The Sending Read online

  I looked into her grey eyes and found I could not lie to one who had endured so much. In the privacy of her mind I told her, ‘It has been foretold that one day I will leave Obernewtyn and the Land and not return. I have told this to no one but it may be that when I leave to go to the Red Land, I will not return.’

  ‘I will keep your secret,’ she promised. ‘But many things seers see do not transpire as the words of a foretelling would have us imagine.’

  Elkar glanced at us, seeming to know we were communicating. Or maybe Cinda had signalled him to that effect. She and the other shadows had developed a complex means of communicating by gesture, even as Brydda had done with his horse, and Elkar had learned the shadow language in order to communicate with Cinda and her sisters under the noses of his masters.

  ‘You will not return to the west coast?’ I asked aloud of Cinda, for she and her brother had been stolen away from their homes there as small children by the Herder priests, and throughout her long and dreadful captivity on Herder Isle, she had dreamed of returning.

  Her eyes grew sad as she spoke inside her mind to me, moving the fingers of her free hand to echo her conversation in gesture so as to include Elkar. ‘We have just returned from Port Oran these sevendays past, where we tried to find some trace of my home and my family. It has all gone. My mother died of the plague years back, and my poor father drank himself to death. One old woman who knew them told me he truly died of grief when I and my brother were taken, and the man who drank was a mere shadow of our father. I have an aunt but my muteness makes her uneasy. Nor does she like to think of what was done to me. She has two sons who were born after I was taken but I am a stranger to them and strangers live in the house where I and my brother were born.’

  ‘High Chieftain Gwynedd promised a house and a plot of land to any shadow or ex-novice who wanted to live on the west coast,’ I said aloud, for Elkar’s sake. ‘I am sure he can arrange for the strangers to be housed elsewhere so that you can be restored to your parents’ cottage.’

  She nodded. ‘I am sure he would, but a home is more than a house. I realised it when I saw the other family living there. Without my dear mother and father and my brother to share it with me, it was just a house. There is nothing left for me in the Westland, but I have people I care about in the Norselands, and who care for me – Mouse and Master Sabatien; Helvar and Lark; Ursa, who has become like a sister to me. They all understand …’ Her image gestured to her mouth.

  ‘So you will stay on Herder Isle?’ I asked, wondering that she could bear to live where she had been mutilated and enslaved for most of her life.

  ‘I will not stay in the Herder city,’ she assured me. ‘I will live on Fallo.’ Fallo was the smaller island that had once been part of Herder Isle, and which was now reconnected to the larger portion by an isthmus formed by the destroyed wall of the Herder complex. ‘That is where Elkar belongs, and I belong with him. He is the home of my heart.’

  Her eyes sought his and her fingers fluttered. With perfect naturalness, he bent to kiss her on the mouth. Then he straightened and said to me, ‘I go each day to the black city which some would call Hevon after that long-ago Norse city destroyed by the Herders. I am working with your teknoguilders and others to bring out the books buried in vaults. Some are in ill repair and others are damaged by damp but we are trying to save as many as we can for the new library we are building. It will also house the books being sent across from the cloister overlooking Fryddcove on Norseland.’

  ‘The priests of Fryddcove cloister opened the gates?’ I asked, remembering that they had locked themselves inside their cloister, refusing to surrender to the newly crowned King Gwynedd.

  Elkar nodded, grinning. ‘It turned out they had a whole library of books there, stored in barrels. Per Vallon decided we might as well have all the books in one place, so ships were bringing them across to Herder Isle until the weather got too bad. The rest will be brought over next spring. By then the new library will be completed. The Hedra are building it,’ he added with a glimmer of triumph.

  ‘And the books you brought here?’

  ‘A gift to Obernewtyn,’ Elkar said. ‘Many are books that were brought to our islands by the original thirty-nine Herders shipwrecked on Herder Isle. Harwood says you have Misfits who have learned to decipher the ancient codes of the Beforetimers. There are also two books with maps that may be of some use on the Red Land expedition.’

