‘I did not have the nightmare for some years after that, but it came to me again when I found out my father and Moss had not died escaping from the Councilfarm. I was not surprised, for men like that do not die meekly. I wondered if there was not some connection between my father and my nightmare. Since the time the nightmares started when I was a child, I had heard him talk with his cronies of finding Beforetime weapons powerful enough to strike terror into the hearts of Herders and rebels alike, the threat of which would ensure obedience and stabilise the power of the Council, which is to say, his power, since he was its master.’
I nodded to her to continue.
She shrugged. ‘You were right in guessing I went looking for my father and Moss. I rode down to the lowlands and camped in the forest near Sawlney, intending the next day to go into the town and confront Jude. But that night, the dream came again, only there was one difference. This time a voice spoke saying that what I had seen was a possible future, but that it would not come to pass at the hands of my father or brother and that there was only one person who could stop it. Then I saw a vision of you riding through the mist with a cat on your shoulder and a dog at your heels. It shocked me, not because it was you, but because when my father first sent Moss and Bergold up to hold land for him, I dreamed of a woman riding through the mist, with a cat at her shoulder and a dog following but her face was hidden. That time a voice spoke to me, too, as I watched the unknown woman ride away into the mist, warning me that I must take care I did not stand by and watch harm done, for to do so was an evil as great as if I had done it myself. At the time, I took the voice as that of my own conscience because I had become accustomed to turning my mind and eyes from the evils done by my father and brother. I saw at once that volunteering to go with Bergold had been simply another means of turning my eyes away. It was the next day that my brother and I came upon you and some of your companions by the road close to my brother’s orchard.’
‘That’s why you stopped the soldierguard from whipping me!’ I said.
She nodded. ‘The man who would have whipped you had been foisted on us by my father and he was a sadistic brute. I made my brother stop him hurting you though I had not acted to prevent a wrong in many years. That defiance salved a sickness that I had not even known was growing in me, and from that day, I began to hone my small healing skills, and to right such wrongs as I could.’ Her eyes met mine. ‘Can you imagine how it felt to see the dream that had changed my life again and this time to know that the face of the woman who had been hidden was the face of the very first person I rescued after dreaming it, never knowing they were one and the same? And then to discover that you were the person who could prevent the destruction I had dreamed of …’ She shook her head. ‘It was like one of those moon fair knots you used to get in Sutrium when I was a girl, where you can never find the beginning.’ She stood up restlessly and tossed her fair head. ‘All my life, before the dream of the woman riding in the mist, I had done what I had been required to do; out of fear of my father to begin with, and then out of wariness and hatred of them, or out of love and worry for Bergold. The dream gave me the courage to act and so I did. Then the Council and the Herders fell and all that needed winning seemed won, yet something in me said there was some greater thing that life required of me, if I could but discover it. Then I saw your face in my dream outside Sawlney and the voice said that you were the only one who could stop my nightmare from coming true, but that you needed my help. I understood that all of the battles I had fought were preparation for some greater battle.’
‘Did the voice tell you then to come here?’ I asked.
‘It bade me go into the high mountains beyond Obernewtyn at darkmoon, for there I would find someone who would also be seeking you, and who would lead me to you. So I came back and told my brother that we were going to Obernewtyn for the moon fair. I knew I could not leave him without protection where our father could find him so I convinced him to go ahead with servants, the makings of a stall and produce from the orchards to sell and a missive for Garth. In it, I asked that he be housed at Obernewtyn until I returned. I sent all of our coin in a sealed pot, saying to my brother that it was a gift to Garth. The missive asked Garth to use it to set my brother up in some small business in the new shire and to watch over him. In payment for his trouble I offered a scroll I had found which he had desired since I first showed it to him.’
‘You can imagine my surprise,’ Swallow said, taking up the tale smoothly, ‘when I rode away from Obernewtyn, headed for the high mountains, to come upon a woman who turns out to be the very person Rushton believed you had gone seeking in the lowlands. I asked where she was bound and she gave me the sharp edge of her tongue for my impertinence and bade me be on my way.’ He laughed and gave Analivia a teasing smile.
She shook her head but laughed softly. ‘We talked at odds and in riddles for a little, until I got sick of it and demanded to know if he knew where you were.’
‘It was cleverly done,’ Swallow approved. ‘For it could have been merely an ordinary query, but to one who had dreamed of voices, it suggested she might be another dreamer.’
‘So you came here together and found the others?’ I asked.
‘We arrived first but it was not until the others came that I had the nightmare again, only it was part of a different dream,’ Analivia said. ‘There was a young cat in it very like to the old cat that you brought here with you, but the dream was not about you. It was a past-dream and the cat was sleeping in the arms of an older woman with very pale skin. It must have been hurt because its head was bandaged. With them was a gypsy girl but both of them had long dark hair and they wore Beforetime clothes. They were in a small dim room looking at a computermachine that was showing them visions of the very same desolation I had seen, over and over in my nightmare.
