The Tenth Power

by Kate Constable

  ‘All Marna’s knowledge – lost when she died – could have been saved,’ said Calwyn slowly. ‘The Power of Signs shouldn’t be secret. Everyone should learn to read and write the Signs, so no more knowledge is lost. The chantments – we must write down the chantments – ’ A thought struck her. ‘Anyone who can read will be able to learn the chantments for themselves.They won’t have to come to Ravamey to be taught! The chantments will spread all over Tremaris, just as we’ve always dreamed.’

  ‘Not only the chantments.’ Darrow coughed again, and his voice was hoarse as he fought to speak. ‘Songs and stories, histories, messages, instructions…The recipe for Tonno’s honey potion…’

  ‘Tonno won’t like that,’ said Calwyn wryly. She tried to imagine how the world might be different. ‘You could write a message to Heben and Fenn in Merithuros,’ she said. ‘You could send it with any trader, you wouldn’t have to rely on Tonno or Trout or someone else you trusted to remember what you said.’

  ‘Yes,’ Darrow whispered. His eyes were almost closed. ‘Yes. I will do that. There are things I must tell them, before … ’

  You are not going to die! Calwyn said fiercely in mind-speech. Do you hear me?

  But Darrow had drifted into sleep. Calwyn stayed by his bed, breathing with the rise and fall of his breath. From the window she could see the stone walls of the vegetable gardens. Gilly and Mica had worked tirelessly, Lia said, to keep them clear from snow, coaxing new growth from the frozen ground. Mica had never given up. ‘A little longer,’ Lia said. ‘And they might have succeeded.’ But now the snow had drifted back again, nipping the fragile shoots as soon as they uncurled from the soil.

  Calwyn stood there, staring, then she wandered away, past the rooms where the others with snow-sickness lay, hardly aware of where her feet were taking her.

  After a time, she found herself in the gallery of the great hall, watching the dancing practice below. The sisters rocked back and forth, eyes closed, their hands dangling forgotten by their sides, or jerking awkwardly in the air. Someone twirled on the spot and almost knocked over her neighbour, and both of them collapsed in giggles.

  Calwyn sank back in despair. It was hopeless.The chanters could not dance, the dancers could not sing. She herself was among the better dancers, but she knew that even she was clumsy, compared with Briaali and the Tree People.

  She caught sight of Gilly, spinning wildly below. Her round face was flushed, and her yellow tunic billowed round her knees. Calwyn had seen her, sobbing and sniffling for Mica, with her apron over her head. Calwyn felt a surge of sudden rage. What right did Gilly have to mourn for Mica? She’d only known her two turns of the moons. That should have been Mica down there, not clumsy Gilly: Mica could have done this! Calwyn remembered how she had pirouetted on the ice in her fur cap.Why couldn’t it have been Gilly who stood in the way of that spear? Mica could sing and dance, she was beautiful and brave and loyal …

  Calwyn covered her eyes with her hands, but even now she could not weep.

  Down below, the dancing petered out. Briaali called for attention; everyone stood fidgeting while she demonstrated a rapid, shimmying movement of the legs. Calwyn watched dully as the sisters tried to copy her. No one, not even Keela, could do it properly. It was three days before the moons became full; she should have been excited, thrilling with hope. But instead she felt nothing but dreary despair.

  On her way downstairs she ran into Trout. His eyes were red. ‘Why aren’t you in there, dancing?’ he asked.

  ‘Why aren’t you?’ Calwyn felt a kind of envy for his tears.

  Trout shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. I’d only make a fool of myself. I never was much of a dancer. If Mica were here – ’

  ‘If Mica were here, she’d want you to help.’ She spoke more sharply than she’d intended; Trout winced as if she’d slapped him. Calwyn felt that everything she did was coming out wrong.

  ‘All right, all right,’ mumbled Trout. ‘I’ll go in.’ He turned away.

  ‘Trout, wait. Please.’ Calwyn held out her hand and, after a moment, Trout grasped it, crushing her fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calwyn. I can’t – ’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t speak.Words are no good.’

  Trout grimaced, trying not to weep, then abruptly he threw his arms around her in a fierce embrace. For a long time he clung to her, while Calwyn held him tight and pressed her face into his shoulder. But still she couldn’t cry.

