Ashling

by Isobelle Carmody

  I chewed my lip, mulling it over. If Maruman had been contacted by Atthis, what did it mean that he was to guard the dreampaths leading to me? And, again, why hadn't Atthis sent a dream directly to me?

  I felt a surge of frustration knowing the cat delighted in making up elaborate lies, and that this might as easily be a complete fabrication, or part of the queer garbled beast mythology, which Maruman had convinced himself referred to me.

  "Elspeth!" Matthew called.

  Maruman hissed in fright and vanished into the bushes and I bit back an unreasonable urge to lose my temper with the approaching farseeker.

  "What is it?" I called, standing up.

  "Rushton wants to see ye right now. Maryon has woken up," he said earnestly.

  Rushton's face was stony as he opened the door of his chamber and stepped back to let me enter.

  The other guildleaders were seated about the small room, their faces grave. My eyes flew to the Futuretell guildmistress standing in a shadowed comer. Her dark eyes glinted enigmatically across the room at me and my heart began to beat unevenly.

  "What has happened?"

  "All in good time," Rushton said tightly, gesturing to an empty seat. I flushed, for he did not normally speak so sharply to me.

  He opened his mouth, then shook his head as if thinking better of whatever he would have said. Instead he turned to the Healer guildmaster. "You'd better begin, Roland," he growled, flinging himself in a chair.

  "Elspeth, as you know, the gypsy you rescued is resisting healing," Roland said. "We cannot work against her body to force her to heal, and it is impossible to enter her mind to see why she will not heal since she has a natural mental barrier."

  "Are you saying she is dying?" I asked.

  "Right now, we are keeping her stable. However, if this goes on for much longer, she will die."

  "Maryon?" I said, turning to the tall woman. "What did you see in your futuretelling yesterday? What has the gypsy to do with Obernewtyn?"

  Rushton rose and began to pace about the room.

  The futureteller made a graceful gesture with her long fingers. "I saw many things. A journey over th' great water; a gray stone fortress wi' a Guanette bird flying o'er it." These words were spoken in a high oratory voice, but now Maryon dropped into a more normal voice, and its very flatness gave her words greater power. "I saw yon gypsy woman mun be returned safe to her people within a sevenday fer th' sake of Obernewtyn."

  "Seven days!" I cried, still groping to understand the undercurrents of tension in the room. Futuretellers often came up with obscure deeds they said must be performed for this reason or that, or for no reason at all that they would divulge. But this was the most dramatic I could remember since Maryon's insistence that we take the newly rescued Herder acolyte, Jik, on the expedition that had ended in his death.

  "Futuretellin' is nowt an exact study," Maryon said. "There is much to see which defies understandin'. But I did see that th' gypsy's people may be found in Sutrium."

  "Sutrium!" That was almost worse than not knowing. Sutrium was the biggest town in the Land, and the most dangerous, being the base of the main Councilcourt.

  Belatedly, I realized no one else had reacted to the mention of it and wondered why Rushton had not waited for me before telling what was to be told. It was not as if I had delayed coming, or had been difficult to find.

  "Given that they are gypsies, I dinna know how long her people will bide there," Maryon was saying. She shrugged. "All I can tell ye is that they are there now." She broke off suddenly and there was an awkward little silence.

  "Are we voting on whom to send with the gypsy?"

  "There will be no voting on this matter. You will take her," Rushton said tersely.

  I was genuinely astonished. Rushton had managed to convince the guildmerge to ban guildleaders from trips to the lowlands because there was too much risk. Now he commanded me like a novice to make a journey to the most oppressive city in the Land, with an unconscious gypsy fugitive!

  "I will impose a deepsleep seal on her," the Healer guildmaster said, in such a way that let me understand this had been discussed too. "It will slow down her heartbeat and her dying. Kella can remove the seal in Sutrium, just before you hand her over."

  "Why am I to take her?" I asked slowly.

  Rushton's green eyes stared into mine for a moment, then he turned to Maryon. "Tell her."

