The Rebellion (104 page)

I should have stopped, but my legs carried me past them to where Kella was bent over the recumbent body of Straaka. I kneeled and touched his ankle where his flesh showed above the boot. His skin felt soft and warm. I managed to raise a weak probe that told me Kella was operating internally on the Sadorian, encouraging nerve and muscle tissue to knit in such a way as to stem massive internal bleeding around his heart. But his life force ebbed dangerously low.

My vision blurred, and I realized that even this mildest form of probing was too much for my ravaged mind.

Kella continued to work, but after a little, she sat back with a sob and shook her head.

Miryum was kneeling beside us, an arrow she had taken in the soldierguards’ second volley protruding from her own shoulder, though she seemed oblivious to it. Her eyes were fixed on Kella. “He jumped in front of me,” she muttered.

“He saved your life,” Kella said gently; then she got to her feet and moved away to find another who needed her.

I rose, too, and the movement caught Miryum’s feverish gaze. “Elspeth,” she rasped. “He would not listen when I told him to stay back. He never listened.”

I did not know what to say. Eventually, Miryum’s eyes fell to Straaka’s body, and I followed Kella, who was now kneeling beside Angina. He looked so dreadfully young, and Miky was clinging to his hand, her face streaming with tears. I needed no probe to tell me Angina was near to death.

“Leave her to do what she can,” Swallow said, coming up beside me. “We need your help to carry one of the wounded.”

I let myself be led to where an enormous soldierguard lay, an arrow in his back. With a shock, I saw that it was the man
who had shot Straaka—the bearded leader of the soldierguards. Seeing my reaction, Swallow said noncommittally, “He will die if he is left to lie here.”

I took a shuddering breath and shook my head. “We can’t carry him alone.”

“No,” Swallow said, and he waved his hand to summon two ragged halfbreeds. Aras came over, too, and between the five of us, we struggled to lift him. He gave a deep groan and then was silent. We were all panting hard and sweating by the time we were halfway down the trail from the cul-de-sac. Fortunately, more gypsies waited, and they took him from us. One of them was Swallow’s half sister, Iriny, but she did not notice me.

“The arrow has not gone deep enough to kill him,” Swallow told her.

“Maire will have a look at him. But here, do you want any of our herbalists down there?”

“One,” he answered. “The horses will have to be treated where they fell. Where is Darius?”

“He comes as fast as he can,” Iriny said with faint reproach.

Swallow nodded and bid Aras and me return with him to the clearing. By the time we reached it, rain fell again.

“Twenty-three horses dead and seventeen wounded. Ten people dead and the same number wounded,” Gevan said when all who could be moved had been taken to the gypsy rigs.

It was just on dawn, and those of us who remained in the clearing were clustered around a small fire. It had been built when the rain stopped, but the air was still clammy with damp, and drops fell steadily from the leaves all around us onto the sodden ground. Only three injured humans remained,
too seriously hurt to be shifted, and all of the surviving horses. The dead had been covered with blankets.

Small makeshift canopies had been set up above the injured to keep them dry, and Kella and a gypsy herbalist were even now working on a soldierguard who had been arrowed in the stomach and in his hand. It was likely that the hand would have to be amputated. As I watched, Kella rose, moving away to examine a coercer-knight I had seen fall. There was little hope that she would survive, and I watched the healer settle a gentle hand on the girl and close her eyes as she drained away the girl’s pain.

Farther down the clearing, the gypsy beasthealer Darius limped toward Lina and two other beastspeakers who were sitting with a badly injured horse. Several other bandaged horses stepped aside as the old man drew near. He had a painful lurching walk, because, aside from a crippled leg, his spine was twisted so that his back rose up into a hump. Nevertheless, his skill with beasts was formidable. Many more would have died without his help, and already both the beastspeakers and beasts regarded him with reverence.

“Seven of ours dead,” Aras murmured, as if she needed to say the words aloud to begin to believe them. I turned to see that she was hanging another pot of sour-scented herb water, which Darius used in his healings, over the flames to heat. Her face was filthy except for the tracks made down it by tears. She had taken an arrow through the fleshy part of her thigh, but the wound was not serious.

