The Waterless Sea

by Kate Constable

  ‘Calwyn, can’ t you do nothin?’ begged Mica.

  Calwyn swayed, and clutched at Tonno’ s hand. She whispered, ‘I don’ t know – perhaps –’ ‘What are you planning, lass?’ asked Tonno quietly.

  She couldn’ t reply. The silent cry for help was all around her, vibrating up through her body, pulsing in her blood. It was not Halasaa; it was a greater force, a shapeless power that called to her. Halasaa! Help me, help me! But there was no one who could help her. Whatever she did, she must do it alone.

  Abruptly she let go Tonno’ s hand, and sank to her knees in the red dust. She pressed her palms flat down through the thick red dirt to the rock beneath. Just as when she’ d sung to the wasunti, she felt the power of the land flow into her. The land, the sand, the rock, the desert. Merithuros. The wounded land, the suffering land.

  ‘Calwyn?What are you doin?’

  Mica’ s voice came to her, faint and dream-like. The clamour in her mind, the call for help, was more insistent: she must answer.

  She closed her eyes. I will try. I will try. The power flowed through her hands, into the land, and from the land back into her, a seamless circle, a looping river.

  From the river, the sea;

  From the sea, the rains;

  From the rains, the river.

  Her lips moved, but she did not know what she sang. Halasaa’ s voice came back to her. Breathe. And she breathed. The rhythm of the land’ s breath was infinitely slow, as slow as a generation passing. Calwyn could not match that rhythm, but she could begin to sense the immeasurable respiration, a gentle wind that blew past her, around her, through her, an infinite slow aaah. In response, her own breath slowed, her heartbeat slowed. Now she was infinitely heavy, connected to the sorrow of the land, and she was infinitely light as she rested there, a dandelion seed, a speck of dust.

  Down she reached, deeper and deeper still, through the layers of rock, through seams of gold and emerald, through underground lakes and seas, through rock that crumbled like cheese, and rock that was hard as flint, and, at last, the roiling, unquiet liquid rock that flowed beneath all the lands and united them, as the sea flowed and united the surface of Tremaris. That was where Merithuros ended, the land floating like a raft on that red-hot sea. Calwyn held the land beneath her dancing hands as she had held Oron’ s wounded leg, aware of the whole, aware of the injury to the whole.

  But holding onto that awareness was like trying to ride a furious tempest. Oron had been one small being; the life that pulsed through the lands of Merithuros was vast and seething. Trying to grasp its immensity, Calwyn was as helpless as a straw in a gale, as fragile as a scrap of snow in a blizzard. Terrified, Calwyn struggled for control.

  But at the next moment, the tumult ceased. Suddenly, miraculously, it was as if she herself had become the storm; the wild, surging power was part of her, as she was part of it. Seamlessly, joyfully, she flew, soaring on the currents of becoming, and she saw it all, understood it all, as the power surged through her. In that single instant, she comprehended the whole.

  Effortlessly her attention rose, up through all the layers of the land, up again to the surface, and travelled out across the spreading sands. This was where the wound lay, on the land’ s skin. She saw, she grasped it all. Near the Palace, the troops, the scattered courtiers: fear and confusion. Beyond, in the mountains, the herders and hegesi, tracing their wandering tracks across and across the barren plains. And beyond, far beyond, the Clans, and the townsfolk, and the miners, the depleted lands, arbec and dry-grass, scuttling nadi and eagles that swooped, across and across the empty sky.

  Halasaa’ s voice echoed from deep in her memory. Let your strength flow – make it whole! Exhilarated, she felt the power stream through her. She would, she could knit up this wound!

  But even as she allowed herself to form the thought, the thought itself unbalanced her. Her attention slipped. She lost her vision, and all her confident sense of power. With a sickening wrench, she was helpless once more, hurled into the teeth of the storm, choking in a boiling cloud of dark poison gas: hatred and fear, the poison that steamed like sulphur from the wounded land. Thrashing panic rose, a part of her, inside and out; she breathed it with every choking breath.

  Helpless in the grip of the deep magic she had called up, she knew she could not control it. The hurt that drained the land was too vast. Such a wound could never be healed, the Power of Becoming could never knit up such an injury. She was not strong enough, her gift was too small, and she was alone. Just like Samis, who had tried to summon up chantment greater than he could master, she was overwhelmed.

