The Red Queen (82 page)

Yet it did seem like a foolish waste for the Gadfians to send troublesome slaves to their deaths when they might just as well be sold at the Spit or used to swell the slave army. It was an idiosyncratic punishment, too, if the creature feasted on only some of those who passed. Unless the real aim of the punishment was to produce that mingling of terror and hope the miners must feel when they crept into the creature’s lair, which survivors would recount vividly, thereby giving potency to the threats of the slavemasters, and strengthening their control over the enslaved population.

As I lay down to rest after the meal, I thought the tale of a mutant monster in a chasm seemed a good deal more threatening as we were nearing its lair.

Swallow woke me, saying it was midafternoon.

‘I know we thought it wise to wait until the sun sets, but take a look at the sky.’

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. It was still very hot, though the heat lacked the intensity of noon, but it seemed to me it was a good deal darker than it ought to have been. When I came out from under the awning, I saw why. The sun was shining, but it was about to be consumed by a rising bank of black and indigo wind-tattered clouds. I had not seen a single cloud since the storm over the strait, but this had clearly come in from the sea, and maybe it was to be another storm. Yet it was impossible to imagine rain falling on this arid land.

Turning, I saw that the sky to the east was a strange lemon-tinged blue that looked nearly green at the horizon. The others were stretching and yawning, having just been roused, too, and like me they exclaimed at the clouds massing over the coast.

‘What do you think? Swallow asked me.

‘I think we had better pack up and be ready to make use of the weather if this cloudbank obscures the sun,’ I said.

He nodded decisively and began at once to dismantle the awning with Ana’s help, while Dameon, Dragon and I put away the cooking things. Then, leaving Swallow to load the three bundles onto the horses when they arrived, I climbed into the depression. None of us had thought it wise to sleep in it, even if the plain and most of the depression was dry as a bone, because there was a giant pipe running into it. Swallow had examined it earlier and had come up with the theory that the depression had not been made
for
water but
by
it. His theory was that some great upheaval had broken the pipe, letting its cargo of water gush away.

I splashed my face with the tepid water and drank several cups of it, grimacing. I had been too thirsty to care earlier, but now the reddish colour repelled me. It looked like water in which a bloody cloth had been washed. Even so, I forced myself to drink till I could drink no more, the memory of the thirst of the previous day very fresh in my mind.

Climbing out of the depression again, I suggested to the others that we try to put together some Land attire that would be so typical and dully appropriate that it would excite no attention in Redport. I had no idea what Redlanders themselves wore, though it seemed to me from my dream it was little enough. I had made up my mind to dress myself as a Land youth since my true dreams had shown Gilaine and her companions wearing long narrow tunics of silk, belted at the waist. The last thing I wanted were clothes that were fussy and confining, though likely ordinary slaves did not wear red silk gowns. Matthew, on the other hand, had always worn simple, brief, rough clothes. Of course I could not leave my chest bare, but the one time I had seen Jow, he had worn a shirt.

Ana bade Dragon bring her pack and then she asked Swallow and went through his too. Like mine, Dameon’s had been left behind, and Gavyn had only ever had the clothes he stood up in and two foraging pouches. As we tried to piece together several sets of clothes, Dragon told me that such gowns as I had dreamed of were worn only on formal occasions, and that red was the traditional ceremonial colour of the Red Land. The rest of the time, Redland women, including her mother, had worn short tunics and sandals, leaving their legs bare or covering them in light trews split at the side for coolness. This was better news, though Ana pointed out that the customs of dress in Redport might very well have altered under the Gadfian oppressors.

I suggested we fashion at least one makeshift gown from headdress scarves, just in case it was needed. This done, we dressed in the clothes we had laid out. I chose a short tunic and leggings, which I carefully split down the side before putting them on. Watching me begin to braid my hair back, Dragon suggested I leave it loose if I wanted to pass for a boy or man, or braid a portion as a sort of intricate cap, as women did. Keeping an eye on the looming cloudbank, I let her weave my hair into a cap, then I summoned the horses.

