The Tenth Power

by Kate Constable

  Calwyn put down her bowl, remembering the catch in Lia’s voice when she mentioned Rina’s name.

  Gilly looked directly at Calwyn. ‘They’ve been waiting for you, you know. Praying to the Goddess, to send you back in time.’

  ‘I don’t – I don’t know what I can do,’ faltered Calwyn.

  She couldn’t help feeling that it was all so unfair. She had travelled back to Antaris, hurt and tired and hoping to be cared for, but instead everyone expected her to take on these enormous problems, problems that she was totally unequipped to solve.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ said Mica, with a squeeze of Gilly’s arm. ‘We’ll help you somehow, won’t we, Cal? P’raps Trout can build a machine, and we’ll bundle that Tamen up like a bale of hay!’

  Gilly giggled. ‘I would like to see that! And the goats, nibbling on her hair.’

  After Gilly had gone, Mica said decidedly, ‘Well, she’s all right, anyhow.’

  Trout smiled. ‘It’s your charm, Mica. You are irresistible, you know.’

  Mica snorted, and threw a twist of straw at his head. ‘Any of that mash left? Reckon I could eat some now.’

  CALWYN WAS WOKEN by someone whispering her name. She started up. By the golden glow of the Clarion, she saw Marna staring at her, flushed and wild-eyed.

  Calwyn hurried to her side. ‘Lady Mother, are you all right, are you in pain?’

  Marna shook her head. ‘No time to waste. Must teach you …the shadow chantments.’

  ‘Is that the Tenth Power, Lady Mother?’

  ‘No, no. This must come first…the hidden face of the Goddess. Taris is the Mother of death and pain, as well as ice and cold.This is dark magic, child. But no High Priestess can leave this knowledge unlearned. You must be armed against – against evil.’ Marna closed her eyes, and for a moment Calwyn saw the bones of her skull just beneath her skin. ‘Dark chantments that can kill in a dozen different ways, chantments to cause illness…to paralyse, and to bring pain… put someone into a sleep so deep that only another chantment will wake them.’

  ‘Lady Mother, I can’t – I can’t learn these chantments,’ stammered Calwyn.

  ‘I understand, child. I felt the same, when my turn came. But without the dark, there can be no light. And dark defeats dark. – There are no shadows at moondark.’ Marna looked directly at her, and said clearly, ‘I let the sorcerer live. I lacked the courage to act. Do not make the same mistake.’

  ‘Lady Mother,’ whispered Calwyn, her eyes downcast.

  ‘Listen. I must teach you these chantments piece by piece, so their power is not released.’

  Calwyn was filled with misgivings.This was knowledge that should only be passed from the High Priestess to her successor; without the power of chantment, Calwyn could never fill that role. In any case, it was knowledge that Calwyn did not want, a dark and dangerous power. But she listened as Marna sang the secret chantments, in a soft and quavering voice, section by section, never singing one complete chantment. Calwyn was used to learning things by heart, and she was able to repeat the fragments back to Marna after a single hearing.

  It was almost dawn before they finished their strange, murmuring duet. At last Marna leaned back against the wall of the loft. ‘It is done,’ she whispered. ‘I know you will remember. Don’t speak of this … to anyone.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Mother.’ Calwyn wished with all her heart that she could forget what she had just learned. The malevolent songs writhed and spiralled in her mind like a nest of snakes. The dark chantments were like, and unlike, the other chantments of ice-call; there was no joy in them. Even hearing them in fragments had sent chills down Calwyn’s spine, and when she sang what she had heard, her lips felt numb, as if she’d rubbed them with ice. She would never feel the magic rise as she sang the chantments complete, and for the first time since she’d lost her powers, Calwyn was almost glad of it. She whispered, ‘And the Tenth Power?’

  ‘Later,’ murmured Marna. Her eyes closed. ‘I must … rest.’

  Calwyn, too, was exhausted. She pulled a sleeping-fur over herself and fell asleep where she sat, close enough to Marna to feel the old woman’s breath on her cheek.

  GILLY DID NOT come next morning. The freeze had broken and it was snowing hard; it would be difficult to find an excuse to go outside.With three of them in the barn to see to Marna, it would be an unnecessary risk.

  Calwyn rested her aching head on her knees. The shadow chantments whispered in her mind, and so did other voices. Marna has always had great faith in you. Lia had faith in her too, and Gilly and Ursca, but she didn’t have the courage to tell them there was nothing she could do to help.

