The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [2]
Once cleansed, it was marvelously versatile, serving in everything from sleep potions to the potent medicines prepared by the Herders.
I had not been to the Silent Vale before. This was the Kinraide orphan home’s area of collection, and it yielded high-grade whitestick. But the Silent Vale was considered dangerously close to the Blacklands, where the poisons of the Great White still ruled. It was even whispered there were traces of Oldtime dwellings nearby. I was thrilled, and terrified, to think I might see them.
We passed through a side gate in the walls of the Kinraide complex. The way from that door was a track leading steeply downward. Seldom traveled, it seemed a world apart from the neat, ordered gardens and paths within the orphanage. Bush creepers trailed unchecked from side to side, choking the path in places.
Elii chopped occasionally at the vines to clear the way. He was an odd boy. People tended to shun him because of his profession and because of his close connections with the orphan home, though he was no orphan. His father had worked in the same capacity and his grandfather before that, until they had died of the rotting sickness that came from prolonged exposure to the whitestick. He lived on the grounds at Kinraide but did not associate with us.
One of the girls in our party approached him. “Why not travel along the crevasse instead of going up this steep edge?” she panted.
For some way, we had been climbing a steep spur along one side of the rise. Northward the dale ran up into a glen of shadows.
“The path runs this way,” Elii snapped, his eyes swiveling around to the rest of us, cold and contemptuous. “I don’t want to hear any more whining questions from you lot. I’m the Lud of this expedition, and I say there’ll be no more talk.”
The Herder flushed at the nearly blasphemous mention of Lud’s name, but the restraint in his face showed he had been warned already about the rude but necessary youth. Few would choose to do his job, whatever the prize in the end. Elii turned on his heel and led us at a smart pace to the crest of the hill. From the top, we could see a long way—the home behind us and beyond that the town center, and in front of us, far to the west, lay a belt of mountains, purpled with the distance. The boundary of untainted lands. Beyond those mountains, nothing lived. Hastily I averted my eyes, for no one understood all the dangers of the Blacklands. Even looking at them might do some harm.
The dawn came and went as we walked, a wan gray light seeping into the world. The path led us toward a pool of water in a small valley. It was utterly still and mirrored the dull overcast sky, its southern end dark in the shadow of the hills.
“I hope we are not going to swim that because it is in the way,” said the same girl who had spoken before. I stared at her defiant face, still stained with the red dye used by Herders to mark the children of seditioners. Elii said nothing, but the Herder gave her a look that would have terrified me. A nervous young Herder is still a Herder.
We came to the pool at the shadowed end only to find the path cleaved to the very edge of the water.
“Touch this water not!” the Herder said suddenly in a loud voice that made us all jump.
Elii looked over his shoulder with a sneering expression. A little farther on, a cobbled border, crumbled in places and overrun with sprouting weeds, ran alongside the track. It was uncommon enough for me to wonder if this was from the Beforetime. If so, I was not much impressed, but the Herder made a warding-off sign at the border.
“Avert your eyes,” he cried, his voice squeaking at the end. I wondered if he saw something. Perhaps there were faint impressions of Oldtimers fleeing along this very road, the Great White mushrooming behind them, filling the