Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  Her fingers had run over the wooden surface, feeling so knowledgeably the numerous minute ways in which this instrument differed from a guitar, that she was certain she had some musical ability. Yet something kept her from trying the Keltan instrument. Not fear of being defeated by its small unfamiliarities – somehow she knew she would be good enough to master them. But because she sensed that her lost life, which she had secretly begun to fear, lay locked within her hands and the music she could create with them.

  It was absurd but she could not get the thought out of her head that, if she played, her memory would return. She ought to do so, for she must want to know who she was. But she could not bring herself to cradle the delicate thing and use it to draw upon herself whatever lay in her hidden past. Suddenly the darkness of her mind seemed like bare corridors; their emptiness, a kind of freedom.

  She kept hearing Alene’s words, like a warning. ‘Sometimes the past is best forgotten …’

  The wind blew and the strings thrummed faintly as if in anticipation or impatience. As if summoning her.

  Ember forced her mind to another summoning. The hunt occupying the Iridomi chieftain had taken more days than expected because Coralyn’s other son, Kalide, had been hurt. But the previous evening the bells had tolled imperiously and no one had to tell Ember what they meant, for the same bells had been rung to mark the commencement of the hunt. Within hours of her return Coralyn sent a message announcing her intention to call on Ember in the soulweaver’s apartment the next day at the thirty-eighth day segment. The Keltans had a rather unwieldy way of telling time. In the daylight hours they used a sundial marked with fifty-two ten-minute segments, and at night there were time-candles divided into the same number of segments. The thirty-eighth segment on the sundial meant early afternoon.

  Ember was not worried by the proposed meeting. She could mimic the Keltan accent perfectly by now, and knew enough about Sheanna and visionweavers to write a book about them – at least in theory. She had a good grasp of the Keltan political situation – certainly enough not to make any blunders. She even had an entire life history as a Sheannite memorised, down to personal anecdotes about real people. She had no doubt that the ease with which she had absorbed her imaginary life owed itself to the emptiness of her mind.

  Another reason for not trying to remember her real past just now.

  All she had to do when Coralyn came was to keep her head and stress how ill she was. She was to be reclining on a couch when the Iridomi chieftain entered with the inevitable entourage such a visit would demand. She was to apologise for her illness and say she could only vision when the mood took her and, even then, she had no consciousness of what she had wrought anyway. She was to make it very clear that she had never finished a visioncloth because she was too frail.

  What could the woman do but accept it? Feyt had pointed out reassuringly that no matter how angry she was, as long as Ember was polite, Coralyn could not have her thrown in prison for her refusal.

  ‘No, but she can have Ember kept here unless she is convinced there is no gain in it for her,’ Alene had said grimly. ‘If she thinks Ember refuses out of loyalty to us, she will not permit her to depart.’

  ‘She must be made to understand how ill Ember is,’ Feyt had growled.

  The mention of sickness thrummed a chord in Ember’s mind, just as the wind had touched the instrument on her knees a moment past. The illness Alene spoke of was a lie, and yet whenever it was mentioned a note resonated within her, evoking curious images and thoughts. There was something about illness and hospitals in her forgotten past.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if someone she loved had died in hospital. Perhaps that was the terrible thing that had caused her amnesia. ‘Sometimes the past is best forgotten,’ Alene had said. Many people would envy that erasure because everyone had things they would prefer to forget. Ember sensed that her forgetting was just such an erasure, and that her forgotten self carried some terrible burden. She had no desire to hasten the return of pain, yet the veil laid over her mind by the amnesia was growing thin. She intuited that music would delve deeper into her than other things, hence her fear of it. But music or not, it was coming. It was as if she could now see the blurred overlap where the present hid the past.

  Her aversion to Bleyd’s attentions, and the voice that had come out of her in the garden, arguing against love with Alene, rose from her past, and it would only be a matter of time before the past asserted itself. To play would simply hasten the inevitable.

  ‘Can you play?’ Tareed asked, coming out onto the terrace in her bed-dress, yawning widely and indicating the instrument.

