The Seeker (19 page)

Cameo was sitting at the same table as Selmar, and her eyes were fixed on the older girl. She looked terrified.

17

T
HE HALLS WERE
chill and silent as I slipped along them in stocking feet. I encountered many closed doors, but their locks were simple enough to require very little power, and I did not let myself become discouraged by the amount of time it was taking me to get to the doctor’s chamber. The sight of Selmar had been enough to make me absolutely determined to find a map.

At last I reached the entrance hall. Slipping across it, I hesitated, for there were several hallways leading off from it. But only one was lit by greenish candles. I hurried along it to the door at the end, then into the waiting room where Willie had left me. I listened at the door that led to Madam Vega’s office before unlocking it. There was neither fire nor candles, but the room was bright with moonlight coming through the windows behind the desk. I crossed the room and felt for the latch that worked the door in the paneling alongside the fireplace. I would have liked to leave it open, but it was too much of a risk. Stepping into the musty hall, I closed it and was plunged into inky blackness. I groped my way along the short hall to the other door. This time I exerted a tiny farsensing probe to make sure the chamber beyond was empty. I could sense no one, but that did not mean the doctor or someone else was not there, sleeping. It was almost impossible to sense a sleeping presence.

I opened the door carefully and froze at the sight of firelight flickering on the walls. But then I saw that there was only a dying fire in the enormous hearth, and no lanterns or candles. I glanced around the room and my eyes fell on the portrait of Marisa Seraphim. Closing the door behind me, I crossed the room to look more closely at it.

The dim, shifty light cast by the flames made it seem as if her eyes followed me. I thought she looked less cold than before. Indeed, it seemed to me now that there was a gleam of amusement in the set of her mouth and heavily lidded yellow eyes. Reminding myself that I had not come to look at a painting, I turned to scan the room, trying to remember where I had spotted the maps. The trouble was that there were so many books and papers. So many tables and shelves. A closer look revealed that I had been right in thinking many of the books had come from the Beforetime. Such books were forbidden now, but there had been a time when the ban had not been so strict and unilateral. This collection must have been amassed in that time. Impulsively, I reached out and took one from the shelves. As I remembered from the few tattered books my mother had possessed, the pages were thin and silky smooth and the scribing impossibly small and perfect. Who could guess how long it had taken to scribe it?

The book itself turned out to be uninteresting being filled with diagrams, symbols, and words that made no sense to me. On the book’s spine I read “Basic Computer Programming” without comprehension. The next book I took up was much the same, except that the diagrams were beautifully colored.

Faintly disappointed, I moved to a different section of the shelves and took out more books at random. Many had been underlined and notated in a neat, sharp script in the margins, but none of them said anything I could understand. It seemed
to me that there were as many numbers as words in them. Whatever they were about, I finally concluded, they were a far cry from the Oldtime storybooks and fictions my mother had read to Jes and me.

Suddenly I remembered where I had seen the maps. They had been on a table by the fire, where the doctor had rummaged for a pencil. My memory proved accurate, but the maps were of little use, being only badly tattered Beforetime maps. But on one I noticed that the spaces between places were covered in small faded ink notes in the same handwriting as in the Beforetime books. Maps of the Beforetime were nothing but curios, and yet someone clearly had been making an immense and determined effort to find some place that had existed in the Beforetime. A vain thing to attempt, for everyone knew the shape of the world had been changed forever by the Great White.

I wondered suddenly if these notes had been scribed by Alexi or Madam Vega. But when I looked at the scribing on the maps again, I saw that it was faded with age.

Suddenly a picture came into my mind of the potmender who had seemed so familiar to me, and I remembered where I had seen him before. He had been the older man with Daffyd, the boy I had met at the Sutrium Councilcourt. It seemed too much of a coincidence that Daffyd and I had spoken of Obernewtyn, and now here was the man that had been with him. I shook my head, reminding myself that this was not the time and place for solving such puzzles. At last, I found a book of modern maps. I opened it, but to my disappointment, they were all of the lowlands. I was about to replace the book when I noticed an inscription that read, “To Marisa.”

