Mica gasped, and Tonno shook his head in wonder. Quietly Darrow said, ‘I thank you.’ He took his foot between his own hands and felt it quickly all over, then without fuss reached for his boot and pulled it on.
Trout gaped. ‘How – ?’
Halasaa smiled. My father taught me the old craft. He was as I am. He taught me how to dance with the force that binds and flows in all living things, in you and me, in the trees of the forest, in the birds and the arakin and the creeping beasts of the ground. All of the world sings, and dances too. All is one, all are joined in the great river.
‘The fourth Power,’ breathed Calwyn. ‘The Power of Becoming.’
Yes. He taught me that there is no ending to the river, only a ceaseless changing flow. Nothing leaves the river, and nothing remains the same within it. All is change, all is movement, yet the river is always the river.
‘How can you heal what’s broken?’ asked Tonno.
When a rock or a tree branch is placed in a river, the water’s flow is altered a little. Have you not seen this? Our dances are pebbles and twigs, we make a little ripple in the great stream, that is all. Nothing leaves the river. This is how healing is accomplished.
‘You say that nothing leaves the river,’ saidTonno, and now his voice was harsh. ‘But what about the dead? Is it in your powers to bring back the dead?’
‘Tonno,’ said Darrow softly, warningly.
Calwyn felt a quick eager rush of hope. But Halasaa was shaking his head, gazing sorrowfully at Tonno. You have suffered a great grief. I too suffered when my father left me. But the one you have lost cannot be restored in flesh.
‘Some other way, then? Is his spirit, his life force, whatever you like to call it, is he still in this river you speak of ?’Tonno could not look at him; there was a terrible angry hope in his voice. Halasaa laid a hand upon his arm.
His spirit is there, yes. But we cannot call it back. The spirit is always part of the river, just as your own spirit is. After the great change which we call death, the spirit mingles joyfully and disperses in the great stream. All is change, all is movement, yet the river is always the river. Halasaa’s words were very gentle;Tonno bowed his head, and did not speak for a long time.
Darrow got to his feet and walked slowly about the platform, gingerly testing his weight on his newly healed foot. ‘It feels strange indeed to walk on a straight foot after hobbling so long on a crooked one.’ He paused by the railing and looked over the treetops. Halasaa and Calwyn joined him there, and Calwyn gazed out toward the glittering band of blue that was the ocean, jewel-bright in the light of the declining sun. But Darrow was staring the other way, deep into the forest, and then Calwyn saw it too, far off across the trees. The platform on which they stood was not the only one perched high in the roof of the forest. In the distance were others, a flotilla of rafts buoyed by the treetops, a whole city riding high above the ground, linked with narrow rope bridges and broader walkways. She could see the tiny figures of people moving about on the platforms; men sat in groups, one woman combed out another’s hair, and children swung nimbly up into the branches of the trees and ran about as easily as though they were on the ground.
Darrow turned to Halasaa. ‘You know so much about us. Is that the place we seek, the Lost City of the Ancient Ones? It is not as I expected.’
Halasaa tipped back his head in a soundless laugh, and the little bird on his shoulder gave an indignant cry and flapped away to preen itself. That is Spiridrell, the Place of Trees. He sobered suddenly, and when he looked toward the city his face was sad. I know the place you seek, but it is not here. My people are the Tree People, not the Ancient Ones you speak of. They were here long before the Voiced Ones ever set foot upon this world. But I know the Lost City. My father took me there when I was a child.
Darrow’s grip on the railing tightened. ‘Do you know how to get there? There is one who we must meet in that place, a sorcerer –’
Halasaa frowned. The arakin have told me of another, a singer of songs also. This one chased them from his ship with his magic, and tormented them.
‘That sounds like Samis,’ said Calwyn ruefully.
Darrow asked urgently, ‘Was he ahead of us, or behind?’
The arakin did not tell.
‘We must reach Spareth before him,’ said Darrow. ‘Can you take us there?’
If you wish it, I will take you.
‘Then let’s go now!’ Tonno jumped to his feet. ‘We’ve wasted enough time here already!’
