Darksong Page 4

  When she was done, she washed her hands and examined the tray of food without appetite. There was soup, a kind of breadcake and a mug of some sort of juice. She had not eaten since the previous evening and knew she had better do so now. She lifted the bowl in unsteady hands and slurped the lukewarm soup from the rim, by now accustomed to the fact that Keltans used no utensils other than knives. Eating some of the breadcake, she found it very hard but surprisingly good. The drink tasted a bit like cold lemon tea, and she had just finished the mug when Bleyd rolled onto his side. The quilt propped around him slithered to the floor. Rising to restore it, Ember noticed that the wound on his back was weeping copiously. She got some more water and bathed it again, humming the old Greek man’s song as she worked, and wondering what it was that seemed so familiar to her. Perhaps it was based on some other well-known song …

  ‘So must Shenavyre have sung to the Firstmade,’ Bleyd rasped. She looked up and found the jade-green eyes open and alert. ‘The last thing I remember is being in a citadel cell. You appeared like a pale ghost to tell me you had come to rescue me. It would seem you succeeded. We are aboard a ship?’

  ‘The Stormsong,’ Ember said removing the bowl of soiled water. ‘Feyt arranged with the shipmistress to transport us to Myrmidor.’

  ‘A balladeer would starve on the material you offer for a story,’ Bleyd said.

  ‘I don’t speak to pad the stories of balladeers,’ Ember answered, filling a mug with water. She brought it to the Fomhikan, thinking it a pity he had not remained unconscious all the way to Myrmidor. Bleyd drank thirstily and handed back the empty mug, working his painful way onto his elbows.

  ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

  ‘Not quite a full day.’ Ember busied herself restoring the medications neatly to their compartments.

  ‘Lady, what have I done to offend you?’ Bleyd asked suddenly.

  Ember was all at once sick of all the secrets and pretences she had been forced into since coming to Keltor. ‘I am not offended,’ she said bluntly. ‘I just don’t like the way you pay me compliments and stare at me.’

  ‘These signs of my high regard displease you?’

  His courteousness in the face of her rudeness gained Ember’s grudging respect but, at the same time, she was irritated by the knowledge that his so-called high regard had been inspired by nothing more profound than her appearance. ‘I don’t want your regard, high or otherwise. I don’t know why you regard me in any way at all when we scarcely know one another.’

  ‘Surely it is reasonable for a man to admire the woman who saved him from torture and certain death, even if he does not know what cirul she prefers.’

  Ember resisted the urge to say that he had regarded her in the same mindlessly besotted way since the first time he had looked at her. ‘I merely played a small part in Feyt’s plan,’ she said, resuming her bland tone. ‘In fact, I am in the midst of being rescued myself.’

  Bleyd sighed. ‘You say we do not know one another yet you act as if I wear the face of your worst enemy. You have done so since the first moment we met in the soulweaver’s apartment.’

  ‘I have only one enemy and that is time,’ Ember said.

  The Fomhikan paled. ‘Forgive me, Visionweaver. I had forgotten your illness. Are you in pain?’

  ‘Alene drained my pain before this journey began. I do not know when it will return but I do not wish to speak of it to you.’

  There was an awkward silence and Ember hoped that now the Fomhikan would be silent, but at length he asked, ‘Are we bound direct for Myrmidor?’

  ‘No. We have to stop on Vespi, but the shipmistress says it is likely that we will then journey direct to Myrmidor. She says we need to stay hidden aboard until we leave Vespi.’

  ‘I doubt I would be fit to go ashore,’ Bleyd said, sounding suddenly exhausted. Whether it was her rebuke, or his pain, it seemed to her he spoke more simply now. ‘If you want the truth, I am surprised we got away from Ramidan at all. It is a miracle that Tarsin did not sound the Edict bell to stop any ships from departing before they could be searched.’

  ‘I suppose he would have, except that Feyt had the Shadowman arrange a false trail to make it seem you had fled towards one of the casting settlements on the other side of Ramidan. That was supposed to stop anyone realising you were in the citadel. That was where you were to be taken. I was supposed to slip away aboard the Stormsong in all the fuss, and you were to be spirited into a hiding place in the town, but when things went wrong there was no alternative but to put you aboard with me.’

