The Red Queen Read online

  I’ll ask Darga to sniff it when we return. Speaking of which, we ought to head back now. It’s getting late and the wolves always come at sunset.”

  He was right, though in fact Rheagor had not mentioned sunset this time. The sun set before we were all the way down, but the moon rose and the clouds frayed enough that there was plenty of light to see by. But Swallow had been right about the climb down being worse in its own way than the ascent. It was utterly unnerving to go backward, feeling for footholds and climbing slowly down the rope. Whenever I made the mistake of looking down for a foothold, my eyes were drawn to the black abyss, even though our descent was above the talus. I could hardly bear to think about Ahmedri, who was untying the ropes before climbing down.

  I had obviously irritated Maruman with my fears, for he leaped down from my shoulders the second we reached the talus. My relief was so great that I felt nauseous and I sagged against the mountain face, wondering if the rubble under my feet truly had once been a bridge. The thought made me look up as I straightened and at that same instant, the flat stone I had stepped onto pivoted and tilted under my weight, sending me stumbling sideways. I might have caught myself if I had not been looking up, and it might have been no more than a fall with grazed knees and a split lip, except that when I landed, the whole pile of rubble, which had seemed so stable, began to shift under me. Half stunned from the impact of the fall, I had time to see the startled face of Swallow, who had already reached the plateau, and then somehow I was spinning so that I was looking at Ahmedri, who had delayed at the top of the talus to stow his ropes. I saw him shout something and point, but the rumble of the stones was too great for me to make it out. Then I was facing down again and my heart leaped into my mouth, for I could see that the stones were flowing down into the dark abyss between the mountains.

  I reached desperately for a boulder to stop myself, but it was no use, for everything was moving around and under me. I opened my mouth to scream, but something struck me hard on the temple, and night fell like a black curtain.

  I dreamed that Ceirwan and the enthraller, Freya, were looking at me in consternation and pity.

  “Are ye so sure she’ll nowt return when she has done whatever she went to do?” Ceirwan asked.

  “Maryon said that she will never return to Obernewtyn or the Land and that she knew it when she left.” It was Rushton’s voice, coming from my mouth. I must be experiencing another of his dream-memories. He went on in the same hard, despairing voice. “I would have ridden after her but Maryon forbade it.

  She said my task is to go to the Red Land and free the slaves there. I told her there were others who could take my place on that journey and she answered that it was not so. None could do what I would do.”

  “That mun have been hard,” Ceirwan said.

  “Harder to obey her words than to hear them,” Rushton answered.

  “I meant that it mun have been hard fer Elspeth,” Ceirwan explained gently. “She had to walk away without saying a word to you or to any of us. When I think back on those last days afore she left, I sensed there were somethin’ weighing on her heart, but she was never one to invite personal questions. And then other times I thought I mun be mistaken, fer she seemed so happy.”

  “She seemed so to me as well, and she spoke with such certainty of the time we would have together on the journey to the Red Land, as if she looked forward to it as eagerly as I did. It is hard to believe that she knew she would never set foot on the ships.”

  “Elspeth was no liar,” Freya said with conviction. “I think if she had known she must leave before the ships departed, she would not have mentioned the journey. Maybe she did not know it till the last minute.”

  “I would like to believe that,” Rushton said, “yet in the end it does not matter whether she lied or not, or why. She is gone.”

  “It matters,” Freya said.

  Ceirwan said earnestly, “Rushton, surely ye ken that Elspeth loved ye no less than ye love her. I dinna doubt that she suffers right now, even as you do. In fact, it may be that her sufferin’ is the greater because it was she who had to leave you without a word.”

  “Am I to be soothed by the thought of her sorrow?” Rushton asked, and there was pain and anger in his voice. He looked down so that I saw his hands, clenched into fists on the table. “Perhaps the worst thing to know is that even if she had told me what she must do and sworn she loved me with all her heart and did not want to leave me, still she would have gone. Nothing I could have said or done would have stopped her.”

