The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [182]
“Wolves! The Brildane are wolves!” I cried. I looked at Gahltha. “Are you telling me they’re just curious?” I asked.
“The curiosity of the gehdra is as savage as its hunger,” Gahltha sent quellingly.
I looked around uneasily, wondering how he had known of their presence. I had heard not a sound. And even now, I could sense no minds but our own. The wolves must have some ability to cloak their minds.
“Would it help if I sent a greeting?” I suggested.
“No!” Gahltha sent urgently, as if he expected me to leap up and rush into the night with a cry of greeting on my lips. “It is impossible to predict what they will do. Speaking to them would not stop them eating us, if that was their desire. And if they wanted to confront us, they would have done it. But I think they came to look, not to feed or speak. Better to do nothing. With the gehdra, that is always safest.”
Gahltha’s warnings were underlined by a sense of tangible fear. Bleakly, I realized these may be the very wolves Ariel had hunted and trapped. He had driven them mad to ensure their ferocity and had used them to guard the grounds, hunting and killing runaways. We had hoped to heal the beasts once Ariel had gone, but his sadistic treatment had made it impossible. In the end, the best we could do was give the wolves back their freedom.
I dared not stir a limb until Gahltha reported that they had gone, fading back into the night as mysteriously as they had appeared.
“Are you sure you didn’t imagine them?” I asked.
“In the morning you will see,” was all he would say.
It was hard to go back to sleep, but after a while I fell into a light, troubled slumber. I dreamed of Ariel as he had been, a boy with almost unearthly beauty and a sadistic turn of mind that delighted in causing pain. I woke disquieted. The night grew steadily colder, and even Gahltha’s considerable body heat could not keep me warm. Eventually, I gave up trying to sleep and lay waiting for the horse to wake.
With relief, I felt Gahltha stir at dawn. It was barely light before we were off but light enough to see that Gahltha had been right the night before. The snow all around us was covered in paw prints, some a mere handspan from where my feet had lain.
The Brildane.
I shivered, and suddenly it began to snow. Just a few flakes at first, but blown with stinging force into our faces by a hard, icy wind. The snow was already thick underfoot and made walking tiring. Gahltha offered to carry me again, but he could only walk a little faster than I and was easily as tired, so I refused. I knew neither of us could go much farther without proper rest and food.
Near to dropping, I was trying to remember how long it had been since I had eaten when Gahltha neighed loudly. Squinting against the wind and flying snow, I realized he had rounded a spur of rock and was out of sight. Forcing weary limbs to hurry, I caught up.
“What is it?” I sent, wondering if I had strength enough left to deal with another obstacle.
“We have reached the valley of the barud.”
I blinked stupidly. Barud? “Obernewtyn!”
All weariness fell away from me then. I was close enough to send a questing probe, but something kept me from it, a desire to have my first glimpse of Obernewtyn unhampered by greetings and explanations.
I had just begun to recognize some of the hills and stone hummocks when the wind fell away and the snow stopped, making our first glimpse of Obernewtyn clear and unmistakable.
A cry of happiness died in my throat, stillborn. I stumbled to a halt, unable to believe my eyes.
All that remained of Obernewtyn was a charred ruin.
26
ONLY A FIRESTORM could have done so much damage.
Little remained of Obernewtyn but rubble. The walls of the main building were no more than jagged, blackened stumps of stone. The windblown snow adhered to the crevices, and a rambling kind of thorn brush thrust its roots deep into the cracked rubble.