The Sending Read online

  Gahltha slowed to a walk and chose a trail that soon brought us to the lip of a hollow filled with dense vegetation and very old, gnarled trees. Clearly the trail had once cut through the hollow, but it was so overgrown that I doubted anyone had used it in some time. Gahltha was on the verge of turning back when I heard the enticing clamour of water cascading over stones and suggested we find the source of the sound and stop for a drink. Obligingly, he pushed on, opening the old trail up with his bulk until we reached a small clearing in a knot of trees divided by a swift, narrow stream. I slid down onto the mossy bank and knelt to scoop water to my mouth. It was so cold that it made my hands and teeth ache. Sitting back on my heels once I had drunk my fill, I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them, wondering idly why water drunk from a stream always tasted sweet.

  ‘It is sweet because it is freerunning,’ Gahltha beastspoke me as he quenched his own thirst. His strength of mind and our closeness gave him easy access to my thoughts unless I consciously blocked him. He ventured a few steps into the stream and splashed at the clear water with one hoof and then with the other. I marvelled at the sight of his black shining form, half obscured by the spray of droplets he sent up and the steam rising from his hot body.

  As a younger horse Gahltha had developed a terror of water after being half drowned by a cruel human owner trying to break his spirit. Time and several sea journeys had forced him to conquer his fear but, being Gahltha, he never lost an opportunity to test himself.

  I looked up at the sky again and frowned. I had intended to ride higher up the mountain valley before doing what I had left Obernewtyn to do, but the storm clouds I had seen earlier were beginning to swell inexorably and the breeze had freshened. I rummaged in my bag for an apple I had filched from the kitchen and tossed it to Gahltha. He crunched the fruit with relish, looking around, ears pricked and nostrils quivering. I did not need to enter his thoughts to know that he was trying to scent the freerunning herd. I had never dared ask if he knew when and if Avra would return to Obernewtyn with their son. Indeed, it was quite likely that Gahltha had not asked her. He did not see himself as worthy of the freeborn mountain mare or of the wild herd, having been owned and broken in by humans.

  Sometimes I wondered if this was why he had accepted the charge of the mystic Agyllian birds to watch over me, why he had become Daywatcher to the Seeker. Any purpose was better than none.

  My stomach growled and I took out a spiced bun and settled my back against the pale, smooth trunk of a single ur tree growing alongside the stream, for I did not wish to be distracted from my purpose by a rumbling belly. The sun shone, but it was cool enough that I pulled my coat closed and turned up the collar before I relaxed. I watched a glistening thread of spider silk drift past my nose and snag on the grass. Somewhere near, a bird burst into ecstatic song, perhaps sensing as I did that the bright day would soon cloud over.

  As the tranquillity of the little glade settled into me, the band of pain around my head finally eased. The breeze caused a tendril of hair to tickle my cheek and even as I reached up to push it behind my ear, I shivered at a memory of Rushton doing the same thing. Rather than indulging in the memory, which would only lead to more memories and more longing, I closed my eyes and steered my thoughts into the creation of a probe attuned to Maruman’s mind. Once formed, I sent it down the valley to Obernewtyn – first to the house and then through the numerous outbuildings and extensive grounds. Of course I had searched them already but probes created away from distraction and human settlements were always stronger, and their strength increased when I was on higher ground than the object I was seeking.

  I knew that Maruman might be asleep, and it was notoriously difficult to locate a sleeping mind unless you knew exactly where it was, harder still with Maruman, whose damaged and distorted mind was always hard to find. In truth, I was relying upon the fact that, even in sleep, if I touched his mind, Maruman would feel me and instinctively open himself to me.

  I paid particular attention to all of the old cat’s favourite sleeping places, but when the probe failed to give the slightest quiver, I sent it through the main gate of Obernewtyn and down the road that ran through the pass to the highlands. I could not scry beyond the pass for it and the mountains rearing up either side of it were streaked with enough residual Beforetime poisons to inhibit Talent. Once I might have used the Zebkrahn machine to penetrate the blocking static of the tainted ground, but it was no longer as effective as it had once been since one of its tiny parts had burned out. The teknoguilder Reul, who had made Beforetime computermachines his area of study, had told me regretfully that we had not the knowledge to repair it nor the tools to create the broken piece anew.