  ‘Calwyn! Are you all right?’ Tonno’ s voice was warm and urgent in her ear. ‘Calwyn! The Palace! We have to run!’

  Briefly Calwyn returned to herself. The Black Palace loomed above her, the shriek of the pipes piercing her skull. Everywhere people were shouting and screaming. She tried to stand, but she couldn’ t move.

  Black panic engulfed her again, and as she lost herself in her own terror, all the pain of Merithuros entered into her. Unknowing, Calwyn gave a shuddering scream that pierced through the tumult that surrounded her. All her strength, all the light of her being, all the power of her magic, was pouring out of her, through her open hands and out, down into the ground. In that moment, there was no Calwyn; she was part of the land, part of its pain. The magic flowed from her, and through her, in an ever-changing, endless circle. From the river, the sea; from the sea, the rains; from the rains, the river. She was the river, and the sea, and she was the rains, the black deluge of suffering, the roar of blind rage, the endless weeping of oblivion.

  ‘Calwyn!’ Mica screamed. The Palace had changed direction. That uncanny music moaned across the plain as the engine bore down on them. The two tiny figures, one in pink, one in black, were at the very edge of the roof now. Both gestured frantically, flinging out their arms in helpless despair. ‘They can’ t stop it!’ gasped Mica. ‘Reckon they can’ t steer it neither!’

  As if to confirm what she said, the Palace swayed off-balance as it careered toward them. Calwyn still knelt on the ground, blind, deaf, paralysed. In desperation, Tonno seized Calwyn’ s arm and tugged at it.

  ‘Don’ t!’ screamed Mica, sobbing. ‘Don’ t you see, she can’ t! It’ s chantment – it’ s swallowin her!’

  Calwyn’ s hands had sunk deep into the rock, and she gazed straight ahead, with unseeing eyes, like a statue. Her face was dead white.

  ‘She’ s not breathing!’ shouted Tonno, white with panic himself, and he shook Calwyn’ s rigid body by the shoulders.

  The sun had all but disappeared. There was a line of vivid red along the western horizon, but that was all. Directly above them, the sky was deep blue-black. It shaded down to the edge of the plain, paler and paler, bleached bone-white where it met the desert sand. The Palace, sleek and inexorable, loomed only three hundred paces away.

  Suddenly Calwyn gasped a deep, shuddering breath, as if she had swum up from the depths of the ocean and sucked in the life-giving air as it burst over her head. Dazed, she stared at them, terror and bewilderment in her eyes. Her hands were trapped up to the wrists in the solid rock.

  ‘Calwyn, your hands, free your hands!’ shouted Tonno. The Palace was within two hundred paces.

  Uncomprehending, Calwyn stared down at her arms, at the rock that had closed over her hands. She moved her lips without a sound, swallowed, and moved them again. A faint croak issued from her throat, and she shook her head.

  ‘I can’ t,’ she murmured faintly. ‘I can’ t sing... ’ Limp as a rag doll, she swooned forward into Tonno’ s arms.

  ‘Calwyn, Calwyn!’ cried Mica.

  ‘Like Halasaa,’ muttered Tonno, his face creased with concern.

  As they bent anxiously over Calwyn’ s slumped body, a lean figure sprinted toward them across the red dust from the Palace. Before they knew it, Darrow was at their side. He threw himself onto his knees beside Calwyn.

  ‘What happened?’ he demanded, laying hi
s hand on her pale forehead. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow.

  ‘She done some chantment, it were some chantment like Halasaa’ s, but now she’ s all sung out, and all for nothin, and the ground’ s eaten her!’ Mica wailed, barely coherent. ‘And that thing’ s still comin!’

  Darrow stood up. The vast engine leaned toward them, slowly sliding across the red dirt, obliterating garden beds and low stone walls, closer and closer. The soldiers had ceased their attack; they circled the Palace warily, but held their fire. And the sorcerers inside the Palace were silent, their chant-ment hushed. Courtiers hovered, unsure whether to stay or run. The Palace reared above them, only a hundred paces away. ‘Mica!’ Darrow’ s voice was quiet, but firm as steel. ‘Stop the winds above the Palace. Hold the air still.’

