Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  The dream faded into another of a door in a dark place. Ember opened the door and found herself stepping into the circular room where the manbeast Ronaall was seated in his worn armchair. He stood, his expression grave. ‘How have you come here?’ he asked.

  ‘I was dreaming. But I’m segueing now, aren’t I, and you’re real?’

  ‘Real,’ he gave a flat laugh that bared his sharp teeth. ‘I am as helpless as a dream, Lady. Each moment I learn how little I know. You should not be here, but maybe I am to blame for it this time, for I was thinking of … well let us say my thoughts summoned you.’ He gave a harsh self-mocking laugh but there was an unsteadiness in it and she thought he seemed less calm and controlled than on other occasions. ‘If only you could tell me what I need to understand to help your world.’

  ‘My world?’ Ember echoed. ‘What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with my world.’

  His eyes held lambent incredulity. ‘Nothing wrong? Do you jest, Lady? Even your sister sees the truth.’

  ‘My … you mean Glynn?’

  ‘Glynna … yes. She is not like you …’

  ‘No,’ Ember said with a sudden pang of grief and regret. ‘She’s better than me. Braver, kinder …’

  ‘That is true,’ the manbeast said softly, as if he really knew.

  ‘If you can see her then you can tell me if she’s safe.’

  ‘Safe … None of us is safe. Not you nor me nor your sister. Not your world nor mine … Perhaps nothing will ever be safe again.’ There was a glint of savagery in his eyes for the first time and Ember took a step backwards. ‘You are afraid of me?’ He sounded both incredulous and angry. ‘How will you ever have the courage that is needed to save us …’ He lifted his hand and Ember felt herself thrust back and away.

  She woke. Or at least, she struggled to find consciousness. It was dark and for a moment she was completely disorientated. Then she realised she was still sitting in the carriage driving through a film of green soup. Bleyd and Hella were heavily asleep, slumped in their corners, and there was no way of knowing how long she had slept. It could as easily have been minutes as hours. The road they were on was now rising steeply, and Ember frowned, remembering that the valley floor had been flat and seemingly filled with buildings, while all else had been green-covered hills and low mountains. They must now be in the mountains, but more than that she did not know. Unfortunately she had paid little attention to the map cloth of Iridom because she had never imagined coming here.

  Peering out, she realised suddenly that the ground was not rising as she had thought, because the carriage had entered the canopy of leaves, brushing and pushing its way through them. The road was now following an ascending spine of rock.

  Without warning, the carriage came out into the open. Ember cried out at the sudden painful brilliance of the light and fumbled to pull her veil forward and double it. Even so it was some time before she could look out at the sea of greenery. They had passed through a heavily forested canyon cut through the ring of high hills around Iridom, and were now in a valley on the other side. Ahead were more mountains and the spine of rock seemed to connect to the nearest of them. Ember prayed that this was their destination because, aside from all else, she needed to relieve herself. But there was no sign of water let alone anything that could be called a fire fall.

  Bleyd moaned and shifted in his sleep, muttering fretfully. His eyes fluttered open and he groped for his pocket, withdrawing a small phial of dark liquid. Without a word he drank the contents. His eyes were on Ember but, knowing he could not tell if she was awake because of the veil, she remained still. In a moment he lay back against the upholstery and closed his eyes. Ember could see that his face was slicked with sweat, which had made the paint streak, and found herself wondering again exactly what Faylian had done to him. Bleyd’s wounds looked close to healed, but maybe she had only healed the wounds and not the infection behind them, nor the etheric taint. Healing Keltan style happened primarily at the etheric level, where most illnesses began. These were generally diagnosed and dealt with long before they manifested on a physical level. Etheric healing was demanding of practitioners, and the more so, the greater the illness.

  Actual physical healing was mostly for accidental injuries; bone breaks, cuts, sprains and strains and burns. Much of this sort of healing was done by rough local white cloaks called menders, trained by visiting white cloaks to perform such treatments to prevent the infections that would require a stronger healing. From what she had understood from her lessons, Bleyd’s injuries had been twofold, because his physical hurts had been allowed to become badly infected. Faylian had promised to accelerate his healing, but maybe the cold-eyed soulweaver had merely done enough to get them off Vespi.

