“Get back inside!” Patrick shouted. “The storm is coming!”
Together, in silence, they splashed back through the mud, reaching the wagon just as the storm broke.
* * *
They traveled through the night, braving the rain and the wind, blasts of lightning and ground-shaking thunder. Miri fell into an uncomfortable sleep. She was jolted awake when the wagon lurched to a stop, tilting sideways and nearly throwing her off the bench. She could hear the driver shouting at the horses. The wagon did not budge. The driver yelled for Patrick.
Patrick had trouble opening the door in the buffeting wind and when he finally did, the rain blew inside, stinging her face. He was gone a moment, then returned to tell them that the wagon was stuck in a mud hole and they would have to get out.
Miri and Gythe stood huddled together in the driving rain that penetrated their clothes and soaked them to the bone. Miri would have offered to help, but realized that it would seem strange for a prisoner to want to assist her captors. She tried to forget her discomfort by watching the dazzling lightning display: pink and purple bolts streaking among the clouds or spiking to the ground. Patrick and the guard heaved and strained to free the wagon wheel from the muddy rut that held it, while the driver lashed the horses, urging them to pull.
After much fruitless effort, they gave up. Patrick told Miri and Gythe to get back in the wagon. They would have to wait until the driver brought someone back to help. Shivering in their soaked clothes, Miri and Gythe pressed together for warmth as the wagon shook and rattled.
The storm ended at last. Day dawned bleak and dismal. Patrick doled out a small portion of food.
“How long do you think we might be stranded here?” Gythe signed.
Patrick shrugged. “This road goes to Dunlow. It was once a main road that carried lots of traffic. The storms make traveling hazardous now, as you can see. The guard and the driver have gone for help. Hopefully we will be here no more than a day. Maybe two.”
He opened the window. The pale sun floated in a pinkish orange sky.
“How do you and your people live like this?” Miri asked somberly.
She ate the small portion of bread slowly, to make it last.
“Before the storms began, our lives were hard, but they were bearable,” said Patrick, munching on his own hunk of the hard, stale loaf. “We had learned down through the years what crops would grow in the limited amount of sunshine that filtered through the Breath. We helped each other. We stopped cursing our fate. We taught ourselves to be content, to enjoy life.”
Miri smiled. “You actually answered my question.”
Patrick smiled faintly in return.
“Your sister told me you guessed our secret, that we are part of the resistance.”
“What does the resistance do?” Miri asked. She hesitated before saying, “And what do you expect Gythe to do to help your cause?”
“We want our lives back,” said Patrick. “Xavier caused these storms with his war. He says we will go Above and live in the sunlight. Glasearrach is our homeland! We have raised our families here, going back generations before the sinking. We do not want to leave nor do we seek revenge. Xavier must be stopped.”
“How did he cause the storms?”
“Xavier’s grandfather learned that blood magic enhances contramagic. His father was a blood mage and so is his brother. He was the one who came up with the idea of using the temple drummers and their blood magic to bombard your world with contramagic. The Blood Mage claims that the contramagic will silence the voice of your God and bring your people to their knees. What he did not tell us was that the drumming is going to bring us to our knees.”
“The clash of magic and contramagic is stirring up wizard storms,” said Gythe.
“Over time the storms have grown worse and worse. Now the magic rages out of control. The storms are almost constant. Crops drown in the fields. Our children are starving. What food we do manage to grow goes to feed Xavier, his drummers, and his army.”
“But why does he want savants?” Miri asked. “Why does he think they can stop the storms?”
“He conceived the idea from some book sent to him by one of his agents Above. He read that these same wizard storms ravaged your world during what you call the Dark Ages. Four saints prayed for a miracle and the storms ceased. Xavier investigated and found out that the saints were savants. That gave him the idea.
“Unfortunately, Xavier has not found any saints among the savants he has taken prisoner,” Patrick concluded drily. “The savants he has brought have done nothing. He can’t afford to feed prisoners who are useless so he gave them to his brother, the Blood Mage.”
“So you brought Gythe here to be murdered,” Miri said.
“I did not bring her here,” Patrick said sternly. “She volunteered. She claims she can quell the storms. If she does, then Xavier will keep her alive.”
“And if she doesn’t, she will be sacrificed in some unholy ritual!” Miri returned angrily. She rose to her feet. “Gythe, come along. We are leaving.”
Patrick made no move to stop her. She knew why when she opened the wagon door and a gust of wind and rain drove her back inside. Grimly, she held on to the door and turned to her sister.
“Gythe! I said we are going!” Miri shouted over the wind.
Gythe shook her head. She sat with her feet on the bench, her arms around her knees.
“Gythe!” Miri cried, both a plea and a command.
Patrick shut the door. Outside the wind howled. The wagon rocked and shook. Miri sank down on the bench.
“You should try to get some sleep,” said Patrick.
16
The church punished us for studying contramagic, then begged us to tell them how to use its power. I am sad to say that the four of us, who had remained fast friends through many trials and sorrows, could not agree on what we should do. Certainly the evil they sought to fight was very great. In the end, two of us remained silent and remained imprisoned. Two revealed the secret and were set free.