  Darrow had thought she might be healed in Antaris. He remembered Antaris as a peaceful place, filled with song and light and healing. But there would be none of that for her.

  ‘Cal!’ Mica called softly. ‘She’s awake.’

  Calwyn threw herself down by Marna’s side and clasped her soft, wrinkled hand between her own. ‘Lady Mother?’

  Marna murmured something, so faintly that Calwyn could only catch a few words here and there. ‘No time… the secrets …this is my punishment.’

  ‘No, Lady Mother!’ Calwyn spoke in a fierce whisper. ‘You always taught us that the Goddess doesn’t punish – ’ She stopped. Hadn’t she, in despair, wondered if her own loss was a punishment from Taris? But it was true: Marna had always taught them to know a loving Goddess, whose ways might be mysterious, but never cruel. Calwyn smoothed the thin, silky hair.

  Very slowly and shakily, Marna raised her other hand and touched the end of Calwyn’s long plait. ‘Don’t grieve, child… for what you have lost.’

  Calwyn blinked back tears. So Marna knew. How long had she known?

  The High Priestess’s lips moved. ‘You live in darkness now, but the darkness will end, as the night ends…and the winter turns to spring.What is broken…will be whole again.’

  Calwyn could not speak. Marna’s cool fingers rested in her own, reminding her of Halasaa’s healing touch. But not all hurts could be healed, and not all winters end in spring, Calwyn thought. Perhaps this winter would never end.

  ‘Lady Mother, please, tell me!’ she whispered. ‘What is the Tenth Power?’

  ‘Find theWheel.’ Marna’s voice was so faint that Calwyn had to put her ear almost to her lips. ‘Time for song…and time for silence. You must learn…to listen.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Mother.’

  ‘We sing, but we are also sung,’ whispered Marna. ‘Little daughter, the Goddess sings for me.’ Her blue eyes closed, and she sighed, as if she had laid down a heavy burden after a long journey.

  Calwyn rubbed Marna’s cool hand between her own. ‘Lady Mother? Please, tell me – ’ ‘Calwyn!’Ursca’s voice was sharp. ‘Stand back! It won’t help anyone if you catch the sickness, too.’

  Calwyn dropped Marna’s hand abruptly. Ursca’s cloak and hair were crusted with snow, and her face was pink with cold. She knelt on the floor and gently touched Marna’s face with her gloved hand. ‘Taris whispered it to me, that it would be today! The Goddess has taken her daughter.’

  Ursca folded Marna’s hands on her breast, and reverently touched her forehead, her throat, her heart. Even when Ursca unpinned her hair and began to croon the lament for the dead, Calwyn did not believe it.

  Mica touched her shoulder; her face was frightened. ‘Is she dead, Cal?’

  ‘She – she has gone to – ’ Calwyn’s voice choked in her throat. Wordlessly she turned, and Mica’s arms went around her. Calwyn clutched her tight and let her tears soak into Mica’s tunic, wishing that Darrow were there to hold her. Trout patted her awkwardly on the back.

  ‘No, no!’ Calwyn struggled free. ‘I must help sing.’

  With shaking hands, Calwyn unbound her own hair and shook it out so that it fell loose around her face. The low, mournful swell of the lament to the Goddess mingled with the doleful howling of the blizzard outside, as Ursca and Calwyn did honour to Marna. Then Ursca recited the prayer for t
he dead, her hands cupped before her. A troubled frown puckered her face, as if to say: this is not my task, this is one more thing that should not be.

  When the prayer was complete, Ursca covered Marna’s peaceful face with the sheet. ‘She was waiting for you, Calwyn. She held herself here until you returned, and she had said what must be said.’

  Calwyn dashed the tears from her eyes, and her voice wobbled in childish protest. ‘But she didn’t tell me everything! There wasn’t time. She was going to tell me about the Tenth Power, about theWheel – ’ Ursca held up a hand. ‘Ssh! I am not learned in the secret lore, these are not matters for my ears,’ she said severely. ‘Whatever our dear Lady Mother left unsaid, you must find out for yourself.’ The lines of exhaustion on her face were more deeply etched than ever. ‘Stand aside, dear,’ she said more gently. ‘I must wrap the body.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Nothing done properly, no oils, no shrouds! Our High Priestess to be laid to rest in a bedsheet!What has become of us?’

