She stared at his sun-browned, wrinkled face and gentle dark eyes and tried to make small talk, but she was not adept at it. Alardded laid a comforting hand on her arm. She was sorry she had come. But why did she block with all her power, a blocking she had perfected in childhood when blocking would save her life—a blocking that now stood as powerful as the master Seer’s own skills? Alardded watched her quietly, his own thoughts hidden. Young Sheb returned with fresh-baked bread; Alardded paid him in silver, and he went away happily clinking the coins. Meatha bent her face over her teacup as the darkness of last night again engulfed her.
She had awakened standing in the moonlit citadel, pressing against the stone table, reaching greedily for the rune-stone; had felt her own lusting greed sharply and suddenly, and had drawn back with a cry, filled with shame. Yet at the same time filled with a desire she could hardly resist to hold and possess the runestone.
Alardded sat quietly waiting for her to ease her mind to him, puzzling at her reluctance, her secrecy. She felt, abstractly, his admiration at the power of her blocking. Then he looked up, and his expression went closed. Hux Tanner was standing behind her chair. She turned to stare up at him, annoyed.
Hux grinned down at her. He did not even feel her anger. His dark beard was sleek and wavy, his grooming perfect as always, to show off the good looks that all the girls admired. Meatha wished he would go away. He must have returned from trading just this morning. He touched her shoulder lightly and sat down beside her, helped himself to Alardded’s tea. He had no sense of what had transpired in silence, so filled was he with his own good humor. Alardded rescued his cup, stared absently into its empty depths. “You’re back from trading early.” The smell of baking filled the air, and they could hear the clatter of pans from the nearby shop. Alardded studied Hux comfortably. “Back in one piece, anyway. You had some close scrapes, Hux. We Saw Kubalese soldiers flanking you several times in visions as sharp as the threat itself. What happened when that large battalion bore down on your wagon just outside Dal? We Saw them and felt the surge of your temper, then nothing. A sense of your horses running, but we could See nothing more, did not know whether you were dead or alive until we touched, much later, a vision of you sprawled before your campfire swilling honeyrot from a Farrian clay jug.”
Hux smiled with satisfaction. “I guess my image-changing worked so well that not even you could see me lighting out with that old wagon clattering over the hills.” He threw back his head in a huge laugh, his dark hair boiling down over his forehead. “Forty-seven Kubalese raiders chasing after a rock hare thinking it was me, while I drove the wagon, bent-for-Urdd, off in the opposite direction!” He grew serious then. “Kubalese raiders are coming out of the hills everywhere, raiding, then gone. Folk travel heavily armed, on the ready for trouble. For the most part, the cities are still able to drive them back. Our raids help to keep the Kubalese down, but there are Seers among the Kubalese, Alardded. Unskilled Seers, but cruel. If we had more than one shard of the runestone, maybe we could thwart those Seers—strengthen our forces enough to destroy the fracking Kubalese! As it is . . .” He leaned forward. “The stone in the sea, Alardded—if we had one more stone . . .”
Meatha watched Hux now with gentler feelings. She liked him best when he was serious, was concerned for Carriol, angry at Kubalese oppression, the hearty, attentive role dropped—though he seldom used it with her, never with Alardded, of course.
Alardded leaned back in his chair, pushed his plate away. “Perhaps we will have the stone soon. Perhaps. The new diving suit works very well. It is ready for testing in deep waters. The wax-coated leather and lighter metal were just the thing. I plan to take it up to the Bay of Vexin in a few days.”
Hux leaned forward eagerly. “I will travel with you, then. I have a cart full of wares to deliver to the charcoal burners and miners, everything imaginable, Zandourian wine, Farrian carved leathers that I had to buy dearly in Dal, boots. I want to see the diving. If the diving suit fit me, Alardded, I would try! Think of it, the stone has lain there for six generations, and only now has anyone known how to bring it up!”
Alardded smiled. “The stone is not in our hands yet, my lad. Though I’ll admit I’m excited. It must have been frustrating indeed for our fathers to know where it lay, so deep, to sense it there and not be able to go into those deep waters. But as to the diving . . .” He gave Hux a wry look. “You won’t fit the suit, Hux my boy. You’re nearly twice the size of Nicoli or Roth. I’d hate worse than fires in Urdd to have to pull you up at the end of the rope!
“But we’d be glad of your company north,” he added. “You can help Nicoli with the horses, and I’ll be there to protect her from any amorous ideas you might have—though the wily Nicoli can protect herself, certainly. Now show us, Hux, the countries you traveled, and how they fare.”
Meatha tried to put her own unsettled emotions aside and attend as Hux showed them in sharp visions the cities of Zandour and Aybil and Farr, the stone and sand fortifications, the patrolling soldiers. He showed them the walled city of Dal, where the dark Seer RilkenDal had reigned before his rule fell to an angry coalition of farmers and sheep men who drove him out of the country keeping only his fine, well-trained mounts. “No one knows where RilkenDal has gone,” Hux said. “But all fear him. Fear he will return and retake Dal. Folk seem to want to make a legend of him, which only increases their fear. They speak of him appearing here, there, come out of the sky mounted on a winged one.” Hux scowled. “No winged one would carry such as RilkenDal!”
“I would hope not! No winged one would carry a dark Seer!” Alardded said.
They grew silent, lost in speculation. A wagon team passed their table, and the smell of fresh-cut hay filled the air. From a nearby shop the voice of a woman rose, scolding her child, then was still. The young waiter filled their cups.
“However,” Alardded said slowly, “there is something amiss among the winged ones. They do not speak of it, but a darkness stirs among them. Nicoli senses it. And some of the outlying bands have not been heard of for a long time.”
Meatha shivered, was alarmed by Alardded’s words; but then, at his mention of darkness, was engulfed in her own confused thoughts once again, so she heard little more of the conversation until suddenly Hux cast into their minds a sharp vision of the place where the cults had gathered along the Pellian coast. She Saw suddenly the mass of hide tents and lean-tos clustered above the sea cliff, and she could imagine Zephy and Thorn and their companions there now, making impressive ceremony for the gathered cultists. Hux showed them the cultist’s passive faces, their quiet submissive minds, so very puzzling.
“They swear hatred of the Kubalese raiders,” Hux said, “but they will not attack them, even to save other cultists. There is—there is a leader who guides the cult leaders, but I can get little sense of him—or of her. Sometimes I think it is a woman. Someone they think of nearly as a god. The cults are so . . .”
“Yes. So committed to good,” Alardded said, “yet so unwilling to uphold that commitment.” Then, “We have known nothing of such a leader. We must speak in Council of it. We must speak with the missions that have gone out. If Zephy and Thorn and the other missions can learn something of an unknown leader . . .”
Hux nodded. “Perhaps, in the journal I bargained for in Zandour and carried hidden in my tunic, there might be some answer to the puzzle. It is written by a Zandourian soldier and covers many years up to the present—but a rambling, incomplete history and hard to read. Handwriting worse than my own.” He showed them in vision the small leather-bound volume he had given to Tra. Hoppa at first light, going directly to her chambers from unhitching and tending his horses. They felt Tra. Hoppa’s excitement as she stood in the doorway, her white hair ruffled from sleep, and took the little book in her thin hands, then eagerly turned the pages. Felt her disappointment at the scratchy, illegible script. But the old woman’s eyes had filled with hope nonetheless, hope that with patient deciphering the cults might be explained, or, even more important, some clue to the missing shards of the runestone might be found.