The Red Queen (78 page)

And yet here we were.

It occurred to me, too, that I had been stubbornly clinging to the elegant idea that what I needed in Redport could be found in Dragon’s memories of her childhood, because that would be easier than going to Redport.

And why
was
I resistant to the idea of seeking out Redport? Dragon might very well be right that the interference along the coast masked the settlement, especially if there was water somehow flowing through the streets. Partly, I knew, it was because going there was likely to involve complications. I would inevitably be drawn into whatever was happening with Dragon’s people and the slavemasters. I might be determined to concentrate all my mind and efforts on my quest and to avoid becoming enmeshed in anything that could stop or delay me, but I knew in my heart that if my friends needed me, it would be impossible to refuse them. Yet if there was a final message from Cassandra in Redport, the only way for me to find it was to enter the city and allow myself to be drawn into events there. Often, in the course of my activities for Obernewtyn, I had found that I was accidentally following my secret quest, and more than once the Agyllians had told me the two things were connected.

I was forced to accept, too, that some of my reluctance to go to Redport had a more selfish aspect. I had painfully relinquished my alliances and friendships and even love, for the sake of my quest, when I had left Obernewtyn. I had managed largely to accept that severing. The thought of being reunited with those I had loved and left and then being forced to sever myself from them again was unbearable. In truth, I wondered if I would have the strength to part from Rushton a second time.

Yet, contrarily, my heart sang when I thought about seeing him.

Thinking of the Master of Obernewtyn, I remembered Dameon and his kiss, and without intending it, turned to look at the empath, only to find his blind eyes resting on me, his face composed, his expression impenetrable. Feeling blood rush to my cheeks, I turned away quickly, hoping he had not been able to tell from my emotions what I was thinking.

Ana was saying to Dragon, ‘We do not know in which direction Redport lies, any more than we know where Eden is!’

‘We know it is on the coast,’ Dragon insisted, getting to her feet. ‘And if it is not directly west, we will find it as we go north!

Like the rest of us, she had changed her Beforetime boots for sandals and had stripped off her upper clothes to her undershirt. I thought how strange she looked in her motley mix of Beforetime trews, Land and Habitat attire, topped with a makeshift Sadorian headdress. Yet her clothing and ours perfectly reflected our journey.

‘But, Dragon, Redport might be further
south
,’ Ana said.

Dragon cast a look at me, eyes pleading.

‘I will think on what you have said,’ I told her firmly.

What I wanted, I thought glumly, was a clear sign from the Agyllians. But to get that, I would have to sleep and journey on the dreamtrails. Yet not once had Astyanax come to me since that first time in Midland, when I had almost lost myself to the cryopod. On the other hand, I had been warned to avoid the dreamtrails because of the Destroyer, and I had done so, therefore how would it have been possible for the oldOnes to reach me? In the past, Atthis had used Maruman as a conduit, to ensure our communications would not be overhead by the H’rayka. I looked at the old cat, sleeping peacefully curled in Dameon’s lap. The oldOnes had also used the merged spirits of Rasial and Gavyn and Straaka’s spirit to commune with me. But if we really were near Redport and Ariel was there, they might avoid making any approach that might alert H’rayka to my presence.

Perhaps
this
was what Ariel had meant when he spoke to Dragon of needing her. Perhaps her part was to draw me to Redport, and into his hands. Except what use would there be in that, since he needed me to complete my quest and reach Sentinel before he could have his chance to gain power over it?
Unless he knew where Sentinel was and meant to bring me there as a prisoner.

This thought led me to wonder for the first time
how
Ariel proposed to take control of Sentinel, if I destroyed it, for he was not supposed to be able to attain what he desired without my doing what
I
was meant to do. It was a paradox I had never been able to unravel. Of course it was not truly Sentinel Ariel wanted but the weaponmachines controlled by the Balance of Terror computermachine. But the only way to get to BOT and its arsenal was
through
Sentinel. Perhaps Ariel’s plan was to use me to penetrate Sentinel’s defences, and then kill me before I could disable or destroy it, taking control of BOT through Sentinel. But was that even possible?

