Slaves of the Mastery Page 13

  ‘When it comes to what?’

  ‘What you asked for.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What have I asked for?’

  Dogface rubbed at his bad eye with one hand and cast his mind back.

  ‘The power to destroy, I think they said. Not what I’d call a noble request. Nor a sensible one, really, given that you have the power already. More power than me, at any rate.’

  The cat heard this in surprise.

  ‘This boy has more power than you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dogface. ‘He was born to it.’

  Bowman too was amazed, though for a very different reason. Could this truly be the answer to his cry in the night? And if so, who was this strange one-eyed man?

  ‘So he could fly, could he?’ said Mist.

  ‘He could do anything he wanted,’ replied the hermit. But after a moment’s reflection, he added, speaking now to the bewildered Bowman, ‘I’m not saying your power will be enough, when the time comes. But you can always ask for help.’

  ‘When what time comes?’

  ‘The time to destroy.’ Dogface raised one arm towards the dark city on the lake. ‘You want to destroy all this, I take it?’

  ‘I – I – don’t really know.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I believe so.’ He spoke in the vague manner of one who recalls something he’s been told. ‘You’ve been sent to destroy and to rule.’

  ‘To destroy and to rule? There’s been some kind of mistake. No one sent me. I’m a slave. I was driven here against my will.’

  ‘Against your will, perhaps. Not against theirs.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Sirene.’

  Bowman stared at the hermit, once again reduced to silence. This time it was because of a name he had never in his life heard before, but which at once seemed familiar.

  ‘So you see, there’s no mistake. It’s like with the cows. You have the power, but you haven’t tried to use it yet. It’s just a matter of practice, and wanting it enough.’

  ‘Just a matter of practice, eh?’ said Mist. ‘Just a matter of wanting it enough?’

  Dogface nudged the cat off his lap, got up, and pulled the heavy sheepskin cape off his shoulders.

  ‘Thank you for your warmth. Now I must be on my way.’

  He started up his humming once more.

  ‘But I don’t know what to do! You haven’t told me. You haven’t explained –’

  The hermit stopped humming, and his good eye fixed Bowman with a severe look.

  ‘You really must get out of this habit of expecting other people to do everything for you. It’s not good, you know. You don’t learn anything that way. Think of the cows, and try and do it for yourself.’

  He reached out and took Bowman’s staff from him, and let it fall to the ground. Then he looked down at it and was silent for a moment. Suddenly the staff jiggled where it lay, lifted itself up, and pushed itself back into Bowman’s still open hand.

  ‘See? Not at all hard, really. Now I must be on my way. Not much time left.’

  With that, Dogface departed, shuffling over the grass in his bare feet with surprising speed. The grey cat ran by his side.

  ‘You say that boy has more power than you?’

  ‘Yes, poor lad. He’s a true child of the prophet.’

  Bowman pulled the sheepskin cape close round himself once more, and stared after him. Even well wrapped, he found he was trembling.

  Sirene . . .

  Why should the unknown name be so familiar? Why did it make him shiver? And could he really do what the one-eyed man had done?

  He let his staff fall to the ground once more. He looked down on it. Feeling both foolish and excited, he tried to concentrate on the staff, saying to it with his mind, Move!

  Nothing happened.

  He stared at the staff for a long time, urging it in every way he could think of to rise up, but it simply lay there in the light of his lantern, showing no inclination to obey him.

  After a while, he sat down on his haunches and glared at the staff, sensing that it could move if it wanted to, but was being stubborn. Just a matter of practice, the stranger had said. But how was one to practise when nothing happened?

  Bowman didn’t notice the grey cat return, and sit silently outside the pool of lantern-light watching him. All his attention was on his unmoving staff.

  Just a matter of wanting it enough.

  He settled down onto the earth, sitting cocooned in the thick cape, as he had been when the hermit had first appeared. He realised his thoughts were all in a racing tumble, from everything his visitor had said. So for a little while he looked up at the sky, and followed the half-moon as it sailed over the world, forever moving, and yet never seeming to get anywhere. Then in a calmer frame of mind, he returned his attention to his staff. He thought of how it had been with the cow. Perhaps this stick had feelings too, in its own way.

  More respectfully, he reached out his mind towards the staff, and – what? Talked to it? That was ridiculous. Nobody talks to a stick. Instead, he attended to it. He felt gently all around it with his eyes, and through his eyes with his inner senses. He found nothing unusual. It was, well, stick-like. It was quite a young stick, he found. There was still sap beneath its hide of bark. The core of the wood had a pleasing density, in which there was no brittleness. The wood was in its prime. Round its smoothed top end he felt the impress of many hands, and he felt the stick’s pride that those hands had clasped it tight, had leaned on it with great weight, and it had supported them. It hadn’t bowed, or snapped. This staff was reliable, and it knew it.

  He nudged it lightly, to see the underside, and it moved. Not much, just a half-roll, as he had intended. Only, his hands had remained buried deep in the warmth of the cape. He had moved it with his mind.

