The Red Queen Read online

  “I consoled myself with the thought that we must have been chosen for a reason, though when Analivia told me what she had seen, I wondered what possible use I could be given what you must do.” He smiled diffidently and then shifted back to his original seat.

  No doubt my emotions were troubling him. Certainly they were troubling me. All of the cool certainty and purpose that had brought me this far seemed suddenly to have crumbled to ash, leaving me vulnerable and open.

  I looked at Analivia.

  Atthis had told Maruman before she died that I would learn what I needed to know from those I met in the Valley of the Skylake. I had assumed I would get it from the wolves, but now I was not so sure. “Tell me about your dream of Sentinel. Did you see where it is and how I am to go there? Did it speak of what I am to do with the devices and messages I have gathered?”

  “Better to call it a nightmare than a dream,” Analivia said in a somber tone. “I dreamed it a lot of times for a while when I was young, and there was more to it each time. That first time, I saw only a terrible vision of a land laid waste, everyone dead, all of it Blacklands. I thought I was true-dreaming of the Great White but the next time I dreamed it, I flew farther and saw other lands, and they were all burned and blackened and dead, too. Night after night I dreamed of deserts of black sand and lakes burning with witch-fires. I saw forests of trees made of black glass, bare hills littered with bones that lay bleaching in the sun, oceans black with foulness. Night after night, whichever direction I took, I saw death.” There was a long moment when she visibly drew herself from the dark vision she had woven for all of us, and then she met my eyes.

  “I did not have the nightmare for some years after that, but it came to me again when I found out my father and Moss had not died escaping from the Councilfarm. I was not surprised, for men like that do not die meekly. I wondered if there was not some connection between my father and my nightmare. Since the time the nightmares started when I was a child, I had heard him talk with his cronies of finding Beforetime weapons powerful enough to strike terror into the hearts of Herders and rebels alike, the threat of which would ensure obedience and stabilize the power of the Council, which is to say, his power, since he was its master.”

  I nodded for her to continue.

  She shrugged. “You were right in guessing I went looking for my father and Moss. I rode down to the lowlands and camped in the forest near Sawlney, intending the next day to go into town and confront Jude. But that night, the dream came again, only there was one difference. This time a voice spoke, saying that what I had seen was a possible future but that it would not come to pass at the hands of my father or brother and that there was only one person who could stop it. Then I saw a vision of you riding through the mist with a cat on your shoulder and a dog at your heels. It shocked me, not because it was you, but because when my father first sent Moss and Bergold up to hold land for him, I dreamed of a woman riding through the mist, with a cat on her shoulder and a dog following, but her face was hidden. That time a voice spoke to me, too, as I watched the unknown woman ride away into the mist, warning me that I must take care I did not stand by and watch harm done, for to do so was an evil as great as if I had done it myself. At the time, I took the voice as that of my own conscience because I had become accustomed to turning my mind and eyes from the evils done by my father and brother. I saw at once that volunteering to go with Bergold had been simply another means of turning my eyes away. It was the next day that my brother and I came upon you and some of your companions by the road close to my brother’s orchard.”

  “That’s why you stopped the soldierguard from whipping me!” I said.

  She nodded. “The man who would have whipped you had been foisted on us by my father and he was a sadistic brute. I made my brother stop him hurting you, though I had not acted to prevent a wrong in many years. That defiance salved a sickness that I had not even known was growing in me, and from that day, I began to hone my small healing skills and to right such wrongs as I could.” Her eyes met mine. “Can you imagine how it felt to see the dream that had changed my life again and this time to know that the face of the woman who had been hidden was the face of the very first person I rescued after dreaming it, never knowing they were one and the same? And then to discover that you were the person who could prevent the destruction I had dreamed of …” She shook her head. “It was like one of those moon fair knots you could get in Sutrium when I was a girl, where you can never find the beginning.” She stood up restlessly and tossed her fair head. “All my life, before the dream of the woman riding in the mist, I had done what I had been required to do—out of fear of my father to begin with, and then out of wariness and hatred of them or out of love and worry for Bergold. The dream gave me the courage to act and so I did. Then the Council and the Herders fell and all that needed winning seemed won, yet something in me said there was some greater thing that life required of me, if I could but discover it. Then I saw your face in my dream outside Sawlney and the voice said you were the only one who could stop my nightmare from coming true but that you needed my help. I understood that all of the battles I had fought were preparation for some greater battle.”

  “Did the voice tell you then to come here?” I asked.

  “It bade me go into the high mountains beyond Obernewtyn at darkmoon, for there I would find someone who would also be seeking you and who would lead me to you. So I came back and told my brother that we were going to Obernewtyn for the moon fair. I knew I could not leave him without protection where our father could find him, so I convinced him to go ahead with servants, bringing the makings of a stall and produce from the orchards to sell and a missive for Garth. In it, I asked that he be housed at Obernewtyn until I returned. I sent all of our coin in a sealed pot, saying to my brother that it was a gift to Garth. The missive asked Garth to use it to set my brother up in some small business in the new shire and to watch over him. In payment for his trouble I offered a scroll I had found that he had desired since I first showed it to him.”