‘
Gnawing
,’ snarled Maruman, lifting his head to glare at me with his one fierce bright eye. He got down from Dameon’s lap and stretched luxuriantly.

The empath immediately rose and stripped off his upper clothes. Swallow had also done so and I rolled up the legs of my trews and considered taking a knife to them as Ana had done to hers. It was now so hot that I felt as if I were sitting too close to a blazing fire. The air I breathed seemed to burn the inside of my nostrils and dried my throat, exacerbating my thirst. The long blazing day wore on as we languished in the shade of the awning.

‘It will help you to think if we ride/gallopfast!’ Gahltha broke into my thoughts, galloping up, his senses ringing with joy at being out of the glide. For a moment I allowed his joy to roar through me, marvelling that the heat seemed not to bother him or any of the horses. Darga, too, endured it without much apparent discomfort, though he had been bred on the West Coast where it was also hot. Maruman, on the other hand, had stretched out again beside Dragon, panting slightly.

‘I would love to ride,’ I told Gahltha wistfully, ‘but I need to decide which way to go.’

The black horse snorted and stamped his hoof. ‘What does wheregoing matter, ElspethInnle? The joy/delight is in freerunning.’

The longing in his mindvoice was so strong and wild that it roused in me an answering desire to throw off constraint and caution and ride without caring where we went. I fought it back. Were I alone, I might have done as he desired, setting off with nothing more than the stone sword slung across my back, Maruman about my neck and the one watermaking device in my bag, trusting to fate to bring me where I must go, with or without my help. But I was not alone and it was likely I would need the help of my companions ere the end. Besides, aside from the killing heat, the terrain was full of fissures and cracks that could easily break his leg. Grudgingly Gahltha admitted that was so and withdrew from my mind with the equine equivalent of a shrug, before trotting away.

As the sun moved slowly from its zenith into the west, the shadows began to lengthen and the land darkened. Suddenly, Fey shook herself awake, and without a sound, flew in the direction taken by Gavyn and Rasial.

Swallow rose abruptly and said, ‘This waiting is utterly wearisome. What if I take the big golator and ride north? Sendari would relish the exercise and so would I. If Eden is in that direction, and I can get close enough, the golator will react, and we will have our destination.’ He was so pleased by the idea that he did not notice the crestfallen look on Ana’s face. His face fell when she told him that she had not brought it out of the glide.

‘You can ask Hendon to bring it out when he comes up.’

Ana shrugged, ‘It won’t help us. God mated it to Kelver Rhonin’s golator, not to Eden itself.’

‘But he was bound for Eden,’ Swallow protested. ‘I thought God gave Hendon the same directions he gave Kelver Rhonin. That means his glide would have brought him here just as it brought us, but instead of having to land, he would have seen this was the wrong place and continued flying on until he found it. So his golator
would
lead us there.’

‘
If
Eden was really his destination and
if
he arrived safely,’ I said. ‘After all, no matter what directions he got from God, he might not have followed them.’

‘Even so, why not see if the golator does show anything?’

Ana glanced at the rift. ‘Hendon has been down there a long time.’

‘He is a machine and he is doing what we asked of him,’ I said. ‘It . . .’ I added, annoyed at myself for falling into the habit of speaking of the androne as if it were a man.

We ate a scanty meal as the sun fell into the west, for none of us had much appetite. Hunger and even starvation might lie in the future, but we had been well fed the whole time we had been in Midland and aboard the glide, and besides all else, it was too hot to eat. There was plenty left for Gavyn and Rasial when they returned.

With little else to occupy us, Dragon allowed me to try to coerce my way into her memories. She had been reluctant until I explained that my reluctance to go to Redport arose from the fear of being captured by a waiting Ariel, and failing in my quest.

‘I would go to Redport, but only if I must,’ I said.

She laid her mind open willingly, but it was no use – I could not get past her innate shields. Possibly she was resisting me unconsciously because she did not want me to find my answer in her dreams. Or maybe her mind was simply defending itself from the mind that had once attacked it and put her in a coma. I might have drawn on the black sword for the strength to force my way in, but given what had happened the last time I had done so, I did not dare. I told her I would wait until we slept and try to enter her memories in spirit-form.

