The Seeker (10 page)

“Nothing,” I answered flatly, wondering by what right he interrogated me.

He frowned petulantly. “You’re new. You will learn,” he said. “Now get up and I will come back for you.” He closed the door behind him.

Rummaging angrily through a chest of assorted clothes, I found a cloak. It was freezing within the stone walls, and pale early-morning light spilled in wanly from the room’s sole window. There were no shutters, and cold gusts of air swept freely through the opening. I would have liked to look outside, but the window was inaccessible, fashioned long and thin, reaching from above my head almost to the ceiling.

The door opened suddenly. “Come on, then,” the blond boy snapped.

As we walked down the hall, I noticed a good deal more than I had the previous night. There were metal candle brackets along the walls, shaped like gargoyles’ heads with savage mouths. Cold, greenish drips of wax hung frozen from the gaping jaws. I eyed them with distaste, reflecting that whoever had built Obernewtyn had no desire for homely comfort.

We passed the entrance hall with its heavy front doors and continued along a narrow walkway on the other side.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

The boy did not answer, and presently we came to a double set of doors. He opened one with something of a flourish. It opened onto a kitchen, a long, rectangular room with two large dining arbors filled with bench seats and trestle tables. At the far end of the kitchen, almost an entire wall was taken up with a cavernous fireplace. Above it was set an immense mantelshelf, laden with stone and iron pots. From its underside hung a further selection of pans and pannikins. A huge, blackened cauldron was suspended over the flame, and stirring the contents was a woman of mountainous proportions.

Her elbows, though bent, resembled large cured hams, and a large white bow sat on her hips and waggled whenever she moved. The roaring heat of the fire had prevented her from noticing our entrance. Tearing my eyes away, I saw that there were several doors besides the one we had come through and a great number of cupboards and benches. A young girl was sitting at one of these, scraping potatoes, and they sat in two mounds on either side of her. She watched me with currant-like eyes buried in a slab-jowled face. The knife poised above the potato glinted brightly.

“Ma!” she yelled, waving the knife in agitation, throwing its light at me.

The mountain of flesh at the stove trembled, then turned with surprising grace. The woman’s face was flushed from the heat and distorted by too many chins, but there was a definite resemblance between her and the girl. The thick ladle in her hand dripped brown gravy, unheeded.

“Ariel!” she cried in dulcet tones. Her accent was similar
to Enoch’s but less musical. “Dear hinny, I have nowt seen ye in an age. Ye have not deserted me, have ye, sweet boy?”

She gathered him in a bone-crushing embrace and led him to one of the cupboards. She took out a sweet and gave it to him.

“Why, Andra, thank you.” Ariel sounded pleased, and I wondered why the cook treated him with such favor. Surely he was only a Misfit, unless he was also an informer. Yet he seemed too arrogant for the latter. Most informers were clinging and contemptible, and even those who used them tended to dislike them.

The girl with the knife giggled violently, and again the blade flashed its silver light. The older woman glared ferociously at her.

“Ye born noddy-headed thing. Shut yer carrying on an’ get back to work.” The girl’s giggles ceased abruptly. Catching sight of me watching her, she scowled as if I were to blame.

“Now, Andra,” Ariel said. “You recall how I promised you some extra help? Well, I have brought you a new worker.”

Responding with enthusiasm, the cook launched herself at him with much lip-smacking. I thought with suppressed glee that it served him right. He caught the amusement on my face. Disentangling himself, he ordered the cook to make sure I worked hard, as I was assuredly lazy and insolent. Andra promised to work my fingers to the bone as he departed with a look of spiteful satisfaction.

As soon as the door closed, her daughter leapt toward me, brandishing her knife. “Misfit pig. What sort of help will she be? Ye can see she don’t have a brain in her,” she sneered venomously, menacing me with the knife.

The syrupy smile dropped from the cook’s face. She crossed the floor in two steps and dealt her daughter a
resounding blow with the wooden spoon. “If she has no brains, then she’ll be a good match fer ye, fool that ye are, Lila. If Ariel gives us th’ gift of a fool, then ye mun show pleasure!” the cook snarled. “Oh, th’ trials of my life. Yer no-good father gives me a fool fer a daughter, then disappears. I have to come to th’ end of th’ Land so ye won’t be declared defective. I find a nice powerful boy to bond ye an’ yer so stupid I got to do th’ charmin’ fer ye. Lud knows ye’ve little enough to offer without gollerin’ an’ gigglin’ like a regular loon,” she added succinctly.

With some amusement, I realized that the cook intended a match between her daughter and Ariel. It seemed he wasn’t a Misfit. But what sort of power could such a young boy possess?

With a final look of disgust at her daughter, the cook turned to me. “As fer you, no doubt ye are a fool at that. An’ work ye hard I will, if that’s what Ariel wants. Ye’ve angered him somehow, an’ ye mun pay. He’ll see ye do. He ain’t one to let petty angers gan away. Ye’ll learn,” she prophesied.

Turning to the sink, she explained that I was to wash the mountain of dishes and then scour the pots. I looked in dismay at the work ahead. In the orphan homes, there had been a great many of us, and a share in duties was always light. Yet there was nothing to do but obey.

