Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘She is here,’ Ember said aloud, pushing dark Ember away. It was odd how her old self had begun to feel alien to her. Almost like another person inhabiting her mind. Ember felt disgusted by the ease with which she had accepted Glynn’s readiness to spend her life caring for her sister, but she was disgusted as if dark Ember was someone else.

  Yet she is me, Ember thought, shamed because she had known that beneath Glynn’s feeling of responsibility for her sister lay a guilt that she did not deserve to feel. Ember even knew the origin of that guilt: their mother, who had so adored Ember and been so unremittingly cold to Glynn, especially after they learned that Ember was dying; their mother, who, without ever saying it, had made it clear that she blamed Glynn for what was wrong with Ember. Worse, although she had never said the dreadful words, they had both sensed their mother’s ugly wish that it had been Glynn who was dying, not Ember. No wonder Glynn had grown to feel responsible for Ember’s affliction.

  ‘Oh Glynn …’ she whispered. The dark Ember part of her mind bridled and rejected remorse, pointing out that it was not her fault that their mother had loved her more than Glynn. But Ember knew that it had not just been indifference that had kept her from disagreeing with their mother. At some level, she, too, had felt that she had deserved all of their mother’s love because she was dying.

  And wasn’t there, deep in her mind, the same question their mother had not voiced? Why me? Why not Glynn?

  Was it possible, in fact, that it had not just been her mother making Glynn feel she was to blame, but her as well? Hadn’t Glynn’s guilt and penitence in labour and care seemed fair payment for her health?

  Sickened, Ember buried her head in her hands, wondering how she had not seen what she had let herself become.

  Survival, dark Ember surged suddenly to shocking independent life in her mind. You think I am distorted? It is you who are distorted with your sickly fear and your cloying hope and sentiment. Acceptance of death freed us of those things. I will not let you infect me with them.

  You let fear make you a monster, Ember accused.

  I have transcended fear.

  I no longer need to be afraid. On Darkfall …

  You delude yourself with hope of healing because you are a coward. I have gone beyond fear and denial to true knowledge. I was prepared for death, and now that I am free of you, you alone will be destroyed when you are forced to face the truth of death again. Then I will control this brief flesh and bring it with grace to its end, dark Ember said coldly.

  I will be rid of you forever when we get to Darkfall! Ember thought, then she felt a wave of nausea, for surely this splitting of her mind was a kind of madness. She heard the mocking laughter of dark Ember, and forced herself to imagine the laughter fading away to nothing. She sensed that dark Ember fought back, but she did not let up until the last trace of grimness faded.

  Standing up and reaching for the towel that lay folded on the bed, Ember found that she was trembling, and not just because the water had grown cold around her. She stepped out of the bath and dried herself, wondering if this splitting of her mind was schizophrenia. But she didn’t feel mentally ill. In fact, she felt better than she had for a long time; free of the heavy negativity and coldness of her old self. For the first time since she had remembered who she was, Ember felt as she had done before that knowledge had come to her. She had tried to merge with her old self, but it seemed that the old self had been too dissimilar to merge. Therefore the two parts of her mind had now separated. Ember could not help but be glad of that, especially since it seemed that she had control. The fact that the healer, Signe, was waiting for her on Darkfall, gave her power over dark Ember. On Darkfall, she vowed to herself, the voice of dark Ember would be silenced once and for all.

  Ember took up the dress she had been wearing and grimaced at the stink of it. She fancied that she could detect the stench of the cliff palace cells on it, as well as the sickly sweet scent of Bleyd’s infected injuries. Wrapping a bed sheet about her, she sank the dress into the bathwater and scrubbed vigorously at it before squeezing out what she could of the water. She hung the dress to dry in the reddish sunlight pouring through the opening in the shutters and began to wash her underwear too, as well as her veil and hair bandages.

  As she worked, she thought of the final vision she had experienced in the white-cloak centre, of the policeman and the older woman from her world who had spoken of a delinquent boy. She was reminded inescapably of her previous vision of the group of boys plotting to rob some sort of crime figure. The Scorpion? Was there some connection between them and the boy against whom the policeman had given false evidence?

  It struck her suddenly that the dominant emotion in both visions had been despair. The young policeman had spoken of hopelessness, too, claiming that he felt some dreadful darkness looming over the world, darkening it and killing hope.

  Despair and hopelessness. Dark Ember understood these things intimately, though she had long since gone beyond despair to grey detachment. But the new Ember was too full of the richness of the recent memories of laughter and pleasure, which she had accumulated while untainted by fear or indifference, to give in to despair and all of its grey cousins. But better to feel all of those things than to accept the blank cold void that dark Ember had made of herself.

  The door rattled and, heart pounding with fright, Ember dragged the sodden veil over her head and hauled open the door.

  The hostess entered, looking around suspiciously. ‘I could not open the door.’ Ember realised she thought that someone else was in the room, and had an insane urge to admit that her alter ego had visited for a time. But that was too strange and discomfiting for much amusement. ‘I barred the door because there was no key. I did not like the idea that one of those men below might stagger upstairs and enter by accident,’ she said mildly.