Be still. You are too impatient. All is as it should be. You will rest here tonight, and tomorrow we will sail for Spareth.
nine
The Desolate City
CALWYN LAY ON her back watching the dappled play of green leaves, layer against layer. Sometimes the white light of the sun lanced through them and made her blink, but mostly the pattern was transparent green, a shifting dance of light and shadow, pale and silver and dark. She could almost imagine herself back in Antaris, lying in the orchard and staring up at the sky through the leaves of the apple trees. But the trees in the orchard would be bare now; after the fruit, the leaves would have turned to gold, and fallen. The younger novices would be shovelling them up for the bonfires the men would set alight, chasing one another and shouting.
Did winter ever come to this part of the Wildlands? She had asked Halasaa, and he had assured her it was so, and put pictures into her mind, images of theTree People making their long yearly trek to caves in the mountains, children and elders gathered close about a fire in the darkness, and hungry men and women searching all day in the bitter cold for food. His face had clouded. Many Spiridrelleen die in the hungry season. It was not always so. When the Voiced Ones came, the Tree People were driven from the warm lands of the north, where we could dwell in the forest all year round.
‘I’m sorry.’ Calwyn hadn’t known what else to say.
There are fewer of us every year. And now that my father is gone, I am the last to know the dances of healing. There is no other.
‘Then they should cherish you all the more –’ Calwyn had stopped. The priestesses of Antaris had cherished her. But when Halasaa had spoken of being shunned by his people, and feared by them, she had understood.
They like to keep me close by, in case they need my skills. If someone is hurt, or ill, then they come to me, but in secret, after dark. But they will not eat with me, nor let me teach the dances to the children. When I am gone, it will all be lost.
‘It’s the same everywhere. Look at Trout. Even when he sees and hears chantment before his eyes, he still tries to find a way to disbelieve it. Perhaps magic is dying, all overTremaris. That will make it easy for Samis, if we can’t stop him.’ And how exactly would they ever stop him? she had wondered, not for the first time.
Halasaa had seemed to hear her thoughts, and had placed his warm brown hand reassuringly over hers. Do not fear. This life is a dance, and not a battle. We are all part of this world, not masters of it. Tremaris dances hand to hand with the moons and the stars. The ocean embraces the river, and the sky breathes in every song. The sorcerer should know this, and we must remember it too.
Looking up at the leaves, Calwyn remembered his words and smiled. Though she had no idea what they might mean, she found them comforting. It was peaceful here, and pleasant to rest after so long at sea. Today they would sail for the Lost City. Tonno and Mica had gone with Halasaa to collect eggs from the water-birds that nested by the stream, and Trout had been taking apart the pulley that hoisted a basket up to the platform, to see if it was better than the ones he had constructed in Mithates. She didn’t know where Darrow was; he was so impatient to be off that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find him already waiting for them on Fledgewing, pacing the deck.
‘May I come up?’ Darrow’s voice broke into her thoughts.
Calwyn sat up, flushing at the unexpected sound of his voice. ‘Of course.’
He climbed the ladder as nimbly as a boy, and Calwyn laughed. ‘It’s g
ood to see you so light on your feet!’
‘I had forgotten how good it feels to run.’ He brushed the hair back from his face and grinned at her. ‘But to sit quietly is a good thing, too.’
She smiled back at him, and they sat side by side in comfortable silence on the edge of the platform, their feet dangling among the leaves. Calwyn looked away, across the rustling sea of green that stretched as far as the horizon. To the north somewhere, invisible, was the shadowy line of the mountains where she had grown up, the place she had always considered her home, the place she might never see again. Supposing they did defeat Samis, what would happen then? Would they go back to Kalysons and help Tonno with his fishing? Or would she make the long journey home through the mountains, to Marna and Ursca and the others? Would Mica come with her? She smiled at the thought of quick-tempered Mica training in the quiet ways of a priestess of Taris. Tamen would find her even more difficult to handle than Calwyn herself had been. Half-regretfully, she put the idea out of her mind. Besides, she knew for certain now that the Wall of Antaris would never again be able to contain her own restless spirit. Perhaps they could all come back here and live in peace among the trees. But the Spiridrelleen would not welcome them.