  The futureteller drew herself up to her considerable height. "Fer Obernewtyn's sake, Elspeth, th' gypsy mun be returned to her people. This was the futuretellin' fer which I sent to recall ye from the city under Tor. But yesterday when I fell into a second an' deeper trance, I learned another thing: You mun be th' one to take her back. Nowt fer Obernewtyn's sake, but fer yer own."

  "Mine?" I echoed.

  Maryon went on, her face grave. "Th' gypsy mun be delivered within a sevenday, Elspeth, fer th' sake of us all. But ye mun take her there fer yer own sake, fer by doin' so, you an' only you, will have th' chance to learn what the word swallow means. If ye fail, I have foreseen that ye'll die afore th' next Days of Rain."

  V

  On the side of the road were patches of scrub and a few of the immense white-trunked Ur trees that characterized lowland terrain, and which had grown in great profusion around my childhood home in Rangorn.

  I thought fleetingly of picking berries in their shade with my mother. Then I sighed and shook myself.

  "Elspeth, are ye still mad at me fer volunteerin' to come with ye?" Matthew asked in a low voice.

  I shook my head.

  I had wanted to go alone and had argued against a second expeditioner. Rushton had simply lifted his black brows in a mocking way to ask if I did not think four eyes would see more than two, even if those two were so very gifted. Enraged by his implication that I was motivated by conceit to want to go alone, I had been unable to think of a sensible counter-argument, and so the vote had gone against me. Of course he had deliberately goaded me to produce exactly that result

  In spite of mat, we had parted without anger. He had come to my chamber only hours before the dawn departure. I had seen from his eyes that he had not slept well, if at all.

  "Since you must go to Sutrium, I need to know how Brydda's allies have taken our offer of alliance," he had begun. "I had thought to hear from them sooner than this, so perhaps something is wrong. I wish I could deal with this myself, but it is not possible."

  Still bristling from having Matthew forced on me, I had felt he was hinting that I was incapable of doing what he asked, and my tone had been waspish.

  "I will make sure I find out"

  He had nodded absently, oblivious of my irritation. Without invitation, he sank into one of the chairs by my small fire. He looked fed up, as well he might at the knowledge that all of his planning and careful thought these long years past might fall awry, for the sake of a nameless gypsy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Yet he had not bemoaned the unfairness of fate or cursed the gypsy when he spoke. His mind had been on other things.

  "Of late, I have heard a number of rumors which suggest the rebels may be planning their rebellion against the Council for next year. Perhaps organizing that has simply taken precedence over our offer."

  I had been surprised enough to forget my anger. "Surely Brydda would tell us if his people were on the verge of open rebellion!"

  "He might keep bad news from us if they had rejected us as allies."

  Well, that was true enough. The anger had drained out of me. "You think they have decided against an alliance with us?"

  "I don't know and that is the problem," Rushton said. "I cannot plan without knowledge, and Domick has not supplied me with it."

  "Does it matter so much if they don't want us?" I had asked. "After all, the Council may never build a soldier-guard camp up here. Or, not for years anyway. There has been talk about it before, that came to nothing. And even if they really mean it this time, maybe we can coerce them against the idea."

  R
ushton had given me a somber look. "The Council must find us and it may be sooner than later. We do not yet have the strength to fight them alone, even less so if they are recruiting as heavily as reports would have it. But there is more at stake in this than keeping Obernewtyn safe from the Council. If we are to survive after this rebellion, we must ally ourselves with the rebels."

  There had been a touch of desperation in his tone.

  "But if they want to fight the Council without us, what does it matter?" I had asked. "If they fight and win, it would solve all of our problems, and if they fail, well... we would be no worse off than we are now."

  "If they fail, the Council will learn of us from them. If the rebels fight and win without us, we will have done nothing more than change oppressors. Worse, these oppressors will have intimate knowledge of us."

  I had stared blankly at him.

  He had looked across at me with haunted eyes. "I have told no one ... When I met Brydda's allies, they were very civil, but I did not need to be either empath or farseeker to recognize that they are not disposed to tolerate Misfits. They might not have shown their feelings so clearly had they realized I was a Misfit. I do not think they would make much distinction between us and ordinary Misfits," he added, with an emphasis that I had not understood. "But regardless of their attitude to Misfits, if we fight alongside them, we will have the protection of being their allies. They will not turn on us so easily then."

