The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [181]
The Elder was right. It was inevitable the machines would someday be unearthed and used. And Atthis had said I was the only one with any chance of destroying them. If that made me the Seeker, it was a responsibility I was finally ready to accept.
Resolutely, I thrust the machines and the Agyllians from my mind and looked at Gahltha. “I will be glad to go from this place and its foreboding lessons.”
He blew air from flared nostrils. “I did not bring you here for lessons. See, there is where we will go down.”
I followed his gaze and saw a natural stone path leading unevenly to the next plateau, cleaving to the edge of the slope. The path began not far from where we stood, moving this way, then that, ever lower, across the face of the cliff.
Gahltha looked at me. “You are weak still. Ride on my back and we will travel more quickly.”
I looked at him curiously. “You want me to ride?” I asked.
“One warrior will carry another, if the strength of one proves greater. Each has his own strength but also his own weakness.” He spoke with the air of repeating a well-learned lesson.
“Wise words,” I said simply. “I am glad to ride on your back if it will help us move more quickly.”
We traveled that day and the next through the monotonous snowbound terrain of the high mountains, and on the third day, we came upon a few scant green shoots, thrusting their tips through the snow. “It will be more dangerous now that the thaw has begun,” Gahltha said. “But I think tomorrow we will reach the valley of the barud.” Barud was the equine word symbol for “home”—it seemed Gahltha had come to miss Obernewtyn.
Snow clouds gathered overhead, and with the bleak afternoon came unexpected doubts. I began to fear Obernewtyn had changed and that I would find there was no longer a place for me there. My whole life had been spent as an outsider, and even at Obernewtyn, I had felt misplaced until the journey to the coast. Ironic if I discovered too late where my own barud lay.
Just at dusk, for the first time, we encountered another creature. A wolf.
The wolves that frequented the mountains were savage, pale-eyed wraiths with coats the color of mist and snow. They were nearly impossible to spot deliberately, and it was sheer luck that I saw this one. I had been plodding along, shivering and staring aimlessly into the distance, when the landscape appeared to shift fractionally. I realized I had been staring right at a wolf without seeing it. It had been watching us, but now it turned, melting back into the white landscape.
Later I heard several desolate calls in the distance. I was tempted to try communicating, but the wild keening calls across the frozen wastes made a desolate song of the night and did not invite a response.
The calls went on for hours, then abruptly ceased.
I was glad of the respite, but Gahltha seemed more disturbed by the silence than by the bloodcurdling howls. I was too tired to worry and slept leaning against his warm flank. Gradually, I felt him relax, too. Exhausted and half-starved as we were, we needed sleep. Initial hunger pains had long since given way to an empty ache that was easier to bear. If sleep was all the comfort that remained for us, then that would have to be enough to get us home.
Suddenly Gahltha stiffened, and I was jerked awake. Dense clouds obscured the moon. I looked around in the pitch darkness fearfully.
“What is it?” I sent.
“The Brildane,” Gahltha responded.
I laid a gentle hand across his back, wondering if there was danger.
“What or who are Brildane?” I asked.
“I do not know what name is given them by the funaga, but Brildane is the name they call themselves. We call them gehdra, because they are invisible. They have no time for any creature but their own kind. But they hate the funaga, because your kind trap and slay their young.”
“Are they hungry?” I asked, trying to understand what sort of animal it could be.
“If they were, we would already be dead,” Gahltha sent. “You heard their calls throughout the night? The mountain equines