The Red Queen (106 page)

‘Elspeth you must wake up. We have to get away from here!’ Merret was shaking me urgently. I blinked and realised I was lying in a cobbled lane.

‘Ma . . . Maruman?’ I gasped.

‘He has gone. I am sorry about him. I just flung him off to get at you,’ Merret said. ‘He bit me and fled. But whatever happened? You were looking at him and then fell into a swoon and you seemed to be having some sort of . . . vision. You shouted so loudly . . . I feared you would be heard.’ She glanced at Reuvan who was peering out of the lane.

He seemed to sense her scrutiny, for he said over his shoulder, ‘I think you
were
heard. Some of the Ekoni are running towards the lane where we were when it happened and there is a lot of shouting.’

Merret rose and went to look. She came to me, shaking her head. ‘That is too much shouting and strife over a mysterious cry. Maybe something else is going on. I think we need to get right away from here.’

‘There is another safe house close to the fourth scythe,’ Reuvan said.

Merret nodded. ‘I know it. We had better go to ground there until the dawn bells toll, then you can escort Elspeth to Slavetown while I make my way to Quarry. I will farseek Jakoby as soon as I get out of Redport to tell her what happened and see what she has learned.’

Reuvan nodded, half his attention still on whatever was happening. But he came when Merret spoke his name. I tried to walk but my legs buckled under me. Seeing it, Merret nodded to Reuvan who simply bent once again and took me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. I could do no more than cling to him as he set off at a loping run. Merret had taken the lead and stopped to look out at the end of every lane before we crossed it and entered another. We came to what I now understood was the fourth scythe and waited till a group of Chafiri passed, in deep conversation. As soon as they were gone, Merret darted out and Reuvan followed. Finally Merret stopped part way along a lane and Reuvan lowered me to a doorstep, his face damp with sweat. Merret opened the door and we went inside, Reuvan helping me to sit with my back to the wall while Merret lit a lantern, then she came to squat before me.

I felt sick to my stomach from hanging upside-down during the run, but utterly glad Merret and Reuvan had been with me, else I would surely have been taken prisoner by the Ekoni. ‘Maruman was . . . was hurt . . .’ I said.

‘What did he do to you?’ Merret demanded.

‘I think . . . I think I just got a taste of
seliga
,’ I told her.

‘Seli . . . what are you talking about?’ Merret demanded.

‘It is a sort of futuretelling that beasts – some beasts – can do. Maruman . . .’ I hesitated, and decided not to try to explain dreamtravel at this moment. ‘He told me that Dragon had a vision and he had shared it. She wanted to see the place of her vision and I think that is why she came into Redport. Maruman led her to the place they had both dreamed of. Then she . . . I think she had another vision while they were there, and that was what he was showing me. It was as if a waterfall was rushing through me. I saw a hundred fragments, some utterly strange. The ground broke open and there was fire inside, then I saw the moon crack open and dragons flew out . . . At last it turned into a memory, Maruman’s memory, Dragon was coming up some steps out of the earth. She seemed weak, and an Ekoni appeared and tried to grab her. Maruman flew at him, but the Ekoni kicked him aside and grabbed her. Then Matthew appeared and struck him down.’

‘I am sorry about Maruman,’ Merret said contritely, ‘poor old fellow. I will go back and look for him when the way is clear. But where did all of this happen?’

I frowned, thinking of the vision. ‘I believe they were on Palace Island.’

‘Rainbow Island,’ Reuvan said, and Merret nodded.

‘It makes sense because it is close to where we came upon Maruman just now. It might even be that those Ekoni we heard running found the fellow Matthew had struck down. He will have nothing to tell, for Matthew would have made sure to coerce away the encounter and replace it with something innocuous. It is necessary because if an Ekoni is attacked, random people from Slavetown are punished.’

‘It was around dawn yesterday when Dragon entered Redport, but it was night in the vision when the Ekoni attacked her.’ I broke off, remembering others of the many tumbling fragments: had Hannah said the Balance of Terror computer was
on the moon
? That was as strange and fantastic a notion as the moon cracking open to give birth to dragons. Yet the queer little dog had offered me a similar vision.