  CALWYN’S NUMB HOPELESSNESS persisted until the very evening of the great Dance. As Ursca had predicted, the long days among the wounded had left her very tired. ‘It’s lucky that Halasaa healed your broken back when he first came here,’ she said to Lia. ‘We might not have had a chance to help you, this time.’

  ‘I could have waited,’ said Lia. ‘I was in no pain.’ She smiled, and touched Calwyn’s hand. ‘But I am glad indeed that I will be able to dance in the ritual that heals the world.’

  As Calwyn’s doubts deepened, everyone else had become more confident. In the last day or two, the Dwellings had buzzed with excitement. Calwyn wished she could share Lia’s certainty, but to her the Dance seemed nothing but folly. She had tried to sleep that afternoon, but without success, and her feet dragged as she walked the path to the sacred valley. If this didn’t work, what would they do?

  The sisters, the Tree People and the villagers filed down into the valley, exchanging smiles and nods, touching one another on the shoulder. One of the novices earnestly twisted her hands in the air, showing a movement to a village woman. As was their custom when preparing for a ceremony, the priestesses did not speak; the only noise was the shuffle of feet and the crack of twigs underfoot.They carried no torches. All the moons were full, and the valley overflowed with light like a silver bowl. The frozen pool and the column of the waterfall were like black glass, and the blazetree, stripped of leaves, thrust its bare branches into the sky.

  Tonno and one of the village lads had carried Darrow to the valley in Lia’s wheeled chair, and Calwyn heard him whisper his thanks. His voice was fading, as Marna’s had faded before the end; Calwyn bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood.

  Calwyn and Lia stood beside Darrow, beneath the blaze-tree, watching as the silent dancers came down into the valley: two dozen villagers, half a hundred priestesses, and twice as many Tree People. In the end, almost all the warriors had decided to join the dance. But not Sibril; he was up in the Dwellings, nursing his wounds alone.

  Once everyone had crowded into the clearing between the frozen pool and the blazetree, Lia gave a signal. Without speaking, everyone stepped back to form a circle around the edge of the clearing, where half a dozen huge mounds of firewood had been laid at intervals. The ground within the circle was bare and frozen hard, trampled flat by generations of priestesses who had held their rituals there.

  Calwyn moved into the centre of the ring. In the night’s first sound of chantment, she sang out a song of fire in her clear, strong voice. All the bonfires blazed up together, and the black ice of the pool reflected the dancing flames.

  Musicians were spread through the crowd, Tree People, Daughters of Taris and villagers mixed together, holding drums and pipes and chimes. Tonno stood ready, with a flute to his lips. ‘I played a fair whistle when I was a boy,’ he’d told Calwyn. ‘Surprised you there, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘Just because I’m no singer doesn’t mean I can’t make music.’

  Now that the moment was finally here, Calwyn felt small, and scared, and foolish. When she’d flown above the battlefield, she was strong and brave, conscious of her own power.That sense of effortless control had gone. Every face in the grove was turned to her. It was because of her that they were all here, waiting to begin a performance that might be nothing but a senseless charade. Calwyn held a drum in one hand, and suddenly she felt unsure what to do with it. But as she looked around the circle, she sensed no such uncertainty among the waiting dancers.They were all tense as harp-strings, eager to be plucked.

  The three moons sailed a
bove the trees. Clouds scudded across the sky, and the silver light flickered as it mingled with the golden light of the fires. Calwyn breathed deep; the cold air burned her throat. Briaali looked at her impatiently. Now, daughter!

  Calwyn raised her hand and brought it down on the drum, and a deep boom echoed out into the night. The noise startled her, and the palm of her hand stung. She brought her hand down on the drum again, and again, until the beat rang out, strong and sure as her own heartbeat. The drummers of the Tree People struck up a softer, more complicated rhythm.

  Halasaa stamped his foot, once, twice, in time with Calwyn’s drum, and slowly began to circle the clearing, within the ring of watchers, his knees bent, his bright eyes shining. He danced the dance of mourning, the celebration of death which brought life, and the ground trembled beneath his stamping feet. Calwyn felt the tension in the waiting dancers wind even tighter, as if Halasaa wound them on a spindle as he turned.

