The Red Queen (128 page)

His fingers struck two sharp clear chimes and then his face lost its rigidity. He lowered his hands and leaned forward a little to say in a normal voice, and in a confiding, self-deprecating tone, ‘I am afraid I gained something of a reputation as a womaniser among the Chafiri after my arrival, Queen, as I searched diligently for the moon-haired woman. Yet it was my seeming lechery that led the Chafiri to offer me a selection of choice slavewomen, and among them, at last, was she whom I had long sought: the Lady Gilaine. What occurred in the crypt on this island was as Lyet-sin foresaw. It is my belief that the doom she feared has been thwarted, and with your permission, I will return to the Hidden Kingdom with this news.’

‘You did not tell any of this to Gilaine when you had her on your ship,’ Dragon said, clearly fascinated by the little man.

The emissary nodded, his expression soberly regretful. ‘All that I spoke was truth, but I did not speak the entirety of it, for Lyet-sin had warned me that the matter unfolding was so complex and delicately balanced and clouded that I should say nothing of it to anyone. Particularly not to the moon-haired woman, for the things she did and said would be vital in thwarting the Lord Ariel. Also, she bade me never be without my mask, for the Lord Ariel would otherwise learn what was in my mind. I should obey the signs she had given me and do as she bade me, nothing less or more. So it was.’

Dragon looked at him in bemused wonderment.

Matthew came to stand beside her, glaring down at the little emissary. ‘That’s all very well, but yer ships – what is the purpose of bringin’ so many if ye dinna come to take slaves?’

The emissary bowed to him gravely. ‘They were intended to validate my seeming purpose, but they are armed and there are many warriors aboard who were prepared, not to attack this Land, but to seek out the Lord Ariel if I failed to keep the Lady Gilaine safe. The doom the emperor’s sisterwife foresaw would come to pass, there would be no stopping it, yet she told me that it might be stayed several generations if only Ariel were slain swiftly, and in that time, some other hope might weave itself.’

Matthew frowned. ‘Will nae th’ emperor’s brother take offence when neither the slave army nor the promised weapon is delivered, an’ want to retaliate against th’ Red Land?’

‘The emperor’s brother is out of favour because he offered a gift that he could not deliver, and so he has lost face, along with the white-faced lords who stood with him,’ said the emissary. ‘In our land, the only thing worse than losing face is to lose honour.’ Then he looked directly at Matthew. ‘The emperor has no desire for slaves nor any taste for conquest, my Lord Protector.’

‘Why do you call him that?’ Dragon asked.

‘In the Hidden Kingdom, the Lord Protector is one who stands by the emperor and is sworn always to speak the truth to him, no matter how unpalatable it is. The role is not always fulfilled by a man, of course. The emperor chose as his protector, his lady wife, Mee-ling, who is known as Lady Protector.’

‘Your emperor sounds an interesting man,’ said Dragon thoughtfully. ‘I am sorry he is ill and I am sorry that I will never meet him.’

‘Perhaps you will visit us,’ said the emissary. ‘If my quest was fruitful, the emperor bade me propose to the ruler of this land that his daughter be fostered in Redport for ten years and that your son should come to the Hidden Kingdom for the same length of time.’

Dragon looked startled and taken aback. ‘I have no son!’

The emissary permitted himself a small smile. ‘Nor does my emperor have a daughter. Yet. But the practice of fostering unborn children is common in the Hidden Land and the emperor’s sisterwife has foreseen that a great alliance of peace would result from such a match. Should it come to pass.’

‘What about th’ ilthum?’ asked Matthew. ‘Do ye still want to trade for that?’

‘It is hoped we may continue buying refined ilthum from you,’ the emissary addressed his response to Dragon this time. ‘The coin paid by the emperor can be paid directly to workers rather than into the purses of the Chafiri. Certainly the emperor will be glad to hear that there is no slavery here. It is a thing that affronts him and it grieves him that some of his own lords indulge in it by proxy in plantations in Chinon.’