  “You can imagine my surprise,” Swallow said, taking up the tale smoothly, “when I rode away from Obernewtyn, headed for the High Mountains, to come upon a woman who turned out to be the very person Rushton believed you had gone seeking in the lowlands. I asked where she was bound and she gave me the sharp edge of her tongue for my impertinence and bade me be on my way.” He laughed and gave Analivia a teasing smile.

  She shook her head but laughed softly. “We talked at odds and in riddles for a little, until I got sick of it and demanded to know if he knew where you were.”

  “It was cleverly done,” Swallow approved. “For it could have been merely an ordinary query, but to one who had dreamed of voices, it suggested she might be another dreamer.”

  “So you came here together and found the others?” I asked.

  “We arrived first but it was not until the others came that I had the nightmare again, only it was part of a different dream,” Analivia said. “There was a young cat in it very like to the old cat that you brought here with you, but the dream was not about you. It was a past-dream and the cat was sleeping in the arms of an older woman with very pale skin. It must have been hurt because its head was bandaged. With them was a gypsy girl but both of them had long dark hair and they wore Beforetime clothes. They were in a small dim room looking at a computermachine that was showing them visions of the very same desolation I had seen, over and over in my nightmare.

  “The older woman said that if the Seeker who would come failed in her quest, all that remained of the battered world would be destroyed. The gypsy girl said they must prepare all that the Seeker would need to locate Sentinel and make sure it could never be used to bring upon the world a greater and more final doom than they had endured. Then she shivered and said it was hard to believe there was anywhere left that was green and clean, seeing what they were seeing. But the older woman said her visions had shown there were such places left and that Obernewtyn was one of them, but they h
ad been of little interest to anyone and so there were no pictures of them. The younger woman asked how she could think of going back to Obernewtyn, knowing everyone would be dead, even Jacob. The older woman said calmly that she had foreseen that in spite of everything that had happened, there was joy in the future for both of them, as well as sorrow. But above all else, it was her duty to go back. Then she began to speak of the journey they would have to make to reach the land where Obernewtyn stood. ‘I will go no farther,’ the older woman said to the younger. ‘But you will travel beyond that land to another and another still, before your work is done.’ Then she looked down at the cat and the younger woman said that its journeying was done, poor thing, since it had not awoken. But the older woman stroked it and said the cat was traveling in its dreams, as was its gift, and that it would sleep until they brought it to the one who could wake it, though not with a kiss.”

  I was riveted by the strange story, for it was evident to me that the women were Hannah Seraphim and Cassy and that Analivia had dreamed of them after the Great White and before they had begun their journey to the Land. Of course, the cat could not be Maruman, even as a kitten, for no cat could live so long, but if they had brought it to the Land, it might be some distant ancestor of Maruman. It might even be that the kitten’s head was bandaged not because it had been injured but because the Beforetimers had been experimenting on it at the Govamen compound, even as they had experimented with the flamebirds. A little stab of excitement pierced me at the thought that Maruman’s strange mind might not be the result of sickness or accident, but of something he had inherited from the cat in Analivia’s dream vision.

  I was so engrossed in my speculations that it took me a moment to realize that Swallow was speaking again. “Did you just say the tribesman Ahmedri followed you?” I asked incredulously.

  The gypsy nodded cheerfully. “It was Dameon he followed, so he ought to tell that part of our tale.”

  I nodded impatiently, eager to hear how Dameon had managed to persuade him to turn back.

  “I had just met up with Rasial and Gavyn as I told you, and we were just setting off together when Ahmedri came riding up,” Dameon said. “He had tracked me, he said, because he knew I was coming to find you. I suppose he heard Rushton talking with Alad about our supplies. The tribesman said he had to find his brother’s bones and that he had been commanded to stay with you until you found the coercer Miryum and freed her, for it was she who would tell him where they were. I was at a loss, for neither Rushton nor the dream voice had mentioned him, and yet I could see no way to prevent him following us. Also, neither Rasial nor Faraf seemed troubled by the thought of him or his horse accompanying us. Later I had cause to be very glad of his company, for while Gavyn led us here, it was Ahmedri who made cook-fires and found ways for us to cross places where it seemed no horse could go.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Why, he is here in the valley,” Swallow said. “Like Rasial and the boy, he spends a good portion of his time foraging—not together, for neither he nor the lad seem to have much use for human company.”

  I scowled. “I don’t know why Ahmedri thinks following me here is going to help him find his brother’s bones.”

  “Maybe Miryum came up into the mountains with his brother’s body,” Swallow said. “But regardless, Ahmedri is convinced that Straaka will come to you in your dreams to tell you where Miryum is. It is hard to argue against that when all of us are here because of our dreams.”

  His words gave me pause, for I had never considered that Miryum might have brought Straaka’s body into the mountains. It was possible, for the coercer was prodigiously strong and she would have been able to use a travois some of the time, but it would have been a gruesome journey with a decomposing body. And how would she then have been taken captive? There were no humans in the mountains, other than us, and no beast took captives.