  “Then maybe this, however painful, was the better way,” Freya said, reaching out to lay her smaller hand over Rushton’s. He looked up into her kind face. “You are strong and great-hearted, Rushton. I knew it the first time I saw you ride up on your horse, when you spoke to my father and bade him sell me to you. And because of that, you will do what you must do even as she does.”

  “I will,” Rushton said on an outward rush of air. “Lud help me, I will do my duty.” Then he drew a long breath. “Forgive me, I am full of self-pity tonight.”

  “No,” Freya said. “You grieve for something precious taken from you, as she must grieve.”

  “I know,” Rushton said, and he heaved a sigh. “Truly I know that Elspeth suffers as I do, whether or not she knew all along that she would not come to the Red Land with me. For a long time after she had first spoken of love in Sador, I could not truly believe she had chosen me. It seemed such a miracle that she, whom I desired more than any other, could desire me. It was easier to doubt it than to believe it, and doubt gnawed at me constantly. Yet she showed me upon Norseland that she loved me more than her own life and to doubt her after that would be to prove myself utterly unworthy of her.” He was silent for a long time, and I wondered if he was thinking about the fierce tenderness of our lovemaking in Louis Larkin’s hut, rain thundering down on the shingled roof. He would not remember what he had learned when we merged minds, nor what I had done afterward to hide those memories from his conscious mind, but he must remember the radiance of our loving and he must sense the spirit link that connected us.

  I thought I must be right, when relief showed on Ceirwan’s face as Rushton thanked them. “You have comforted me by reminding me that I am fortunate to have loved so deeply and to have had the love of such a one as Elspeth Gordie. The memory of what was between us must strengthen me in the days to come.”

  The words were resolute, and hearing them broke my heart.

  The memory-dream faded but instead of waking, I drifted down through the layers of my mind to the mindstream. A shining tendril rose from it and reached out to me as if summoned. Accepting it, I willed myself to consciousness, thinking that I might as well take the opportunity to look at Gavyn and Rasial with spirit-eyes. I willed the tendril from the mindstream to pool and take on my spirit-form. The transference of my consciousness to the spirit-form was so effortless that I thought again that I must be dreaming, for I had never felt so much in control of myself.

  I opened my eyes and saw below me the brownish shape of my slumbering body, half invisible against the deeper brown and black of earth and stone. Then I heard or felt something calling me.

  I willed myself to rise toward the summoning, leaving the world of matter behind. I rose until I was floating close enough to the dreamtrails to feel the weight of the wings of my spirit-form and of the spirit sword at my belt. I wondered if that was why I felt so much more in control than before.

  Even as I reached the eldritch clouds through which the dreamtrails wove, Maruman appeared in the air beside me in one of his favorite spirit-forms—a greatcat with a tawny gold pelt slashed with black streaks, one of his eyes diamond white and the other a rich gold.

  “Do not stay here on the dreamtrails, ElspethInnle, lest the H’rayka sense you and seek you out,” he sent. “You must wake.”

  “Maybe I need not flee from it,” I said, moving my hand to the hilt of the black sword.

  “The darkness that seeks you is stro
nger than you,” Maruman said bluntly, urgently. “Wake.”

  Reluctantly I willed myself to obey, but nothing happened save that I drifted closer to the dreamtrails. “I … I can’t wake,” I sent, puzzled. I concentrated hard and strove downward more strongly, but still I could not exert any force. “Maybe whoever is summoning me prevents me waking. Can you feel it?”

  “You were summoned?” Maruman asked sharply.

  “Can’t you feel it? Something is calling me, drawing me up. I can feel it right now,” I said.

  “Up?” Maruman echoed. “Maybe it is the oldOnes. Rise, then, but beware. Do not go too high, lest you lose yourself.”

  “Come with me, Marumanyelloweyes,” I sent, wondering what he meant by the oldOnes.

  “I will try,” he answered warily.

  I focused my mind on the calling, which was less a sound than a feeling. It was definitely coming from above, and when I willed myself to respond, I was astonished to find my strength and control had returned, and I was moving very swiftly. I willed myself to move faster and found myself fairly soaring upward. Only the fear of losing Maruman made me slow down.

