She no longer believed she had caused the tumour, but she felt instinctively that she and Ember were truly bound together, even in this way. She pictured her inability to take hold of life or understand where she fitted into it, as a grey emptiness; a reverse image of Ember’s tumour. Her lack of music was a negative imprint of Ember’s abilities. If Ember died, Glynn was convinced that she would die too. If Ember could be saved, then she would be saved.
Now, for no reason she could understand, she had been severed from Ember and transported somehow to this dangerous planet. Even in this their lives took parallel courses, for Ember had been left alone thousands of kilometres from their home on earth. If she were to suffer one of her attacks, no one on the island would have any idea what to do. They might not even think to look for the pills. They were both in danger.
Which brought Glynn abruptly to the simple conclusion that she must find a way back to her own world.
Oddly, this steadied her, for it was a definite goal, no matter how impossible it might seem. In any case, the impossible demonstrably could happen. Who would have imagined her swimming from one world into another? The thing was to concentrate on getting back now. One step at a time, she thought.
The longest journey begins with one step …
Wind had said that to her on the very first night they met, after he had shown her the martial-arts dance called kata, and she had said she could not learn something so gracefully complicated.
So what was the first step? Her father had always said you were halfway to a solution once you had identified the problem and accepted it. Therefore the first step was to accept the current situation no matter how crazy it seemed.
I am Somewhere Else, Glynn told herself firmly. I am on another world and I have to get back home.
The next thing was obviously to find out as much as she could about this world, partly for her own survival and also in the hope of discovering how she had got here. An instinct of caution advised her against telling the truth about what had happened to her. She had no way of knowing how an alien would be received. There was more than enough internal strife, by the sound of things. They might chop her head off, or burn her at the stake, if they knew the truth.
Better to keep her ears and eyes open and her head down while she had an excuse for silence, and concentrate on learning as much as she could that way. If Argon white cloak was correct in his diagnosis, her voice would not be long in returning, and when she could speak, she would be able to use his diagnosis about mental confusion to cover any mistakes. Unfortunately she looked like one of these myrmidon spear maids who seemed to be so unpopular, but that would simply have to be endured for the moment. If need be, she could do as Solen had suggested and pretend to be a Fomhikan with memory problems.
She couldn’t help thinking rather wildly of the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She had spent a lot of time as a little kid trying to find the wardrobe that would get her into Narnia, and now she had gone and done the next best thing.
What I need now is Aslan, she thought.
By the time Solen came back to help her up on deck, she was composed and disposed to be attentive. She decided she had been mistaken in thinking the fleshy, languid young man resembled Wind, and dismissed the matter from her mind.
Having accepted she was Somewhere Else, her senses were free to notice the subtle differences between this world and her own. The characteristic salty tang of the sea had been replaced by a sharper pungency that reminded her of crushed lemon peel. The air was richer, too, as if over-oxygenated.
I’m alive, Glynn thought, breathing deeply. Though, truly, that was no surprise. There had been so much death around her in one form or another that she sometimes felt death was a plague to which she alone was mysteriously immune. More often, though, she had a sneaking feeling that death had not thought her worth taking, and would not take her except when it took her twin.
Immortality through insignificance?
Wind’s words again. Strange that his teasing should be so clear in her memory after she had tried so hard to forget him. The shock of changing worlds must have shaken some of her repressed memories to the surface.
On deck she gazed around at the sea stretched out on all sides, glimmering in the sunlight. Or would it be the Kalinda-light? If not for the sun she might have been in her own world. Solen brought a small wooden bench for her to sit on, and lashed it at the base of the biggest of the vessel’s three masts, then excused himself, saying with a flap of his hand that he had preparations to make for their arrival.
Probably has to powder his nose, Glynn thought. It was hard to believe he had jumped into the sea and saved her life.
She settled herself and drew the blanket close to keep out the prying fingers of the wind. The ship itself was not unlike an old-fashioned pirate ship. The most obvious differences in design were the lack of rigging and sail around the three high, ornately carved masts running along the centre of the vessel. Clearly they were ornamental, but she had no idea what was propelling the ship through the water. There was no engine sound, and the ship was travelling faster than any current would move them.
Some of the crew were huddled around a small platform fixed to the deck towards the prow. Their attention was divided between the bearded shipmaster, Carick, who was standing balanced on top of the platform, and the sea. The open water, Glynn corrected herself, forcing herself to think in the unfamiliar terms with the same dogged determination that had enabled her to master Greek using library language tapes.
There was neither lever nor wheel visible on the platform; nonetheless, Glynn was certain that the older man was directing the course of the boat from there. She was so intent on trying to figure out how, that she did not hear the approach of boots.
‘You are recovered?’
Glynn looked up into the sombre features of the white-cloaked Argon. Remembering his hands on her breasts, she felt the blood surge in her cheeks, but she kept her expression still, merely pointing to her throat and shaking her head.
