Darksong Read online

  ALSO BY ISOBELLE CARMODY

  Legendsong:

  Darkfall

  The Obernewtyn Chronicles:

  Obernewtyn

  The Farseekers

  Ashling

  The Keeping Place

  Scatterlings

  The Gathering

  Green Monkey Dreams

  Greylands

  This Way Out (with Steve Taylor)

  Billy Thunder and the Night Gate

  BOOK TWO OF THE

  LEGENDSONG

  VIKING

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Viking

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd

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  Penguin Books Ltd

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  Penguin Putnam Inc.

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  First published by Penguin Books Australia, 2002

  Copyright © Isobelle Carmody, 2002

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  www.penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228389-0

  for Samantha

  sister, songmaker, soulweaver

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With grateful thanks: to the folk at the Sandy Feet Health Food Cafe and the Bay Leaf Cafe for not minding me working over two coffees for hours; to Margaret, Fernanda and Claws the cat, for the use of their house as a place to work; to Peter, Kathleen and Becky for enthusiasm, inspiration and enlightenment, for letting me use their computer when mine betrayed me, and for translating my words sent down the line into something Penguin could read; and to Ann for the lovely London house where I finished the book.

  I would also like to thank Janet Raunjak of Penguin for TLC above and beyond the call of duty and, in particular, Nan McNab, my valued friend and editor, for her elegant and meticulous editing.

  KELTOR

  Prelude

  In a high cold place on the Unraveller’s world, the wind was a constant sighing susurrus, for there was nothing to break its flow. The sinking sun momentarily illuminated a jutting finger of stone as if to admonish approaching clouds, saturated with darkness. The rocky outcrop was the last place the sun touched before it slipped over the edge of the world, and darkness closed over the sky like an eyelid over a bright eye. Night came like a dream.

  None of the multitude of creatures that inhabited this world witnessed the dialogue of stone and cloud. Nevertheless it was noted. Hidden in the eye of the screaming vortex that was the Void, the watcher’s vision had diminished, yet it recognised in this small detail another sign that the Song was dying on this world.

  Keltor had been created by the Song, and had been breached by the Chaos spirit, the opposite in all possible ways of the harmony represented by the Song. A portal linking this other world to Keltor had been constructed to allow the passage of one not made by the Song, who might unravel that which bound the long-lost Firstmade of the Song. Legend told that when the Firstmade flew free, the Song would be renewed on Keltor, and Chaos would be vanquished.

  But the watcher understood that freeing the Firstmade would not destroy Chaos. It would simply restore the balance between Chaos and harmony. Variations of the two forces were naturally in flux on all worlds and the energy created by this striving was part of what fuelled the forces of life.

  Seeking relief from the weight of its self-imposed burdens, the watcher had delved into the Unraveller’s world, curious to learn how the presence of the Song had affected the harmonising forces of this world. It had uncovered traces of it even in the most ancient tomes and myths of the Unraveller’s race, which meant that it had come there long before the making of the portal, perhaps even when the Firstmade had flown to many worlds in the dawn of its days.

  True fear, or whatever the watcher experienced that approximated fear, came when it discovered that Chaos had also entered this world, joining the darker of the forces that warred here – race hatred, cruelty, violence – strengthening them dangerously. And it was a bitter thing that, although the Song might have come to this world in ancient times, Chaos could only have come by Lanalor’s portal, constructed to undo the evil Lanalor had wrought by enabling the Chaos spirit to breach the Void on Keltor in the first place. Lanalor had given his soul into the keeping of the Chaos spirit for the power to fashion the portal. If the Unraveller failed to free the Unykorn, Lanalor’s soul would be finally forfeit to the Chaos spirit, but much more than his soul he risked, knowing there was no other way to free the Firstmade, and praying that he had been wise and sly enough to outwit the secret designs of the Chaos spirit.

  Reason said that what happened to the Unraveller’s world had nothing to do with the smaller, watery world of Keltor, but the astonishing web of connections it had uncovered between the two worlds revealed them to be irrevocably linked. The watcher had come to understand that in order to save either world, the Song must be saved upon both worlds.

  Yet what could be done to preserve the Song on this world that did not know of its existence? A world where an insidious form of Chaos had entered by the dreams of its inhabitants, and the precious Song – perhaps the only thing that had stayed the invading darkness – was fading without their ever knowing its name. Without their recognising that a war was being fought, they were losing it; they were sleepers falling into death. How to waken them?

  The watcher contemplated the Void, lapping like a great, grey sea between the made worlds. It contained all that had been and was and all that could come to be. Answers might be found there by one disciplined enough to negotiate the unmade stuff of Chaos, but it would be dangerous to spend too much time segueing in the Void while it was so disturbed. Recent events on both worlds had caused possibilities to fuse and reshape violently and, weakened by its part in those events, the watcher hesitated to chance itself to the maelstrom.

