The Singer of All Songs

by Kate Constable

  ‘No!’Trout clutched at the tiller with both hands, his body bent over the shaft.

  ‘Give him the tiller, or we will all be drowned. There is a storm rising.’

  Calwyn looked up. One by one the stars were being eaten up by darkness; clouds gathered swiftly, blotting out the moons and the spangled sky. It was true: a storm was rising all around them, howling over the sea. She could hear someone’s sobbing breath, and realised it was Trout. His head was lowered, the bright discs of his lenses suddenly darkened. Calwyn heard herself whisper in agony, oh be quick, be quick! There was a distant low rumbling of thunder, and she felt the first splashes of rain on her cheek.

  ‘Come, Trout, be sensible.’ Darrow’s voice was as calm and unhurried as if Trout had the whole night to consider his answer, as if Fledgewing were not leaping up and down against the waves like a goat bucking on a mountain track. ‘If you wish, we can put you ashore at the next land we come to, and you can make your way back to Mithates.’

  ‘Aye, and perhaps we’ll put you ashore too!’ shoutedTonno, turning on Darrow suddenly. ‘You and your accursed chantments! Or mebbe I should put you overboard now, and let you swim back to Merithuros where you came from.’

  ‘Tonno, stop it!’ screamed Calwyn. ‘In the name of the Goddess, take care!’

  Abruptly Trout let go of the tiller. At once Fledgewing twisted back under the force of the wind, and they all staggered. Trout fell to his knees, and began to crawl back toward the hatchway, one hand blindly shielding his lenses from the rain that splashed down now in earnest on the deck. Tonno leapt for the tiller, and bawled afterTrout, ‘Boy! Stay on deck! We need all hands now!’

  ‘Trout, Calwyn, with me.’ Darrow was still astonishingly calm. ‘Help me trim the sail.’

  Calwyn hauled on the ropes as Darrow directed her, and fastened them as she’d been shown. Across the deck she could see Trout doing the same. For all their quarrelling, now they must work together, like it or not. The mainsail was growing smaller and smaller, giving the wind less canvas to catch, and Fledgewing bucked less violently before the storm. Calwyn could sense how the tiller had eased under Tonno’s big sure hands. The boat moved more smoothly, but fast, so fast, through the water. The rain was driving down hard on her back, and streamed into her eyes. Then Calwyn heard a noise she hadn’t heard for many days: the deep uneven boom of the sea crashing against rocks, somewhere ahead on the port side. She yelled out to Darrow, ‘Land ahead!’

  ‘We are at the Mouth,’ he shouted back.

  She nodded to show that she had understood, her hands still busy trying to fasten down the many tie points that held the sail in place, her fingers slippery and clumsy with the rain, and the deck unsteady beneath her feet. Xanni had told her about the Mouth – it seemed a lifetime ago – the place where the Bay of Sardi joined the wide Great Sea beyond. It was a narrow and dangerous gap, flanked by cliffs, and the strait between them was dotted with treacherous rocks that sailors called the Teeth. Some of them thrust high above the water, but others lurked just below the waves. She glanced up, squinting against the rain, and saw one of the rocks slide past, silent and sinister, looming up out of the dark then vanishing once more. It was so close she could have touched it with her hand. But there was no time to feel frightened; already Darrow was calling to her to help him batten down the cabin where the water was getting in. She remembered with a pang that she had left open the porthole in her cabin too. All her bedding, all her clothes, would be drenched and damaged.

  As she and Darrow struggled with the hatchway, she put her mouth close to his ear and yelled, ‘Will we be past the Mouth soon?’

  ‘Not past,’ he shouted. ‘Through.’

  Calwyn gaped at him. ‘Into the Great Sea?’

  He couldn’t have heard, but he saw the movement of her lips, and gave a nod. Then he was gone, hauling himself along the tilted deck to where Trout was struggling to stow some ropes that jumped and slithered from his grasp as though they were alive. Another of the great sharp rocks loomed up out of the dark, then another;Tonno’s face as he hung onto the tiller was set with a scowl of grim concentration. The storm was too strong for them to do anything but let it drive them through the Mouth. Tonno and Xanni had gone through the Mouth before; she had heard them speak of their voyage north to Nesca and Liminis, as far as Gellan. But they had only done it once before, and that was not in a storm, and not in darkness.