  ‘Yes,’ Ember said automatically, then bit her lip, realising she had opened herself to being pressed.

  Tareed asked, ‘But in your world is there not a similar instrument of music?’

  ‘It is called a guitar,’ Ember answered non-committally.

  ‘The Scroll of Strangers tells that your guit-ar is close in form to the a’luwtha. That one is Alene’s. She will not mind if you want to use it.’

  Ember all but shuddered as she thrust the instrument into the amazon’s hands, and went inside. Alene’s head turned as she entered and Ember wondered exactly what the soulweaver saw. The cooler auras of the furniture, the warmer auras of herself and Tareed who had come in behind her?

  A puzzled look flitted across the soulweaver’s features. ‘Do you have the a’luwtha, Tar?’

  It was the first time Ember had seen the older woman limited by her blindness. Although maybe it was not blindness she was revealing, but confusion as to why Tareed would have her instrument. What colour was the aura of the a’luwtha? Ember wondered. What colour was fear?

  Tareed took the instrument to the soulweaver and laid it in her arms as tenderly as if it were a child. The soulweaver ran her fingers over the strings reverently and the silvery run of notes was so pure and sweet, that Ember caught her breath.

  Alene began to strum the strings absently, and Ember had to sit because her legs felt as if they would not support her. To shield herself from the music, she concentrated fiercely on the soulweaver’s attire, an ornately embroidered tunic slashed with green worn over her usual plain pale gown. Her dark hair was drawn up into a diadem set with luminous green stones. She was obviously ready for the afternoon meeting with Coralyn.

  Alene began plucking the strings and Ember’s flesh rose into goosebumps. The soulweaver hummed a few notes, then mumbled to herself.

  ‘In a moment she will be song-making and then there will be no getting any sense from her,’ Tareed remarked tolerantly, coming over to Ember. ‘All soulweavers make music for they use it to control their segueing in the Void, but few make music as Alene does. It is said that she has mastered the a’luwtha, but the truth is it has mastered her. Perhaps that is why she plays so seldom.’

  They both listened as Alene began to pick out a tune. Back and forward she went, wrinkling her brow and tilting her head to listen. She was completely absorbed, making notes on a chit she had taken from her tunic pocket.

  ‘I think sometimes she is trying to find the Song of songs itself,’ Tareed said. ‘She believes that nothing fills the inner emptiness more completely, though transiently, than music. She thinks if a song could be found of surpassing beauty that was not transient, listening to it would enable us all to gain completion at last, and fill the little camla left inside us by the Song.’ The amazon shrugged. ‘Before she was named soulweaver to the Holder, she only made songs about the Firstmade. She had decided to devote her soulweaving life to the search for the Song for she said the Firstmade was the essence of the Song made flesh. Now she makes songs about many things.’

  Ember was thinking that, on her world as well, songs often touched you in a way nothing else could, enhancing every mood they evoked, teasing out every subtlety of pain and happiness. Even when the words to songs were foolish or trite, they still had power.

  Yet hers was not a world born of the Song.

&n
bsp; Alene was now singing softly, matching words to music. Tareed fell silent, listening raptly. The soulweaver stopped and tutted, then started again with a slightly different tune. She was oblivious to Ember and Tareed. The song she was composing concerned a flyt seeking its nest in a storming and a shipmaster called Ranouf. Ember remembered the story the older woman had related in the walled garden.

  ‘Will you not sail your ship home to shore?’ Alene crooned, revealing a voice of great colour and depth.

  She had never seemed more human to Ember than she did in that moment, muttering and strumming and frowning and talking to herself. At the same time, there was something unearthly about the music she was creating. Especially when she unclipped a bow from the side of the instrument and ran it across the strings to produce notes which throbbed and peeled like a violin played by a master musician. Other times she muted the strings, and their voice seemed to deepen into a string version of a clarinet or an oboe. Strummed differently, the amazing instrument could be persuaded to sound like a harp or a zither.