  Bleyd slumbered fitfully for perhaps another hour but, when he opened his eyes again, he looked better. Ember wondered how much of his apparent revival was the effect of the drug he had taken. He sat up and stretched, knocking Hella, who also began to wake, yawning and stretching. Opening her eyes she let out a cry of delight and half hung out the door in her desire to see more. A hot wind had begun to blow, stirring the treetops so that they really did look like a sea.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ she shouted. ‘So different from Acantha.’ She nodded ahead. ‘That must be the fire-fall mountain?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Ember murmured, suddenly realising uneasily that currents of pain had begun running thinly along her arms and legs, radiating from the back of her neck.

  ‘It is,’ Bleyd said, sounding tired but cheerful enough. Ember peered out of the carriage door to distract herself, and saw that, just ahead, the rock spur widened and ended in a plateau, and here the carriage lurched to a standstill.

  ‘We must walk the rest of the way,’ Bleyd said. The spur they had travelled upon actually continued, Ember now saw, running another twenty metres before disappearing into the emerald foliage on the side of the mountain, but it was far too narrow to allow the passage of a carriage.

  With a grunt Bleyd lifted down the capacious woven hamper in which their picnic had been packed, grimacing slightly, but other than this he appeared to be in a much better state as he turned to the driver. The man had dismounted and was unharnessing his beasts and giving them surly looks. ‘You will wait for us?’

  ‘Hanna been paid yet, have I?’ snarled the man.

  ‘That’s true,’ Bleyd said pleasantly, and set off along the narrow stone path. Ember and Hella followed, Ember feeling the heat of the sunlight against her skin, and wondering why no one other than Vespians was tanned; it seemed more genetic than an effect of the sun. Perhaps Kalinda had some different sort of chemical make-up than the sun of her world and did not burn skin. Or maybe the envelope of air about Keltor was less damaged than earth’s ozone layer.

  This thought reminded Ember of Ronaall’s words about her world needing help. What could he have meant? He had also mentioned Glynn, praising her courage and pointing out that Ember had none. The memory of the disappointment in his golden eyes had stabbed her unexpectedly, but Ember told herself that the whole thing had probably been a dream. After all, the manbeast had said he would stop her being drawn to him.

  ‘Are you all right, Gola?’ Bleyd called back, interrupting her musings. Hella also turned to look back at Ember, her expression puzzled as she no doubt wondered at the obvious note of concern in Bleyd’s voice, when he was the one who was supposed to be sick.

  ‘I do not like this heat,’ she finally said tersely.

  They entered the dappled shade of the trees, and the path they were following turned sharply to run along the side of the mountain.

  ‘What was all that about back there with the carriage driver?’ Hella asked Bleyd.

  He shrugged and spoke over his shoulder, the path being too narrow to walk two abreast. ‘I have heard that in recent times there are carriage drivers on Iridom who will agree to take unwary visitors to some remote place, and then abandon them, having pocketed the full fare. Then another carriage will happ
en along after a while and the traveller is so relieved they pay a full fare all over again to get out, never realising the whole thing has been set up. From his reaction to my refusal to pay the fare at once, I suspect our driver would have tried it with us.’ He laughed. ‘Or maybe he is just naturally bad-tempered.’

  The way ahead forked into two paths, and they stopped. One path ran steeply upward, and the other sloped down. Bleyd wiped the sweat from his forehead, further smearing his face paint, and told them they must now choose. ‘The left path will bring us to the top of the falls and a spectacular view, but it is a steep climb with little shade at the end of it. The lower path will bring us to the level of the fire lake, where we may see the falls from below. The walk is longer but some of it will be in the shade of rock. And we can rest and picnic in the shade of a cave. There is a cold spring where we can swim and later, if we want to try, we can see if there are any run-off pools of hot water where we can bathe.’