They had found nothing to graze on the whole day, so Swallow decided it was time to open the one bale of fodder we had got from the glide. It ached me that all of the equines had grown so thin that their bones were beginning to show through their coats, and I prayed there would be better grazing closer to the coast. If not, there would be nothing for it but to acquire food for them from Redport.

At last the cloudbank consumed the sun, and in the blink of an eye, it was dark.

‘Let us go,’ I said.

Once more Gahltha wanted us to ride, but I refused, saying that it was simply too dangerous. Aside from there being fissures hidden under the powdery dust, the ground had trembled again, hard enough to send ripples across the bloody water in the depression.

‘I/Marumanyelloweyes will ride the Daywatcher,’ Maruman announced, with the air of one conferring a great favour on the black horse. I lifted him up, and although it was cooler without his light hot weight, I missed it. Maruman stretched out magisterially, clearly very comfortable despite his earlier complaints.

Swallow and Ana took the lead, taking turns at using an arrow as a probe and holding a lightstick out ahead of them. It was carefully shaded so as to direct its light downward, though I considered it highly unlikely anyone would see us creeping over the bare, broken plain, what with the darkness and enough of a wind to raise veils of dust and whirl them away. Also, since neither I nor any of the others save Swallow had yet been able to see Redport, it seemed safe to assume that no one in the settlement could see us either.

We made safe but tediously slow progress, and I felt we were squandering the opportunity the cloud cover had given us. But there was no alternative and gradually we did manage to gain some speed as we fell into a pattern. Whenever they came to a hole or fissure, Ana or Swallow would simply call our attention to it by shifting the light from side to side, and we would note their evasion and emulate it.

As I plodded along in their wake, my arm hooked through Dameon’s, obeying Ana or Swallow’s signals without thought, I summoned up a picture of the final clue left for me by Cassandra. I had no need to read the scrap of paper Fian had scribed on, for I knew the wording by heart, having studied it often since the young teknoguilder had translated the Gadfian words concealed in the central wooden panels of the original doors to Obernewtyn.

That which will [open/access/reach] the darkest door lies where the [?] [sleeps/waits]. Strange is the keeping place of this dreadful [step/sign/thing] and all who knew it are dead save one who does not know what she knows. Seek her past. Only through her may you go where you have never been and must someday go. Danger. Beware. Dragon.

I had long been sure that Dragon was the
one who does not know what she knows
, and that whatever the clue referred to, I would find it in the Red Land, and that certainty returned to me now. For inside Dragon’s coma dream, I had witnessed her mother, dying, bid her remember the grave markers of the first Red Queen and her brother. I could not believe the Red Queen would make those her final words to her beloved daughter unless they had been vitally important. Surely whatever had been left for me by Cassandra –
that which will open the darkest door
– lay wherever the grave markers of these two were. Dragon did not know their location, but if she had known and had forgotten, that would fit the clue. All I needed was for her to remember, and surely she would, once we entered Redport.

It was significant that this was the first thing Cassandra had left for me since the end of the Beforetime, though she had carved the clue referring to it long after. She would have been grieving for Luthen, whom she had loved, and whose son she must by then have known she carried. It would have made perfect sense for her to choose Luthen’s grave as a hiding place because a grave marker was made to last. She had returned to the memory of her lost love when she carved a statue of Luthen at Stonehill to mark the safe passage agreement with the Council that had enabled the Beforetime Misfits and their descendants to wander the Land, and the more I thought about it the more certain I was that I would find whatever Cassy had left for me with the grave markers.

The words from the coma dream might be gibberish, but lacking any other clue or guidance, the grave markers would be as good a place as any to begin my search. Of course there would only have been one marker when Cassy left the land, for the Red Queen had not been dead then. By all accounts she and Cassy had been close, and perhaps the marker had been as much to honour their bond as in memory of the man they had both loved.

I thought of a past-dream in which I had seen Hannah speaking to the man I now knew to be Luthen, and realised she might have grieved the younger man’s loss as well, though my dream had shown some constraint between them. But perhaps that was Hannah’s doing, since the dream had also suggested she had foreseen his death.

