I looked at Brydda. “I did not have the chance to ask Dardelan what he intended to do about ownership and treatment of beasts.”
He scowled. “He agrees that beasts must have their freedom, but he thinks we must introduce the subject of their emancipation slowly, lest we make our own position untenable. He says we cannot give power back to people by commanding them to do what they do not wish to do. We must find a way to change how people think about animals so that they will not want to own them any more than they would choose to own a human.”
“If we wait until people learn to care about more than their own species, beasts will be slaves forever, and Misfits outcasts,” I said.
“I feel the same and so does Sallah, but I understand Dardelan’s point, too. If the changes are made as he plans, they will be true and enduring changes. But if changes are made in swift heedless passion, people will resist them. Why don’t you speak to the others at Obernewtyn? Especially to Alad and the beast council. See if they can come up with any ideas. Dardelan is as eager as we are for change, Elspeth, but he is wise enough to see that it must be done carefully.”
In less than an hour, Rushton was settled in the small covered wagon that would convey him to Obernewtyn with Kella seated by him. The healer had not wanted to leave the healing center, but she had agreed that Rushton could not be shifted without her.
I did not want to think about Rushton and what it meant that he had been found in the Herder cloister. The others were silent on the matter as well. I was glad for their reticence, but trying to stop myself thinking about what had happened to him was like trying to keep a secret from myself.
It made no sense that the Faction would force us to work with the rebels. Had they thought to turn us against the rebels entirely? Had it all been a diversionary tactic to distract us from some other plot? Unless the entire aim had been to capture Rushton and ruin him. But why?
The only thing I could think was that if Ariel was part of what had happened, he might have arranged to have Rushton kidnapped as a way to manipulate me.
If that was so, I had barely missed being given that dreadful choice.
“How soon before this sleepseal wears off?” I asked Roland.
It was late in the afternoon, several days after our return to Obernewtyn. Despite Maruman’s urgent summons and all that had befallen us, life had resumed a numbing regularity. It had been all I could do to function under the weight of a growing depression.
Roland shrugged. “Kella was right to impose it on Rushton for your journey, but it is always hard to predict the effect of a sleepseal on a damaged mind.” He gave me a slanting glance. “I was thinking of speaking to Darius about him,” he added.
“Darius?” I echoed blankly.
“The gypsy beasthealer. It is a pity I could not persuade the gypsies to stay up here.”
“Since you were unable to do so, I don’t see how you can consult Darius,” I said tersely.
“I will ride down to the White Valley and see him,” the healer said.
I gaped at him stupidly. “Are you telling me the gypsies are still there?” I demanded.
“I thought you knew,” he said. “One of Garth’s people was in visiting the big house this morning, and he mentioned that your friend Swallow had dropped into the Teknoguild camp. The gypsies are building a monument to those who died in Malik’s decoy.”
My heartbeat quickened at the mention of a monument, but at the same time, I felt a twinge of shame. I had not thought of the dead in the White Valley since riding to Sutrium. Malik’s treachery in the cul-de-sac, the screams of dying humans and horses, the whine of arrows, and the funeral fires in the misty morning had assumed a half-remembered nightmarish quality. Not even the recovering soldierguards and Misfits in beds in the Healer hall nor the injured horses on the farms could bring it into focus properly. More and more, I seemed to be seeing life through a fog, but I fought against it now to ask what Darius could possibly do for Rushton, given that he was a beasthealer.
“That name is too narrow for what he does,” Roland said. “Better to say the kind of healing Darius does is especially useful to beasts. You see, when a beast suffers an injury, both mind and flesh are wounded, and the inner wound is the more dangerous of the two. Darius made me understand that a wound healed physically can still cause a beast to die, because the inner wound has been left to fester. At the same time, an inner wound that is healed can almost miraculously help a fleshy wound.”
I thought of the livid red streak I had seen in Kella’s aura with my spirit-eyes and wondered if such dual wounding did not also happen to humans.
