The Red Queen Read online

  Before Gobor could strike, however, a deep growling filled the air. Gobor and Descantra sprang around to face Rheagor, who was bearing down on them, hackles raised and lips drawn back to reveal his sharp white teeth. The sight was made more terrifying by the red flicker in his pale eyes.

  Descantra sank to her belly and rolled over to bare her throat in a show of submission. I felt the submission of the other wolves, who had also dropped to their bellies, but Gobor’s mind was a red snare of anguish and rage. He snarled savagely at Rheagor and then turned and fled.

  Rheagor did not pursue him. Instead he opened his maw and bent his head slowly to close his teeth on the throat of the old she-wolf, but he did not bite down. When he lifted his head, there was no blood. Still, Descantra lay still as death.

  Rheagor turned to me but before he could utter a word, Maruman hissed at him.

  The wolf spoke directly to the old feline, mind to mind, saying, “Nah nah, tha brave little yelloweye. Tha do be courageous but not wise. Save tha courage, for tha will need all of it in the graag.”

  “Tha will guide the dinrai to the graag?” one of the other wolves demanded, his tone incredulous.

  “This one did see us go with Innle and her pack to the graag,” Rheagor answered.

  “What is the graag?” I asked.

  “It be the way across the plain of shining poison,” Rheagor said.

  I remembered the recurring nightmares I had experienced in recent years of walking over the Blacklands, my legs streaked with deadly poisons, and a chill went through me. “Did you see seliga?” I whispered.

  “This one did see much seliga. The Brildane will travel with Innle and her pack to the graag. Many Brildane will die on this journey, Innle, nor will all of tha own pack stand with tha at the end,” the wolf sent. “Death will stalk all who make this journey and it be well fed. But at the end be the place where beasts will walk free of the funaga, if the Brildane hold true. But if the Brildane do not go with the Innle, all will come to darkness and destruction at the hands of the dinrai that tha do call Ariel and tha enemy. Thus for life and hope and vengeance, we do agree to that which tha did ask.”

  His words sent a little shock through me. “You … you saw Ariel? Where was he?”

  “This one did see much that was as leaves glimpsed in a storm,” he answered.

  “All right, then what is beyond the graag?”

  “There be the funaga city on a bone-white plain where my ancestor did be held captive for a time, before he escaped to cross the graag and found the Brildane. The city do be guarded by the efari.”

  “What are the efari?” I asked.

  “Those that do guard the funaga city,” Rheagor sent.

  I tried to think how to put my question so as to get a better answer, until it occurred to me that Rheagor’s answer was limited because that was all he knew. But his description of the city beyond the graag was too close to Jacob’s dream city not to be the same place, so I had been right in one thing: The wolves would lead us to Cassandra’s key. “Did you see anything about Cassandra’s key when you were seliga?”

  “I did hear tha speak the words,” the wolf answered.

  “Where do we go after we leave the city?” I asked.

  “Beyond it all did be darkness,” said the wolf flatly, and then he turned his head and gave a huffing bark that brought all of the pack to its feet, save Descantra. “The pack do go to hunt now. Be tha ready to leave when the moon do rise. The Brildane do have little tolerance for bright light, so tha must travel at night and rest by day.”

  “I thank you, both for this and for coming when you did,” I sent courteously; then I added, “There are horses by the lake, as well as a boy and a dog who—”

  “I have seen tha pack, seliga, and they do be safe from this one’s pack until our ways do part,” he sent. Then he withdrew his mind from mine and turned to look down at Descantra. She rose slowly and they regarded one another. After a long moment, she dropped her eyes and he loped away. The wolves streamed after him, the she-wolf following alone, tail low.

  Maruman leaped down and I realized I was free to move again.

  I turned to the others.

  “I couldn’t move a muscle,” Analivia exclaimed. She was very pale, as was Dameon. It must have been terrifying for the blind man, given that he would have felt all of our emotions without having any idea of what was going on. Of course, none of them had been able to hear my exchange with the wolves.

