But why?
Everyone knew but me, and why should I be told the reason? she thought bitterly. Who was she to these people that she should presume a right to be told anything, let alone the truth? Glynn thought of Hella weeping in her arms with such desperate and seemingly genuine anguish after her brother had vanished, and could not credit that it had been an act.
‘On Acantha when Hella came to me and told me you were dead …’ she began.
‘She believed it,’ Solen said. ‘There was no time for any explanations or warnings. It was not until she came to Fomhika that Hella knew I lived. In fact, when you spoke to her on the green isle, she did not yet know I was alive.’
That offered a slight salve to Glynn’s wounded feelings, but there was a deeper coldness spreading through her veins, for she was remembering other words Solen had said on Acantha.
‘How did you survive?’
‘When I left,’ Solen said, ‘I took with me, concealed, a small narrow coracle. After the legionnaires gave up following me and returned to land, I walked the winds as long as I had strength for it, then I used the coracle and a phial of culva. I waited until dawn, when I knew the search would be called off, left the coracle and windwalked back to Acantha. I had friends who concealed me and smuggled me aboard a vessel to Fomhika.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Glynn asked. ‘You know I am with the Draaka.’
Of course he knew. They would have told him everything on Fomhika. Before he could answer, if he meant to, another thought speared into her mind. ‘You work for the Shadowman, don’t you? You and Donard. You were never what you seemed to be.’
‘Nor was my father,’ Solen answered obliquely.
‘You acted as you did so no one would suspect the truth.’
‘It was safest to be thought worthless …’
‘You lied the whole time I was staying with you,’ Glynn said coldly, remembering his apparent despair the night they had talked in his fell. It had been cruel to play that part and make her pity him. Thank heavens he had no way of knowing that she had been fool enough to imagine she had made him want to change his ways, and had even blamed herself for his tragic end! What pathetic arrogance to suppose she had so much influence over him.
‘It gave me no pleasure to deceive you …’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she assured him. ‘I am nothing to you or to Hella. If I had not realised that before, your speech at the wing hall and hers on Fomhika made it very clear to me.’
What the hell do I care what he thinks? Glynn wondered angrily. She was trembling all over! She felt so strange; angry and sad and tense and even desperate. She did not know whether she wanted to weep or run away or lash out at Solen.
‘I know you went to the Draaka to get coin,’ he said surprisingly. ‘I know they drugged you at the haven. Hella knows too, now.’
‘How could you possibly know what happened in the haven?’ Glynn demanded, but she knew before she finished speaking. ‘The Shadowman has a spy there!’
Solen did not reply, which was answer enough. ‘Hella regrets deeply what she said,’ he said gently. ‘She was harsh only because she had come to care for you and believed herself betrayed.’
Glynn noted that Solen had not said he regretted what he had said. Galling to realise she wanted him to regret it. She dared not follow that thought where it led. She turned away, trying to ignore the fact that the ship seemed to be striving to buck her into the water. The storming was on them but she hardly seemed to be aware of it, except as a force in her blood.
‘You should go below deck, Glynna,’ Solen shouted, over the howling wind. ‘You could be swept overboard in this.’
‘I would not require your services a second time,’ Glynn snapped. ‘I am aware you acted on impulse in saving me and may have regretted it. But I did not bring what happened on Acantha to you.’
He stared at her, his expression stern. ‘You think I regret saving you?’
Glynn was taken aback at the calmness of his tone in the midst of all that ferocious wilderness of sea and wind. ‘How is it you don’t get sick?’ she asked tangentially.
‘I assure you I do, but am too stubborn-headed to let a storming defeat me.’ His lips tilted into a grin. Glynn had only seen him smile genuinely twice before; once when he had flown her up on to Acantha and once by firelight in his fell. Her heart seemed to contract and the raging in her blood flowed towards him.
‘Both Hella and I were encouraged by our father to learn to bear it. I did hate him for it occasionally, but I am glad now. Sometimes it is a virtue and a necessity to bear the unbearable. Is it true you seek a sister on Ramidan?’
