The Seeker (7 page)

Seeing my expression, he only shrugged. “These fools believe everyone who doesn’t think and act as they do is evil. As for Obernewtyn, you need not fear it. It is merely a large mansion with farms. Not those labor camps the Council calls a farm. Real farms, with animals and crops and sowing and reaping. You might like it,” he said reassuringly.

“Have you been there?” I asked.

His eyes were suddenly evasive, and though I did not press him, his unexpected reluctance angered me. “I might escape,” I told him coldly, more for effect than because I meant it.

But he gave me a measured look. “If ever you do run away, you might seek out the Druid in the highlands. I have heard he lives still in hiding. He has no love for Misfits, but you need not tell him—”

He broke off his words at the sound of footsteps, and we both looked up to see his uncle reenter the room. “Come, Daffyd,” the older man said, his eyes skidding over me.

Daffyd rose at once. He said nothing to me, but as they moved to the door, he smiled over his shoulder.

I watched them go thoughtfully. Henry Druid had been a Herder, forced to flee with some of his followers after defying a Council directive to burn his precious collection of Oldtime books. That had been long years past, and rumor was that he had died. Yet this boy implied otherwise.

I shrugged. The boy had surely been defective. He had been careless in talking to me at all.

A soldierguard stepped from one of the doors and waved impatiently for me to enter. I went slowly, playing the part of a dull wit.

The trial room was quite small. At the very front was a Councilman seated at a high bench, facing the rest of the room. Beside him at a lower table were two Herders. The rows of seats facing the front were occupied only by a few lounging soldierguards in their telltale yellow cloaks. The seats were theoretically meant for interested members of the community, but I could not imagine anyone would be curious enough to risk being associated with whoever was on trial. No one paid the slightest bit of attention as I was prodded
to the front by the soldierguard on duty. I looked up at the Councilman, wondering bitterly what would happen to the daughter of such a person if
she
were judged Misfit.

“Well, now,” said the Councilman in a brisk voice. His eyes passed over me with disinterest, reminding me that I was less than nothing to him. “I understand this is a routine affair with no defense,” he said to a tall man in black who rose and nodded languidly.

The Councilman turned his attention to me. “You are Elspeth Gordie?”

I nodded.

“Very well. You have been accused of being a Misfit by Madam Vega of Obernewtyn. If so judged, you will be unfit ever to receive a Normalcy Certificate or to become part of the community of true humans. Corsak, you will speak for Stephen Seraphim, the Master of Obernewtyn?”

The man in black did not look at me as he spoke. “This orphan has been exposed as a Misfit by the Obernewtyn head keeper. She was also denounced by another orphan, who claims that she fell in tainted water and has from that time had unnatural dreams and fainting fits. This would normally mark her a Misfit by mischance, but there are several other points. May I expand?”

The Councilman nodded.

“In her first home, the girl was accused of giving an evil eye. Naturally we do not place too much credibility on these reports, but they do point to the possibility that she had Misfit tendencies even before this tainted water infected her.” As he continued outlining various reports made about me in various homes, both by other orphans and by guardians, I began to feel truly frightened. I had never imagined my record would hold so much evidence to suggest I was a birth Misfit.
It was suddenly clear to me that I would never have been issued a Normalcy Certificate.

Suddenly the Councilman cut him off. “I do not see how any of this gossip is as significant as the fact that the girl came into contact with tainted water. Surely that is the cause of any mutancy. And is it not still true that your master has no interest in those made Misfit by mischance?”

“That is so, Councilman,” Corsak said carefully. “But that evidence was not available at the time Madam Vega made her initial claim.”

“And your master. Does he still feel there is some hope of a cure for Misfits?”

“Obernewtyn concentrates all its efforts on healing,” the man in black answered somewhat defensively.

One of the Herders stood. “Misfits are not sick. They have allowed themselves to become habitations for demons.”

Sirrah Corsak bowed. “My master feels it is the sickness that allows the invasion of demons, and that a young mind might be healed so that the demons could be driven out.”

The Herder glanced at his companion, an older priest who also rose. He wore a gold-edged armband that denoted him the senior of the pair. “Driving away demons is Herder work,” he said.

“Of course,” said the Obernewtyn representative. “If a mind were to be healed, the subject would immediately be delivered to the Herder Faction.”

“Yet where are your successes, Sirrah Corsak?” asked the first Herder aggressively. “Why should we keep sending Misfits to you, when none are healed?”

The Obernewtyn man cast an appealing look at the Councilman. “You are well paid for them,” he said.

“That is not the point,” snapped the Councilman. He nodded at the two Herders, who again sat down.

The man in black looked nervous. “I beg pardon, Councilman,” he said. “It is true that Obernewtyn uses these Misfits for labor, but my master diligently seeks a cure as well.”

The Councilman eyed him coolly. “So you have said, and so Madam Vega and your master have scribed. Even so, perhaps it is time for us to visit Obernewtyn and evaluate for ourselves what is done with the Misfits we send there.”

His eyes flicked back to me. “Do you admit to being a Misfit?” he asked in a bored tone.

I cringed and gave him what I hoped was a convincingly vacant leer. The Councilman sighed as if it were as much as he had expected, then asked if anyone knew whether I was able to speak. No one answered, and the Councilman scowled impatiently.