  Then slowly, calmly, Darrow raised his hands, and sang. Puzzled, but obedient, Mica sang too, and as she held back the desert winds that drove the engine, one by one, invisibly, the blocks that had sealed the pipes on the roof of the Palace slid back into place. There were pipes as wide as the trunks of spander trees, and pipes as slim as Darrow’ s wrist, and every size in between. He knew them all, and one by one, unhurriedly, he sang them shut.

  Still the immense cube of the Palace came on, its razor-sharp edge only fifty paces away.

  ‘It’ s still movin!’ screamed Mica, abandoning her chantment. She flung herself down beside Calwyn and scrabbled with her bare hands at the rock that trapped her friend.

  Darrow held up a clenched fist, the hand that bore the ruby ring. He growled out a chantment, and as Tonno and Mica stared, the red stone of the ring wrenched itself free of the gold claws that gripped it, and hung suspended in the air, glowing in the last fiery light of sunset.

  For a heartbeat the ring hovered there, between the flat plain and the dome of the sky. Then Darrow flung up his arms toward the looming black silhouette of the Palace, stamped against the emerging stars. The radiant blood-red stone shot up, up, to the roof of the Palace.

  Darrow threw back his head, and watched it go. ‘The last pipe,’ he whispered. ‘The Pipe of Lyonssar, which is always open. The ring is the only way to seal it, the only way to stop the engine.’

  As they watched, the Palace slowed, the black edge grinding through the red dirt, forty, thirty, twenty paces away, sliding slower and slower. And then, at last, it was still. A profound silence filled the Dish of Hathara.

  In the midst of the silence, a low growl of chantment from Darrow crept across the desert. For a long moment nothing seemed to happen. Then Mica saw the dark-shining speck of the ruby come spinning out of the night to Darrow’ s clenched fist. The tiny golden claws of the ring reached up to grasp the stone, and it settled back in its place, dark and secret as blood.

  Darrow said, ‘It is finished.’

  The soldiers stood about, uncertain and whispering. The courtiers began to creep back in fascination to the Palace in its new resting-place, close to the edge of the plateau, slightly tilted down the slope. Mica saw that more and more openings had appeared in the walls of the monolith, so that the sheer cliff-face of the cube was pocked and laced with holes, windows and doors and peepholes. A face was staring down from every aperture; one of them was Heben, watching intently, and beside him stood Fenn, one hand on Heben’ s shoulder.

  For a long frozen moment it was like a picture in a tapestry; the chanters and the rebels gazed down, and the soldiers and the courtiers gazed up, trying to read each others’ faces.

  Night had fallen suddenly as it always did in Merithuros. The three moons shone brightly, flooding the scene with silver light. The huge black cube of the Palace loomed at the edge of the escarpment; all around it lay the destroyed walls and gardens of the plateau, the smashed remains of military equipment, abandoned helmets and scraps of banners. A great crowd of soldiers and courtiers were massed at the base of the plateau. Catapults and courtly baggage littered the red dirt, and bewildered hegesi galloped across the plain. Soldiers stood about in aimless groups, helmets pushed back, hands on their hips. Here and there, someone stood stoically, having his head bandaged, or wincing as a cut was sponged clean. Dishevelled courtiers clutched their embroidered robes close against the evening chill, and picked their way gingerly across the battlefield to stand with their acquaintances. No one knew quite what to do.

  Darrow stooped to where Calwyn lay; he sang a swift chantment to free her hands from their manacle of rock, and lifted her in his arms.

  ‘We must take her inside,’ he said.

  ‘Inside there again?’ Mica’ s sharp little face grimaced in reluctance.

  Darrow said, ‘The Black Palace is not what it was. It never will be again. Inside and outside are not so different now.’

  Tonno lifted his boots, squelching, in. . .could it be. . . mud?

  Mica gave a sudden yelp, and clutched his sleeve. ‘ Tonno! Look!’ She pointed down with a shaking hand.

  ‘By the gods,’ muttered Tonno, dazed and blinking. Surely his eyes were playing tricks on him. It must be one of those chantments of seeming, that made you see what wasn’ t there, because this was impossible.

  A spring of water was bubbling up from the place where Calwyn’ s hands had been. Silent and unstoppable, a clear stream crept out toward the edge of the plateau, then trickled over the escarpment. As Tonno and Mica watched in amazement, the rocks around the mouth of the spring crumbled; Mica leapt back as a sudden roaring rush of water poured out in a silver torrent. She held out her dusty hands to the spray, and eagerly splashed her face. She was a child of the ocean, and she had been missing the sea.