A reminder as breathtaking as a bucket of ice water. Glynn drew herself up. ‘I do, but I am not sure if she is there still. I will begin my search there.’ All truth.
‘I would offer you the aid of the Shadowman if you will have it. You need not stay with the Draaka.’
Which explained why he was talking to her at all. He wanted information for the Shadowman, of course. ‘Have you the authority to offer the services of your master?’ And before he could answer, ‘But even if you do, I will stay with the Draaka. I have given my word.’ Not true, but close enough. She could not explain about the feinna. That went almost too deep for words. How could she say: I am the feinna and it is me, and we have younglings to bear. No.
‘You can remain with the Draaka and speak of honour?’ Solen asked. ‘Duran said you do not declare yourself for her, but nor do you declare for Darkfall.’
‘I am my own,’ Glynn said.
Solen’s eyes probed hers disturbingly. ‘You have heard of the attempt on Tarsin’s life?’ He raised his voice above the rising shriek of the wind.
Glynn nodded. ‘That is why you are going to Ramidan, I suppose? For the Shadowman?’
He made no answer to that. ‘Will you not let me help you?’
Glynn was stunned to find she was now close to tears. ‘Why should you?’
Solen looked faintly exasperated, but before he could respond another wave broke over the deck, flinging them down and drenching them both. Coughing and spluttering, they got to their feet. Glynn wiped her arm across her face.
‘Duran said if you could be made to see sense about the Draaka …’ Solen began.
A wave of tension crested in Glynn and she shaped it into anger and sucked in a breath of white-hot fury. ‘Make me see sense!’ Her whole body felt as if it was going to explode. Some part of her knew her emotions were out of all proportion to anything that was happening, but there was no resisting them.
She heard a shout above the raging of the storming and turned in time to see Bayard stagger on to the deck. The elderly draakira was shouting something, but the wind whipped her words away. Without warning, the ship listed violently sideways and she staggered and fell, sliding towards the edge of the deck.
Glynn screamed and tried to run to her aid, but the rope around her waist held fast. Tearing frantically at the knot, she watched helplessly as Bayard caught hold of a mast rope.
Solen threw himself towards the older woman, but a wave slapped him back.
Bayard began to slip. The draakira flung a hand up to the rail, but it was wet and she found no purchase. The end of the rope slid through her other hand and, with a scream of terror, she reared back and vanished into the turbulent night-dark sea!
Solen had reached the edge of the ship and made to dive after her, but one of the crew caught hold of him. ‘It is too late,’ he bellowed. ‘If you follow you will die too.’
Glynn heard nothing more. She fell on to her knees. Waves of pain assailed her, and a tremulous need. The feinna racked by Bayard’s death, but more than that.
All at once she understood why the draakira had come out into the storming, and why she had been climbing out of her skin all day.
The feinna was birthing!
Solen was beside her, grasping her arm. ‘I am sorry, Glynna-vyre. Though she is a follower of the Draaka, I did try to save he
r, truly.’
He thought she was mourning Bayard and at some level she was; and would. But now she could only feel terrible pain. She grasped at her stomach and doubled over, screaming. When the spasm ended, she looked up at Solen.
‘Help me,’ she rasped, clutching at his arms and digging her fingers in.
White-faced, he pulled her to her feet. ‘What is it, Glynna-vyre? Tell me and I will do it.’
‘Quickly. Take … take me to my cabin. It … It is the first door … down those … steps … Ahhh!’
Solen took out a knife and sliced through the wet rope holding her to the mast, then half carried, half dragged her over the reeling deck and down the stairs. He kicked open the cabin door and stopped in shock at the sight of the feinna writhing on the floor, surrounded by blood.
‘Put … put me down next to it …’ Glynn whispered, biting her tongue to keep from screaming. She felt as if something was tearing at her from the inside.
