The Rebellion (57 page)

“I am glad you are well,” Dameon said gravely.

“The rebels have decided on their rebellion,” Kella said, and a shadow passed over her features. “It is to be after wintertime.”

I did not want to hear about rebels or rebellions.

“Is Maruman all right?”

Dameon chuckled. “He has made himself at home again
on Powyrs’s ship. The old man dotes on him.”

“Dragon?”

The healer sighed and shook her head. “There is no change in her condition. Maybe when we get back to Obernewtyn …”

I wondered suddenly if I
should
go back. There was nothing there for me now. I could just as well wait to hear from Atthis in Sador.

When we reached the tents, the others crowded around to greet me.

“Where is Rushton?” I asked, noticing abruptly that he was not with them.

A silence fell, and in spite of my new detachment, it made me uncomfortable.

I turned to Dameon and touched his arm. “Is he … he is not hurt?”

Kella looked exasperated. “Oh, Elspeth. Rushton has been odd ever since the Battlegames. He blames himself for our defeat.”

“He walks alone and hardly eats,” Miryum said. “He refuses to lead us.”

As they settled back into their tasks, I looked around at the others. At Miryum brooding over our loss of the games as Hannay worked to cheer her; at Fian and Kella grinding leaves for herb paste; at Freya and Dameon, settling in to listen as Angina and Miky sat side by side, practicing a new song. Angina still bore the great bruised lump on his forehead from the Battlegames, but their faces were serene.

I thought of the song they had chosen for the Battlegames, and in a flash, I understood the power it had possessed. The empaths had sung it before, never knowing why the soldier sang. But now they understood. No wonder it had reached
even the hardened hearts of warriors, for there was truth in it.

I stared wildly about me, and the icy wall of detachment that had risen around me came crashing down.

Atthis had told me once that I should go to Obernewtyn and aid the Misfits in their struggle because it was worthy. I had gone and I had worked alongside the others, but I had always felt myself to be marking time, waiting for my true quest to begin. Now I saw that the two quests were parts of the same purpose. One without the other was meaningless.

Bram had been right to judge us unfit warriors. And perhaps in a world without threat of extinction from the weapons of the past, Obernewtyn would be free to usher in a new breed of humanity that would not take the same terrible path to destruction as the Beforetimers.

“What is it?” Kella asked, and I realized I had begun to grin like a fool.

I looked around and found they were all watching me. I took a deep breath.

Rushton had said we would learn about ourselves by taking part in the Battlegames and competing with the rebels. Well, we had learned all right. We had learned what it truly cost to be warriors. We had learned that the price was too high.

Losing the Battlegames had been the best thing that could have happened to us.

43

I
FOUND
R
USHTON
sitting on a rock and staring out to sea.

“You haven’t failed us,” I said softly. “We haven’t failed.”

He was still for a moment. “Elspeth. I am glad you are well.” His voice was dull, and he did not turn. I had never heard him sound so defeated.

“Listen to me—”

“I have called myself your leader,” he said. “I thought to guide you all to battle, because I imagined your powers would fit you better for war, that all you needed was a leader to bind and direct you. But you are not meant for war. I failed you because I did not understand the truth of you.”

“If there is any fault, it belongs equally to all of us,” I protested.

He shook his head lethargically, but still he would not turn to face me.

“What will happen to you and the others when the Council sends its soldierguards to clear out Obernewtyn, Elspeth? Or when rebels like Malik come to wipe you from the earth? I wanted to protect you.”

“Us,” I said firmly, gently. “Us.”

“I am not one of you,” he said. “I have wanted to be and I have dreamed of it … but I know now that it will never be.”

“Of course you are one of us,” I said sharply. “Besides, leadership has nothing to do with your being a Misfit. You
began this. You freed us and gave us a place and time to grow.”

“But I was wrong.…”

“So were we,” I cried. “I was the one who wanted to show the rebels our power and our might. If anyone is a fool, it is me.”

“You have the right to make such decisions,” he said more strongly. “Whereas I … I cannot even access my Talents without help.”

“You think there is something wrong with needing help?”

“It is a weakness.”

“Now you sound like Malik,” I said hotly. “And maybe that’s the point. Maybe there is a little of Malik in all of us. In spite of what Bram said, I have the feeling we could be like him if we wanted to badly enough. A Malik, after all, would never need help. Our need for one another is what makes us better than him!”

