The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [156]
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel uneasy about my parents. And we’re moving so slowly.” He looked down at Dragon with mingled pity and frustration.
“Why don’t you go ahead?” I suggested. “We can’t be more than a few hours away at a fast gallop.”
Brydda bit his lip and looked thoughtful. “I think I will. Reuvan can come with me.” Thinking of his “knack,” I worried that his fears could be well founded.
The triumphant mood of the day occasioned by Dragon’s presence evaporated with Brydda’s departure. He told us to wait at the ford until he returned to tell us the way was clear. He refused to say what he was afraid of, but his elaborate precautions only served to heighten my apprehension.
As if to mirror my thoughts, a heavy, dark bank of cloud looming on the horizon billowed in to veil the sun near the end of the day, and we reached the ford just as a light rain began to fall.
There was no sign of Brydda or Reuvan, so we decided to make camp behind a copse of trees within sight of the ford. It proved nearly impossible to light a fire with the damp wood, but finally we managed and sat around it shivering in the chilly wind. No one felt like talking. Pavo was nearly blue and shivered constantly, but Kella said these were also symptoms of advanced rotting sickness.
Dragon had reacted to the sight of the Suggredoon with real terror, and it had taken all my strength to reassure her. I was afraid she would run off and be lost. Her reaction to the river and to my submersion seemed to indicate something connected with water had happened to her, but I could not penetrate her mind, and she was unable to explain, only clutching at me in mute plea. In the end, I found myself patting her as I would pet Maruman.
“At least she doesn’t stink,” Jik said earnestly when I wondered aloud to Kella what might have caused her fear of water. We laughed, but oddly this was true. Dragon smelled like rich, dark dirt after rain. She had not used her remarkable illusory powers since joining us. I hoped she would not tame to the extent of forgetting them altogether.
All at once I heard the drumming of hooves in the distance.
We all stood, the underlying fears that had gnawed at us since Brydda’s departure showing clearly in our faces. There was one rider, coming fast. Idris gave a shout of joy as he recognized Brydda’s horse, then he fell silent, seeing the rider was Grufyyd, whose face he did not know.
Reining the horse in, Grufyyd dismounted. He looked pale and there were dark shadows in his eyes. After a brief greeting, he urged us to pack up quickly and come with him to the cottage.
The serious note in his voice warned us something was badly wrong.
“Brydda?” Idris began worriedly.
“My lad is fine,” he said, then once again urged us to make haste.
Not until we were approaching the great forest of trees at the foot of the mountains did he say, “Soldierguards have been to Rangorn. It was fortunate that ye dinna come sooner, else they would have taken us all.”
“They were looking for Brydda?” I asked. But Grufyyd shook his head.
“They said they were looking for seditioners. A small group of young gypsies,” he added significantly.
I stared. “But why? How? No one from the Council knew we even existed, and the disguise was all but washed away before we left here.”
“Henry Druid an’ his folks kenned ye were about,” said Grufyyd.
“But how could he …?” I stopped, thinking hard. “They said in the encampment that he has a friend in the Council. Someone influential who sends him all sorts of expensive delicacies. Maybe the Druid told his friend about us.” I chewed my lip. “But why go to so much trouble over a few gypsies?”
“Perhaps he no longer believes ye were just gypsies,” Grufyyd said. “One of the soldierguards said the gypsy attire might be a disguise and that the seditioners were more dangerous than most.”
Uneasily, I remembered that I had been forced to reveal my power in the escape. The gatewarden would have woken with a strange tale of the gypsy girl who had rendered him unconscious with her touch. It