  The hostess flushed with anger. ‘This is a decent establishment and no man would bother a songmaker …’

  This was almost an accusation but Ember ignored it. ‘Did you want something?’ she asked politely.

  ‘I was wondering whether you want your luggage sent for,’ the proprietress said, nodding at Ember’s attire hung dripping from the sill. ‘You will need your entertainment clothes for tomorrow. I suppose they are at the carriage depot?’

  Ember hadn’t thought of this. ‘I’m afraid my clothes were … stolen. That is another reason I cannot perform tonight. I will need to order something.’

  The hostess gave a grunt that might have meant anything. ‘I will summon a dressmaker to attend you here in your room. But mind you have the coin to pay her for what you order when her work is done. Tradesmen here have their own way of dealing with debtors.’

  ‘She will be paid,’ Ember said, allowing a faint note of haughtiness into her words.

  The woman went to the door. ‘I do not know what you have to hide but you cannot perform veiled.’

  ‘In performance I will wear no veil,’ Ember said easily, because of course she had no intention of performing. ‘I wear this because I weary of being gaped at from daylight to dark. Let those who wish to see me pay for their curiosity.’

  To her surprise, the woman actually looked sympathetic. ‘I see how it could be like that, Songmaker. And you have been in the mountains where I have heard they gawk at all visitors as if they had two heads, so seldom do they see new faces. You were performing at a nighthall?’

  Ember dared not agree for fear she should be asked its name. ‘I was performing for a private household,’ she said. The eyebrows rose knowingly, for some reason that Ember could not fathom, but the woman only asked if Ember would tarry long on Vespi.

  ‘Not long,’ Ember said. ‘I have learned all I need to update my music.’ Tareed had told her once that songmakers journeyed to all of the songmaker academies before completing their training, and that they continued to move about afterwards to ensure that they were abreast of events on all islands. On Keltor, songmakers were less entertainers than a combination of entert
ainer, teacher and journalist. ‘I am travelling next to Iridom,’ Ember said, determined to put an end to what was beginning to feel like an interrogation. ‘I noticed a seerat on the pier. A strange sort of fellow he seemed to me.’ She was immediately sorry that she had mentioned the pier but the hostess only scowled in disapproval.

  ‘I do not hold with demon worshippers. Seeing the future is soulweaver business.’

  ‘I did not know that seerats worshipped demons,’ Ember said vaguely, relieved, for the woman had all but announced her allegiance to Darkfall. ‘It would be hard to take seriously one who surrounds himself with such a gaggle of women, not to mention that peculiar carriage driver.’

  The woman’s face cleared and she actually laughed. ‘That seerat is more buffoon than mystic, Songmaker, to be sure. And those foolish woman that serve him! But the halfman is truly a sight to behold. He came from Ramidan, I heard. Or was it Fomhika? In any case, it is said his mother was a wire-dancer who fell and bore him thus.’

  ‘Sad,’ Ember murmured.

  ‘A woman loves her children, withall,’ the woman said with curious emphasis, as she left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Not all mothers, Ember thought sadly, thinking of her own mother, and of Glynn.

  segue …

  In the Void, the watcher entered the room of a young man who moaned and twisted in his dreams. Beside him, crumpled in a heap, lay the blue hat and uniform he had thrown off the night before. The untidiness of the clothing was out of place in the neat room.

  The watcher entered the dream that had drawn it to the man. Once again, it watched a red-haired woman walk about a clearing, singing. It moaned at the sight of Shenavyre. How fair she had been. How matchless. And she sang in the voice that had tormented its dreams since it had first heard it. This was a dream that it had encountered many times on Keltor and it always ended in the same way.

  ‘Maybe this time it will be different.’ It was the man speaking. John, his thoughts named him. He had manifested within his dream but this was less startling than the fact that he appeared to be able to see the watcher. It noted that the man wore the uniform of his job, and even his policeman’s hat, but he carried no weapon.

  ‘It must end as it does. One cannot change the past,’ it was compelled to answer.

  It was unclear if the man heard, for now he said, ‘I keep dreaming this same dream and it always goes the same way. The woman walks and sings and then the beast comes. Or something. I never see what it is. She screams and then I wake. But you’re new so maybe this time it will end differently.’

  ‘I am only a watcher,’ the watcher said, wondering what form it took in the eyes of the man. Most likely it would appear as the manbeast which was the form it had taken.

  The man was talking again. ‘I always want to warn her but you know how dreams are. You want to yell and you can’t. You want to run and it’s like you can’t move.’

  ‘Dreams have a magic that binds.’ It stopped, realising in a blinding flash that it could fight the battle against Chaos in this world using the untapped magic of their dreams. It would only take this one man to discover the power contained in his dreams, and use it.

  ‘I’d call this a nightmare,’ the man said, but his eyes turned back to Shenavyre. ‘Except for her. I’ve never heard anyone sing like that before. It … it haunts me.’

  ‘The dream uses you,’ the watcher said. ‘Shall I show you how to use your dream?’

  ‘I’d be content if you would show me how to turn it off. It and the other dreams. They’re driving me out of my mind. I guess it’s a sign that I’m cracking up. Maybe I ought to see someone.’

