Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  One scroll observed that Alyda had warned Lanalor that his lack of attention to his office threatened all he had wrought, upon which he bade her soulweave and seek the one who would be best fitted to hold Keltor after him. Other scrolls suggested Alyda’s decision to appoint a successor was her own idea.

  The boy named by the sisterhood was an Iridomi called Gia – the son of a perfume distiller and master olfactor. He was given the title of mermod, meaning in an older dialect, He who waits, for, seeing how young he was, Lanalor was forced to delay his abdication for several years. When he succeeded, Gia proved an enlightened ruler. It was under him that callstones had been widely distributed, establishing swift communication between the septs, and it was Gia who decided each island needed a legion to enforce their chieftain’s rule and his laws, since the Holder could not be called to deploy his forces for every small dispute. The sept legions could be called upon at any time by the Holder to swell his own legion if a greater force were needed. It was also Gia who decided Ramidan should have a legion no larger or smaller than any other island, and that the legionnaires of all septs would undertake part of their training on Ramidan to ensure they understood that their highest loyalty was to the Holder of Keltor.

  When Gia was middle-aged, the soulweaving sisterhood established by Alyda summoned him to Darkfall and, by Decree, named the son of a Vespian shipmaster as the new mermod. They commanded that the boy be fostered to Gia on Ramidan until it was his turn to rule Keltor.

  Glynn was impressed by Darkfall’s foresight. If the next mermod had been anything but Vespian, the whole thing might have fallen apart.

  She closed up another scroll and stretched to ease her aching back. She had the feeling hours had passed but there was no way of telling. The feinna had shifted to the cool flagstones and was watching her. She took up the brush again, reflecting that after Gia had become Holder, mentions of Lanalor were sketchy and infrequent.

  The scrolls said only that he had retired to Darkfall; most implied that his mind was decaying when he invented or discovered something called the Darkfall process, which was supposed to ensure that someone with soulweaving tendencies would see only true visions. One scroll observed that Lanalor was the last man ever to step onto the misty isle, for henceforth it was forbidden to men. Glynn found no clue as to why, but, remembering the story of the ten-year-old Argon white cloak being sent away by his mother, there was no doubt that the restriction was treated very seriously.

  Glynn decided that Darkfall would be her destination if she was ever free of the haven. That was where Lanalor had pursued his interest in soulweaving and where he had presumably died, so it was reasonable to assume he had constructed his portal there.

  Piling the scrolls she had finished to one side, Glynn lay back on her bed. She stared at the roof unseeingly, wondering what had become of Lanalor. His last act seemed to have been to write notes for the epic Legendsong, later rewritten in its present form by the soulweavers. He had been absorbed into the pervasive secrecy Darkfall generated about itself, and various legends followed his death.

  Had he been a good or bad man on balance? Glynn could not decide. He had invaded and conquered with no provocation. He had set himself up as a dictator, and when he went mad he had invoked a reign of terror. Yet he had also united Keltor and established a system of rule that strove to be incorruptible; he had built a city and established a legal system. Maybe the ambiguity with which he was regarded by the Keltans was nothing more than a reflection of the ambiguity of all human beings. People were, after all, capable of good and evil. And sometimes right and wrong were no more than a matter of perspective.

  Inevitably the thought of ambiguity made her think of the enigmatic Solen. Picturing him, she found herself remembering a soldier from the Second World War who had once spat on Wind’s feet. To the soldier, Wind was Asian and therefore he was evil. That was the sort of simplistic thinking governments encouraged in soldiers. How else could so many millions of men be persuaded to kill one another? Perhaps all that made anyone a hero and not a villain was winning, because it enabled you to impose your idea of right and wrong. Inevitably you would cast yourself in the role of hero.

  It was the losers, she thought, who became evil and were reviled in retrospect. Maybe war was not even a matter of fighting for perceived right, but to become right. Winners wrote history, not losers.

  She jumped as the feinna, without warning, climbed onto her stomach.

  ‘Well, make yourself at home,’ she laughed.

  It chirruped at her pertly.

  Glynn’s smile faded as she thought of the bleak future faced by the little animal. Disliking the tenor of her thoughts and mindful that she did not want to communicate negative moods to it, she sat up, carefully sliding the drowsy animal into her lap.

  She found a small faded patch in the scroll she had been working on and dabbed on the last of the resin. She read, ‘It is told by the Legendsong that within the Void the essence of Chaos infected Lanalor …’

  Glynn yawned and wished she could go for a walk outside. But all at once the hair on her neck stood up on end with the sudden conviction that someone was watching her.

  In her lap the feinna wakened and growled, a low rumble almost like a purr and yet unmistakably a note of warning. That scared Glynn, until she realised it was probably only responding to her own fear. It was impossible to be spied on in a room without windows, she chided herself.

  After some time, Bayard brought a lunch consisting of a roll stuffed with some sort of paste, a small jug of cirul, and a bowl of milk-soaked bread for the feinna. She smiled approvingly at the sight of it in Glynn’s lap and Glynn was provoked to ask the question uppermost in her mind. ‘How is it that none of these scrolls mention Lanalor’s portal?’