“My point about asking Darius’s advice is that Rushton’s spirit and mind seem far more wounded than his body, so that is what needs healing. His spirit.”
“It’s worth a try,” I murmured.
“I’d like to take Gavyn down to see him anyway,” Roland went on. “Alad says he has been asking about Darius, and he so seldom even seems to notice humans, it is worth putting them together again. Oh, by the way, did anyone tell you that Gavyn foresaw that Seely was in danger?”
That caught my attention. None of the futuretellers had foreseen anything of our people on the west coast. “Was the hideout attacked?” I demanded.
“I doubt Gavyn could tell you,” Roland said regretfully. “His vision seemed entirely focused on Seely. Not on her surrounds.”
“What exactly did he see?”
“She was hiding somewhere and watching men searching. She was frightened. Gavyn thought the bad men were looking for her. That’s how he put it. ‘The bad men.’ ”
“They must have been soldierguards,” I murmured. “Was Gavyn very distressed?”
“Not truly. He told Avra and Rasial what he had seen, and then suddenly he smiled and said she was all right. Then he seemed to forget about it completely.”
“What did he mean, she was all right?”
“He would not say. I’d guess that the soldierguards left without finding her.”
I made up my mind to have Avra speak with Gavyn about his vision. Anything we could learn of the west coast would be invaluable, and perhaps the boy had seen more than he said.
Roland began to unwind an unconscious man’s bandage. I recognized him as one of the soldierguards from the White Valley. His foot had been amputated at the ankle, and Roland examined the livid pink flesh of the stump with professional interest, grunting with satisfaction before rebandaging it. The Healer guildmaster had asked Kella to delay her return to Sutrium until the soldierguards were fit for the journey, and she had agreed.
“I have been thinking about Dardelan’s laws,” Roland said presently. “I’ve scribed a couple of suggestions of my own, which I want Kella to offer him.”
I was ashamed to admit I had not read Dardelan’s proposed laws. Alad had told me that the beasts approved of them, though they felt that very specific laws would have to be made as to the use and abuse of animals by humans.
“But they can see how the ground for such laws is being subtly laid,” the Beastspeaking guildmaster had said.
I had been genuinely surprised to find that the animals understood Dardelan’s dilemma. Their only immediate requests were that the Council’s practice of gelding not be resumed and that a law be made to forbid deliberate physical and mental abuse of animals. They did not demand that all beasts be freed by their masters, as I had expected. Avra merely commented that this must come in time, but her primary concern was to ease the lot of animals in captivity. Pragmatically, she pointed out that many animals would need to learn how to be free, and that would take time, too.
Alad had further suggested that in addition to learning to read and scribe their letters, all children ought to be taught both Brydda’s fingerspeech and the simplest of the animals’ physical movements upon which it was based so they could understand what beasts were saying. His hope was that, as in Sador, once people understood that animals were intelligent, it would be harder to mistreat them.
“Elspeth?” Ro
land said.
I realized I had been standing there lost in thought. “My apologies. What did you say?”
He sighed in exasperation. “Honestly, Elspeth. I said why don’t you ride down with us to see the gypsies? At least you could be assured of some good, deep sleep.”
“There is that,” I said noncommittally, thinking that I must look as badly as I felt. Angina’s condition had improved, but he was far from able to resume playing for Dragon, and nights were again dangerous for me. Only Maruman’s constant vigilance enabled me to avoid her dream beast, and I relied on Roland to drain me of fatigue, for I was unable to manage more than a few hours of sleep a night.
Of course, I could not tell him that I did not dare leave Obernewtyn for fear of missing whatever it was that had caused Atthis to summon me back to the mountains.
But I didn’t have to wait much longer for a clue. When I rose the next morning, a message had been slipped under my turret room door. Taking it up, I read:
My dear Elspeth,
We have found a monument in the waters under Tor that will be of particular interest to you. If you would see it, you must come at once.