  The chimes and flutes wove a gentle thread of sound through the drum beats, and now Briaali began to dance. Calwyn realised she was beating the drum slightly faster, and her heart was beating faster too. No one who saw Briaali would have thought she was an old woman; she moved with the lithe grace of a young girl. The sisters and the village women began to clap their hands, and sprang into the circle. Suddenly the clearing was filled with joyful, swaying, graceful women, calling up the life in the soil through their feet, up through their own life-giving bodies, shimmering out from their fingertips as they danced.

  At the edge of the circle, the village men and the men of the Spiridrelleen stamped out their own insistent rhythm with bare feet on the frozen ground. One by one, they whirled into the clearing with their arms outstretched, the men and the women dancing together.

  Calwyn stood at the centre of the circle with dancers spinning and swaying around her, the still point, the pivot of the dance. And now she began to sing.This was the day when the sisters sang to strengthen the Wall of Ice. But the chantment that rose to Calwyn’s lips was the song of unmaking, the song that dissolved the ice. It was a song of opening, a chantment to melt down barriers and let in what had been shut out. The magic rose within her, warm and tingling as fire, and Calwyn felt the numbness in her heart thaw at last. The tears that had been frozen inside her spilled down her face, and she tasted them on her lips as she sang.

  One by one, the sisters joined Calwyn’s chantment, and the song and the music, the pipes and chimes and drums, all wove together into one seamless, intricate whole. Everyone was part of the dance now. Calwyn glimpsed Lia, singing strongly. Tonno’s foot tapped time as he played a simple, swooping melody. Gilly clapped her hands, her cheeks pink with exertion. With their heads flung back, sweat pouring down their faces, the dancers twirled and looped, weaving a pattern as complicated as the music.The clearing was filled with flying figures, but unlike the days of practice in the great hall, no two ever collided, or even brushed each other’s fingertips.

  The bonfires crackled and leapt, and shadows flickered over the dancers, whose movements echoed the flames.There was the gleam of Keela’s golden hair, the flash of her dainty feet, the sound of her laughter threading through the music.There was Darrow’s face, pale in the shadows. He was leaning forward, his grey-green eyes fixed eagerly on the dancers, on Calwyn herself. Her palm struck the drum, but she no longer felt the sting on her hand. She was singing, her voice lost among many voices; she was dancing, her body moving unconsciously with the sway of the music; she wept, and she was laughing.

  All around the clearing were watchers, who had fallen out of the dance to catch their breath. But they were clapping, or playing drums or chimes. Their lips moved as they sang or shouted encouragement, they nodded and swayed to the lilt of chantment. Suddenly, Calwyn understood that this watching and listening was just as important, was just as much a part of the dance, as the movement of the dancers and the singing of the chanters.

  Beyond the circle of the fires, the moonlit trees whispered in the breeze, as if the woods joined the dance.With a rush of elation, Calwyn knew that the life-blood of the land, frozen for so long, was stirring at last, called by the magic of the dance. From below the thick ice that imprisoned the waterfall, a deep, muffled murmur blended with the sound of chantment, as the living water wakened from its long sleep.

  Someone plucked the drum from Calwyn’s hands, and she was free to thread her way through the pattern of the dance. The smell of smoke and sweat filled her nostrils, and behind it the cold, fresh smell of the woods and the ice. Familiar faces dipped and blurred away:Trout, Gilly,Tonno, Ursca, Halasaa. Was that Mica whirling by, her head flung back, her golden eyes glowing? Mica, I’m sorry! cried Calwyn in mind-speech. Tears streamed down her face as the music spun faster and faster. Keela came up and grabbed both her hands, and the two young women danced together. Keela pointed her toes, and kicked high in the air, and Calwyn copied her, laughing through her chantment. Keela’s face was alight with joy, her hair flying free in a golden cloud, and for an instant the two young women clasped each other close, thudding heart pressed to thudding heart, before Keela whirled away.

  But now the music, as if at some silent command, began to slow; the wild rhythm calmed. Drums and chimes were abandoned as everyone surged into the middle of the clearing. The fires had died down and the embers glowed deep red.The dancers circled slowly, hands linked; the priestesses still sang the chantment of unmaking, but there was no other music.

