“Can he not hear us now?”
“He would not dare come so close to the death/dreaming river for fear that it would swallow him. And so it might, for you are perilously close. You must come back from the edge now. I am holding you, but my strength fades.”
“I like it here. There is no pain, and it sings to me.”
“It is not yet your time to hear this song.”
“Then why am I here?”
“A bloodpath in your leg was severed during this testing called Battlegames. You bled near to death. They have stopped this, but you are too close to the stream. Your body has learned to heal itself, but it cannot do so when you are so close to the stream. You must draw back if you would live.”
I felt a great wrenching pull to return, but I fought it. I was not sure I wanted to live.
“What you feel is the spiritcall of one who would have you live, ElspethInnle. Go back and let yourself heal, for the world has need of you. Go back, or the H’rayka wins. Go back, or the beasts will never be free.”
I felt the pulling again and wondered whose spirit held me so tightly. Curious, I let myself be drawn away from the stream by it.
“Who are you?” I called, but there was nothing, only a roaring sound in my ears. There was a long rushing darkness, and then I opened my eyes.
A monster peered at me. I screamed and fled back to the darkness.
I opened my eyes and Kella smiled at me.
I opened my eyes and Dameon touched my cheek.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying in bed in a dark, cold room. Beside me sat the hooded overguardian.
“You are in the Earthtemple, Elspeth Gordie,” said the voice from within the hood. “You have slept long.”
42
“COME,” THE TEMPLE guardian murmured, his voice shuddering and whispering along the damp, echo-ridden stone tunnels that honeycombed the Sadorian cliffs.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, exasperated. “And when can I see my friends?”
“Soon,” he answered. The same thing he had said for days in the same queer, breathy voice.
“I am no longer sick, and you are keeping me prisoner!” I snapped. “I know they were in here before, so why can’t I see them now?”
He did not answer.
I glared at the damp walls resentfully. Maybe Rushton and the others had not come in to see me because they had left Sador. After all, I had been unconscious for five days and awake for three. Eight days in all since the Battlegames had ended. The Temple guardians had cared for me when I woke, weak and disoriented, and I was grateful for that. But I was fully recovered now. If the place had not been such an impossible warren of tunnels, I should have long since walked out myself.
I was about to repeat my question when we rounded a bend. Set into the side of the tunnel was a huge panel carved of wood; I had not come across it in my wanderings.
I stopped and gaped at it in amazement, for there was no doubt in my mind that whoever had executed it had also carved the doors to Obernewtyn! The chisel work on the doors possessed a precision in angling that could not be mistaken, as individualistic as the markings on a person’s palm.
“Come,” the guardian prompted.
Dazed, I did not move. “Who did this?”
He came back a few steps, reluctantly. “Kasanda. Now will you come?”
I followed him. “Who is Kasanda?”
He did not answer, and my temper rose again. I wrestled it down.
“When can I see the overguardian?” I asked sweetly. Again he did not respond.
I ground my teeth and searched my mind, but before I could come up with something rude enough to fracture even a guardian’s phenomenal composure, he stopped before a stone doorway.
“Go in. The overguardian will come to you here.”
I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it and went through the door. Behind it was an enormous lantern-lit chamber. Like most of the caverns, it was devoid of furnishings. The temple was, in fact, a natural labyrinth, and the guardians inhabited only a fraction of the chambers and tunnels. But unlike the other empty chambers, every bit of wall space in this one was taken up with huge panels of carved stone. I could see at a glance that they had been created by the same hand that had executed the wood carving in the hall.
“The sequence begins here,” the guardian said, pointing to the panel nearest the door.
I nodded absently and moved to the first panel.
It was part carved, part daubed with mud and fiber to raise up shapes, and tinted with darker and lighter tones. Little enough with which to create a world, let alone a lost world of unimaginable wonders, and yet the panel showed one of the Beforetime cities. I was reminded inevitably of the city under Tor, but the city depicted in the panel was vibrantly alive. The constructions were magnificent, reaching to the skies and embodying the greatness of their makers. The panel was a paean of praise to the Beforetimers.
