The Rebellion

by Isobelle Carmody

  Even as I watched, the taller Herder lifted his pale face to the Earthtemple, his lip curling in scorn. Letting my eyes follow the same direction, I was startled to discover that what I had thought randomly carved patterns on the cliff were, in fact, a multitudinous swirl of faces.

  “You’d better get on,” Daffyd advised.

  “Perhaps you should not go,” Freya told Dameon when I offered him my arm. The Empath guildmaster smiled unerringly down at her. “I am not ill. I am only blind.”

  She flushed.

  “I am going to have another drink before we start,” Fian announced.

  Daffyd caught his arm. “Don’t be a fool. You will be sick if you fill your belly with water, then walk in this heat. Drink when you return.”

  It was a steep walk up to the top of the cliffs, but Fian found breath enough to describe what he was seeing to Dameon. I was glad of his monologue, for it freed me of the need to speak and kept the Empath guildmaster’s attention from me. Before long, though, we were all trudging along in silence again.

  “The sun is like a hammer on my head,” Fian panted when we stopped to rest halfway. “It did not look so far from the camp. At this rate, it will be dusk before we are back.”

  My own head was pounding, yet the heat in the desert running back from the cliffs must be a thousand times worse. Still the Sadorians spent their lives sailing the sea of sand on their desert ships. Strange how differently humans could live and still be human.

  The Earthtemple had two facades.

  The grandest was the one it presented to the sea and to the spitroad. We had been sitting literally with our backs against the base of it when we were by the spring. The road from the spit had risen gradually to the height of the clifftop, where a small rocky path had peeled off to the left, running down into a deep fissure. A man had told us this would bring us to the entrance of the Earthtemple.

  After making our way carefully and with some relief down the shaded path running along a deep sloping cleft, we discovered the second facade of the Temple. It was neither gilded nor carved, and there were no windows. A single, rough-hewn portal served as the doorway, while a great, plain slab of stone, set upon a smaller pivoting stone, served as its door. Its simplicity seemed far more in keeping with the Sadorians’ philosophy as expounded by Powyrs than the ornate, carved facade of faces it presented to the sea.

  The stone door was currently tilted to allow a slender opening on either side, and beyond, the darkness was so complete that it was impossible to say what lay within.

  There were at least thirty people lined up outside in five separate queues. One line seemed to consist of very elderly people, worried-looking adults with sickly children or babes, and others with rough bandages or hacking coughs.

  A young man with wild eyes, held tightly between two plump, distressed-looking women, lashed about babbling and shuddering. Clearly, he was undergoing some sort of seizure.

  This, then, must be the line for supplicants seeking healing.

  The line next to it had more animals than people, therefore, this must be where beasts were brought to be examined for disease before they could be sold. The animals were all small, so the larger beasts, such as horses, must be dealt with at some other point.

  In the third line, there were Sadorians carrying sacks. An acrid odor suggested they were the spice gatherers Powyrs had mentioned, bringing in their tribe’s quota to exchange for barter tokens.

  At first I wondered why the queues were not advancing; then I noticed a number of barefooted men and women clad in hooded linen tunics moving along the lines.

  “The Temple guardians,” Fian murmured. “Looks as if all of the ministerin’ is done outside.” He sounded disappointed.

  I waved him back and moved closer to listen to an exchange between one of the hooded guardians and a Sadorian woman of middle years.

  “What do you seek of the earth?” the Temple guardian asked. His voice and shape proclaimed him a man, but I could not see his face. As with the other Temple guardians, this was concealed by the drooping hood.

  The woman launched into a detailed litany of physical ills to which he listened with great patience. When she could find nothing more to complain about, he rummaged in a small pouch bag tied at his waist and removed a twig. Pressing it into her hand, he bade her in a gentle voice to soak it in boiled water, then drink the fluid.

  Fian poked me in the ribs, his eyes bright with suppressed laughter. “It’s no more than a wee bit of relaxin’ herb he’s given her. A sop.”