  ‘No white cloak can heal a dream.’

  But the man shook his head. ‘I know enough psychology to see that the dreams I’ve been having represent bad conscience. It’s guilt making me feel like this. And maybe despair.’

  ‘Do not give in to despair,’ the watcher thundered, and it felt its eyes blaze with heat. ‘If you do, it wins.’

  The man gave him a look of strange terror and the watcher said with dawning incredulity, ‘You know the Chaos spirit! I see it in your face. You know it moves in your world.’

  ‘I have to wake. This is craziness,’ the man muttered, his eyes shifting back to the clearing where Shenavyre had now lifted her arms to the skies.

  ‘Wake, then. But remember. The Chaos spirit moves in your world. Your dreams tell you so. Trust them. Learn from them.’

  In the clearing, Shenavyre began to scream and John woke.

  Shattered by the strange encounter, the watcher segued. It was conscious that, in being seen by the man, it had shown its hand more directly than ever before, so the risk of being discovered by the Chaos spirit was very great. Yet at the same time, the fact that the young man seemed to have become aware within his dreams was cause for hope. But before it could think how this might be finessed, it felt events re-shaping themselves on Keltor. Something ultimately precious was awakening; a beauty extreme enough to provoke the stirring of its dark opposite.

  The watcher segued, hope shrivelling, for when had beauty ever managed to win against such malevolence and hunger …

  9

  As Shenavyre died in his arms, Lanalor swore

  to free the Unykorn and himself from the Chaos spirit,

  ‘For,’ he said, ‘I am as an empty vessel which you filled with Chaos.

  You grew in the void within me, left by the Song of Making.

  Now do I see that the capacity for both Chaos and the Song

  dwell in me.

  By this knowledge shall I thwart you.’

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  Glynn opened her eyes. The dim lantern light showed a grey stone wall. Her body ached and her head thudded and for a moment she had the confused idea that she was back in the Acanthan haven trying to throw off her addiction to the virulent drug sharap’n. But then the memory of the trip to Ramidan flowed through her mind and she remembered that she was in the citadel palace. There were no windows in the sleeping chamber so there was no way of telling what time it was. But something had woken her.

  Slipping out of the bed and pushing her feet into her sandals, she moved to kneel by the bunched cloak where the feinna slept. Its eyes opened, and for a moment she was lost in the tenderness of the little animal’s adoring regard.

  You are awake at last, little one. Glynn sent the words to its mind the way she had done with its mother, without any real thought that it would respond, for it was mere days old.

  Wherewhere? it asked, far more strongly and clearly than its mother had ever managed to communicate with her human partners.

  The feinna link informed Glynn dryly that feinna younglings used the intense sleep following birth as a period of rapid mental and physical maturation. The dreams of a feinna nourish, it said.

  The mention of nourishment made Glynn think of the feinna’s need for food. Surely it must be ravenous, having not eaten since its birth. But the feinna link informed her calmly that the youngling was able to consume nutrients from an internal store for the first few waking days of its life, and so did not actually need an external food source. In the wild, this period gave the feinna-She much-needed time to focus on restoring itself following a birthing.

  Welcome to the world, little brotherling, Glynn sent to the feinna, brimming with wonder.

  Stroketouch, the little animal demanded. Glynn obeyed with delight. Its fur seemed to grow silkier under her fingers and the He signalled its pleasure by arching its body against her palm and purring like a cat. It began slowly drifting back to sleep, which was all to the good.

  If she was right about it being early morning, she had the perfect opportunity – perhaps the only opportunity – to investigate the servitors’ quarters while the draakira were sleeping off the effects of their journey.

  The feinna stirred again and looked up at her, its eyes brightly curious. Clearly it sensed her intention to leave it. The last thing she wanted was for th
e little creature to begin crying out, or searching for her, so she carefully formed a mental picture of herself going and then returning with food and water, pushing it gently into the little animal’s mind. To be on the safe side, she sent words. If someone comes be still. No noise. Hiding if someone coming. All humans here are dangerous.

  Biting! the feinna sent fiercely, hissing slightly.

  Glynn couldn’t help but smile. The age of it to be so fierce and protective of her! But she had to be careful how she responded because feinna could not bear the moral ambivalence that accompanied lying. Can’t bite humans, she sent carefully. Too many in this place to rout. Better to be silent. Hiding.

  Can’t biting? the feinna sent.

  Glynn almost smiled. Can biting, but better not. Biting food, she sent firmly.

  The feinna evinced its lack of interest by closing its eyes. Sleeping, it sent. To Glynn’s surprise, it did exactly that, immediately. She stood up, pulled on her cloak, and slipped into the cold hallway. A wary glance in either direction assured her that there was no one in sight, but she stood awhile listening intently to be certain the draakira were not wandering around before she set off. Eschewing the passages that had been lit the night before, she entered others in search of windows and food. She found at least thirty sleeping chambers, and several rooms that were clearly communal. One smelled of food and she entered it, thinking that, being creatures of habit, the draakira were likely to go on using this as their dining hall if they had eaten here the previous night. Her stomach growled and she regretted that whatever had been eaten had been consumed or cleared away.