The Singer of All Songs

by Kate Constable

  ‘I’m not saying that I believed him,’ said Calwyn hastily. ‘But at the end, when Samis sailed away, letting us follow him – perhaps he wants Darrow to join with him again. And Darrow seems – changed. He doesn’t speak to you any more. Or to me. Perhaps – perhaps he is thinking of going back to Samis.’

  ‘You don’t know him as well as me, lass, and that’s a fact,’ said Tonno bluntly. ‘The only thing he’s thinking of is how to stop that rogue. Aye, he’s thinking hard. Too hard to talk to you and me about what’s for dinner, or whose turn it is to swab the deck. I wouldn’t expect anything different. And nor should you.’

  Calwyn was silent, playing with the end of her plait.

  Tonno knocked his pipe out on the side of the boat. ‘Foolishness,’ he said, and that was the end of that conversation.

  They sailed on, close to the shore, close enough to see the barren wastelands, with their cover of grey scrub, through Trout’s looking-tube. Once they saw a great beast grazing on the bushes; it lumbered from one plant to the next, tearing at the branches with its massive jaws.

  ‘It must be near as big as the pirates’ ship,’ said Mica in wonderment.

  Trout shuddered. ‘Then its jaws must be large enough to snap this boat in two, and swallow us all without chewing.’

  ‘It is an eater of plants,’ said Darrow. ‘It would not be interested in chewing on us.’

  ‘All the same, I’d rather we didn’t land just here,’ said Trout. ‘If no one else objects.’

  The next day they saw a herd of the shrub-grazers, and the sound of their mournful bellows carried across the water. They had a favourable wind to take them south, and Mica was able to spend all morning at the railing, gazing at the creatures. ‘You sure we can’t land?’ she asked wistfully. ‘Look at em, Trout, gentle as kittens. Wouldn’t you like to have a look up close?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Trout firmly, and later that day something happened to convince him he was right.

  They were eating the midday meal on deck when Calwyn caught sight of a flock of birds, wheeling and turning, a crowd of black dots between the boat and the shore.

  ‘What are they? Too big for gulls – Trout, where’s the looking-tube?’

  ‘Here,’ said Tonno, raising the tube to his eye.

  ‘Comin closer,’ said Mica. ‘Must be gulls, after scraps.’

  Suddenly Tonno sprang to his feet, knocking his plate of food aside. ‘They’re no gulls. Darrow, quickly, look! Have you ever seen creatures like these?’

  Darrow took the tube, and his eyebrow raised. ‘I have heard of them, but never seen them. I had thought they were creatures of legend.’

  ‘Let me see,’ demanded Trout, even though he could never manage to see through the tube as clearly as the others. But Mica was quicker.

  ‘They’re coming closer,’ said Calwyn. The shapes which had been mere dots a moment before were now clearly creatures with long, straight wings, swooping and riding the wind like kites. Their cries rang across the water, sharp, fierce, high-pitched calls. Mica passed the tube to Calwyn, and said just four words. ‘Look at their teeth.’

  Calwyn put the tube to her eye with a hand that shook. There they were, suddenly clear and huge, enormous flying beasts, not birds, far bigger than any bird, and without feathers. Their wings stretched like sails from scaly bodies to clawed feet, and their heads turned as they flew so that Calwyn could see their small hooded eyes, and their long jaws, lined with row after row of sharp gleaming teeth. She held out the tube to Trout.

  ‘They speak of these beasts in the ancient tales of Merithuros,’ said Darrow, in a calm, interested voice. ‘They were known as the guardians of the Wildlands. Some call them the flesheaters.’

  ‘Flesheaters!’Trout’s voice was a squeak.

  ‘I think,’ said Tonno, with admirable steadiness, ‘that we should all go below.’

  Trout was already clattering down the companionway.

  Eagerly Mica asked, ‘Tonno, you want Calwyn and me to call up a wind and hold em back?’

  ‘No,’ said Darrow. ‘Let them be.’

  ‘Calwyn could put up a shell of ice to protect us,’ said Tonno. Calwyn gave him a sharp look.

  ‘We do nothing unless it is needful,’ Darrow said sternly. ‘These creatures belong to this place, they have every right to defend it. If we show them that we mean them no harm, they will leave us alone. Once we start to fight them, they will have all the more reason to attack us.’