—Confessions of Saint Marie
Miri woke to the sound of voices. For a moment, she was groggy and disoriented, wondering where she was. The sight of Patrick leaving his seat to open the door brought everything back. He returned to say that the driver and the guard had come with help and that she and Gythe needed to leave the wagon.
Another dreary, sunless day had dawned, the second day they had been stranded. Miri and Gythe stood in the mud and watched six men drag, shove, pull, and push the wagon until they finally managed to free it. She and Gythe climbed inside and the weary journey began again. Patrick was silent, gazing out the window at the bleak, barren mountains.
Gythe cast Miri pleading glances, asking her to understand.
Miri pretended she didn’t see. She gazed out the window until the rain started again and Patrick closed the shutters.
She dozed uneasily as the wagon squelched through the mud, and jolted to alertness only when the motion of the wagon changed. The wheels were now rattling over cobblestones again.
“The city of Dunlow,” said Patrick. “We have arrived at our destination.”
The wagon traveled along streets that appeared to turn and twist, for the wagon was continually shifting direction. At last, it came to a stop. Patrick opened the door. The latest storm was drifting off. The rain was falling in a drizzle instead of torrents. Miri climbed out of the wagon and onto a cobblestone street.
People muffled in heavy wraps against the rain hurried about their business. A few stared at the wagon and its passengers. Most cast furtive glances and then looked quickly away.
The driver told Patrick to keep watch on Miri and Gythe, and walked off, saying he was going to make arrangements for their admittance to the temple.
Miri looked around. Patrick had told them a little about Dunlow, the old capital of Glasearrach. Located in the foothills of a ridge of mountains called the Spine, because they formed the backbone of the island, Dunlow had been a
prosperous city prior to the sinking, known for its fine merino wool and the famous Dunlow brick, renowned for its unusual creamy color. The brick came from the clay pits to the north and was once shipped around the world. Dunlow had also been a market town. Crops from the surrounding farms had fed the entire island.
Miri looked down a wet street and saw a hodgepodge of dwellings and businesses, all made of the famous brick. Like the Trundler floating cities, Dunlow was divided into neighborhoods, each of which was home to a single Trundler clan. In the old days, the clan leaders led the city. The clans had managed to live together fairly peacefully, with only the occasional blood feud.
Miri’s uncle claimed that their clan had been one of the leading clans in Dunlow, all lost with the sinking of the island.
“I am amazed Dunlow survived,” Miri remarked to Patrick.
“The coastal villages were destroyed by the contramagic beams that struck the island,” Patrick replied. “Almost everyone perished. Those who did not die in the burning rubble succumbed to the cold as the island sank into the Breath. The residents of Dunlow were more fortunate. Saint Xavier the First ordered the people to flee to the caves in the mountains and there they managed to survive the descent through the Breath.
“The island fell slowly. The contramagic that had killed us proved our salvation. The Breath boiled and bubbled and thickened. The island came to a soft landing in a mixture of sea and swamp. The survivors waited,” Patrick continued, his voice hardening. “They waited in the endless night for their people to come rescue them. But no one did. Eventually they realized they had been forgotten.”
His voice was tinged with bitterness that Miri realized must have lasted centuries, passed down from parent to child.
“Is that why your people have targeted Trundlers?” Miri asked. “Is that why they attacked Trundler boats, murdered people like our parents? Because you thought your people had abandoned you?”
“You did abandon us,” said Patrick grimly.
“Our people had no way of knowing anyone had survived!”
“They knew,” said Patrick.
“How?” Miri demanded. “How could they know?”
“Those early people were determined to find a way to get back to the surface. A man named Alan MacGregor finally succeeded. He discovered a river that he theorized must have its source in the world Above. He and two of his sons made the arduous and treacherous journey, climbing the rocks along the banks of the river. Eventually, after many months, they reached the surface. They found themselves in a large cavern in the Oscadia Mountains.”
Miri stared at him. “I have heard nothing of this tale. No one has.”
“There is a reason you have not heard,” Patrick said. “Alan and his sons were jubilant. They climbed down out of the mountains and made contact with some villagers. He and his sons were pale, gaunt and haggard, half starved. They spoke a strange language. The superstitious villagers thought they were demons from hell and fled in terror, running to tell the local priest.
“The priest was a wise man and he knew they were not demons. He understood some Trundler. He listened to their tale and believed them. He wrote to his superiors what he considered was good news—people on Glasearrach had survived the sinking. The grand bishop himself traveled to the mountains, saying the Church wanted to help. Alan and his sons went back to the cavern, planning to return to Below to bring the joyous news. They never arrived and everyone on Glasearrach assumed they had failed.”
“But if they never arrived, how do you know what happened?” Miri asked skeptically.
“Centuries later, an explorer came across traces of Alan MacGregor’s campsite. He and his party followed Alan’s route and climbed to the surface. When they reached the cavern, they found three skeletons, the remnants of the arrows that had killed them, and Alan’s journal. He and his sons had been murdered and sealed up inside the cavern. Nearby was a monastery, built to guard the ‘Gates of Hell.’”
Miri stared at him, aghast. “You are saying the grand bishop killed them? But why?”
