Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  Yet what choice did she have but to present herself at the door and beg shelter? As dusk deepened into twilight, the breeze had become icy. She had committed herself too far to withdraw.

  At that moment, the enormous haven door swung open, and two men, clad in grey tunics with the red suns embroidered on their chests, came out. There was no time to think of concealing herself, even if there had been somewhere to hide, because they saw her at once. The taller draakira beckoned.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I came to … to sell a darklin …’ Glynn stammered.

  The two exchanged an unreadable look and she noted identical long-bladed knives at their waists. Maybe they would decide to kill her and take the stone. She had been mad to come alone. She made up her mind to tell them she had friends camped nearby but, before she could speak, the taller draakira gestured for her to follow them inside. Crossing the threshold and noticing the thickness of the walls, Glynn felt the sweat of fear trickle down her spine.

  The door led into a large dim room with not so much as a rug or picture to relieve the monkish bareness. What did I expect? Glynn wondered. There were a number of doors leading from the room and the one they took led to a room containing rows of empty stone benches. In front of them was an enormous grey altar. The door they came through opened at the side of the altar, and there was another door on the other side, as well as a wide entrance at the back of the room.

  ‘This is the chapel where we offer prayer for the endurance of the Void wall,’ the draakira said, impersonal as a tour guide. ‘Wait here.’

  He and the other draakira departed, leaving Glynn to contemplate the grey stone altar and wonder what it was used for. After some time had passed, she heard footsteps. Two women in draakira tunics entered. The first was extraordinarily tall and wore a red cape around her shoulders. This was the same woman who had accompanied the Draaka to the wing hall, and who had taken her own place beside Nema. The second woman was short and rotund with untidy grey hair and a distracted air. She wore around her neck, rather incongruously, a small, pale animal pelt.

  ‘I am Prime draakira of the Acanthan haven of the Draaka,’ the tall woman announced. ‘Am I to understand that you have brought a darklin to sell?’

  Glynn nodded.

  ‘Why would a myrmidon bring a darklin here?’

  Uh-oh, Glynn thought. She had completely forgotten her appearance. No wonder the draakira outside had stared at her so oddly. Remembering what Hella had said about why she kept being taken for a myrmidon, she tried to make herself humble and timorous. ‘I am not a myrmidon, Lady.’

  ‘You will address me as Prime,’ the woman snapped.

  ‘I am sorry. Prime, I am not a myrmidon. I am Fomhikan and I came to Acantha to earn coin as a minescrape worker. I found a darklin and was told that you will buy it from me.’

  ‘You left Fomhika to earn coin? Plantsinging pays far more than minescraping,’ the woman said.

  ‘I have no ability to plantsing, Prime. On Fomhika, I worked for a man who bred aspi. If I have enough coin, I can buy a partnership from him. That is why I came here and why I want to sell the darklin.’

  The fierce look in the older woman’s eyes died. ‘Show it me. Set it on the altar,’ she commanded.

  Glynn hesitated, then took out the stone and laid it down. The Prime peered at it closely.

  ‘Bayard?’ she called the other draakira imperiously. The woman with the fur stole came to the altar and leaned over to look at the stone. Glynn yelped aloud when the fur stole lifted its foxy little face and stared at her out of huge dark eyes!

  The older woman looked at her in surprise, then saw the creature around her neck staring at Glynn.

  ‘Well?’ the Prime snapped.

  ‘Patience, Wykka,’ the grey-haired woman said soothingly, and bent over the darklin for so long that Glynn began to wonder if it was a darklin. All the while the strange animal around the woman’s neck stared fixedly at her.

  ‘It is genuine, I assure you,’ Glynn said. ‘I have had two visions from it.’

  The two draakira turned to stare at her incredulously.

  ‘You allowed the stone to orientate on you, and then you try to sell it to us knowing the stone will vision only for its master?’ the Prime demanded in a dangerously pleasant voice.

