Read The Red Queen for Free Online

at Gilaine’s side. He was so small that he barely reached her shoulder and he had snow-white hair bound into a long tight braid. His skin was an unusual yellow-gold hue, and his eyes were striking – steeply slanted up at the outer edge and slitted so that the iris was no more than a dark glitter between the lids. He wore no jewellery or mark of rank, but even without the respect the shipfolk had showed him, I would have known him for a man of power, for he carried himself with an unmistakable authority.
    Was he Gilaine’s owner?
    It struck me as I studied him that I had seen others like him; two diminutive acrobats performing at a moon fair long years past, and the defective Okan, brought to the Healing Centre in Sutrium by his dying foster-mother. Was Gilaine being taken to their land?
    The man turned towards her and shook his head. Gilaine’s shoulders slumped and she glanced down at the pendant she was holding. She regarded it for a moment and then tucked it under the neck of her tunic with a sigh.
    ‘I am sorry that I cannot do what you have asked,’ the old man said in a courteous musical voice. There was sincerity as well as regret in his tone, which made me wonder if he
had
bought her after all. Somehow I could not imagine that anyone who owned another person would treat them with gentleness or courtesy. Gilaine had turned to him and now he took her hand and continued, ‘The sole purpose for my long journey was to keep you safe and to ensure you come to the appointed place at the appointed time. Nothing can come before that.’
    A woman joined them then, not much older than Gilaine, but also small of stature and gold skinned. She, too, wore trews and a plain tunic, but these were the same midnight black as the heavy mass of her hair, drawn into a great glossy knot high on her head. Only two flat blades of darkness had been left to hang either side of her face. The style exaggerated the length and delicacy of her neck, but still she did not look fragile. Indeed there was a catlike smoothness to her movements that reminded me of the lithe strength of the Sadorian tribal leader, Jakoby, and her pale-blue eyes held the same steadfast confidence.
    Having greeted Gilaine, she turned to the man, bowed very low and said respectfully, ‘Greetings, Chodan Sangmu. Chiya Pema and Rabten have prepared a bath and beg you to make use of it while the water is hot.’ Her voice had the same musical quality as the old man’s.
    He sighed. ‘Thank you, Chiya Dawa.’ He turned to Gilaine again. ‘I am afraid these old bones need some attention if I am to stand strong in the days ahead. I will leave you in the Chiya’s competent hands. Do not fret too much. We are all servants of the world and it will use us as it must.’
    ‘It is her friends,’ Chiya Dawa told him, giving Gilaine a slanting look of mingled complicity and compassion. ‘She is worried about what they will do when the Gonpo Dron tells them she has been given to you as a gift.’
    ‘And I have told her that too much is at stake to risk contacting them to explain. In truth, no less than everything is at stake.’
    The dream changed abruptly. I was looking at Gilaine again, but now she was younger. Even if she had not been, I would have known this for a past-dream because Matthew, who was with her in a dark, grimy-looking hut, was little older than the boy I had seen marched aboard a Herder ship in Rangorn so long ago.
    ‘It were her, I tell ye, only her as a futureteller might see her years from now,’ Matthew was saying, running dirty fingers through his unruly brown hair, making it stick up in all directions.
    ‘You are a fool,’ snapped a tall, sour-faced Landwoman standing nearby. ‘That is no vision of the future but a carving of the last Red Queen of this land, and she is long dead and buried in her brother’s crypt.’
    ‘There are many carvings of her throughout the Red City,’ said a younger woman in a kinder voice. ‘No doubt you have seen