  Suddenly Fledgewing was climbing a sheer cliff of water, flecked with white foam, rearing up and up; then they dived down the other side, skidding into a glassy chasm. Without warning, something smacked Calwyn off her feet and sent her sprawling to the deck, the breath knocked out of her. Helplessly she slid toward the edge of the boat and the yawning abyss of the waves, desperately scrabbling for something, anything, to cling to. But now Fledgewing rolled the other way, and she slithered back, cracking her head on the cabin wall, dazed and drenched and sobbing for breath. Tonno shouted at her to get up, to make herself fast, but she could only clutch the cabin railing as the next wave threw itself onto them. Above the scream of the storm there came the most terrifying sound of all: a tremendous creaking groan, louder than the nearest thunder, a noise that made the whole boat shudder from bow to stern. Calwyn heard Trout shriek, then the terrible crack as the mast snapped in two and crashed down onto the deck in a tangle of wet canvas and ropes. And then everything was chaos.

  When the storm cleared, it was morning and they were adrift on the Great Sea. It had been morning for a long time, behind the clouds and rain, without their noticing. But now they were able to see exactly what damage had been done to Fledgewing, and to each other.

  The top half of the mast was gone. There was a great gap in the coaming where it had crashed down, half-on and half-off the deck. With the mast had gone the mainsail, cut free and then washed overboard in the desperate panic to clear the Teeth. Trout had a gash on his forehead where he had been struck by flying debris. The others were all bruised and battered to varying degrees, andTonno had difficulty breathing after a crack that had broken at least one of his ribs. But the greatest catastrophe was the loss of the mast. Until they reached land, and land where tall trees grew, they had no way to repair it. With the big sail gone, they could still limp along, but it would be all but impossible to turn and sail against the winds and the currents, back toward the Bay of Sardi.

  Down in the cabin, Darrow and Tonno debated in low, fierce voices. No one had even begun to clear up the mess below decks; if everything had been properly stowed away in the lockers, it would not have been so bad, but food and plates and cups and clothing had been flung about and trampled in the confusion of the storm.

  Darrow knocked a stump of candle from the bottom of his boot and hurled it across the cabin. ‘We must have a new mast. Without it, we are drifting, as good as helpless.’

  Tonno shook his head. ‘We must turn back to the west, try to run into the headlands of Kalysons.’

  ‘That will take too long. And even if we reach the cape, the currents are too swift there, we will never be able to land. Better to keep going east. We are bound to come across the Isles of Doryus before long.’

  ‘Finding the Isles is like finding one grain of sand hidden on a beach! I don’t know these waters. We must go back,’ insisted Tonno.

  ‘I have sailed this sea before, and I tell you the Isles are strung out across the Eastern Sea like the beads of a necklace.’

  ‘But who’s to say we’re in the Eastern Sea? By now we might have been swept into the Southern Straits, or even the Outer Sea.’

  ‘That’s absurd

  –’ ‘Who’s the sailor here, you or I?’

  Back and forth they argued, while Trout and Calwyn sat up on deck, one on either side of the tiller. Calwyn grasped it firmly; it made little difference to the direction they drifted, but at least she felt as though she were doing something. She had no wish to join Darrow and Tonno’s dispute. The brief truce of the storm had dissolved again; everyone was quarr
elling, worse than ever.

  ‘Why don’t we turn back?’ said Trout. ‘We can’t go on drifting like this, in the open sea.’

  ‘The current won’t let us turn back. We have no choice but to go on.’

  ‘Go on into what?’Trout waved his hand at the vast expanse of empty ocean.

  Calwyn didn’t answer; she had no answer to give. She didn’t know what lay ahead. Perhaps they would go on and on for ever into the wastes of the sea, never touching land, until they starved or died of thirst, helpless and drifting. She tightened her grip on the tiller. ‘Darrow and Tonno will find a way.’

  ‘Your chantments don’t seem to be much help to you now,’ said Trout gloomily, but with a trace of smugness.

  ‘The ocean’s too deep here for Darrow to use his powers,’ said Calwyn shortly. She had been racking her brains all day long for some way to use her own arts to aid them. But she could think of nothing.