“To stop our people from returning to tell our tale,” said Patrick. “To stop us from pointing accusing fingers at a church that talks loudly about mercy and forgiveness while hiding hands drenched with blood.”
“If this is true,” said Miri slowly, “then what happened to your people is a terrible tragedy.”
She was about to add that this didn’t give them the right to murder her parents or the nuns of Saint Agnes or the children in the Crystal Market. She remained silent, thinking.
Down through the centuries, Trundlers had lived by their own laws, refusing to obey the laws handed down by others. Trundlers were fiercely loyal to their clans. The right of a Trundler to demand blood justice for an injury done to him or to a clan member was sacrosanct. Miri had taken part in her own share of blood feuds when the honor of the McPikes had been challenged.
She considered the terrible lives these people had been forced to lead, trapped at the bottom of the world, knowing that they had been abandoned. Perhaps they had a right to don demonic armor and fly off on giant bats to seek their revenge.
But blood feuds had rules. Her uncle had taught her that. Before going to war, the clans would meet to air their grievances. The Bottom Dwellers could have done the same, but instead they had resorted to murder.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the return of the driver with word that they could proceed. The temple warders were expecting them.
Patrick escorted them down the street toward a destination obscured by the downpour. As they walked, Miri mused on how it seemed that time had stopped for Dunlow the day the island sank. The old, old buildings were probably much the same now as they had been all those centuries ago, except that they were dirtier, shabbier. The cream-colored brick was stained with soot and was now black or dingy gray.
She could see a few lights in the windows, but, for the most part, the buildings were dark. The people who had dared venture out in the storm carried lanterns or torches that smoked in the rain. Their faces were pale and thin, pinched with hunger.
An oppressive silence hung over the city, dark as the storm clouds. People did not speak, not even to each other. They walked with their heads bent and shoulders hunched, wrapped in private misery. There was little traffic on the streets, no laughter of children playing. The only sound was a distant rumble of thunder.
“I want you to see something,” said Patrick softly. “Look to your left, through the gap in the buildings.”
At first Miri couldn’t see anything, but then a sheet of lightning spread across the sky. She saw ships riding at anchor, their yardarms silhouetted against the lightning. The ships were large and so numerous she couldn’t count them. She could see men working on them, climbing among the rigging, even in the storm. An armada of black ships.
“Xavier’s fleet,” said Patrick. “They are going to invade your homeland. You may be safer down here.”
Miri stared at the fleet, lagging behind, until Patrick ordered her sharply to keep up.
The street and the rows of buildings came to an end at a large courtyard paved with ornamental stone. In the center she could see Xavier’s crest—the X with the knot work—done in mosaic.
“Beyond the courtyard, behind that brick wall, is the Temple of Saint Xavier,” said Patrick. “His soldiers are watching us. From now on, you are my prisoners.”
They walked across the vast and empty courtyard. Miri could feel the eyes on her. Patrick steered them toward a large, iron-banded wooden gate that pierced the brick wall. Torches mounted in iron sconces on either side of the gate smoked and flickered.
“Keep your hands in sight,” Patrick warned. “Make no sudden moves. The guards are suspicious of everyone these days.”
Miri and Gythe walked with their hands visible outside their cloaks. Patrick kept close to both of them, herding them in front of him. Two soldiers emerged from a small guardhouse that stood to one side of the gate, providing shelter from the in
cessant rain. Miri could see two more inside.
“What is your business?” one of the soldiers asked Patrick.
“These are the two savants, Captain,” said Patrick, prodding Miri in the back. “They are expected.”
Whatever the captain was going to say was interrupted by the arrival of a crude-looking carriage marked with Xavier’s crest. The fast-moving carriage came to a stop in a flurry of splashing water and mud. Startled, the captain barked an order and raised his weapon. The two soldiers in the guardhouse ran out with their weapons. Patrick grabbed hold of Miri and Gythe and drew them near the guardhouse.
The wagon’s driver raised his hands in the air to show he was unarmed.
“What is the password?” the captain barked.
“The love of Xavier,” said the driver, adding, “My passengers are Leanai Scath. They bear important tidings for our saint.”
The captain gestured. The driver descended and hurried to open the carriage door.
A tall woman with a regal bearing stepped out. She wore a gold-colored hooded mantle that was wet and mud splattered. Accompanying her was a man with an upright, soldierly bearing, wearing a green hooded mantle. He kept the hood pulled low over his face. The man walked with a limp, leaning on a cane.
“Leanai Scath,” said Patrick. “The Children of Shadow.”
He spit on the pavement.
The man and the woman approached the gate. The captain ordered his men to stand down and advanced toward the two.
“Steward,” he said, saluting the woman. “How can I be of service to you?”
“I seek admittance, of course,” said the woman in disdainful tones. “Why else we would have risked our lives to come here?”
Miri started. The woman spoke in Rosian! The captain of the guard stared at her blankly, not understanding. The woman’s companion, the man leaning on the cane, translated her words into Trundler.
The captain was embarrassed. “I have not received any orders from the saint regarding visitors.”
“I want to see your superior,” said the woman coldly.
Again, her companion translated.
The Seventh Sigil Page 26