  ‘I look forward to seeing them,’ I said. ‘It sounds as if life is busy in the Norselands.’

  He nodded. ‘I love the work I am doing, though it does not leave much time to build the home I promised Cinda. But Ursa is doing a good deal of the building, with my father’s help. She will live with us, so it will be her house, too. Cinda and my mother are making a garden of such beauty that it will take your breath away.’

  The knowledge that I would never see their house or garden saddened me, but Cinda, feeling my regret, responded by promptly imagining a sunlit garden with tiny wending streams and ponds and great banks of flowers. I could even smell the scents of the sea and the flowers and hear the whirring of insects and the distant thunder of waves breaking on the beach. Then the garden vanished.

  Seeing my dazed expression, Elkar burst out laughing. ‘I can guess my Cinda is showing you her garden. Sover and Harwood look just like this when she shows them something! Harwood said she may not be Talented, but that her imagination is strong enough to be called a Talent in its own right.’ Then he sobered and said almost fiercely, ‘I truly do not know how to thank you for all you have done for us.’

  I shook my head and said firmly, ‘You must stop this. I was only there by chance, and took part in the end of a struggle that you began; you and Cinda and Sabatien and the others, Elkar. No one gave you freedom. You won it.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘We did little more than talk and dream until you came, Lady Elspeth. We were like a fire set, without a match to light it. None of us ever thought of the shadows fighting, not even me. It was you who ignited hope in them and they who fired us. And I do not believe for a moment that your coming was by chance. Too much came of it! We all agree. Lark wanted to come and thank you on his father’s behalf, but Helvar told him he must spend every second he can in training if he is to go with Oma as cabin boy on the journey to the Red Land.’

  ‘So it is definite that Oma will master the Stormdancer?’ I asked, picturing the big Norse seaman with his scarred face and unusual dark side braids.

  ‘The Pers insist it cannot be Helvar,’ Elkar said. ‘Indeed, I have heard Per Vallon say that King Gwynedd ought to have named Helvar kinehelt and he means to propose it when the king visits us next.’

  Kinehelt meant king’s hand, I remembered.

  ‘Gutred says she will leave him if he becomes kinehelt, for already he is away from home so much she is in danger of forgetting his face,’ Cinda told me, her image laughing. Her fingers flickered as she shared the joke with Elkar.

  We fell silent as we entered the kitchen, which was full of warmth and talk and shouts of laughter all rising on a delicious smell comprised of baking bread and hot porridge. Javo and his whole host were out in force preparing food and serving it to the ravenous travellers and the atmosphere was so boisterous and lively that it was hard to believe it was the middle of a stormy night.

  I led Cinda and Elkar to a table by a wall in one of the dining alcoves where there was a little fireplace, belatedly realising I had not offered them a change of dry clothes, but hearing my thought, Cinda said it did not matter a bit. ‘It is so warm in here our clothes will dry in no time.’

  ‘Tell me what happened to make the priests give up and open the gates in Fryddcove?’ I said aloud.

  ‘Hunger, just as King Gwynedd predicted,’ Elkar answered succinctly. ‘In a way it was good they had not come out at once because the rage people felt after the deaths that had occurred during the fighting had faded enough for everyone to remember that it was not the priests inside the clois
ter on Norseland who had done the killing. Instead of seeing terrible Herder priests when the doors opened, they saw very old men, most of whom had been sent there in the first place from Herder Isle because the members of the inner cadre regarded them as unsound. Which is to say, they were not brutal or ruthless enough to satisfy their superiors.’

  ‘So what happened to them?’ I asked.

  Elkar shrugged. ‘Most were allowed to remain in the cloister, though the gates have been removed. They are too old to serve as labourers, though they were bidden to grow their own food now that there is no more forced tithing. But their gardening skills are so poor and most of them so old and decrepit that they would have starved if Per Vallon had not suggested they offer lessons in scribing and reading in exchange for food and other necessities. These days the cloister serves as a teaching centre on Norseland, though the best students will have to come to Herder Isle for more advanced lessons and to have access to the library.’