  ‘We could take what’s left of the mast, and splice it in half. Except it wouldn’t be strong enough to hold up the sails. Or we could make a pair of giant oars. If we had anything to make oars with. Or we could catch a sea serpent, and it could tow us to land.’ Trout whipped off his lenses and polished them on his shirt, as he often did when he was agitated.

  ‘Have you suggested any of these things toTonno?’ Calwyn could imagine his reaction.

  ‘I think he was quite impressed with the idea about the sea serpent.’

  ‘How do you think we’d catch one?’

  ‘I’m not sure, what do they eat?’

  ‘People,’ growled Tonno, coming to take the tiller. ‘Why don’t we tie a bit of rope around you and try some fishing?’

  ‘Very funny,’ said Trout, but he edged away. Calwyn laughed; it was a long time since she’d laughed, and it was a long time before she laughed again.

  Day after day they drifted on, caught in the swift currents around the cape of Kalysons, carpeted with farms and orchards and clear streams, all out of their sight and out of their reach. Sooner or later those same currents would fling them out into the unknown reaches of the Great Sea; they might carry them north toward the Isles of Doryus, as Darrow predicted, or further south, toward Merithuros, as Tonno feared. Fledgewing was a little fishing boat, not built for long ocean voyages. The water barrels were full, but their food was running low.

  The further south they sailed, the hotter it became, as if they were drifting deeper into summer, even though by the reckoning of the moons they should have been feeling the first chills of autumn. Down in the cabin, the air was stifling. Calwyn took to sleeping on the deck, propped against a coil of rope; but Tonno grumbled that she was getting in the way and drove her below again, where she lay hot and sleepless and resentful, wondering what was to become of them all.

  Tonno cast his nets over the side and managed to catch some fish, to eke out their food a little longer. They were not the sweet fat fish that lived in the Bay of Sardi, but tough lean fish that dwelt in the depths and tasted strongly of the ocean. Every day Darrow stood at the prow, trying his powers in the hope that he would be able to bring them closer to some shore. But every day he turned away with a bowed head. Every night Tonno stared up at the sky and tried to judge their position from the wheeling of the stars, and calculate how far they had come since the day before. It was never a great distance. Then each of them would turn away, retreating to their own private corner of the boat, so that the others would not see their despair.

  ‘There must be a way,’ saidTrout. ‘Can’t we take the dinghy and row to land?’

  But Darrow shook his head. ‘We are not near enough to the shore to try it. The risk is too great.’

  ‘But the risk now is that we’ll go on drifting for ever!’

  ‘The Goddess will watch over us,’ said Calwyn.

  ‘You and your goddess! I can see how carefully she watches,’ said Trout. ‘Since I came, there’s been a wrecked ship, broken bones, soldiers chasing us. And your friend is dead.’

  At that Tonno stood up and walked away to inspect his nets.

  ‘Unless you have something helpful to say, will you hold your tongue?’ hissed Calwyn.

  ‘And unless you can say something sensible, will you hold yours?’

  ‘Peace, both of you!’ Darrow looked up irritably. ‘We have troubles enough without quarrelling.’

  ‘And yet you and Tonno spend more time in quarrelling than any of us,’ said Calwyn bitterly.

  That very day, Trout began work on a device. He took a spare pair of lenses, slid them out of their wire frame and fixed them one at either end of a narrow tube, which he held to his eye. ‘It’s not as powerful as the one I made in my workshop in Mithates,’ he said, showing it to Darrow. ‘But it’s better than the plain eye. Not my plain eye,’ he added. ‘My vision’s no better than a mole’s. But Calwyn’s eyes are sharp. With this she could see land, or a ship approaching, long before the rest of us.’

  It became Calwyn’s task to scan the horizon all day long, until she felt her eyes blur and she feared she’d become as short-sighted as Trout. But it was not until the third day after Trout had made the looking-tube that she finally spied something. ‘I think – I think I see a sail.’ She lowered the tube and blinked doubtfully toward the north.

  Tonno grabbed the tube. ‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment. ‘A square sail – two square sails.’

  ‘Two ships?’