  The draakira gave her a sharp look. ‘Of what interest is the portal to you?’

  Glynn was suddenly keenly aware of the danger of revealing herself to be a stranger. ‘It is nothing to me,’ she said casually. ‘I just wondered, but if you don’t know …’

  Bayard shrugged, seeming to lose interest. ‘The scholars are using all the scrolls that mention the portal.’

  Glynn remembered that Nema had said the Draaka’s scholars were composing chits suggesting Lanalor had been insane when he created the portal.

  ‘I was just wondering where it is supposed to be,’ she said vaguely, hoping it was a reasonable thing to say.

  Bayard looked irritated. ‘Of course it does not have a location as does a tree or a building, else we of the faithful would long ago have destroyed it. It is invisible, but it is generally believed to open out somewhere near Myrmidor as most of the demon strangers were found in Myrmidori waters.’

  ‘Water?’ Glynn’s heart jumped and she must have sounded odd because Bayard gave her a sideways look.

  ‘It is believed the great water touches at some deep points on the Void. Vespians believe this very strongly. They also say stormings are children of the mating between Chaos and the waves.’ She sounded amused.

  ‘What do the soulweavers say of the portal?’

  Bayard frowned, which Glynn deciphered as meaning she was pushing her luck. ‘Soulweaver’ was a dirty word here. ‘They claim to believe it passes through the Void and reaches to a world beyond the mists. They say strangers were brought here by it randomly and accidentally from that other place.’

  Random sounds right, Glynn thought. ‘What happened to the demon strangers?’ She put it that way to mollify the older woman.

  ‘Those caught were slain, of course,’ she said. ‘They were killed in rituals to prevent their returning in spirit form to strengthen the Unraveller demon. Now listen, speaking of rituals, I will not return this evening, for the ceremony is long and will end very late. Look after the feinna and let us hope it does not hamper me tonight.’

  Glynn took a bite of the roll that Bayard had brought, pretending hunger, though her throat was clenched shut with fear. The draakira gathered up the completed scrolls and went
out, saying she would bring more scrolls and resin the following day. When the door closed Glynn spat the roll out, unable to swallow. She was shaken to the core by the way gentle, doddery Bayard had spoken of rituals of killing. There was no doubt that the older woman would see her killed without a qualm if she knew that Glynn was a stranger. She had been insane to come here – a stranger coming to a place where strangers were slain as demons.

  The air vibrated with the pounding of drums. This had been going on for more than an hour. Glynn lay on top of her bed fully clothed. Her fingers ached because she had bitten her nails down to the quick. She would have liked to be in the darkness, but if she extinguished the lantern she would have no way of relighting it.

  She wondered only slightly about the ceremony taking place; the cause of the drums. Her interest lay in the likelihood that all of the draakira would be attending, crowded together into the altar room, and the servitors would be slumbering heavily, locked into their rooms.

  Leaving the way clear for her to escape.

  If caught, she would almost certainly be killed or made into a drone. There would be no talk of caring for the feinna, she knew. But still she must try. Bayard’s easy talk of the ritual killing of strangers had given her a premonition of doom.

  Dimly she heard the hypnotic thrum of some new instrument join the drums and, finally, what she had been subconsciously waiting for: voices chanting – the signal that the entire haven community was assembled.

  Glynn got up and crossed to listen at the door in her bare feet. The flags were cold but sandals made too much noise. She had already tied them flat against her chest. She listened for the sound of boots or of doors slamming or the hum of conversation.

  There was nothing.

  Glynn turned to find the feinna watching her, its eyes shimmering with lantern flames. She felt bad leaving it, but knew it could not come with her even if she would take it, because of its link to Bayard. Her biggest worry was that it would be upset by her departure and would somehow transmit this to the older woman.

  ‘I am sorry, little seal-eyes,’ she murmured. ‘I wish I could help you but even if I stayed I could do nothing for you. I have never delivered anything in my life.’

  The feinna’s eyes looked deep into hers and Glynn felt shabby. ‘If it were not for Ember …’ she began, but the feinna turned away. Curled up in its cushions it yowled again, a soft forlorn sound, and Glynn felt a wrench of her heart.

  She went and sat by the cushions, and stroked the little creature gently. It purred like a cat, arching itself up against her hand. When it succumbed finally to sleep, Glynn’s eyes burned with tears as she got carefully to her feet again.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.

  This time the feinna did not stir.

  She listened at the door again, then tried opening it. It was locked. She shrugged. It was no more than she had expected, but she had needed to try. She knelt and pulled the mattress aside. Underneath, the cracked flagging had been levered up and a cold draught of air fanned her cheeks.

  She had explored the crack the previous night, after noticing that a draught of fresh air was coming through it. Once Bayard had left in the afternoon, Glynn had torn the mattress aside, pushing her fingers down the crack that ran across the floor and tearing several nails before managing to get a grip on the broken edge of one of the flags.

  Underneath she had found the web of rope which supported the interlocking flagstones. Something very heavy must have been dropped to have made the crack in the stone floor, and the web was torn. Holding the lantern over the gap left by the dislodged stone, she had discovered that there was a space between the web and the hard-packed earth below it. The outer haven ran right to the ground, but the breeze coming from below the floor could only mean there was an opening somewhere in the wall.

