The Red Queen (52 page)

Perhaps he guessed it, for Ahmedri said, ‘I have become accustomed to these dead cities but I do not like them. Least of all do I like these metal boxes, which are too like the ones the people in the Land build to close the dead in, before they are laid in the ground. It is better the Sadorian way, to be laid in the ground as an offering to the earth.’

‘I prefer the gypsy way,’ Dameon murmured. He felt my puzzlement and explained. ‘When one of their number dies, they lay the dead in fine clothes on a bed of twigs in a high place and give them to the fire and to the air and sky. That is how I would like my body to be dealt with. I have lived enough of my life closed up in darkness.’

I shivered violently, and told myself it was not the edge of a premonition brushing me. I bade the tribesman go on with his story.

‘I went inside and the wolf followed. It went to the same place it had slept before and stretched out,’ he said. ‘I closed the door. I was very weary and ill and very cold for I had lost the silver blanket. It had fallen from the pack when I brought everything into the settlement. I lay down to sleep, but despite my weariness I was so cold it took a long while for me to drift off. I dreamed of
rhenlings
swarming and woke, stiff and thick-headed, hours later, to the sound of the
rhenlings
again. I knew it was nearing dawn and that meant the swarm was returning. I lay listening to it pass and gradually it came to me that I was no longer cold. There was warmth at my back. It was the wolf.’

He remained silent and I asked the question that had been burning in me since he began to tell his tale. ‘What happened to Darga and Falada?’

‘They did not rejoin me,’ he said, and there was sorrow in his eyes, and I realised he thought them dead.

‘What of Gavyn and Rasial?’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They followed you. Remember Gavyn wandered off the way you had gone, and Rasial went after him. I farsought you to tell you right before the sandstorm came, and you said you would search for them.’

‘Ah, I remember. It was long ago now, and in truth I was not sure if you said they
had
come after me, or
meant
to.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I never saw any sign of them.’

‘Rasial was resourceful,’ Dameon said, no doubt feeling the surge of sorrow I felt at the thought that the strange pair had died. ‘I do not think they are dead. I have dreamed of them. Of the joined creature they became in spirit-form.’

‘Dragon has dreamed of them, too,’ I remembered.

‘What of the wolf?’ Dameon asked.

The tribesman smiled. ‘It remained with me. It let me heal its wounds, eventually, and I saw they were claw marks very like to the ones on the she-wolf Descantra, now that I think on it. Perhaps they were attacked by the same creature. In any case I was very glad of its companionship in that dead and empty place. I tried to communicate with it but it did not know signal language. I would not say we became friends, but we were true companions. It took me some time to realise that the
rhenlings
had not killed us because something repels them from the buildings, and it was easier after that. They can overfly the settlement, but only at a great height. If they do not fly high enough, they sheer away as if they have come too close to flames. They would have caught us that first night, if not for that force.’

‘It must be the same force that covers Habitat, save when the red token is used,’ Dameon said.

At that moment, the elevating chamber slowed and then came to a halt and the door split and opened.

God’s voice announced that we had reached the level of the resurrection chamber. There was only one cryosleep bed where before there had been four, and from the corner of my eye I saw Dameon shiver slightly. No doubt he was remembering his own recent waking in this place.

Ahmedri reached the cryopod first, and gazed down at Miryum, who lay upon it swathed in white, still and pale as death. She was changed, in truth, and it was little wonder. She had endured much, by all accounts, since the time I had last seen her in the White Valley, moments after Straaka had thrown himself in the way of a soldierguard’s arrow. I glanced up at Ahmedri, wondering what he thought as he finally looked upon the woman he had once cast as a loathed nemesis, but though he did not take his eyes from the coercer, there was no expression on his face.

I looked back at Miryum. She was much leaner than I remembered, and while she had never been beautiful, there had always been courage and stubbornness in her face that gave it character; now that stolid stubbornness had been scoured back to reveal a yearning that might have always been part of her nature, hidden under sturdy pragmatism. Bared, it made her look noble.

She was badly scarred down one arm and leg and a little on her face. It looked like a burn scar on her arm, but there were bite marks over her shoulder and neck and on her face, close to her eye. There was another large scar on her thigh – a claw mark not dissimilar to the one on Ahmedri’s face, and I prayed that the tribesman was right, and he did not carry the same plague seeds that Miryum did. Certainly for all his thinness and scars, he did not look sick, but in its first and second phases, God had said the Endrax virus did not manifest as sickness at all.

‘How long will it be before she wakes?’ Ahmedri asked, and there was tension in his voice.

I knelt by Miryum’s head and asked God, deliberately speaking in my normal voice. God answered at once that she could be brought to full wakefulness immediately without harm, having brought herself so far by her own will, but it reminded me that she would still be unable to move or speak for some time.