  ‘What of Anyi?’ Bleyd asked softly, closing his eyes.

  ‘He was with Feyt in the citadel palace when I came to your cell. There was a hall but they left it early. They were going to go to the soulweaver’s hut to avoid being implicated in your escape or my disappearance.’

  ‘My poor Anyi.’

  Something in his tone irritated Ember. ‘You need not pity Anyi. He is young but he is brave and strong-willed, too. He swore to Alene that he would never forgive her if any harm came to you.’

  Bleyd shook his head in wonderment. ‘I have always found it hard to see him as the future Holder of Keltor. Perhaps I have been so busy protecting him and thinking of him as my awkward little brother that I have been blind to the strengths in his character.’

  Ember was startled that he gave such weight to her opinions but then remembered he believed her to be a visionweaver with soulweaving tendencies. He was staring at her again, but less in admiration now than simple bemusement, ‘It is passing strange that, even masked, you are like Shenavyre. If I speak the plain truth, I must tell you that some of my stares were for that reason alone.’

  ‘Many Sheannites have red hair and are slightly built as I am.’

  ‘True but you must know that you also look uncannily like her. Alene is wise to send you away from Ramidan. Tareed believes that your appearance is a sign that the time of the Unraveller’s coming is nigh. I wonder if it is true?’

  ‘I am sure my looking like Shenavyre is only a coincidence,’ Ember murmured. Given that she was a stranger on Keltor, she doubted that her appearance was some sort of mystic sign. Probably it was just one of the many puzzling correlations between her world and this one. The Firstmade closely resembled the legendary unicorn out of the myths of her world. There, a unicorn was generally accepted to be an imaginary beast, while the Keltan Unykorn was seen as real, despite the fact that it was supposed to have been the first made of the Song of creation that had brought Keltor, and the worlds around it, into being. The Unykorn had not been seen since it had been entrapped in a bubble of Chaos after the death of Shenavyre. Many Keltans believed that a legendary hero called the Unraveller would come to free the Firstmade. It was such a fantastic story, all the more so because this hero was supposed to come from her world. In the face of this, the firm belief of the younger myrmidon, Tareed, that Ember’s appearance was a sign of the impending arrival of the otherworld hero, was not so far-fetched.

  Bleyd suddenly groaned and clutched at his head. ‘That bastard … I would like to face him in fair battle some day. By Dar, I would give him some scars to remember me by.’

  ‘Who?’ Ember asked blankly.

  ‘Coralyn’s son, the foul but fair Kalide,’ Bleyd spat out the name. ‘Torture is an Iridomi specialty, and Kalide prides himself on being a master of it, or so he boasted to me as he demonstrated his prowess. I can’t bear to think of Anyi at his mercy.’

  ‘Anyi has Feyt and Tareed to protect him. And Alene.’

  ‘If you will forgive me for saying it, they may well need protection from Coralyn themselves if it becomes known that they helped me escape.’ He shook his head in frustration then closed his eyes at the pain it must have given him. ‘If only I could have remained on Ramidan. At least there I could protect Anyi. On Myrmidor I will be nothing but a political embarrassment. It will certainly cause a further breach between Tarsin and the soulweavers when it becomes public knowledge that they give sanc
tuary to his poisoner. It may even be said that the poisoning plot originated on Darkfall.’

  Ember decided not to tell him that Alene had already set this rumour in motion. ‘I think the idea is that no one should know where you have gone,’ she said mildly.

  Bleyd made no response and Ember thought he had fallen asleep. Then he said softly, ‘Perhaps we can begin again, Vision-weaver. I am grateful to you for your help, whatever the reason for your giving it. I fear I am too weak to be your protector on this journey, but I would offer what companionship I may to you, if you will permit it.’

  He looked so downcast that Ember did not have the heart to reject him outright. ‘I am not good at light conversation,’ she murmured.