  Ember hungered to play it with a passion that startled her. Something within her clamoured to open her mouth and sing, too. She knew exactly which notes would harmonise to enhance the music Alene was playing, and lift grief into highest sorrow. She knew it as she knew how to breathe.

  Feyt came out of her chamber and Ember was glad to be distracted. The amazon wore a white tunic and her blonde dreadlocks were trimmed intermittently with silver beads and cuffs.

  The music drew her back, and with it came an awareness of something darker, a pain of her own that might yet be sung out of the shadows.

  Gritting her teeth, Ember forced herself to focus on Feyt’s belt, tooled in the greenish-gold metal that she had learned was atar. Used for capping javelins and for spearheads, the metal was stronger and cheaper to produce than steel. Iridom alone knew the secret of its manufacture and therefore had a monopoly. Silver was mixed with atar to mint the coins used on Keltor, while silver, gold and precious stones were used mainly as jewellery.

  Tareed went to make her own preparations for the afternoon audience, and Ember lifted her veil over her face and returned to the terrace. The music pursued her, but was muted.

  Feyt had returned the previous evening with the news that the Stormsong was scheduled to cross from Sheanna to Ramidan. According to the dock manifest, it was due to arrive in two days. The manifest allowed anyone wanting to ship goods to plan a route and to time the delivery of perishables to coincide with the departure of the carrier, but there was always a certain amount of leeway in the schedule, for the best shipmaster or mistress could not predict the vagaries of waves and stormings.

  They all hoped that this time when the Stormsong left, Ember would be aboard. The fact that the ship was then scheduled to cross to Myrmidor suggested Revel had thought so too, and had arranged her routing accordingly.

  Feyt mentioned to Ember that she had lodged a request with the Shadowman’s network for information about a possible stranger who bore the characteristics of the girl in her dream. It would take some time to circulate the description to all septs, but if there was positive news, Feyt promised she would send word to Darkfall at once. It was unlikely to come before Ember’s departure.

  Ember was about to ask who the Shadowman was when the soulweaver entered, and the subject had been dropped. Later she walked again in the walled garden. Alene had said she might since nothing untoward had happened the first time. Ember had told her nothing of Anyi and the legionnaires. She had not even had to explain returning alone after her first visit, because as she was about to leave the garden, Feyt had arrived to escort her back to the apartment.

  Alene had not accompanied her again, and although Ember liked the older woman, she had been glad of the time alone. Tar regarded the task of guarding Ember as a serious business and spoke little on the way to the walled garden. Once there, she stood just inside the archway entrance looking fierce.

  Ember wished she could go to the garden now to escape the music winding its spell around her. She would listen to the water and let the faint breezes riffle her hair. But, of course, it was too close to Coralyn’s arrival and it was not a good time of day in any case. The grounds would be too busy.

  Besides all else, she had yet to be readied for the audience. Judging from the preparations of Alene and the amazons, it was to be a major production. In addition they had to obliterate her resemblance to Shenavyre and establish her illness. There had been some discussion the previous night about the virtues of deathly pallor over hectic flush. Pallor had won out because the other could be misinterpreted.

  Alene’s music stole through the determined screen of her thoughts and Ember shivered as if some invisible web of beauty were being lowered over her. She pushed closed the doors to the apartment and moved to the farthest point of the terrace. She thought about the urchin boy, Anyi. She had said nothing about him to Alene, partly because she wanted to be able to go to the garden again and part because she did not want to get the boy into strife. She was not bothered that Anyi had guessed the truth about her being a stranger. Instinct told her he would do no harm with the knowledge.

  Her attention shifted to Bleyd of Fomhika.

  He could not fail to be aware that she was avoiding him. He was very handsome, he was a man of strong loyalties and courage, and he had a sense of humour, yet she shrank from him. If he had asked her why, she would have had no answer. The soulweaver and her myrmidons were aware of her antipathy, Ember knew, but to her relief no question had been asked.

  Ember wondered if Bleyd’s feelings changed his aura for Alene, and how her own aura looked when he was near. She imagined his reaching out and hers shrinking away. It seemed that auras were not only as individual as fingerprints, but would change according to mood and even health. The latter enabled Alene to make her swift diagnoses.