  It sighed, knowing that it did not know enough, nor could it ever hope to know enough to plot the end of all courses.

  ‘I am not a god,’ the watcher murmured, and was obscurely comforted by the statement of its own limitations. Its long exile had taught it that life had a purpose which no single being could hope to understand, let alone control. Perhaps it was the will of life that Chaos would win both Keltor and the Unraveller’s world. Nevertheless, the watcher must fight to save them. There was comfort, too, in the decision to strive for harmony while admitting the possibility of failure; peace in accepting the presence in all things of Chaos. That was balance.

  The Void began to shudder in anticipation and the watcher dared delay no longer in turning its eyes to Keltor. Events set in motion there by its long-secret manipulations were beginning to uncoil, and it must witness the shape they took, for everything was in flux now and there was no knowing how matters would settle.

  It gathered itself and segued into the Void …


  1

  There came a day when the Unykorn heard Shenavyre

  singing a summons from beneath the waves.

  The Firstmade dove into the great water,

  drawn by love and longing,

  but the voice was false.

  A lie wrought up from the Void. An echo

  shaped to bait a deadly trap:

  A sphere formed from the unmade matter of Chaos.

  The Firstmade following the darksong.

  Too innocent, too quick, too powerful to fear,

  it entered that darkest place.

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  Ember strummed the a’luwtha and the sound that rose from the strings was a long, questing note; a musical inquiry answered only by the laughter of a Vespian shipdaughter somewhere on the deck above.

  Swallowing fear, Ember strummed again, her fingers remembering what her mind did not. A second note merged with the first, and with the wind thrumming against the ship’s hull, a yearning sound that caused the man lying unconscious on the hard bunk behind her to stir.

  A third stroke, and the seeking note was abruptly truncated by the slap of a wave against the hull.

  Ember resisted the urge to give up and lay the instrument aside along with its terrifying potential to unlock her memory; to abandon her lost past, and simply be what she had become in this world, a Sheannite visionweaver. After all, she was dying and there must be some dispensations in that. Yet she had sworn to let herself remember who she was if she could only be free of the sinister web of intrigues on Ramidan island. She had not promised anyone in particular, but against all odds, even miraculously, she had escaped from Ramidan with time enough to reach Darkfall and be healed. Who knew what would happen if she failed to honour her promise?

  She shivered and turned her mind to the other reason she wanted her memory restored.

  During her escape from Ramidan the mental curtain separating her from her past had opened a chink, and she had discovered that a young blonde woman whom she had seen fall from a cliff in a vision, was her sister, her fraternal twin. She had seen them walking together on a night-dark beach. Glynn had gone into the water for a swim and Ember had gone in after her when she had got into difficulties. She had no other memory of her life before the crossing.

  The warrior woman, Feyt, had promised Ember to locate Glynn if she was on Keltor, but they had both known that it would be easier if she could offer more detailed information about her sister.

  Ember again addressed herself to the a’luwtha. Beautifully crafted, it had been given to her by the soulweaver Alene. A two-edged gift, for Ember was certain that music would restore her memory, and though she wanted and needed to remember who she was, she was also terrified of remembering. Ember did not believe that she had lost her memory merely as a consequence of the crossing between worlds. Something else had happened either before or during the crossing, and her mind had fled from it.

  Whatever that had been, the memory of it was waiting for her along with all the rest.

  Yet I must keep my word, Ember charged herself sternly. I must remember who I am for Glynn’s sake, if not for my own, and for the sake of a promise made. I must accept the past. I will call it to me.

  A fourth complex stroke executed so faultlessly as to announce indisputably that she was a musician, and at last, the high, tense, difficult note clawed open the thin membrane separating her from her past; yielded her up to herself.

  She was sitting in a restaurant gazing through a glassless window at a sea as smoothly silver-pale as the underbelly of the fish the men brought in each afternoon, still flapping and gasping their lives out. The sea was the Aegean and the Greek fishermen brought their catches ashore from their caiques in woven baskets sodden with briny water.

  Opposite Ember, Glynn sat studying the menu. She was tall, with amber eyes and hair so pale as to be sunlight caught in a gush of water. The jaw was too strong, the brow too high, the nose too straight, for her to be classically beautiful, but the fall of hair and the strong clean line of forehead and cheek, the long column of the neck flaring to wide delicate shoulders and slight breasts, made her seem to have been cast of some graceful liquid. Everything about her flowed.

  Glynn. Called by their father Glynna-love. Ember’s twin sister. People could hardly be brought to believe they were related, they had so little in common physically or in any other way.

  ‘See our eyes?’ Glynn would finally say, pointing to her slender, red-haired sister and, yes, the person would have to admit their eyes were the same pale-yellow shade. Sisters maybe, it would then be conceded, but twins?