  ‘Let me help,’ begged Calwyn. ‘Please!’ She took a deep breath. If Marna had known, then Ursca should know too. ‘No harm can come to me. I – I am not a chanter any more. I lost my powers of magic half a year ago, in Merithuros.’

  Ursca stared at her, and put out a hand to steady herself. ‘Oh, my dear child,’ she said softly. ‘My poor dear child. The snow-sickness?’

  ‘No. Not that.’

  ‘That Merithuran’s work then, no doubt!’

  Calwyn smiled weakly. ‘No, Ursca. I tried a chantment that was greater than my strength. It wasn’t Samis’s fault. It was my own.’ As she spoke the words, she knew that they were true, and a small part of the bitter weight she carried lifted from her. ‘Please, Ursca. I’m not a priestess, or even a novice any more, but I loved Marna. Let me help you.’

  Ursca hesitated. Then she said, almost to herself, ‘Yes, it’s fitting you should tend her. If you’d stayed, you would have been the one to light her pyre and scatter the ashes beneath the blazetree.’

  Calwyn felt sick with fresh grief. Traditionally, it was the successor to a dead priestess who lit her pyre. Lia had said the same: that Marna had intended Calwyn to follow her as High Priestess. If Calwyn had stayed in Antaris, everything would have been different. After her initiation, Calwyn would have replaced Tamen as Guardian of theWall; Calwyn would have been governing Antaris now, notTamen. If Calwyn hadn’t run away with Darrow, there would have been no sacrifices to the Goddess, and Marna would have died in her own bed, surrounded by those who loved her. Perhaps she would never have caught the snow-sickness. Perhaps there would be no snow-sickness, if Darrow had not come.

  Calwyn put the thought from her mind. It was too late now for regrets.Tenderly, she and Ursca washed and dried the High Priestess’s body. Trout and Mica sat quietly in a corner of the loft, sensing that this moment was not for them to share.

  While Ursca dressed Marna’s body in the dark blue robes of the High Priestess, Calwyn combed out the thin, tangled hair and plaited it smooth. Then she fixed it with pins from her own hair, so that Marna looked regal again, as Calwyn remembered her. As she slid the last pin into place, she had never felt so lonely. Ursca wept as she worked, but Calwyn was too numb to cry.

  They wrapped the old woman’s shrunken body in a sheet, leaving only her peaceful, serene face exposed. After dark, Gilly would drag the body on her sturdy sledge to the village of Anary, where there were people who would help them. Marna would be buried with the common folk in the Anary graveyard.

  ‘That our High Priestess should lie there, not in the sacred valley where she belongs,’ mourned Ursca, then shook herself. ‘The Goddess’s light shines there as much as anywhere else within theWall, I suppose. And there are worse things to cry over, these days.’ She darted a look at Calwyn, who turned away.

  Ursca and Lia and the others who had hoped so much from her return would surely feel betrayed, now that her secret was revealed.With a heavy heart and aching eyes, Calwyn bid Ursca farewell, and went to sit with Trout and Mica.

  ‘You all right, Cal?’ Mica slipped an arm around her friend’s waist. ‘When my grandma died, I felt like someone ripped my heart out.’ Mica’s grandmother had been murdered by slave-traders; Calwyn was touched that the younger girl regarded her loss as equal to her own.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calwyn,’ said Trout awkwardly. ‘At least you spoke to her before she died.’

  ‘Yes.’ Calwyn hugged her knees and stared across the loft to where the white-wrapped body lay. ‘A little. But there was so much left unsaid, so much knowledge lost forever. She told me there’s a Tenth Power – can you imagine that? But now we’ll never learn its songs. I don’t even know what sort of magic it is, what it controls.We’ll never find out now.’

  ‘P’raps we’ll find out some other way,’ said Mica stoutly. ‘Can’t be a whole other power of chantment just gone. Everyone thought the Power of Beasts was lost, but you still knew it. And the Power of Fire was lost, only you found the Clarion, and saved it.’

  Trout coughed indignantly. ‘I found the Clarion!’

  Mica waved her hand. ‘Someone found it, that’s what I’m sayin. It weren’t really lost. And this power won’t be neither, you’ll see.’

  Calwyn frowned. ‘There was something else: a Wheel.’ ‘Marna said it’s an object of power, like the Clarion; she said it holds the answer to ending the long winter, and this sickness.We have to find it.’