Though we were not hungry, we were all terribly thirsty. The water device had to be watched and constantly emptied, but vigilant as we were, it could not amass enough to properly satisfy the humans in our party, let alone the horses and dogs. And still there was no sign of Hendon. Now that the sun had set, I was becoming restless, though I had yet to make up my mind which way we would go. Swallow pointed out that Rasial and Gavyn must have found water else they would have returned by now; the horses too, for they had not come back since my refusal of Gahltha’s invitation to ride. Dameon suggested water might lie underground like the isis pools in the Sadorian desert, and that the rifts might provide access to it. The thought of water prompted me to farseek the white dog, but I could not locate her mind. This suggested she and Gavyn had gone underground, in which case Dameon might be right. That there might be such verdant and water-filled rifts in this hot land was a pleasant thought, but we would not know their whereabouts until Rasial and Gavyn returned.

At last the air began to cool. Relieved, but still horribly thirsty, I climbed out from under the awning and stood to stretch.

Dragon was standing at the edge of the rift, a slight dark form against the great orange ball of fire that was the setting sun, hanging low in the cloudless sky above the flat red land. Its ruddy light caught in her hair and for a moment I was struck by the vision of red sky over red ground split by the black maw of the crevasse, and the dark shape of the girl standing on its rim, hair aflame. Then the sun sank and night was upon us, though for some time the sky in the west remained a bruised shade of red and purple, like a wound.

‘Have you decided?’ Ana asked, coming out from under the awning, too.

‘Look!’ Dragon suddenly cried, gazing into the rift.

‘Is it Hendon?’ Ana demanded, hurrying to her side. Swallow dug a lightstick from his pack and by the time I joined them at the edge of the rift, he was playing its beam into the depths. I saw the climbing form of the androne: its strength and strange smooth grace were formidable to see, and utterly inhuman, I thought, as we moved back to give it room to climb over the edge of the crevasse.

‘You were long, Hendon. We were worried,’ Ana cried, as it straightened.

‘Did you get into the glide?’ Swallow asked.

‘Not yet, Technician Swallow,’ the androne said. ‘I estimate that it will require another seventy-four hours of digging to gain access to it, however my energy cell has reached reserve levels and I require solar exposure to replenish it.’

‘What is a solar?’ Dameon wondered.

‘It is how my people describe the sun,’ Dragon said unexpectedly.

‘Oh no!’ Ana exclaimed, turning to me. ‘I remember now, God told me that Hendon needs to be fed sunlight. All that time in the glide and all today in the ground . . .’

‘He was out of the sunlight,’ I said with a sigh, and glanced glumly at the sky, beginning to glimmer with the first stars, and the new moon.

‘But you are still speaking, Hendon,’ Dragon said.

‘I am functioning on reserves, Technician Dragon,’ the androne said. ‘In five minutes, I will shut down in order to preserve data and memory and if I am not where sunlight can reach me, I cannot be restored to operation.’

‘How long will it take for you to gather enough solar in your cell to continue your excavation?’ Ana asked.

‘Complete replenishing of solar cell levels will require three days of minimal function in full sunlight, Technician Ana.’

I looked at Ana. ‘Then it would be days more before it could dig out the glide. I don’t want to wait that long.’ Saying this, I felt a sudden urgent need to get moving and I wondered if it was merely the effect of a day of inactivity or the edge of premonition.

‘At least we must wait until Hendon can go with us,’ Ana protested. ‘He saved my life! And you have not even decided which way we are to go!’

‘Leaving Hendon is not a betrayal,’ I said sternly, restraining myself from pointing out that her life had only been endangered in the first place because she had been trying to save a machine. ‘Hendon is an androne, and will stand here until it has power enough to go on, and then it will go on. No beast will harm it and it will not die of thirst or lack of food. Unlike us. And I have decided that we will travel north, because that was the direction the glide was travelling in, before we landed. Given the coast was further north than we thought, it stands to reason that Eden will be north as well.’

Dragon’s face fell, but before she could speak, Ana turned to the androne. ‘When your cells are replenished, will you follow us?’