The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  “You have seen supernatural deliverance in Pravik and here in Athrom. Even on the road as you battled the serpent. The powers that served you then have not abandoned you now.”

  He tried to smile, but was not triumphant. “This is not a battle,” he said.

  She looked at him, equally unsmiling. “Isn’t it?”

  “There!” Cratus cut in, pointing toward a shining ivory palace on the crest of a hill, rising from the very center of the great city. He rode up alongside the Ploughman and cast a glance at Maggie, who turned her eyes to the palace. “That is the Jewel of Athrom,” Cratus said. “The palace of Lucien Morel, the man who rules the world. You are facing your destiny, friend. The emperor will see you tomorrow.”

  The Ploughman nodded, but still he seemed troubled.

  * * *

  The main street of Athrom was a wide thoroughfare passing through rich boroughs, with darkened shops and gardens on all sides. The scent of orchids and orange blossoms drifted through the night air, and glowing lamps flickered as the cart rolled over a smooth marble road.

  It was beautiful, Maggie thought. Truly, peacefully, awe-inspiringly beautiful.

  At the end of the thoroughfare, the palace itself glowed like an ivory moon setting on the horizon. Guards came out to meet them as they reached the low walls that surrounded the palace, wearing the black and green of the hated High Police. But they came courteously, opening the gates and allowing them quick entrance.

  The wagon rocked as Pat jumped inside. She hunkered down next to Maggie with her arms folded. She stayed silent, aware of the listening ears on all sides, but Maggie saw the words written in Pat’s eyes.

  I don’t like this.

  For a moment Maggie closed her own eyes and tried to listen to the song of the city, but she could hear nothing. The silence was not like a breathing thing in waiting, but like a great absence—she had felt and heard such silence just before the serpent attacked. Suddenly the grandeur and beauty of the city felt hollow.

  “Come,” one of Cratus’s men said, holding out a hand to her. Reluctantly, she released Huss’s hand, exchanged a quick glance with Pat, and accepted the man’s assistance. Pat jumped down before anyone could offer to help her. All around, the men were dismounting, unloading, brushing themselves off. In the courtyard of the ruler of the world, the men of Pravik were suddenly very small, very dusty, very gruff and quiet.

  A palace servant—one who carried himself with some authority—offered his hand to Maggie. “This way, miss,” he said. “You will stay in the west quarters for the night.”

  Alarm filled her at the thought of being separated from the others. “But—Ploughman!” she called, relieved that he was quick to hear her and approach. “I do not wish to be separated from you,” she said.

  He frowned at the servant. “We did not plan to separate,” he said. “General?”

  Cratus approached. “Yes?”

  “We do not wish to be separated,” the Ploughman said. “Is there nowhere we can stay all together?”

  Cratus cleared his throat. “I had you all stationed for the night in rooms that would befit each one’s status.”

  The Ploughman shook his head. “One room,” he said. “We do not care much for status. Surely somewhere in this palace you have a room big enough for all of us? My men, and the women, and the professor and me. Harutek and his warriors too, if they will stay with us. If you cannot accommodate that request, we will happily stay in a stable. Forgive us, general, and write us off as shameful rustics. But we would stay together.”

  Maggie’s heart nearly burst with gratitude, even as Cratus gave the Ploughman a grudging acquiescence and some of the guards sneered. Let others think them ridiculous. Here in this place, they were a family. And they needed each other desperately.

  “I will keep my own men with me,” Harutek said quietly. “But we need not stay with the Ploughman.”

  “Come then,” Cratus said, scanning the yard to see if all were ready. They were. He turned and led them up a flight of marble stairs. Grand doors opened for them, and they passed into a great hall adorned with fountains and paintings and crystal lights. Guards lined it. They watched the newcomers wordlessly.

  A man in long blue robes met them and bowed. “Your journey has been long, General Cratus,” he said.

  “Indeed it has, steward,” Cratus answered. He fell to discussing the travelers’ peculiar requests for sleeping arrangements. The guards in the hall watched, every eye on the people of Pravik and every mouth utterly silent.

  “Curse their quiet,” Pat muttered suddenly.

  With Pat’s words, Maggie knew why the men’s silence was so unnerving.

  Unlike the absence of song underlying the city, this was a waiting silence, and she did not know what they were all waiting for.

  * * *

  The Ploughman stood at the door, staff in hand, as his farmers filed in one by one. The room was large and ornate, a banqueting room. To Cratus’s credit, he had not put them out in a stable. The Ploughman had waved away the suggestion that Cratus rouse servants to prepare beds. A few of the men brought their traveling things in, and they laid out their bedrolls, this time under chandeliers and a muted mural instead of under the stars.

  Maggie sat on the floor, and the Ploughman came and sat beside her. Huss settled on her other side. No one was sleeping. Every eye was on the Ploughman now.

  He cleared his throat. “We have come a long way,” he said. “If all goes well, we will make the journey home in a few days’ time. I know you are anxious to be gone from here. You are not more anxious than I.”