  I nodded absently, wondering what the fourth line was for. Its people did not look sick, nor did they lead beasts or carry spice.

  A smaller guardian approached a man in this line. “What do you seek of the earth?” asked a girl, her voice muffled slightly by the hood.

  “Wisdom, Guardian. My son desires to bond, but he has yet to make his first spice gather.” He seemed undaunted by the fact that the voice could not belong to a girl much older than his son.

  “Is the girl he would take worthy in your eyes?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is only his youth that troubles me,” the man answered. “In truth, it may be that he is not worthy of her.”

  The diminutive guardian nodded sagely. “Say to the father of the girl that he must set the boy a quest to determine his worthiness. If he fails, then he must wait another season. If he succeeds, then he shall have her.”

  The father nodded and went away.

  “That’s no more’n a bit of common sense. Th’ man’s a fool nowt to have thought of it fer hisself,” Fian muttered.

  “Perhaps he had thought of it but needed reassurance,” Dameon murmured.

  Another Temple guardian came out of the shadowy doorway with two clinking bags slung about her waist. She passed briskly along the farthest line, exchanging coin for tokens.

  “Wait here,” I said, and took my place at the end of the line. When the guardian reached me, she asked, from the depths of her hood, “What do you seek of the earth?”

  “I … We have come to pay our respects to the earth goddess and to get some barter tokens,” I said politely.

  She nodded and counted the coin I offered into one bag at her waist before giving me a handful of small, pale metal discs from another. She lifted her hand to my forehead and made a sign, but the words were drowned out by a scream.

  I turned swiftly to find the frenzied youth had broken free of the women and was rushing toward me.

  I thought he meant to attack me and flung up my hands, but to my astonishment, he threw himself at my feet. “Do you bring the Moonwatcher?” he whispered fiercely.

  The two women had hurried forward and pulled him away from me, apologizing profusely. “When these fits come on him, it is as if he is possessed by demons,” one said.

  The Temple guardian who had been attending to me waved the women and the now-silent boy back to their place in the line, then turned to me.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a strangely tense voice.

  My heart began to gallop. “I … I am a visitor from the Land.”

  “Whom do you visit?”

  I did not know what to answer, so I told the truth. “Jakoby has invited me. She is—”

  “I know of Jakoby,” the woman said shortly, and now her tone was indifferent. She lifted her hand and made the same mark on my forehead. “May you nurture the earth and find harmony.”

  She moved to the man behind me, and I returned to Dameon and Fian, feeling somewhat bewildered.

  “What happened?” Fian demanded.

  “I’m damned if I know,” I said.

  As Fian had predicted, the day was indeed drawing to a close by the time we returned to the spit. The shadows were lengthening, and people were lighting cooking fires and lamps. Already the moon had risen, and it hung like a great coppery disc, low on the skyline—a full moon.

  As we reached the trade area, Fian suggested we get some food to take back to the camp. The atmosphere surrounding the selling t
ents was as familiar as the rest of Sador was strange. In the mill and jostle, there was a similarity to markets in Sutrium and Kinraide and Morganna, which reassured me in some deep way. Well, that was not so surprising. After all, people had to eat and drink and trade and speak.

  All about us, men and women were involved in the mundane business of haggling with traders. Here, at least, there were almost as many Landfolk as Sadorians.

  “Got any silver to sell?” demanded a squint-eyed jack. Dameon smiled in the direction of the voice and shook his head. The man recoiled as if his blindness might be contagious.

  “Need flints or salt?” a woman in the tent alongside him asked.

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  She spat on the ground in disgust. “Filthy gypsies.”

  “Like a girl, pretty boy?” whispered a woman with lustrous painted eyes, peering at Fian from the shadowy interior of another tent.

  He shuddered and backed away with comical haste into one of the odorous desert ships sitting with its legs folded queerly beneath its body. The creature snorted fiercely and eyed him with pouting ire.

  “Greetings,” I sent, wondering if its mind would accept me. It regarded me for a long moment, but either could not or would not understand.

