The Red Queen (102 page)

‘While you ask and ask and I answer, your queen may be dying,’ I snapped.

‘All that can be done is being done,’ Maginder said, to my relief and gratification. ‘Slavetown is turning itself inside out seeking her. The trouble is that it is curfew, so no Redlander within these walls can leave before the curfew bells toll at dawn, and those outside of the walls will not risk moving around during curfew until the Red Queen shows herself and convinces them of who she is.’

‘Non-Redlanders who have pledged to our cause,’ said Rymer softly. The others fell immediately silent to listen to him, but he spoke his next words directly to me. ‘As Maginder said, our people are making a thorough search of Slavetown, but we rely on others to search outside – Landfolk with Redlander blood mostly, for Landfolk must live within Slavetown, aside from a few exceptions, of which Matthew is one.’

‘I am glad to hear you are searching but I need to get out of here to meet my friend in case he has learned something,’ I said tersely. ‘I meant to go over the wall, but I understand that is impossible.’

Rymer glanced at the others, then he stood and said to me, ‘I will send someone to wait for him and bring him into Slavetown. Then he will tell you and us what he has learned and we can decide how to proceed.’

Watching him depart tranquilly, I wondered at his calmness, given how long his people had waited for the return of their queen. Was it possible he did not believe me? I might have tried to coerce him, except that I had noticed he and the other two Redland leaders were taking exaggerated care not to make contact with me. No doubt Matthew had taught them that!

A man and a woman brought in some platters of food, and despite my anxiety for Dragon, my stomach rumbled. We were joined by two other women and some men, all Redlanders. Maginder urged me to eat, and I did so, gingerly, for the food was highly spiced. The others ate little as they speculated about what Dragon might have been doing when she crept away to enter Redport. They all spoke as if the last Red Queen had perished long ago, and Dragon was not her daughter but her descendant. I wondered for a moment if it could be so, but then how could it possibly be that the infant daughter of the last Red Queen had been lost at sea and then by strange coincidence, a descendant of hers, also an infant, had been washed ashore on the Land ages later. Besides, what of Dragon’s memories of her mother? At the same time, I could not help but think how different the settlement had looked in Dragon’s visiondreams, compared to the red and arid reality I was seeing. Yet I said none of it, knowing it would have made me sound mad and this was no time to make the Redlanders doubt my sanity. Besides, there was only one way it could have happened that Dragon was the daughter of the last Red Queen, even though she had died two hundred years ago, and that was for Dragon to have been put into a cryopod, and then later, somehow, she had ended up at sea and had been washed ashore on the land to live in the ruins until I had found her.

But who would have put her into a pod and where? Was it possible there were other places like Habitat where people were captured and ‘saved’ in cryopods? And if so,
why had she then been released?

Seeing Rymer return, I stood up. ‘I cannot just wait here like this.’

‘You must,’ the Redlander said in his soft, stern voice. ‘Sometimes the only way to serve is by waiting.’

It was a reminder of the incredible patience of the Redlanders who, it seemed, had been enslaved not for a mere decade or so as I had imagined, but for generations. I sighed and resumed my seat. ‘What became of the rest of the Druid’s people after the Druid’s camp was destroyed in the firestorm?’ I asked Jow.

‘Some perished as we were marched from the mountains to the shore, and others died or were slain on the voyage to the Spit. Erin, Gilaine and I survived the journey to the Spit, along with Saul and Peter. Michael died on the way. Lidgebaby was alive then too, though she had developed a cough and she was left behind there. It near killed Gilaine but at least Saul was with her and he would have died to protect her.’

‘Her,’ I echoed, startled, for I had thought the baby a boy.

Jow nodded absently, his expression haunted for a moment, and I remembered the strong coercive bond the baby Lidge had forged, binding him and the other Misfits in the Druid camp together, ensuring they would love and protect her. It must have been dreadful for her to be separated from them, too. Suddenly, I thought of Ana and wondered if Dragon had returned to the camp. The thought that she might have done so lifted my spirits, but something stopped me from speaking of Ana and the others to these Redland men. It was not that I mistrusted them, it was merely an old habit of secrecy roused to life. As it was, I had risked a great deal in revealing as much as I had done this night. Yet when I looked about at those gathered, Redlanders all, talking with increasing excitement and, I realised, beginning to talk about what must be done when the queen was found, I realised I was glad.