  I suppressed a scowl, thinking it too mild a punishment. The priests on Norseland may not have had much power, but they had known about children being taken from their homes and forced to become priests or slaves. They had certainly known of Ariel’s vile experimentation and his treatment of the shadows. In my mind they were no less guilty than the priests on Herder Isle for having failed to do something about it. Given my way, I would have razed every cloister to the ground, and sent every priest to the Councilfarms to years of hard labour. But how could I voice these bitter thoughts in the face of Elkar’s mild compassion despite their own suffering?

  Unaware of my dark thoughts, Elkar went on, ‘Sabatien has work details of Hedra preparing a building alongside the new library that will serve as a great teaching centre. Both buildings are being constructed where the Hedra armoury once stood, and the training ground is being transformed into a garden. With the wall down all along that side of the city, both the library and teaching centre will have magnificent views of the Girdle Road. That is what we are calling the road that has been built over the fallen rubble that now links the main part of Herder Isle and the green wilderness of Fallo. Sabatien has the Hedra workers building a footpath that will run up from the end of the Girdle Road between the library and the teaching centre into the newly made gardens in that part of the city. He wants to call that entrance the Gate of Knowledge.’

  ‘A good name,’ I murmured, impressed with the older man’s vision. ‘I assume the Hedra workers are closely watched?’

  ‘There are Norse overseers watching them work, and they sleep and eat in their old barracks and are locked in each night,’ Elkar said. ‘Harwood also randomly checks their minds to be sure they are not plotting and he is training those Norselanders who have shown coercive or empathic Talents to help him. But since all of the Hedra and the ordinary Faction priests were given the choice of being transported to the mainland to work off shorter sentences on Councilfarms or of staying to work as labourers in the Norselands, I think it unlikely those who chose to stay would plot against us.’

  ‘Some may well dream that the Herder Faction will rise again.’

  ‘They can dream as they like so long as they do not plot insurrection or sedition, for Harwood would see it, and having chosen to stay, they are now subject to Norse laws in these matters. The penalty for plotting against the king is transportation and exile to the black coasts.’

  ‘A death sentence.’

  ‘Exactly. And they would be fools to break faith with us, since they have only to serve out their sentences then they will be permitted to build a cottage and live as free men.’

  ‘It is better than they deserve,’ I said, and heard the coldness in my voice.

  Elkar shrugged. ‘It might be different if all of the Hedra captains and inner cadre Herder priests had not been taken to the mainland. Those remaining had little power even when the Faction ruled, and remember most were originally taken by the Herders when they were children and forced into the order. They adapted because death or slavery was the only other choice, but if you saw them now, contentedly working alongside the Norselanders, you would wonder how the Faction ever came to have power. There was so little joy or gain in it even for those who reached its heights. The more I think on this, the more curious I become about what your teknoguilders will discover once they read those tomes the first Herders brought to our lands.’

  ‘What of the mine shadows?’

  Elkar’s expression changed. ‘Some have already died and more than half of the rest are in the Healing Centre. But they are free, and they are being cared for and have such pleasures and comforts as we can offer them, as the heroes and victims they are. Some of the other shadows serve the healers as best they can, and ironically they work alongside the Herders who were healers under Faction rule. Many of the Herder healers have willingly remained at the Centre, though most were pardoned by our council because they had always done what they could to help those who were the victims of their masters. They all but worship Sover, who says he is a healer these days far more than he ever was a coercer. I carried a missive from him to the mistress of the Healing Centre in Sutrium, asking her to send trained healers and especially those with knowledge of physical healing and of herb lore, that they might teach Norselanders their skills. In exchange he offered to teach them new ways in which empathy can be used in healing. He sent another missive for the Empath guildmaster asking that empaths be sent to Herder Isle to train with the healers. I have yet to deliver it, however, for Guildmaster Dameon travels in the west coast.’

  It was a blow to hear that Dameon was still in the west, but I hid my disappointment and said, ‘If you leave it with me, I will see that he gets it when he returns to Obernewtyn. But tell me more of this new use of empathy in healing.’