She sighed, and looked at Darrow, at his hawk’s profile outlined against the leaves. He had spent so many years in companionship with Samis, then in rivalry, then pursuit. Once this chase was over, there would be a great emptiness in his life. How would he fill it? Wistfully she remembered the image that Samis himself had suggested to her in Trout’s workshop: she and Darrow, wandering the world together, seeing all kinds of marvels, side by side – She shook herself. This hunt was not ended yet; she couldn’t know how it would end. And if they weren’t strong enough, if they couldn’t manage to defeat Samis, all of them together, three chanters and Halasaa? Calwyn left the thought unfinished.
She turned to Darrow. ‘Will you leave your walking stick behind, now that you don’t need it any more?’
Darrow looked at her steadily. ‘A gift is not thrown away so lightly. Especially a gift from a friend. No, I will keep it, to remind me that not all friendships need to end in bitterness.’
Impulsively Calwyn laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘Sometimes friendships end in other ways. They can change – into something more . . .’ Her face grew warm. Would he understand her? She stammered, ‘As Halasaa says, all is change . . .’
For a moment Darrow looked puzzled. Then his face cleared, he flushed, and he laid his warm hand on top of Calwyn’s. ‘There are things that you and I must say to one another, Calwyn,’ he said, and there was a tenderness in his voice that she had never heard before. ‘When this is finished –’
But before he could say anything more, Mica’s clear shout rang up from below, sending a handful of the red and green fruit-birds fluttering into the air. ‘Hey, you two, come down! We got enough eggs for a hundred omelettes! And Halasaa says it’s time to go.’
Darrow gave Calwyn a regretful, apologetic look before he scrambled to his feet. The quest still came first. But Calwyn sensed that he was not as eager to be under way as he had been before. Perhaps Darrow too had his doubts about what awaited them. All the calm certainty about their task now seemed to belong with Halasaa; it was as though he had been waiting for them all his life, and knew exactly what must be done. Looking over the edge of the platform, Calwyn could see him, still and straight as a sapling, his face turned upward, his eyes bright, a little bird on one shoulder and a woven basket of fruit slung over the other.
Come. It is time to leave.
Calwyn couldn’t help comparing the look of serene joy on Halasaa’s face with Darrow’s stern, set frown. Quickly she seized his hand and pressed it between her own.
‘When this is finished,’ she said.
He nodded and gripped her hand. Their eyes met, and held, and in that look there was a promise.
They spoke little in the next few days of swift sailing along the southern coast, as though the silence of the Tree People had seeped into their bones. They moved about the boat with quick deft actions when it was necessary, or stood motionless at the tiller or the prow, scanning the horizon. The shore slid by, the endless forest gliding past them; from time to time the noise of birds or the rustle of leaves would call out to them like whispers of encouragement. But not once did they catch sight of Samis’s ship, either before or behind them.
The arakin came sometimes to Halasaa, not in the great flock that had descended on the boat before, but one or two at a time. Trout still flinched at the sight of them swooping toward the boat, and took himself hastily below, but Mica stood bravely by Halasaa, willing herself not to move out of range of their sharp-toothed beaks. The arakin would speak to Halasaa in that language that only he could understand, and then flap away on their scaly wings. Every time the message was the same.
They say they cannot see the one you seek.
‘Perhaps he’s hiding himself with the Power of Seeming,’ said Calwyn.
‘Perhaps he’s sailing beside us right now,’ said Trout.
At once Mica snatched up an egg from the basket and hurled it at the place where Samis’s ship might be, but the tiny splash as it dropped into the empty waves did not wholly reassure her.
Darrow’s face wore the grim look all the time now, and once a whole day went by without his speaking a word to any of them.