  Glynn was aghast but dared not show it. Her mind jumped on something Lev had said. ‘It orientated on me before I could stop it, but I heard in the minescrape that you had a way of using melted darklins so I thought it might not matter that it was orientated. Of course, I know it is not worth the same coin.’

  There was a long silence in which Glynn’s fear alternated with the despairing realisation that ignorance had cost her the one chance she had of getting home quickly. And what would she and Hella do now?

  ‘It is true we use melted darklins, but we have never used those which have been orientated,’ the older draakira said thoughtfully. ‘If you are willing to risk losing what remains of the darklin’s power, I could experiment and see what can be done with it. If there is any power to be had, perhaps we can come to some agreement.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Glynn said, knowing she had no choice.

  The Prime nodded briskly. ‘Very well. You will eat and sleep in the haven tonight. No doubt draakira Bayard will have completed her tests by tomorrow.’

  An hour later, Glynn listened to the tumblers click into place in the lock of the tiny cell she had been given to sleep in. She could not help but wonder again if she had been a fool to come to the Draaka haven. True, she had a belly full of surprisingly delicious and plentiful stew and freshly baked bread, but perhaps the whole thing would come to nothing because, in her ignorance, she had wasted the true value of the darklin.

  She tried to convince herself that the draakira would find some use for her stone and pay at least enough to buy a passage to Darkfall for two people. By tomorrow evening, she told herself firmly, she would be with Hella and Lev celebrating in Lev’s fell.

  So why did she feel so much like a fly who had just walked into a spider’s web?

  segue …

  The watcher segued within the web connecting the two worlds, sensing a resonance building. It was carried to the Unraveller’s world on the crest of a wave that sent ripples throughout the Void …

  ‘I don’t like circuses,’ a boy told his companion, ‘because of the animals.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like thinking of animals in cages either, but think of what happens to them in the wild. Getting their horns cut off while they’re alive, or being killed for some little bone in their ear.’ Mark tightened his grip on Tim’s elbow as if the smaller boy might dart away suddenly.

  ‘It’s undignified for them to roll over and dance,’ Tim said.

  Mark sighed. ‘Being dead is undignified. Listen. We’re not going to see the animals. I mean, not specifically. I brought you here for a purpose.’

  They were passing the Ghost Train, and laughter and screams and the sound of wheels rumbling roared at them. Tim flinched and Mark felt a surge of exasperation at his timidity.

  They passed a ride rising up like one of those monoliths out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was called The Black Tower.

  ‘Step up!’ a man cried, poking his head out from the side of the monolith. Timothy noticed he had crossed eyes.

  ‘There,’ Mark said, pointing to a tent looming up in the dark morning. There were lights strung along the rim of the tent and tracing the struts and roof line, but a lot of them were broken and several flickered intermittently. A slight wind was blowing the sides of the tent in and out, and Timothy stopped. The tent was the exact colour of dried blood, and it looked like a giant lung moving in and out.

  ‘Come on!’ Mark cried. ‘We’ll miss it.’

  ‘No,’ Timothy said, but then a strain of music flowed out of the opening so piercingly sweet and familiar that he gasped.

  ‘What?’ Mark shouted, still pulling at his arm.

  Timothy did not answer, but he le
t himself be drawn forward and through the flap entrance. The music had now resolved into a brassy flourish, but even so it seemed to Timothy that the other music was just inside it, barely audible.

  Mark produced the ten dollars, without looking at the vendor or his friend. ‘Two in the front.’

  It being a morning matinee, the concentric rings of curved benches were only a quarter occupied. There was the sawdust ring inside a buffer painted bright blue, separating audience from stage floor, and lights around the buffer pointing inward. Standing in the middle of the ring was a long thin man in black, with a scar down one cheek and puckering the flesh beside his nose.

  Timothy imagined a knife had made that cut and wondered who had wielded it.

  ‘I am the Ringmaster!’ the man cried. He threw back his black cape from his shoulders and lifted his hands, turning them palms up. ‘Now we present for your fascination and enchantment, the Wind Walkers!’

