The Seeker (61 page)

“Patience,” Gahltha sent.

He made for the opposite side of the plateau, and there I looked out, aghast. Again the plateau was high, but there were no clouds to hide the dreadful vision from us.

Stretched out like a charred skin were hundreds of spans of Blacklands, lifeless and still. I had thought the snowy slopes barren, but this was a terrible stretch of obsidian, flecked here and there with dark, gleaming pools reflecting a tarnished sky. A stretch of mountains, breaking away from the main mass, ran across the nightmarish terrain and out of sight. It was the Land, dead and without hope of life. Looking at that, it was impossible to share Pavo’s assurance that the Blacklands would not last forever.

Even as I watched, night crept like a dark shadow across the bleak plains, and though the heights were still bathed in sunlight, I felt strangely cold. I had wondered why the Agyllians left me in the mountains when it would have been so easy for them to carry me down to Obernewtyn. Now I thought I understood.

“I did not know it went on so far. So much land poisoned …,” I whispered.

“Perhaps there are many lessons to be learned in the mountains,” Gahltha sent gravely.

I could not take my eyes away.

I thought of the Oldtimers and wondered whether they would have built their weaponmachines if they could have foreseen what would come to pass. And why create machines that would outlast a hundred lives? Had they been so enamored of war and destruction that they had to make it immortal?

For the first time, I felt I could understand the original Councilmen and their tyrannous rule. Farmers and children of the Oldtimers, they had seen firsthand the will to destroy and the hunger for power that knew no boundaries. Perhaps they had even known the deathmachines existed and had hoped to ensure no one would ever use them again. No
wonder they had forbidden delving into the past.

They had been afraid.

Unfortunately, the repressive philosophies had become a different sort of threat. I doubted the present Council understood the real dangers any better than those who had made the weaponmachines in the first place. I had only to think of Henry Druid and Alexi to know there would always be men and women prepared to pay any price for power. Even our own Teknoguild would risk agonizing death to revive the knowledge of a lost age.

The Elder was right. It was inevitable the machines would someday be unearthed and used. And Atthis had said I was the only one with any chance of destroying them. If that made me the Seeker, it was a responsibility I was finally ready to accept.

Resolutely, I thrust the machines and the Agyllians from my mind and looked at Gahltha. “I will be glad to go from this place and its foreboding lessons.”

He blew air from flared nostrils. “I did not bring you here for lessons. See, there is where we will go down.”

I followed his gaze and saw a natural stone path leading unevenly to the next plateau, cleaving to the edge of the slope. The path began not far from where we stood, moving this way, then that, ever lower, across the face of the cliff.

Gahltha looked at me. “You are weak still. Ride on my back and we will travel more quickly.”

I looked at him curiously. “You want me to ride?” I asked.

“One warrior will carry another, if the strength of one proves greater. Each has his own strength but also his own weakness.” He spoke with the air of repeating a well-learned lesson.

“Wise words,” I said simply. “I am glad to ride on your
back if it will help us move more quickly.”

We traveled that day and the next through the monotonous snowbound terrain of the high mountains, and on the third day, we came upon a few scant green shoots, thrusting their tips through the snow. “It will be more dangerous now that the thaw has begun,” Gahltha said. “But I think tomorrow we will reach the valley of the barud.”
Barud
was the equine word symbol for “home”—it seemed Gahltha had come to miss Obernewtyn.

Snow clouds gathered overhead, and with the bleak afternoon came unexpected doubts. I began to fear Obernewtyn had changed and that I would find there was no longer a place for me there. My whole life had been spent as an outsider, and even at Obernewtyn, I had felt misplaced until the journey to the coast. Ironic if I discovered too late where my own barud lay.

Just at dusk, for the first time, we encountered another creature. A wolf.

The wolves that frequented the mountains were savage, pale-eyed wraiths with coats the color of mist and snow. They were nearly impossible to spot deliberately, and it was sheer luck that I saw this one. I had been plodding along, shivering and staring aimlessly into the distance, when the landscape appeared to shift fractionally. I realized I had been staring right at a wolf without seeing it. It had been watching us, but now it turned, melting back into the white landscape.

Later I heard several desolate calls in the distance. I was tempted to try communicating, but the wild keening calls across the frozen wastes made a desolate song of the night and did not invite a response.

The calls went on for hours, then abruptly ceased.

I was glad of the respite, but Gahltha seemed more disturbed by the silence than by the bloodcurdling howls. I was too tired to worry and slept leaning against his warm flank. Gradually, I felt him relax, too. Exhausted and half-starved as we were, we needed sleep. Initial hunger pains had long since given way to an empty ache that was easier to bear. If sleep was all the comfort that remained for us, then that would have to be enough to get us home.

Suddenly Gahltha stiffened, and I was jerked awake. Dense clouds obscured the moon. I looked around in the pitch darkness fearfully.

“What is it?” I sent.

“The Brildane,” Gahltha responded.

I laid a gentle hand across his back, wondering if there was danger.

“What or who are Brildane?” I asked.

“I do not know what name is given them by the funaga, but Brildane is the name they call themselves. We call them gehdra, because they are invisible. They have no time for any creature but their own kind. But they hate the funaga, because your kind trap and slay their young.”