  “It was the wolves’ musk,” Ahmedri said, surprisingly. “Some beasts have the power to use their scent as a weapon. Silksnakes in the desert use their scent to make their enemies feel fear.”

  “Was it like that when you met with them before?” Swallow asked me, a hint of accusation in his tone.

  I met his eyes coolly. “There was no time to warn you.”

  “What happened?” Dameon asked. “I do not feel the emotions of beasts as clearly as humans, but it seemed there was anger between them and great sorrow.”

  “You are right, and I will tell you all else that transpired, but for now, it is enough that you know they have agreed to go with us. The wolves will return when the moon rises, for we are to travel at night and rest by day.”

  “They will lead us?” Analivia asked.

  “Yes,” I said, though in fact Rheagor had said nothing of leading. I wondered if the others realized that this meant we were to go down from the mountains and cross Blacklands where the ground was so poisonous that it would glow in the dark, though presumably the graag was somewhat less poisoned or how else would Rheagor’s ancestor have crossed it? I seemed to hear the pack leader’s harsh voice again, saying that many would die on the journey, ere the end.

  Analivia was the first to nod decisively and begin packing up the cooking utensils. As the others began to make their preparations, I went to the packs piled under the trees and dug out of mine clean underwear, socks, and a comb. I noticed that the other packs were saddlebags, made to be slung across a horse’s back and to hang down either side. They were a good deal bigger than my pack and bulging with provisions.

  I checked on the stone sword, deciding I would show it to the others when I had told enough of my tale to make sense of it.

  I slipped away to put on my clean underclothes and shirt and then returned to the fire to comb out the matted ropes of my hair. Swallow was stirring a pot with a ferocious look while Ahmedri was filling a net with firenuts. Judging by the mound before him, he had spent the time while I slept gathering them. Suddenly I thought of Gavyn and Rasial, but when I asked about them, Swallow said Ahmedri had seen the boy splashing about in the stream some time before the wolves had appeared.

  Analivia added, “He wanders constantly, yet Rasial always seems to return with him if we have need of him.”

  I felt less sanguine about the absence of the boy and the dog, for even though Rheagor had said the wolves would not harm them, what would they do if Rasial decided to attack them for the sake of the boy or out of sheer wildness? After all, she told me that she wanted to die. I tried to find the white dog, but my farseeking probe would not locate. That meant they had either left the valley or, more likely, they slept.

  I found Darga and bade him look for them, and he padded off without complaint. Maruman looked across the flames at me.

  “You were brave,” I sent. “How did you resist the wolf musk?”

  “Stupid wolves did not notice clever, quiet Marumanyelloweyes creeping in a tree when they came and when they released their scent,” the old cat boasted.

  “So they can decide who the wolf musk will affect?”

  “Of course,” Maruman sent scornfully. “Else how would they travel with us if we cannot move when they are near?”

  I went on combing, until, wincing at a knot, I laid down my comb to tease out the burr at its center. I looked into the flames and thought about the city that the wolf had seen. If it was the same city Jacob had seen in his dreams, then he had reached his destination, for there
could be no reason we were to go there save to get Cassandra’s key. I had never imagined that I might truly have to go to Jacob’s shining city, and I decided that when day came and we rested, I must read his journal more attentively so that I could compare it with the things Rheagor had said.

  Something else occurred to me. The wolf claimed that his ancestor had been taken captive, before escaping to cross the graag and finding the Brildane. It must be the efari that guarded the city who had captured his ancestor, and perhaps they were the descendants of the Beforetimers whose memories and knowledge stretched back unbroken into that time.

  I plaited my clean and combed hair, relishing its heavy silky feel and the delicious scent of lemonleaf, thinking that if a wolf and an old man had crossed over the glowing Blacklands to reach the Beforetime city without it killing them, it must be possible for us to do the same.