  Bleyd smiled faintly. ‘I think I have guessed that. But I vow that I will never let a single compliment pass my lips, since they are so offensive to you. I promise to speak only of matters so weighty that I shall bore you to distraction.’

  Ember made no response, and when she next glanced over at the Fomhikan he really had gone to sleep. Only then did she lie down herself, and she was tired enough to sleep at once.

  When she woke, it was from a nightmare of the fear and the pain endured by dark Ember, before she had come to accept death. Trembling, Ember swore to relearn indifference and acceptance in case she did not make it to Darkfall in time.

  Music would help her, as it had done before.

  She strummed the a’luwtha very softly, having muted the strings as she had seen Alene do, so the music would not be heard beyond the cabin. She closed her eyes then, and played of death and dying. She summoned the greyness to her like a tide of mist, dampening and sucking the colour from the memories she had recently absorbed. But unbidden a clear picture came into her mind of Glynn, falling backwards off an unknown cliff. The vision evoked the old man’s haunting song and, in turn, the song called up the ghastly screams of horses she had heard the day she came to Keltor.

  Ember ceased to play, her heart hammering. She was sweating too, and there was a vile taste at the back of her throat.

  She had convinced herself, before seeing Glynn drowning, that she felt nothing more for her than for anyone else, but the gut-wrenching terror she experienced exposed her hard-won indifference as an illusion. She understood now that, all along, Glynn had been standing between her and the true detachment she sought. But no more. Glynn must be found and brought to safety, then would Ember find a way to push her from heart and mind.

  Ember strummed the a’luwtha, and played a strong golden note which fluttered at the heart like moths around a flame. She played a seeking note, a striving chord, a song of searching and calling.

  Glynna …

  segue …

  The watcher reflected upon fear of fear. Many of the inhabitants of the Unraveller’s world preferred not to feel, rather than to endure fear. It was a subtle form of cowardice which the Chaos spirit had found easy to exploit, and the quest for indifference was now dangerously common among the people of that world. Most who sought it, obtained what they desired. Those who wished not to feel, ceased to feel. It was their numbness that was killing the Song, for those who could not feel, were deaf to it, and the Song, which could only sustain itself by striking an echo, faded a little each time it went unheard.

  To strengthen the Song on the Unraveller’s world, it would be necessary to teach its inhabitants the courage to feel again, so that they could hear it. Yet that was all but impossible, since courage itself was a feeling.

  The face of one of the children from the Unraveller’s world came into the watcher’s thoughts. It had entered the girl’s mind upon a whim, and had found a heart and mind that were brutal and casually callous. Resisting its instinct to withdraw, the watcher had delved deeper, in an attempt to learn what had damaged and stunted such a young mind. Unlike the adults of that world who had sought indifference, the girl only reflected the indifference of the world around her. She had no particular fear of feelings because she did not know what it was to feel. Her parents might have taught her, but like many other children of her world, she had little respect for them. Her world preached that respect for one’s elders was stupidity; innocence, ignorance and gullibility. Television and movies and books and all the creative offerings of her clever race had instilled the shallowest idea of what it was to feel. They promoted all manner of vacuous entertainments to simulate certain narrow, prefabricated feelings, and they urged the girl to sate her own immediate desires at all costs. She had been schooled to deride courage and to admire sly cowardice parading as reason or common sense.

  But she was not afraid and so she could be made to feel. By chance, the watcher had witnessed exactly this as the girl looked into the eyes of an old and dying horse. It had felt the unfurling of her soul as she had experienced sorrow and guilt over her mistreatment of the beast. Then had come compassion. Incredibly, the watcher had heard the Song in her, as radiant with joyous purity as it had been when it sang the Firstmade into existence.

  The watcher was haunted by the awareness that what it had heard had not been an echo of the Song, but its birth. On worlds made by the Song, everything was born echoing its making, therefore, although the Song could be extinguished by Chaos, it could not be born because it was part of their making.

