The Lost Heiress

13

Always now, we will be hunted.

Third Letter of Mardoc Archkeeper

RAFFI WAITED ANXIOUSLY BY THE DOOR. The cottage was small; he could see the fire crackling inside, the dresser with its pewter plates, a basket of chopped wood. It looked cozy. For a moment it reminded him of home.

Then the woman came back, a toddler clutching her skirt. “Here. Take these.” She dumped the rough sacking in his arms hastily. “Cheese. Some smoked fish. Vegetables. That’s all I can spare.”

“It’s very generous,” Raffi muttered.

She gave him a hard looking-over, and he felt himself going red. “Wait,” she said.

In a moment she was laying a blue jacket on the sack. “That was my eldest’s. It’s too small for him now. You have it.”

He was really red by this time. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“You’d better hurry. My husband will be back and he won’t stand for tramps. Which way are you heading?”

Off guard, he shrugged. “West . . .”

The woman turned and gathered the child up onto her hip. “Then be careful. The Watch are always patrolling that way.”

He nodded, walked to the gate, and turned to say thanks again. She was looking after him, the baby playing with her hair. Suddenly he saw how young she was.

“Give us your blessing, keeper,” she whispered.

For an instant Raffi was still. Then he raised his hand, as he had seen Galen do, and said the Maker-words slowly, carefully. It made him feel strange. Older. She bowed her head, and without looking up, went back into the house.

Three fields away, under a blackthorn hedge, Galen looked sourly at the jacket.

“Keepers didn’t use to have to beg for castoffs,” he said bitterly.

Raffi didn’t care. He tried the jacket on. It was dark blue and warm, and even the patches were better than his old, worn coat, full of holes.

“She knew what you were?” the Sekoi asked quietly, nosing in the sack.

“She guessed. She said the Watch are about.”

Galen snorted. The burst of fever was over, but it hadn’t improved his temper. He bit into a carrot. “You said nothing else?”

“No.” But the memory of that word, west, stung him. Galen stopped chewing and stared harder. Then he leaned over and caught Raffi’s arm. “What else? What did you tell her?”

“Nothing . . .” But that was useless. He frowned and took a breath. “That we were going west.”

For a moment he thought Galen would hit him. Then the keeper flung him away, his eyes black with fury.

“I didn’t mean to! She caught me unaware!”

Galen gave a harsh laugh. “Never mind. Too late to start being careful now.”

“She won’t tell anyone.”

“Let’s hope not,” the Sekoi said uneasily. It spat out the pips of a dewberry and stood up. “Still, it would be best to be gone. How far is this magic well of yours?”

Galen flashed it a vicious glare. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve never been there?”

“No one’s been there for years. It’s lost.”

“Lost?”

“In the marshes.”

They both stared at him, but he flung the pack at Raffi and stalked off, his tall stick stabbing the mud.

The Sekoi gave a tiny mew of disgust. “I should have taken my chances with Godric.”

For two days they trudged through fields and scrawny pastures, always upward. The weather was warm, and Raffi tied his new coat to the pack and watched the vast flocks of migrating merebirds flying over, always west, their loud cries breaking the evening hush. But the nights were cold; once they lit a fire in a copse of oak trees that Galen said still had much Maker-life and were prepared to allow it.

By now they were high up, and the pasture was poor, full of hollows and humps, studded with boulders, cropped by hungry sheep. Four moons, wide apart, lit the sky.

For a change, Galen was in a milder mood. He was wrapped in his dark coat, the firelight making shadows move on his sharp, hooked face. The Sekoi asked its questions carefully, flipping a gold coin over in its fingers.

“So what is this lost well?”

The Relic Master smiled. “It’s a long story. Once there was a keeper; his name was Artelan. He had a vision and he saw Flain. Flain told him to travel far to the west, to the edge of the Finished Lands, and he would find an island called Sarres, where fruit grew all year, where there was no snow, no strong winds, a place out of the world. And on the island was a well, and whoever drank out of it would have his questions answered.”

“So he went?”

“He went. The story of his adventures is a long one, but finally he climbed these hills and on the other side saw the Moors of Kadar, green and fertile. And rising out of them was a strange hill, remote and eerie, looking like an island in the mist, and Artelan traveled there, and they say he found the spring and the fruit trees, just as Flain had said. I’ve often thought it odd, though, that Flain should say it was an island.”

The Sekoi smiled, scratching its zigzag tribemark with one finger. “You people waste your stories. I could tell this so that we would all seem to be there now.”

Galen nodded. “Our gifts are different. But the Makers gave them all.”

“They did not!” It sat up fiercely. “Not ours!”

Galen frowned, but Raffi said, “Never mind all that. Tell us more about the well.”