  I ran my probe over a number of new buildings that had been erected just above the pass in the hope that they might find tenants once Obernewtyn officially became a settlement. I doubted there would ever be more than minimal traffic in such a remote region of the Land. Or perhaps, I thought wryly, that was what I hoped. Finding no sign of the old cat, I brought the probe back up the valley, moving it in a tight pattern from one side to the other. I came to the steep foothills on the western side of the long valley, where the Teknoguild had created a garden inside a honeycomb of caves fed by hot springs. It had not yet endured a mountain winter, but given the immense fertile forest that grew miraculously in a cavern deep under the subterranean Beforetime complex on the west coast, I did not doubt that a wintergarden was possible.

  As ever when admiring human ingenuity, I could not help but acknowledge that, knifelike, the power had two edges: it had enabled the Beforetimers to conceive of a forest growing under the earth, but it had also led them to create weaponmachines powerful enough to destroy their world. I always wondered if we had learned from the Beforetimers’ mistakes to temper our imagination with enough humility to make us think twice before we set out to change the world to suit our desires. Of course the creation of a wintergarden was unlikely to cause any harm, but perhaps the Beforetimers had felt the same about some of the things they created.

  I withdrew from the cave gardens without bothering to dip into the minds of the teknoguilders working there. If any of them had seen Maruman, I would be informed of it soon enough.

  I sent the probe further up the valley until I came to the high, jagged peaks that were the end of a great, thick chain of mountains running away across the vast landmass of which the Land and Sador were the smallest untainted parts. I lingered briefly over the hot springs bubbling up into pools at the feet of the mountains, remembering the times Rushton and I had ridden up to bathe there. My probe would go no further for it could not penetrate the taint-streaked mountains that were regarded as the outer border of the Land. One could wind a crooked trail on a horse and go higher, and I knew there were clean places much deeper in the mountains, for the mystic Agyllian birds lived there in high eyries, but there was no way to reach them, save to fly. Once I had been carried there near dead with infection, and it was after my body had been taught to heal itself that the Agyllian Elder Atthis told me it was my destiny to find and destroy the weaponmachines responsible for the holocaust that ended the Beforetime.

  ‘Long ago … I dreamed one would be born among the funaga, a seeker to cross the black wastes in search of the deathmachines, one who possessed the power to destroy them … you,’ Atthis whispered in my memory.

  Was it possible that Maruman had gone to the Agyllians? I wondered suddenly. As well as making him one of my guardians, the birds had often used him as a messenger, yet it was hard to imagine the irascible old feline submitting to the indignity of being carried in a net, and why would the Agyllians bother summoning him when they had never before needed physical contact to reach his strange mind?

  Abandoning my search I reeled the probe back in. It took time but simply allowing it to rebound would have left me with another headache. Opening my eyes at last, I saw that the shadows of the surrounding trees now striped the clearing. Overhead, black storm clouds filled half the sk
y, though beams of pale sunlight still shafted down through their tattered edges.

  ‘Maruman is not a tame cat,’ Gahltha beastspoke me mildly as I got stiffly to my feet. I grimaced, knowing I had been foolish to imagine that the black stallion would suppose I had been sleeping.

  ‘I know he is not tame,’ I sent. ‘I just don’t understand why he tells me that the oldOnes want me to come back to Obernewtyn immediately, and then he disappears the minute we get here without explaining what I am meant to do.’

  In truth, when the old cat had vanished the night I had returned from Sador with him and Gahltha, I had assumed he was revenging himself on me for leaving him in Saithwold. Never mind that I had been carried away unwillingly aboard a Herder ship, there was no excuse as far as Maruman was concerned. I was the Seeker, Elspethlnnle, and he and Gahltha were my protectors, the Daywatcher and Moonwatcher. I should never have allowed myself to be parted from them.

