The Red Queen (56 page)

It was also Ana alone who had elected to remain in Kelver Rhonin’s residence on our last night, and I suspected she had done so less to enjoy the comfort of the bathing chamber, as she had claimed, and more because she had spent a good part of the night conversing with God.

As she disappeared from sight, I realised I had once again forgotten to ask her about Hannah’s things.

I had been determined to do so the previous day, the moment she returned from her latest foray into the Incidental Storage, but before I could utter a word, she had triumphantly presented me with my old clothes, the memory seed still buttoned into its waxed pocket! Not only had she found it, she had brought up all of our packs and bundles from the camp. The others had been no less elated to have their belongings restored to them. Quite aside from my delight and relief at having the all-important memory seed restored to me, I had been very pleased to have Jacob Obernewtyn’s journal back, though in the end, I had given it to Ahmedri, telling him to return it to Garth for me, along with my apologies for having it so long, with the news that he had been right all along about Jacob and Hannah.

The only disappointment had been that Ana had not found the stone sword, yet there was nothing to be done about its loss, truly, and at least it was not something I would need for my quest. Even so, I apologised mentally to Cassy for failing her trust. Most likely the sword had sunk into the sand and been covered over after the storm. The androne must not have seen it, any more than Ahmedri had done. The tribesman promised to look for it when he went to find Straaka’s bones, but admitted he would have trouble finding the exact place we had camped, given there had been nothing to mark it.

I noticed that Swallow was stirring. He sat up, threw off his blankets and came to the fire. Frowning, he squatted down and looked into the pot, then began to stir it, chiding me for letting the bottom of the porridge burn.

I related my dream to him.

‘So he is truly gone then,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder where the dreamtrails will take him.’

I stood up and relished the feel of the wind in my hair, the nip of its coolness on my bare skin, but already it had warmed a good deal from when I had awakened. I had removed my sandals the moment I had come up out of lower Midland, and now I wriggled my toes in the cool soft sand that had flowed through the streets, covering most of the black roads. God had not attempted to hold back the desert, and in many places white dunes lapped up against the sides of buildings. It had taken care of the empty buildings as best it could, but all of the outer surfaces showed signs of erosion, being exposed to the wind and the scouring sand for aeons.

The camping place Swallow had chosen had the advantage of being at the centre of a crossroads that ran out of the city in four directions, and so, looking east along one of the roads, I could see that the sky was beginning to lighten as the sun came near to rising. This early, there were still pools of blue shadow about the base of dunes visible beyond the edge of the city, only the tips showing the lemony light of the predawn. I thought of my first view of upper Midland the previous evening, how the air had been hazy with heat, the buildings half lost in the gauzy light. I had walked with Tash about the nearest buildings, gazing up at the bland unadorned facades and squared-off edges that characterised Beforetime structures, marvelling again that they had never been inhabited.

At one point, we came unexpectedly to the edge of the city, and I was immediately conscious of the androne that had been following us. What would he do, I had wondered, if Tash stepped out of the city. But she merely stared out for a time, then turned back without saying a word.

As for Habitat, it had been utterly disorientating to discover that the whole of it was sunk into the ground in the midst of the surrounding cluster of empty buildings set along a grid of streets. Its wall did not soar up above the desert as we had imagined, visible from afar in all directions. Only the topmost part of it rose up as high as the roof of nearby buildings, and the desert lapped up against it like a slow white sea. No wonder it had seemed to disappear when I had overflown it in dream form. I wondered why it had been excavated, since God had definitely said Habitat had been set up in an existing structure.

Swallow suggested we could climb up the wall into Habitat from the outside, but the androne warned us in God’s voice that the wall was infused with a force that would shock any creature attempting to scale it. This was to prevent beasts entering Habitat, in addition to the force that overlay it, preventing the approach of the
rhenlings
, save when the red token was employed.

I wondered again about the token, and why Hannah had introduced it to the Speci. Surely she had some good and important reason, rather than simply to enable the Committee she had set up to exert a vicious punishment on Speci of whom they did not approve. Perhaps Hannah’s effects would contain some explanation, for Ana had certainly said there were papers and two booklets among them.