  ‘An object of power. That isn’t much to go on,’ said Trout gloomily.

  ‘Wait. Marna did say – she said the Wheel is safe with your friends.’

  ‘Us?’ squeaked Mica. ‘We ain’t got it! If we had somethin else magic like the Clarion, we’d know it. You could feel the Clarion buzzin from the bottom of the sea!’

  ‘Darrow then?’ suggestedTrout. ‘Could Marna have given it to Darrow before you left Antaris?’

  ‘Don’t be a goose!’ exclaimed Mica. ‘He couldn’t have carried somethin magic around for two years without knowin it, any more’n we could!’

  ‘Then Marna must’ve been talking about your friends here in Antaris,’ said Trout.

  Calwyn was silent. She had never had many friends among the sisters.The older priestesses had kept their distance, and so had the other novices. Darrow was the first person she called a true friend; a lump came into her throat at the thought of him. She had spent her time at the top of the western tower, gazing across the forests, or else down in the orchard, with the bees.

  Marna had smiled, and her breath went zzzz.

  With a cry, Calwyn scrambled to her feet. ‘That’s it!That’s what she meant! Mica, I need you to come with me. I know where we’ll find theWheel.’

  four

  The Treasure of the Bees

  AT NIGHTFALL, THE snow-storm was raging as fiercely as ever. Mica peered through a chink in the wall. ‘Gilly ain’t comin through all this. There’s bits of ice big as your hand flyin round out there!’

  ‘Gilly is a priestess of ice-call,’ said Calwyn. ‘She’ll be able to sing a clear path.’

  ‘Here she comes!’ Trout ran to let down the ladder, and Gilly’s head emerged into the hayloft. She was out of breath and red-eyed; she stole one glance at Marna’s white-wrapped body, then turned quickly away, saying, ‘It’s wild out there! I cleared the snow, but the wind nearly blew me down!’

  ‘I could’ve kept the winds off,’ said Mica almost shyly.

  ‘That’s right, you’re a chanter of the winds.’ Gilly pushed back her hood and the two girls looked at each other for a moment. ‘We’d make a good team! Could you – would you come with me to Anary tonight?’

  ‘I need Mica tonight,’ said Calwyn abruptly. ‘She and I are going to the orchard.’

  ‘To the orchard ?Whatever for?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ snapped Calwyn. ‘It’s secret lore Marna told me before she died.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gilly’s eyes dropped. ‘Then I suppose you have to go. But be careful, Calwyn. If Tamen finds you, she’ll put y
ou in the Wall with the others. She wants to make an example of you. It was your disobedience that started everything going wrong, she says, and all this is the punishment of the Goddess.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, surely,’ said Trout.

  ‘It’s what Tamen believes that counts,’ said Gilly. ‘Even if she knew Calwyn couldn’t sing any more, it wouldn’t make any difference – ’ She stopped, and bit her lip. ‘Ursca told me. I’m so sorry, Calwyn. You were the strongest chanter of all of us.’

  Calwyn could not bear Gilly’s pitying look. She felt herself flush. ‘We must go.’ She turned away to fasten her cloak, and to hide the Clarion safely under a pile of straw. ‘We’ve wasted too much time already.’

  ‘I’ll help Gilly with the sled,’ said Trout. ‘I can’t sing the winds away, but I can help pull.’

  Gilly gave him a quick, grateful smile. ‘Thank you.’ She hesitated over the High Priestess’s silver-topped staff. ‘What should we do with this? It doesn’t seem right to leave it here, in the hay.’

  ‘I’m sureTamen would like to have it,’ said Calwyn bitterly, but Gilly shook her head.

  ‘She’s afraid to touch anything that belonged to Marna, in case she catches the snow-sickness.’

  ‘Well, leave it there,’ said Calwyn. ‘It’s safe enough for now.’

  They helped Gilly to carry Marna’s body down the ladder from the loft. Calwyn felt a pang of distress that they had to drag their beloved High Priestess about like a sack of apples. But, she reminded herself, this was not really Marna. Their Lady Mother had joined the great river that Halasaa spoke of, the First and greatest of the powers, the joyous flow of being that included the Goddess herself, and the spirit that animated every living thing. Marna was among the stars, and the whispering leaves, and in the sleeping soil that waited for the touch of spring.

  Mica and Calwyn lifted Marna’s body onto the sledge, and watched as Gilly and Trout disappeared into the whirling snow.