  ‘Perhaps the oldOnes wanted no more than that you should return to the barud,’ Gahltha suggested.

  ‘But why bring me back here to do nothing?’ I demanded, exasperated.

  ‘Nothing?’ Gahltha echoed blandly.

  I laughed despite myself. ‘All right, I have been busy, but surely the Agyllians did not summon me back to Obernewtyn to sort out Misfit affairs?’ Even as I said the words, I wondered if that was the reason. Long ago atop her mountain eyrie, the Agyllian Elder Atthis had told me that my role at Obernewtyn was as important in its own way as the fulfilment of my quest as the Seeker. I had never understood how the fate of Obernewtyn could be as important as the fate of a whole world, but like the futuretellers, the mystic birds saw much that they did not tell.

  ‘Well, there is plenty of time for me to sort things out here, before we leave for the Red Land,’ I told Gahltha. ‘What worries me is that Marumanyelloweyes may be ill / hurt. He is not a young cat …’

  ‘I would not say that to his face,’ Gahltha warned seriously.

  I sighed, for I did not like to think of Maruman’s age any more than he did. He was no longer a kitten when I met him during my time in the Kinraide orphan home, and sometimes it frightened me to think how old he might be. I always comforted myself with the thought that his life had not been easy and he was simply battle-scarred. But therein lay a greater fear. Something – either a traumatic birth or a later event – had caused terrible damage to the cat’s mind, leaving him prone to fits and fey states, when he would wander, half in a dream, never knowing where he went and scarcely remembering to eat or drink. In such a state he had more than once ended up on tainted ground, though not so tainted that it did him permanent harm.

  What if, this time, he had stumbled onto badly tainted ground?

  To distract myself from the bleak turn of my thoughts, I got out the gourd bottle of cider and the rest of the food I had brought with me. I ate another spiced bun and shared a second apple with Gahltha, accepting that one more attempt to find Maruman had failed. I resolved glumly to ask the futuretellers to scry out Maruman’s whereabouts. Once I knew where he was, I could send the coercer-knights to get him. The knights had bound themselves to serve the master of Obernewtyn unquestioningly, or in this case, the temporary mistress, and they would just have to face the old cat’s wrath.

  ‘As will we,’ Gahltha sent ruefully.

  I said nothing, for the thought of having to consult the futuretellers filled me with a different kind of anxiety. Indeed, this whole expedition had been an attempt to evade the need to face the Futuretell guildmistress, Maryon, whom I had been avoiding since my return from Sador. Aside from the fact that she seldom gave a clear answer to a question, Maryon’s visions often addressed something other than the thing you had come to ask, usually the very thing you wanted least to talk about.

  As I mounted Gahltha, I decided the worst of it was the knowledge that the Futuretell guildmistress had probably already foreseen my coming to her, and would be expecting me.

  2

  I was barely back in my turret room above the Farseeker wing of Obernewtyn before there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Enter,’ I called, repressing a sigh.

  Ceirwan came in carrying an armful of wood. “Tis colder than it has been an’ I thought ye mun want a bit of a fire tonight.’ I grunted an assent, having no wish to talk, but as he knelt to lay the fire, the guilden said, ‘I’ll have some food brought up, since ye missed nightmeal.’

  It was not quite a reproach. I told the Farseeker guilden firmly that I was not hungry, and bade him inform the futuretellers I would be waiting upon their guildmistress on the morrow.

  ‘Ye’ll ask Maryon if Rushton is on his way up fer th’ moon fair?’ Ceirwan asked, watching the fire crackle to life.

  ‘Rushton will return when he returns,’ I said coolly. ‘I mean to ask the futuretellers about Maruman. I am worried about him.’

  There was a little silence and I did not need to read the guilden’s mind to know that he was trying to decide whether he should apologise for mentioning Rushton. Like many others, he had witnessed the cold brusqueness with which the master of Obernewtyn had treated me the last time he had been in the mountains, and now imagined I was dreading his return. If I did not so dislike speaking of emotional matters, I would have told him that Rushton had never ceased loving me, that he had behaved as he had done because he had been tortured and manipulated by Ariel into seeing me as his enemy.