‘The older woman said that if the Seeker who would come failed in her quest, the result of it would be that all that remained of the battered world would be destroyed. The gypsy girl said that they must prepare all that the Seeker would need to locate Sentinel and make sure it could never be used to bring upon the world a greater and more final doom than they had endured. Then she shivered and said it was hard to believe there was anywhere left that was green and clean, seeing what they were seeing. But the older woman said her visions had shown there were such places left, and that Obernewtyn was one of them, but that they had been of little interest to anyone and so there were no pictures of them. The younger woman asked how she could think of going back to Obernewtyn, knowing everyone would be dead, even Jacob. The older woman said calmly that she had foreseen that in spite of everything that had happened there was joy in the future for both of them, as well as sorrow. But above all else, it was her duty to go back. Then she began to speak of the journey they would have to make to reach the Land where Obernewtyn stood. “I will go no further,” the older woman said to the younger. “But you will travel beyond that Land to another and another still, before your work is done.” Then she looked down at the cat and the younger woman said that its journeying was done, poor thing, since it had not awoken. But the older woman stroked it and said the cat was travelling in its dreams, as was its gift, and that it would sleep until they brought it to the one who could wake it, though not with a kiss.’
I was riveted by the strange story, for it was evident to me that the women were Hannah Seraphim and Cassy, and that Analivia had dreamed of them after the Great White and before they had begun their journey to the Land. Of course the cat could not be Maruman, even as a kitten, for no cat could live so long, but if they had brought it to the Land, it might be some distant ancestor of Maruman. It might even be that the kitten’s head was bandaged not because it had been injured but because the Beforetimers had been experimenting on it at the Govamen compound, even as they had experimented with the flamebirds. A little stab of excitement pierced me at the thought that Maruman’s strange mind might not be the result of sickness or accident, but of something he had inherited
from the cat in Analivia’s dream vision.
I was so engrossed in my speculations that it took me a moment to realise that Swallow was speaking again. ‘Did you say the tribesman Ahmedri followed you?’ I asked.
The gypsy nodded cheerfully. ‘It was Dameon he followed so he ought to tell you that part of our tale.’
I nodded impatiently, eager to hear how Dameon had persuaded him to go back.
‘I had met up with Rasial and Gavyn as I told you, and we were just setting off together when Ahmedri came riding up,’ Dameon said. ‘He had tracked me, he said, because he knew I was coming to find you. I suppose he heard Rushton talking with Alad about our supplies. The tribesman said he had to find his brother’s bones and that he had been commanded to stay with you until you found the coercer Miryum and freed her, for it was she who would tell him where they were. I was at a loss, for neither Rushton nor the dream voice had mentioned him, and yet I could see no way to prevent him following us. Also, neither Rasial nor Faraf seemed troubled by the thought of him or his horse accompanying us. Later I had cause to be very glad of his company, for while Gavyn led us here, it was Ahmedri who made cookfires and found ways for us to cross places where it seemed no horse could go.’
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
‘Why, he is here in the valley,’ Swallow said. ‘Like Rasial and the boy, he spends a good portion of his time foraging – not together, for neither he nor the lad seem to have much use for human company.’
I scowled. ‘I don’t know why Ahmedri thinks following me here is going to help him find his brother’s bones.’
‘Maybe Miryum came up into the mountains with his brother’s body,’ Swallow said. ‘But whether or not, Ahmedri is convinced that Straaka will come to you in your dreams to tell you where Miryum is. It is hard to argue against that when all of us are here because of our dreams.’
His words gave me pause. I had never considered the possibility that Miryum might have brought Straaka’s body into the mountains. It was just possible she could have managed it, for the coercer was prodigiously strong and she would have been able to use a travois some of the time, but it would have been a gruesome journey with a decomposing body. And how would she then have been taken captive? There were no humans in the mountains, other than us, and no beast took captives.
I noticed Swallow and Analivia watching me expectantly, and felt an uneasy surge of anxiety at the knowledge that, although all of them had come into the mountains after having struggled separately and alone with doubt and fear and disbelief, they were now looking to me to guide them. Yet how was I to guide them when they seemed to know all I knew?
I thought of a Beforetime phrase that Garth sometimes used – The blind leading the blind – but I did not say it aloud out of courtesy to Dameon.
‘Have any of you dreamed of where I will go from this valley?’ I asked evenly.
They looked at one another and then Swallow said slowly, ‘You do not know where to go?’
A crucial question, I thought. ‘Up until recently I was convinced that Sentinel was in the Red Land, and the fact that I was supposed to travel there with Dragon and the others seemed a confirmation of this. But I was summoned to the high mountains at the last minute and told I would never return to the Land, and the ships left without me. It may be that I will come to the Red Land in some guise, ere the end, but I do not know how. What I do know is that the same voice that summoned all of you bade me come here to the mountains to seek out a pack of winter wolves so that I might convince them to accompany me. I know not why I need them, nor where I am to go with them, and yet I have been told that my quest will fail if they refuse me. I spoke to the pack leader yesterday and he bade me come here to await his answer. I think he meant to seek a vision that would give him guidance, and it may be that he will vision of where we are to go. Indeed, it must be so, for the voice in my dreams promised that I would have the answers I needed from those I met here in this valley.’