  Several long beams of light stabbed upward, illuminating a web of lines and wavering ropes. The audience followed the path of radiance to a small wooden platform where the ropes intersected. On it stood a man in a shimmering white costume from which sprouted a tail, a mane and, from the middle of his head, a horn. The woman also wore white, but she had no mane or tail. She had long fiery hair caught up into a begemmed cone that held it back from her face. As they watched, the man lit a long taper and reached forward. Suddenly a wheel burst into flame.

  The audience gasped.

  ‘See!’ Mark hissed. ‘Just like in your dream. A unicorn and a red-haired girl. Morphic resonance, it’s called. I read about it. It’s when something happens and then it happens again. Like two people inventing the same thing – those DNA guys.’

  ‘Crick and Watson,’ Timothy murmured.

  ‘Yeah them. And like coincidence. You know – you hear something and you keep hearing about it. Like echoes. Things have echoes and some things have loud echoes. You dreamed this and now here it is. Weird, hey?’

  ‘But the dream was real. Not people dressed up.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Mark shouted in his excitement and a woman behind hissed at them.

  Timothy was watching the man and woman swing back and forward in a kind of dance. She appeared to be both calling and evading the unicorn, and the man dressed as the unicorn seemed both tame and wild in turns.

  They were very good and, if you blurred your eyes, you could almost imagine the man really was a unicorn, flying round and round in this dancing aerial hunt that might also be a strange kind of courtship, just like in his dream.

  Below, a drum roll began, very softly. At first Timothy thought it was the wind outside but, as it grew louder, he became sure it was deliberate. There was something ominous in the sound and he shivered despite the rather oppressive heat of the tent. The drum beat quickened urgently, as if the storm were almost overhead, and the acrobats above began a spinning series of jumps and whirls around the flaming wheel.

  All at once, there was a loud creaking sound and the tent seemed to sway sideways. Timothy realised it was the light and not the room moving, just as the great fiery wheel tilted sideways too, and then fell. The man in the unicorn costume seemed to be tangled with it and the rigging ropes, and he was dragged from the high wire. Timothy saw the horn come loose from his forehead and as it fell in a pale arc he thought it looked exactly like pictures he had seen of the comet that was coming. There were screams of terror and a thunderous crash, then near-darkness and complete chaos. People shouted and screamed.

  The lights came on all at once, blindingly, and the music Timothy had heard in his dream rose in a soft soughing wind as the woman flew alone.

  ‘I thought …’ Tim gasped.

  Mark said triumphantly, ‘It was part of the show.’ They were both silent as the music faded, and the woman slid down a rope to the ground. She was quite close to them, and now they could see she was older than she had looked in the air, with a big nose and thick black brows. The red hair was a wig and there were old overlapping sweat stains under the arms of the costume.

  The applause came some moments later, loud and prolonged. Mark clapped enthusiastically. Timothy sat with his fingers folded in his lap, wondering why things had echoes, if they did. Why had he dreamed of a unicorn? Why did you dream anything?

  ... the watcher, shaken by the strength of the resonance it had witnessed, withdrew from the boy. It was as if the two worlds were being drawn inexorably closer.

  It segued …

  18

  Lanalor sought to be more than other men,

  that Shenavyre would see and admire him;

  thus did he study the magics and mysteries,

  until, by will alone,

  he could walk the winds.

  But the Unykorn journeyed among the stars

  and wheresoever it flew,

  did Shenavyre’s eyes follow …

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  Ember was in the dream wood again but it was different from all the other times. It was snowing – just a powdery coating like icing sugar, frosting the edges of the world. The green grass still showed, and the leaves had not fallen from the trees.

  Then she heard the music. It sounded nearer and more specific than on the other occasions. She pushed through the bracken, showering herself with slush. An inner voice warned her not to go any deeper into the leafy dimness, but she did not listen. For the first time in this dream, she had no sense of being watched. The further she went, the darker it grew; trees became closer to each other at the base, their branches interlaced overhead, but she wove her way through them, drawn towards the music.