  Yet it seemed but a moment had passed before I entered the strange realm of merging color. As before, I felt my form becoming lighter and less defined.

  “This is a realm of pure spirit,” Maruman sent. “It is difficult for the living to come here. The higher you/we go, the less you will feel yourflesh. Only yourmind/will can hold the link. You must keep your spirit-form intact, else this realm will eat you.”

  Unnerved by the notion of a mere idea of my spirit-form being the only thing between me and oblivion, I summoned up a visual image of myself as I had done for Cinda and set it in my own mind, imagining it in great detail. I gave the image the black sword in its sheath and immediately felt the weight of it as a slight downward pull. At the same time, I felt my spirit-form sharpen.

  “Good,” Maruman approved.

  “Why do you say it is the oldOnes calling me?” I asked. “You told me Atthis is dead.”

  “They cannot summon you directly unless the new Elder is chosen and encompasses their minds,” Maruman sent. “Until then, the merged minds of the oldOnes have no link to flesh and so no way to reach the realms below this. Unless they have found a messenger.”

  “Who?” I asked. For some reason his words made me think of Angina.

  “Not that one,” Maruman sent. “His spirit has gone into the mindstream.”

  I had known Angina was dead and yet it hurt to hear it said. I felt my spirit-form softening, losing the integrity of its shape. It was a slow almost molten sensation where I seemed both to grow warm and spread out as if I were a shape of wax melting in the sunlight. I ought to have been afraid, but it was oddly pleasant to feel myself losing all tension and rigidity. I began to feel the formless allure of the matter about me, which was as vividly compelling in its own way as the mindstream. I wondered what difference there was between the two realms. Was it that the memories of life and flesh went into the mindstream but the experiences of spirit came here?

  “Beware, ElspethInnle, lest our spirits blend, for if that happens, we will be merged forever!” Maruman warned me sharply, and only then did I realize with a little shock of fright that my spirit-form had begun to overlap his. It was only the strength of his spirit-form that had stopped us merging.

  Frightened by what had almost happened, I summoned up the image of myself. It was like trying to keep a ball of very soft mud together. The moment I tried to think of anything else, it began to soften again.

  “Use the black sword,” Maruman sent.

  I thought of the sword, and immediately its weight and strength gave substance to the visual image I was holding in my mind. But I resisted the temptation to draw on the spirit-force to which it was linked, sensing that once I did, I would be dragged downward and away from the strange realm.

  I looked at Maruman and was alarmed to see that his greatcat form was blurring.

  “I cannot hold,” the old cat sent at last, and he vanished.

  I was frightened then, for Maruman had far more strength and skill in his spirit-form than I did, so how was it that I was able to remain in this strange spirit realm while he could not? Was it the black sword?

  Without warning or any feeling of movement or transformation, I was floating above a wide ledge of stone jutting out from a shadowy mountain. It was very like a ledge I had rested on halfway up the bluff we had climbed. My spirit-form had never felt so real before, even on the dreamtrails.

  “Where am I?” I wondered.

  “I have shaped this place from your memories to anchor your dream form,” a voice whispered. “It will be easier than trying to hold your image of flesh. Easier still if you can engage with the dream.”

  I could see nothing, but I recognized the voice. “It was you who saved me from the Destroyer,” I said, and then I saw the same shimmering, vaguely human shape floating in the air before me that I had seen once before.

  “Thank you,” said the voice, more strongly. “It is very difficult for me to take physical form even in your spirit-dream without the will of flesh.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I was Straaka the tribesman,” said the voice.

  Straaka stood before me on the ledge exactly as he had looked in life, in tribal robes, his hair in plaits and beaded just as it had been when I had last seen him standing in the cul-de-sac in the White Valley before he was killed. The silver cuffs in his hair clinked as he bowed in proper Sadorian fashion.

  “You are dead,” I whispered, cold fear snaking through me.