‘Elspeth?’ Merret said warily.

‘Don’t worry, I am not going to start shouting and raving again,’ I told her. ‘I was just trying to think what Dragon might have been doing between dawn and dusk.’

‘Maybe she hid in the ruins on the island for the day,’ Merret suggested. ‘It is pretty well deserted and though it is not guarded, no one is permitted on the first scythe save for people on approved business, because that is where the slave pens are, and the Ekoni barracks, and no slaves are permitted there save with Chafiri tokens. As to steps out of the earth, there are steps remaining here and there from the palace.’

Suddenly it struck me with the force of a blow that Dragon might have found Luthen’s crypt! Was it possible
that
was why she had entered Redport? Not to present herself to her people as I had supposed, but because she knew the Seeker needed to know where the crypt was, and had seen it in her dreamtravels and remembered it in reality. Of course she might also have been looking for the sceptre her mother used to carry, for that had been kept in Luthen’s crypt. Yet she had been empty-handed when she had emerged. Was
that
why she had seemed so shattered? Maybe she had searched unsuccessfully for the sceptre, aware of its importance to the Redlanders, and fearing that her people would not accept her without it.

But Maruman had said she had visioned a second time after he had led her to the place she had seen in her first vision. What had that been about, or had I simply misunderstood?

‘I will go with you into Slavetown,’ Merret said suddenly. ‘I can go back to look for Maruman before we go on.’

‘He was hurt, but not badly,’ I said. ‘Either he will sniff his way to me, or I will search for him later. I wish it might have been possible to have a closer look at Rainbow Island.’

‘It is too dangerous right now, especially if the Ekoni have just found an unconscious man there, even if he does tell them he fell over his own feet and knocked himself out.’ She looked at me. ‘You know we all dreamed of you from time to time after we left the Land – strange, impossible dreams. In one, I saw you speaking with Miryum.’

‘That was no dream,’ I said soberly. ‘We found her in the desert in a Beforetime city, lying trapped in sleep and unageing in a Beforetime machine that kept her so because she was ill and it could not heal her.’

‘A machine! But then she . . .’

‘She lived still when we parted. The machine had been keeping her asleep so she would not sicken, because it is waiting for a govamen computermachine to contact it so that it can get the knowledge it needs to make a special potion. Of course, it does not realise the world has ended and there is no more govamen. The moment she woke, the sickness did, too, but there was not yet any sign of it when we parted.’

‘How strange and sad that you woke her to that,’ Merret said. ‘But Dell told me that Ines had knowledge of many things she could not tell unless a govamen computermachine would contact her and permit it. She said there must have been at least five of them in the Beforetime, one for each of the five great powers because govamen had served all of them, and they had probably been in contact with one another, until the Great White caused them to sleep. She thought all of them destroyed.’

‘And so they may be,’ I admitted. ‘Yet I tried to convince Miryum to allow the computermachine to return her to deathless, ageless sleep in the hope that I or Dell or some other person would find a govamen computermachine that could be woken and made to reach out to other computermachines. She had not decided what to do when we left her in the care of Ahmedri.’ It was a shortened version of the truth, for I could not begin to tell all of it, especially the fact that I, and the others with me, had been laid to sleep in such a machine as well.

‘Ahmedri . . . you mean Straaka’s brother went with you? Is
that
what became of him?’ She sounded startled.

‘He followed me because he was seeking his brother’s bones to bury and the overguardian of the Earthtemple had foretold that I would lead him to them. And in a way it was so, for I found Miryum and she knew where they were.’ I broke off, thinking I ought to have told this to Jakoby, but there had not been time for thinking about what needed to be told, truly.

‘I should like very much to hear more of your adventures,’ Merret said, shaking her head in wonderment.

‘Would that a day might come beyond all of this, when there is time to tell stories,’ I said.