  Calwyn returned to the centre of the circle, slowly spinning with her arms outstretched. As she looked from face to face, she read every emotion from rapture to exhaustion to inexpressible grief.Tears gleamed in the eyes of many dancers. Feet dragged, hair hung limp, clothes were in disarray, and the circle revolved more and more slowly.

  There was a moment at the end of every ritual when the chantment ceased. Calwyn found herself gathering the attention of the singers like threads in her hand. The end of the chantment was near; they would follow her lead. Calwyn brought them to the last phrase, the last note trembling in the air. And there was silence.

  Into that waiting silence, like a wave building, the magic surged to its crest. Hand to hand, power flowed around the ring. It came from the ground beneath them, warmed by the tread of their feet, and from the ice-cold air they gasped into their lungs. Chanters and those without the gift of chantment, Tree People andVoiced Ones, all were links in a great chain of living magic that strengthened with every step. As the slow circle turned, the power heightened, spiralling in a great coil. This was the axis around which the whole of Tremaris pivoted, the solemn wheeling of the whole world.

  Like warmth spreading from a white-hot fire, the healing magic spread across the valley. It passed effortlessly through the Wall of Ice, and melted it away. It rippled across the forests and the mountains and down across the plains, wider and wider with every turn of that inner wheel of dancers. Calwyn, the Singer of all Songs, was the centre of the wheel. And it was her hand that had set it turning.

  Calwyn felt flooded with light, just as when she’d emerged from the Knot of theWaters. All her tiredness vanished. She didn’t want to stop; she wanted to dance until morning. Then she saw the faint pale sky behind the trees. It was morning! And there was a sound she had not heard for a long time: the clamour of birdsong. They had danced all through the night.

  With the coming of dawn, the force that had connected the dancers diminished, and released them. Only then, with a pang, Calwyn remembered Darrow. She craned to where he had sat, in the blazetree’s shadow. There was Lia’s chair, but it was empty. Darrow was gone.

  ‘Calwyn!’

  She whirled around. Darrow broke free from the circle of dancers and ran across the clearing toward her. His head was held high, his eyes sparkled. He had shouted, clear and glad, and he was running, running… Calwyn cried out.With one leap she was in his arms, and he buried his face in the dark hollow between her throat and her black hair.

  Once broken, the circle dissolved quickly. People flung
themselves down by the remains of the fires. Others embraced, and kissed, and sobbed in each other’s arms. Halasaa had slipped away between the trees. Someone fetched kettles from the Dwellings and began to brew roseberry-leaf tea over the coals. Keela sat beside Tonno, with her head on his shoulder. Trout was almost asleep, propped against a tree-trunk. And one by one, greeted with cries of joy, the priestesses who had been too ill with snow-sickness to leave their beds were stumbling, skipping down into the valley, cured as Darrow had been cured by the great healing magic.

  Darrow released himself from Calwyn’s arms, and said quietly, ‘Is there a place where we could be alone?’

  Calwyn hesitated. She could sense Briaali’s impatient black eyes on her back. She took his hand. ‘Come with me.’

  She led him away from the clearing, around the rim of the black pool, and up the slope, between the bare trees. Her body thrummed with the awareness of magic; the whole world hummed with chantment. Below them in the little valley was a quiet buzz of conversation, the crackle of the fires, the whistle of a boiling kettle, the first trickle of falling water.

  She led him to a secret place, a place she had discovered as a child. The branches of the bower-tree drooped down, and Calwyn and Darrow crawled through them into a dry, sheltered space. There was no frost beneath the tree, and the ground was carpeted with soft moss. The two sat close together under the arching roof of the bower-branches. Darrow began to say something, but Calwyn touched a finger to his lips, and he kissed it. Gently he turned up her palm, and traced some signs on it with his fingertip. Laughter trembled on her lips, and then they were kissing hungrily, as if they had never kissed before.

  Darrow reached up and tugged at the carved comb she wore. She shook her long hair free, and it shimmered like a dark opal, with the same lights they’d seen inside the sacred caverns. Darrow ran his fingers through the silken curtain as he drew her down beside him, and her hair fell around them like a waterfall.