  A grim picture rose in my mind of the dark, echoing Beforetime compound under Ariel’s residence on Norseland where I had sat on a cold floor holding a bloody and battered Rushton in my arms.

  ‘Elspeth?’ Ceirwan asked, his dark-blue eyes compassionate.

  I mastered myself, and managed to say calmly, ‘Light the lanterns for me, will you? Perhaps I could eat something.’

  The guilden looked pleased. ‘Ye might have a slice of the loaf that Freya just baked. It is very good.’

  ‘Freya cooked?’ I asked in surprise, for the kitchen master’s possessiveness of his kitchens was as well known as his choleric temperament.

  Ceirwan grinned. ‘Javo was nowt happy with the idea of someone cooking what they liked in his kitchen until Freya pointed out that her Talent would make all of his workers better at their jobs. Which of course it did. Not a pot was burned nor a sauce spoiled all afternoon.’ He smiled. ‘She dinna have to do anything to help people wi’ her Talent, ye ken. She just has to be around.’

  ‘Why does she want to cook?’ I asked. I did not mind preparing food when I was on expeditions away from Obernewtyn, but I would never actively seek out the task.

  The guilden shrugged. ‘She used to cook for her father afore she came here. She says it is as much an art as singin’ in its way.’ He paused and then began to stoke the fire. ‘We have been thinkin’ that we might build a little cottage just outside the walls of Obernewtyn once we have bonded. Freya could have her own garden an’ kitchen.’

  I stared at him. ‘Live somewhere other than Obernewtyn?’ I asked.

  He flushed a little and did not speak again until he had lit the lantern hanging on a hook by the mantelpiece. Then he straightened and met my eyes. ‘We would still be part of Obernewtyn.’ He moved to the lamp on the bedside table and added, ‘Ye ken others will do the same once Obernewtyn becomes a settlement.’

  I nodded, feeling bleak at the realisation that, yet again, things were about to change. I wished it did not feel like the end of something, rather than the beginning. Then I reminded myself that I had no right to reject the idea of change when I would soon enough have to leave it all behind me.

  After Ceirwan had gone, I moved to the fire and held my hands out to its crackling warmth. It had not rained that afternoon, despite the lowering storm clouds, but a strong wind had begun to blow and the ride back down the valley had been a cold one. I felt a stab of sadness at the thought that this might be the last autumn I would see at Obernewtyn, and I ran my eyes around the turret room, wondering if I loved it as much as I did because it had once be
en Rushton’s, or because it was the first place I had been able to call my own since Jes and I had been dragged from our home to witness the burning of our parents. The first time I had seen the turret room had been the day I had tried to flee from Obernewtyn and the sinister Alexi, only to be caught by Rushton. Instead of turning me over to Alexi and Madam Vega, he had brought me here and offered to help me get away, revealing that he was more than a simple farm overseer. Of course I had not suspected that he was also the rightful heir to Obernewtyn.

  The only thing the room lacked was Maruman. How empty it felt without the old cat lying on the sill or bed, and his occasional acerbic utterances.

  ‘Where are you, Marumanyelloweyes?’ I asked aloud.

  Sighing, I began to unbraid my hair, crossing to the table by the bed where I kept my brush and comb. I noticed that a flat package had been left on the end of the table nearest the door. Setting aside the comb, I unwrapped it to find a slim Beforetime book with a note bearing the seal of the Teknoguildmaster Garth. I drew a breath of anticipation, knowing that this must be the journal that had been found in Jacob Obernewtyn’s grave. Maryon had commanded that the Beforetimer’s grave be opened, but instead of finding his desiccated bones inside, the Teknoguild diggers had found a journal and a plast suit. Those who had read the journal discovered that Jacob Obernewtyn had put it and the plast suit into the crypt before leaving Obernewtyn to travel across the high mountains into the deadly Blacklands beyond. The journal was his, scribed in the year leading up to his journey.