‘Your voice will return as did your ability to move,’ he said indifferently. ‘Are you a myrmidon, girl? You do not need a voice to tell me if you are. A nod will serve.’
Glynn hesitated, but having made up her mind to play dumb in all senses of the word, she mimicked incomprehension.
Argon turned and walked away without saying another word, leaving her to wonder what he would have done if she had said she was. Would he have offered to convince Carick to bring her to Fomhika? Fomhika sounded a less intimidating destination than Acantha, but she would not relish having to spend additional time aboard the ship with Argon white cloak or soulweaver or whatever he was called. Bitterness ran deep as a taproot in him, seeming to rise from his avowed hatred of Darkfall:
‘No one has seen the misty isle as I have …’
His feelings about Darkfall ought to have allied him with Solen’s chieftain but, instead, he and his half-brother were enemies. Irrelevantly, it came to Glynn that another of the rivers of the underworld was the Styx – the river of hate and death.
Glynn noticed the girl, Aris, watching her, and on impulse beckoned.
‘I am glad to see you are better,’ the girl offered shyly, coming nearer. ‘It is a pity Argon will not divine who you are so that you need not go off at Acantha.’
Glynn made a gesture of helplessness. She did not like Argon, but how was the man supposed to guess where she came from?
The healer paced by them at that moment, and Aris’s eyes followed him. ‘He is nothing like I imagined,’ she murmured confidingly. ‘I thought of him as a romantic hero for following his love halfway round the world, and then being exiled because of her. But he is just a bad-tempered old man with a sour face. He ought to be grateful to you since it is only because of you that he has passage to Fomhika. Why does he travel after all this time, anyway, I wonder? Mark me, something is going on if Argon chooses to re-enter the world. Perhaps he has woven something.’
Wo
ven? Glynn thought, all at sea in more ways than one.
Aris’s eyes were suddenly turned to her, avid with curiosity. ‘You are too young to remember when Argon lived on Myrmidor, I suppose?’
Glynn lifted her shoulders ambiguously, thinking what a useful thing a shrug was when you didn’t want to say yes or no. Clearly the islands of Myrmidor and Darkfall were near one another, given their alliance. Possibly Argon had been exiled from them for some misdeed. No. Aris had just said he had gone halfway round the world and had then been exiled for love.
Glynn dismissed these questions. She must get hold of some sort of map so that she could get a feel for the layout of this world. So far it seemed to consist of a few islands in a vast expanse of water. If that was all there was of it, she would not have too much trouble learning her way around.
Aris was continuing her own train of thought. ‘No, of course you do not remember. That would have been years before you were even born. One forgets it was all such a long time ago. In stories the heroes and heroines are always young. I pity Argon, though he would not thank me for it. Truly the blackwind of Draakar blows with him. I hope he brings no strife to the soulweavers. Shenavyre knows, they have trouble enough …’
‘Aris!’ Carick barked, making both girls jump. ‘You know nothing about this girl, shipdaughter, yet you open your mind to her as if she were a sister. Have a care. This one may be a myrmidon as that indolent fool, Solen, thinks, but she could as easily be a spy for the Draaka or one of the Shadowman’s people. Now get back to your work.’
He turned on his heel without even looking at Glynn. Aris rose, sheepish and red-faced. She looked through downcast lashes. ‘I am sorry. I must go.’
A loud pounding noise filled the air.
Glynn froze, hoping it didn’t mean the boat was sinking. She’d had enough of water to last a lifetime.
‘Acantha,’ Aris said.
4
All the world abounded with the Song of Making
and the Song quickened, for it desired to make life.
Firstmade and most perfect was the Unykorn; silver-white,
four-legged
and horned in pearl, it wove among the stars
casting its image into many Worlds …
Most lovely of all its features were its eyes
for they burned with the brightness of its soul …
LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN
Glynn gazed incredulously at Acantha island.
What had been, at a distant sighting, a mere black smudge against the horizon, was, close up, an enormous jagged monolith rising up out of the sea, presenting sheer stony cliffs on all sides. It was impossible to see what the surface was like because it lay at least a hundred metres above sea level. There seemed no way even to approach the island, as lethal stone spikes rose up from the ocean floor all around it, forming an impassable shoal just visible beneath the water.
How on earth were they supposed to get onto the island?
Glynn turned to Solen in time to see him throw off his cape revealing a shoulder harness which she had taken for a leather backpack. At his feet was a long narrow parcel. He knelt and unfolded it, then deftly reconstructed struts and poles and sheets of leather into what looked like an oddly shaped canvas stretcher from which hung complex webbing. At a signal, Aris and another of Carick’s crew lifted the whole thing and hooked it onto the shoulder harness, leaving the leather loops free. Solen threaded some of these onto his arms, belting the contraption around his thickened waist. He lifted both arms out and up in a graceful arc and Glynn stifled a gasp to see the unwieldy mass on his back open out into a small hang-glider structure.
She looked up at Acantha.