Garth
30
LATER THAT MORNING, Roland, Gavyn, Dameon, Zarak, and I rode down to the White Valley. I had been surprised when Dameon chose to accompany us, for he was not a good rider. But Gahltha offered to carry us both, so he was safe enough behind me.
He admitted sheepishly that he had less interest in our destination than in knowing he would have a decent sleep, since we planned to stay the night. Like the rest of us, he had been sleeping badly since his return to the mountains.
“It is hard to believe Dragon is causing such lurid nightmares as I have experienced,” he murmured.
“Nightmares?” I echoed.
“Matthew is in them,” Dameon said. “He is somewhere hot and dry.”
“What do you see in the dreams?” I asked.
“I do not see anything,” Dameon told me gently. “I dream as I live; I dream of words spoken, of smells, and of feelings. It is always the same dream. In it, I am standing with my bare back against a stone wall. I feel heat radiating from it and from the sun above. I am, I think, in some sort of stone quarry, for I can hear the stone being broken with metal picks. I smell the sea somewhere at a distance, when the wind blows, and from another direction, the smells of a city like Sutrium, only more spicy. I smell the sweat of workers and the sweet oils worn by their masters. I hear the crack of a whip, and I hear Matthew’s curses. That’s how I know he is there—I hear his voice. Then I hear something else: the roaring of some indescribable beast.” He shuddered against my back. “Then I wake.”
Avra had drawn level with us, and Gahltha turned to nuzzle affectionately at her neck. The mountain pony was carrying Gavyn and his owl, and her pitch-black foal pranced behind alongside Rasial, shying playfully at every leaf that fell and darting skittishly sideways in little wild outbursts of excitement. The tiny equine was so full of bright-eyed mischief that, looking at him, it was impossible to feel downcast.
We made an exotic group. It was queer to think that, for the first time, we need not hide our oddness, since no authority existed to persecute us. Just the same, none of us could be sure exactly what would happen the first time a Misfit used their Talent openly among unTalents. I feared there would be trouble, unless the occasion and the Talent had been very carefully chosen.
It was growing late in the afternoon by the time we reached the Teknoguild camp at the foot of Tor. It was deserted, which meant everyone was still inside the mountain. Divested of their loads, the horses wandered off to graze, and Gavyn and Rasial vanished into the trees.
Roland had brought a number of parcels and baskets of delicacies conjured by Katlyn and Javo, with the intention of inviting the gypsies to share our campfire later in the night. Zarak volunteered to find them and render the invitation, and Dameon elected to accompany him, saying he needed to stretch his legs.
“Elspeth! I am glad you have come,” Garth said, helping me to clamber from the raft onto the island of rubble. It looked much as I had last seen it, piled high with equipment and rusting metal boxes. Even the three divers were the same ones I had met before. I waved to them where they sat wrapped in blankets and drinking from steaming mugs, and instead of responding, they gave looks of such profound wonder that I grew uneasy.
“This monument …,” I began.
Garth’s eyes virtually glowed, and he nodded violently. “Yes. The monument. It’s under the water, of course, but we managed to break off a section and haul it up. No easy task, I assure you, and furthermore—”
“Garth. What is so special about this monument?” I asked warily.
“It’s better if you see,” he said, moving to what I thought was a rock draped in stained canvas. He drew the sheet carefully away to reveal what appeared to be a great, ragged chunk of ice, glimmering in the torchlight.
Then I realized it was not ice, but glass, and far from being randomly jagged, it was hewn roughly into the face of a woman. Then I gaped, and my skin rose into gooseflesh, for I realized the face was mine.
It was not a carving of a woman who looked somewhat like me; it was me. It even looked to be my current age.
What sort of sign was this?
“But … but how can that be?” Roland stammered.
“That is what I should like to know,” Garth said almost smugly. “How could a Beforetimer carve the face of a woman who had not yet been born?”
