The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [10]
“She is coming,” he sent suddenly, and looking at his eyes, I saw that he was already half into a fey state, and his words were probably only raving.
Nonetheless, I asked, “Who is coming?”
“She. The darkOne,” he answered. “She seeks you but does not know you.” A thrill of fear coursed through me. His thoughts seemed to tally with my own persistent visions of being sought. “She comes soon. The whiteface smells of her.” Maruman spat at the moon, which had risen in the daytime sky. It was full. I wondered why he hated the moon so much. It had something to do with the coming of the Great White, I knew.
He snapped at nothing above his injured ear, then yowled forlornly.
“When does she come?” I asked, but Maruman seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation. I watched his mind drift into his eyes. He growled and the hackles on his back rose, then he shook his head as if to clear it of the fog that sometimes floated there.
“When I was on the dreamtrails, I met the oldOne. She said I must follow you. It is my task. But I am … tired.”
“Follow me where?” I asked. Then I gulped, for a horrible notion had come to me. “Where does the darkOne come from? Where will she take me?”
“To the mountains,” Maruman answered. “To the mountains of shadow, where black wars with white, to the heart of darkness, to the aerie above the clouds, to the chasm under-earth. To the others.” Suddenly he pitched sideways, and a trickle of saliva came from his mouth.
I sat very still, because none lived in the mountains save those at Obernewtyn.
A keeper from Obernewtyn would come; if Maruman was right, it would be a woman who would find out the truth about me.
4
LIKE EVERY CHILD, I had heard stories about Obernewtyn. Parents and orphanage guardians used it as a sort of horror tale to make naughty children behave. But, in truth, very little was known about it.
In its early days, the Council had been approached by Lukas Seraphim, who had built a huge holding in the wilds of the northern mountains, on land ringed by savage peaks and only just free of the Blacklands. He had offered this holding as a solution to the problem of where to send the worst-afflicted Misfits and those who were too troublesome for use on the Councilfarms.
In the end, an agreement had been made to send some Misfits to Obernewtyn, where they would be put to work. A few generations later, the agreement still stood. Some said it was just like another Councilfarm and that the master there only sought labor for an area too remote to interest normal laborers. Others said the Seraphim family was itself afflicted in some way and pitied the creatures, while still others claimed they practiced the dark arts and needed human subjects.
Those Misfits taken there were never seen again, so none of these stories had ever been authenticated properly. But such was the legend of Obernewtyn, grown over the years because of its very mystery, and it was feared by all orphans, not the least because in more modern times, it sent out its keepers to investigate the homes, seeking undisclosed Misfits among us.
It was said these keepers were extraordinarily skillful at spotting aberrations, and that the resultant Council trial was a foregone conclusion.
If what I feared was true, Maruman’s garbled predictions and my own premonitions could only add up to a visit by a keeper from Obernewtyn. In the past, I had been fortunate enough never to have been present at a home under such review, but it was an occasion I had dreaded, particularly as my abilities made me far more deviant than any Misfit I had ever heard of.
When official word of an Obernewtyn keeper’s imminent arrival was circulated, my worst fears were realized. All the omens implied disaster.
Jes was worried enough to catch me alone in the garden and advise me to be careful. His warning itself did not surprise me, but he looked scared, and that made him more approachable. Impulsively, I told him of my premonition, but that only made him angry. “Don’t start that