The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [180]
Clouds were strung out across the sky like skeins of wool—below my feet!
Seen from above, the clouds were fluffy mounds of cream or sea foam shot with glorious sunset colors—a fairy realm. The Land was barely visible through the woolly curtain. And between the Land and the plateau there were rank upon rank of mountains, jagged as upturned teeth, streaked with snow and lacking the slightest touch of color or softness.
Some of the mountains were dense and dark, unmistakably Blacklands. Few dared travel through mountainous terrain, because a snowfall could hide lethal, poisonous ground. Yet Gahltha seemed unperturbed, saying only that the voices had told him where to walk safely.
I had often gazed at the distant mountains, but I had never had any real idea of the sheer size and barrenness of them. Gahltha’s lone trek to the heights had been an incredible act of faith.
Something glistened on the far horizon. Squinting, I realized I was looking at the great sea. For a moment, I seemed to smell the salty wetness of waves on the shore. All the world lay spread at my feet. The one thing I could not see was a way down. The plateau stood apart from the other plains and mountains. I looked at the black horse and found him watching me inscrutably.
“I brought you here to see the world, funaga. I wondered if it would move you as it once moved a proud and bitter equine. It was here I saw my own smallness and understood how stupid and arrogant I had let pride and hatred make me,” he sent.
“Not many could see this and be unchanged,” I sent gently. “But you haven’t said how we can get down.”
“Patience,” Gahltha sent.
He made for the opposite side of the plateau, and there I looked out, aghast. Again the plateau was high, but there were no clouds to hide the dreadful vision from us.
Stretched out like a charred skin were hundreds of spans of Blacklands, lifeless and still. I had thought the snowy slopes barren, but this was a terrible stretch of obsidian, flecked here and there with dark, gleaming pools reflecting a tarnished sky. A stretch of mountains, breaking away from the main mass, ran across the nightmarish terrain and out of sight. It was the Land, dead and without hope of life. Looking at that, it was impossible to share Pavo’s assurance that the Blacklands would not last forever.
Even as I watched, night crept like a dark shadow across the bleak plains, and though the heights were still bathed in sunlight, I felt strangely cold. I had wondered why the Agyllians left me in the mountains when it would have been so easy for them to carry me down to Obernewtyn. Now I thought I understood.
“I did not know it went on so far. So much land poisoned …,” I whispered.
“Perhaps there are many lessons to be learned in the mountains,” Gahltha sent gravely.
I could not take my eyes away.
I thought of the Oldtimers and wondered whether they would have built their weaponmachines if they could have foreseen what would come to pass. And why create machines that would outlast a hundred lives? Had they been so enamored of war and destruction that they had to make it immortal?
For the first time, I felt I could understand the original Councilmen and their tyrannous rule. Farmers and children of the Oldtimers, they had seen firsthand the will to destroy and the hunger for power that knew no boundaries. Perhaps they had even known the deathmachines existed and had hoped to ensure no one would ever use them again. No wonder they had forbidden delving into the past.
They had been afraid.
Unfortunately, the repressive philosophies had become a different sort of threat. I doubted the present Council understood the real dangers any better than those who had made the weaponmachines in the first place. I had only to think of Henry Druid and Alexi to know there would always be men and women prepared to pay any price for power. Even our own Teknoguild would risk