Virginia thought again of the mountainside where the Blackness had used her, and she shuddered. “So tell me,” she said. “Why should I not go with the Ploughman? Perhaps he is right and I can help him.”
“I want you to go back to the Highlands,” Huss said. “I want you to seek out the King there.”
Virginia was silent. The bridge swayed in a gust of wind, wild with the scent of pines and mountain streams. She tried to deny the feeling of being suddenly suspended over a world that might drop away from beneath her.
“What makes you think he will be there?” she asked.
“My own search for the truth began in Angslie,” Professor Huss said. “The Council for Exploration Into Worlds Unseen began there, and though things ended badly for us, we walked for a while on the edge of this reality—we were close to the truth. And you have seen the King there. You once told me that he spoke to you—that he prophesied that he would wake the world through you. Virginia, my deepest hope is that if you return to Angslie where you saw him before, he will come to you. You will bring him into the world.”
Virginia let her protests die as Huss continued, his voice gentle and urgent. “When you traveled here with Lord Robert, the Earth Brethren awakened to you. It was your prophecy that led to victory in Athrom. You are at the heart of everything, Virginia, you and Angslie itself. Yes, I want you to go.”
Her voice was terse. “Have you forgotten that it was I who betrayed you all in the Battle of Pravik?”
Huss was silent for a moment. “You were not the betrayer,” he said at last.
There were tears on Virginia’s face, but she turned her unseeing eyes toward the west and let the wind dry them. “Does the Ploughman know what you are asking of me?”
“No. He would not be pleased with me if he did. You should leave the city without his knowledge. He would not force you to accompany him, of course, but he might talk you into it. I would advise you to go this very night—before he gathers his entourage to leave in the morning.”
“I will go,” Virginia said. “Of course I will go. But Professor, I cannot go alone.” She smiled, almost apologetically. “If you have forgotten, I am blind.”
A gnarled hand touched her cheek. “I have not forgotten,” he said.
Wind played around them. “Go tonight,” Huss said. “Hide yourself in the mountains so the Ploughman cannot find you. I will see what I can do to bring you eyes.”
* * *
Chapter 3: Leave-taking
In the courtyard of Pravik Castle an hour before dawn, the Ploughman’s entourage made ready for their journey, packing and inspecting horses and two wagons. Harutek and six of his Darkworld warriors had joined them from below. Their interaction with the Ploughman’s men was cordial, yet tense. With Cratus’s two, the entourage totaled twenty-one men, plus Jarin Huss, Maggie, and Pat.
Pat was coming because she insisted on it. Maggie was coming because of her songs.
“You are Gifted, Maggie,” Professor Huss had said when she protested, in the quiet of his study high in the castle. “As such you are a link to the King and a special strength to the Ploughman. He needs you.”
“But I don’t even know how to use this Gift,” Maggie said. “I’m not like Virginia. I’ve never seen the King—I don’t see how I can be of any help.”
“You don’t want to leave the city?”
Maggie had looked out the window at the narrow streets below, winding down the plateau to the bridges that crossed the Vltava. She remembered entering the city for the first time on horseback, its bridges and streets lit with lamps and torches, the sounds of a riot at the castle gates reaching her ears. She had been with Nicolas Fisher then, carrying an ancient scroll in search of Huss, and entirely unaware of how her life would change.
But it had changed. She had become someone else, someone who loved a man who had died since, someone who sang supernatural songs and saw supernatural beings in the skies. And now she clung to Pravik as the only place the changed Maggie really knew. The rest of the Seventh World was part of some other life. And it threatened her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m afraid of what might happen.”
“Because of all that has happened,” Huss said. “But think, Maggie—would you really change any of it?”
She had shaken her head. “No.”
Maggie went through her things one last time, spare though they were—two changes of clothes, a bone flute from the Darkworld that she was learning to play. Mrs. Cook had added quite a few things to Maggie’s load: a kettle and tea, three woolen blankets, stockings.
“You’re going to freeze to death on the road, child, and I won’t have that on my head.”
“It’s spring,” Maggie had answered. “Late spring, and we’re going south.”
Pat snorted. “And you expect her to trust the weather?”
Pat had managed to pack exactly what she wanted without Mrs. Cook adding a single item, which meant that her saddlebags were considerably smaller and lighter. Maggie felt guilty every time she looked at her horse.
She patted the animal’s brown neck with a comforting word and turned to survey the rest of the band. Huss was seated on a stool in the middle of the courtyard, leaning forward on a gnarled staff, watching. Pat and Mrs. Cook were laughing about something, Pat determined to keep her foster mother from crying and Mrs. Cook determined to cry through her laughter anyway. Her girls were leaving her again, after all.
Virginia was conspicuously absent, as Maggie had somehow known she would be. When Professor Huss had pressed her to come and be their link to the King, she had known the Seer would be staying behind—knew it though she didn’t understand it. But she didn’t tell anyone else what she knew.
The Ploughman held a long staff in his hand such as he had always carried in the old days when he was a country landlord leading a secret militia. He looked, Maggie thought, like a ballad. Strength and romance and uncertainty in a single man: a prince who didn’t know he wasn’t really a pauper. Libuse had hardly left his side.
