The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  Maggie stepped forward as the sound of her voice swept through the room. As she moved, the floorboards around her became solid and clean, the soot melting away. The ashes of books and paper slowly began to transform, coming together and becoming smooth and formed and coloured; becoming books and paper once more. The song became a mighty river, filling the room and rising above the little house; rising and flowing out to the farthest reaches of the world.

  And the black-robed figure was gone. It disappeared without a trace. The second it disappeared, the song stopped. Maggie was not conscious of stopping it; it was simply not there anymore. The cat was laying on the floor, and Maggie picked it up just in time to feel the little animal’s last breath leave its body. She buried her face in its fur and whispered her thanks to the valiant creature, and then she laid it down and ran from the house.

  * * *

  Lord Robert Sinclair stepped into the glen and felt his heart leap to his throat. Virginia lay on ground lately scorched by fire. Her clothing was singed and black with soot. She lay so still that the laird could not move for a moment for fear of what he would find. His only link—she could not be dead.

  He forced himself to take a step closer, his foot falling without his notice into the track of a large wolf. Before he moved another agonized inch, Virginia stirred. He ran to her, falling to his knees in the scorched earth.

  “Is it you, laird?” Virginia asked.

  “Yes, yes, it’s me,” Lord Robert said, taking the girl in his arms and resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s me. You’re safe now.”

  Virginia stiffened and pushed back from the laird. She sat on her knees and looked in his direction, listening to the sound of his breathing. His breath quickened as he looked at her. She was the same Virginia as ever. One wrist was still bandaged, though the bandages were torn and shabby; her face was scratched and her clothes were blackened from heat and smoke. Yet something was different. A fire seemed to blaze in her green eyes, the red in her dark hair seemed more pronounced—yet it wasn’t physical change that made his heart beat faster.

  He could not begin to point to the change in a tangible way, but she had changed. She had always been a girl before, a pretty blind girl from the Highlands. And now a woman sat before him: a woman shining with the glory of another world.

  “By the stars, Virginia,” Lord Robert whispered. “What happened to you?”

  “Much,” she said at last. “So much has happened. I don’t know…” She broke off and looked up, as if she was seeking guidance from the sky.

  “Why did you leave the train?” Lord Robert asked. His words seemed to wrench her back, to force her into conversation she did not want to have.

  “Someone was after me,” Virginia said. “She would have killed you all if she’d found me with you.”

  “Someone?” Lord Robert asked.

  “I don’t know who she was,” Virginia said.

  “Did she find you here?” the laird pressed. “The earth is burned black all around you.”

  “Yes, she found me,” Virginia said. “But I—I defeated her… and they came.”

  “They?” Lord Robert’s voice was shaking with excitement. Only now was he noticing the tracks that scuffed the dirt all around the clearing: wolf and bear and fox and badger, deer and squirrel and mouse.

  “The spirits of the forest,” Virginia said in a low voice.

  “Tell me,” he said, urgently. “Who were they—these spirits?”

  “The spirits of animals, and trees, and wind,” Virginia said. “They have been bound since the exile of the King. Laird, I… please, don’t ask me any more.”

  “The King?” Lord Robert said. His voice was taut. “What are you talking about?”

  Virginia began to cry silent tears. “I have seen the King myself,” she said. “He came to me in Angslie. He is—he is spring, and light, and goodness—I can’t describe him. He is peace. He is beautiful.”

  Lord Robert fell silent at last. He had long known that Virginia held much back from him, that she did not trust him, but he felt it now more keenly than ever. She was a stranger to him, this woman-girl with the fire of another world in her unseeing eyes. She had finished speaking, he knew, and yet if he could have wrested more from her with his hands, he would have done it. He looked at her, and something in him twisted until he felt as though it would break. He needed understanding. Needed it desperately. For the first time Virginia, with her closely-held secrets, seemed to him like an enemy.

  “We are far from any shelter,” Lord Robert said, and stood abruptly. He reached down and helped Virginia to her feet. “Let’s go. I don’t want you spend a night out here. Your attacker could come back.”

  “She would not dare,” Virginia said, almost to herself. But the laird heard, and frowned.

  His thoughts waged war with each other until he and Virginia reached the railroad tracks, and on until they had followed the rails to a small town with an inn. He did not speak to Virginia again until he bade her goodnight and retired to a room of his own.

  * * *

  Maggie did not stop running until Pravik was behind her and she was standing on the side of a great slope that swept away to farmland and miles of country roads. The slope was wooded with small, friendly trees, and Maggie threw herself into the damp warmth of dead leaves beneath the branches and cried.

  She did not understand anything that had just happened, but she was acutely aware of several things. For one thing, she was alone. There was no Nicolas with her to poke fun at her and tell her which way to go and keep her from getting lost in this strange territory, or to find her a Gypsy wagon with feather pillows to sleep in. Huss had given her something terrifying and incredible in the truth which he had revealed to her, and now he was gone. Nor was Mrs. Cook there to pat her hand and assure her that everything would be fine after a cup of tea, and Pat was not there to look bold and ferocious and more than a match for anything that came along. Mary was not there to sing to her, and somehow Mary’s song had hurt her. Its strains had gone deeply into her and come up as something wild, something she couldn’t control, something that was at once beautiful and so foreign it frightened her.