I had long marvelled that Hannah had foreseen so much of Cassandra’s journey in the Beforetime, but I now knew that she had survived the end of her world and that she and Cassy had both survived the poisonous aftermath of the Great White by sleeping in cryopods at Hegate at Inva; they had then travelled to the Red Land together. It might even have been Hannah, I reflected, who suggested to Cassy that Luthen’s grave would make the perfect hiding place for the last message for the Seeker.

How wonderful it would be if all Dragon had to do was to lead me to Luthen’s grave, where I would find whatever had been left for me along with clear directions to Sentinel. But the fact that the clue warned of danger made me doubt it.

And what
did
the words of the clue mean? Must I be wary
of
Dragon or
for
her? Or was it that I must be careful of what she would do or fail to do?

Suddenly, delightfully, the hot breeze gave way to a wonderfully cool wind carrying the distinct smell of the sea. We all greeted the change with gasps of pleasure, and the horses stamped their feet and snorted and would have galloped for sheer delight, save that it was still too dark to see the ground.

But the smell of the sea was a warning, too, that we were closer to the coast. The wind dropped away then, but some time later, I saw one or two stars that suggested the cloud cover was beginning to break up. Then, fleetingly, I saw the moon, visible behind a dark shifting haze. Once that was gone, we would be completely exposed. Yet still, try as I might, I could see nothing ahead. I asked Swallow, who admitted he could see nothing of Redport now either, though he was confident we were heading towards it.

‘At least the ground is less broken,’ Ana said, sounding as weary as I felt.

She was right, I realised. We had not passed over a rift or diverted around one for some time, and indeed it seemed to me the ground we were riding over now was closer to the hard high ground we had first traversed after leaving the glide. Was it possible that this was not sunken ground, but an area that had simply been lower ground before the land around it sank down to its level? Hearing these thoughts, Gahltha suggested we mount up again. ‘There is sufficient light for equines to see, and the ground is less broken/treacherous than it was. We will go slowly but not so slow as now.’ His mindvoice told me he was as weary of our slow progress as I was, and despite my reservations, I agreed.

Mounted on him a little later, Dragon lying lightly against my back already drowsing, I felt a profound relief at not having to walk another step and a dangerous desire to simply give into weariness and sleep.

‘I/Marumanyelloweyes will not let you sleep, ElspethInnle,’ the old cat sent from my lap.

I thanked him for his vigilance, feeling immediately less anxious. Fleetingly, with his soft weight against me, Gahltha’s warmth beneath me, and Dragon safe at my back, I felt a moment of profound contentment that was utterly foolish given our circumstances. But I had often experienced such moments of grace during tense and difficult rescues when I was Guildmistress of the Farseekers. It was as if, doing what must be done to the best of my ability, I would be rewarded with a moment of peace that I valued far more intensely than if it had occurred in some less fraught time.

I recalled the latest vision of Redport I had got from Fey’s mind and added it to all I knew from Wila’s researches, everything that I had gleaned from my dreams and, more recently, from Dragon. I had not managed to probe her memories, but it seemed to me that she was remembering more, the closer we came to her home. Yet it was also clear to me, if not to Dragon, that the settlement had changed a good deal since she had been there. That was what made Fey’s visions so vital. Distorted or not, they offered immediate and true information. For example, Dragon had told me that Redport was not walled, but I did not accept this as fact until Fey’s vision confirmed it. Swallow was convinced the two towers were watchtowers, but I was less sure, for Fey’s latest vision suggested they were too narrow to house stairs, let alone people, and were windowless besides.

Suddenly, I realised I could see. The clouds had frayed and the moon was shining, bathing the plain in a soft light. My heart began to pound, for in the distance I could see Redport for the first time, the two high towers rising almost absurdly above the other buildings. I was startled to realise that they had bulbous tips, a fact Swallow had neglected to mention and which had not been evident from Fey’s visions. I was shocked, too, because seeing them for the first time, I was absolutely sure that one of these was the tower I had seen in the true dream I had experienced in the cryopod, of Maruman prowling through a Beforetime city. I realised I had never considered that Redport might date from the Beforetime, yet it might also be that my dream had distorted the city, even as Fey’s eyes did, or that I had misread what I had seen.