Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  She took a deep breath and continued on the narrow path leading around the water, marvelling at the brightness of Aden’s light. The boy had said they were not far from the soulweaver’s hut but it had taken most of the remainder of the night to reach it. To be fair, that was partly because they kept away from the road. Fortunately they had been able to follow a stream which Anyi had said would lead them to the lake beside which the soulweaver’s hut was built, so it had only been a matter of tiredly plodding on and ignoring the weight on her back and arms.

  The lake itself was little more than a large pond and almost perfectly oval shaped. It was also as still as a mirror, and the night lay reflected within it. Passing close by it, Glynn found herself staring, wearily mesmerised, into her own reflection. Some thought hovered, concerning the reflection and her own situation, but she was too tired to concentrate, and it would not come.

  As if he sensed the journey’s end, Anyi stirred and looked around. Before she could stop him, he had taken a deep breath and bellowed out a greeting. Glynn was almost startled into dropping him. The door to the hut burst open to reveal a powerful-looking blonde woman, with bound hair and a belted tunic like Duran’s, unmistakably a myrmidon. ‘Anyi! Thank the Horn!’ she cried in mingled anger and relief. Then her eyes fell to his bandaged leg. ‘What has happened? Who are you?’ This was aimed at Glynn.

  ‘She is a caster though she looks like a myrmidon,’ Anyi said eagerly. ‘She helped me after I escaped from the green legionnaires.’

  ‘Green … Anyi what in the name of Lanalor is going on? Days past I go out of the apartment for two hours telling you to do nothing, and I return to find you gone, leaving a note telling me you are coming here. Then I get here and Alene has not seen you …’

  ‘I did not leave any note!’ Anyi cried. ‘I did go out for a little while. I wanted to find out what Coralyn was going to do about my brother. I heard her and Kalide talking about Fulig and my father. I did not hear what they said about Poverin, but they are going to imprison Fulig straight after the betrothal ceremony tomorrow night. Then that sneak of an Asa caught me. Horrible man, creeping about. He’s worse than ever since Kalide questioned him about what happened to the visionweaver. Anyway, he dragged me off to Coralyn and she told the legionnaires to put me in a cell and to arrest you when you came back to the palace. Then yesterday morning they came and took me out to the wilderness. They were going to kill me and blame it on you. But I got away.’

  ‘And you just happened to be in the right place to rescue him?’ This to Glynn who did not like the way the older woman was regarding her.

  ‘Possibly it was the wrong place for me,’ she said tersely, thinking that this grim-faced myrmidon was disappointingly unlike the laughing, charismatic Duran. ‘I had no idea the … uh … mermod was there until he ran into me.’

  ‘I did! I ran right into her. And she pushed me up into a tree and led the trakkerbeasts away just like a myrmidon out of a ballad.’

  ‘Do not exaggerate, Anyi,’ Feyt said repressively. ‘We should go inside. That leg needs proper treatment.’

  ‘I am not exaggerating!’ Anyi protested indignantly.

  ‘Perhaps not, but you talk as if what has happened is a game rather than real events where people suffer and die. Grow up, Anyi.’

  ‘I do not understand why you are so angry …’ he began.

  ‘You do not understand? We have been worried about you, boy! And if you had done as I asked instead of creeping about prying into matters that are not your business, you would not have got hurt and you would have arrived here with me.’

  Glynn could not help herself. ‘If he hadn’t crept about you wouldn’t know that Coralyn was plotting Fulig’s imprisonment.’

  The myrmidon gave her a long look. ‘What stake have you in all of this, caster? If you are a caster.’

  ‘She is a friend of Kerd’s,’ Anyi said.

  ‘I am not sure that is any recommendation right now, given all the trouble that young man is causing,’ Feyt reached out and scooped Anyi effortlessly from Glynn’s aching arms and, although she was glad to have the weight taken from her, she immediately felt redundant. Nevertheless she trailed after them to the hut door, trying to decide what to do. All at once, she was not so sure she wanted to tell her complicated story in the hearing of this stiff, angry myrmidon who would doubtless sneer and question everything she said. And yet where else could she go?

  Suddenly the myrmidon was back, free of her burden. ‘You had better come in,’ she said abruptly.