  ‘No, one ship with two masts. A large vessel, indeed. No ship that sails the Bay of Sardi is large enough to carry such weight of canvas. This is an ocean traveller, no fishing boat.’

  ‘Merithuran?’ said Darrow quietly at his side.

  Tonno shook his head. ‘Can’t tell from its markings. But where else would it be coming from?’

  ‘Most likely a trader, heading for Gellan.’

  ‘Will they help us?’ asked Calwyn eagerly.

  ‘If we can offer them something they value, we might bargain for a tow into the nearest port.’

  ‘They might take me with them,’ said Trout. ‘They might give me passage back to Mithates.’

  ‘They might take you as far as Keld,’ said Tonno. ‘But the Merithuran traders don’t bother entering the Bay of Sardi.’

  ‘Keld would be close enough for me,’ said Trout fervently.

  It seemed to take a very long time for the ship to come into view. ‘What if they can’t see us?’ said Calwyn, almost in agony. ‘I’m sure they have no looking-tube.’ And for a while it did seem that the other ship would sail past, oblivious to their plight. But at last the white squares of canvas became clearly visible on the horizon.

  ‘They see us,’ said Darrow at last. ‘They’ve shifted their heading.’

  ‘Merithuran.’ Tonno slapped his hand on the railing. ‘No doubt of it. Look at the shape of her.’

  Now Calwyn could see the high tiered decks of the other ship, and make out the tiny figures of its crew swarming up and down in the rigging.

  ‘A trader, carrying cargo in the hold, gold and silver and iron from the mines of Geel and Phain,’ said Darrow. ‘They’ll fill with grain in Gellan and sail back again.’

  Trout was waving his arm in wide sweeps. ‘They can see me! They’re waving back!’

  ‘How can we be sure that they’ll help us?’ Now, when it was too late, Calwyn was struck with sudden doubt. ‘How do we know we can trust them?’

  ‘Things are different at sea, lass.’Tonno gave her a slightly scornful look. ‘Sailors help each other.’

  ‘For a price,’ said Darrow. ‘For a price.’

  Before long the huge ship hove to nearby, towering above them. The crew were dressed in short ragged trousers, with bare feet, and wore close-fitting striped caps in different bright colours. Their skin was tanned brown, and their hair, where it stuck out from under the caps, was stiff and straw-coloured, bleached by the sun. ‘Not Merithuran,’ said Darrow quietly at Calwyn’s side. ‘Doryan. A Merithuran ship with a Doryan crew.’

  ‘They’re
lowering a boat!’Trout hopped from foot to foot with excitement.

  Half a dozen sailors rowed rapidly toward them. One man in the dinghy did no rowing. His hair hung in a long oiled plait down the back of his green coat, and there was a flash of gold at his throat and his wrists. ‘That’ll be the captain,’ saidTonno.

  At a word, the rowers shipped their oars, and the captain stood and hailed them. ‘Where are you bound?’

  ‘North,’ called Tonno. ‘But swept off course by the cape-stream.’

  ‘Lost your mast?’

  ‘In a bad storm at the Mouth, some nights back.’

  The captain’s eyes flickered across them all as they stood in a row at the railing. Like skittles, thought Calwyn, with a sudden stab of unease. Waiting to be knocked down.

  ‘What’s your cargo?’

  Tonno’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that to you?’

  Trout gave a little anxious moan.

  The captain raised a hand in appeasement. ‘I mean no offence to you or your crew. I’m only wondering what business a Sardi fishing boat might have out on the Great Sea.’

  Darrow stepped forward, and Calwyn saw him place a restraining hand on Tonno’s sleeve. ‘We carry no cargo worth your notice. My friend takes me north on a voyage to visit my uncle, who lies dying in Gellan. I am anxious to be on my way with all haste. If you would be kind enough to tow us to the nearest land or port where we might replace our mast, then we will trouble you no further.’

  The captain was silent, stroking his beard. Calwyn could see threads of gold woven through the wispy hairs. He smiled, a wide, slow smile, and said abruptly, ‘Aye, we will take you under tow. Cast us a line and I will lend you one or two of my crew to help secure your craft to mine.’

  ‘I think not,’ saidTonno politely, though his big hands were clenched hard on the railing. ‘My crew is small, but we can manage whatever is needed.’