  He fought back the impulse of surprise, determined to maintain the quiet contact he had made. He nudged at it again, and again it shifted a little. It was rather like blowing on a leaf: all he had to do was push with his mind, and the stick felt the force.

  He held the smooth end of the staff with his mind, and gently levered it up. It rose, its other end still on the grass. He lifted it almost upright, and started to pull it towards him. But he wasn’t quite strong enough, or practised enough, and it fell clattering back to the ground.

  The cat saw, and was impressed. The boy did have power. That was all he needed to know.

  He stood up, and stalked majestically into the light.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Bowman. ‘You’ve come back.’

  ‘Are you telling me?’ said Mist. The boy heard nothing, of course. The cat sat down and stared at him. ‘If you’ve got so much power, how about learning to talk?’

  ‘Where’s your master?’

  ‘Oh, spare me!’

  Bowman looked out into the darkness. There was no sign of the one-eyed stranger. The night was passing, and he had much to think over. He returned to the doorway of the hut and sat down there with his legs crossed, his staff and his lantern by his side. Mist climbed onto his lap and curled up there and started to purr. Bowman stroked him.

  ‘I think you like me,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ said Mist wearily. ‘You give me what I want, and I give you what you want. Let’s just leave it at that.’

  That same night, Ira Hath dreamed again, the dream in which snow fell over a red sky, and the coastal plain with the two rivers lay before her, between the steep hills. She cried out loud in her sleep, ‘Wait for me! Don’t go without me!’ This woke her up, as well as her husband. She lay in his arms and they whispered together about the dream.

  ‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair. I wish it would go away.’

  ‘No, my darling. It’s not fair.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a prophetess. It’s too tiring.’

  ‘The land you see in your dream. Is it a good land?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it our land?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you lead us th
ere?’

  ‘Yes.’ She hugged him close and kissed his familiar face. ‘I’ll never leave you. They can’t make me.’

  Hanno kissed her in return, and said nothing.

  Bowman came back to the slave quarters at daybreak, and the cat followed him at a distance. At the first opportunity, Bowman took his father aside, and told him about the visitor in the night.

  ‘Sirene!’ exclaimed his father. ‘That was the ancient home of the Singer people!’

  ‘I think he may have been one of them.’

  ‘I didn’t know they still existed.’

  ‘What are they, pa?’

  ‘I know a little. If only I had my books!’

  ‘They built the wind singer, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They were a people who had no homes, no possessions, no family. They wore plain robes, and went barefoot, living off the kindness of strangers. They had no weapons, no armour, nothing, and yet they alone had the power to resist the Morah.’

  ‘What kind of power?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was all written down once. But so much has been lost.’

  He fell silent, deep in his own thoughts.

  Bowman did not tell his father about the power he had discovered within himself. He was still unsure about it, and shy of exposing it to the scrutiny of others. For similar reasons, he did not say that the stranger had told him, You have come to destroy and to rule. He only half understood it himself. What he did understand, and did tell his father, was that he now believed he was part of some greater plan.

  ‘I think I’m here for a reason, pa. I think there’s something I’m to do.’

  ‘We’re all here for a reason, Bo. We must watch, and wait for our moment.’

  As the others departed for their day’s work, Bowman went to his bed, in the many-bedded room. Mist followed him silently, almost unnoticed, and lay down under the bed. Here, as Bowman slipped into sleep, when he was least expecting it, he caught the tremor he had strained for night after night: the sound too distant to hear, the movement too distant to see, the passing of a shadow in the dark –

  Kess!

  So faint that even thinking the thought made too much noise. Now it was gone again. But it had been his sister, he was sure of it.

  She was coming.

  11

  Preparations for marriage

  Kestrel was lying in her narrow cot bed in the Johdila’s carriage when she felt that brief tremor of contact. She made herself as still as she could in the lumbering creaking vehicle, but it did not come again. When finally she relaxed her intense concentration, she found that Sisi was speaking to her from her nearby bed, just a few feet away in the shadows of the curtained carriage.

  ‘Why don’t you answer, Kess? Are you angry with me?’

  ‘No, no. I was thinking about my brother.’

  ‘Oh, your brother. You’re always thinking about him.’

  ‘You’d like him too, if you knew him.’

  ‘I don’t expect I would,’ said Sisi sulkily. ‘I don’t really like anybody, except Lunki, who doesn’t count. And you.’

  But as she said this, a new thought came to her.

  ‘Is your brother like you?’

  ‘I don’t know that he’s like me. It’s more as if he’s half of me.’

  ‘Is he the same height as you?’

  ‘A little taller.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, what colour is his hair?’

  ‘He’s dark, like me. And a pale face. He’s quiet. He often looks sad. He can feel what other people are feeling, just by looking at them.’

  ‘Does he have someone he wants to marry?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He’s quite a lonely person.’

  ‘Like me,’ said Sisi.

  She lay in her deep downy bed, and as she was rocked by the steady motion of the carriage, she let her new thought blossom within her. Kestrel was her only friend, the only one outside her family she had ever loved. Bowman was just like Kestrel, only he was a man. Why should she not love him?