“The carver had to have been a futureteller,” Roland murmured.
“Of course. But why did he see Elspeth’s face?” Garth asked.
“Where did you find this?” I whispered, still unable to tear my eyes from my own decapitated head.
“The monument is in the foyer of the Reichler Clinic building,” one of the divers said. They had all drawn about us now, trailing their blankets and staring down at the glass head.
“The foyer? Not the basement of the building?”
“No. It was in the public domain. We have not yet figured out a way to enter the basement. It might be impossible,” Garth admitted in a disgruntled tone. “We’ve spent the whole blasted day trying to figure it out, but time is running out.”
“What has time to do with anything?” I asked.
“There is an unstable airlock in the foyer.”
“Like this,” one of the divers volunteered, cupping a hand and holding it upside down. “The base of the building is watertight, so when the city flooded, the air stayed where it was. But our clearing the rubble from the entrance has destabilized the lock, and so each hour a little more air is lost. Eventually, the lock will give way completely, and water will rush in with such force that it will tear loose anything that is not firmly fixed. The monument is already badly cracked and will almost certainly be destroyed.”
“This woman who looks like me,” I said carefully. “What is she doing in the monument? I presume it is a statue of a full person?”
“Zadia?” Garth prompted the diver.
“The foyer is constructed on two levels,” she said, her breath steaming in the chill air. “The first is already underwater, so you have to swim in and up a set of steps, which brings you above to where the air is still trapped. The statue looms above the steps. It would have been designed to be the first thing you would see coming in the door of the place. It is enormous. You … I mean, the woman is all wound about with a great serpentish beast, but there are many animals carved into the monument as well. It is like a rendered dream or maybe a kind of nightmare.”
I took a deep breath. “Was there … were there any words on the statue?”
She nodded. “There were: ‘Through the transparency of now, the future.’ ”
“It has to have been a futureteller who carved it,” Roland said positively. “They dreamed of the future, and they foresaw Elspeth.”
“So it seems,” Garth said, but there was a dissatisfied note in his voice.
&nb
sp; I took a deep breath. “I must see the whole monument,” I said.
“I felt the same, but—” Garth began.
“No, you don’t understand,” I interrupted brusquely. “I must … dive down and see it for myself. And right now.”
Garth stared at me in horror. “Now! But … but you are not trained to dive.…”
“You said yourself it could be destroyed at any moment,” I said determinedly.
“I will take you,” Zadia said.
“Are you both insane?” Roland raged. “I forbid it!”
Garth stuttered, “Elspeth, you can’t be serious. He’s right. Rushton would …”
“Rushton is in no condition to approve or disapprove anything, and right now, I am Master of Obernewtyn. Zadia, you are ready?”
“Ye gods!” Garth exclaimed, wringing his hands and looking truly distressed.
“You must not do this,” Roland said.
Zadia ignored him and shed her blanket. She found two of the flabby gray suits, still wet, and ordered me to strip down to my underwear. I did as she bade, trying not to shudder at the clammy feel of the material as it was rolled up over my skin. Once sealed into the suit, I warmed up very quickly. Despite its bulk, it was remarkably light. Zadia gave me a weight belt, and I fastened it with trembling fingers.
There was no time to worry about consequences. If the monument was a sign from Kasanda, nothing Zadia or Garth had said suggested what it might mean. Perhaps the message was one that I alone could interpret.
Zadia donned the other suit and her own belt, then handed me several small bulbs of glows and a little pair of goggles shaped to seal to my face and keep water from my eyes. As she passed me one of the breathing tubes, she asked, “You’re sure?”
In answer, I took the leather loop fastened to the end of the pipe and slung it around my neck.
Zadia said, “The important thing is not to panic down there. You must breathe normally. It will feel as if you can’t get enough air, but that is only an illusion. I will lead you, and we will go down the rope.”
“Elspeth!” Garth pleaded.
The Rebellion Page 80