‘Perhaps it would be better to let her wake naturally . . .’ Dameon began.

‘There is nothing natural about waking here,’ I said. ‘God, wake her now.’

‘It will still take some time,’ Dameon said, no doubt remembering his own experience. He suggested we make ourselves as comfortable as we could and allow Ahmedri to finish his story while we waited. I sat cross-legged beside the cryopod and Dameon sat with his back against it.

Ahmedri said he would stand for the moment. ‘There is not so much more to tell,’ he went on absently, his eyes straining forward. ‘Gradually I set up a proper camp in the settlement, in the place my brother had showed to me. I found a well and foraged for such fare as the desert can offer. Once I realised the settlement was safe from the
rhenling
horde, I explored, and it was soon clear to me that no one had ever lived there, strange as that seemed.’

This explained his lack of interest in Midland, I thought. He had explored his own city full of wonders, for surely that settlement had its own devices controlled by a computermachine, even if it was not one as complex as God appeared to be. But as Ahmedri continued he made no mention of computermachines or devices and I concluded that they had not been awakened. He had spent most of his time outdoors, roaming the desert around the settlement, foraging. Then one day, returning from the oasis, he noticed footprints that matched the great flat tracks in our camp. Some time later, he saw a figure moving across the desert, dazzling to look at in the sunlight, and became certain that we had been taken by an
efari
; which meant Miryum had been taken by one, too.

The next time he saw the
efari
was from the top of a building, where he had been harvesting the leaves of some useful plant he had found growing there. By the time he had climbed down, it had long gone, which told him it moved very quickly. The tracks were the same as those he had seen in the camp, and he had been certain it was searching the settlement systematically. From the other occasions on which he had seen it, it seemed to him it searched constantly as well, probably for travellers. He realised then that he had been very lucky not to have been spotted. He resolved to be more careful and wary when he moved about, and at the same time, he conceived a plan to track the
efari
back to its dwelling place, in the hope that it would lead him to us. The only danger would be the
rhenlings
, should they happen on him when he was out in the open. He thought the
efari
must be a man inside a silver suit and helm that offered protection from the
rhenlings
, whereas he possessed no such suit. He had prayed to dream of his brother again, that he might ask Straaka’s advice.

‘Maybe it was only ever a fever dream born of need and longing, for he did not come to me again,’ Ahmedri said. ‘Finally I was strong and healthy and impatient enough to come up with a plan, but it needed testing. I had found the silver blanket where I dropped it long since, and I had the idea of waiting until the horde that regularly passed at darkmoon had flown over, and then I took food and water and the blanket to the crack in the earth from which I had learned the
rhenlings
came, and dug a hole. I lay down and covered it with a silver blanket. It stretched stiff and light and unsagging over the hole. I scattered some sand over it to dim the brightness of its lustre, and then slipped into the space under it.

‘The
rhenlings
came and I watched through a crack as they approached the settlement and then sheered away before coming back to their lair. They passed within a hand’s breadth without noticing me.’

I was aghast at the risk he had taken, for if the creatures had detected him, he would have died swiftly and horribly.

‘I was elated at my success,’ Ahmedri went on. ‘But when I returned to my camp that night, for the first time, the wolf did not come. I had been unable to tell it my plan and perhaps it thought I had been caught and killed foraging. I waited a sevenday in the hope that it would return, but it did not, so I packed up and set off in the direction the
efari
had taken in leaving the settlement, and after some days, I came to another deserted settlement. I spent a great deal of time searching it, utterly convinced the
efari
had imprisoned you there as it had Straaka’s woman, otherwise you would have used your powers to contact me, but I found nothing except
efari
prints that suggested a single walker had passed through, even as it had passed through the settlement I had come from. I finally accepted that you were not in there and I told myself that I had been mad to follow the advice of a dream brother. I made up my mind to return to the other settlement in the hope that the wolf had returned and because I had made a place for myself there, and I knew where to find food and water. If I remained in this new settlement, I would have to begin again and what would it serve?

‘On the journey back to the first settlement, I made up my mind that I would set a trap and capture the next
efari
that came. Once it was helpless, I would demand to know where you had been taken and why. It was a mad notion because if the
efari
were Beforetimers, as I thought they surely must be, they would have weapons with which to vanquish me. In truth, it was all bluster and desperation, for by the time I reached the settlement, I was exhausted, and the fever, which recurred sometimes, though less and less frequently, was fully upon me. I barely made it into the building before I collapsed. I dreamed, not of my brother, but of a wolf, and when I woke, the wolf was lying beside me.’