“Eight if you count Straaka,” Gevan said wearily, nodding to where the Sadorian lay. Miryum was still sitting a lonely vigil beside him, stroking his limp hand and muttering to herself.

“How could Malik do such a terrible thing?” the young
ward asked. She poked a stick needlessly into the fire under the pot.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
But I should have known
, I thought bleakly.

“Humans seem ever capable of exceeding the lowest expectations,” Swallow said, coming to stand by the fire.

Aras gazed up at him, her face transformed by an adoring awe. “You saved our lives,” she said breathlessly. The gypsy made a negating gesture.

“She is right,” Gevan said stoutly. “You did save our lives, Swallow, and you have our heartfelt thanks for it. Malik would have stood by and watched us hacked to pieces if you had not happened along.”

“So that is who he was,” Swallow murmured. “Malik’s name is well known among the halfbreeds for his brutality. I only wish I’d been a bit quicker in getting here, but we had trouble finding a way to bring the wagons down into this cursed Valley.”

I looked over to where Angina lay.

He had not yet regained consciousness, and it was possible that he never would. An arrow had grazed the boy’s temple, and though seemingly a slight wound, it had caused internal damage, much of which could only be repaired by his own body. Miky had not left his side, and seeing the desperate intensity in her expression, I sensed she was using all her empathy to bind her twin to life.

I knew I ought to go to her, but when I tried getting up, Swallow caught my arm, pulling me to sit back down. “Just stay there, Elaria. You are in shock.”

I had no energy to resist him. It was all I could do to lift a hand and push back a strand of hair. I noticed that my fingers trembled violently and understood that if my body was weak,
my mind was worse. It was possible that what had happened back on the main road had permanently harmed me in some way, but I could not summon up enough concentration to care. What use were all my powers if they could not keep those I loved safe?

Swallow dippered a mug of warm water from the pot and handed it to me. “It’s not hot yet, but the herbs in it will help to steady you.”

I drank only because I sensed he would force me if I refused. The liquid tasted foul, but my mind did seem to clear somewhat.

I knew that, given the time, the rebels would be in the midst of taking Sutrium. I had intended to ride down to the coast after the decoy operation to join them, but the night’s events had sucked all meaning from the rebellion. Soon we would light funeral fires for the beasts and beastspeakers, who preferred their bodies to be disposed of as beasts were, and later, all the remaining human dead, including the two soldierguards, would be buried. Too much death.

The only thing that raised a flicker of emotion in me was the possibility that other Misfits were among treacherous rebels, perhaps soon to be betrayed and slaughtered, because I had underestimated the loathing of unTalents. They had to know what the rebels were capable of.

Of course, Ceirwan must have seen Malik ride by. If so, he would have wondered at the absence of Misfits among the party. He would have probed their minds to learn what had transpired; therefore, he would know that we had been betrayed by Malik, and he would have warned Zarak.

Or would he? The terrifying swish of arrows and the screams of humans and horses rose in my mind with such ghastly clarity that I felt myself near to fainting.

After the funeral fires are lit, I will ride
, I vowed.

I heard Aras ask, “How did you come to be in the Valley, uh … Swallow?”

The gypsy shrugged. “Luck guided us to your aid.” The pot of water began to boil, and he asked Aras to take it to Darius.

When she had gone, I said softly, “It was not luck that brought you to our rescue.”

He smiled, his teeth white against his dark, shining skin, but his eyes were serious. “I told you once that I had a vision we would stand together in battle when next we met.”

“That doesn’t explain how you came to be here tonight,” I persisted.

“A voice in my dreams bade me ride to the highlands with all haste, lest you perish and all promises be broken,” he said in a low, intimate tone.

I shivered. “A voice …”

“The same that sent me to save you from being whipped to death in Sutrium. And again I obeyed.”

I had once felt sure that the mysterious voice that had sent Swallow to my aid in Sutrium belonged to the Elder of the Agyllians, Atthis, and that the gypsy’s babble about my involvement in his people’s ancient promises was no more than some sort of coerced vision, implanted by the bird to make him biddable. But knowing that Twentyfamilies gypsies had carried two panels of wood to Obernewtyn containing a message to me carved by the mysterious Kasanda, I had to accept that our lives might be truly linked.