Dragon stood up suddenly, startling everyone. ‘Thank you for your story, emissary. I need to think about all you have said. We will talk again tomorrow, but now I need to walk and be alone, for tonight I have decided to raise the sceptre of my mother in Dragonstraat. Matthew will take you and your people back to the compound where you are staying.’ Her eyes moved to the rest of us, gathered about. ‘Everyone else, stay, eat the food.’ The emissary bowed and without further ado, Dragon turned and strode away towards the shore of the island and along it, her brow furrowed. Matthew moved swiftly to Maginder and spoke to her. She nodded and hurried after her quick-stepping queen with a speed that belied her age. Matthew spoke to the emissary who gestured for the seated women to rise.

‘What a strange story. Do you believe him?’ Rushton asked me, reaching out to take a plate of food from a table.

‘Our stories would sound far more strange, I think, and I can’t imagine what the emissary would have to gain by telling such a complicated lie,’ I said. I was hungry, though Brydda had provided food when I had come to the compound to bathe, and I took a soft little dumpling from the plate, expecting it to be sweet but finding something astonishingly sour inside. For some reason, I was reminded of the bland and peculiar-tasting foods I had eaten in Habitat.

Merret and Blyss drifted over, then Dameon and Ana came to join us, her bandaged hand threaded through the empath’s uninjured arm. I was shocked to see Darga walking by her side!

‘He came to me in the night,’ Ana said. ‘He signalled that he sniffed his way to me. I don’t know where he has been all this time.’

I knelt to look into the eyes of the Herder dog and beastspoke him. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Swallow sent me to find/bring Sendari,’ Darga sent in his rough soft voice. ‘When I returned with the equines and the goat, there was the smell of blood.’ I saw it in his mind. He had thought Ana dead, and he had fled. He did not understand what had made him so afraid, but I could guess it was connected to the pain Jik’s death had cost him. I knew he remembered the boy, but he had asked the Agyllians to remove that love so that he could be free of his sorrow.

‘You were afraid to feel what you felt when Jik died,’ I said.

‘I think the emptiness made me run,’ Darga said. ‘I feared to lose the woman/Ana. I thought to run from love/pain, but the emptiness was with me still. I made the emptiness when I let the oldOnes take love of the boy from me. The emptiness is worse than the sorrow. It weakens me. I did not understand, but I cannot go back and change it.’

‘You will stay with Ana?’ I asked.

‘She/Ana smells of sorrow/courage. She would not choose to forget the funaga/Swallow. I will learn courage from her.’

I rose.

‘How strange to think of the people from another land having visions and a quest connected to yours,’ Blyss was saying to Ana and Dameon, unaware of my intense exchange with the dog, though the empath turned his face to me in a way that told me he felt it.

‘It makes you wonder if there are others,’ Ana said.

‘I believe the emissary invited Gilaine to come back with him to Shambala when she visited him today,’ Dameon said, as several of the other Landborn drifted across to join us.

I looked over to where the Redlanders had formed a group of their own and I wondered how long it would take them to merge into one people, if they ever did. At least their queen was not just a Redlander, though I had not yet had the chance to ask her who her father had been. Perhaps she did not know herself.

‘Daffyd will not let Gilaine out of his sight, so the invitation had better include him, and Jow, for he will not be separated from his brother, either,’ Merret said.

‘It includes them all and Lidge,’ Dameon said, smiling. ‘In fact the emissary thinks his people can help her.’

‘I thought the emissary said strangers weren’t to enter the Hidden Kingdom,’ Blyss said.

‘They will be the first,’ Ana said. She yawned and I stifled a yawn of my own, thinking it was no wonder we were tired, since we had not done more than doze during the long night of vigil. I would need to sleep a little before the evening, if Dragon truly did mean to raise her sceptre.

Matthew came to fetch Rushton, wanting his advice about something, and I sat listening to the others discuss the emissary and the necessity of trading with the Shambalans. Talk turned then to the possibility and value of a future alliance between a child of Dragon’s and a child of the emperor’s, as the old man had rather fantastically suggested, as a means of holding the Gadfians at bay. Then the Gadfian problem, as Merret called it, was raised, involving the halfbloods, some of whom wanted to stay and others of whom longed to go to Great Gadfia. Would the High Chafiri of that distant land want to mount a war to reclaim a territory they had begun to settle? Nobody could be certain.

Then Brydda demanded a proper accounting of me about what had happened with Sentinel, for no one seemed to know anything more than that I had gone into the ground and it had heaved and trembled, though it was wont to do that from time to time in any case. But the monster that had howled for as long as anyone could remember had definitely been silenced.