I shivered, for surely such a vision could only come from one who had seen the cities of the Beforetime in all their glory.
After a long while, I tore myself from the first panel. The next also featured the towering Beforetime structures, but they were subtly different. After only a moment of admiration, I noticed not the buildings but the way they crushed and smothered the earth. I saw the caged and stunted trees devoid of sunlight. I realized that this panel spoke not of greatness but of soaring, overweening pride and, most of all, oppression. The Beforetimers had gouged and yoked and reshaped the very earth to their creations.
I shifted to the third panel. Here again were Beforetime structures. Above lay a pall of blackness such as rose chokingly from the smithy’s forge. I did not know what purpose these buildings served, for no smith would need so much space, but the message was clear. Not content to despoil the earth, the Beforetimers had smeared the skies with their messes.
One after another, the panels depicted similar scenes—rivers clogged and poisoned, forests hewn down and transformed into salted deserts, mountains leveled to rubble. The Beforetimers had been masters of wanton destruction, and they had built their world regardless of the cost.
I moved to another panel and here at last were scenes of the Great White. Seen thus, it seemed to me that the holocaust had been inevitable, given the nature of the Beforetimers. How else could their story have ended, but with men and women and beasts and birds fleeing in terror from the huge fiery mushrooms that rose in the skies behind them? And when the whiteness faded, there were panels of utter desolation—sere deserts and poisoned waters: the Blacklands.
“Truly this is a place of sorrows,” a boy’s voice said.
I whirled to see the tiny hooded figure who had sat at Bram’s feet during the Battlegames. The overguardian’s hands lifted and removed the hood.
I recoiled involuntarily, for the face revealed was grossly deformed. In stark, dreadful contrast, his eyes were the color of isis pools, sad and beautiful.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I did not expect …”
He smiled, a grotesque twisting of his lips. “I am the overguardian of the Earthtemple. That which poisoned the earth also poisoned my mother. It is so with all of the guardians here.”
I took a deep breath, hiding my surprise at his age as much as at the fact that he was a Misfit. “I am glad to meet you. Thank you for healing me.…”
“I did not heal you. Your body healed itself. We do not know how.”
His words evoked a memory of my dream and Atthis telling me my body could heal itself. Had it really been the old bird or a feverish delusion? Yet if it was true, it would explain so many things. Perhaps even the disappearance of Swallow’s tattoo.
“There is a story,” the boy said dreamily. “It tells of one who will come from across the sea in search of the fifth sign of Kasanda.”
I frowned, drawn from my despair by curiosity. “The same Kasanda who carved these?”
He seemed not to hear. “There are many born with Kasanda’s g
ift, here and even in your own Land. And it is said that when one comes in search of the signs, three companions will come also, one of whom shall be of true Kasanda blood.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I demanded coldly. His talk of seeking and signs chilled me.
The boy shrugged. “Perhaps I dreamed that you would come and that I must say these words. I have Kasanda’s gift of true dreaming, and so I am sometimes called a kasanda. But the first Kasanda is the one who dreamed of the Seeker.”
“The … Seeker?”
He nodded. “After the signs. Kasanda told my people that the Seeker would bear the Moonwatcher and be borne by the Daywatcher, who is the color of shadows. You see the beauty and intricacy of the images? The Moonwatcher’s daylight eye and the Daywatcher’s shadow hue are complementary. Two sides of the spinning coin. The implication is that one may emulate the other in times of need. The interesting thing is that there is no information about the Seeker—as if that was too dangerous to be left.”
I shivered, unnerved by his use of the name Atthis had given me. I thought of the disturbed youth outside the Earthtemple flinging himself at my feet. He, too, had spoken of the Moonwatcher. But the threads of my quest could not stretch this far, surely.