  Nevertheless they had been born out of the same pregnancy, the same womb; Ember moments before Glynn, whom no one had expected. It had been a mystery to their parents how the doctors could have failed to detect the presence of a second foetus.

  ‘You were a precious secret,’ their father had told Glynn once, though their mother had said, perhaps too often, that they had been at a loss to know what to do with this entirely unexpected and unplanned child. Their mother had always disliked surprises because they disrupted her careful plans and projections. Once she had said crossly to Ember that her sister made a habit of doing anything but what was expected of her and that it would doubtless bring her to grief.

  The memory-Glynn’s head lifted abruptly as if she had heard the thought, and Ember, who was both memory and rememberer, glanced away smoothly. Glynn’s eyes remained on her, but Ember bore the scrutiny without acknowledging it. She was well used to being stared at.

  Beautiful, people had called her from the moment she could understand they were speaking of her. They had murmured it to their friends or to her parents and often, as she grew older, they would say it to her face, never feeling they were rude, never seeing that such personal evaluations were intrusive and unwanted. They felt themselves to be applauding her, praising her for her cleverness. But she had accomplished nothing in being beautiful so why should she be awarded honour for it? If an award must be given for an innate quality, then why not an award for good health?

  Ember thought of her beauty as a tawdry consolation prize given to one who missed out on the real prize. Sorry, we can’t give you health, but we do have this beauty you can have instead. The only catch is that it won’t last long, but then again, neither will you.

  None of these thoughts showed on her face, for Ember had grown accustomed to projecting the sort of stillness that allowed no intrusion. She was able, simply by her immobility and the distance in her eyes, to prevent people from speaking to her, from asking questions or offering comments; from prying into her head and forcing her to engage with them.

  Glynn shifted on her chair and Ember sensed that a reminder was about to be voiced. She forestalled it by opening her purse and bringing out a small phial. Unscrewing it, she tapped a yellow pill into her palm and dry-swallowed, all the while staring out to the sea.

  She was relieved when Glynn made no comment. They both knew it was the last time they would be able to go overseas. The tumour in Ember’s brain was now so advanced as to require close proximity to doctors familiar with her case. They had not wanted her to make this trip because the yellow pills were new and experimental and there might be side effects.

  ‘What does it matter about side effects?’ she had asked bleakly.

  Hallucinations, dizziness, headaches, nausea, the doctors chorused. And if the pills failed, there would be little time to find another solution. Perhaps only two or three weeks.

  But Ember wanted to go and Glynn had made the arrangements, never even asking, ‘Why there? Why the Greek islands?’ The truth was, Ember herself did not know. She had dreamed compellingly of walking on a warm beach and had wakened with the name of a Greek island in her mind.

  From the moment the plane lifted off at Tullamarine, Glynn had not referred to sickness or hospitals. She knew that Ember preferred her illness never to be mentioned; might even prefer, Glynn sometimes felt, to live without words at all.


  That evening in the restaurant had been in the nature of a farewell to the island, for it had been the last night of their stay. The next morning they were returning to real life.

  Real life. Glynn’s phrase.

  Ember let the words slip through her mind, and strummed the a’luwtha again, this time giving herself to her knowledgeable fingers. They, it seemed, had forgotten nothing of their considerable ability.

  Her memory unravelled itself, unwinding the face of a man with big white teeth and slightly bulging blue eyes. Harrison Bonn.

  ‘Brilliant. Superb.’ He flashed a too-white smile and said confidingly that Ember was so beautiful her music would double its value if she ever took to playing it herself, instead of merely composing it. ‘Think about it. That’s where the real money is.’ He drummed nicotine-stained fingers eagerly on his plump knee.

  Ember refused to deal with him again.

  ‘We need him,’ Glynn insisted. ‘You have to go through these people and we’re going to need money.’

  ‘Then you deal with him,’ Ember had said.

  So Glynn had. She managed Harrison Bonn, just as she had managed the tax department and the housekeeper and the taxi company and the doctors and even Ember, so far as she could be managed. She told the agent that Ember did not wish to perform; that she was a recluse who had no desire to meet with the artists who would perform her compositions or be involved in any publicity.

  ‘I am to be her buffer from now on. You will speak to me and then I will tell her what you have said. That’s how she wants it to be.’ Glynn told her later that Harrison Bonn had winked and said admiringly that it was a good gimmick.

  Neither of them had any knowledge of the rapacious music industry, but luck had got them into it and had seen that they were treated fairly. It began when a woman heard Ember playing in a hotel room and left a message for them at the reception desk. Glynn had written a polite note explaining that the music the woman liked had been composed and performed by her sister. Months later a call came from the woman, who had got their names from the hotel register. She wished, she said, to pass on an offer to pay for original compositions in that same dark, serious vein.