Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  Continuing her search, she was delighted to come upon a bathing room. Though nowhere as extravagant as the one that she had filled for the Draaka, it was deliciously warm and Glynn decided that if she was not to eat, then at least she could bathe. Fetching a lantern from the hall, she closed the door carefully behind her. The bathing chamber contained ten baths made of what looked like stone, shaped high at one end and low at the other. They were reminiscent of the hipbaths people used in cowboy movies. A rack of clean towels hung against the wall, and on the floor was a wooden box filled with the scented sand which Keltans used for soap and shampoo. Glynn uncapped the tubes in the wall above it and began to undress while a tub filled. She put a sudden sense of deja vu down to having filled a bath for the Draaka the previous night and stripped down to her underwear before noticing a pile of bags and woven boxes against the wall behind the door. The delegation luggage. She dug her own bag from the pile and, after a slight hesitation, Bayard’s. Unthreading the drawstrings of the latter, she determined to find out if Bayard had carried any coin. She was all too conscious that she had not a single coin of Keltan money. Unfortunately there was no pouch.

  Restoring the contents of the bag, she decided on impulse to keep a loose woven tunic in palest blue, worn to softness. It would be no more use to Bayard, and was big enough to serve perfectly if she needed to disguise herself in a hurry, since it would go right over her other clothing. She hesitated, too, over a long-sleeved, floor-length nightgown made from a thick, white, flannel-like fabric. It was what her needlecraft teacher had called a Comfort Gown, the title referring more to the fact that one would feel safe and protected in it, rather than because it was physically comfortable, though it would be that as well. It emanated the delicious and paradoxical mixture of innocence and maternity that spoke of grandmothers and home-baked bread saturated with melted butter and Vegemite.

  Glynn sighed and pushed the nightgown back into Bayard’s bag, returning it to the pile and telling herself that she had never had a grandmother, so what comfort could be derived from the nightgown of such a woman?

  But a grandmother is not just a person, she could almost imagine Wind answering. It is also an archetype. One could imagine grandmotherliness, without having experienced an actual grandmother.

  She capped the water tubes, thinking how much Wind had been on her mind since her arrival on Keltor. She had deliberately repressed all thoughts of him after his suicide, but meeting Solen, who sometimes so resembled him, had awakened memories of her first love and mentor. She finished undressing and climbed into the tub, thinking that it was better to forget the sad manner of Wind’s death and remember all the good things he had said and done; the wisdom that had lit up her life and the love that had irradiated her spirit.

  She found that she could get her legs into the water as well as her body, though it was cramped because of her height. Presumably you were actually meant to wash a bit of yourself at a time. Relaxing as best she could, it struck her that Bayard had been the age of a grandmother, without being the least bit grandmotherly. It was hard to imagine that the elderly draakira had ever been in love or had wanted children; equally hard to imagine her as a little girl with parents and siblings. She had never made any mention of her life before entering the haven and if she pined after anyone, she had shown no sign of it. She had seemed as contented and fulfilled in her life as nuns on Glynn’s world, though Glynn had always felt that those apparently serene nuns must grapple painfully in private with their unfulfilled desires. Perhaps it had been the same with Bayard, though perhaps her longings had been assuaged by her link with the feinna-She.

  But as much as she adored the He, Glynn knew that her bond with the little animal would not fulfill all of her needs. The emptiness which had tormented her in her own world had arisen from a lack of connections – the feeling that she was irrelevant to people, to the world. Her father had loved her, and Wind, but neither of them had needed her. Indeed, when Wind had been most in need, he had turned away from her. Looking after Ember had given her a purpose of a kind and she had clung to it. Ironically, despite striving to return to her own world to be with Ember, she was no longer driven by the need to prove herself relevant. Here, she had learned that she was relevant to the world simply because she was part of it.

