Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘By the Horn!’ Donard cried, his face suffused with rage. ‘I knew those servitors lied. Anyi would never have turned us away like that. But wait. Anyi – where is he?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Glynn said. ‘He is within the city but I had to leave him because he hurt his leg. We came through the tide gate late this afternoon.’

  Donard turned to the baker. ‘Get the carriage, Ulric.’ The baker nodded, taking off his apron and saying that he would come as well. Donard turned back to Glynn. ‘It will be better if you stay here, I think. Lilla, get a map of the city.’ Lilla disappeared and then returned with a map cloth and a lantern. They laid the map out and the Fomhikan pointed out the bakery. ‘We are here and the tide gate is there. Show me, if you can, exactly where you left Anyi.’

  When Donard and the baker left a little later, wrapped in heavy coats and carrying blankets and a flask of water, Glynn was confident that they would have no difficulty in locating Anyi, so she relaxed as Lilla escorted her into the warm rear section of the bakery which was well lit and filled with delicious odours. At the back of the room by the ovens was a set of steps. ‘Go up. I will boil some water and bring it up. You really do smell awful, and Clover is very fussy about her materials. I will bring food as well.’

  Glynn mounted the steps, her thoughts flitting from Solen to Anyi to Feyt and then to Alene, and finally to Ember. At the top of the stairs there was a short landing and an ornate door, but before she could knock, a young woman opened it and stared out at her. ‘Where is my brother Donard?’ she demanded, then her face fell comically. ‘Ugh. You smell terrible!’

  Glynn could not help herself. As much out of relief from tension as amusement, she burst out laughing. ‘I guess you must be Rilka.’

  ‘And you say that Anyi is not badly hurt?’ Rilka asked again.

  ‘He gashed his leg. It was pretty bad when we arrived at the hut, but Alene did something to it and this morning you would not have known he was hurt at all. But he began to limp again on the plainway and then he hurt himself pulling me to safety.’

  ‘It sounds as if Alene only had time to take the pain away and close the wound up. It will take a white cloak to drain the infection of his chakra. But my dear, brave Anyi! I was so worried when we heard that he was ill.’

  ‘The important thing is to keep him safe because he is the one person who can stop Kalide being put onto the throne as a temporary Holder,’ Glynn said, sipping at a heated ferment. She was no longer hungry, having eaten an entire plate of savoury pastries. She had been on the verge of hysteria when Rilka had led her into Clover’s superbly appointed waiting room. Clover, a tiny exquisite woman with a fretwork of golden tattoos on both cheeks, had thrown up her hands in horror and had made Glynn stand in the centre of the room without touching anything until the water came. Both women had interrogated her thoroughly throughout her bath and she had told them the same tale that she had told Alene and Feyt while she ate. The only things she had left out were the predictions concerning her betrayal of the Unraveller. Anyi would tell them, and she felt vaguely ashamed whenever she thought of it, though it was ridiculous. The warmth of the food and the pleasure of being clean had eased her tensions and she realised that she was starting to feel sleepy.

  ‘But what about Feyt?’ Rilka asked after Clover had gone away to dispose of her filthy clothes. ‘And what is Alene’s plan?’

  ‘I don’t know if she had any plan aside from coming to the citadel for the betrothing,’ Glynn said. ‘She said it was her duty to be with Tarsin. I think she is afraid that Coralyn might do something to him.’

  ‘Alene must be in the citadel by now!’ the Fomhikan girl cried in delight. ‘But that is how we can get a message to her about Feyt being taken captive! Donard will go to the ceremony to represent my father, and he can speak with her there.’

  Glynn thought of what Tarsin had said about Poverin, and opened her mouth to tell Rilka, but all at once the door opened. It was only Clover with fresh clothes. ‘You will find something among these to wear, Glynn. Regrettably I must go. I have a fitting to arrange with a bad-tempered hall matron who thinks this is an original and therefore charming hour. I will see you later.’

  When she had gone, Glynn dressed, choosing warm mustard leggings and a long rust-colored shirt with a thickly woven brown over-tunic. Rilka helped her to comb her drying hair. ‘It is very beautiful to touch,’ the Fomhikan girl murmured and Glynn flushed, glad that her face could not be seen, because she had been imagining how it would feel to have Solen run his fingers through her hair.

  ‘You love him, do you not?’ Rilka asked softly.