“Are they hungry?” I asked, trying to understand what sort of animal it could be.

“If they were, we would already be dead,” Gahltha sent. “You heard their calls throughout the night? The mountain equines know a little of their strange speech. Their calls concerned us. They wonder what we are doing here. The gehdra claim the high mountains as their own world. Here we are intruders.”

“Wolves! The Brildane are wolves!” I cried. I looked at Gahltha. “Are you telling me they’re just curious?” I asked.

“The curiosity of the gehdra is as savage as its hunger,” Gahltha sent quellingly.

I looked around uneasily, wondering how he had known of their presence. I had heard not a sound. And even now, I could sense no minds but our own. The wolves must have some ability to cloak their minds.

“Would it help if I sent a greeting?” I suggested.

“No!” Gahltha sent urgently, as if he expected me to leap up and rush into the night with a cry of greeting on my lips. “It is impossible to predict what they will do. Speaking to them would not stop them eating us, if that was their desire. And if they wanted to confront us, they would have done it. But I think they came to look, not to feed or speak. Better to do nothing. With the gehdra, that is always safest.”

Gahltha’s warnings were underlined by a sense of tangible fear. Bleakly, I realized these may be the very wolves Ariel had hunted and trapped. He had driven them mad to ensure their ferocity and had used them to guard the grounds, hunting and killing runaways. We had hoped to heal the beasts once Ariel had gone, but his sadistic treatment had made it impossible. In the end, the best we could do was give the wolves back their freedom.

I dared not stir a limb until Gahltha reported that they had gone, fading back into the night as mysteriously as they had appeared.

“Are you sure you didn’t imagine them?” I asked.

“In the morning you will see,” was all he would say.

It was hard to go back to sleep, but after a while I fell into a light, troubled slumber. I dreamed of Ariel as he had been, a boy with almost unearthly beauty and a sadistic turn of mind that delighted in causing pain. I woke disquieted. The
night grew steadily colder, and even Gahltha’s considerable body heat could not keep me warm. Eventually, I gave up trying to sleep and lay waiting for the horse to wake.

With relief, I felt Gahltha stir at dawn. It was barely light before we were off but light enough to see that Gahltha had been right the night before. The snow all around us was covered in paw prints, some a mere handspan from where my feet had lain.

The Brildane.

I shivered, and suddenly it began to snow. Just a few flakes at first, but blown with stinging force into our faces by a hard, icy wind. The snow was already thick underfoot and made walking tiring. Gahltha offered to carry me again, but he could only walk a little faster than I and was easily as tired, so I refused. I knew neither of us could go much farther without proper rest and food.

Near to dropping, I was trying to remember how long it had been since I had eaten when Gahltha neighed loudly. Squinting against the wind and flying snow, I realized he had rounded a spur of rock and was out of sight. Forcing weary limbs to hurry, I caught up.

“What is it?” I sent, wondering if I had strength enough left to deal with another obstacle.

“We have reached the valley of the barud.”

I blinked stupidly. Barud? “Obernewtyn!”

All weariness fell away from me then. I was close enough to send a questing probe, but something kept me from it, a desire to have my first glimpse of Obernewtyn unhampered by greetings and explanations.

I had just begun to recognize some of the hills and stone
hummocks when the wind fell away and the snow stopped, making our first glimpse of Obernewtyn clear and unmistakable.

A cry of happiness died in my throat, stillborn. I stumbled to a halt, unable to believe my eyes.

All that remained of Obernewtyn was a charred ruin.

26

O
NLY A FIRESTORM
could have done so much damage.

Little remained of Obernewtyn but rubble. The walls of the main building were no more than jagged, blackened stumps of stone. The windblown snow adhered to the crevices, and a rambling kind of thorn brush thrust its roots deep into the cracked rubble.

It looked like a ruin of years rather than moons. How had it degenerated so quickly? I blinked, for when I stared hard, I seemed to see the ghostly shape of Obernewtyn as it had been.

Tears blurred my vision, and the wind froze them before they could fall. It was bitter cold on the hillside, but I scarcely felt the chill. To have traveled so long and far only to find Obernewtyn destroyed was beyond a nightmare.

“Come,” Gahltha sent.

I stared at him incredulously.

He asked doubtfully, “Do you not want to go to the barud? I am sworn to take you wherever you will.”

I shook my head, disturbed by his lack of emotion. Perhaps he had changed less than I realized and welcomed the downfall of any funaga institution. I looked back at the wreckage and wondered whether any had escaped the firestorm. What a tragic irony that the lie that had protected us for so long had come so horribly true.

Stumbling forward, I prayed I would find some clue as to
where everyone had gone. The ground was sodden from the melting snow, and fresh flakes fell soft as ashes on the dark, wet earth.

Abruptly, I stopped and stared, squinting against the cold wind blustering across the valley. I thought I had seen a smudge of smoke.

It had come from somewhere on the far side of the valley, near the pass to the highlands. My heart beat faster as I made out a number of dark shapes that might be buildings. It seemed to me I was looking at a small settlement.

Gahltha offered to carry me, though he seemed puzzled at my instruction not to pass too close to Obernewtyn. It occurred to me that equines might not know that a poisonous residue was left behind by a firestorm.