Now he did turn around. “
You
can say that? You, who never needed anyone in your life?”

“No one could say it with greater truth,” I said sadly.

“And what happens when you cannot
have
what you need?” he demanded angrily.

That was a question I could not yet begin to answer. I knew only that, though Rushton might not love me, there was far more at stake here than my feelings. “Look, I’m trying to tell you that what we learned in the Battlegames was important. We needed to know what we couldn’t do so that we could begin to think of what we can do. Remember Maryon said this journey had something to do with finding the right road? Can’t you see that we’ve done that?”

He shook his head. “Will that knowledge show you how to deal with the soldierguards?” Rushton asked, apathy returning to his tone.

I held on to my temper with difficulty. “It might. Misfits are hated and persecuted because people fear us. The Herder Faction and the Council enhance that fear, just as Angina enhances Miky’s songs. Maybe the answer isn’t to fight and force and make, but to show. To empathise. To let them understand us so that they will see there is nothing to fear from us. I think we should try to reshape ourselves and our purposes around empathy.”

“You are not an empath,” Rushton said.

“No, but I can try to understand and care for the unTalents. Any one of us can learn to do that.”

Rushton made a choking sound and turned away again. “You do not understand. How could you?”

A spurt of anger made me reach out and pull him back to look at me. “What do you know of how I feel? Do you think I am a machine like the ones the Beforetimers made?”

“I do not know,” Rushton said with a sudden fierce bitterness. “I know nothing, because you have never
let
me know. Because I am not like you.”

I gaped at him, my anger slipping away. “Not like you? What are you talking about? I have just been telling you …”

“Then why?” he asked softly, a world of pain in his voice. “Why will you never let me come near? Why do you reject me with every look and word if not because … I cannot reach my Talent, because I am not …” His voice faded away.

Had I understood correctly? “But surely Freya …,” I said faintly.

He nodded. “She is an enhancer. She has tried to teach me to use my powers, and we have had some success.” He paused. “Though I don’t know how you could know of it—but it is too little when you are … what you are.”

I gazed at him, incredulous, my mind rearranging itself
like the colors of a kaleidoscope. He thought I did not love him because he could not use his Talent. He and Freya had been trying to reach his powers so that he would be worthy of me!

In that moment, I saw that if my quest to dismantle the weaponmachines and Obernewtyn’s future were bound together, so were Obernewtyn and I bound up as one in Rushton’s mind. In feeling he had failed one, he now felt he had failed the other.

But he had failed at neither. And I?

I understood that this was a moment that might never come again. I had learned the hardest way of all that beauty and happiness, like life, were ephemeral and could no more be saved up for later than a sunbeam could be hoarded. If I would have any life with Rushton, I must take it now, for now was all there ever was.

“What am I, Rushton?”

His eyes flared with a naked longing that seemed to suck the breath out of me.

He stood up suddenly, and I stepped back, almost frightened.

“You are everything,” he said roughly, hopelessly. “Freya said to give you time, and I tried. But you have gone further and further from me. I have been a fool to imagine that you would ever care for me.…” He shook his head, and the light faded from his eyes, leaving them dull and sad.

“You are a fool, all right,” I said tartly, half laughing.

He frowned at me, and my smile faded at the hurt in his face.

“You are a fool for thinking you failed Obernewtyn. You will go on leading us as we strive to find some other way to make our place in the world.”

He began to shake his head, but I reached out my hand and laid it against his cheek.

He stood very still, and I let my hand slide around until my fingers were against his lips.

“I love you, and I have done ever since I saw you at Obernewtyn carrying that silly pig,” I said simply, looking steadfastly into his eyes. “I just had to grow up enough not to be frightened of what I felt.”

Rushton’s face did not change, and for a moment, doubt flickered in me. But then I banished it, for surely nothing required courage so much as love, and I was equal to it.

Swallowing the fears of a lifetime, I reached out my mind, passing the barriers Rushton could not broach, and opened myself to him.

Only then did he move, and faintly, so faintly I could barely catch it, I heard his whisper inside my mind. “Ravek, my Elspethlove.”

E
PILOGUE

M
ARUMAN GAVE ME
a jaded look. “And what answer will that be?”

I leaned on the tower sill and looked out into the first flurry of wintertime snow, pulling my cloak about me.