  Glynn stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Solen. It is obvious that he loves you. He was beside himself when he came back last night when they had not found you. I have never seen him so distraught. I was a little jealous, for I once imagined that he would plight his troth with me.’

  Glynn turned to the other girl. ‘I … I’m sorry …’

  Now it was Rilka’s turn to burst out laughing. ‘Do not be. I had barely seen two turns at the time I made this romantic plan. He began visiting us when I was a child, for he and Donard were childhood friends from when they had both been fostered upon Ramidan together.’ She smiled. ‘It was only later that I guessed that they were still plotting together, much to Donard’s annoyance. Of course he had no choice but to take me into his confidence after that.’ She giggled mischievously and sat down on the couch beside Glynn, laying aside the comb. Glynn felt her mood shift. ‘Meeting a stranger has fulfilled one of the wishes of my heart. Perhaps someday I will even meet your sister.’

  Glynn opened her mouth to speak but all at once there was a great commotion in the street below and the sound of shattering glass. Rilka jumped to her feet and ran to open the curtain a crack. The stiffening of her back was enough to warn Glynn there was trouble. She was on her feet and pulling on her filthy boots even before Rilka turned to hiss, pale-faced, that there was a squad of green legionnaires in the street below. ‘You must have been seen or followed and someone has reported it to the legionnaires. You have to get out of here. There is a way up onto the roof through the room back there. Run across the roofs to your left and you will find a ladder going down to a lane.’

  ‘What about you?’ Glynn asked.

  ‘I am Rilka, daughter of Poverin, waiting to have a mask fitted by Clover, master mask-maker. I will scream and weep and tell them of a wild-eyed woman who stumbled in ranting and impossible to understand. Now go.’

  ‘What about Donard?’

  ‘He will see the legionnaires and stay away.’ There was the sound of boots on the steps, and of Lilla’s voice raised loudly in indignation. ‘Go!’ Rilka urged.

  Glynn fled through the door indicated and found herself in a tiny room hung with tapestries – obviously a change room. It took her a moment to locate the trapdoor in the sloping roof, because there were artistic swathes draped across it. Butting it open and hauling herself through the opening into a shallow attic, she closed it behind her and then crawled to another trapdoor that opened to the roof, climbing out into the chilly night.

  The voices of the legionnaires waiting outside the door to the bakery were clearly audible to Glynn as she crept catlike along the tiles, passing from roof to roof as fast and silently as she could. She came so quickly to the lane that she almost tumbled head first into it and, even as she teetered at the edge, it began without warning to rain.

  Glynn looked up in disbelief, for it hardly ever rained on Keltor. Then collecting her wits, she located the ladder and climbed down. Before she could even turn, a hand descended on her shoulder and she felt the chill touch of a knife edge at her throat.

  She turned slowly, lifting her hands, and found that she was facing a phalanx of green legionnaires.

  ‘She is the one,’ said a woman from the shadows behind them. ‘I followed her and I saw her go into the bakery. I sent my boy off at once like you told me, and then two men came out and got into a ca
rriage and rode off. Where is my reward?’

  ‘Duty is its own reward, woman,’ the legionnaire said haughtily, blinking to clear the rain from his eyes. He turned to Glynn. ‘Where is the boy?’

  ‘What boy?’ Glynn asked.

  ‘Play no games or they will cost you more than coin, woman. The boy must be found and escorted back to the palace.’

  A wave of anger and helplessness seemed to wash over Glynn, for it was clear now that she had no hope of escape. ‘Why? So that you can try again to kill him?’ She was reckless with despair.

  The nearest legionnaire gave a thin, vicious smile then he nodded to the legionnaire holding Glynn. ‘Take her to Kalide. I am sure she will be happy to speak with him, when he has done with her.’

  ‘You should know that Aluade was the daughter of an important Iridomi noble,’ Kalide said lightly. ‘Her father will surely demand blood price for her murder.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Glynn insisted in a slurred voice. Her split lip stung and was beginning to thicken, but she made no attempt to brush the blood from it. She did not want to give the sadistic bastard the satisfaction. She was learning something that Wind had never taught her. While anger ill-served a person in fighting or thinking, it could be a powerful source of energy for endurance.

  ‘You left the palace with Aluade. This morning her drowned body and a mass of carriage debris washed into the nets of casters along the coast. Are you trying to tell me that you know nothing of this?’

