The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [55]
“One day, he broke down and told me. He said, ‘I have been afraid to tell you, but I love you and I must tell you the truth. I am a Misfit by birth.’ I thought he was joking, and I laughed. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t!” This last was almost a sob. “He said Harald had shown him what he was. He said he could talk to people inside their minds and hear what people were thinking. He kept saying you were right about having to use the powers once you knew they were there. I knew then that you must have been the same.
“He showed me.” Her voice had risen and again I looked around uneasily and saw that a number of curious glances were being directed toward us. I longed to coerce Rosamunde into calmness, but I dared not use my powers so close to where the machine had caught hold of me before. Rosamunde got control of herself and went on more calmly. “He said he had not wanted a rift to grow between us but that Harald had not wanted me to be told. But he told Harald that he trusted me with his life. I was terrified he would read my mind and learn that I had denounced you to save him. I made him promise never to invade my mind.
“Jes started to talk about escaping. He said that Harald knew others like them, in Kinraide and in nearby towns, and that we could all run away and live somewhere where no one would find us. If he had said just the two of us, I would even have gone, but a group of us? There would have been a massive search. He didn’t care. He said the Herders knew something about Misfits like them and that they wanted to know more. He said the boy claimed some Misfits had been taken to Herder Isle because they had given themselves away.”
She fell silent for a while, and I did not prompt her. Now that she had begun, I knew she would say it all.
“Jes told me one day that a group of orphans from the home in Berrioc had been uncovered and betrayed. Those taken were friends of Harald’s. They had been taken to the Herder cloister in Kinraide to be interrogated, and Jes said he and Harald were going to escape and try to help them. It was madness. A nightmare! How could two orphans break into a Herder Cloister?
“Jes said I would never understand because I was not like them. He said he and Harald had heard the others calling out for help as they were taken to the cloister.” She paused with deep sadness in her eyes. “I guess I knew then what I had really known since the whole thing started. Jes loved me, but it was as if I came from another race. In some ways, Jes was hard like a stone. He told me he had rejected you because you were different. He regretted that, yet now he did the same to me because I was different in another way.
“The night they meant to go, he came to ask me to leave with them. I loved him so much that I almost said yes. But I knew it would be no good. I refused, and he climbed out the window. Harald was waiting in the garden. And that is when the soldierguards got them.”
My heart froze.
“They killed Harald. Then I saw Jes shot in the chest with an arrow. He tried to run, but he was too badly hurt. One of the soldierguards ran to where he had fallen. I heard him tell Jes the Herders would be pleased to hear they had taken him alive, for they knew there were others at Kinraide and he would be made to tell their names. That was when Jes did something to the soldierguard. I don’t know what. The man just stopped laughing and fell down dead. Then another soldierguard shot Jes through the throat.”
Rosamunde’s voice was like cold death, and I wondered numbly if that was the end of her dreadful tale. But she went on. “I wanted to die, too. They knew he had been with me, and at first they thought I was like Jes. They wanted me to tell them who the others were, but Jes had never told me. I kept telling them I didn’t know. But they didn’t believe me. They took me to Sutrium. They tortured me. They wanted to know all about Jes. All he could do. I told them everything,