The Seeker Read Online Free Page B

men had unleashed the Great White from things they called machines—powerful and violent inanimate creatures set deep under the ground, controlled and fed by men. Beasts called them glarsh.
    I questioned him as to how inanimate things could be violent or fed, but he could not explain this apparent paradox.
    Maruman said he “remembered” the Great White, and though that was impossible, he wove remarkably frightening pictures of a world in terror. He spoke of the rains that burned whatever they touched, and of the charnel stench. He spoke of the radiant heat that filled the skies and blotted out the night, of the thirst and the hunger and the screaming of those dying, of the invisible poisons that permeated the air and plants and waters of the world. And most of all, he spoke of the deaths of men, children, and women, and of the deaths of beasts, and when I listened, I wept with him, though I did not know if he had imagined it all or if he was somehow really able to remember something he had not seen firsthand.
    According to the orthodox history of the Great White, only the righteous were spared. But Maruman said those spared had the luck of living a long way from the center of destruction and that was all. If he was right, then all that the Herders had told us were lies, and the Council, supposedly devised by Lud, was more likely man-made, too.
    It was then I had begun to understand what my parents had been fighting for with more than blind loyalty.
    Maruman bit me, bored with my musings; then he lickedthe place as demanded by courtesy. I looked fondly at him, wondering where his wandering had taken him this time.
    “Where have you been? I missed you,” I told him.
    He purred. “I am here now,” he answered firmly, and I knew better than to question him further. He did not like to be questioned, and when he did not want to talk, the worst course was to press him. Gradually, over time, he would give me enough information to work out the rest, but for now I noticed a few places where his fur had rubbed off and assumed he had been to tainted land. If that was true, he would almost certainly undergo another of his mad periods. I resolved to feed him up, because he did not eat at such times and was already too thin.
    “She is coming,” he sent suddenly, and looking at his eyes, I saw that he was already half into a fey state, and his words were probably only raving.
    Nonetheless, I asked, “Who is coming?”
    “She. The darkOne,” he answered. “She seeks you but does not know you.” A thrill of fear coursed through me. His thoughts seemed to tally with my own persistent visions of being sought. “She comes soon. The whiteface smells of her.” Maruman spat at the moon, which had risen in the daytime sky. It was full. I wondered why he hated the moon so much. It had something to do with the coming of the Great White, I knew.
    He snapped at nothing above his injured ear, then yowled forlornly.
    “When does she come?” I asked, but Maruman seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation. I watched his mind drift into his eyes. He growled and the hackles on his back rose, then he shook his head as if to clear it of the fog that sometimes floated there.
    “When I was on the dreamtrails, I met the oldOne. She said I must follow you. It is my task. But I am … tired.”
    “Follow me where?” I asked. Then I gulped, for a horrible notion had come to me. “Where does the darkOne come from? Where will she take me?”
    “To the mountains,” Maruman answered. “To the mountains of shadow, where black wars with white, to the heart of darkness, to the aerie above the clouds, to the chasm under-earth. To the others.” Suddenly he pitched sideways, and a trickle of saliva came from his mouth.
    I sat very still, because none lived in the mountains save those at Obernewtyn.
    A keeper from Obernewtyn would come; if Maruman was right, it would be a woman who would find out the truth about me.

4
    L IKE EVERY CHILD , I