  And Jerome—she loved him. She knew that now, just as she was sure that he loved her. She could not say how or when it had happened, much less why. She wanted him so badly, and he was separated from her by thick, cold stone and the unforgiving eyes of the High Police. All of her aloneness washed over her in waves, dragging her heart out bit by bit to drown in the deep.

  The worst of it was that she no longer knew herself. She could not take comfort in the familiarity of her feelings and reactions. The old Maggie, predictable and timid, had disappeared, piece by piece, on the roads of the continent. She was someone else now—someone who fought battles and roamed with Gypsies and knew ancient secrets; someone who knew what it meant to love fiercely and to sing miracles. Mary’s song had completed the change in her. Maggie did not even know what she had sung; the words and the melody had left her without so much as a memory of their form. She was left with the bitter loneliness of a young woman who did not know her own soul.

  In time the thought of Jerome and Huss brought Maggie back to herself. She stood unsteadily, lightheaded from crying. With miserable clarity she realized that she had no idea how to find the Ploughman. The High Police would be on her trail soon—and in their shadow, the black-robed Order of the Spider would follow. The scroll inside her coat felt heavy.

  Maggie drew a deep breath and staggered down the hill to the farms and country roads below. Perhaps a rebel who went by the name of the Ploughman could be found among the farmers of the Eastern Lands. She wandered down the road about a mile, past recently harvested fields where flocks of birds gleaned from the remaining stubble. Now and then the birds would rise up together, calling and cackling, and swoop down over the road on their way to a new picking field. Maggie would stop and watch the birds diving and soaring all around her, and would stand still until every last little stra
ggler went fleeting past.

  The road was rough and worn with deep wagon ruts. Maggie’s feet slipped on the dry earth and the sun beat down on her head. Still she walked, until the bright world around her had become something of a blur. Fragmented thoughts drifted through her mind.

  After a mile or two the farmland gave way to wooded hills. The trees sent sparsely-clothed branches out to offer the road what shade they could. The shadows cooled Maggie’s eyes, and she lifted her head as her mind troubled over the problem of where the road was taking her and what she was going to do when she got there.

  The road narrowed and Maggie became faintly aware of the distant sound of a train—then, suddenly, there was a noise of metal grinding against metal, a dreadful squeal and whine, and a cloud of birds burst from the trees a small distance away. Distinctly human sounds followed the flutter of birds’ wings on the wind.

  Maggie stood undecided for a moment, and dashed into the woods, trusting her ears to lead her to the source of the noise. The sounds of confusion came closer and she slowed instinctively in case danger lay beyond the forest tangle. She could see the place where bright sunlight lit a clearing just beyond a row of trees.

  As she neared the clearing, a sound like the call of an owl fell on her ears. She stopped and looked all around her. There was something afoot in the woods, she could feel it. Every shadow seemed to be hiding something. But no, there was nothing there—she looked again, and again her eyes found nothing. Maggie tore her eyes away from the surrounding forest and looked back out to the place where the trees ended.

  Low, yellow-leafed branches blocked her path, and she ducked and pushed her way through until she stepped abruptly out onto the edge of a ridge. Below it lay the scene of a train wreck. The iron serpent was long, its cars stretching out of sight around a bend. Its first ten cars had been derailed, and it lay twisted in the hollow.

  Men, rail workers from the look of their uniforms, walked the length of the train inspecting the damage. Most of them stood in front of the dragon’s head engine, where an enormous man-made wall of brush had caused the train to go off of its tracks.

  Maggie began to pick her way gingerly down the slope when one of the figures standing in the clearing turned and looked straight at her, and she found herself looking into the face of Patricia Black. Pat’s face was surprised, then elated, and she shouted Maggie’s name and ran to her.

  Maggie was nearly at the bottom of the slope when Pat reached her, but she was not smiling. She knew it, and was sorry for it, especially as Pat’s face clouded. But if she could not smile—not in the face of all that had happened and all she was trying to do—she could yet look, with eyes that shone welcome and need.

  Pat shook off whatever had clouded her face. She beamed and caught Maggie in an embrace. Maggie held her friend as if she would never let her go. Fierce gladness burned in her heart.

  She did let go at last, and Pat stepped back and looked Maggie over with thinly veiled curiosity.

  “You’re not in Pravik,” Pat said, and laughed slightly. “Bless this wreck, then. Without it we would have gone all the way to Pravik in search of you and been cheated at the last.” Maggie finally managed a weak smile as she sought words, and Pat continued, “Mrs. Cook is with me. And we’ve got so much to tell you!”

  She linked her arm with Maggie and dragged her off to a train car where Mrs. Cook anxiously awaited Pat’s return.

  “You go in first,” Pat said. “Mrs. Cook won’t know what to do with herself!”