Rivan and two other men entered the courtyard and bowed to the Ploughman.
“Still nothing?” the Ploughman asked.
“Nay, my lord,” one of the men said. “There’s not a trace of her anywhere.”
Maggie’s stomach knotted. She felt a pang of anxiety for Virginia and hoped, despite herself, that the Seer wouldn’t be found. If she wasn’t coming, she had a reason for it—and surely she had been hunted enough.
Rumour said Virginia had refused to go and had faced off against the Ploughman like some kind of traitor. Others speculated on why. Maggie heard soldiers talking about it in low voices and shook her head. If Virginia had spoken to the Ploughman, it had been only yesterday. It was incredible how quickly rumours could spring up. She remembered, with a little guilt, her own annoyance when Virginia had chosen not to come to the Ploughman’s engagement celebration.
The arrival of General Cratus and his men broke the camaraderie in the courtyard. The general strode in as though he was looking over troops of his own, holding a torch high in the cold, dark morning air.
Huss remained seated in Cratus’s presence. The general stopped in front of him.
“Are you sure you’re strong enough to make this journey, old man?” he asked.
“That is hardly any of your concern,” Huss said.
“I would hate to come late before the emperor because we were slowed by one who should have stayed home,” Cratus answered.
“We will not go without him,” the Ploughman said, stepping to Huss’s side. “He has strength we would sorely miss.”
“Does he now?” the general asked.
“Indeed,” Huss said, looking up past the staff in his hands. “I have the strength, for example, to remain sitting when other men would stand—invaluable, I think, in the presence of bullies. Do you not agree, general?”
“And that is what you expect in Athrom?” Cratus asked. “Bullies?”
“The emperor has ne
ver been anything but,” Huss said.
Cratus laughed. “You may find,” he said, “that the emperor is not at all what you expect.”
Maggie shivered. There was too much in this whole business that felt like being fed to the lions. Although, she thought as she watched the Ploughman give orders, the lions may be surprised to find they are more than evenly matched.
She knew the plan. They would keep together in Athrom, allowing nothing to separate them for long. If the emperor’s purposes were treacherous, the Ploughman’s Gift—the battle-heat that came on him and the Golden Warriors who were there whenever he needed them most—would be enough to help them fight their way out. Even to do great damage on their way. The Ploughman’s Gift might not be enough to keep the concentrated forces of the Empire at bay in a protracted war, but in the fire of an unexpected battle it would be enough to rescue them.
At least, Maggie sincerely hoped it would.
Pat’s hand on her left shoulder and Mrs. Cook’s prodigious presence at her right brought sudden comfort and strength, even in silence. Together they watched as Cratus finished his unofficial inspection, made a displeased comment about the Seer’s absence, and left the band alone again, almost chased out by the force of their combined loyalty and fierce hope. They were Pravik, the city that existed against all odds, and they would face Athrom together.
Two hours later, with the sun still shining golden and new over the horizon, they rode out of Pravik. The people of the city, early out of their beds but unwilling to miss saying good-bye, lined the street from the castle down the plateau and across the Guardian Bridge. Beyond that the city was as ghostly as ever.
Maggie stored up images as she rode: the empty streets, the patches of upturned earth where the farmers had pulled up cobblestones and tried to plough, the silent houses, the sun on Pravik’s eastern spires. Images she might try to sing later. General Merlyn Cratus and his three men, dressed now in the black and green uniforms of the High Police, rode slightly ahead of them.
“It’s hard going, this,” Pat said under her breath as she drew up alongside Maggie. “Every time I see those colours I want to fight.”
Maggie laughed. “Self-control is a virtue, Pat.”
“As I well know,” Pat answered. “But then so is loyalty. Wisdom, too. This seems all wrong.”
“It isn’t disloyal to try to secure a future for ourselves,” Maggie said. “For all of us.”
The thought of the King came to her, and she shifted uncomfortably. He had not forbidden this. And he had not come to show them another way. She wondered where Virginia was and hoped that her disappearance had something to do with the King. At least someone among their number was still seeking him.
The western gate of Pravik was just ahead, and Maggie looked up at the wall’s ancient stones and felt the smile leaving her face. This place had been their protection, their world within a world they were sure was at enmity with them, for more than two years now. Two years they had somehow expected would last a lifetime.
The horses’ hooves beat placidly on the cobblestone road as they neared the gate. The Ploughman gave a command to the few men who watched it. The gate lifted, exposing green forested mountains glimmering like a jewel in the early morning sun beyond, and in a moment they were through.
“Thus changeth the world,” Pat said, and Maggie felt that somehow she was right.
* * *
The Darkworld child looked up, wide eyes dilated in a pale face. Rehtse touched the shaven head gently as she lifted a cup of water to the little boy’s lips. His skin was hot with fever. He lay in the limestone infirmary, where the cool air did little to bring down his temperature. The floor had been carved away around raised beds, which were thickly padded with braided hair and covered with tightly woven, thin sheets of the same material. The beds lay in rows twenty long and six across. At times they were all filled.