“Very well, I pronounce her Misfit by mischance. But you may take her, Corsak. Make arrangements to name her in the records when you make the bond over. And we look forward to an invitation to visit Obernewtyn and to see these healing efforts you have described with such eloquence,” he added meaningfully.

Corsak nodded and indicated for me to follow him.

The Councilman forestalled him coldly. “If you please. Is the scribe here?”

“Yes!” said a cheerful voice.

“Ensure this reaches the people. Misfits are a particularly foul and insidious threat to our community. They often pass as normal for many years, since their defects are not obvious to the eye. We know this because of the efforts of our good and diligent Herders.” The two Herders inclined
their heads modestly. “They have lately informed me that their researches have revealed that Misfits are Lud’s way of punishing our laxity. How is it, Lud asks us, that Misfits are permitted to roam and breed among us for so long? The answer is that we have failed in our duty of watchfulness. This attitude threatens to hurl us back into the Age of Chaos, and worse. Therefore, it is the order and decree of this Councilcourt that penalties for aiding and concealing Misfits and any other defective humans or beasts will increase. Each man must watch his neighbor.…”

He went on to explain the various new rulings and penalties, and I shuddered at the effect this would have on the community. Each time the Council sought to tighten its control, a new wave of denunciations and burnings occurred. Oddly enough, I fancied a look of surprise had crossed the face of the younger priest at the mention of Herder researches.

7

I
T TOOK SOME
time to reach the outskirts of Sutrium. I had forgotten the city was so big. The streets were completely deserted, and it was well into the morning before we reached the end of the town’s sprawling outer limits, but toward midday, the city fell rapidly behind.

I had lived in urban orphan homes now for many years, but the curved road parting the soft folded hills and gullies brought back clear memories of my childhood in Rangorn, far from the towns and the ever-present menace of the Council. I realized I had not lied to Jes when I told him I was almost glad. There was an odd sort of peace in having got the thing done at last. I thought of Madam Vega and reflected that Obernewtyn was bound to be less terrible than the stories.

It was not hard to forget fear and to surrender myself to the peaceful solitude of the carriage. The morning burgeoned into a sun-filled day, and between naps I watched the country unfold.

To the east of the road, we passed the villages of Saithwold and Sawlney, and beyond them to the north were soft woodlands, where from the window I could see the downs sloping gently to Arandelft, set deep in the forest. To the west of the road were the vast hazy moors of Glenelg.

The road curved down to pass on the farthermost outskirts of Arandelft, where slate-gray buildings were framed
by cultivated fields flanked by bloodberry trees. More than twenty leagues away and closing the horizon was the Gelfort Range—the mountains Tor, Aren Craggie, and Emeralfel. They marked the border of the highlands, and as if to underline this, the road began gradually to incline upward.

We passed onto the low westernmost slopes of the Brown Haw Rises, hillocky and undulant—I was astounded to discover how much I knew of land I had never seen. My father had talked a good deal of these places. He had traveled much in the Land before he bonded with my mother. Sometimes he had seated me on his knee and shown me colored pictures that he called maps. He would point to places, tell me their names, and explain what they were like.

We passed a small moor, wetter and more dense than Glenelg, and I peered through the leafy eben trees along the roadside at the mist-wreathed expanse. There had been no moors in Rangorn, but I recognized this from my father’s descriptions. He had said the mists never went away but were always fed by some hissing subterranean source. He thought the moors were caused by some inner disturbance in the earth, yet another legacy of the Great White.

My mother had said good herbs always grew near the moors; she came from the high country and knew a great deal about herb lore. I thought of the great, white-trunked trees that had stood on the hillside around our house. Were they still there, though the house had long ago been reduced to ashes? I remembered my mother making me listen to the whispering sounds of the trees; the rich, shadowed glades where we collected mushrooms and healing flowers; and the summer brambles laden with fat berries, dragging over the bank of our favorite swimming hole. I thought of standing with my father and looking down from the hills to where the
Ford of Rangorn met the onrush of the Suggredoon, and the distant, grayish glint of a Blacklands lake.

And I remembered the burning of my mother and father, in the midst of all the beauty of Rangorn. Perhaps that was what Jes remembered most, what had made him so cold and strange in recent times.

As the late-afternoon sun slanted through the window of the carriage, we halted briefly at a wayside hostel, and a new coachman came to take the place of the other. The hostel was just outside a village called Guanette, and I felt a jolt at the name. It made me think of Maruman, and I wondered if he had understood that I really was going away for good.

We rode on, and I saw that the village consisted mostly of small stone-wrought hovels with shingled roofs. They looked ancient and had probably been erected during the Age of Chaos. Their stolidity seemed a response to the turmoiled past.

Laughter drifted in through the windows as we rode by children who scrabbled in pools of dust along the roadway. They looked up indifferently as we passed. I was once like them, I thought rather bitterly, until the Council had taken a hand.

The carriage jerked suddenly to a halt, and the coachman dismounted. We had stopped outside yet another hostel called The Green Tree.

After a long time, he came back, unlocked a window, and threw a soft parcel to me. “Supper,” he grunted in a curious accent. Impulsively, I asked him if I could sit outside and eat.