  A surge of anger at her brusqueness gave Glynn the energy to draw herself up and say coldly that she would be on her way. ‘I helped the boy, but this matter of legionnaires is none of my business.’

  ‘Enter, and we will speak of what is your business,’ invited a low sweet voice, and out stepped a slender, plainly dressed woman with long, sleekly beautiful black hair and a smooth ageless face. Her eyes seemed, in Aden’s greenish light, to have the same odd silvery quality as Ember’s blinded eye. The woman could only be the soulweaver Alene but she was nothing at all as Glynn imagined. Neither a voluptuous but aging beauty who had seduced and betrayed men like Argon and Tarsin, nor the interfering hag of popular draakan mythology. Nor yet was she a frail old woman radiating goodness and wisdom. She emanated mystery and seemed to Glynn as fey and lovely and sternly distant as a star.

  ‘You … you are Alene?’ Glynn asked, thinking how very odd it was to finally meet someone, almost by chance, whom she had been seeking so desperately only a little time before. She wanted to ask if the Unraveller was inside, but knew that she could not possibly begin that way.

  ‘I am indeed she, but I do not know you,’ Alene responded graciously. ‘Let us offer you our hospitality and we will talk.’ She held out a slender unadorned hand and Glynn put her own in it and let herself be led into the hut by the blind woman. Feyt came in behind them, shutting the door hard. The dwelling was as simple inside as it had looked from without, being a single room warmed by a fire in a wide hearth with two battered chairs and a bench drawn up to it. There was a younger, dark-haired myrmidon leaning over the fire stirring a pot and the walls on all sides were hung thickly with bunches of fresh herbs and flowers and berries which gave off the sweet, faintly decaying spice of autumn. The only other furniture was a bench table in one corner piled with dried herbs alongside a large mortar and pestle, two low beds against the wall and a mattress made up on the floor. The only light in the room came from the fireplace and a single lantern hung over the bench table.

  Glynn wondered suddenly why they were all up so terribly early.

  ‘How is it that you did not see this?’ Feyt asked almost accusingly of the soulweaver.

  Alene frowned. ‘I told you that the boy was safe and would come to us, and I told you that you must not go back to the citadel or you would die.’

  ‘You implied that Anyi would come here alone. You said nothing about him being a prisoner of Coralyn’s legionnaires!’

  ‘To ask, even by implication, why I did not see everything, Feyt, is a novice myrmidon’s question and not worthy of you. And yet, there is something in what you ask, for even when this girl’s hand lay in mine just now, she was utterly opaque to me.’

  Glynn opened her mouth to say she knew not what, but she sneezed explosively several times.

  ‘She saved me from the legionnaires and tore up her skirt for bandages, and you act like she is a criminal,’ Anyi said hotly from the bed nearest the fire.

  ‘The mermod speaks true, Feyt.’ Alene turned to Glynn and gave her a gentle push towards the fire. ‘Sit. Warm yourself and Tareed will serve you some food.’ younger myrmidon regarded Glynn with a mixture of frankness and curiosity as she handed over a bowl of thickish broth. Glynn took it and sat to eat it with a murmur of thanks, realising that the younger myrmidon must be the second of the soulweaver’s traditional protectors.

  ‘I am pleased to greet you,’ the myrmidon said eagerly.

  ‘I am Glynn,’ Glynn b
egan, then stopped because the other girl was gaping at her.

  ‘You are Glynn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Glynn said, wondering uneasily why her name should occasion such amazement. She looked around to find Feyt and Alene looking no less stunned than the younger myrmidon. Only Anyi looked as puzzled by their reaction as Glynn felt. ‘Is … is something wrong?’ she asked at last.

  Alene answered, sounding almost amused, ‘Nothing is wrong. I was merely wondering how it was that I had failed to foresee the coming of a stranger.’

  ‘You are a stranger!’ Anyi cried in delight. ‘Of course. That is why you did not say any of the proper things when I told you who I was! That makes two strangers that I have met in my life.’ Then his face changed. ‘But you must be …’

  ‘Whisht,’ Alene hissed and the sightless eyes turned unerringly to the boy. ‘Let us go gently now.’ She turned back to Glynn, her expression once again serene. ‘We have much to say to one another, Glynn, but eat first and rest a little, for I know you are weary.’ She turned a forbidding face to Anyi who, from his expression, had opened his mouth to argue, and he subsided. Glynn could hardly blame him. How strange to be faced down by a blind woman.