“It is said Kasanda took the signs from her dreams and strewed them across the lands so that they should not be found except by the Seeker. There are rumors that they lead to the deepest treasures of the Beforetimers. Still others say they are the key to a power that is great enough to shift the stars, and even to quench them.”
Power again, I thought bleakly. That was what had brought about the holocaust. “Do you know what the signs are?”
He smiled enigmatically. “I know many things. I know that the Herders come bearing lethal gifts of disease and that they must be watched constantly to prevent them harming the earth or our people. I know that when the Seeker journeys forth with the Daywatcher and Moonwatcher, and with one of Kasanda blood, they will be looking for the final sign. Then may the kasanda, who is the overguardian, aid them.”
I shook my head angrily. “This is nothing to do with me. I want to get out of here.” I glanced around at the panels with loathing.
The boy sighed and resumed his hood. “Very well. Tomorrow your friends will come to the Temple for you.”
He went out, and when I followed, he had vanished.
Left alone in my chamber, I sat on the edge of the bed. My mind was filled with pictures—the Herder torturing Iriny’s bondmate, my parents killed for their beliefs, Malik’s eyes filled with hatred, and the dark dreadful visions in stone left by the mysterious Kasanda for the Seeker.
Well, the Seeker had seen them.
I thought of the transcendent beauty of the first panel and tried to understand how the ability to create such wondrous beauty could have become so perverted, so destructive.
With power, my mind whispered.
I felt desperately confused and lay down, longing to be in the mountains. I closed my eyes and sent my mind out into the desert. It was night, and the pale changeless dunes undulated beneath the night sky, going on as far as the eye could behold without a sign of human life. So must the world have looked before the Beforetime and the demon-angels we named Old-timers. The Great White now seemed the least of their evils. Perhaps not evil at all, for if it had not come, then what would they have done next? Shaken by this thought, I tried to draw the calm grace of the desert into me, but the despair was too strong.
Again I felt a fierce longing for the clean coldness of the mountains.
“Then seek them,” Maruman’s voice whispered into my mind.
“Where are you?” I sent, trying to decide if his voice was real or imagined.
“Maruman/yelloweyes flies the dreamtrails. Fly to the mountains if you need them.”
I sighed. “It is too far. You know I cannot send my mind over Blacklands.”
“You can if/when you farsense you seek the dreamtrails. Come.”
I let him take hold of me, but almost immediately I felt claws. Before I could summon the wit to struggle or fight, I had the uncanny sensation of hurtling through the air as if hurled from a catapult.
“Fly/seek!” Maruman’s mindcry faded behind me.
“ElspethInnle. Come ride with me.…” Gahltha’s mind-voice came to me.
I opened my eyes and was amazed to find myself sitting in my turret chamber at Obernewtyn.
Dazed, I crossed to the window and looked out. The black equine was standing in the moonlit garden below. I felt a surge of joy at the sight of him.
“I’m coming,” I sent, and turned from the window to drag on riding boots and a cloak.
This can’t be happening, I thought, hurrying down.
“It has happened, and anything that has happened can happen again. Life is filled with circlings,” Gahltha sent as I mounted. He wheeled to trot down the drive. The air was cold and thin, and I shivered.
“Is this real?”
“What is real? You are here and I am here, but we are also far from here. Who knows which existence is more real?”
Which was no sort of answer, but as Gahltha traveled gently out of Obernewtyn’s gate and along the road with its whispering green sentinels looming darkly above, it did not seem to matter very much. When the trail ran out, he broke into a wild gallop, crossing the long grassy plain like a creature possessed. His tail and mane streamed out behind as we sped through the gap in the foothills and climbed the narrow way into the valley above, and the one above that.
At last we reached the valley that lay at the feet of the highest mountains. Though it was not yet wintertime, the ground was hard, and snow lay spattered on the ground like ash. The peaks were already white.