  Darrow walked steadily around to the side of the Palace, to the still-open door, carrying Calwyn in his arms. Mica trotted to catch up to him. ‘Darrow, where’ d it come from? Look, it’ s still spoutin up!’

  Darrow turned his head, and a brief smile flickered across his stern face. ‘Perhaps the uprooting of the Palace has freed the spring that fed the wells, like pulling a cork from a bottle. Or it might be Calwyn’ s doing.’

  ‘What is it she’ s done, Darrow?’

  A shadow crossed his eyes. ‘I don’ t know what she has done, Mica.’

  A sheet of water spread across the plain, wider and wider, until the plateau where the Palace stood seemed to float on a pewter plate that mirrored back the sheen of the moons’ light. Tonno paused to duck his head into the river, and shook his wet curls with a sigh of satisfaction. Mica danced with delight.

  ‘It ain’ t never goin to stop! It’ ll be the biggest lake in Tremaris! It’ ll fill up the whole of Hathara!’

  ‘Perhaps it will.’ But Darrow was less interested in the lake than he was in taking Calwyn to safety.

  The soldiers and courtiers clustered about the sloping walls of the escarpment, and shouted up to the chanters. They were not like Mica and Tonno, relishing the embrace of the water. There was real panic in their voices as they yelled, ‘Let us in, for pity’ s sake! We’ ll drown out here!’

  One of the chanters leaned far out of one of the new windows and called down to Darrow. ‘My Lord! What would you have us do?’

  Without breaking his stride, Darrow called, ‘Have them throw their weapons into the water, and the rebels too. Then let them come up.’

  Children hung out of the windows and laughed at the sight of the bedraggled courtiers as they stumbled through the deepening water, wet hair tumbling over their shoulders, their fine clothes sodden and heavy with mud. But the courtiers responded to the children’ s giggles with good-natured shrugs, rather than insults. The soldiers of the Emperor’ s Army were surprisingly nonchalant as they tossed their weapons into the widening lake, and hurried to the shelter of the tilted Palace. The chanters opened gateways in every wall and waved the invaders inside almost as if they had been looking forward to their arrival. And the rebel fighters chuckled as they threw their sheathed knives from the windows far out into the water, turning it into a game.

  Mica saw all this, and wondered at it. ‘What’ s happened?’
she whispered to Darrow. ‘Why ain’ t no one fightin?’

  He glanced down at her with a strange expression. ‘I think we will have to ask Calwyn that.’

  Soberly, Mica looked at Calwyn’ s pale face as it rested on Darrow’ s shoulder. ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘I don’ t know,’ he said grimly. They had reached the doorway; recognising his authority, the soldiers and courtiers cleared a path for him to pass. Inside the hall, the chanters welcomed him. And there was someone else too. At the sight of the tall, gaunt figure at the back of the crowd, Darrow’ s face lit up with joy and relief. ‘Halasaa! Halasaa, my friend! Welcome back to us.’

  Calwyn brought me back.

  ‘But – she said she could not heal you.’

  She has healed far more than what ailed me. She has been part of a powerful chantment. It may be the most powerful magic ever attempted in Tremaris. Halasaa stepped forward with his arms outstretched. I will take her now. Do what you must. Make her work complete.

  Darrow hesitated, confused. ‘You mean, she has performed a chantment of healing? A great healing?’

  Halasaa nodded, his face both grave and joyful. She has begun the healing of a land.

  Darrow held Calwyn’ s limp body close for a moment before he surrendered her to Halasaa’ s arms. ‘Thank you, my friend. Take good care of her.’

  Halasaa bowed his head, and bore Calwyn away, vanishing into the shadows. After spending all his life in the treetops, he was more sure-footed than most, for the floors of the Palace were all slightly sloping now. The sorcerers had hastily sung up some chantments to make it easier to walk around, singing some inclines into steps, and roughening the slippery floors to give more grip. The children scrambled about, shouting with wild laughter as they skidded and slid, but the sorcerers found themselves suddenly ridiculous, clutching at the long robes that tripped them up, and sometimes tumbling down altogether.