I thought again about the timing of things and wondered if I was right in my guess that Matthew had seen Dragon creeping into Redport. Or was it something else entirely?

‘Do you have a plan to reveal Dragon to her people? I asked Rymer.

‘Dragon,’ he echoed thoughtfully. ‘Matthew always called her that. It was one of the first things that made me believe he was a true prophet. He said she had been named so for the power she had of summoning dragons. You see the Red Queen is said to be able to do that. I always thought it a sort of mythic truth rather than a real thing. But does she have a true name?’

‘Dragon is what we called her from the time she came to us,’ I said.

‘You found her, Elspeth Gordie,’ he said, giving me a swift, sly look. ‘That is why I came so quickly. I remembered Matthew speaking your name. He said you were a powerful Misfit. Mistress of a guild of Misfits in the Land.’

I nodded, half hypnotised by the extreme softness of his voice, its faint whispering quality. It made you feel you were being told secrets, confided in. I would have been curious to know more about him, if it had not been for my anxiety about Dragon, and now, about Swallow, for midnight had come and gone and he had not appeared outside the northern wall. My hope was that he had spotted the Redlanders and had concealed himself from them; anything was better than the thought that he had come to some harm.

‘It is interesting that one such as you would come here to help restore a queen to her people,’ Rymer went on now. ‘How did you learn what she was in the first place? Matthew said he only realised it when he came here and saw the fresco of the Red Queen on the Great Hall.’

‘I am sure Matthew spoke to you of Futuretellers,’ I said, wondering what Matthew had made of the Redlanders’ belief that the Red Queen had died aeons ago, unless
he
had supposed Dragon not to be her daughter but a descendant. It would have been a natural assumption, faced with the frieze and the disparity between Dragon’s age and the period since the last Red Queen had died. Especially since the freize showed the first Red Queen and not the last. Yet he must have found it a very queer coincidence that she had been washed ashore when the Red Queen and her infant daughter had fallen into the sea.

‘You foresaw that she carried the blood of the last Red Queen and might be restored to her place?’

‘It is impossible to know how a prophecy will unfold,’ I said. ‘Were there ever any Red Land futuretellers?’

‘There were tent mystics once upon a time, but after the queen was betrayed and taken from the Red Land, all Misfit abilities atrophied,’ he said, and I remembered that Dragon had said something once about tent mystics having an eye tattooed between their true eyes. Or had that been Swallow?

‘Tell me more of your journey here,’ he went on.

I had been dreading being asked more specific questions. It would lead inevitably to my quest. ‘We came overland,’ I said. ‘Before that across the sea. It was a long, hard, strange journey.’ I had an inspired thought. ‘We were helped by beasts, for some of us have the capacity to communicate with them.’

His eyes widened, and as I had hoped, he was distracted. ‘That was the greatest power of the Red Queen of old, though Matthew said our queen no longer has that power.’

‘Nor does she. Yet she is revered by beasts and they have their own name for her,’ I said. ‘In human speech it would be rendered as sunlight . . . what you call the solar, I believe.’

‘Ah! How fitting!’ He contemplated this for a moment. ‘I suppose she has no need of all her powers of old, for she has bestowed them on you and the others who served her. I look for the day when the queen herself will tell the story to her people in a land that is free of slavery.’

I was puzzled as to why they felt their Talents were connected to those of the Red Queen, unless the blocking machine had been here ever since the slavers came. Then, because I did not want to risk being asked any more questions, I said, ‘Rymer, please have your people take me out of Slavetown by whatever secret ways you have. It may be that Swallow will not show himself until he sees me, and I am very afraid of what might be happening to Dragon.’

‘You are impatient,’ he said. He seemed to make a decision. ‘Well, perhaps the time for waiting and being patient is at an end.’ He looked around and the grizzled Murrim immediately came over.