  “You want to buy this fine animal?” a Sadorian trader asked, appearing from nowhere at the beast’s side.

  “I don’t think he likes the color of my eyes,” I said, and walked on, leaving him to stare after me.

  “How can they live in this heat?” Fian panted as we reached our camp at last. “It’s practically dusk. Doesn’t it ever cool down?”

  “I suspect the night will be cold,” Dameon said.

  Fian snorted as if coolness here was something no sane person would believe in. “They are surely mad to live in such a place.”

  “Perhaps so,” said a familiar voice.

  I whirled to find myself staring at a tall woman, clad in a flowing cloak of beaten animal hides atop a thin shift of some golden material that matched her eyes and bared the full, dark muscular length of her legs and arms. Her hair was woven into tight, metal-beaded braids, which clinked whenever she moved.

  “Jakoby,” I said.

  Rushton approached us and bowed. “I am pleased to greet you. Elspeth has told us much about you. We feared you might have been becalmed, as we were.”

  “The winds were good to us.” Jakoby smiled enigmatically, her face illuminated fitfully by the fire that had been kindled in the angled embrace of the tents. The others stared at the Sadorian woman in wonder. She looked about at them, taking time to examine each of the faces carefully.

  “Your chosen warriors are young indeed,” she said at last. “But age does not always signify, as the Landman Elii said. Will you come now? The two of you,” Jakoby asked.

  I faltered under Rushton’s green glare.

  “We will be glad to accompany you,” he told Jakoby tersely. “Where do we go?”

  “To meet Bram, who is to judge the Battlegames, and the Temple’s overguardian, who shall preside.”

  “Are all of the rebels here?” Rushton asked.

  “Not all, but all who will come. More, I think, than Brydda expected.”

  We were turning to leave when I heard Miryum’s voice ring out angrily and the sound of a blow.

  Hurrying around behind one of the tents, we discovered the stolid Coercer guilden standing over a Sadorian man, who sat in the dust, his nose running with blood.

  “What happened?” Rushton demanded.

  “Him,” Miryum said fiercely, glaring at the man as he got to his feet.

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  Miryum looked over to me. “He … this fellow was making fun of me,” she muttered wrathfully.

  “This is not so,” the man said carefully. He bowed low to her and then to Jakoby. “I am sorry if I have given offense. I spoke ravek. I did not mean to insult her. Do you wish me to kill myself?”

  Miryum gaped.

  “Well?” Jakoby asked her mildly. “Do you want him to kill himself for insulting you?”

  “But surely you can’t mean he would … would …” The coercer looked more disturbed than I had ever seen her. “Of course he mustn’t … kill himself. Not for a joke.”

  “Very well, you may leave,” Jakoby told the man indifferently.

  “It was not a joke I made,” the man said gravely. He bowed to Miryum and then again to Jakoby before backing away.

  “What on earth did he say to you?” I asked.

  Miryum reddened. “I will not say.”

  Jakoby walked slowly, adapting her long stride courteously to our pace.

  “What is a ravek?” I asked her.

  Her teeth flashed in the darkness of her face. “It is an endearment between those who are heartfasted. It means ‘you who have my heart beneath your foot.’ The man your friend struck offered to make her his ravek. That is a formal proposal of bonding in Sador.”

  In spite of everything, I smiled. Obviously, Miryum had caught some of his meaning but hadn’t known how to take a compliment.

  Jakoby stopped before a large tent.

  She lifted the tent flap, and the muted sounds of laughter and the clink of plates and knives spilled out into the dusk. She gestured for us to enter.

  Inside, a fire burned in a ground hearth lined in stone. Three trestle tables were set around it in a U-shape and piled high with all manner of food and drink. Seated at the tables were both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

  At the central table on a raised dais was a wizened Sadorian man with skin the shade of old bronze and hair as white and tight-coiled as the fleece of wild mountain goats. He wore a cloak of what appeared to be animal pelts sewn together about his skinny shoulders, as Jakoby did.

  It was not difficult to guess that this was Bram.