  ‘I think I shall marry your brother,’ she announced shortly.

  Kestrel laughed aloud.

  ‘Don’t you think you should ask him first?’

  ‘Why? He’s bound to want to marry me. Because I’m so beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, Sisi. You’re so – so –’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So uncomplicated. I don’t know how else to say it.’

  ‘Do you mean I’m stupid?’

  ‘No, not stupid. Only, there’s so much you don’t understand.’

  ‘Mama told me men want to marry women who are beautiful. She said it doesn’t matter if you’re stupid, so long as you’re beautiful.’

  ‘Bowman’s not like most other men.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t want a beautiful wife?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of being beautiful?’ She gave a little scream, out of anger at all the wasted effort. Kestrel said nothing, so she screamed again.

  ‘Stop it!’ said Kestrel. ‘You’re not to scream over such nonsense. Screaming’s for when you’re hurt.’

  ‘All right, Kess. Don’t be cross with me, or I’ll – no I won’t.’

  ‘And anyway, you can’t marry my brother. You’re going to marry this other person. Whoever he is.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You said you have to.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t if you were me.’

  ‘I’m not you.’

  ‘Oh, Kess, how I wish you were! Then I could be you. You are going to dance for me, you know. You’ve already started being me, just a little. And think how much you’d like being so beautiful.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Kestrel.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’d rather be me.’

  ‘But what if you were you and beautiful?’

  ‘I couldn’t be,’ said Kestrel. ‘If I was very beautiful, I’d stop being me. Or at least, people would see my beauty and wouldn’t see me.’

  ‘What an odd idea. That’s not how it is at all.’

  They fell silent. The Johdila had been told how beautiful she was so often she found it difficult to imagine herself apart from her beauty. But one day soon a man would see her unveiled. What would he think? She wanted him to see her beauty, but she wanted him to see her, too.

  ‘Oh, Kess, darling,’ she sighed. ‘How hard it all is.’

  Later that day, the Johdila was summoned to her father’s carriage, where she was to be instructed by her mother on the ceremony of marriage. This gave Kestrel the opportunity she needed to speak with the Commander of the Johjan Guards.

  She found Zohon drilling his men. He was standing on a set of steps he had had made for the purpose, which raised him high enough to oversee the entire formation, watching as his officers issued the drill commands in a series of staccato barks.

  ‘Wheel! Merge! Cross under!’

  Kestrel waited to one side, and also watched. The long lines of men in their deep purple uniforms created intricate patterns that flowed in and out of each other, as if, ceasing to be individuals, they had become one vast pulsing organism. Zohon had forged his men into a superb fighting machine, and Kestrel rejoiced to see it. Already as her plan matured in her mind she thought of the Johjan Guards as her army, the force that would set her people free.

  Zohon saw her at last. Impatient to learn her news, he signed to his officers to bring the elaborate drill to an end.

  ‘Turn! Face! Salute!’

  The troops saluted their commander.

  ‘Dismiss!’

  Zohon strolled over to his campaign tent, paying no attention to Kestrel. She let a few moments pass, and then followed.

  As soon as they were alone together, Zohon fixed her with his burning eyes.

  ‘Well? Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kestrel.

  ‘And?�
��

  Kestrel lowered her voice. ‘The Johdila is very afraid.’

  ‘Afraid! Go on.’

  ‘She’s afraid of this country called the Mastery. She’s afraid of disobeying her father. She’s afraid of failing her people.’

  ‘Of course she is. They ask too much of her.’

  ‘She believes she must do her duty, even though . . .’

  ‘Even though her heart isn’t in this marriage?’ Zohon was eager to learn his instincts were right.

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Kestrel.

  ‘And me? You spoke to her of me?’

  ‘I was very careful. I slipped your name into the conversation.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. Her eyes looked down. She was silent.’

  ‘She looked down. She was silent.’ Zohon strode up and down the tented space, pondering this information. ‘She looked down. She was silent. What does it mean? I’ll tell you what it means. She dared not look, or speak. And why not? Because of the strength of her feelings! Yes, count on it, she did not trust herself even to speak my name!’

  Excited by this conclusion, he turned back to Kestrel to instruct her on the next phase of his plan.

  ‘You’re to say to the Johdila that you’ve spoken to me. You’re to say that I will save her from this marriage. But I must know her heart. You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kestrel.

  ‘Let her send me a message, through you. Then I will know what to do.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Now go! I have matters to attend to. Fortune favours the bold!’

  Meanwhile the Johdi was rehearsing her daughter in the wedding ceremony. It was many years since she had performed the five steps herself, but she remembered every moment vividly.

  ‘My mother cried all through my wedding day. I shall cry, I know it. Now, the most important thing to remember is to keep the steps small. Like this.’

  The Johdi shuffled forward, one small step.

  ‘Remember, every time you step forward, he steps forward. You don’t want to bump into him. I’ve known weddings where they never had room for the fifth step. And you know what that means.’