‘Has there been any word?’ Rymer asked.

‘Maginder has had Slavetown turned upside-down but there is no sign of her,’ Murrim said in his abrupt way. ‘I’d say she never was here or someone would have seen her if she is as like to the old Red Queen as Matthew always said. With your say-so, I would go out into the city and seek her with some of the halfblood younglings.’

‘Without seeing her and being sure she is the one for who we must wait, Murrim?’ Rymer asked. ‘You know that if it is not she, then you are breaking the ancient promise?’

‘I know it, but I am old and weary of waiting. I am ready to act this once before I die. If I am caught, I will claim to be trying to plot a rebellion, and of course, I will admit that no one would support me. I will be sent to the Entina,’ he said. ‘Yet you know I do not think it will happen, my friend, given the dreams the young ones have been having this last moon or so, my own Maya and Tulbutt’s sister Caro among them. Besides all else, Matthew foresaw her coming.’ His eyes flicked at me and back to the other man. ‘And she has the powers that once flowed from the Red Queen.’

‘Yet she comes without our queen,’ Rymer said, his eyes turning back to me. For a moment I felt accused by his dark stare, but then he frowned and shook his head. ‘Very well, go from Slavetown. Look for our queen and I pray you find her, but make certain those who go with you understand what must happen if you are taken by the Ekoni.’ He looked at me. ‘Take Elspeth Gordie out the secret way with you, that she might seek her friends. Raise the Dragon.’

Murrim’s eyes widened, so that I could see they were a clear blue. ‘Raise the Dragon,’ he said loudly enough that others in the chamber heard, and suddenly there was dead silence and all eyes were upon us.

‘Raise the Dragon!’ a woman said. Then they were all saying it, as if it were an invocation, a prayer, a call to arms. And so it seemed, for suddenly there was no more talk of patience and waiting. There was a rush of activity and calls and responses, then Murrim was leading me and two women, one his daughter Maya, and a group of older boys, all of whom were half Gadfian and half Redlander. Each of them carried a short sword, though I had been told there were no weapons in Slavetown.

Murrim, who was agile and strong for all he looked old, led us swiftly through the relatively straight streets connecting the infinities to a small infinity that was, by my reckoning, close to the gate in the wall. Here we entered a house and went, without encountering a soul, down to its cellar, where a seemingly solid wall was dismantled to reveal a tunnel. It was fortunate none of us was as big as Harym or we would never have got through it. Indeed at one point it was so narrow that I feared I had become stuck and a rush of terror came over me. Ahead of me, Maya looked back and calmly bade me turn sideways and I slipped through easily. But I was very glad to climb out the other end into yet another cellar. There was a lad lying sleeping on a mat by the door we opened and he sat up and gaped at us in utter astonishment.

‘Raise the Dragon,’ Maya said, and he leapt to his feet, face flushing with excitement.

‘I will wake my mam and da,’ he said, then hesitated. ‘Can I say the words?’

‘Say them,’ Murrim said, grinning, then he caught the boy’s arm, ‘only quietly, eh? Tell your father the Red Queen has come to Redport and we are going to her. We do not want to wake the slavemasters until we have her safe. Rymer will send word when it comes time for us to cry the words aloud.’

The boy nodded and darted away up some rickety steps but Murrim led us to the door the boy had seemingly been guarding, and unbolted it carefully, opening it to the quiet dark city. I looked up, but could see neither stars nor moon. Clouds must have blown in from the sea. Something hanging from a sill was flapping, which suggested there was a wind blowing even now, but there was not a breath of it down in the lane. ‘Now it begins,’ Murrim whispered, and there was exultation in his soft words. ‘We are outside the wall of Slavetown.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘Maya, you and Serrik and you three lads go with Elspeth Gordie round the back of Slavetown to see if her shysome friend will show himself. I am going to the Infinity of Blue to speak with Vadim. He and his friends have always wanted a rebellion. Now they will have their chance.’

‘Raise the Dragon, Father,’ she said, and they smiled at one another.