A gust of wind blew from the west, and I turned my face in that direction to see a long indigo smudge just visible as a dense blackness above the dark horizon. It might be the Blackland Range or merely a low-lying bank of cloud. Or maybe a storm – a sandstorm probably, for when I sniffed I could not smell rain, as I would have done in the Land or in the mountains had a storm been approaching. I did catch the faintest scent of green and growing things and realised this must be coming from Habitat. It was very strange to think of the Speci living their limited busy lives even now inside Habitat.

On impulse, I closed my eyes and, summoning a farseeking tendril, reached out, seeking Ahmedri’s wolf, but to no avail. Most likely it had already taken refuge in some rift or cave or even in a building in one of the other settlements, for day was dawning

I had just returned from relieving myself in the lee of a building when Ana arrived with Hendon in tow. The androne looked little different to before but when I said so, Ana pointed out with considerable exasperation this box and that tube, saying Hendon was much changed. Ahmedri had been explaining the use of various spices to an attentive Tash, and after we had all admired Hendon to Ana’s satisfaction, the tribesman said we had better eat before a second lot of porridge was burned. Tash helped him to dish out the meal. She seemed a good deal more cheerful and outgoing than on the previous day, and I wondered if it was because she was becoming resigned to being left behind, or because of Ana’s enthusiasm about her life after we left, and her promise to find a govamen computermachine to reach out to God. Dragon was taking a turn at sitting with Miryum, and Dameon said he would take her some porridge. He had obviously memorised the route, for he did not falter once as he made his way under the awning. He had only just gone inside the tent, when Dragon came rushing out to call to us that Miryum was waking.

We crowded into the plast tent, in time to see her open her eyes. The bandage she had worn when the androne brought her up had been removed, but the walls of the tent blocked the blazing sunlight and a curtain formed from thin strips of the same light-responsive material had been hung in the doorway so that it was very dim inside. Although it had been growing hotter outside, within the tent it was neither hot nor cold.

Realising belatedly that we were all waiting for Miryum to speak, I remembered how impossible that had been to begin with upon my own waking. I formed a farseeking tendril, armoured with coercivity, and entered Miryum’s mind. At the same time I threw out connecting spars to the minds of my companions so that they would hear what Miryum said to me within her mind. The first thing I did was to tell the coercer clearly and in detail about the Endrax virus, saying she had most likely been infected when she had been bitten by the beast that dwelt in the place where she had left Straaka’s bones.

‘I will not be put back to sleep,’ she sent at once, when I outlined her choices. ‘I will die and go after him.’ She meant Straaka of course, and I felt Ahmedri move beside me, but he did not speak. Now her eyes sought me out, though she did not move her head. ‘How long?’ She thought the question at me powerfully enough that I felt the others flinch from the coercive force of her mind.

‘A month, maybe less,’ I said. ‘First you will feel well, and then very well, and then . . .’ I thought again of Domick, forgetting that my probe enabled everyone to catch glimpses of my thoughts. Dragon cried out to see Domick in his final extremities, while Ana lifted a hand to her mouth, appalled. I cursed my carelessness and forced the memory from the forefront of my mind.

‘I have potions that will ease you,’ Ahmedri said evenly, but when I looked at him, I thought he, too, looked shaken.

‘God will not let you suffer like that,’ Ana said with absolute certainty.

‘I want nothing to ease me,’ Miryum said inside my mind. ‘I have experienced pain before, and sickness. I will endure them.’

I felt a stab of irritation with her for she had been ever thus – foolishly, needlessly stoic – and yet it was the essence of her character that she was steadfast even in small things and even to the point of foolishness.

‘I will remain with you,’ Ahmedri said.

Miryum’s eyes shifted to the tribesman and I thought she might think he was Straaka and suffer for it, but instead of pain, her eyes expressed disdain. ‘You are his halfbrother.’ She coerced the words directly to the tribesman, and he flinched at the force of them, or maybe at the scouring contempt in them, evident even to me, who lacked empathy. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Dameon shudder. He had felt her emotion, but all of us heard the words because I was linking them.