  ‘Down,’ Hella said promptly.

  ‘Down,’ Ember concurred wearily, wishing again that Bleyd had left her at the nightshelter.

  20

  My brother was an extraordinary man. There are few of his ilk and

  seldom are the lives of such people merely happy. His desires nearly

  destroyed him and his dreams burned him. In the moments of his sharpest

  pain, he bade me play the a’luwtha to him and he wept, for so had

  Shenavyre played to the Firstmade. I would have stopped but he

  commanded me to go on for he said the beauty of the music healed him

  even as it rent him …

  THE ALYDA SCROLLS

  They had been walking no more than ten minutes when the path began to slope up again. Ember was on the verge of announcing that she would go back and wait in the carriage when she saw through a gap in the trees that the path entered a tunnel a little way ahead. The thought of the coolness of the shade kept her silent. And indeed, as they entered the tunnel, which burrowed straight on into the mountain, all of them uttered cries of relief at the delicious chill of the air. There were no lights of course, and they had no torches or lanterns, but the glare of the day went a long way into the tunnel and, just as it was fading, Ember realised there was light coming from ahead. It looked like daylight but they hadn’t been walking nearly long enough to have passed right through the mountain. And it did not look like firelight, though she had begun to wonder if the fire falls were actually within the mountain.

  By the time they had reached the other end of the tunnel, her teeth were chattering and she was glad to discover that it was daylight they had been seeing. For several blissful moments she revelled in the warmth of Kalinda just as she had earlier relished the cold of the mountain shade. For most of the walk, coping with the temperature extremes and curiosity had kept her from focusing too much on the pain simmering under her skin, but as they stood waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light, pain stabbed hard into Ember’s skull and she doubled up under the force of it. It passed as quickly as it had come, and fortunately she was behind the others so none of them had seen her clutching at her head, but the intensity of it had frightened her nearly to bonelessness.

  She forced herself to look around and note that the tunnel had brought them through the edge of the mountain to a bowl-like valley at its centre. The tunnel opening was only several metres above the floor of the valley, which lay much higher than the plain outside the mountain. A path worn by feet ran from the tunnel down a gentle slope to a small forest.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Hella asked.

  Ember became aware of a deep thrumming noise. ‘Is it … some sort of landslide?’

  Bleyd grinned at her in boyish excitement. ‘It is the sound of the falls but we can not see them from here. Come on.’ He led them down the path and into the trees, which were yet more veswood trees in their luxuriant Iridomi incarnation. They had not gone far when a hissing noise became audible above the drumming sound of water falling. ‘Not far now,’ Bleyd murmured, glancing back. Ember noticed that the face paint which had hidden his multi-coloured bruises was almost gone and wondered about her own make-up. She had been careful but she had been perspiring too. She reached up and unfolded the doubled fabric of her veil so that it now fell over her face. It was hot, but the last thing she wanted was for Hella to note her resemblance to Shenavyre. Fortunately, the fact that she was wearing a privacy veil would prevent the other girl asking any questions about why she wore it.

  The hissing grew in volume as they followed the path into the forest, and by the time they came to the almost perfectly circular clearing in the midst of the trees, Bleyd had to shout to make himself heard over the din. ‘On the other side of these trees is another path where you can climb up some way to see the falls. To see it from the bottom you must follow that stream. He pointed to a small pool of water that Ember had not noticed, fed by a rill of water that wound ahead.

  ‘Good. I am so thirsty,’ Ember said.

  Bleyd caught at her arm when she tried to step forward, a horrified look on his face. ‘Surely you know that the water from the fire falls is deadly!’

  Ember’s heart jerked in fright, but she pulled her arm free and said coolly, ‘Of course I know that. I just wanted to have a closer look at the stream.’

  Bleyd flushed and turned to see Hella staring at them both. ‘Let’s go on,’ he muttered and marched ahead.