Maya led us back to the wall around Slavetown and along it to the edge of the city. The other woman and the boys came behind us, not speaking. We all stopped at the edge of the city, looking out across the windswept plain that stretched darkly away, merging with the sky into a general blackness. It was a good omen, I thought, for a bright, moonlit night would have been far more dangerous, and the wind would make it hard to see far beyond the settlement.

Maya led the way round the wall, and we were soon making our way along the lane leading from the north of the city. I stepped out onto the plain and felt the weight of the block slide from my mind with relief. There was a wind blowing and I turned my face into it with pleasure.

‘If we can wait a bit . . .’ I said, already shaping a probe to reach out to Swallow, but without warning a boy suddenly seemed to rise up from the earth a little way along the wall.

‘What is happening?’ he asked, rubbing red dust from his face.

‘We have come to see if we can lure out the man you have been waiting for,’ Maya told him.

I sent the probe spinning out, but it would not locate Swallow, so I tried Ana, praying she was atop the dome rather than behind it. To my incredible relief, she was, and the probe located at once.

‘Elspeth! I have been so worried. What is happening? Have you found her.’

My heart sank. ‘Dragon is not with you?’

‘No. But Darga came back. He says he got her scent but then he could not get to you and Swallow. I could not make out what he meant. Is Swallow with you?’

I bit my lip, realising I had been hoping Swallow might have returned to the camp. ‘No. He was meant to meet me by the north wall of Slavetown. That is where I am now, but I . . . I came later than we had planned. If he comes . . .’ I stopped, trying to think what to tell her. ‘If he comes, tell him I have made contact with Dragon’s people. They are searching for her, too. I am with some of them now. I think . . . I think we might have started a revolution.’

‘Without Dragon? I thought the Redlanders had sworn to wait until she had returned.’

‘I think most of them will wait until they see her, but it seems some of the young Redlanders have been dreaming of her imminent coming, and Matthew, too. He told them I would bring her, so they knew my name.’

‘Do they know about your . . .?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I do not want them to know. If Swallow returns to the camp before I see him, remind him that none of you must speak of my quest to any of the Redlanders. They see me as the bringer of their queen and it is better that I am nothing more.’

‘Have you any idea where Dragon is?’

‘None. And what is worse, Matthew has vanished as well. I thought he might have foreseen her coming, but it turned out that he disappeared before she came into the settlement and no one here has seen him since. There is the possibility that the Ekoni have scooped him up as part of a random search. Swallow was going to locate the place they took prisoners and I hope he has done that. It might even be that he ran into Matthew. Did Darga say if he scented Maruman?’

There was a pause then she said, ‘He signalled that he smelled both Dragon and Maruman together, or Maruman following Dragon’s scent. Gahltha signalled the same. I think he was saying that he dreamed it, but that was before Darga came. The horses all went out grazing and they have not yet returned.’

My heart began to pound. ‘Did Darga or Gahltha say where they had seen Dragon?’

‘Darga tried but I could not understand what he meant, probably because I have never been into the settlement. Should I go down and send him away from the dome camp so you can farseek him.’

I shook my head, forgetting she could not see me. ‘Send him to the north of the city and tell him to find my scent and follow me in. I am with some Redlanders and we are about to go to the Infinity of Blue to meet some others, but I have no idea where it is. Tell Swallow if he appears, for he might know it.’

‘I will,’ Ana said. ‘Elspeth, have you found whatever Cassy left for you?’

‘I found some statues she carved, but no message. Yet maybe if I could examine them more closely and in daylight I would find something. But that will have to wait for the moment.’

‘Be careful.’

‘I will, and if Swallow comes, tell him the code phrase the Redlanders are using to rouse their people is Raise the Dragon. He might need to have something to identify himself to the Redlanders.’

I severed the probe and farsought Gahltha. The black horse responded at once and with his usual painful barrage of questions, which I answered as best I could. He told me that he had dreamed of Maruman with Dragon, and offered me a useless but frightening image of her creeping along a dark stone passage, but there was no sign of Maruman. Gahltha explained that he had not seen the old cat but had felt his presence somewhere close by. Then he demanded to join me. I insisted he wait and cut off the connection to avoid arguments.