  I ran my eyes swiftly around the rest of those seated.

  Plump Brocade was at one end, seated beside Tardis’s yellow-haired emissary, Gwynedd. Brocade was wearing a jewel-encrusted vest stretched tight across his wide belly. A little farther along sat a tall, fair, proud-looking woman. She wore no jewelry, and her hair hung white and unbraided and perfectly straight about her shoulders like a snowy veil. She sat with Brydda and Dardelan.

  Also next to Brydda was a stooped man who smiled faintly in greeting when our eyes met. I guessed this was Yavok, who had taken over for him in Aborium. Brydda had called him trustworthy.

  On the other side of Bram, among a great number of strangers, were white-haired Cassell and Elii. It seemed Brydda’s recruiting journey had borne fruit. But I had no doubt they were here first for a war council, rather than to see whether we were fit allies.

  Last of all was Malik.

  When our eyes met, his lips curved into a sneering smile that made me instantly conscious of my sweaty, dust-smeared face and clothes.

  “It is the Misfit and its master,” he told the dark-eyed man on his right, just loudly enough for us to hear.

  I felt Rushton tense with anger beside me.

  “As you see, this master is but a stripling himself,” Malik went on scornfully, not bothering to pretend to be speaking in an aside. Rushton’s silence had made him bold, for he took it as weakness.

  Jakoby said nothing, and I sensed she was waiting to see how Rushton would deal with this.

  The Master of Obernewtyn merely settled a long, impassive stare on the rebel, whose smirk faltered, then faded altogether.

  “What are you looking at, boy?” he growled.

  “I am not sure,” Rushton said. “It might be a man, but then it might be a kind of performing ape. It is hard to tell in the firelight.”

  Malik stared at him incredulously. Then he rose with a curse, pulling out a knife.

  “Enough,” Jakoby said imperiously. “The Battlegames do not commence until the morrow, and it is unseemly to sour our feasting with such behavior before then. All things in their right time.”

  Malik resumed his seat, though he was pale w
ith fury, and Jakoby ushered us up to Bram. I was surprised to see one of the hooded Temple guardians in the seat beside him. The hood gave no sign of its wearer’s sex, but I thought it must be a wizened old creature, for it was very small. No doubt the overguardian Jakoby had mentioned.

  “Bram, this is Elspeth Gordie of whom I have spoken,” Jakoby said. “And Rushton Seraphim, who styles himself the leader of these Misfit gypsies.”

  “Seraphim,” Bram echoed. “An old name, I think.”

  Rushton bowed. “I do not know if your name is old or not. I have heard only a little about the Sadorian people, but it has made me curious to know more, and I am pleased at this chance to speak with you.”

  Bram chuckled fruitily. “Yet I think this is not an occasion for speeches. I hope you do not think to win the Battlegames with words alone.”

  “We are prepared to meet whatever challenge is offered,” Rushton responded smoothly.

  “Good.” Bram’s dark eyes shimmered in the firelight. “I have heard from those among my people who watched for your arrival that your force contains warriors who are even younger than you. And though you may count yourself a man, you are too young to be seasoned properly to battle. Have you hope of winning against such men as Malik, whose prowess is legendary?”

  “I would not have come otherwise.”

  The old man cackled. “No? But sometimes battles must be faced whether or not there is a hope of winning them. This is a truth known to men and women of honor.”

  “No battle is lost until it is lost. Men and women of courage know this.”

  Bram nodded in appreciation. “True enough! You speak well, lad. I regret that you are not yet a sworn ally and therefore have no place at this table. Yet, if your people acquit themselves well and survive the testing tomorrow, we might yet sup together and have this speech you desire.”

  “Survive?” Rushton echoed carefully. “Surely there is no question of not surviving since this is only a contest.”

  The overguardian stirred.

  “These are the Battlegames, lad, where matters large and small may be decided without massive bloodshed,” said Bram. “It is war in miniature. If death was not possible, there would be no true testing. Of course, death is not the aim, nor is injury inevitable.”