  "But what if you are right and they won't have us?" I had asked, frightened as much by the dejection in his manner as by bis words. I had been surprised to discover how much his determined will and belief that we would succeed gave me hope and confidence for the future. If he doubted...

  I had forced myself to speak when he made no response. "We can't make them accept us as allies."

  "We can and we will," Rushton had said, his voice suddenly harsh. "If they will not let us join them to fight the Council, then we will wait until they are on the verge of moving, and strike the first blow, forcing them to join us. That is why I need to know what they are up to.... "

  Rushton, Dameon and Ceirwan had seen us off, the gravity of the expedition at the last minute diverted by an hysterical tantrum on the part of the young empath-coercer, Dragon, whom we had rescued on a previous expedition. She had suddenly realized she would not be going with us and it had taken all of Dameon's empathy to prevent her flinging herself after us as the gypsy wagon pulled away in the gray mountain dawn.

  My last sight of Rushton had been of him frowning after me, arms folded across his chest.

  Thunder rumbled and I looked up at the lowering sky, wondering if we would reach Sutrium before the storm broke. We had not long passed Glenelg Mor with its sodden earth invisible beneath a veil of mist, fed by steam hissing endlessly from some subterranean source.

  I sent a brief command for Matthew to take up the reins, rather than letting them hang down loosely. "It will look odd if someone comes along and sees no one is steering the wagon."

  "Gypsy horses are trained to stay on the road while their owners sleep. Besides, who in their right minds would be out so late with a storm brewin'?" Matthew grumbled, but he did as I bade.

  A few minutes later a horse galloped around a bend behind us. I gave Matthew a pointed look, though in truth he was right about seldom meeting anyone on the road. He did not notice, because he was all agog at the sight of the exotic-looking, gold-skinned rider, wrapped in a purple cloak and bent low over the horse's neck.

  "That were one of them Sador tribesfolk," Matthew said excitedly, when the rider had thundered from sight around a bend in the road ahead. "I'm goin' to visit Sador someday." His eyes glowed at the thought.

  The road to the remote region with its nomadic inhabitants had been opened up in the last year, as the Black-lands taint along the western shore of the Land faded, allowing a slender, and some said dangerous, passage along the coast to the plain country.

  I sent a mental enquiry to the equine, Jaygar, who had volunteered to pull the wagon. The big roan gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. "Gahltha rides to see what is ahead/before us on the road. He thinks of yoursafety, Elspethlnnle."

  I sighed a little, knowing that everything Gahltha did these days was governed by concern for my safety. I had told him and Maruman of Maryon's prediction, half expecting them to deride it, but they had simply said that they would go with me and no amount of argument would shift them. They were determined to watch over me until the moment when, somehow, I was supposed to lead the beasts to freedom. Maruman was curled up by the gypsy inside the wagon.

  I asked Matthew how long Gahltha had been absent.

  "Nowt long. He won't go too far with you here."

  I ignored the questions implicit in his tone. There was no way of explaining Gahltha's transformation from a vicious human-hating fury into my devoted guardian, without relating the whole fantastic story of my deliverance from death by the Agyllian birds. It was Atthis who had called the black horse to carry me down from the high mountains, and whatever the ancient bird had said to keep him waiting through the long months of my convalescence had altered Gahltha completely. He had never spoken of it to me, but I guessed Atthis had played on the beasts' beliefs and legends to keep him there. Gahltha now believed utterly that I was to rescue beasts from their long slavery to humans. There had been endless whispered speculation among the younger Misfits since my return, as to what I had done to so change him.

  I sighed. Everything that had happened at the Agyllian ken was so long ago, it seemed dreamlike in my memory. If not for Gahltha, I would have thought it so. Maruman's talk of Atthis and a journey had made me think the old bird would call at long last. Instead, I had been caught up in yet another expedition and another futuretelling—this time Maryon's. What would have happened if I had left the gypsy to die on the stake? Would Obernewtyn now be doomed, or would some other set of events have arisen from it?