  ‘What is the matter with him? Everyone knows the waters of the fire falls are poison to drink,’ Hella said as they followed Bleyd along the path that curved to go upstream.

  They came to the end of the trees, which they could now see only ringed the clearing that lay at the heart of the crater. The circle of trees was broken where the stream passed through them and, through the gap, they could see that it flowed from an impossibly still lake which lay at the base of what could only be the fire falls. Spilling from the jagged valley rim hundreds of metres above, an immense torrent of glittering water cascaded to the lake, but the drop was so great that the water was literally vaporised by the time it reached the bottom, hence the stillness of the lake. But the most astonishing thing about the falls was the blue and violet flames that shimmered along the whole length of the falling water, and danced over the surface of the lake, reminding Ember very much of the way the southern lights had played across the skies in her own world.

  ‘Where does the water come from?’ Hella asked, voicing Ember’s own unasked question.

  Bleyd said, pointing downward, ‘It flows up from deep inside the mountain walls that we just came through, and overflows into a pool way up there on the rim of the crater valley. You can not see from here but there is a plateau up there. That is where the other path would have taken us. Then the water spills over the edge and falls down.’

  Hella gave a hiss of excitement. ‘Of course! I have seen it in visionweavings. That is where the windwalker is said to have found and named The Heart of Fire!

  ‘Guilamo was her name,’ Bleyd agreed reverently. He was sweating again and dabbed at his brow, grimacing to see the paint smeared on his hand.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to picnic under these trees right here,’ Ember said.

  But Bleyd shook his head. ‘I know you are hot and tired but the cave is only a few steps more. It is as much worthy of an audience as the fire falls, and you will find it very pleasant.’

  ‘I do not see any cave,’ Hella complained.

  ‘There’ Bleyd was pointing to what Ember had taken to be a slight hillock on one side of the clearing. Then she noticed a wide, deep, mouth-like slash across the front of it.

  ‘Picnic inside that?’ Hella asked dubiously.

  Bleyd threw her a smiling look. ‘I promise you that even an Acanthan will not be disappointed by this cave, which is called The Mouth. We can have a closer look at the falls when it is cooler.’

  The cave had been aptly named, for they had to climb over a lip of stone and then over teethlike stumps of rock beyond, before getting
to the pale sand floor of the cave proper. It was not too cold because Kalinda’s light slanted inside and fell over the floor and over some flat-topped boulders of varying sizes. It was upon one of these that Bleyd set down his burden with a sigh of relief. ‘I hope you both have a good appetite because I have no intention of carrying this back any way but empty.’

  ‘How far back does this go?’ Hella asked peering into the stygian darkness into which the cavern dissolved once it passed outside the range of the light.

  ‘The floor begins to slope down a bit further back, but I do not think anyone knows where it ends,’ Bleyd said.

  Hella turned to look back out of the cavern mouth and sighed. ‘You see how the mouth of the cavern frames the falls from here?’ They both turned and Ember noted that the lips of the cave did indeed frame the falls perfectly, now that they were back a little from it. ‘There is a visionweaving that I have seen back on Acantha which shows it like this. I always thought the blackness around the edges was a conceit invented by the visionweaver. Now I see that the visionweaver simply wove of the fire falls from this cavern.’

  Fearful that Hella’s words would provoke Bleyd to blurt something out about her being a visionweaver, Ember stiffened, but he only turned to look at the falls, saying dreamily, ‘Some of the visionweavings of the falls are wondrous fair, but none ever made me feel as I do when I look at the real thing.’

  ‘It is as I have long believed,’ Hella murmured. ‘Visionweavings can be almost miraculously beautiful, but in the end they are no more than commentary. A visionweaving of the falls is not the falls, but an opinion and an interpretation of a thing which can never be entirely defined in human terms.’

  To Ember’s surprise, Bleyd nodded soberly. ‘Sometimes it has seemed to me that in trying to name the world and things for songs and visionweavings, we blind ourselves to reality. But come, let us go a little deeper into the cave and I will show you a spring where we can swim. I could do with it to rouse me.’