  Elkar frowned, gathering his thoughts. ‘Well, there are many shadows and novices and more than a few priests and soldierguards whose minds were damaged by what was done to them, and by what they saw or did during the time the Faction ruled. As Sover’s healing abilities work best with mental wounds, the healing of the mentally damaged fell to him. He discovered that a combination of empathy and coercive skills used in tandem with traditional healing Talent would serve where any of those things alone would fail. What he would like, though, is to have healers who are both coercers and empaths.’ He grimaced. ‘I am putting it too simply but I am not an empath or a healer.’

  I shook my head absently, somewhat startled to realise that, despite the slightness of his empathic talent, Sover had developed enough control over it to be called an enthraller. I wondered if he really meant to try to teach empaths to be coercers and vice versa and if it were possible. That he had begun to use what had always been a Talent so slight he had barely acknowledged it, suggested it was possible. We had always tended to see Talents as fixed, and the combination of coercion and empathy was rare, but coercion did use the same root Talent as healing and futuretelling. Was it possible that Sover would suggest Talents possessing that root ability should be trained to use it in two ways? Certainly this was what enthrallers did, though I had never quite seen it in that light before. It had been suggested at one long-ago guildmerge, but we had all agreed the usages were too different to allow a mind to encompass both.

  ‘What of Mouse?’ I asked, my thoughts shifting to the little bright-eyed boy whom the mine shadows had hidden from the brutal Herder priests.

  The Norselander looked sad. ‘The lad will not grow to manhood, of course, but he is content to be with his father and with Terka, who cared for him and hid him from the Herders. He tells me without fear that Terka will go ahead into death before him, and wait for him in the darkness with a lamp to light their way. He has a great capacity for happiness.’ Elkar’s eyes were bright and he swallowed before he could go on. ‘It is very hard for Sabatien, I think, because he believes he ought to have found some other way to protect the boy. I think I would feel the same, were I him, but I doubt there was any other way, truly.’

  Elkar began talking of the shadows w
ell enough to live outside the Healing Centre. Surprisingly, most had chosen to remain within the city, where they dwelt in the same cottages that had once housed the inner cadre of the Faction.

  ‘No one would deny them the right to live in the best houses the city has; they have suffered so. But you would not believe what they have done with what they claimed,’ Elkar said. ‘Once it was agreed they might stay there, they asked Sabatien to have the Hedra tear down the enclosing wall and day by day the greenness and fruitfulness that was once kept only for the inner cadre flows out into the rest of the city.’

  ‘It must be wondrous, for I heard High Chieftain Gwynedd say that he is thinking of changing the name from Hevon City to Greenheart,’ said a familiar voice.

  7

  I turned in surprise to see the Farseeker ward, Zarak, who had been in the lowlands since my return to Obernewtyn. His father, Khuria, had recently become the first Misfit chieftain of a region, following the sudden death of the old chieftain of Saithwold, Noviny, whom Khuria had served and counted a friend.

  ‘Zarak! Did you come up with the others?’

  ‘I did, Guildmistress. I was in Sutrium delivering a message from my father to High Chieftain Dardelan about the supplies Saithwold province will tithe to the Red Land expedition. When I realised a party was setting out for Obernewtyn that very day, I decided to come with them. I meant to be here in time fer th’ moon fair anyway, and it is safer to be one of many with the gangs seeming to know when any Misfit is on the road.’

  He switched his gaze to Cinda and Elkar and asked if he might bring them porridge when he fetched his own. Watching him, it suddenly struck me that I was seeing him as a man for the first time. Before, I had regarded him as the troublesome youth whom I had reluctantly allowed to join the Farseekers guild, after he had been some time a beastspeaker. He had made his first choosing out of love and loyalty to his father, who was also a beastspeaker, but his Talents had been equally matched by his propensity for getting himself into trouble. I had sometimes wondered if it would not have been better to leave him in the Beastspeaking guild under the guidance of his father, but Ceirwan had convinced me that giving him responsibilities instead of treating him like a child would force him to grow up.