The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [160]
Domick nodded.
“Ariel,” he said. “It was Ariel.”
PART III
THE KEN
20
WITH SOLDIERGUARDS ON their way, it was too risky to proceed as planned. We decided to hide at the foot of the mountains until the danger was past. No one would guess we would deliberately trap ourselves in a cul-de-sac.
“The soldierguards aren’t subtle enough to suspect we would do anything other than the obvious,” Brydda said. “When they don’t find us here, they’ll think we have escaped by going around Glenelg Mor, because that’s what they would do in our place.”
Brydda knew of an area at the foot of Tor where we could make a safe camp, a narrow valley running into the foot of the hills and concealed by a thick copse of trees. From the other side, no one would suspect the trees continued for just a few steps before reaching the steep mountainside. Brydda had played there as a boy and remembered it well despite his long absence.
We had spent precious time packing Katlyn’s invaluable store of dried herbs. Almost everything else had to be left behind, and tears coursed down her face as Brydda threw a flaming torch on the roof of the cottage.
“It is only stone and mud and straw, I know, but all the memories of happy years are in those walls, and now they burn,” she sobbed.
Jolting through the darkness and chilled by a damp, blustery wind, I thought bitterly of Domick’s news. Obernewtyn was in danger. With Ariel to force the pace, I had no doubt the soldierguards would appear in spring, immediately after the thaw. Ariel, of all people, would know that Obernewtyn was at its most vulnerable then. If we failed to get back in time to warn Rushton, they would be completely unprepared, defenseless against an onslaught of soldierguards.
But it was a matter of days before the pass would be snowed shut. Domick must have known when he came to us that he was losing the last chance of warning Obernewtyn. But if he had not delayed and ridden to warn us, the soldierguards would have taken us all.
I could not imagine how Ariel had survived or what course had brought him to the Council, but I had no doubt that his primary motive was to revenge himself on Obernewtyn and Rushton.
He could not know for sure that the firestorm story had been a lie, but he might have guessed it was a ruse to keep the Council away from Obernewtyn, for he knew that Rushton had befriended me. But how had Ariel inveigled himself with Henry Druid and then the Council? The most obvious likelihood was that he had stumbled into the Druid’s men in the White Valley, and he had somehow won the old man’s trust. But how had he reached Sutrium from the highlands, and how he had gained the Council’s trust?
It did not take us long to reach Brydda’s hiding spot. It was as good as he had led us to believe. We could even see the cottage burning in the distance, while we were invisible behind a thick girdle of eben trees. Brydda bade Kella, Jik, and his mother to organize supper in order to occupy the older woman’s mind. He asked me to walk with him to collect firewood, leading the way purposefully through the trees. The ground sloped up steeply, offering a sweeping view of the area.
“This is a sight I remember well,” Brydda said softly. Over the treetops, I could see the dense darkness of the Blacklands in the moonlight like a shadowy stain across the Land.
Pavo had once said the Blacklands would recede in time, but I could not imagine anything growing on the black, stinking soil. I shuddered, and for a moment, it seemed to me Ariel and the Blacklands were symptoms of the same evil.
Beyond the hills was the silvery rush of the Suggredoon and the huddled village of Rangorn. I could even see the mists that hung above Glenelg Mor. Behind me were the towering bulks of Aran Craggie and Tor. So many ways to go, and none fast enough to get us to Obernewtyn in time.
The wind in the treetops sounded like the whispering ebb and flow of the sea. Brydda stirred as if the same wind had blown through him, ruffling his thoughts like so many leaves. I bent to pick up a stick for kindling,