  I noticed Swallow and Analivia watching me expectantly and felt an uneasy surge of anxiety at the knowledge that, although all of them had come into the mountains after having struggled separately and alone with doubt and fear and disbelief, they were now looking to me to guide them. Yet how was I to guide them when they seemed to know all I knew?

  I thought of a Beforetime phrase that Garth sometimes used—the blind leading the blind—but I did not say it aloud out of courtesy to Dameon.

  “Have any of you dreamed of where I will go from this valley?” I asked evenly.

  They looked at one another and then Swallow said slowly, “You do not know where to go?”

  A crucial question, I thought. “Up until recently, I was convinced that Sentinel was in the Red Land, and the fact that I was supposed to travel there with Dragon and the others seemed a confirmation of this. But I was summoned to the High Mountains at the last minute and told I would never return to the Land, and the ships left without me. It may be that I will come to the Red Land in some guise, ere the end, but I do not know how. What I do know is that the same voice that summoned all of you bade me come here to the mountains to seek out a pack of winter wolves so that I might convince them to accompany me. I know not why I need them, nor where I am to go with them, and yet I have been told that my quest will fail if they refuse me. I spoke to the pack leader yesterday and he bade me come here to await his answer. I think he meant to seek a vision that would give him guidance, and it may be that he will vision of where we are to go. Indeed, it must be so, for the voice in my dreams promised that I would have the answers I needed from those I met here in this valley.”

  I sighed and shrugged. “I thought when I found all of you here that you must have the answers I sought. But having heard your tales, I am back to pinning my hopes on the wolves.”

  “Maybe the voice from our dreams now speaks to the wolf,” Dameon suggested.

  I said nothing for the moment, incapable of imparting the news that the dream speaker—my guide and theirs—was dead and we were on our own.

  “Perhaps the answer will come from putting all we know together,” Swallow said.

  “I thought that Sentinel must be in these mountains at first, else why come here and why would I have dreamed of the Beforetime women talking about it?” Analivia asked. “But after I had spoken to the others about Sentinel, Swallow told us of seeing the ancient promises that were made by his people in the Red Land, about you, and how he had long ago seen a vision of himself there with you. Thus did it seem to me that Sentinel must be there. Yet I cannot see how we are to get there either, if we are not to return to the Land.”

  “We must go there, ere the end,” Swallow said. “For that is where the ancient promises were first spoken. Yet there must be some reason why we have come to these mountains. Unless it was solely to seek out these wolves.”

  For some reason a vivid image came into my mind from my past-dream of the weapons flying up from the opening under the Skylake. I looked at Dameon, knowing his empathy would tell him that I was addressing him, and said, “Tell me what you learned of Dragon when you were in the Westland. I know that Dell saw that she had been there in a vision, but did she ever see what Dragon had been seeking?”

  “She said Dragon was seeking her past,” Dameon answered.

  I frowned and turned my attention to Analivia. “You heard no rumor of her when you traveled to Sawlney?”

  Analivia shook her head. “Why do you ask about her? Has she some part to play in this as well?”

  “The futuretellers saw us together in the Red Land and I am sure you have heard that she is its rightful queen,” I said.

  Analivia shook her head impatiently. “You wish to know what to do next, but surely the answer is simple. The voice will tell us. Either through the wolf or it will speak to you directly.”

  I carried her words with me into the present and sighed. Neither she nor any of the others, even Swallow, truly understood the nature and complexity of my quest. None of them had any idea of how long I had been traveling along the road to get to this point, nor
of how many others had traveled that same road before me, laboring to ensure that I would fulfill my quest. If they were truly to walk that road with me, eventually I would need to tell them about all that Cassy and Hannah had done to prepare the way for me, but seeing them all gazing at me with eager expectancy, so sure I would know what to do next, I had felt a sudden wave of nausea and unease at the thought that Atthis had summoned them here, long before her death. It must be so, for although the old bird’s spirit was now trapped in some way with the spirits of the other Agyllian Elders, awaiting an Elder capable of taking in their merged spirits, who would then become the new Elder and my new guide, Atthis could not have any way of communicating with anyone now, surely.

  And yet, who had sent that dream of Sentinel to Analivia, if not Atthis?

  This thought sent a trickle of ice down my spine, and I had felt a sudden desperate desire to be alone. I had risen abruptly, telling them I needed to find Maruman. Swallow had offered to help me search but I had bidden them stay by the fire.

  I had all but snarled the words, I thought ruefully. I was calmer now, and having had a little time to reflect, I accepted that they were truly the companions Atthis had chosen for me, and this meant I would need to tell them of the Govamen compound in Scotia where the Sentinel program had been developed and of the permanent Sentinel complex that had been established elsewhere. I would have to speak of images of the Great White that I had seen in the Earthtemple, and I would need to explain that Swallow’s ancestor was the Cassy of my past-dreams and had later become the revered Kasanda of Sador. I would have to tell them about Ariel, who was the Destroyer, destined to evoke the dreadful power controlled by Sentinel and the BOT computers if I failed in my quest. And I would need to tell them of the roles played by Maruman and Gahltha.