‘One of the miner’s lads said you went to fight the monster,’ Brydda said.

‘I thought it was a computermachine Elspeth was meant to find and stop,’ Blyss said doubtfully.

‘It was a weaponmachine on the moon,’ Ana said. Then she frowned, reaching down to lay a hand on Darga’s head. ‘No, it was a computermachine on the moon and the weapons are on the ground.’

‘The
moon!
’ cried one of the Landborn whose name I had not learned. ‘How could there be a computermachine on the moon?!’

‘The Beforetimers put it there,’ someone else said.

They had forgotten me in their pleasant wrangling and I was glad of it. It seemed that the story of my journey was like the red gauze cloak and was being gradually transformed into a few bright tatters. I did not mind. The truth was that I did not want to talk about my quest. I had endured it and I had completed it and now all was done. Strange as it was to think of the Beforetimers flying to the moon and putting a computermachine and weapons there, I wanted to forget it. The Darkest Door had been closed, and no one need fear or watch the moon any longer.

I thought of Maruman, whom I had carried to my chamber in Brydda’s compound, and felt a sudden longing to be with him. I farsent Rushton and told him I was going back to Brydda’s complex to sleep and felt his wish that he might join me as wistfulness and weariness and a surge of desire. Then I felt his resignation that he could not walk away from the problem Matthew had presented to him, for although it now seemed unlikely the farseeker would return to the Land, he still deferred to Rushton as the master of Obernewtyn.

‘I will come when I can,’ he sent, before I withdrew from his mind.

I slipped away, only bidding Ana and Dameon a quiet farewell, and saying I would see them at Brydda’s compound, where they were also staying, or at the Infinity of Dragonstraat that night, to see the queen raise her sceptre.

Crossing the stone bridge, I heaved a sigh of relief to find there was almost no one about. It was odd, and yet perhaps it was because this area had been inhabited mainly by the Ekoni. After all, it had been almost deserted when I had come here before the Gadfians had been overthrown. At the end of the stone bridge I was startled to see the strange little dog I had fallen over the first time I had entered Redport, lying on the road. He rose, wagging his tail.

‘Greetings ElspethInnle.’

I greeted him and continued, wondering if he would follow me, but when I looked back, I saw that he had merely dropped back onto the warm stones; yet his eyes followed me.

I thought of the light Swallow had seen moving from beasts to me. Was it still happening? I could feel nothing, but then again, I had not felt anything when Swallow had spoken of it. It reminded me of the beastlegend that I would lead them to freedom from humans. I knew no more now than I had ever done about what it might mean, though I no longer believed it was merely a story woven by the Agyllians to ensure beasts would aid me in my quest.

I made my way along the shore and then back to the compound Brydda had claimed. I was surprised to see Maruman now lay in the courtyard on a sunny bench. As I approached, he lifted his head to look at me with his fierce yellow eye, and I had an uneasy sense he had been waiting for me.

‘Greetings ElspethInnle,’ he sent, and was it my imagination that there was something pointed in the way he spoke my name?

I greeted him and said that I needed to sleep, inviting him to go with me. He said that he would stay in the sun, and began licking irritably at his bandaged paw, which stuck out awkwardly.

‘It is itching,’ he complained. ‘I do not need this cloth/binding.’

‘Not now maybe,’ I said, and sat on the bench beside him to unwind the offending bandage carefully, hoping his body had healed enough. He endured my attentions with complaints and hisses until I was finished. The paw was healing rapidly. Then he gave a sigh and stretched out once more, closing his eyes.

I resisted the sudden mad desire to gather him into my arms and merely rose and bade him sleep well. He made no response. I went to the pleasant chamber Brydda had assigned me, stripped off my clothes and crawled onto the bed, drawing up a folded sheet for comfort, for it was hot.

I stretched out blissfully and closed my eyes, enjoying the brief coolness of the sheet, and thought, now it is truly over. Then I wondered why it did not feel as if anything had ended. Was it the odd little dog and the way it had looked at me? Or the fact of Gahltha’s death that I could not make myself accept? Or was it simply that, having been driven by a purpose for so long, the lack of that purpose felt like an emptiness?

I turned on my belly and sank into a deep dreamless sleep, and woke to someone shaking me hard, urgently.