  The faces of the people she had come to know on Keltor flickered in her mind’s eye: Solen’s sister, Hella; Lev with his grainy laughter; the handsome, laughing-eyed myrmidon, Duran; even Nema, Jurass’s aged and indomitable mother. She had forged more links in the few weeks she had been on Keltor, than she had managed to do in a whole life on her own world, and she knew that she would never forget this sensation of belonging, of being part of the world around her. Needed and wanted. Liked. Loved. This world felt warm and alive to her, while her own world had felt like a turned shoulder.

  Glynn had a sudden vivid mental image of Ember wrapped in a white bed sheet, combing her wet hair. She might have believed she was really seeing her sister, for as twins, they had from time to time received vivid mental images of one another, especially when they were engaged in the same activity at the same time. The Twin Thing, her father had laughingly called it. But that synchronicity had ended after the diagnosis of Ember’s tumour. It was, for Glynn, as if a telephone number had been suddenly cancelled. Besides, the bathing Ember in Glynn’s imagining had been different from the real Ember. Her expression had been characteristically serious, but there had been a gentleness and a pensiveness in her face that the real Ember had never possessed.

  Glynn took a deep, slow breath, and concentrated on giving her hundreds of muscles permission to relax as she released the breath infinitesimally slowly. It was a meditative technique Wind had taught her to help unwind after a hard training session, or a competition. He had made her visualise each tiny bit of her body, and order that part to relax before moving onto the next bit. The mind followed the body, and in the state of stillness that was the goal of the technique, apprehensions and anxieties abated allowing the mind to become serene.

  Glynn gently deflected any urge to analyse the thoughts and random images that drifted through her mind, until she felt herself to be entirely empty. She had no idea how long she remained in this state but, eventually, her mind reformulated two clear goals. She must get the He-feinna safely to the wilderness on Ramidan and let it loose to seek out its own kind, as Bayard had intended, and she must find out the whereabouts of the soulweaver Alene, and speak with her. Since nothing could be done about the feinna until they were able to be physically parted, she would focus her initial efforts on the soulweaver. Of course, knowing where she was within the palace was only part of it. Reaching the woman was not going to be the simple matter that she had rather foolishly envisaged, given their virtual prisoner status.

  Sitting up slowly, Glynn held the meditative trance as she began to massage sandsoap into her hair and skin, again allowing thoughts to slip by her without grasping at them. From experience she was aware that this was the moment at which important thoughts or memories or connections would occur. Wind had taught her the trick. The first thought she had was only a memory of the peculiar dream in which she had seemed to be inside Solen. On the point of dismissing it from her mind, she hesitated, because Wind had taught her to respect the ability of her mind to work beneath the level of its own consciousness. He claimed that the mind had a way of gathering information at both the conscious and subconscious levels, offering it up to the conscious mind in the form of dreams or hunches which must be deciphered. Therefore it might be that this dream was important in some way.

  Glynn frowned. Solen did not believe Bleyd of Fomhika to be the poisoner, so that part of the dream had obviously come from her own knowledge. But the other two men in the dream were products of her imagination and so their words might be taken as a message from her own subconscious. The trouble was that they had basically admitted to knowing little. Maybe, then, the dream was only a reflection of her helplessness; her own awareness that she needed
more information.

  Emerging from the now tepid water, Glynn dried herself, wondering what path there was to knowledge other than the one she had taken? Having dressed in clean clothing and stashed her dirty clothes in her bag, she listened at the door to be sure no one was up, then went quietly back to her own chamber.

  The feinna had not stirred in her absence, but she had known that because of their bond. Some obscure instinct made her set the bag in front of the sleeping feinna to hide it from anyone entering the room. Then she burrowed back into bed, letting her thoughts freewheel. She found herself wondering again exactly why Tarsin was estranged from the soulweavers.