We rested by a hot spring, and as I sat on a rock, warming myself, Gahltha grazed on the sweet grass that grew about the edge of the simmering water. “I will eat the grass and you will nourish yourself on the mountains,” he sent, as if it were no more than biting into an apple.
Giving myself to the dream, I lay my mind wide open, seeking the detachment and clarity the mountains enabled. Their wild beauty always seemed to make a gentle mockery of brief human woes and lives. Had not these jutting bones of the world survived a thousand eons of human life? Could anything I or any human do really matter in the face of that?
But for once, I could not comfort myself and answer no. I had stood in the Earthtemple, and I had seen the panels made by Kasanda. In my mind’s eye, I saw again the smothered and abused earth, the befouled waters and blackened skies. I saw again the desolation that lay on the other side of the mountains—the endless bleared deadness of the Blacklands—and I knew that even mountains could be killed.
It seemed to me then that I felt the earth’s life, the cold sweetness of its breathing winds, the deep beat of its stone heart, and I understood the Sadorians’ devotion to the earth. Everything lives, Powyrs had told me, and I realized he was right.
For the first time, it seemed to me that I knew the true evil of human wars and their instinct to dominate and oppress and subdue, for hadn’t the Beforetimers poisoned great tracts of the earth with the holocaust? And if the Destroyer reached the hellish slumbering weaponmachines first, would not the task be finished for always? If mountains could die, and vast plains, then why not a world? Humans would perish, and perhaps it was no more than they deserved, but so would equines and bears and the Brildane. If the earth died, not a single blade of grass nor a cat with one eye would survive.
The moon rose, a thin sliver now, and shone its eldritch light through a haze of cloud and onto the mountain peaks, silvering their snowy mantles and transforming them into shimmering ghosts.
I clenched my teeth.
My resolve, shattered and confused for so long, became, all at once, blessedly strong. When the Agyllians called, I would leave Obernewtyn as I had promised. I would obey the prophecy the birds claimed I had been born to fulfill and all the strange strands of fate that sent me here and there seeking signs and
ways; I would follow the sinuous, difficult, puzzling manywindings of my quest, whether they led me into the deserts of Sador, or over the vast dark seas, or into the very fires of hell—I would complete my quest so that what had been could not come again.
I would walk the dark road to its end and never return, for nothing was too great a price to pay for the earth and all its life. Not love or my own little life.
My quest was greater than fear or love, and it was greater than Obernewtyn and the fate of the Talented Misfits there, and nothing would ever make me question that again.
I slept then, dreamlessly, and when I woke, I was in the hard little Earthtemple bed. The terrible draining tide of sorrow that seemed to have defined my whole life had ebbed, along with the fears and murky apprehensions that had haunted me for as long as I could remember.
I felt as clear and light and pure as a glass of sunlit rainwater as the guardian led me through the tunnels to the outside. As I blinked into the fierce sunlight, I felt as if it pierced me and filled me up.
“Elspeth!” Kella cried.
She and Dameon had come to meet me. I let them hold me but felt a great distance had come between us. I had seen too much and flown too high.
“I am glad you are well,” Dameon said gravely.
“The rebels have decided on their rebellion,” Kella said, and a shadow passed over her features. “It is to be after wintertime.”
I did not want to hear about rebels or rebellions.
“Is Maruman all right?”
Dameon chuckled. “He has made himself at home again on Powyrs’s ship. The old man dotes on him.”
“Dragon?”
The healer sighed and shook her head. “There is no change in her condition. Maybe when we get back to Obernewtyn …”
I wondered suddenly if I should go back. There was nothing there for me now. I could just as well wait to hear from Atthis in Sador.
When we reached the tents, the others crowded around to greet me.
“Where is Rushton?” I asked, noticing abruptly that he was not with them.
A silence fell, and in spite of my new detachment, it made me uncomfortable.
The Rebellion Page 39
