The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [91]
“What if someone is caught and … tortured into giving up its location or, worse, to tell th’ truth about us and Obernewtyn?” Matthew asked. A few nodded fearfully at this.
“Don’t you understand that we are no safer hiding up here?” Rushton demanded. “Even if the rumors are just gossip, the soldierguards will come to hear of it, especially if they set up camp in the high country. The question is, do we wait until the Council descends on us before we act, or do we act now, while we can still move with relative freedom?”
A thoughtful silence greeted his words.
“Then, do you propose two expeditions to the lowlands?” Roland asked.
Rushton smiled slightly. “I vote that we accept the expedition proposed by Elspeth, with the addition of another person, whom I will choose, who will leave the main party after Rangorn and venture into Sutrium to investigate the possibility of establishing a safe house. An expedition that can have two purposes can as easily have three. Now we will vote on the expedition with its threefold purpose, and on the establishment of a safe house in Sutrium. Yes, first.” He lifted his own hand.
I raised mine, hiding a reluctant smile. Rushton was as sly as ever. He knew Garth would never have agreed to the move on Sutrium without the lure of the coveted library. In the end, the vote was unanimous. Perhaps all felt that the time had come, whether we liked it or not, for a less passive strategy. At any rate, no one liked the idea of waiting like a lamb to be slaughtered.
Rushton rose to close the meeting but was interrupted by a commotion outside the doors.
Christa entered, her face betraying her worry.
Seeing me, the Futuretell guilden beckoned urgently. “Elspeth, it’s Maruman. He’s returned but is unconscious, and we cannot waken him. You had better come quickly.”
3
MARUMAN HAD BEEN taken to the Healer hall. As usual after days of wandering, often on tainted ground, his fur was filthy and singed in places; dried blood matted the fur on one paw. But he looked no worse than he had on any other return. The wan afternoon light slanted obliquely from a high, slitlike window to lie across his body, making it seem insubstantial, while candles burning all around the hall gave the room a ghostly orange tinge.
In the bed alongside the old cat’s was a girl, heavily bandaged. She had been literally wrested from the Herders’ purifying flame and had been unconscious since her arrival. One of Christa’s fellow futuretellers sat beside her, sunk in deep concentration.
I looked up to see Alad come through the door.
“He looks like he’s asleep,” I said.
Christa shook her head, then gestured at the meditating futureteller. “She can hardly think for Maruman’s emanations. I don’t understand how you can’t feel them,” she added.
“I have my shield up,” I explained. I dissolved the protective mental barrier and almost staggered beneath the force of gibberish flowing from Maruman’s mind. “I see what you mean.”
I saw from Alad’s expression that he had lowered his own shield. “Usually I find the flow of beast thought soothing,” he said ruefully.
“He was lying outside the Futuretell wing when we found him. It looked as if he had dragged himself there,” Christa said.
“Can you reach his mind to find out what he’s been doing?” I asked.
She looked down at the old cat. “The truth is, his mind is generally such a mess that it is a wonder he can think straight even some of the time. I can’t imagine what caused the damage in the first place—perhaps a traumatic birth. For the most part, his mind seems to have adapted itself amazingly well. There are the most extraordinary links and bypasses—somehow it all functions. The fits he occasionally has are the result of some sort of upward leak in his mind, where material from the deepest unconscious levels rises to distort his everyday thinking, hence the wild futuretelling, but this …”
“What do you make of it?” I asked Alad.
He sighed. “I’m a simple beastspeaker. This is beyond me. I’ve sent for one of the few strong beastspeakers with a small Talent for deep