  ‘You speak as if these were people, with reasoning minds, not blind and stupid beasts,’ said Tonno. ‘Do I ask permission of the fish before I haul it out of the sea? Do I beg the pardon of the rabbit before I set the trap?’

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ said Darrow, with a faint smile. ‘Mica will tell you that the people of the Outer Isles beg permission of the fish every year in their great ceremony.’

  ‘Please,’ said Calwyn. ‘If we’re not going to fight them off, then let’s go below!’

  The creatures were very close now. Their harsh cries and the eerie whistle of their wings grew louder on the wind. The rest of Fledgewing’s crew hastened down the companionway, and Tonno pulled the hatchway firmly closed behind them.

  ‘Can they open latches?’ asked Trout, white-faced, peering out of the porthole. ‘With those jaws, they must be able to. They look like vices – or pincers –’

  ‘For the last time, these are mere beasts!’ said Tonno in exasperation.

  ‘The legends say they are as intelligent as any man or woman,’ said Darrow. ‘It’s said that they are masters of the ninth Power, the Power of Tongue – though of course they have their own language, different from ours.’

  ‘If no one can speak it, how do they know it’s a language?’ Even shaking with terror, Trout couldn’t stop himself asking.

  ‘If it is a language, it’s not one I want to listen to,’ said Tonno, with a shake of his big curly head.

  Mica edged closer to his side. ‘You think the sorcerer sent em? Is he spyin on us?’

  ‘I dunno, lass. Mebbe.’Tonno looked at Darrow.

  ‘It is possible,’ he said impassively. ‘He may be capable of anything now.’

  ‘They’re here!’ cried Trout, and in the next moment there came a terrible noisy chorus as the creatures perched on the decks and the mast and the roof of the cabin, the sound of a hundred sharp talons rasping, fifty pairs of scaly wings folding. It was a sound to send chills down the spine. Suddenly the cabin darkened as the creatures settled, screeching, in front of the portholes. Hastily Trout hauled at the curtains. ‘I don’t want them looking in at us with their little beady eyes.’

  Mica was huddled in a corner, her usual bravado quite vanished, as the creatures clamoured all around them. Even Darrow, though still resolute, looked a little apprehensive. Tonno picked up Darrow’s walking stick, and tapped it against the edge of the table, muttering something that might have been a curse, or a plea to the gods for protection.

  Then Calwyn closed her eyes and began to sing. She sang softly, no louder than a murmur, the quiet soothing song that she used to sing when the bees swarmed in Antaris. As the familiar words rose from her lips, she was aware that the others in the cabin fell silent and listened. She let her voice grow stronger, the words clearer in the gentle lulling melody that Damyr had taught her long ago.

  ‘Listen – listen – they can hear her!’

  ‘Ssh!’

  Beneath the steady rhythm of her song, Calwyn heard Mica whispering, and Darrow hushing her. The song was carrying her now, the words themselves drawing her onward. And then she knew that the creatures were growing still on their perches, their wings silenced, their cries muted. They could hear her; they were listening just as the bees used to listen. Sometimes in Antaris the bees would become utterly quiet, as though she sang them to sleep, and sometimes they would sing in their turn, an answering murmur, so that she and they sang together, an easy peaceful melody.

  And now she heard them, softly at the fri
nges of her hearing, a barely audible rasping chorus, as the creatures whispered in answer to her song. For a long time Calwyn and the terrible creatures sang together, and then all at once there came a great rustling of wings, and the boat lurched as the flock took flight, pushing off together with their sharp claws. The cabin grew light once more. The creaking of the great scaled wings sounded around them, and diminished, and then there was silence but for Calwyn’s clear voice rising and falling. Then the song ended, and everything was quiet. She opened her eyes.

  The others were all staring at her, wide-eyed. Mica gave a loud sobbing gasp, as though she’d been holding her breath all the while, and then tossed her hair out of her eyes and pretended she had never been frightened at all.

  ‘How did you do that?’Trout’s voice shook.

