The Rebellion (49 page)

I
DID NOT
go.

In time, I would be able to face Rushton calmly, but not yet. I could not trust myself. What if somehow I betrayed my feelings? Perhaps I already had by speaking so stiffly to Freya. My thoughts ran wild. What if Rushton wanted to see me alone so that he could apologize for not loving me any longer? What if he tried to explain his attachment to Freya?

These were stupid thoughts, and it was the fear of making a fool of myself that made me cast about desperately after the nightmeal for some plausible excuse not to go to Rushton’s chamber. I found myself plucking nervously at the bandage covering the tattoo Swallow had given me, and this produced an idea.

I would go and see Fian about the Govamen mark. He was ensconced in Powyrs’s chamber, and I doubted anyone would think of looking for me there. The tattoo was reason enough to have forgotten Rushton’s summons. I would tell Rushton of the tattoo—and I imagined the apologetic and slightly flippant smile I would wear as I said it—and explain how it had come about. I would casually mention that the gypsy had kissed me. Just as if people were always kissing me, so that I hardly even bothered about it.

Let him dare try to pity me then!

Having worked myself into a fury, I marched off to
Powyrs’s cabin, taking good care to let no one see me enter.

“Elspeth,” Fian said, sounding surprised. He had to flatten himself against the wall to get the door to the tiny chamber open, but there was hardly enough room even when it was closed. He waved me to the only seat that would fit and propped himself on the corner of the rickety wooden table piled high with books.

“I’m glad ye’ve come. Ye know there are actually some Beforetime maps amongst these papers? I am tryin’ to …” He stopped. “Lud, I do blather on. It is a Teknoguild failing, I know, to imagine th’ world revolves around us. Did ye want somethin’ in particular?”

I bit my lip, suddenly unsure of how much I wanted to tell.

“I did,” I said slowly. “Do you remember the mark on the Govamen plasts we saw beneath Tor?”

Fian wagged his head impatiently. “Yes, yes. Three Guanette birds goin’ round one another?”

“Was there anyone else who might have used the same mark other than Govamen?”

“Unlikely,” Fian said. “It appears on every single piece of research an’ plast from Govamen, an’ I think it was especially devised fer them. In fact, th’ plasts appear to have been stolen from Govamen—we think the Reichler Clinic had a spy working there. It would have to be one of th’ scientists—that’s what th’ Beforetimers called teknoguilders.”

“You think this scientist wanted to help Misfits stay hidden?” I asked curiously.

“Or help them to escape, if Govamen had them already. Why do ye ask about th’ mark anyway?”

I took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what gypsies were before the holocaust? Where they come from?”

“There were people called gypsies in the Beforetime, but
they were swallowed up into other races long afore the Great White. Our gypsies are just people who took on some of their philosophies—there’s no true connection.” Fian’s puzzled expression deepened. “What is this all about, Elspeth?”

I went on to explain much of what Swallow had told me.

“Amazin’,” Fian said after some time. “You must write this down for our records. I had no idea gypsy society was so complex. But what has any of it to do with th’ Govamen mark?”

“The purebloods wear it on their inner forearms.”

“That is odd. Why would a gypsy wear th’ mark of a long-dead Beforetime organization?”

“Exactly what I am wondering,” I said. “And how do you explain that the gypsies regard it as a sacred mark?”

“Perhaps their mark only
looked
like th’ Govamen symbol,” Fian suggested.

I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the grubby bandage around my arm and gestured for Fian to pass over a jug of water sitting on a tray.

He stared as I dipped my arm in it and let the water penetrate. “A Twentyfamilies gypsy gave the mark to me,” I said. “You will see if it is exact or merely alike.”

Fian listened, horrified, to my description of the tattoo procedure.

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed it is healed properly,” I said, carefully separating the sodden bandages. When I lifted the last layer away, we both stared.

“Is this a joke?” Fian demanded crossly.

I was mute with astonishment, for other than the crisscross reddening left by the bandage, my skin was utterly without mark or discoloration.

The tattoo had vanished!

Leaving Fian’s tiny room, I dismissed his suggestion that I had been tricked into thinking I had been given the tattoo. If Swallow had intended to rook me, why would he have told me so much about himself? Besides, I had seen the needles and felt them pierce my skin.

But I could hardly blame the teknoguilder for his doubts. Unfortunately, only Swallow could answer what had happened.

I sighed and decided to relieve Miky, who was sitting with Dragon. Maruman was sleeping curled up at the foot of the mattress, but he woke as I entered.

When the Empath guilden had gone off yawning to her bed, I sat on the floor and took Dragon’s small, limp hand in mine. Maruman rose, stretched, and came to curl himself into my lap. We made no attempt to communicate, and I was grateful for his silent companionship. It had been a long, confusing, painful day, and I just wanted to lay my head on the bed and be still.

I put my cheek against Dragon’s hand and stared out the small circular window at the sky. Almost at once I slept.

I dreamed of walking along a black road. Rushton was behind me, calling. “Wait. I will come with you.”

I walked faster, thinking of him holding Freya. “Elspeth …”

But his voice faded. I was crying, but I walked faster still.

I fell then into a deeper dream: a chaotic tumult of images that made no sense.

There was a chair, red and bulging with carvings of grotesque faces. One moment the faces appeared to convulse with mirth, and the next, they seemed to shriek with agony.

I saw a tall, beautiful woman smile.

“All the women in my family have it,” she said in a soft, musical voice.