Solen did as she bade, and the feinna devoured her with huge liquid eyes, almost overpowering her with love and pain mingled, and the deeper undertone of loss at Bayard’s death. Aloud it howled in terror and anguish. It wanted to die, but there were the younglings clamouring.
Glynn understood starkly then that she was not linked as Bayard had been. She was held by a lesser link and could withdraw as Bayard would have been unable to do. She could be free.
The feinna’s eyes were clouded and Glynn felt it begin to slip away. ‘No,’ she said. Its eyes widened and the soul-spar stilled its withdrawal. ‘I will hold. I will help.’
She leaned close to the feinna and saw enough to be sure that it would give birth the way animals and humans did on her own world. That was something at least. Maybe the school movie on childbirth would help her after all.
She barked a command to Solen to bring water, clean cloth, and a knife. She did not look to see that he obeyed, for she was focused entirely on the animal. She lifted the feinna onto her bed and blood saturated the sheets beneath it with terrifying swiftness.
Solen pressed a cloth into Glynn’s hand. She packed it around the animal.
‘There is the head,’ he said, and she saw it was true. Small and befurred as a coconut, the head of a youngling was beginning to emerge from the creature’s birth canal. The feinna panted and Glynn groaned as some echo of the pain reached her. She put her hand between the creature’s legs and put her fingers either side of the tiny skull, then pulled gently, petrified it would crack under the pressure of her fingers. It felt as delicate as an eggshell, yet babies survived after being delivered with metal forceps.
‘Please,’ she whispered, not knowing to whom or what she prayed; for in her world, the gods worshipped by humans cared nothing for animals.
Gradually, the youngling emerged. Its head was enormous compared to its body. It was a female, but it was not breathing. There was no umbilical cord, just a torn membranous sac which she peeled away.
‘We must breathe life into it,’ Solen said urgently. Taking the bloody youngling from her hands, he wiped the face clear of mucus and birth fluids. Covering its whole nose and mouth with his, he breathed gently. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then he pressed softly on the chest.
He looked into its face, then tried again.
Glynn felt a stab of pure anguish from the feinna, and knew it was no good before Solen shook his head. He laid the tiny, limp corpse down and brushed his mouth with the back of his hand.
The feinna cried out and Glynn forced herself to birth the second youngling. It too was born dead and none of Solen’s efforts to revive it worked.
‘Oh, please,’ Glynn whispered, and delivered the third stillborn. Despair and grief ran so deep she wished she were dead herself. No more death, she thought. No more.
This last youngling was also the smallest and a male. All the longing in the world would not make it live. Glynn looked at the feinna, whose eyes were pools of pure sorrow. Pleading.
Pleading for what?
‘It is no good,’ Solen said softly, and moved to take the youngling from her, but Glynn pushed his hand away, feeling the same burgeoning of tension she had felt before. She leaned forward and looked into the feinna’s face; felt the soul-spar slipping again, as Bayard’s fingers had slipped on the wet rope. Dimly she was conscious of the ship rising and falling under them.
‘What is it? What can I do?’ she whispered.
The feinna’s eyes seemed to grow and Glynn felt … something.
‘Tell me …’ she begged.
‘Glynna …’ Solen said, but she ignored him.
‘Tell me. Show me, damn you!’ she screamed and then she gasped as comprehension blistered its way into her mind, twisting her, changing her. And then the feinna’s soul-spar slipped loose and Glynn was free.
But how could she be free, when she was so needed?
Weeping so much she could not see, she lifted the limp youngling and pressed her face to its wet fur. Somehow the new bit of her wrought by the feinna groped and found the faltering flame of the youngling hovering outside its body. The life flame was nearly extinguished, but when she touched it with her own fire, it brightened and coalesced around her in a mindless nuzzling that filled her with tenderness. She drew it into the limp He-feinna, and felt soul infuse flesh.