  ‘I sang the old song, the song to the swarm,’ said Calwyn. She felt a little dazed, as if she were waking from a dream. Her fingers were tingling. She stared down at them as though she had never seen them before, then, suddenly understanding, looked up at Darrow with a question in her eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, though she had not spoken. ‘It is the eighth Power, the Power of Beasts. Whatever you used to sing to the bees, these creatures understood it too.’

  Tonno asked gruffly, ‘Will they leave us alone now?’

  ‘If they don’t, she can sing to em again, can’t she!’ Mica’s golden eyes shone with pride as she nudged Calwyn in the arm.

  ‘I don’t think she will need to do that,’ said Darrow, and as he stood to go back up on deck, he laid his hand briefly on Calwyn’s shoulder. It burned there like a brand for the space of a heartbeat or two, like the ice-brand that had marked her arm when she became a novice. Even after he had lifted his hand and limped away, she felt the shadow of its burning, and all that day she felt it burning still.

  That night, as Calwyn lay sleepless in the little cabin that she now shared with Mica, she overheard Darrow and Tonno talking in low voices.

  ‘Didn’t you once tell Xanni and me that it was so difficult to master one craft, it could take a lifetime?’Tonno was saying. ‘And that was what made Samis dangerous, that he could master two or three Powers so easily?’

  ‘I remember.’ Darrow’s voice was low.

  ‘And yet she comes to us an iceworker, learns windcall in a day or two, and now it seems she can tame the beasts as well.’

  ‘It is interesting.’ Darrow’s voice became more lively, and Calwyn heard the knock of his boots as he stretched out his lame foot. ‘Perhaps I should have guessed it when I saw her with the bees in Antaris. That Power, the eighth, is the one that all the scholars thought was lost. Maybe it’s carried in the blood, in the depths of memory, passed on without knowing, the way beasts themselves know how to sing, and build their nests, and hunt, without being taught. Or the priestesses of Antaris have been guarding those chantments without knowing it, as well as the craft of ice-call. Interesting –’

  ‘You’ve always called Samis such a marvel. Such a mighty sorcerer. And here’s this lass with her plaits down her back, with the same gift, mebbe. Mebbe stronger than his, for all we know.’

  ‘Maybe.’The word was breathed so low that Calwyn barely heard it.

  ‘Mebbe she’s the one, not him – the Singer of all Songs. Think of that! I’d like to see his face if he knew it, to be trumped by a slip of a lass, not even in skirts.’ Tonno’s rare, deep laugh rumbled through the cabin. ‘Aye, I’d like to see that day!’

  ‘There’s one day I would not like to see,’ said Darrow. ‘A day when the two of them joined their powers together.’

  ‘She’d never do that.’Tonno’s reply was instant, dismissive.

  ‘He can be very – persuasive. He is not easy to refuse. And she would have power over all the world. Empress of Tremaris. Better than being a mere High Priestess of Antaris.’

  Tonno laughed again, uncertainly, as if he didn’t know whether Darrow was making a joke. ‘Aye, well, who can say if any of us would say no to all that, eh?’ Calwyn heard the scrape of his chair as he stood up.

  ‘Good night, friend.’

  ‘I’ll wake you for the second watch.’

  She could hearTonno climb the steps onto the deck where he would keep watch. But she heard no sound from Darrow; he sat at the table for a long time, lost in thought, and by the time he stirred, she had fallen into a troubled sleep.

  The next morning she found a reason to sit by Darrow at the tiller. The strange beasts had not come back; the skies were clear and the sailing brisk. They’d come round the southernmost cape of the unknown coast; Fledgewing was heading westerly now, away from the morning sun. The scrubby landscape with its herds of huge shrub-grazers had gradually given way to a grimmer vista of high bare cliffs and peaks.

  Darrow did not greet her, or even look at her; it was as though she wasn’t there. Calwyn sat in silence, watching the dark line of the shore. Her throat was tight, as if a string were tied around it, and wouldn’t let her voice out.

  At last she said, ‘Am I really so unnatural?’

  Darrow said, ‘Uncommon, perhaps. But not unnatural.’ He’d known she was there all the time. He glanced up at the sail and shifted his hand slightly on the tiller. ‘I wondered whether you had overheard us.’

  Calwyn’s face flushed, and she said quickly, ‘Then you should have been more careful with your words. You must know that I’d never do anything to help Samis.’

