The Seeker (28 page)

“I will teach her not to defy me,” he snarled. He did something to the buttons, and several colored lights began to pulsate. The machine hummed very faintly, and Alexi took up a bowl-shaped helmet and fitted it over my head, his strange black eyes burning down at me.

All at once, I felt a faint buzzing in my head. It was only
slightly distracting, and my spirits lifted. If this was the extent of their torture, the secret of the map’s whereabouts would be safe with me. I wondered suddenly if Marisa had even known the terrible capability of the weaponmachines she had located. I remembered that cold, enigmatic face in the portrait and thought it must be so.

“Even if you find what you want, the Council will not let you rule them,” Rushton said.

“He’s just trying to get you mad,” Ariel sneered.

Alexi turned his hot, mad gaze on Ariel, who visibly quailed. “I’ll kill you if you say anything else that annoys me,” the man hissed.

“Concentrate on the girl,” snapped Madam Vega, giving Ariel a warning look. Alexi came back to the machine and turned a knob, and the buzzing in my head increased sharply. The sensation was still a long way from being painful, yet I thought uneasily of Cameo and Selmar. Selmar, who had been more like me than I could have guessed. Was it this machine that had broken her mind?

Alexi took the diary, opened it, and held it in front of my eyes. I tried not to look at the crabbed scribing, which I recognized from the maps and books in the doctor’s chamber, but the nearness of the diary was such that I could hear the faintest whisper of the woman’s thoughts. I strengthened my shield.

“I have dreamed of the power that will come to me,” Alexi said. “It is my destiny, and Marisa had no right to keep it from me.” He moved a lever on the machine, and the buzzing increased. It was uncomfortable enough to begin eroding the solidity of my shield. Again I heard the whisper of Marisa’s thoughts rising from the diary like a scent. Complex calculations. The desire for a certain book. An unkind thought about
her baby son, whom she suspected of being dull-witted. Irritation with her husband.

“Open your mind to her,” Alexi commanded, and again the buzzing increased. Now there was pain. I could tolerate it, but there would be more, I knew, and worse. What if I could not hold out?

Fear made me grope for Rushton’s mind. If I could just speak with him, I might find courage enough to endure.

“Think of Marisa,” Alexi commanded.

My mental probe found Rushton’s mind, but it was blocked. I despaired for a moment, but then I realized that his mind was not consciously shielded. Nor had he a natural block. The barrier I encountered was unlike any I had felt. It was like a thick wall of cloud or mist. I gathered my strength and arrowed my way through it into his mind. Distantly I heard him moan.

“What is the matter with him?” Vega asked.

“He’s fainted again,” Ariel said contemptuously.

But he was wrong. Rushton had retreated into his thoughts to deal with my intrusion. Quickly I identified myself.

“It was
you.
” I heard Rushton’s thought and, with astonishment, recognized the mind of my rescuer. At least, his mind seemed part of the entity that had helped me get free from the Zebkrahn once before. But I could tell he had no Misfit ability.

Seeming to guess my puzzlement, Rushton explained. “There are many among my friends who have mental abilities like yours, and though none are as powerful as you, they are able to combine their strength. Somehow they use my mind to focus their energies, and carry me with them. If I had succeeded in making my claim on Obernewtyn, I would have made it a refuge for them.”

I told Rushton he must not give up, for his friends were on their way with help.

“My friends?” he echoed.

Swiftly I shared with him everything that had happened since we parted last. It took but a moment, because I used mental pictures rather than words. I read in his mind that he was unaware that the weaponmachines sought by Alexi and the others were those that had caused the Great White. I chose not to burden him with the knowledge, though he asked if I could do what Alexi wanted.

Before I could answer, the effect of the Zebkrahn increased dramatically. I tried to withdraw from Rushton’s mind, but he held me.

“Let me go!” I begged. It would have been easy enough to tear free, but he would be hurt.

“I can help you endure,” he said. “Draw on me.” I warned him that he would share my pain if I stayed inside his mind, but he insisted. “If you give them what they want, they will kill us both anyway, so I help myself in helping you.”

“This is taking too long,” I heard Ariel say impatiently. He reached up to adjust the machine, but this time there was no increase in the pain. Had the machine reached its limit? I prayed so, for on the other side of my mental barrier, I could sense Marisa’s thoughts clamoring.

“Don’t be afraid,” Rushton told me. Then I heard him moan and realized with horror that he was shielding me from the worst of the pain. I did not know how it was possible, and yet he was doing it.

“What is wrong with him?” Vega snapped.

Alexi sprang forward and looked into my face. “He’s helping her!” he screamed. “Kill him, Vega.”

“No!” I cried.

His brows drew together in triumph. “Tell me where the map is or I will kill him,” he whispered. I wrenched my mind from Rushton’s with a scream.

“Vega, get a knife,” Alexi instructed. He looked back at me. “Tell me or he will die.”

“Elspeth!” Rushton shouted.

In that moment, the block that separated me from Marisa’s thoughts was as thin as a web. I saw right through it and knew where the map was. It was hidden in plain sight, carved into the front doors of Obernewtyn. Then, as my mind began to buckle under the assault of the machine, I saw a vision of a dark chasm in the ground from which rose a thick brownish smoke, and I knew I was seeing the very place indicated on Marisa’s map.

Terrified at what else I would see, I found the strength to block the vision and push Marisa from me.