  She came so abruptly to a pond that her feet slipped on the muddy bank and she slid in up to her ankles, breaking the thin rim of ice around the edge. Using an overhanging branch for leverage, she climbed out and pushed her way around the pool to the other side. Her feet made black prints in the powder snow. Beyond a screen of feathery fronds growing in the sodden earth around the pond, she saw there was another clearing.

  The music was perfectly audible now, each note discernible, but still she could not see where it was coming from, nor could she decide from what instrument or creature it came. It was unlike anything she had ever heard.

  A movement caught her eye and a woman emerged from the trees on the other side of the clearing. Ember registered with astonishment that she had found the source of the unearthly music. The woman was young and slight with small high breasts and coppery hair hanging to her waist in a great tangle of fiery ringlets. She wore a long pale dress with short tight sleeves. A shadow passed over the clearing and Ember looked up to see what had made it, but the trees blocked her view. She looked back at the young woman to find her staring upward, her face suffused with joy and golden sunlight. It was still snowing, but no snow fell where the woman stood. As Ember watched, the golden glow around her deepened like a spotlight intensified, shifting from gold to crimson.

  ‘Beloved …’ the woman sang, and lifted her hands to the light.

  Unaccountably, a weight of dread settled on Ember.

  ‘Firstmade of the Song … Heartsong of my soul …’ the woman sang. The shadow passed over again, then it stopped over the young woman and began to grow as if something enormous was swooping down towards her. Ember’s dread deepened into icy terror.

  Shenavyre … I come … a voice hissed, and a violent flurry of wind blew snow into Ember’s eyes, blinding her.

  Then the woman began to scream …

  Ember woke with a heart thumping and sweat like the ice of the dream on her forehead. She lay very still, letting the familiarity of the soulweaver’s apartment room and its furnishings calm her.

  A nightmare and nothing more, she told herself firmly, trying to still the gibbering fear. She was sick and shaken. No, not sick. That was a rumour spread so Tarsin and his court would not want to see her. Ember felt her gorge rise and lurched up, reaching the bathing room just in time to vomit into the hole that served as a lavatory. Stagg
ering back at last, she saw flashes of colour, and darkness fluttered at the edge of her vision.

  I am sick, Ember thought, slipping to the cool tiles and resting her head against the wall. The light showing through the delicately etched glass of the bathing-room window was pink and, lying in it, she was reminded of the light on the red-haired woman that had changed from golden to blood-red. She shuddered as her vision faded and then she could see nothing at all.

  Now I am truly blind, she whispered.

  That was how Tareed found her. The amazon gave a cry of alarm and Ember tried to get up, but pain speared through her head and she fell back with a groan.

  Tareed returned with Feyt and they carried her into the other room to lay her on a couch. The slightest movement gave her pain, but at some point she realised she could see again.

  ‘I am sick. How … how funny that we should say it and then it comes true …’ she whispered. She really felt dreadful.

  Alene bent over her, saying, ‘I am not a white cloak who can heal you, but I can siphon the pain I see in your aura.’

  Ember frowned at the soulweaver’s tone. ‘But what is wrong with me? Is it something to do with the dreams?’

  ‘What have you dreamed?’ Alene asked sharply.

  ‘I dream of a … a young woman with red hair …’

  ‘Shenavyre?’ Tareed asked excitedly.

  ‘You have dreamed this more than once?’ Alene demanded.

  Ember nodded. ‘I think it is because of looking at the tapestry so much. You warned me not to but I can’t seem to help myself.’ She remembered something else. ‘I had another dream, too. There was a blonde-haired myrmidon, only her hair wasn’t bound up like Tar’s and Feyt’s …’ Ember paused as nausea swelled in her then faded. Her head felt big and empty as if her brain had shrunk and there was some sort of gas in there filling the space. The sort that made balloons stay up.