They turned northward, and it was then that the rains began, softly at first, a silver curtain falling between Fledgewing and the shore, reminding Calwyn of the days in Antaris when the rains fell in a dull roar over the Dwellings. Then, the novices would sit by the hearth, weaving and spinning and listening as the priestesses told the long tales of Taris and the other gods, and the Ancient Ones and their adventures. There were no Tree People in those stories. There were no tales that told how they had been chased from their lands and driven deep into the wilderness, no stories of their hunger and cold, nor of their own silent dancing magic and the secrets of becoming. And what were the stories that the Spiridrelleen told of the Voiced Ones, the people who had driven them away? She did not like to think what horrors those tales would hold.
Day after day the rains fell, as the landscape of the shore changed before their eyes. The blanket of dark solid trees gradually gave way to a coverlet of more slender trees with pale trunks and silver-grey leaves. The land shimmered with delicate light, so that it was hard to see where the boundaries between the sea and the rain and the trees began and ended. During the day, the rain blurred the light of the sun, but this was also a time when all three moons were at their fullest, theThree Lanterns of the Goddess shining bright. Even at the depth of night, a silvery glow shone through the mists, and the lines between day and night were blurred too. The sound of the rain washing against the decks and sighing into the sea was like soft music, and droplets of water clung to the ropes and the sails like diamonds.
On they sailed through this indistinct world of blues and greens and silvers. Calwyn gave up all tasks on the ship, and stood unmoving at her place in the bow, barely eating or drinking, rarely sleeping, consumed by the faint steady call of the place that waited just beyond the horizon: the abandoned city of the Ancient Ones, the heart of all magic, the breath behind every song. Her serious dark eyes were always fixed at some place in the mists beyond the dipping of the prow, but it seemed to the others that she was listening, rather than watching.
At last, at a time that could have been early morning or silver dusk, she heard what she had been waiting for. She turned her head. ‘Mica, still the ship.’
Obediently, Mica broke off her song. The sails drooped; there was a sudden silence, but for the lapping of the sea and the ever-present murmur of the rain.
‘What is it?’ said Darrow.
Halasaa’s quiet words sounded in their minds. This is the place.
Calwyn stood with her hands gripping the rail, and as the mists thinned, the others saw a wide cove spreading before them. And there was Samis’s ship, his Gellanese g
alley, the long rows of oars stilled and silent, the single square sail furled against the crossmast. Trout groaned; they all felt the same sickening despair. Tonno took up the looking-tube. ‘No one there that I can see,’ he said, in a voice more subdued than usual.
‘He’s not on the ship,’ said Calwyn, with certainty. Since she had met Halasaa, she had become aware of a flickering sense she hadn’t recognised before, a sense of the presence of life. It was neither seeing nor hearing, but some other ability that had lain long dormant inside her. It was like being able to close her eyes and still see the imprint of a candle flame, flickering against the dark. Now she could turn her mind toward Samis’s long ship and know in an instant that it was empty. She was even, very faintly, aware of someone, Samis himself, enclosed in the expanse of shimmering forest on the shore.
‘If he has gone ashore,’ said Darrow, ‘we should follow him.’
Tonno and Darrow took the oars of the dinghy, and the little boat slid through the mist. When the water became too shallow for rowing, Trout took the rope and waded the last few steps onto the pebbly beach. Calwyn was the last ashore, and stumbled as she left the boat. Mica steadied her.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes, but –’ Calwyn looked around at the slim trees that stood like a crowd of silent witnesses all around them. ‘There’s something about this place, a doomed feeling.’
There was a great slaughter between the Tree People and the Voiced Ones here, all around the Lost City. Halasaa’s face was taut with sadness. The land remembers.
Calwyn closed her eyes, and for a moment it was as though she could hear the cries that had rung through the trees on that day so long ago, and the clash and whistle of weapons, and see the terrified faces of the fleeing people, and the stain of blood spreading slowly, slowly, a dark tide across the land, tinting the pale pebbles of the beach with scarlet, the blue-green sea soaked with red. So many bodies, so many, the land heaped with the dead and dying, and the stench of killing everywhere. She took a sharp, sobbing breath.
The Singer of All Songs Page 21