  But she wondered very much why they had reacted the way they had to her name. Was it possible that Alene had foreseen her coming to Keltor, without seeing her face? Indeed how else could the soulweaver know her name and the fact that she was a stranger. Despite her curiosity about what that vision might have shown, Glynn was glad enough not to be interrogated at once. She sniffed surreptitiously at the broth to be sure it contained no meat but, only when she had managed to blow the liquid cool enough to sip, did the thought buzzing about her mind settle.

  If Anyi had met another stranger, it could only be the Unraveller. Glynn prayed that the man would not return, and tried to think how to broach the subject of the Chaos spirit’s predictions concerning her. The thought of trying to explain made her feel even more weary and she decided that, rather than trying to tell a long complicated story, she would simply answer all of the questions put to her and explain further when it became necessary.

  Feyt refused a second bowl of soup and began to prowl about restlessly like a panther wanting to tear someone’s head off while the soulweaver unwrapped Anyi’s bandages, using water to soak them free where the blood had glued them together, and spoke to the boy in a low voice. Gradually their quiet words became audible to Glynn, almost as if her feinna hearing was activating.

  ‘… see all things,’ Alene was saying gravely.

  ‘I am not a child. And that was not an answer.’ A fleeting sternness in Anyi’s voice made him sound older and Glynn looked across at the boy and realised that he was not truly a child. It was only that he was thin and small-boned.

  Alene only said evenly, ‘You are not a child, that is true, but nor are you yet a man, for a man who gives his word is bound by it.’

  ‘I did not promise Feyt to stay locked in the apartment,’ Anyi said, scowling.

  ‘You gave the impression of promising, which is worse, for there was an intent to deceive in it.’

  ‘A wise Holder needs deceit. You told me that.’

  ‘Deceit at need only, and always tempered by wisdom,’ Alene corrected. ‘Lies too easily become a habit. Do you think you are wise, Anyi?’

  The boy flushed and finally shook his head, wincing as Alene began to probe the wound. She produced a phial of reddish powder and sprinkled it liberally along the wound, saying, ‘This will stop the pain for a little while.’ She drew a needle from a white block of soap-like matter, threading it with a black twine. Seeing it in the hands of the blind woman, Glynn felt slightly sick, but Alene’s movements were neat and deft, as if she was able to see, and the boy hardly seemed to feel her needle in his flesh, wincing only once or twice.

  The soulweaver suddenly said, ‘To know one is not wise is the beginning of wisdom.’

  That she was almost exactly quoting Wind startled Glynn. She was not aware of reacting in any obvious way, but the soulweaver’s silver gaze turned in her direction. Glynn looked away, unable to cope with the ambiguity of a blindness that nevertheless allowed its owner to look through your skin.

  Anyi suddenly sat bolt upright. ‘By the Horn! I forgot. Feyt has not told you yet, but, Alene, I overheard Coralyn and Kalide talking about Fulig. He is in terrible danger! Coralyn …’

  ‘I have woven what Coralyn and her corrupt son plan for the Vespian chieftain, lad,’ Alene murmured.

  Anyi looked disappointed and, remembering her own quick words to Feyt, Glynn flushed. It seemed that they had not, after all, needed the boy’s warning. No wonder Feyt had not reacted to Anyi’s news. Alene went over to the table where there was a bowl of water and washed her hands, and Feyt stormed outside, muttering that she would get some more wood. Nursing her half-emptied bowl and warmed by the broth inside and by the fire outside, Glynn’s eyelids began to droop inexorably.

  Alene returned to Anyi’s side to lay her hand over the stitched wound. Glynn woke up a little to watch the healing. Anyi himself seemed largely unimpressed by what was happening to him and Glynn supposed that watching Alene healing with her hands on Keltor was to Anyi the equivalent of watching a doctor in her own world splint a leg. She became gradually aware that Anyi kept stealing covert and possessive glances at her. Remembering the enthusiasm of his embrace when they had been sleeping beside Skyreach Bluff, she was very relieved when Alene insisted on giving the young mermod a sleeping potion.