  This time, Argon’s gaunt face floated into her mind. Rather than dismissing it, she considered the coldness of his green eyes as they had rested on her, helplessly mute and paralysed as she had been after her crossing to Keltor. He had healed her paralysis and hastened the restoration of her voice, yet it was impossible to think warmly of him. There had been no kindness or compassion in his manner to her. Indeed he had made it plain that he healed her merely to gain passage to Myrmidor. That he had wanted to break his long self-imposed exile on Eron isle had unsettled the phlegmatic shipfolk almost as much as his claim that this decision had been prompted by a dream.

  Dreams again. Glynn wondered what sort of dream it could have been to prompt the stern white cloak to travel to Myrmidor, so near to Darkfall which he professed to hate.

  Her thoughts drifted to Alene soulweaver, whose power lay in her ability to dream her way into the Void. Both Tarsin and Argon seemed to feel themselves spurned or betrayed by her but, despite all the gossip, she had never heard it said how Alene had felt about either of them. Glynn had formulated a picture of a remote woman, beautiful but formal, passionless and dutiful. Now she chided herself for making judgements based on so little real knowledge. Her only concern ought to be that the soulweaver was bound to give aid and succour to all who come through Lanalor’s portal. Glynn had no memory of travelling through any portal, but since this was the way that other strangers had come to Keltor, it must be the same with her. And if the legendary portal truly existed, then Lanalor must have existed to create it, which meant that there must also be an Unraveller for whom it was intended, and a Chaos spirit to have trapped the Unykorn so that it would need rescuing by the Unraveller. In short, if she accepted that she had come to another world, then she must accept that the Chaos spirit and the Unraveller both existed.

  There was said to be a record of the strangers who had come to Keltor kept on Darkfall. It would be interesting to note how many strangers remembered their crossing, and where they had been when it had happened. The book might offer answers to some of the famous disappearances in her own world.

  Her amusement faded at the thought of all those strangers who had come before her who had been killed by draakan demon hunters, also called the Hounds of Chaos. Bayard had told her that the Hounds were men and women infused by the power of Chaos, whenever another stranger crossed. Glynn had learned enough about the manner in which strangers were hunted by these Chaos-possessed draakira for the thought of it to chill her. When she escaped, it must be without the Draaka being aware of her true nature.

  It had puzzled Glynn initially that the Chaos spirit had not seemed to know that she was a stranger, but given that it had announced the arrival of the Unraveller, Glynn had come to believe that the coming of the long-awaited hero had shadowed her own crossing. Even so, every time the draakira summoned their master, she was in danger of being discovered.

  Argon’s face arose in Glynn’s mind and, quite suddenly, she thought she knew why he had come out of exile. What would drive such a man to go to a place he loathed, but a dream that portended something so enormously important that it would override his individual desires and fears? And what could be more important than the arrival of the Unraveller! The Chaos spirit had boasted about preventing any soulweaver from receiving the vital knowledge, but it might not have bothered about those with mere soulweaving tendencies since most of them would dismiss such a vision as false because it was not echoed by the Darkfall soulweavers. But Argon was no ordinary person. His own mother had been a soulweaver and his childhood on Darkfall would have acquainted him intimately with all the details of the Legendsong, including Lanalor’s prediction that the Chaos spirit would move against the Unraveller as soon as he appeared. What better way to promote that than to cut the Unraveller off from his supporters?

  Glynn’s thoughts shifted to Solen and his younger sister, Flay, who had demanded her brother take her to Darkfall because of a dream! Escorting her had cost Solen his home sept and very nearly his life, yet Flay had not hesitated to insist. Was it possible that she, too, had dreamed of the coming of the Unraveller? Solen had not mentioned the nature of her dream, but maybe she had never told him the details.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain Glynn felt that she was right. But Flay was already on Darkfall, and even Argon must have reached Myrmidor by now, so why wouldn’t Darkfall have announced that the Unraveller had come? Had they doubted the dreams of Flay and Argon? Or had they thought to keep the arrival of their champion a secret, never realising that the Draaka already knew he had come?