I sighed and shrugged. ‘I thought when I found all of you here that you must have the answers I sought. But having heard your tales, I am back to pinning my hopes on the wolves.’
‘Maybe the voice from our dreams now speaks to the wolf,’ Dameon suggested. I said nothing for the moment, incapable of imparting the news that the dream speaker – my guide and theirs – was dead and we were on our own.
‘Perhaps the answer will come from putting all we know together,’ Swallow said.
‘I thought that Sentinel must be in these mountains at first, else why come here and why would I have dreamed of the Beforetime women talking about it?’ Analivia asked. ‘But after I had spoken to the others about Sentinel, Swallow told us of seeing the ancient promises that were made by his people in the Red Land, about you, and how he had long ago seen a vision of himself there with you. Thus did it seem to me that Sentinel must be there.’
‘We will go there, ere the end, I think,’ Swallow said. ‘Yet there must be a reason why we have come to these mountains, unless it was solely to seek out these wolves.’
For some reason a vivid image came into my mind from my past-dream of the weapons emerging slowly from the opening under the Skylake. But I looked at Dameon, knowing his empathy would tell him that I was addressing him, and said, ‘Tell me what you learned of Dragon when you were in the Westland. I know that Dell saw that she had been there in a vision, but did she see what Dragon had been seeking?’
‘She said Dragon was seeking her past,’ Dameon answered.
I frowned and turned my attention to Analivia. ‘You heard no rumour of her when you travelled to Sawlney?’
Analivia shook her head. ‘But why do you ask about her? Has she some part to play in this as well?’
‘The futuretellers saw us together in the Red Land and I am sure you have heard that she is its rightful queen,’ I said.
Analivia shook her head impatiently. ‘You wish to know what to do next, but surely the answer is simple. The voice will tell us. Either through the wolf or it will speak to you directly.’
Her words told me that neither she nor any of the others, even Swallow, truly understood the nature and complexity of my quest. None of them had any idea of how long I had been travelling along the road to get to this point, nor of how many others had travelled that same road before me, labouring to ensure that I would fulfil my quest. If they were truly to walk that road with me, eventually I would need to tell them about all that Cassy and Hannah had done to prepare the way for me. I would have to tell them of the Govamen compound in Scotia where the Sentinel program had been developed, and of the permanent Sentinel complex that had been established elsewhere. I would have to speak of images of the Great White that I had seen in the Earthtemple, and I would need to explain that Swallow’s ancestor was the Cassy of my past-dreams and had later become the revered Kasanda of Sador. I would have to tell them about Ariel, who was the Destroyer, destined to evoke the dreadful power controlled by Sentinel and the BOT computers if I failed in my quest. And I would need to tell them of the roles played by Maruman and Gahltha.
There was so much to be imparted that it exhausted me merely to think of it, and despite the revelations of the last hour, my habit of secrecy was so deeply ingrained that I was drained from fighting my own reluctance.
A movement caught my eye and I looked around to see Ahmedri striding towards me, arms piled high with what looked to be apple-sized balls of mud. He bent to set down his burden then gave me a challenging look.
‘You swore that I might ride with you until I learned the whereabouts of my brother’s bones. I see you know how to keep your word.’ His tone roused my temper.
I rose and was annoyed to discover that I had to look up to meet his eyes. But I kept my voice cool and mild when I said, ‘I agreed only that you might remain at Obernewtyn. You assumed this meant you could remain with me. You were wrong.’
‘Yet here I am,’ the tribesman said. ‘And I will remain with you until the woman is found.’
‘It must be obvious to you now that the overguardian was mistaken or Bruna misinterpreted her words,’ I snapped. ‘For who is there to imprison her in these mountains but wolves and firelizards?’
‘My brother’s spirit will lead you to the woman,’ he answered doggedly.
‘Since when do the dead speak to the living?’ I demanded.
‘My brother’s spirit will speak to you when you open your mind to him,’ Ahmedri said.
I glared at the stubborn tribesman. ‘As to my mind being open, it sometimes feels like a passageway full of doors I cannot close. But your brother does not enter.’
‘You have not opened the proper door,’ Ahmedri said.
I drew a breath to calm my temper. ‘Tribesman, why would she have brought your brother here?’
‘It is said madness possessed her after my brother died and so it may be that she had no reason that could be guessed at,’ he answered. ‘But that she is here, I have no doubt, for you are here and you will lead me to her.’
I sighed. ‘You should go back to Obernewtyn.’
‘I will stay,’ he said, and with a curt bow, he turned to Swallow and Analivia and gestured to the brown balls he had collected. ‘These are firenuts. We find them in the desert lands close to the great escarpment. They are light and they burn hotter and longer than wood. We should take as many of them as we can when we leave this place.’ He went back to the balls, knelt and began peeling a light husk from the outside of one of them. Analivia went to help him.
‘The Twentyfamilies believe it is possible for a spirit of the dead to speak,’ Swallow said mildly.
I was too tired to argue, for to do so effectively, I would have had to speak about the dreamtrails and the mindstream and the link between flesh and spirit. Besides, given what Maruman had told me of Atthis and the oldOnes, my own ideas on the matter of spirits and death were confused.
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