  I shook my head, sick of living my life at the directive of the vague whims of fate and futuretellers.

  In the dream I had experienced while concussed from the knife blow, Atthis had been dead. Perhaps the old bird really had died. She had been very frail. She might never call to me again. I might, in truth, spend my whole life waiting for a signal that would not come.

  Rushton had ended our dawn Council suggesting I say nothing of Maryon's prediction concerning myself to the general population of Obernewtyn. I had been only too glad to agree. Success would simply add to the myth surrounding me and, if I failed, it would not matter what had been predicted. Matthew had been told that the purpose of the journey was to return the gypsy to her people, so that we could learn more about them, and while in Sutrium, that we would inspect the safe house. But since the journey began, the farseeker had several times intimated that he suspected there was more to it than that. He was no fool.

  I glanced back over my shoulder to where the gypsy lay on one of the wooden pallet beds. Maruman was now curled fast asleep at her feet. He disliked wagon travel and had slept continuously since our early morning departure. Leaving very early and traveling without a break would bring us to Sutrium within a single day, leaving five complete days in which to track down the gypsy's people, perhaps six if we did not count the day on which Maryon had announced her futuretelling. She had said the time limit might simply imply urgency and the need for speed, rather than being literally seven days, but Rushton said we must take it as seven days, just in case it was exact.

  I turned my eyes to the gypsy's face. I judged her to be about forty years of age. Her features were too strong for beauty, but she was handsome and her hair was as black as my own. One sleeve had ridden up to reveal the pot-metal bracelet she wore pushed above her elbow. Since the rescue, I had scarcely thought of her as human. Unconscious, she had no personality. Remembering her courage on the stake, I hoped she would not die, for her sake as much as Obernewtyn's.

  Yet her stubborn resistance to healing had begun to take its toll. Despite Roland's sleepsea
l, there was an unhealthy pall to her skin.

  "She's nowt dead yet," Matthew said defiantly.

  I frowned at him. "Let's hope she lives until we get to Sutrium, and that we have no trouble getting her through the gates." I did not say: And let us return her safely to her people before the seven days stipulated by Maryon have passed.

  "We have papers," Matthew said.

  "Yes. False ones. But, Lud willing, the soldierguards will not have a description of her or me yet."

  The farseeker paled. As usual he had given no thought to the realities of the situation in his dreams of heroic deeds.

  "I wonder where th' gypsy that shot them arrows in Guanette rode to in such a rush. It's odd he nivver came back at all, dinna ye think?"

  I shrugged. "When we didn't appear, he probably thought we had been caught and killed. It's a pity we don't know where he went. That might help us return the gypsy more swiftly."

  "I dinna see him very well through the trees, but he were tall and well muscled. He had gray hair in a gypsy plait an' he were wearin' a blue shirt," Matthew said dreamily. Beyond his sloppy shielding I caught a glimpse of a vision in which a tall gypsy hero thanked us regally for the return of his companion.

  "There's no question of us chasing after this gypsy and just handing the woman over as if it were a public play," I said sharply.

  Matthew flushed and his shield slammed into place. "Ye said ye'd give her to her people, an he mun be one of them."

  "And so I will, but discreetly." If she lives, I thought. And if I can find them.

  "How far have we to go to Sutrium?" the farseeker asked.

  I shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I've only been along this road the once, when I was sent from Sutrium to Obernewtyn. I can remember vividly how frightened I was of what I would find at Obernewtyn, but I hardly remember the journey at all."

  It was little wonder I had been afraid. Rumors about Obernewtyn ranging from torture and gruesome experimentation to outright murder had abounded in the orphan home system and it had been common knowledge that the Obernewtyn Keeper, Madam Vega, paid over coin for newly charged young Misfits with unusual deviations. My sole desire had been to hide the true nature of my Misfit abilities from her. Ironic that, in the end, it was Madam Vega, in trying to murder Rushton, who had led me to discover the most fearsome of my Talents—the power to use my mind to kill.