The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [7]
I had not known then that Sutrium was also the home of the main Councilcourt. That I had discovered on my grim second visit. There had been no fair then. It was wintertime, and the city was gray and cold. There were no gay crowds filling the streets, only a few people who had regarded us furtively as we passed in the open carriage, our faces stinging from the red dye. We had not known then that Henry Druid had only recently disappeared, fleeing the wrath of the Council, and that the entire community was fearful of the consequences, since many had known and openly agreed with the rebel. But what I did understand, even then, was the hatred and fear in the faces of the people who looked at us. I had felt the terror of being different that has never left me.
Shuddering, I thrust the grim memory away. Ludwilling, I would never see such looks again.
The time of changing was near, and I sighed, thinking it would be better for us both if Jes and I were sent this time to separate homes. The Herder told us that the custom of moving orphans around regularly from home to home had arisen to prevent friendships forming that could not be continued once leaving the system. But it was widely accepted that the changing was engineered to prevent alliances between the children of seditioners, which might lead to further trouble. And there was another effect, evident only when the time for the changing approached. No one knew where they might go and whom they might trust in the new home.
Even before the relocation, we learned to prepare mentally, withdrawing and steeling ourselves for the loneliness that would come until the new home was familiar, until it was possible to tell who could be trusted and who were the informers.
I looked up. It was growing dark, and soon I would have to go in. Fortunately, no one minded my wandering in the garden even on the coldest of days, but I never stayed out beyond nightfall—those dark hours belonged to the spirits of the Beforetime. I leaned against a statue of the founder of Kinraide. Here I was hidden from the windows by a big laurel tree, and it was my favorite place.
The moon had risen early, and the darkening sky made it glow. An unnatural weakness coursed through me. I felt a sticky sweat break out on my forehead and thought I was going to faint. The pain in my head made me stagger to my knees.
I tried to force the vision not to come, but it was impossible. I stared up at the moon. It had become a penetrating yellow eye. I knew that eye sought me, and I felt the panic rise within me.
Then, abruptly, there was only the pale moon. My headache was gone, as though it had been only a painful precursor to what I had just experienced. I shivered violently and stood up. I would not let myself wonder about the vision—nor the others that had preceded it. Jes had told me long ago, when we could still talk of such things, that only Herders were permitted visions. “You must not imagine that you have them,” he had said.
But I did not imagine them, either then or now, I thought, and walked shakily back across the garden. Yet though I did not try to understand what they meant, a few days later the meaning forced itself on me.
3
MARUMAN CONFIRMED IT in the end.
It had been a cold year overall despite the occasional muggy days that came whenever the wind blew in from the Blacklands. Most often even spring days were bitten with pale, frosted skies, which stretched away to the north and south and over the seas to the icy poles of the legends.
Sometimes in the late afternoon, I would sit and imagine the color fading out to where there was no color at all, as if the Great White again filled the skies, its lethal radiance leaching the natural blue. But unlike that age of terror when night was banished for days on end, I fancied the Land would be permanently frozen into the white world of wintertime, the sea afloat with giant towers of ice such as those in the stories my mother had told.
“Stories!” Maruman