  Certainly, I could cross some Blacklands and recover, but if I had to walk over vast tracts of tainted land, my body would go on healing me relentlessly, until all of my strength and energy and eventually my life were devoured by it. It would be the same for Maruman and Darga, if I was right about their bodies being able to heal as mine did. The three of us could reach Jacob’s city near to death, with all of our other companions lost to us, but what would be the use of that? I might even have strength enough to find Jacob’s body and acquire Cassandra’s key, but how was I then to reach Sentinel?

  Unless Sentinel was not in or beyond the Red Land as I had always supposed, but in the city of Jacob’s dreams. What if, in seeking Cassandra’s key, I find Sentinel?

  I shivered at a vision of myself arriving in that city, near devoured by taint and the healing powers of my body, having to locate Cassandra’s key and facing Sentinel before I died. My heart grew cold as I realized that remaining alive and healthy was not the aim of my quest. Nor was it my quest to keep my companions safe. My task was simply to bring to an end the threat of the weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime. What happened to me after that did not matter.

  Was that the meaning of Rheagor’s vision?

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and then Dameon was empathizing warmth and calmness into me. I let it flow through me, unknotting the snarls and thorns in my mind just as I had unknotted my hair. At length he stopped and sat down on a stone by me, telling me I had been emanating gloom enough to sink a ship. Before I could do more than thank him, Analivia pressed bowls of soup into our hands. Realizing that I had not eaten since the morning, it was no wonder that I was suddenly ravenously hungry by evening. I had already devoured the soup when she offered a steaming chunk of campbread that had been cooked around a green stick. I was startled to find a small dollop of stewed plum in it, for that had been my father’s trick.

  “All right, tell us about the wolves,” Swallow said, coming to sit by me with his own bowl of soup. Analivia sat down beside Dameon, and Ahmedri came to sit cross-legged on the bare ground on the other side of the fire.

  3

  “THE PACK LEADER saw a vision of us all traveling to a Beforetime city that stands on a white plain,” I began.

  “It sounds like the city that the Beforetimer Jacob Obernewtyn sought,” Analivia observed, to my astonishment. Then I realized she had probably heard Garth and the other teknoguilders discussing Jacob’s journal.

  “I believe it is,” I said, and ate my campbread, leaving the others to talk about the journal and Jacob, until Swallow turned back to ask me what else the wolf had said.

  “There were some things I did not understand well enough to relate, but I will question Rheagor further as we travel,” I said.

  “Did he at least say why we have to go to this Beforetime city?” Analivia asked.

  “He did not, but I know why,” I said. “Jacob took something there with him when he left Obernewtyn that I will need to deal with Sentinel. Until I read the journal, I always expected to find it at Obernewtyn or somewhere in the valley about Obernewtyn.”

  “You speak of Cassandra’s key,” Analivia said. She looked at the others. “Garth told me it was a love token that Hannah Seraphim gave Jacob Obernewtyn, but how strange that it should be a key that you would need for your quest.”

  I did not want to begin talking of Hannah or Cassandra now, so I merely nodded. Eventually I would have to tell them how the Beforetimers were linked to my quest and about the Agyllians, and I wondered how they would respond when they learned that their dream voice belonged to a bird, moreover a bird that had died before we began our journey.

  Despite the dramatic arrival of the wolves, my spirits had risen because I had done what Atthis had told Maruman I must do; I had convinced the wolves to go with us, and the pack leader knew the way to the Beforetime city. Once again, knowledge had come to me at the very moment I needed it, and I told myself that here was proof, yet again, that no matter how impossible things seemed, a way would open that would enable me to proceed, so long as I was willing. The pack leader said he had seen darkness beyond the city, but there might be many reasons for that, the simplest being that his vision had not extended beyond our arrival in the Beforetime city. At the least, it could be taken as a warning to be careful when we approached the city and its unknown denizens.

  “You have not yet said what went on between the wolves,” Dameon reminded me gently.

  “Yes, I thought the older female was going to tear your throat out,” Analivia added.