‘I think it will come very soon, now that Dragon is here,’ Merret said confidently. ‘It will change everything. The Redlanders have waited so long for their queen, and it is strangely right that Dragon, who is so like the first Red Queen that she
must
carry the same blood, arrives at the very moment when the foreign slaves in Quarry and Slavetown are about to rise against the slavemasters, for it means we will stand together. For that reason, I think the conflict will be over quickly and with as little bloodshed as in the land and the Norselands when we overthrew the Council and the Herders . . . if only we can deal with the greatships before anything happens.’

I wondered if it was true that the freeing of the Red Land would go smoothly. Those other confrontations, though less bloody than they might have been, had nevertheless left people dead and injured, and they had been a good deal more frightening and chaotic than in the retelling and remembering. Nor did I imagine that the Ekoni would go tamely, though their masters might when it was clear to them that they had lost, especially if Dragon and her people permitted them to leave. Though this was problematic, too, for, unlike the Hedra and the Council, the Gadfians had their own land, and it was highly likely they would return in force unless given good reason not to do so. The taking of the emissary’s ship and the
Black Ship
might solve that, but then there was the problem of the emissary’s people, who were likely to take it ill that their emperor’s envoy had been mistreated, and what of the ships lying off the coast? They were like to have weapons, but would they truly hold off attacking if the Redlanders kept the emissary and his entourage as hostages? Matthew and the Redlanders must have considered all of these things when they made their plans, and as Merret said, now that Dragon had come they would work together.

In truth, I wondered why I was thinking about any of it. My first priority was to learn the whereabouts of Luthen’s crypt from Dragon, or maybe to learn from her what message lay within it for the Seeker, and then I must leave Redport to seek out Sentinel, regardless of whether the Red Queen had won the freedom of her people and her kingdom or not.

This is not my story and there is no ending for me here, I thought, and a terrible weariness flowed through me. I told myself the fatigue that sapped my will was partly the result of the surge of visions Maruman had poured into me and partly the fact that I had become entangled in events in Redport. I resolved, with anguish, to disentangle myself from the Red Queen and her struggles.

Despite my sorrows and anxieties, I was weary enough to drowse a bit against Reuvan’s shoulder, until Merret woke me, saying the dawn bells were tolling. She urged us to make haste, for this was the time the Ekoni changed the guard, so there was little likelihood of us encountering any of them. I thought she was also anxious to get word to Quarry of Dragon’s arrival.

As we slipped from the safe house into the quiet, cool lane, Reuvan pointed out that the looming masked ball might mean a good deal of unusual movement about the settlement, but Merret said it mattered little, for anyone involved in preparations would be busy minding their own business, save the Ekoni, whose business was looking for trouble. But she was right about the streets being empty, at least in the northern part of the settlement, and the bells had only just ceased tolling the end of the curfew when we came in sight of the gate to Slavetown. It was still closed and as we waited in a lane for the Ekoni sentries to open the gates and let out the crowd of slaves beginning to gather inside, I realised that we were lurking in the same lane as Swallow and I had waited in the previous day, for the same reason. Thinking of the gypsy, I prayed he had got safely back to the dome camp. I had intended to go out and farseek him before entering Slavetown, but for the sake of my quest I needed to speak with Dragon. The minute I had done so, I would ensure I contacted him and the others.

And then, maybe, it would soon be time for me to part from them, I thought with a chill.

‘There,’ Merret murmured, and I saw the gate opening. She turned to Reuvan and bade him go and meet Jakoby and then go as fast as he could to Quarry to let them know about Dragon. They must have discussed it while I slept for Reuvan simply bade me farewell, rose, and ran lightly back along the lane. Merret watched him go and then suggested we wait until some people began arriving before we moved. The two Ekoni were soon busy questioning a man trying to enter Slavetown with his arms full of sharpened poles, so we pushed past and made our way directly along the Knife to the Infinity of Hope. Merret knew the residence of Councillor Telluride, saying she had been to meetings there. As we crossed the infinity, I saw Cassy’s statues carved from stone in the full light of morning, and marvelled a moment at their beauty, wondering again if the name of the infinity had been taken from the final stone form, with his wings and radiant upturned face. The moon was still showing, though very palely, and it was in such a position that it seemed the winged boy looked as if he were gazing at it with yearning and hope.