‘I am Ahmedri, the halfbrother of Straaka,’ the tribesman said, his voice emotionless. He had thrown up a wall about his mind, too, but I had seen him recoil at her initial words. Yet he did not tell her, as I wanted fiercely to do, that Straaka had forgiven his brother and insisted there was no need for shame. ‘It is my duty to remain with the woman of my brother.’

Miryum said, ‘Straaka loved you but you did not value his love. I do not criticise you for this. I cannot, for I was no more worthy of his love than you. But I do not want you to stay with me. What is the use of a worthless man guarding a worthless woman? Go and take his bones to Sador, to the vale of your ancestors. That is your duty as his brother. Perform it now, if you value him, or your overguardian and your reputation. I will tell you how to find his bones.’

‘I know my duty and it is first to do as my brother bade me do,’ Ahmedri said, speaking aloud, and in that moment he sounded very like the old Ahmedri – unyielding and coldly angry. I could hardly blame him and yet he must see that the coercer spoke as she did because she despised herself.

‘He . . . he spoke to you?’ Miryum asked coercively, and for the first time there was uncertainty in her voice. ‘He did not speak to me.’

‘He bade me watch over you and I will do that because he asked it,’ Ahmedri said. ‘If I am unworthy of my brother’s love it is my own affair. If you choose to be put to sleep again, I will remain with your body until you perish, or I do, or until you are free. And if you choose to remain awake and die of this sickness you bear, then I will remain until you have done so. Only when your soul leaves your body, will I seek my brother’s bones. I will take yours with me and bury you together. But one other thing my brother told me when he came to me some time past in a dream: if Elspeth’s quest succeeds, you will live.’

The rest of us stared at him – I as well – for he had said nothing of this, nor had Straaka.

Ana, standing on the other side of me, reached out and pinched me in excitement, saying it must mean that there was a govamen computermachine at Sentinel and that once I had dealt with it, we must be going to be able to reach out to God.

In my mind, Miryum dismissed her words, saying stiffly, ‘You do not understand me. There is nothing in life I want, save to leave it and follow my love. Would that I could ask one of you to kill me, but I know the tribes forbid it and I think none of the rest of you will have the courage or kindness to do it.’

‘We will not,’ I snapped, without looking at any of the others. ‘Do not burden us with such a request.’ I felt Dameon’s soothing exhortation to be gentle, to be kind, to remember that the coercer was not long awake and still deeply anguished.

I sighed. ‘Miryum, Straaka does not want you to die. He came to me in a dream and told me that.’

‘I ask only that I might lie where I can see the sky and the sun and moon. Leave me, all of you, and I need have no fear of infecting someone else with this sickness.’

‘I will speak to God and see if a tent can be got with a window that will show the sky,’ Ana said, and her tone was one I had heard before when she healed – a firm, kind tone shaped to deal with a fractious sick person. ‘As to passing on the sickness, you need not fear; all has been arranged. God will know when you are near to becoming contagious because the androne will take blood from you and analyse it once a day. Then you will be sealed in a biohazard tent, so that neither Tash nor Ahmedri can be infected. Unit A will feed you and tend to you, and in time, if there is pain, he will give you medicines to ease you. I have discussed it all with God.

‘Unless your desire is to have more pain to cherish,’ I said, and felt all of the others frown at me.

But I, too, had my reasons, and the apathy with which Miryum had listened to Ana was obliterated in the flash of anger I provoked. ‘I do not cherish pain!’ the coercer sent forcefully enough to make us all stagger. ‘Do as you will,’ she added, and deliberately shut her mind to all of us.

Ahmedri held his hand over his heart and bowed low to her. ‘I will go to construct my own tent nearby, and I will tend you as I promised my brother, but knowing you despise me, I will not make you suffer my company.’ Without another word, he stalked out.

The rest of us looked at one another and then I told the others to go and finish their meal, for we would leave very soon. When the others had departed, I said aloud, ‘You are stubborn, Miryum, and well I know it from Obernewtyn. Straaka said it to me as well, and so my guess is that he knew you would choose to remain awake and let this sickness devour you in misguided fidelity to him.’