  And what of the Unraveller? Unlike Glynn, he would have wasted no time in trying to figure out where he was, how he had got there and why, because he must know those things. He may have been confused to learn that many on Keltor did not look for his coming with hope, either fearing him as a demon from the Void or actually disbelieving in his existence. But he would know that all he need do was to present himself to the nearest soulweaver and demand her aid.

  Glynn’s eyes widened at the thought that the Unraveller was quite likely to be seeking the same woman as she was! Lanalor could not have prepared a way to get his hero into the palace, having no idea that it would be needed. The Unraveller would have been thrown upon his own resources. Presumably, as the chosen hero of Lanalor, he would have considerable resources, but even he could not simply walk into the palace. In his place, Glynn would not have lingered on Ramidan but would have made her way directly to Darkfall. What an irony if the Draaka summoned up her master only to find that the Unraveller had left the island! Even so, Glynn wished that she had told Solen what she had overheard of the Draaka’s plans.

  Unable to lie still, Glynn decided to do some exercises. After warming up, she slowed and began a simple kata sequence. At the same time she began to review what the Draaka knew of her, in preparation for the coming interview. She was a Fomhikan, rescued from the waves by Solen, and brought to Acantha. He had been forced by the ship code to let her stay with him until she was able to return to a home she could not remember because she had swallowed bittermute algae.

  Glynn lowered herself into an extended crouch, thinking that she had not given much extra credence to her claim to be Fomhikan when the ship bringing them to Ramidan had stopped there. She could say that her bond to the feinna and Bayard had caused her to lose interest in her past. On the other hand, it might be better still to abandon the story altogether. She would claim that she had dreamed so vividly of being Fomhikan, that she had clutched at it as truth, but had realised, upon reaching the green isle, that she had been wrong.

  She turned on one heel and then on the other.

  She had also told the Draaka that she had seen Ember in a darklin-stone vision. She regretted that now but she would have to adhere to this part of her tale as she had referred to it upon their arrival on Ramidan. Glynn moved into an upright position, and began to flex her neck muscles. The Prime had said that the Draaka might find it useful that she looked so like a myrmidon and so perhaps she could claim to have remembered being disposed of by her myrmidon sisters for something she had seen or heard? A secret meeting between the Shadowman and a soulweaver, perhaps? But what soulweaver and where? And what had been said …

  It was too complicated.

  Glynn’s head had begun to ache and she straightened and pressed her fingers to her t
emples. There must be a simpler approach. The trouble was that although she felt mentally and physically rested, she had definitely done something to her mind when she had influenced the emotions of the gate legionnaire and the women on the pier. She had felt herself to be recovered, but there was certainly an area of numbness inside her head that made it hard to think logically.

  Without warning, the door opened to admit one of the draakira. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘I … I was just dressing,’ Glynn answered meekly, glad she had not been in the middle of an exercise.

  ‘You will come and prepare to serve a meal to the senior draakira,’ the woman ordered. Glynn followed her back to the communal room that she had passed through earlier, where the food scents were now hot and fresh.

  ‘They will dine at that larger table,’ the draakira said, pointing to a table by a window which Glynn had failed to see in the darkness of the previous night. The draakira departed and Glynn hurried across to the window behind the table. Unfortunately the window showed only a small, entirely enclosed courtyard.

  Returning to the buffet tables, she noticed two green-clad servitors were transferring food from trays to the table. They must have been in a dozen times already for the table fairly groaned under platters heaped with strange-looking fruits, fragrant pies, bowls of a steaming pinkish gruel that smelled of cloves and might be a sort of porridge, wheels of cheese and crocks of butter and huge baskets of fresh-cooked bread. Realising she was ravenous, Glynn helped herself to some bread from a loaf and used a wooden spatula to smear on butter. The servitors continued to arrange the table, watching her covertly as she ate several more slices of bread, then a large juicy slice of kalinda fruit.

  ‘Do you have let milk?’ Glynn asked at last, beginning to lay out plates and fill them for the senior draakira’s table.

  The elder of the pair asked, ‘Will you require it sweetened?’