  Ember was still sitting there on the terrace, drowsing in Kalinda’s rosy light, her mind drifting, when Tareed brought her some fruit. When it was finished, she must bathe and ready herself to be painted.

  Obediently she ate the kalinda fruit, which was rather like a mango, and was glad it was nearly time. Being cooped up was causing her to become neurotic. This very morning she had awakened feeling ill and unable to see. The recurrence of complete blindness had frightened her, but gradually the sight in her good eye cleared. She felt fine now and put these symptoms down to stress and anxiety.

  Wiping her fingers on a napkin she sighed and went into the apartment.

  ‘There,’ Tareed said triumphantly, and produced a mirror. Ember looked into it, and was startled at how the artfully applied paint changed the shape of her features. She looked older. Her lips were fuller and her visible eye, shadowed at the edge to match the eye shape of the half-mask, had an enigmatic tilt.

  Alene’s face turned to the door just before there was a knock. ‘It is Feyt.’ Tareed opened the door and the blonde amazon entered looking thunderous.

  ‘More Iridomi legionnaires have just landed at the dock. Coralyn now has a force here greater than the Ramidan legion, even counting its trainees from the other septs. She could set a coup in motion. The Gia Directive specifically prohibits the build-up of legionnaires of one sept on another’s soil, yet Tarsin does nothing to stop it. If I did not know better, I would say Coralyn is positioning herself to take over the citadel.’

  ‘Why, when her son rules it and all Keltor?’ Alene enquired. ‘And what would be the point? Vespi would never bring her back to Iridom and before long a Keltan legion would be summoned to quell her.’

  ‘And if she plans a larger coup?’ Feyt barked.

  ‘It is the same. Vespi would never carry legionnaires to war except by direct command of the Holder and a quorum of chieftains. You know this.’

  ‘Why has she brought so many of the green legionnaires here then?’

  Alene sighed. ‘Perhaps it is a power play. Coralyn calls the legionnaires a guard of honour and Vespi cannot refuse passage to them as such, un
less Tarsin names them otherwise. Now calm yourself. It is probably just a deliberate flouting of the Gia Directive.’

  Feyt ran her hand through her short hair, lifting it at the nape. ‘Alene, if you cannot see what is happening …’

  ‘Today my concern is for Ember and her audience with Coralyn.’

  Feyt sighed. ‘Very well. Let us speak of that. Have you given thought to what we might do if she is refused permission to leave? Perhaps Kerd could intercede for her …’

  ‘Kerd would be a bad choice for a mission of intrigue.’ The soulweaver shook her head in faint exasperation. ‘It astounds me that he is so naive after attending court these past seasons. He has failed to absorb any of the usual diplomatic abilities.’ She gave a resigned smile and shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps he would not be Kerd if he became a polished courtier. It is a pity Unys does not see the sweetness in him. As for Ember being forced to stay here, let us not put the cart before the aspi. There is every chance she will be permitted to depart after today. Any news from Duran yet?’

  Duran was the leader of the myrmidon women on Myrmidor, and a close friend of Feyt’s.

  ‘She is travelling,’ Feyt said. ‘They can not be more specific in open callstone bulletins.’ Feyt was examining Tareed’s handiwork. ‘Make her face a little paler and put some more shadowing under the eye,’ she suggested.

  Tareed made the adjustment. She had sleeved Ember’s hair and when she had finished with the face paint she draped a very thin veil over her head, and set a circlet of tiny atar flowers around her brow to hold it in place.

  Alene drifted nearer, seeming unusually restless. ‘A last suggestion, my dear. Do not pretend to be a Sheannite today, be a Sheannite, for Coralyn knows all there is to know about deception and she is Iridomi – which means she notices everything.’

  There was a sound outside the door and Feyt, coming out of her chamber, waved an impatient hand at Tareed. ‘Quickly, get her in place before I open the door. It must be Coralyn come early.’

  Alene frowned, then stiffened. ‘No, it is …’