwell upon Herder Isle. I was very surprised to learn that Herder Isle was actually an island divided in two by a channel, where once there had been an isthmus. A vast, walled Herder Compound occupied most of the larger island, which lay closer to the Land, while the Norselanders dwelt in villages on the lesser island, arrayed about the edge of a great swampy expanse of land surrounding a single low hill at the center of the island. The smaller island was called Fallo after a Norse city that had once stood on that side of the isthmus. This bridge of land, called the Girdle of the Goddess, had been destroyed by the Faction, along with the cities of Fallo and Hevon. Hevon had stood on the larger island, facing the bay and the Land, and had been surpassing fair. I tried to find out how the Faction had destroyed two cities and an isthmus, but the boy did not know. Indeed, much of his knowledge came from tales his mother told him and, occasionally, by what he had overheard from his father’s shipfolk.

  Lark, his parents, and all the shipfolk lived in the village nearest the channel. His mother and father had been brought from Norseland to dwell upon Herder Isle so they would be better placed to serve their masters as shipfolk and shipwrights. The Orizon was one of several smaller greatships built at the Herders’ behest, Lark’s mind told me with faint disparagement. Many of these had foundered at sea, Lark believed, because they had not been dedicated to the goddesses who protected the Norseland shipfolk. But the Stormdancer, which was the ship his father mastered, had been built by one of his own ancestors and had been sailed in the days of freedom, before the Faction came. Now the Herders owned all the ships, and the Norselanders served them as they required, for anyone who defied them was taken to the Herder Compound for questioning, where they faced death by burning, or worse.

  I wanted to know what “worse” entailed, but this part of Lark’s mind was darker and more sensitive, because it connected to his fears of what might happen to his father upon their return to Herder Isle, so I dared not venture there.

  I turned instead to Lark’s childhood. He had no memory of Norseland, for his mother had given birth to him on Fallo, but he had many glowing visions, fashioned in his imagination through his mother’s stories of the island. These were peopled with noble men and women akin in strength and courage to the Norse kings who had made the high rocky island their ancestral home, who farmed and tilled and wrested a living from the barren island, yet who never forgot to keep their blades sharp. His favorite fantasy was that those upon Norseland were planning an uprising and would someday come to free Fallo and Herder Isle from the Faction. But I saw from his memories that the Norselanders who served aboard ships traveling regularly to Norseland spoke of only a few scattered villages of farmers and two sizeable towns, the entire population of these being less than the number of Hedra in the training camp there.

  Brydda, too, had spoken of the training camp for warrior priests on Norseland. I remembered that, according to the priests in the cavern, Ariel had a residence on Norseland, too.

  The boy looked up at the moon. I saw it clearly in his mind’s eye, a shining sphere across whose face now unraveled skeins of purplish cloud. I sent him to the other side of the ship to survey the Land, and the sight of the high dark cliffs evoked in him uneasy apprehensions about Landfolk whom the Herders described as little better than savages, preyed upon by dreadful fanged mutants.

  I could not resist constructing and implanting a question as to why the Faction would invade the Land if it was full of savages and bestial mutants. The boy’s mind immediately seized on the question but could come up with no answer. This troubled him, and he decided he would ask his father. Then he began to think about the training exercises the warrior priests had practiced on the decks. He wondered if those techniques would aid them against the mutant hordes. Seeing the exercises in his memory, I noticed they truly were very like coercer training exercises. Gevan had devised these with the help of Beforetime books unearthed by the Teknoguild, so perhaps the warrior priests were also using Oldtime books, despite their being forbidden by the Faction.

  The boy’s mind registered the shipmaster’s summons, and he hurried to meet him, love for his father filling his mind. The shipmaster’s cabin was not the best chamber aboard, as was traditional, for that had been taken by the Herders. Through Lark’s mind, I saw his father close the cabin door firmly after them and turn up the wick on a lantern. The boy sat on the edge of the bed, anxiously waiting to see what his father would tell him. I prompted him to ask the question I had placed in his mind, interested to discover that it had already formed strong connecting threads to other doubts and questions. If I had not encouraged the boy to ask why the Herders were invading a land inhabited by monsters, it was clear that Lark would soon enough have come up with it for himself.

  The boy watched several expressions chase one another across his father’s face: astonishment, anger, concern, and, finally, wariness. But last of all, he smiled, and Lark knew this meant that his father would tell him something true, something dangerous.

  “Perhaps the Landfolk are not the bloodthirsty monsters the priests preach about but are only folk who do not wish to be ruled by the Faction,” the shipmaster said quietly. “But you must never speak of that possibility with anyone but me or your mother.”

  Lark nodded seriously, pride swelling in his mind at the trust his father placed in him. Then, prompted by me but not yet controlled, he asked, “Why do you wear a demon band if you think the people of this Land are not mutants with dreadful nullish powers?”

  His father frowned. “Because it is what the priests command.”

  “Can I look at it?” I made the boy ask, holding out his hand.

  His father hesitated, then sighed, and the boy watched him unfasten it. “Just for a moment, then.” As the lock opened, I abandoned the boy for his father’s mind.

  His name was Helvar, and his mind showed that he was, incredibly, all that his son believed him to be: noble, strong-minded, compassionate, and generous. He was also troubled by Lark’s sudden interest in the demon band and his questions about the Land’s inhabitants, and he was aware that his answers, repeated, would see them both burned. He had answered Lark truthfully, because he knew the boy would appreciate his trust. He believed the questions his son had asked were a manifestation of the lad’s fear of the Nine. Helvar knew very well that Lark was afraid the Herders would punish him for protecting his son, and he feared that, too. But his fear was not that he would vanish into the Herder Compound, for his skills as a shipmaster and shipwright were too valuable to be wasted. Besides, the priests’ punishments were a
lways cruel and subtle. They would be far more likely to do what both Helvar and his wife feared, which was to claim the boy as a novice.

  Ever since Lark had been born, this possibility had haunted Helvar, for most Norse boys were taken from their families to become Herder novices. Helvar had done what he could to protect his son; he had taught the boy all he knew, hoping that, by the time he was old enough to be considered as a novice, he would have too many valuable ship skills to waste. And it might have been so, save that by stowing away, the boy had drawn himself dangerously to their masters’ attention.

  I threw up a thin coercive shield, realizing I was becoming dangerously absorbed in the compelling thoughts of a man I could not help but like and admire. My control loosened, and Helvar immediately reached out to pick up the demon band, remembering that it was death to be caught without it and wondering at his carelessness in failing to put it back on immediately.

  I coerced him to set it aside again and cast about to find a thought I could use before making him ask Lark to fetch their nightmeals on a tray from the galley. As the boy closed the door behind him, his father reached again for the band, and again I had to turn his mind away. Helvar knew that the bands were dangerous, and he had told his son the truth when he had said he wore it only because he must. I made him button his shirt to the neck so the demon band’s absence would not be noticed if someone entered the cabin.

  Leaving his conscious thoughts, I delved deeper into the shipmaster’s mind, searching out his knowledge of Herder plans for the Land. Unfortunately, he knew no more than the boy’s mind had already yielded, the Norselanders being little more than a source of bonded labor and novices for the Faction. Helvar’s memories showed me that he and the other shipmaster had been informed only two days before the journey that the Stormdancer and the Orizon, led by the Black Ship, were to carry a Hedra invasion force that would reclaim the Land from the mutants who had driven out the Faction and enslaved the Landfolk.