I had been working for hours and had just managed to finish the dishes when the cook announced that the easy work was over since it was nearly time for midmeal. I felt like weeping. Already I was exhausted, but as Lila and I set the tables, I channeled my despair into fueling a growing hatred of Ariel, whom I regarded as the initiator of my woes. I was hungry, having missed firstmeal, but I dared not complain as I carried bowl after bowl of stew to the tables. Lila moaned
endlessly and received endless slaps for her pains. I judged it wiser to hold my tongue.

Presently, the cook rang a bell. Young people of varying ages filed in through the double doors. Soon all the tables were full. The diners did not look at us at all but ate with steady concentration, then left, their seats soon taken by others. The meal consisted of a bowl of thick stew and freshly baked bread. The food smells made me feel dizzy with hunger. In town, food had seldom been this good or this fresh, but we had never had to work too hard. I wondered wistfully what the others did and regretted that I had fallen foul of Ariel.

“Ye gan eat now,” the cook said finally, and thrust a generous helping into my hand. My stomach growled in appreciation. I sat at a nearly empty table and devoured the food. Only when I had spooned up the last morsel did I look up.

“Hello,” said a soft voice at my elbow. I turned to look at a young blond girl sitting nearby. She smiled, and I was astonished that anyone would ever want to condemn her. Even her ungainly clothes could not hide the delicacy of her features and her slender bones. Her hair was like cream silk. She endured my examination without embarrassment, until it was I who looked away from her clear, naive gaze.

“I am Cameo,” she whispered. I looked at her again, and such was the sweetness of her expression that I might have smiled back, but Lila, seated at the end of the table, was watching us.

“I am not interested in your name,” I said in a repressive voice, worried that Ariel would punish the girl for her kindness toward me. But when the brightness of her face dimmed, I wished I had not been so terse.

A sharp cuff on the side of my head was the cook’s signal
that my short respite was over. I rose and began to clear plates. The afternoon was spent washing all the midmeal dishes and scrubbing down the jagged kitchen floor, then serving stew and unwatered milk for nightmeal.

Every bone ached by the time Ariel took me to my permanent room, and I was too exhausted to care that I was not alone. At that moment, the Master of Obernewtyn himself could have been my roommate and met as little response.

10

M
Y INITIAL EXHAUSTION
wore off as I became accustomed to the hard physical labor in the kitchen, but it was replaced by a terrible mental despair. I could not endure the thought of going on in such a way forever, and yet there seemed no opportunity of finding Enoch’s friend who might be able to help me move to the farms to work.

My sole comfort came from a conversation I had overheard at midmeal one day, which had implied that most of the house workers went down to work on the farms to prepare for the long wintertime. I prayed this was so, and that I would be among those dispatched to the farms. But I had arrived in the spring, and my calculations told me no extra workers would be required until the beginning of summerdays.

I shared my sleeping chamber with four other girls, including the strange disturbed girl I had seen on my first morning, Selmar, who now ignored me. Remembering the mess inside her mind, I thought it possible she had simply forgotten our meeting. She was, I noticed, permitted to wander more freely than the rest of us.

There were surprisingly few guardians at Obernewtyn. Most responsibility seemed to be taken by senior and favored Misfits, though none was so favored as Ariel. I had heard nothing of the mysterious master and had seen no sign of Madam Vega.

Altogether, life at Obernewtyn was a matter of grim endurance rather than terror. I thought a good deal about Jes. I had imagined myself a loner, never needing anyone, but now I saw that I had never really experienced loneliness. In Rangorn, there had always been my parents, and in the homes, there had been Jes and later Maruman. I had discounted Jes, but now I often found myself longing to talk to him, even if we spoke of nothing important.

One day late in spring, Ariel came to the kitchen to announce that I was to take a tour of the farms with some other Misfits. Even the knowledge that Ariel would lead the tour could not mar the joy that arose in me at the thought of even a few hours of freedom from the dreary kitchen routine. I had not been outside for so long.

Ariel had instructed me to wait for him in the entrance hall after midmeal. When I arrived, a boy ushered me down several halls and outside into a large enclosed courtyard. Three girls whose faces I recognized from the meal table were waiting already, and soon after a dark-haired boy with a limp arrived. With him was the pretty girl who had spoken to me at my first meal, Cameo. She smiled at me tentatively, but I felt her companion watching me and could not bring myself to respond.

Ariel arrived soon after accompanied by twins—Norselanders, judging by their height and blondness. There were few enough in the highlands for me to be curious about how they had ended up being charged as Misfits. I could not see anything out of the ordinary in their appearance, save that each lacked a hand. I was contemplating entering their minds when the hair on my neck prickled. Turning my head slightly,
I saw that the slight, dark-haired boy was still watching me. I scowled at him, suddenly remembering that I had seen him in the dining arbors and he had been watching me then, too. It occurred to me that he might be an informant, and I turned my back on him, resolving to have nothing to do with him.

At last two final Misfits joined us, and Ariel addressed the group. He told us we were being taken on this tour in preparation for working on the farms. I felt a ripple of delight at the news.

Like the kitchen courtyard, the one in which we had gathered was roofed, but now we followed Ariel through a gate into another courtyard that was open to the sky. The sun was shining brightly down on the cobbles, and I turned my face to it and breathed in warm mountain air and tasted the summerdays so soon to come.

Three sides of the courtyard were formed by the high walls of Obernewtyn. Windows pitted the gray expanse like hooded eyes. Above them, the roof sloped steeply so that in wintertime the snow would slide off.