Then the same woman was slumped in the carved chair. Her hair was red like Dragon’s, and her breast, too, for she had been stabbed there, and the knife still protruded from the gaping wound. Bending over her was a bald man with a pale, greasy face and a bloody hand. “Who will ever know it was my hand that struck the killing blow?” he whispered with feral glee.

The vision changed, and I was aboard a ship going over the waves. Then I was in the sea, and the water about me was tinged with the red-haired woman’s blood, for she was beside me in the water. I tried to keep her afloat, but the waves were violent and kept tearing us apart.

“My daughter,” she rasped. “You are … you must …”

“Templeport ho!” a voice called, and I woke with a start to a blazing hot day, my head aching abominably.

I got up stiffly, disentangling myself from Dragon. I rubbed at my stiff back, ignoring Maruman’s grumbles at being disturbed.

The others were outside already when I got there, all pressed up against the side of the ship and staring out through the goldshot salt haze at Sador. I was astounded to see how high the sun was. I had slept near through to midday! The air outside was dry and hot, and breathing seemed to burn the inside of my nostrils.

The soaring sea cliffs lay before us, running as far as I could see in both directions. They were sheer and utterly inaccessible. But right ahead of us, the cliff was cracked as if split by a giant axe, and sand from the desert beyond had
trickled out to form a spit, pointing out into the dark sea like a white finger. This, Powyrs said, was Templeport.

As we came closer to the tip of the peninsula, we could see a cluster of tents fluttering white like scattered blossoms, but there were no buildings and no greenery at all. Little wonder. The spit would be barren, saturated as it was with salt from the sea, and the pitiless heat would scorch anything that tried to grow. The shore wavered and danced through shimmering waves of heat, appearing as insubstantial as an illusion.

“How can anyone live here?” Miky said. This had been directed at Angina, but her twin was busy murmuring softly into Dameon’s ear, describing the scene.

I kept a tight shield around my mind, for Dameon always seemed to sense my darkest moods. The image of Freya and Rushton was still fresh in my mind, and I had no wish to confide my feelings to the empath, for all that I loved him dearly. Some pains were not to be shared.

“It is too hot,” Miryum grumbled, her voice slurred by her long sleep.

“You’d best get used to it,” Hannay said. “The ship will be cool compared to the land.”

“Hmm,” Miryum grunted. “Well, at least the ground will stand still under my feet.”

“There is the Earthtemple,” Powyrs said, pointing.

I scanned the spit for a building but could see nothing.

“Oh Lud,” Daffyd murmured suddenly. “There. In the cliff. No wonder it is called an Earthtemple.”

The Temple was part of the cliff and visible only because the cliff exterior was carved from top to bottom. Closer, I could make out windows in the carving. From the number of them, the Temple must be enormous.

I felt someone at my side.

It was Rushton, and his eyes were accusing. “I asked you to come and see me last night.”

“I … I had to see Fian,” I stammered. “He …”

Rushton’s eyes blazed with such fury, I faltered. He turned on his heel without a word and went to stand with Freya and Hannay.

“What in Lud’s name are those?” Angina exclaimed once we had disembarked.

He was pointing at a group of great, shaggy, dun-colored beasts with four legs and a lump of flesh pouting up from their backs.

“They are kamuli,” Powyrs said, looking over his shoulder with a grin. “The Sadorians use them rather than horses, and they are not mutants, however much they might look it. They existed in the Beforetime and were called ‘desert ships’ because they traverse the sands effortlessly with their soft, splayed hooves.”

“Sadorians do not use horses, then?” Freya asked curiously.

“Inland they do,” the seaman said. “Where the spice groves are, the ground is hard and there is thick forestation that makes horses more suitable as transport.”

I noticed Kella watching me and made an effort to look interested.

“Act,” Brydda had once advised me. “Pretend that you are clever, wise, brave, calm, courageous.” Pretend, and some of the time you can forget it is pretense.

It was incredibly noisy on the spit. Everyone seemed to shout at the top of their voice—a great deal of bartering took place literally from ship decks—and there was a tremendous
bustle as people carried boxes and bundles to and from the ships. Yet the scene was, for all its loudness, curiously colorless. The savage blaze of the sun seemed to bleach everything to a blinding bone-whiteness that made my head pound and my eyes water. More than anything else, I longed to sit in a bit of shade and drink a cold mug of water.

Unfortunately, the only shade available was that cast by the towering Sadorian cliffs, looming on both sides of the sloping pass that led up to the desert, and that was a goodly step away.

Powyrs pointed out a spot farther up the spit where it widened at the base of the cliffs. “About halfway to the cliffs, there is a place where visitors set up their tents. Can you see them? Nearby are stalls where you can purchase food, and at the very base of the cliffs there is a freshwater spring. The water will cost you nothing, but you will have to change your coins for barter tokens at the Earthtemple if you want to buy food.”

Watching us go, the plump seaman gave Maruman, who was draped around my neck, a long look of bewildered wistfulness that spoke of the strength of his attachment. I had coerced all memory of their brief association from his mind, but clearly the impression had been deep and some residue remained.

38

R
USHTON
, H
ANNAY, AND
Miryum cleared the rough shale and, with the twins’ aid, set about erecting the tents we had bought in Sutrium at Jakoby’s suggestion. Daffyd and Freya were charged with getting water, and Fian and I were to exchange our small store of coin for Temple barter tokens. Dameon elected to walk with us, and since the spring was on the way to the Temple, we went that far together.