‘Song be blessed,’ Solen cried. ‘It lives!’
segue …
The watcher allowed the shockwaves caused by the birth and the linking to carry it into the Void. Even the Chaos spirit must feel the impact of what had happened, for the entire Void pitched and churned.
More than ever, it was convinced that the relationship between the young woman and the feinna held the key to what bound their two worlds and so it segued to the world of the Unraveller, to the last place where the blonde woman had walked before being drawn through the portal to Keltor. There were no footprints in the sand, of course, but there were still traces of her aura. Even these, though, proved inviolate.
Distracted, the watcher found itself absorbed by an old man’s nightmare in which Chaos devoured the Song, but it could not bear the struggle and acted to bring the dreamer to consciousness …
Ari woke to the impression of light moving across his closed eyelids. He decided it must have been the setting sun, sending its sharp beam though a chink in the swaying curtains. He slept badly these days. Anything woke him up. The bark of a dog, the wood in the floor creaking. Sometimes even the crash of the sea on the shore. He had taken to napping in the afternoon.
He was grateful for the few hours he managed to sleep, but he was not sorry to have wakened. He had been dreaming about his son. The boy had been on a high cliff somewhere misty. He had been there to meet someone. Ari had suspected the boy of dealing in cocaine to tourists for some time now, and seeing him waiting in that dark place, hands pushed deep in his coat pockets, the old man felt his heart was breaking.
He was glad he had awakened before the meeting. To suspect was one thing, but to know would be a kind of death. There was a windy pain in his chest as he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
It was just a dream and you are an old fool, he admonished himself, but he felt like weeping. The boy had been distant these last few weeks, as if he had gone away, and much further than the mainland.
‘Oh please,’ Ari whispered to God, if there was a God. He was no longer sure there was any kind of benevolence watching over the world; over boys like his son.
The sea roared and Ari flexed his fingers painfully. The doctor on the mainland had told him the rheumatism was getting worse. He was stiffening up like an old tree whose sap was drying out. He ought to stop playing in the restaurants, but letting go of the music was as hard as accepting that he had lost his son. He felt that giving up the music would be the same as giving up hope for his boy; giving him over to the shadow of despair that lay so heavy over the world.
Ari reached for the guitar. His fingers ached, but he strummed anyway, limbering them for the evening performance. He remembered when th
e boy had been a bright-eyed, cheeky urchin who had danced to the music his father made. Danced and laughed.
The old man strummed and tears welled up in his eyes and made their way down his gnarled cheek, transformed into gilt rivulets by the golden sunset. A cloud that had absorbed the coming night closed swiftly over the brightness like a dark, long-fingered hand.
That was how night came, Ari thought, falling darkly. The falling of darkness over the light. Darkfall.
… the watcher segued in Chaos.
31
Lanalor spake to the Chaos spirit, saying: If the Unykorn cannot be slain,
what power would bind it against its will?
The Chaos spirit replied: If you desire it, I will gift you with
matter from the Void, that is Unmade.
With this you can fashion a prison
which nothing made by the Song will ever break.
LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN
Ember looked about her with a feeling of wonder. She had expected the main hall of the citadel palace to be as dark and brooding as Tarsin’s private audience room. Instead, it was a long airy corridor running along the side of the palace and overlooking the sea crashing onto the cliffs below. On the wall facing the water was a glimmering, pastel-toned tile mosaic that offered a surreal seascape which appeared to waver. Closer, Ember realised the rushing sound that she had taken for the waves was a constant stream of water running down the mosaic. On the other side, the whole apartment was open to the sea and air, with only spiderweb-soft drifts of waving cloth hung to flap and coil at regular intervals. There were no formal seating arrangements. People were sitting or reclining on low stools or on piles of cushions. They rose to serve themselves from tables laden with food, and servitors carried glasses of cirul or juices on trays. In the very centre of the room was a huge white aviary, filled with the chittering, red-plumed and beaked butterflies the Keltans called flyts. Somewhere out of sight, musicians played softly.
The effect of the whole together was light and airy and unexpectedly beautiful.
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