This time they both glared at him, but he didn’t mind. He was warm in his new coat and a blanket, and the soft crackle of the fire soothed him. Galen dragged his hair back irritably. “It became a place of pilgrimage, a holy place. The Order built a great house there, and a custodian lived there always. People came, looking for peace, some of them for healing. When they came back they were different. The well had given them wisdom.”

“And you think it will tell us where this Interrex is?” The Sekoi looked politely dubious.

“Me. It will tell me.” Galen was silent for a moment, then shifted, so the green and black awen-beads glinted. “If it still exists. Because the Watch have destroyed us, and who knows what happened there. Artelan once wrote that the spring would never fail, and never be foul. Let’s hope the Watch never found it.”

“What would have stopped them?” Raffi asked sleepily.

Galen gave him a strange look. But he didn’t answer.

Raffi was silent too. He’d had a sudden mind-flicker; it was water, the shimmer of it under leaves. Just a glimpse and it was gone. He turned over and checked his sense-lines, but the countryside was empty except for the numb minds of sheep, and the faint intelligences of the listening oaks, too deep and too old for him to reach.

Next day, for hours, they climbed the relentless ridge. Each time Raffi was sure they had finally sweated to the top, another fold of hill would rise up before them, and the bitter wind flapped their coats and rippled the long wet grass. The hills were empty; few animals lived here and fewer trees, only stunted shreds of old hedgerow, sheep-gnawed and bare, and the immense burrows of ridge-rats, the fat females scattering from under their feet.

Clouds swept over, some dragging showers. Soon they were soaked; Raffi was glad of his coat. Turning the collar up, he smelled suddenly, as if it were real, a scent of soap, of wood smoke. Ahead of him Galen limped grimly, finding ruts and tracks in the slippery grass; the Sekoi stalked far behind, its fur drenched, miserably silent.

Just below the ridge, Galen stopped. He turned quickly and stared out at the gray country below, blurred by showers.

The Sekoi walked past him. “Come on, keeper.”

“Wait.” Galen was alert, his eyes dark. “Do you feel that, Raffi?”

Raffi opened his third eye, groping into distance. Far at the edge of his mind-set, something rippled. “Men?” he said doubtfully.

“Men. Following us.”

The Sekoi had stopped; now it came slithering back in alarm. “Are you sure?”

“Certain.” The keeper glanced around hastily. “Over there. We’re too exposed.”

They ran to the hollow and slid in; the bottom was muddy and sheep-trodden. As Galen rummaged in the pack, Raffi kneeled up and stared out; the land seemed empty, but he knew Galen’s sense-lines were stronger than his, reaching far into stone and soil. The keeper had tugged out the seeing-tube, one of their most precious relics; as he murmured the prayer of humility and gazed through it, the Sekoi looked on with interest. Its yellow eyes flickered to Raffi.

“A relic?”

“It makes far-off things seem nearer.”

“Got them,” Galen muttered. He was rigid a moment, the tube pointing northeast into a brief moving patch of sunlight on a distant slope. “Ten. Eleven. All on horseback.”

“The Watch,” Raffi said.

“I don’t think so.” Galen’s voice was sour; he lowered the tube. “Take a look.”

Eagerly Raffi took the relic and held it to his eye, touching the red button so that the blurred circle suddenly shriveled into focus, and he saw trees, small in the distance, and between them horses running, red-painted.

“Alberic?” the Sekoi said to Galen.

“Without doubt.”

“But how could he be so close?”

“Godric must have been meeting him nearby. He wasn’t worried about having to take you any distance, was he?”

Across the circle a shape flashed: Raffi steadied the tube, brought it back carefully. The rider was tiny, muffled in coats; turning, shouting something.

“It’s him,” he muttered.

“Besides,” Galen said acidly, “they probably asked at some cottage.”

Raffi scowled, watching the minute horseman vanish behind trees. He gave the tube back curtly, and after a second’s hesitation, Galen offered it to the Sekoi.

The creature’s eyes glinted; it held the tube carefully with its fourteen long fingers, then lifted it and looked in, and its whole body quivered with surprise.

“I see them,” it said after a moment. “They’re riding fast. They’ll be here in less than an hour.” It looked around anxiously. “They’ll catch us.”

“Maybe.” Galen took the relic and stowed it away. “Come on.”

They hurried to the ridge-top. The gale increased, pushing them back; Raffi felt he was struggling with a great invisible force, coming out of the land ahead, a hostile force, something he had never felt before. “What is it?” he gasped.

Galen gave him a sideways look. “We’re coming to the end, boy.”

“The end?” For a moment he thought that the ridge was the edge of the world, that there was some vast giddy chasm on the other side, but as Galen hauled him up over the rocks and the full rage of the wind crashed against them, making him stagger over the skyline, he saw what the keeper meant.

They had indeed come to the end.

For in front of them were the Unfinished Lands.