Marisa! Impulsively, I opened another book to the front page and found the same inscription. It was the same in a
Beforetime book. Amazed, I understood that the collection had belonged to Marisa Seraphim. Then it struck me that the crabbed notes I had been reading were hers. I turned back to the painting, and Marisa’s eyes mocked me in the light of the dying embers.

I began to search again, and this time I was startled to find that one set of shelves swung like a door. Behind it was another enormous chamber. I saw the unmistakable gleam of metal amid a pile of papers. And sure enough, it was an arrowcase. Delighted, I thrust it into my pocket. Then I noticed a square steel box standing on legs in a niche between two shelves. It was a metal cupboard with a lock built into the door. Curious, I knelt down and worked the tumblers with my mind. It was more complex than the door locks, but the mechanism was more delicate and therefore needed less force. In a moment, the door clicked open.

There were only two shelves inside, and both were stuffed with old papers and letters. I was disappointed, but I pulled out several pages. On top of the rest was a letter. It read:

The letter ended suddenly halfway down the page, which suggested it had never been completed. I wondered why, and
which Master of Obernewtyn had penned it. Not Stephen Seraphim, certainly, and not Lukas Seraphim. So it must be his son, Michael. And the mother he mentioned must be Marisa.

I found two more letters among the papers. Both had been opened and replaced neatly in their envelopes. One was a missive from Lukas Seraphim to his wife, Marisa, and the other was addressed to Michael Seraphim. I had no chance to read either, though, because I heard the sound of a muffled voice.

I quickly closed the door on the cabinet, the forgotten letters falling from my lap. There was no time to reopen the cupboard and replace them, so I thrust them in the narrow space beneath it and crept to the edge of the hinged shelves. My heart pounded at the knowledge that I was trapped.

But the voices faded without anyone coming into the doctor’s chamber. Relieved, I waited until the voices had faded completely and then made my way back to my own room as fast as I could. Twice I had to conceal myself as older Misfits passed. By the time I was in my own bed, I was soaked with sweat and dizzy with fatigue. But even as I drifted to sleep, I seemed to see Selmar’s dead eyes, gazing emptily at me.

I slept only two hours before being wakened. I had missed firstmeal, and there was no chance to talk to Matthew and Dameon, for they had already been taken through the maze to the farms. Nor had I any opportunity to speak to them at midmeal, for there were other people clustering about them. Too tired to eat, I stretched out in a patch of shade and slept, waking only when everyone was returning to their labor.

It was not until nightmeal that I finally had the chance to speak with them, but before I could whisper my news, Matthew leaned across the table and told me softly that the
new Misfit was sitting at the next table. I looked where he had indicated, and my exhaustion fell away in my shock, for I knew that face.

It was Rosamunde! She seemed to sense my gaze and looked up. As I had expected, she recognized me. What I did not expect was the look of blank bitterness she gave me.

18

I
T WAS SEVERAL
days before I had the opportunity to speak to Rosamunde.

After that first meal, she did not come to the same sitting. I only saw her from a distance on the farms once or twice; then at last, one midmeal I saw her come out of a barn to collect her lunch. I followed and sat down beside her.

“What do you want?” she asked listlessly.

“Do you know me?” I said in a low voice.

“You are Elspeth Gordie,” she said flatly.

Bewildered by her manner, I leaned closer and asked, “Is it Jes? Has something happened to him?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Rosamund said dully.

I bit my lip and suppressed an urge to shake her. “He would not have let you come here alone. He cared about you,” I said. Her face trembled with some feeling, so I pressed her. “He’s my brother. You must tell me if he’s all right.”

She looked away from me. “Leave me alone,” she whispered.

“I know that you denounced me,” I said, desperate to get a response from her.

Her face paled a little. “You knew?” Then the bitterness I had seen that first day in the kitchen returned to her eyes. “Of course you knew. You read my mind. I should have guessed you were like him,” she said colorlessly.

I reeled at her words. “Are you saying that
Jes
can read your mind?” I said at last.

She gave a heavy sigh. “All right. I might as well tell you everything, though I wonder why you don’t just read my mind and find out for yourself.”