‘It came back,’ I said softly.

The tribesman smiled at me. ‘It came back. Both the wolf and I took some time to recover, and then I prepared a light pack with food and water and the silver blanket, so that I could follow the
efari
immediately, when it next appeared. If the
rhenlings
came, I would simply lie down and pull the silver blanket over me until they flew on. But many months passed and there was no sign of an
efari
. I explored the settlement further and found lower levels and strange devices and many things that were interesting or strange to me, and the wolf remained, sometimes coming with me but always vanishing in the daylight to return at night, sometimes with food, which it shared with me. Three times it returned badly wounded, and once, I saw it fall unconscious outside the safe area right on dusk. I barely got to it and carried it back to safety before the
rhenlings
came. It limps still from one wound. Twice in all that time I found tracks that showed the
efari
had come through while I slept.

‘Then there came a day when I was returning to the settlement with some tiny bitter berries I had gone to fetch from a lick – it was a great distance to travel in daylight but my teeth had begun to rattle in my jaws. Also I had noticed the wolf’s limp had worsened, and the berries could be mixed in salve that would help us both. Far wiser to have made it a twoday journey, but my companion had been listless the day before and I was worried about leaving him alone when I could not explain what I meant to do. He trusted me, and I him, but we could not communicate even after all that time.

‘I was within sight of the settlement and the sun was westering when I noticed a flash of brightness on the other side of the city. I watched and saw it again and realised the
efari
must have come while I was away. I raced into the settlement, got the small pack I had prepared and set off after it. The wolf was nowhere to be seen, though he had been sleeping when I left, but he always sought out some deep dark place to lie in during the daylight hours. I had to follow the
efari
; indeed I had vowed it. So I left half the berries and some water and my large pack as a way of signalling that I would return.’

He had been pacing around the cryopod as he spoke, but when he stopped so abruptly, I turned to look at him and saw that he was gaping at the cryopod. I got up hastily and saw that Miryum had opened her eyes a slit. Remembering my own wakening, I bade God dim the light, but even so the coercer blinked and squinted.

‘Miryum, you are safe but don’t try to speak or move yet,’ I said aloud, for Ahmedri’s sake and God’s, though the latter
must
have a strong suspicion that I was a special anomaly. In that moment, I made the decision to speak of the matter to the computermachine the first chance I got.

‘Miryum?’ I said again, and this time, I farsought her at the same time.

The coercer’s eyes moved wildly this way and that before settling on me. I could tell from her panicked glances, and from my own memory of this state, that she was trying to speak and move and could not. I guessed, too, that she might not be able to see me clearly, and I asked God to dim the light still further and make it redder. As the chamber darkened and changed colour, she seemed at last to grow calm and I guessed Dameon was exerting his influence.

‘Guildmistress?’ she sent coercively, doubtfully.

I bit back a groan at the force of her mindvoice. ‘It is I, Elspeth Gordie,’ I told her, farseeking and farsending what I heard to both Dameon and Ahmedri. Dameon did nothing but the tribesman stiffened. I focused my attention on Miryum so as not to be distracted by the reactions of my companions, for I knew she might not be able to think clearly for long. ‘Are you in pain?’

‘What . . . happened to me?’

‘What do you remember?’ I asked.

‘Straaka,’ she sent, and her staring eyes filled with tears. ‘He died. But then . . . he was . . . I thought . . .’ She faltered.

‘Do not concern yourself about what you cannot recall,’ I told her. ‘It will all come back to you.’ I stopped, knowing she would want some explanation from me, and at a loss to know how to tell so much.

‘Make it simple,’ Dameon advised. ‘Tell as little as you need. The detail can come later.’

‘Is that Dameon?’ Miryum coerced the question to me. ‘Is he with you? Are you both real? I dreamed so many dreams that I wondered if I would know when I was not dreaming, if ever I woke. I dreamed . . . Straaka talked to me, after he was dead. I thought I was going mad. But he was real, Elspeth.’

‘I know it,’ I farsent. ‘I have spoken to him as well.’

‘He said that I had bound his spirit to mine,’ Miryum sent. ‘I didn’t know it but it was true. I held him even though his body had . . . died. I could not bear to let him go. You see I . . . I had known my heart had changed towards him but I had said nothing. Pride or . . . no, it was fear – cowardice – stopped me telling him I loved him. You see I thought it was perversity that drew him to me. I could not think what else.’ The tone of her mindvoice was unsteady and distraught. I feared she would let herself fall away from me into sleep to escape her confusion.

I reached out to lay my hand on Dameon’s and felt him strengthen his soothing emanations, then I sent, ‘Straaka’s spirit told me that you travelled the dreamtrails together and shared great joy.’