  Before I could respond, Gavyn and the pale ridgeback Rasial emerged from the night with Darga. Maruman opened his yellow eye to regard them briefly, then curled back to sleep. The boy wore loose trousers, light woven shoes, and a coat that hung open to reveal a wrongly tied vest. He had no shirt, his hair was unbrushed, and there was a streak of dirt on his face. He cast off a hempen forage bag that bulged with whatever he had collected, hardly seeming to notice any of us, though when Analivia handed him a bowl of soup and set down some campbread for the dog, he gave her his vague sweet smile before squatting and gulping down the soup hungrily.

  Rasial ignored the bread and came to fix me with her pale eyes.

  “Greetings, Innle,” she sent as coldly as ever.

  Her manner lit a chilly flame of anger in me. “You told me once that you had come to Obernewtyn to seek your death,” I beastspoke her. “You did not find it there, but I think you will find it on this journey. Have you considered what will happen to the boy?”

  “The oldOne came to me in a dream and showed me how to come to this place. She bade me wait for the blind funaga and bring him here to wait for you/Innle. The cub shared the dream.” She sniffed the air and narrowed her eyes. “Wolves have been here.”

  “They have and they will return to lead us,” I said, wanting to ask what she meant by the boy sharing her dream, but Rasial had already turned away, her eyes seeking out Gavyn. Having finished his meal, the boy had wandered down to the lake. He was just visible at the outer edge of the light cast by the fire, hurling stones into the water. Watching the big white dog pad down to the pebble shore to stretch out beside him, great paws just short of the edge of the water, it struck me that she could no more bear to be parted from him than he would let himself be parted from her. Was the closeness of their bond connected to what the ridgeback had said about the boy sharing her dream? I thought of how I had seen them gazing raptly into one another’s eyes on the farms some weeks past and wondered again what I would see were I to look at them with spirit-eyes.

  At last the sun set and the moon rose. It looked like a worn silver coin above the high, sharp peaks surrounding the valley. A thin blanket of mist that had arisen from the lake turned silver in the moonlight as we finished loading the horses; then all of us stood about the fire restlessly, talking in nervous fits and starts and looking expectantly out into the darkness every time there was a sound.

  Gavyn gave a hooting cry and we all turned to see the little owl that he had won from Kella winging across the lake toward him, her white feathers glowing in the moonlight. She uttered her own h
ooting call as she flew down to close her small talons on the boy’s outstretched arm. Rasial had risen and sniffed at the bird, who endured it without alarm. Belatedly it struck me that it was this owl that I had seen the night before, flying across the face of the moon.

  “Tell us more of the wolves,” Dameon suggested when we had turned back to the fire again. “Why were they so full of anger and sorrow?”

  I pushed my hands into my pockets. “The old wolf that ran off and the she-wolf that led the pack before Rheagor came both wanted to kill me because I am what they call a dinrai. That means a human who can reach the minds of beasts. They loathe us because Ariel was a dinrai and he used his Talent to capture their cubs. The two old wolves were taken captive with the rest of their litter and held at Obernewtyn before the two of them escaped.”

  “Who is Ariel?” Analivia said.

  I asked Dameon to explain to the others who Ariel was, but after he had done so, he turned his blind eyes to me and said, “Do you mean to say that Ariel was a beastspeaker, as well as an empath and coercer?”

  “As far as I can tell, dinrai means any human who can touch the mind of a beast,” I told him. “Ariel was not a beastspeaker, but I think that, like Darius, his empathy—twisted as it was—could reach beasts and he used it instinctively to help capture them. Of course, once he had them, his defective empathy made him slake his desire to cause pain by torturing them. I doubt he used his Talents consciously on the wolves, though. I think he had little knowledge or control over them when he was at Obernewtyn.”

  Analivia opened her mouth but something in my expression made her close it without speaking, and I went on. “It is time now for you to make up your minds whether you truly mean to go with me. You see, the pack leader told me that he saw us traveling over glowing Blacklands to reach this city on the white plain, and it seems that it is guarded by a people called the efari, who captured the wolf that later escaped and found his way to the mountains where he founded the Brildane. Obviously that is how the wolves know the way there.”