  ‘Mind what you promise, Calwyn. Whatever arts we may possess, not one of us can see into the future.’

  She stared at him, white now with hurt and anger. ‘I think I can safely promise that! Can you?’The words shot out before she could bite them back, and he flinched as though she had struck him.

  In a low voice, he said, ‘If anyone had come to me five years ago, and said to me that my dearest friend would become my fiercest enemy, that he would try to kill me a dozen ways, that I would rather see him dead than –’ He stopped, staring across the waves, and was silent. ‘We cannot know what lies ahead,’ he said at last, his voice shaking. ‘But one thing I do see clearly. We will fail in this quest, unless we can trust each other.’ He turned his head and looked at her with his keen grey-green eyes.

  For a long moment they stared at one another, while the sound of the sea rushed beside them, and the clear high thread of Mica’s song hung in the air, bright and thrumming as a golden wire. And she saw that he knew about her own doubts, her fears, and even her feelings for him, and their misgivings were mirrored, each in the other’s face.

  For some reason she thought of Marna then. Do not be enemies. It would be all too easy to allow doubts to grow into mistrust, mistrust into bitterness, bitterness into hatred. And then Samis would have won, without ever lifting his voice against them.

  The angry light died in Calwyn’s eyes, and the hard line of Darrow’s mouth relaxed. She held out her hand, and he took it, and pressed it briefly against his cheek. Then he turned to the tiller again, and the distant mountain-tops that gleamed with caps of snow.

  ‘Look, Calwyn,’ he said. ‘These are your mountains. If you followed the range north, you would come to Antaris.’

  Calwyn gazed at the silent peaks with an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. Somewhere, far to the north, life went on in Antaris as it always had. The autumn ceremonies would be under way, the leaves of the blazetree in the sacred valley turning scarlet. Then the leaves would fall, and at midwinter moondark, under the bare branches, she would have been made a full priestess. Soon, perhaps, she might have taken over from Tamen as Guardian of the Wall. Now that would never be.

  She looked about at the shining sea, and the clean stretched canvas of Fledgewing’s sail. She looked at the eager face of Mica as she pointed to a school of leaping fish, and at Trout, almost overbalancing as he tried to net the fish because they were a kind he had never seen before, and atTonno’s strong stern gaze as he watched them. And at last, she returned Darrow’s grave smile. And she knew that, even with the
menace of Samis all about them, she would rather be here on Fledgewing than anywhere else in Tremaris.

  At last the mountainous shore grew less forbidding, the slopes more gentle. Trees appeared, at first just a light scattering of green, but then more and more, clustering thickly right up to the water’s edge, until there was nothing to be seen but dense forest. Mica’s eyes were wide with wonder that there could be so many trees in the world. In the Isles, it was rare to see two trees growing side by side; to see a hundred, or a thousand, with barely a hand’s gap between them, was a marvel beyond belief.

  Through the looking-tube, they saw bright flashes of colour: the glimmer of birds’ wings, blue and yellow, and trees in fruit, with globes of heavy red and gold hanging from their branches.

  ‘We should land as soon as we see a river,’ said Tonno. ‘We need to fill the water barrels.’

  ‘And I can’t wait to taste fresh fruit again,’ said Mica longingly. ‘I swear, next plate of bean and fish stew I see, I’ll chuck over the side. Though it’s the best bean and fish stew I ever ate,’ she added hastily, seeing a scowl on the face of Tonno, who was responsible for producing the meal they ate most days.

  It was Trout who saw the harbour first. The wind had slackened, but not quite died; they were debating whether it was worth Mica or Calwyn summoning up a breeze, when Trout gave a cry. They all gathered at the boat’s side, silently watching as they came around the promontory, and Calwyn caught her breath, for every tree that lined the inlet was a blazetree in full autumn colours. The narrow cove was an extraordinary sight, a splash of scarlet against the dense green of the forest. Calwyn had only ever known the one solitary blazetree of the sacred valley in Antaris, but here hundreds thronged along the water, like a crowd of people all dressed in bright crimson and scarlet pressing eagerly forward to glimpse them as they glided by. The blazeleaves stirred and rustled in the breeze with the whispering she knew so well, but magnified a thousand-fold, so that a sighing chorus reached out to them across the water. She whispered, ‘The trees are singing –’