“Very well, kill him,” Alexi snarled.

I threw back my head and saw Madam Vega’s hand raise the knife. “No!” I begged.

“Tell me,” Alexi whispered.

“We come,” said an unknown voice in my mind. Startled, I realized Rushton’s friends must be within the stone hillock.

“Tell me!” Alexi shouted.

I hesitated. I could not tell him where the map was. That was too high a price for either my life or Rushton’s.

Alexi’s eyes narrowed, seeming to divine my thought. “All right. Do it.”

Madam Vega lifted her arm slowly.

I heard running footsteps, and at the same time, the machine seemed to be overheating. There was the sound of an explosion, and a shower of sparks fell on my boot and onto my bare and grazed knees. I jerked and kicked as best I could.

Vega’s hand paused before the downward blow. She looked at Alexi, and he nodded.

There was a terrible pain in my legs and feet, and I could smell smoke.

Then something inside my head crackled violently; a power stirred in me completely unlike any other ability I possessed. All at once, I knew that Rosamunde had spoken the truth: Jes had killed that soldierguard,
and I knew how
.

Whatever I had roused came from the deepest void of my mind, like a serpent uncoiling to strike. I felt a sense of exaltation at the knowledge that I could control such a terrible power. Madam Vega drove the knife downward, but I struck first, swatting her hand away and plowing a terrible furrow through her mind. She screamed horribly.

I felt flames burning my legs and feet. The smell reminded me of the day my mother and father died.

Dimly, I saw people running and shouting.

“Is she alive?” asked a voice I knew but could not recognize.

Am I?
I wondered, and a dark wind swept me away.

27

“Y
ER NOWT WELL
enough!” Matthew said stubbornly. The look on his face told me what I already knew. I looked haggard even after all this time.

“It might be better …,” Dameon said diplomatically, but I would not let him finish.

“Stay here and miss this mysterious meeting? Not on your life,” I said. I sat back after that outburst, feeling the now-familiar weakness roll over me. It was still incredible to think the machine had taken so much from me. That, and unleashing the strange power I had tapped in myself. I had been unconscious for days after.

“Ye look different,” Matthew said. And I felt different, stronger somehow, despite my physical weakness and the scars. Even now I could feel the tingle in the depth of my mind that told me the power was there, waiting.

“So
you
would be different if some machine had been inside your head,” I snapped.

He grinned.

“Where is Rushton?” I asked casually.

Matthew looked quickly at Dameon, but the empath’s face remained as inscrutable as ever. I felt a stirring of resentment that Rushton had not come by to visit. Matthew had told me that Louis and the others had freed Rushton and he had beaten and smothered the flames that had engulfed my lower
legs. Both Alexi and Madam Vega were dead—Alexi with an arrow to the heart and Vega without a mark on her. Louis guessed she had fallen and hit her head in the commotion. Ariel had fled, and had surely perished in the savage blizzard that had come that night.

It was known now by all those who dwelt at Obernewtyn that Rushton was its legal master and that the mysterious doctor was his defective half brother. None doubted the claim, and the new Master of Obernewtyn spoke openly of taking it to the Councilcourt to have the matter formally recognized.

I was amazed at how many different varieties of mental prowess there were among the Misfits at Obernewtyn, and at the fact that I had never realized it. But, of course, I had kept my mind tightly leashed after my first encounter with the Zebkrahn machine. And most of the Misfits had minimal abilities; Roland, Domick, and a few others were the exception. But type and strength of ability did not matter to Rushton, who had none save the curious ability to host a merge of minds. In a way, it seemed to me that his desire to turn Obernewtyn into a refuge echoed this ability. The meeting I wanted to attend was meant to outline his plans in detail.

Matthew and Dameon felt I was not fit enough to attend. I insisted that the numbness and pain in my mind had gone, but I was still very weak and the burns on my feet and legs were yet to heal fully. Rushton had left word that I was not to get up until I was completely recovered. And still he had not come to see me.

“He’s the master here now,” Matthew said, as if answering my thought.

“No doubt he is too busy to tell me himself that I must not come to his meeting,” I said. I had meant to say it lightly, but
I heard a flash of anger in my voice and realized that I only wanted to go because Rushton wanted to stop me.

Dameon said gently, “He
did
come to see you several times, Elspeth. But you were always asleep, and he would not let us wake you.”

“Of course,” I said as casually as possible, ashamed to think he was privy to my pettiness when we all knew how busy Rushton was. And after all, Rushton did not know I had stopped Vega from killing him. In truth, I did not want anyone to know that. The fact that I had the capacity to kill with my mind was hardly likely to endear me to anyone.

“We’ve decided we’re going to stay,” Matthew said. “Rushton’s going to make Obernewtyn a secret refuge for people like us. He has plans.”

“I know that.” I snapped. Dameon was staring at me with an odd expression on his face, and I felt a blush rise to my cheeks at the thought that he was sensing the muddled roil of my emotions.

“What about Henry Druid? Does he have a role in this great plan?” I asked. Rushton had met the renegade Herder several years before, when he had stumbled into his camp, on his way to Obernewtyn at the request of his dead mother. Instead of being killed or made prisoner, Rushton had been allowed to go free, on the condition that he aided the old man in acquiring some of the forbidden Beforetime books said to be hidden at Obernewtyn.