  She positioned the lantern by the crack and, using both hands, lifted the weighty flag carefully aside. The cold, stone-scented air of freedom touched her cheeks and ruffled her hair as she bent to take a grip on another flagstone.

  After some minutes she had made a space wide enough to fit through, and she took up a rough-edged stone to widen the hole in the net. When this was done, she steeled herself to climb through it, trying not to think of how shallow the gap was between the ground and the flagstones.

  The drums and voices changed beat and her heart rate accelerated in response. She had no time to waste. She cast a final look of farewell at the sleeping feinna and squeezed herself through the hole in the net into the space below.

  It was even smaller than she had expected. Barely big enough for her to fit. Both floor above and earth below seemed to press against her and she felt a moment of blind panic.

  She reminded herself of Wind’s formula for bearing pain: ‘What cannot be tolerated, may be borne, if one isolates fear …’ She lay completely still, relaxing physically, until calmness returned.

  Repeating Wind’s words over and over like a mantra, she tried to move. There was so little space she could not bend her legs, and was overcome by another surge of fear at the thought that she might not even be able to get back out of the hole. She fought it by relaxing again and forcing herself to calmness. Trying to contain fear was like trying to cage butterflies, but she managed it by considering how she could better manoeuvre in the constricted space.

  When she felt calm enough, she stretched herself full length. Then, by moving her buttocks and shoulders, she began to inch along like a worm.

  In minutes she could feel sweat pouring off her. It was amazingly difficult, but she dared not stop because now she had travelled some distance from the hole in the floor of the room. She could still see where it was by the lantern’s light. There were stumps going from the flags down to the dirt and she used these and the light to keep her bearings. She had decided that rather than following the draught, she would take the shortest route to the outer wall, then make her way around it until she found the hole through which the air flowed.

  She refused to consider that there might be other sources of air than a hole.

  After a time, Glynn found she could move more quickly by using fingers and heels as well. She began to long for moonlight, because it would mean a way out.

  Aware that the drums were louder, she knew she must be drawing nearer to the altar room. She shivered and resisted the urge to strike off in another direction.

  The sound of voices chanting was clearly audible, though the words were muffled to gibberish. When the noise became suddenly louder, Glynn reasoned that she must be directly below the room in which the Draaka was meeting with her followers. She tried to increase her speed, though there was no way anyone could know she was beneath the floor.

  She almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the Draaka quite clearly.

  ‘Spirit of Chaos. I am your servant. Speak to me. Tell me your will.’

  There was an eerie howling and suddenly, more than anything in the world, Glynn wished she were back in her stone cell, fast asleep, preferably drugged senseless.

  ‘Tell me what must be done,’ the Draaka cried.

  The howling increased and a second voice seemed to rise out of it. A sibilance that spoke of snakes and wet fires. ‘The One who waz promized iz come.’

  Glynn froze.

  ‘The Unraveller?’ The Draaka sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears, and for a moment her voice lost its manic quality.

  ‘The Unraveller iz on Ra mi dan,’ the hissing voice confirmed. ‘You will travel there. You will find and capture the Unraveller.’

  ‘How will I know who it is?’ the Draaka asked, her voice trembling with excitement.

  ‘By the zacred zignz I gave to Lanalor,’ the voice answered.

  Glynn’s teeth were chattering so loudly she wondered that the Draaka did not hear her. She forced herself to go on, and tried to concentrate on the rhythm of her movements: heels, hands, heels, hands …

  ‘When the Unraveller iz deztroyed, all that haz been promized will come to paz
z, and more,’ the voice hissed.

  ‘I will kill this Unraveller with my own knife!’ the Draaka cried.

  ‘Szzz! The Promized One muzt be zlain according to the ancient ritez and in the correct plaze. But do not imagine it will be eazy. Lanalor haz assured hiz chozen one will be protected, but thoze protectionz are weak now. Act zwiftly. Go to the zitadel.’

  ‘But Tarsin …’

  ‘Szilence! I have prepared the way. An invitation haz even now reached Jurazz from the Iridomi chieftain, inviting you to pay allegianze to her zon and exzzplain your philozzophy. You will travel az sshe zuggestz. Fail and my wrath will be terrible. Do not think I will allow a proxzzy then.’

  There was a sizzling sound, and the Draaka screamed. ‘Master!! I will not fail!’

  Glynn panicked and began to wriggle as hard as she could away from the voice as the hissing intensified.

  ‘Feed me!’

  Some sort of animal began to bleat piteously. They are sacrificing it, Glynn thought in horror, and envisaged the stone altar covered in sticky blood. There was a scuffling noise and the drums quickened.

  There was a prolonged squeal of terror and Glynn bit her tongue to keep from screaming out. The drums ceased and the chants rose again but Glynn did not hear them because she was propelling herself as fast as she could away from that hissing nightmare voice and whatever had been killed. She was in flight, and mindless, until she jarred her elbow savagely against stone. In a flare of pain, her wits returned. She stopped and lay for a moment gasping and trembling.