Thankfully, most were empty now.
The low ceiling was carved with a stylized sun nearly the size of the entire infirmary. Hanging candles around its perimeter and all down its rays lit it up like a giant chandelier.
Rehtse left the boy and wandered down the rows, delivering water to more sufferers. She sang softly as she went, an old song praising the glories of the sunlit world and of the sun itself—a giver of life and health, whose light was dimmed only by that of the King himself. Sun-sickness, the Darkworld’s age-old affliction, was thought to be an illness of the soul as well as of the body. So songs, stories, and the giant sun carving were all part of its treatment. The priesthood had been using them all in this same infirmary for hundreds of years.
“Rehtse.” The voice that beckoned her was Annan’s. She looked up to see him standing in the doorway. “Divad wants to see you,” he said.
The young priest crossed the floor and held out his hands for the water jug she carried. “I’ll take over for you,” he said.
She nodded and headed out of the infirmary, down the torchlit corridors to the high priest’s chambers. The doors were open, and she passed through the curtains without announcing herself. Divad was seated at a low table, fingertips touching and elbows resting on the table. She recognized the position. He was deep in thought.
For a moment she thought he’d missed her entrance, and she opened her mouth to speak. He beat her to it.
“Sit down, Rehtse,” he said.
She crossed the floor and sat at the low table with her legs tucked to one side. She waited.
“Harutek has gone,” Divad said. She bowed her head and swallowed. Divad had embraced the Ploughman and his people and struck a close friendship with the scholar called Jarin Huss. But she knew he did not approve of the emissaries from Athrom, or of Harutek’s decision to go with them, any more than she did.
“It has been five hundred years,” Divad said. “Do you know what that means?”
She looked up and met his striking blue eyes. The intensity in his gaze matched that in her soul. She answered, “If the legends have it right, it means the King will soon return.”
“Or Morning Star will,” Divad said. “The Blackness will be unleashed and destroy the world above. And Harutek is making us a part of that world.”
A smile quirked at her mouth. “You sound like the Majesty.”
“The Majesty is wrong to doubt the King and reject the Ploughman,” Divad said. “But he is right to disagree with his son. I wish with all my heart that Caasi had lived.”
Rehtse looked away.
“I am sorry,” Divad said, his voice gentler. “I would have rejoiced to see you and Caasi wed, Rehtse. From the day you came to us, I sensed that you had a special purpose among the priests.”
She looked back at him, and there were tears in her eyes.
He continued. “Do you know what Hazrit dreamed the first night you were here?”
Rehtse shook her head, puzzled. This conversation was not going as she had expected it to.
“Hazrit was a young woman then,” Divad said. “She tucked you into bed and dried your tears as you cried for your mother. Then she came to me and told me that we should send you back. No child had ever been given to us so young.”
“I—” Rehtse looked for words, then gave up. Better to keep listening.
“I said that was not ours to decide,” Divad said. “Your parents had offered you, and the Majesty had accepted you. I suspected him of ulterior motives. You were a beautiful child, even then, and the priesthood lacked likely wives for his sons. Though I think he meant you for Harutek.”
Rehtse looked down at the table. She cleared her throat. She loved Harutek—she always had, as an older brother who teased, bullied, and frustrated her. But nothing on earth could ever have enticed her to marry him, and she was quite sure the feeling was mutual. Caasi, on the other hand…
“Hazrit came to me again early, before morning prayer,” Divad said. “She said she had dreamed of you, and she knew now that we could not send you back. She had seen you beneath the stars, on a mountaintop with wi
nd in your hair. The stars had gathered in a circle around you, and voices came from them. Hazrit could not remember what they said. But she knew you were destined to be one of us.”
“I didn’t know,” Rehtse said.
“Hazrit’s dream told me something quite different,” Divad said. “That you were to be one of us, yes. But also that you were to leave us.”
The words hit Rehtse like a shock. “What?” she asked.
He looked into her eyes once more, and this time he spread out his hands, as though his thinking was done and now he had only to explain a settled decision. Firelight flickered blue off the carved stone walls. “You are to leave us,” he said. “Now, in fact.”
“I cannot leave,” Rehtse said. “What about my duties here? The children—”
“Hazrit and Annan can handle their care,” Divad said. “The sickness is not bad for the time being.”
“—and prayers,” Rehtse continued, “and the Majesty. I am his attendant. And you know that no priest is free to leave his service. We are bound to him.”
Divad’s eyes flicked away from her face. He looked—unsettled? Guilty? “I do not know what to do about that,” he admitted. He picked up something that had been lying on the table, bringing it to Rehtse’s attention for the first time. It was a letter.
“Professor Huss has gone to Athrom, but he sent this,” Divad said. “A request that one of my priests might accompany Virginia Ramsey on a journey to the Highlands where she came from. She needs eyes, he says. To help her find the King.”
Rehtse fought to breathe as the implications sank in.
“You, Rehtse,” Divad said. “She is waiting for you.”
Rehtse shook her head. To go into the Sunworld—to seek the King—to serve one of his Gifted—all her heart desired it. But she had vows to keep. She could not simply leave the Majesty.
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