“These promises … to whom were they made?”

“To the first D’rekta, who led our people from the lands that were destroyed by the Great White to the country of the Red Queen.”

I gaped at him. “The … the Red Queen?”

He nodded. “The first D’rekta brought our people to her land. The Red Queen gave them refuge, but after many years, the D’rekta had a vision and asked the people to travel yet again with her. Many refused, for they had intermarried with the Red Queen’s people, and the D’rekta would not reveal her vision to any but those who had sworn to go. It is said that those in whom she confided walked silent and pale until the boat that the Red Queen commanded to be built was completed. But they did not tell what they had learned, for the D’rekta forbade them to speak of her vision henceforth, even to their own children.”

“Then you can’t know what her vision was,” I murmured, fascinated to discover that the first D’rekta had been a woman. But I was more intrigued by his talk of a Red Queen. I wanted to know the whereabouts of her land very badly, but some instinct bade me not to come upon it too bluntly. I asked, “Why did the Red Queen build the D’rekta a ship?”

“The two had become as sisters when the D’rekta bonded with the Red Queen’s brother,” Swallow said. “He died not long before the D’rekta had her vision, and many of the people who refused to go thought the vision a product of her grief.”

“What happened to her bondmate?”

Swallow shrugged. “He was killed by sea raiders. It is said that the queen wept as the boat was launched. Some say she did so because she grieved still for her brother, and others claim she wept because the D’rekta had revealed the vision to her. Still others say she shed tears for she knew that the D’rekta carried within her a child of royal blood when the ship set forth on its perilous journey to this Land.”

“The D’rekta’s vision brought them here? Why?”

“I cannot say,” Swallow said.

“Are the ancient promises about the vision?”

“In a sense, they are, but I cannot say more than that.”

“But you once said you saw me speak those promises,” I protested. “You said I was involved in them.”

He nodded gravely. “That is so. But I do not know how the knowledge of them comes to you. Only the D’rektas know the words, and you have never met my father. Nor would he have told you, for we were bade keep our secret.”

Weary of his mystical talk, I remembered that I had questions of my own to ask. “Did you … did you ever hear of a woman named Kasanda?”

“No. Who is she?” The gypsy’s face was blank.

I sighed. “She was a woman who made a wood carving I have seen.”

Swallow’s dark eyes glimmered. “Perhaps she was a student of the D’rekta, then, for carving was her greatest skill. She learned it as a girl in the Beforetime, but she perfected her ability with the stone-carvers in the Red Queen’s country. When she came to the Land, she took students and taught carving throughout her pregnancy.”

I gaped at him, an incredible thought forming in my mind. “The … the D’rekta was a carver?”

“A master carver,” Swallow said, giving me a curious look.

I struggled to compose myself, dizzy at the possibility that the first gypsy D’rekta and the mysterious Kasanda might be the same woman!

Swallow misunderstood my reaction. “Is it so shocking to you that a woman shaped stone? It is true that here in this Land it is not common, but our stories tell that in the Beforetime and also in the land of the Red Queen, many women did so. Of course, it was not only stone that she shaped. All substances
became graceful beneath her fingers. Glass and jewels and wood as well as metals. It was she who taught the Twentyfamilies the skills that allow us to tithe to the Council for safe passage.”

“What was the D’rekta’s name?” I asked, hoping I did not sound as breathless as I felt.

He shrugged. “I do not know that I ever heard it spoken.”

I wanted desperately to ask if the D’rekta had sent her people throughout the Land with her works—the signs—but feared this might come into the forbidden area of the ancient promises. “The original D’rekta brought your people here, and she negotiated with the Council to pay a tithe that let you have safe passage. Then what?”

“The D’rekta did not bargain for safe passage, though the statue that marks that pact is her work.…”

His words were virtually a paraphrasing of the fourth line in the message left on the doors of Obernewtyn!

“Why didn’t she make the pact?” I asked tensely.

“A vision took her from us before the day of the pact-signing came,” Swallow said simply.