  The shock I felt caused the mountain face to waver, but I willed myself to stand on the stone ledge, and the mountain settled and became solid.

  “My body is dead,” Straaka agreed. “My spirit would have gone into the mindstream save that at the moment of death, my ravek bound her spirit to mine, thereby linking my spirit to her living flesh. I welcomed it at first, for I had yearned for such closeness to her when I lived, and though she had never allowed it, I saw that she had come to love me.”

  I thought of Straaka, who had been slain by a soldierguard’s arrow meant for Miryum, wondering how she had been able to bind the spirit of a dying man to her. She was one of the most powerful coercers I had ever known, but she had no futuretelling ability that would have given her power over his spirit. But Straaka said she had loved him and I knew that love could form a potent link between two people. Was that it?

  Straaka went on. “At first she thought it was madness that made her hear my voice in her dreams, for she did not know what she had done. It was madness that made her carry my body from the White Valley. When I was able to make her understand that her realization that she loved me, coupled with her anguish at my death, had given her spirit the power to reach out to mine and hold it, she was glad. For a time we were content, but I was not a man any longer, and I soon saw that she could not live a proper life of flesh bound to my spirit-form. I told her this but she would not hear me.”

  “You are talking as if you spoke to her. How did you do that?” I asked.

  “To begin with, I dwelt in her dreams and I spoke to her when she slept,” he answered in his grave, courteous way. “Later I learned to shape a spirit-form and I taught Miryum to do the same. I discovered the dreamtrails and we went there together. But that was before I came to see that it was not enough for a living person to love a spirit and to live only in her dreams. I knew I had to make her sever the link binding me to her. I asked her to bring my bones to the hot springs and clean them, and then to take them to the vale of the dead in the spice groves of Sador. I told her it was my wish that my bones be buried there. I knew that in that place, my spirit would be able to draw on the strength of my ancestors to sever the bindings she had woven that tied my spirit to hers, whether she willed it or no. But somehow she sensed my intention, and after she cleaned my bones, she bore me in the opposite direction.”

  I drew in a breath.
“Into the high mountains!”

  Straaka nodded gravely.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “To begin with, she was simply doing the opposite of what I had asked her, but the strain of having me in her mind was beginning to tell on her. Since she was a child, she had dreamed of a Beforetime city standing in a white desert surrounded by Blacklands. She had spoken to me of the dream when I lived, and to others of her coercer-knights. Many times she visited Newrome under Tor Mountain, seeking to understand why the dream came again and again to her. She feared there was a warning in it that she was failing to understand. Once when I was there with her, she told me she had seen us walking together in her dream city. I remember how it lifted my spirits, for I saw it as a sign that she was beginning to care for me.” He was silent for a time. Then he said, “Once we were in the high mountains, Miryum dreamed of the city again. I entered the dream and begged her to turn back and to release me, but she said that she would not, for the meaning of it was finally clear to her. The city was real and it stood on a white plain beyond the high mountains, just as we were seeing.

  “I told her there were only deadly Blacklands that way, for my people had sailed farther around this great landmass than any shipfolk from the Land, and the coasts were black as far as they had sailed. Never once had they seen any untainted land, let alone a Beforetime city. Miryum would not listen. She had convinced herself that the city existed too far inland to be seen from the deck of a ship. She believed it was inhabited by Beforetimers who had somehow remained untouched by the Great White. She thought that her dream of us walking there meant that the Beforetimers had the power to restore me to life. It was madness and I told her so, but she would not hear.”

  I was flabbergasted at his tale, for there could be no doubt that Miryum had dreamed of the same city as Jacob.

  “It is real,” I told him. “The city she dreamed of is the very place I am seeking.”

  “I know,” Straaka said grimly. “I know it now because that is where Miryum is. But let me tell the tale in order. Miryum told me that she was going to carry my bones to the city of her dreams to bring me back to life. She would not listen to me when I told her it was not possible. I strove to journey in my dreams to Sador so that I could draw on the strength of those of my blood, but they were too distant.”