  Some of the men answered that with chuckles and cracks about the Ploughman’s waiting lady. The Ploughman ignored them and continued. “I know that some of you have questioned my decision to come here. Perhaps you have feared that I was giving up on our dream. I am not—I have not. I never will. We are here to see if, as Pravik, we can find a way to coexist with the Empire. But we will not give up who we are. Pravik remains a bastion of freedom, and always will—because of you. Because you are committed to that freedom, and you are willing to give your lives for it.”

  The Ploughman hesitated. “On the road here we faced a creature of the Blackness,” he said. “We defeated it. I believe it is a sign of what is to come for us. There may be a battle of some kind ahead. But we will fight it, and we will prevail.”

  He turned to Maggie, catching her off guard. “Will you sing?” he asked.

  Maggie nodded, seeking for words. She closed her eyes and tried her hardest to listen past the city’s terrible silence. Her songs always began with hearing: she did not create them. It had been the same way for Mary Grant before she was murdered by the Order of the Spider.

  But she could hear nothing.

  She tried hard to lose awareness of her surroundings, of the clearing of voices and the expectant faces. She tried to will away the consciousness of Pat’s presence, even of Huss and the Ploughman. Just to hear.

  Still nothing.

  Her mouth was dry. She had not always heard songs, of course. But since the first song had come to her in Pravik, the songs had been ever present, always there if she listened hard enough.

  Where were they now?

  “Maggie?” Pat asked. “What is it?”

  Opening her eyes, she blinked away tears. “I can’t hear anything,” she said. “No songs—nothing.”

  “Make your own,” Pat urged. “Can’t you?”

  “I—” Maggie frowned. “I can’t sew without thread. I can’t hear anything.” She swallowed hard. “It’s this city.” she said. “There’s no song here—nothing, only a silence I don’t understand.” She didn’t say the words that were shouting through her now, feeling traitorous after the Ploughman’s comforting speech. We should never have come here.

  Pat cleared her throat. “Do you remember the silver thread?” she asked. “The Huntsman you saw in the Eastern Lands? The story about the King you heard in the Gypsy camp?”

  Maggie
nodded. Pat was naming things close to her heart, small things that had stirred her hope in the King more than the great battles fought by the Ploughman and his Golden Warriors. Pat had shared none of these experiences, but Maggie had told her of them, and now Pat told them back.

  “Well,” Pat said. “Can you listen beyond the city?”

  For a moment they looked at each other. Then Maggie felt a smile tugging at her lips, and she closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her mind ranged beyond the painted ceiling and the crystal chandeliers, beyond the city, up into the stars where the Huntsman was on the ride.

  Somewhere impossibly far off, she thought she heard a horn sounding. And then a song.

  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.

  The song rose warm and alive in her throat, a song that had never before sung itself through human instrument. Its strains were burning, distant, far, and cold, an otherworldly chant of adoration, of highest praises, of dreams.

  And then, though her eyes were still closed and she could not see it, the mural overhead came to life.

  It began as rays of light falling through the darkness of the room like starlight, sparkling, forming celestial patterns on the floor. The eyes of the travelers were drawn up in wonder to see the colours of the mural swirling and rearranging themselves, pictures of the Empire swallowed up in far older images. They saw the River-Daughter in crystalline beauty, Tyrentyllith of the Woods in verdant splendour, Gwyrion of the Wild Things attended by his winged and four-footed attendants. They saw a great hunter riding across the sky with stars in his cloak. They saw the Sea-Father in regions of ice and fire, and they saw the dancing colours of the ancient Shearim.

  Falling rays of light lit upon each one who watched, eyes wide, and in the gentle touch of light they heard the wind blowing, Llycharath, Spirit in the Wind, echoing the sweet, strange strains that Maggie’s voice still sang.

  And then, for an instant, all the colours gathered themselves together and became a pure white light like the heart of the purest star, and in the light everyone in the room thought he could see a man. Maggie opened her eyes. The light illuminated her face and her eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak and smiled, reaching up as though she could touch him.

  The light vanished.

  The vision, and the man at the center of it, was gone.

  * * *

  Virginia awoke to the gentle playing of the wind through her hair. Her head was throbbing, and moving it sent pain all through her neck and shoulders. A voice was calling her.

  “Little sister…”

  “Llycharath,” she whispered back. Her hands were bound in front of her, as were her feet. She was leaning on something warm—Rehtse’s back, she realized.

  “You are not alone,” the voice of the wind whispered in her ear. The cool breeze, bearing the scent of flowers with it, felt good around her aching head.

  “Can you help us?” Virginia asked.

  A boot nudged the side of her leg.

  “Who do ye think you’re talking to?” a rough voice asked. “Your companion ain’t even awake.”

  Virginia fell silent and listened for the wind to answer her. But though the breeze continued to stir the tent and her hair, Llycharath’s voice did not come again. Rehtse turned her head not long after, indicating she was awake. Aware of their surly guard, neither said anything.

  Besides, there was plenty to listen to without making conversation. They were still in the commander’s tent, and into his presence in the next several hours came reports from other camps and scouting parties, until the size of the High Police contingent hiding in the mountains had grown in Virginia’s mind to five or six hundred. The reports chilled her. A report that the entourage under General Cratus had safely traveled through the mountains. A report on the activities of the people inside the city walls—on the slow going in the streets where they were trying to dig up the cobblestones to make way for crops, on the movements of Darkworld people in and out of the castle, on small groups that left the city only to return.