  The watcher had returned more than once to the girl and the dying horse within the Void, sensing that the incident held an important part of the answer to the saving of the Unraveller’s world. For if the Song could be born in one child, it might be possible for the same thing to happen in others. But it would take something as immense and mysterious as whatever the girl had seen in the eyes of the dying horse to reach them all, the young and the willing and the half lost.

  Beauty. Wonder. Compassion. Again and again the watcher came to these three elements. Wherever it encountered compassion, it found the ability to feel and so the potential to hear the Song. Indifference produced a void where Chaos lurked, radiating malevolence. Courage was connected to compassion as cowardice was connected to fear. One needed courage to be compassionate, as well as to feel. And compassion was an outward urge. It was a response to pain and sorrow. It was a sorrowing at Chaos. The cowardice that sought indifference as an escape from fear was a maggot-like inward burrowing, a hidden corruption that would not allow the Song to be heard.

  The young red-haired woman who had crossed to Keltor was a coward, but though she had long ago closed herself to life, she resonated with the Song, partly because of her love for her sister, which she had only hidden from herself under a grey blanket of indifference and self-pity. What she felt for her sister was the Song, and it was the Song from which her mind had fled. Ironically though, the amnesia had wiped away the force behind the young woman’s indifference – her knowledge of her death – and so she had experienced fear and hope, love and friendship, happiness and anger. And the Song had grown triumphantly stronger in her.

  Now, music had restored her memory and again she made indifference her goal, but the Song had been strengthened enough to war openly in her with the Chaos spirit. That which she called dark Ember was the Chaos spirit, and that which she thought of as her newborn self, was the voice of the Song in her.

  In one thing, the girl was right. Her love for her sister gave the Song strength. But from it, she drew a wrong conclusion. She believed that if she could be assured her sister was safe, she would be able to suppress that love and attain true indifference. But love was perhaps the strongest weapon against indifference.

  It was a pity that love could not be used as a force to waken the Unraveller’s race. Unfortunately it could not be used on a great enough scale. There was no symbol or display that would evoke love in an entire race. By its very nature, love was a potent but limited force. One man might love one woman or a mother her several children, a child its parent, a brother his sister, even a person his country, but groups of people did not love other groups of people. Indeed there was ample evidence that groups were far more open to the Chaos spirit than indivi
duals.

  No. What was needed to waken the Unraveller’s people could not be a symbol of love.

  The watcher segued.

  3

  The thing that must be remembered is that the Song originally rose out of Chaos … [They] should not be thought of as two separate things. It is my belief that where one occurs, the other will rise in a natural and necessary dichotomy. In the darkest moment of Chaos, the Song will rise as a flicker of hope or a memory of beauty. And in the midst of delight, Chaos comes as a whisper of doubt and mortality. You cannot think of one without the other, but each has its own domain. This is balance. My brother called himself Damned because he brought Chaos into the domain of the Song, but he also brought the Song into the domain of Chaos when he taught us how to soulweave in the Void and so it can also be said that he was the agent of balance …

  THE ALYDA SCROLLS

  ‘What will you tell the Draaka?’

  Glynn dragged her eyes from Ramidan island to look at the man standing beside her on the deck. She was struck anew by his elusive resemblance to her dead martial-arts instructor on her own world. Wind, too, had been only a little taller than she, and had worn his blue-black hair cropped close to the skull. Solen even had the same oriental tilt to his eyes, though his were blue and had a tendency to purple under stress. But there were differences. Wind, though physically strong, had been slender of build, equally narrow in the hip and shoulder, his hands long-fingered and finely boned. Solen’s shoulders were very broad, his arms and legs muscular, and his hands wide and calloused, the fingertips spatulate.

  Glynn had thought Solen a wastrel and a fool when they had first met. During the period she had dwelt with him on Acantha, she had lost count of the times he had staggered drunk into the subterranean apartment they had been forced to share. Knowing him as she did now, it was hard to credit that she had believed this rather obvious performance. But she had still been reeling at finding herself transported to another world, and Solen had been very determined to be misjudged. His ability to act was no doubt one of the reasons he had been recruited by the mysterious Shadowman.