  Pat shoved Maggie gently. Maggie smiled at her and went through the door of the compartment. She did not see the way Pat watched her go, with her dark eyebrows knotted in perplexity. Maggie was different, Pat thought—she looked as though she’d been living too close to the stars, and now all their light and solemnity was shining through her eyes.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Cook said when Maggie entered the little room, and her hand flew to her mouth. Then her arms opened wide and Maggie stepped into the warmth of the elderly woman’s love. Mrs. Cook burst promptly and sobbingly into tears.

  “My dear girl,” she cried, while Pat hovered over them both, grinning like a child who has played a clever trick. When Maggie stepped back, her face was flushed and her eyes were bright with very deep love, and even Mrs. Cook noticed that there was something deeper there than she had seen in Maggie before.

  “It is so good to see you,” Maggie said, feeling suddenly as though words could flow out of her in an unending torrent, but before she could say anything more she was cut off by the call of a bugle. The sound wavered in the air and slowly died. Maggie moved to the window. Her eyes opened wide as she caught sight of something dark moving in the trees.

  Then they appeared, out from the darkness of the forest, spilling down the hill to the train. It seemed as though there were hundreds of them, men in dark clothing, brandishing swords and clubs and whooping like boys on a holiday. They descended on the men of the train, whose courage failed them at the sight. Almost as one the men turned and ran for the safety of the train cars. Pat’s long knife was drawn in a flash, and she was nearly out the door when Maggie reached out and caught her arm.

  “Wait,” she commanded. Pat put up the knife even as she stared at Maggie in surprise.

  Maggie’s eyes were drawn to one lone figure, who was even now emerging from the woods. He was on horseback, unlike the others, and he wore a long, navy blue cloak with a hood that had fallen back from a dark, handsome face. His hair was black and thick, and even on horseback he looked tall. Maggie recognized him almost instantly.

  The Ploughman.

  He shouted orders to his men and they swarmed around the train, boarding the cars with wild shouts. From their compartment, Maggie and Pat could see them begin to stream back out, carrying crates and rolling barrels ahead of them.

  “What sort of cargo was on this train?” Maggie asked.

  “Food,” Pat answered. “Bound for the Overlord’s storehouses. And weapons.”

  “I need to talk to that man,” Maggie said, pointing to the Ploughman.

  “All in good time,” Pat said, one eyebrow raised. “I’m sure they’ll drag out the hostages sooner or later.”

  “They don’t want prisoners,” Maggie said. “These men aren’t bandits.”

  “Oh no?” Pat asked. “It looks to me as though we’re being robbed.”

  “They’re farmers,” Maggie said. “I left Pravik to find them.”

  “Oh,” Pat said, “I see. We’re being robbed by friends of yours.”

  “Come with me,” Maggie said. Pat and Mrs. Cook crowded out of the compartment behind her. They picked their way to the door of the car and lowered themselves down to the ground. The rebels were everywhere. One man saw them and shouted.

  “You there!” he said, pointing a thick finger. “Back on the train!”

  “I wish to speak with the Ploughman!” Maggie called back as the man moved in front of them. “I am a friend of his.”

  The man looked at her incredulously. “Come along, then, miss,” he said. “We’ll see if your friend the Ploughman recognizes you!”

  There was laughter from the surrounding rebels, and the men formed a wall of bodies around and behind them, escorting them to their leader. Maggie approached the tall man on his horse and dropped to one knee.

  “I am a friend of Libuse,” she said. “And of Jarin Huss.”

  “Stand up, then,” the Ploughman said. His deep voice sounded amused. When Maggie looked up into his face she saw that he was smiling slightly. “You look familiar,” he continued. “I have seen you somewhere, though I don’t know your name.”

  “Maggie Sheffield,” she told him. “Professor Huss and Jerome need your help.”

  The Ploughman silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I see by your face that you do not bring good news,” he said. His eyes left Maggie, going to the train and his men at work emptying it. “We will speak later, after this carcass has been cleaned and we are away. Stay here.” He pointed to the
place next to his horse. “My men will be your escort.”

  So saying, the Ploughman rode away. His men moved in closer to the three women.

  “He’s a well-spoken bandit, that friend of yours,” Pat said in a low voice.

  “Are we really going to go with them?” Mrs. Cook asked nervously.

  “I am,” said Maggie. She put her hand on Mrs. Cook’s arm suddenly. “You should go home. Get back on the train. Help will come soon and take you to the city. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Mrs. Cook drew herself up to her full, plump height. “My girl,” she said, “you are here, and I will not leave you alone again. Something has happened to you, that’s plain enough, but I won’t have you making a stranger of me.”

  She smiled, and her tone of voice changed. Her eyes twinkled as she spoke. “I’ve been through some adventures of my own, Maggie. I’m not afraid of them.”

  When the rebels were finished they loaded every last parcel from the train onto their backs and the few horses and pack animals that were hidden in the woods. The bugle sounded, and the company melted back into the woods from whence it had come, bearing Maggie, Pat, and Mrs. Cook away with it.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  Dreams and War

  Hear the call of the Huntsman’s horn;

  The stars all sing when the chase is on;

  Over the sky fields and cross the moon;

  The darkness meets its downfall soon.”

  Heed the song of the Huntsman’s soul;

  He sings of battles fought and won;

  He sings of love and stars aglow;

  Of a King, a Heart, that all hearts know.