  ‘Oh no, Alene, I do not want to sleep yet! We have to talk and decide what to do. And I want to hear Glynn’s story, and we have to tell her …’

  ‘You must sleep,’ Alene said firmly. ‘Your blood is thin and you need to recover as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Why?’ Anyi asked anxiously. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘Much, Mermod, but we will talk of it after you have slept. Now drink.’ Anyi looked mutinous, but suddenly he yawned and shrugged.

  ‘All right. But I want to hear everything when I wake.’ He drank, then he lay back against his pillow and before Alene had finished pulling up his blankets, he was sound asleep and snoring softly.

  Alene went to her work bench and Glynn returned her gaze to the fire, wishing someone would tell her to go to bed and sleep. She would need no potion. Then Alene was beside her, removing the bowl of now cold broth and giving her a steaming mug of what smelled like honeyed water. ‘Drink this. It will stimulate your mind,’ she said. ‘I know you are fatigued but we must talk before you sleep.’

  Glynn sipped at the liquid. It tasted as innocuous as it smelled, and yet immediately she felt more alert. Her mouth tingled just as it had done when she had eaten the tube-like water berries with Anyi and she wondered if they were one of the ingredients in the brew. She opened her mouth to ask, but at that moment Feyt re-entered the hut with an armful of chopped wood. She strode over to the fire to unpack it in a neat pile, emanating tension and a waft of cold early-morning air.

  ‘Sit, Feyt, and you too, Tareed. The boy is asleep and we must talk,’ Alene said.

  ‘How did you know I was a stranger? And how is it that you knew my name?’ Glynn asked, forgetting her resolve only to answer questions put to her.

  Feyt interrupted before the soulweaver could answer, saying, ‘Look, I know this girl is important but Fulig is more important and I do not understand why we have done nothing to warn him of what Coralyn plans.’

  ‘Warning him, as you wanted to do, would have meant that he would not have landed on Ramidan, and it was necessary that he do so.’

  ‘What if Coralyn kills him?’ Feyt asked. ‘Or is that necessary, too?’

  ‘Do not judge me,’ Alene said coolly. ‘Each action causes a myriad of reactions, and each of those causes more actions. It is always more dangerous to interfere than to leave matters to take their course because one could never see all ends of all actions, and that interference may well provoke a terrible reaction.’

  Tareed asked eag
erly, ‘You mean it might stop the Unraveller from freeing the Unykorn …’

  ‘Stop!’ Glynn said, and her sudden cry was loud enough to make Anyi stir before settling back to sleep. ‘I … Please don’t talk about the Unraveller in front of me. You see there is a prediction that I will betray him to the Draaka and so I mustn’t know who he is or anything about him or what he means to do. Of course I wouldn’t betray him willingly, but the Draaka said that I won’t be able to help myself.’

  ‘What do you know of the Draaka?’ Feyt snapped.

  ‘But the Unraveller is not a …’ Tareed spoke at the same time as her older comrade.

  ‘Silence,’ Alene thundered, and they both looked at her. ‘We have spoken of the Unraveller and also of this stranger Glynn, and what her coming might mean. I have warned you that matters hang in balance and much is unknown or only partly understood. Now I tell you that we must go carefully now. Let Glynn speak and we will listen. Glynn, what is this prediction you speak about?’

  ‘It was a prediction made by the … oh this is hopeless. You have to let me tell you from the beginning. It will be quicker if you just let me tell it without questions.’

  Alene nodded. And so Glynn told the whole long story after all, beginning with her walk on the beach with Ember in her own world, her crossing to Keltor, her rescue by Solen and healing by Argon. Alene did not react to the exile’s name. Glynn went on to tell them of her time on Acantha with Solen, and her work in the minescrape as she tried to amass coin enough for a passage away from Jurass and Acantha. Then she told of Solen’s apparent death and her finding of the darklin which she had so fatefully attempted to sell to the haven, only to be trapped there.

  ‘So the Shadowman was right. They drug visitors,’ Feyt muttered wrathfully. Then later, when Glynn spoke of the feinna she said, ‘A feinna? But that is not possible. There are none left …’