Surely he was not going to try hang-gliding to the island? There was nowhere to land. Nowhere but the surface, and there was no chance of him hang-gliding up there. The wind, though strong, would hardly be strong enough to lift her off the deck of the ship, let alone carry someone of Solen’s height and weight up to the island. The whole point of a hang-glider, surely, was to glide from a height, not up to one.
Solen had lowered his arms and was now using the additional straps to tie a number of bags and parcels flat against his body. This done, he straightened and without warning began to rise smoothly into the air!
Hovering just above the ship’s mast, he spread his arms slowly as he had done moments earlier on deck. This time when the structure unfolded, it swelled with the wind, and Solen was swept towards the sheer Acanthan cliffs. He angled himself so that he rose in a slow gradient, at the last minute banking hard against an updraught to rise steeply to the surface of the island.
A tiny stick figure now, he landed.
No one else on deck seemed more than mildly interested in what was happening, which meant there was nothing unusual in being able to levitate. What if all the people on this world could levitate? Maybe they would expect her to do the same thing! She would have to pretend she was too weak. Or maybe she could intimate that she had forgotten how.
‘Do not look so wretched, girl,’ said Carick. ‘What is a short windwalk to a girl who survived a dip in the open water? And for all his faults Solen is very skilled.’
Glynn swallowed hard, not knowing whether to be relieved or more afraid. Solen was going to carry her to the island! She watched him return, spiralling down and coming lightly and elegantly to land on the deck. There was no doubt he knew what he was about, but that did not lessen her fear. Stalling, she turned to grasp Carick’s hand warmly, fighting inwardly for calmness.
‘Well now, girl,’ the shipmaster said, looking somewhat abashed. ‘There is no need for thanks. I did my duty, is all. Solen will look after you now. You are his responsibility.’ His eyes went past her to Solen, sternly. ‘You remember your honour, lad.’
‘Honour?’ Solen said sardonically and Carick shifted uncomfortably on his feet. The Acanthan transferred his purple gaze to Glynn. ‘Are you ready?’ He sounded as if he were asking her to pass the salt.
She nodded, swallowing hard, and hoped the faults to which the crew member referred did not include homicidal tendencies. She was all too conscious that she had delayed Solen’s journey, and he clearly did not relish having to take her with him onto Acantha. What if he meant to drop her from a great height and pretend it was an accident? On the other hand, what choice did she have but to trust him? Despite his talk of honour, Carick would not let her remain on board without money, and Argon had not even bothered to stay above deck to see her depart. At least Solen had not refused to take her with him.
He stepped close to her and dropped to one knee like a man in an old movie proposing. Glynn felt herself redden as he busied himself about her body, fastening straps beneath her arms and around her waist and legs. His expression was disinterested as he put his arms around her at last, pulling her close and finally tying leather straps to matching straps on his own harnessing that bound them close in a parody of intimacy.
At least he would not be able to drop her easily, Glynn told herself. She avoided his direct gaze politely, but Solen appeared to have no qualms and stared rudely straight at her. Amusement showed in his eyes for a moment and she felt her temper stir at the thought that he was laughing at her.
She resolved to be like a stiff board against him, but when the deck fell away suddenly from under her feet a moment later, she flung her arms around his middle and held on for dear life.
‘Farewell,’ Aris cried from below. Glynn was too petrified to wave or look back. As they rose, the sound of the sea seemed to increase in volume. Her heart lurched at the loud creaking noise Solen made unfolding his wings in the air.
‘Do not be afraid. I will not let you fall,’ he murmured.
Oddly, Glynn was reassured by his serious tone, and she relaxed fractionally. Thus softened she became aware that his bulky body was hard and unyielding muscle. She had expected him to be soft and flabby as his manner.
Wind filled the canvas structure and they were flying parallel to the sea, aimed
at the Acanthan cliffs. Glynn stretched her neck to look ahead and her heart nearly leaped out of her chest, for they were running at the cliffs so fast they must surely be smashed against the rocky outcrops. But at the last second Solen angled his wings and they soared straight up.
Glynn’s stomach seemed to be forced down onto her bladder so hard she was afraid she might wet herself.
Then the wonder of it struck her. She was flying!
Her fear disappeared in a wave of exaltation that tilted her face to Kalinda. She listened to the roar of the wind rushing past her ears and the thunderous battering of the waves at the foot of the cliffs. The sight of the strange sun above filled her with amazement and wonder. I really am in another world, she thought with a feeling of delight. Me. Unimportant plain Glynn Flanders.
Her neck hurt and she lowered her head only to find herself staring into Solen’s face again. His lips curved into a genuine grin of complicity that went all the way to his eyes and made him look younger. Glynn was struck again by his elusive resemblance to her dead friend, but when she tried to think of Wind, she found his face curiously difficult to picture.
A cross-draught blew her long hair into Solen’s face and around his shoulders as they rose to cliff height. One bright strand slid along his high cheekbone and his smile faded.
Darkfall Page 4