  How long had Pravik been so closely watched? And how had they known nothing of it?

  One report, brought later in the night, mentioned a Gypsy caravan on the move through the mountains just to the north.

  Another, causing chills to go down Virginia’s spine, reported that the woman Evelyn had “disappeared again” but was not thought to have left the mountains. Was the man still with her? the commander asked. Yes.

  Virginia closed her eyes. The memories were still so sharp—the pain of being used by the Blackness, the burning sensation of the covenant fire on her skin, and the hurt of being betrayed by one she had trusted.

  From the sound of the report, Lord Robert still accompanied Evelyn.

  The commander sat in his tent and smoked a cigar all through the reports, the smell within the canvas growing worse by the hour. Virginia slowly twisted the ropes around her hands, but they held tight. In vain she wracked her mind for some plan of escape. If only she could speak with Rehtse. But the priestess followed the same instincts and was as silent as she.

  Night grew long. The reports ceased. The commander slept, snoring loudly. The deep breathing of the guard filled the air beside them. Virginia did not know if she also slept—she thought so. But suddenly her ankles were free, and fingers were working swiftly at the knots around her wrists. Rehtse took her hands and pulled her to her feet. Neither said a word. Carefully, Rehtse led Virginia into the open air. The fresh smell of the night was potent relief.

  Rehtse continued to lead, and so Virginia followed, still saying nothing as her heart beat hard. With every step she expected the crack of a stick or an unfortunate trip to give them away, but their footfalls were remarkably muffled. Perhaps Rehtse’s unusual eyesight in the dark, developed in her Darkworld people over centuries in caves, was serving them better than Virginia knew.

  No voices called out to stop them. Soon Virginia knew the camp was far behind. They made a little more noise now, though only a little, as they journeyed through the forest, the trees sparse amid the rocks.

  “Virginia,” Rehtse said suddenly and quietly. “How do we find north?”

  Virginia paused. “Does moss grow on the trees?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rehtse answered.

  Virginia nodded. “It will grow most heavily on the north side.”

  “It is good,” Rehtse said. “We travel aright.”

  “Where are we going?” Virginia hardly needed to express her bewilderment. She still wasn’t sure how they had so easily escaped.

  “To join the Gypsy caravan the reports spoke of,” Rehtse said. “Alone, the scouts will catch us again, but if we can seem to be part of a Gypsy band, they will let us pass.”

  “Rehtse—” Virginia stopped walking and released Rehtse’s hand. “What happened back there?”

  Rehtse sounded puzzled. “We escaped.”

  “I know that,” Virginia said. “But how?”

  “My bonds were loose,” Rehtse said. “I waited until the guard slept and then released us both.”

  “But—they heard nothing, saw nothing. And why would they leave your ropes loose?”

  “The King watches over us,” Rehtse said.

  “Yes,” Virginia said. She shook her head, wanting almost to laugh. “In the Highlands, where I come from, they say that some people are born favoured—lucky. Might you be one of them?”

  Rehtse’s voice was solemn. “I have lost too much that I value to be considered lucky,” she said. “But I do believe the King favours us. Did you not hear the voice in the wind?”

  Virginia smiled. “I thought I was alone in hearing it. That was Llycharath, the Wind-Spirit. He rescued me once before.”

  Rehtse was quiet, waiting.

  “The woman they spoke of—Evelyn—is truly a witch. She is one of the Order of the Spider. She
once took me captive and… and did what she could to turn my sight against the people of the King. She is as great a threat as the High Police, if not greater. I cannot imagine what she is doing here.” Urgency suddenly gripped Virginia. “But Rehtse, how can we continue on? Libuse must be told that she is sitting in the midst of a trap.”

  “I have thought of that,” Rehtse said. “My people also are threatened. But we cannot go back to the city. The commander desires you now. The police see everything that comes in and out of Pravik; they will see us and capture us again, and we will do Libuse no good.”

  Virginia nodded. It was true, of course. But still—how could they continue on their journey without sending word to Libuse of Cratus’s treachery?

  “We must go to the Gypsies,” Rehtse said. “The High Police will let them pass; we heard them say as much. Perhaps they will help us send word to the city. But that is not all. Virginia—I feel that this is meant to turn us off course, and we cannot allow it to do so. We must not leave off seeking the King. The emperor has deceived the Ploughman and my prince Harutek, for these outlying camps are no forerunners of peace. We know now that Cratus meant no good. The King alone can help us all.”

  “The Ploughman and Harutek,” Virginia repeated. “And the others with them—who will warn them? They also are going into a trap.”

  She could hear the concern in Rehtse’s voice. “It is too late to send them word now. We must leave them to the King’s care.”

  * * *

  After they left the commander’s camp, two hours of wandering in the dark brought Virginia and Rehtse back into the proximity of voices. They could hear low murmurs, the sound of footsteps on gravel, the crackle of a fire. Virginia could smell horses and smoke.