  ‘I told you. A man followed me when I went to the privvy at Moon Song of Lidorn. I was frightened and I ran out the back. There was no gate so I climbed the wall to escape him. I went to the carriage and told Aluade what had happened. I was talking to her and someone hit me on the head. I don’t know what happened after that, but I woke this afternoon lying in a rubbish slot.’ She was taking a chance that she had not been seen driving the carriage from the citadel, but she was fairly sure that no one would have been able to say for sure who had been driving it.

  ‘What took you to the mask-maker’s establishment?’

  This was the tricky bit. ‘When I woke up, I … I remembered that I had been there once with my sister. I thought they might know where she was and maybe even who I am, so I went there.’

  Kalide slapped her face hard enough to rattle her teeth. ‘Liar! The legionnaires said you spoke of the boy when they captured you!’

  Inwardly, Glynn cursed herself. But she made herself look bewildered. ‘They asked about a boy, I remember, but I did not know who they meant. I tried to tell them that but they would not listen.’ It was a weak answer and if Kalide questioned the legionnaires who had brought her in again, he would know that she lied. But as she had hoped, he had not the patience and only glared at her.

  ‘Where is the feinna? Its body was not found.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Glynn said stupidly.

  Slap. The interrogation continued, and with each question, Glynn bled more, but she also learned more. It was clear that the Draaka had told Kalide a good deal about her, in which case he might also know her value to the Draaka. Was that why he had done no permanent damage? Because she was to be handed back to her former mistress when he was done with her?

  Glynn had kept her story simple, maintaining that she had not been outside of the citadel and knew nothing of Feyt or of the mermod when Kalide mentioned them. It was theoretically possible that Kalide had Feyt and had tortured the myrmidon into telling him everything, but her feinna instincts told her that his questions were fuelled by a genuine frustrated fury. It was an irony that Kalide’s corrupt lusts were so abhorrent to her feinna self that sometimes the pain Kalide inflicted was actually welcome because it blotted out her feinna sensibilities. But what helped her to endure above all else was the knowledge that, if she broke, she would end up telling Kalide that the visionweaver Tarsin was seeking was her sister and that they were both strangers.

  ‘Do you expect me to believe this nonsense?’ Kalide jeered, unaware that his emotions were telling Glynn that he did not know what to believe. She fought elation, but perhaps he sensed it in her for his fist lashed out again and her head rocked back painfully on her shoulders. His eyes were avid and she let her head fall forward for fear that he would see a burst of fury in her eyes at the knowledge that he was enjoying hurting her. But at the same time, she was aware again of his restraint.

  She clung to this, and said shakily, ‘I want to see the Draaka.’

  A curse and another slap. ‘What happened to the animal? The feinna?’

  ‘I … do not know,’ Glynn mumbled. ‘I dreamed that it … it was running free as Bayard wanted …’ She pretended to lose the thread of her thoughts. Kalide had tried various drugs on her, but her feinna abilities had allowed her to analyse the substances and emulate their effects without succumbing to them. The latest had been a substance that caused a drunken sort of vagueness. Over and over again, she thanked whatever powers there were for the feinna abilities that stopped her being forced to tell all she knew, though even in the midst of what was happening, she could not help but wonder again why her powers had come back.

  Slap.

  ‘Tell me again what you did before the legionnaires caught you?’ The Iridomi began to pace about the chair where Glynn sat, bound painfully at the wrists and ankles, muttering to himself and casting malevolent looks at her. He was growing more and more frustrated by her responses and she wondered uneasily what would happen if his fury exceeded his control.

  The interrogation went on and on, and she clung to her sanity by thinking about the others and what might have become of them. With luck, Donard would have seen the legionnaires in time and he and Anyi would be safe. Hadn’t Alene even seen him safe with the Shadowman’s people? Rilka had seemed certain that she would not be harmed, and maybe she was right if she had simply claimed to know nothing of the wild-eyed young woman who had appeared at the mask-maker’s. As for Feyt, if Kalide had not got her, then she must be in the hands of the red legionnaires. It might even be that Alene had reached the palace by now and had been informed of Feyt’s capture. In which case the myrmidon might even be free.

  She could hardly bear to think of Solen, coming back to find that she had brought disaster to an important link in the Shadowman network, and had been captured. Rilka must know she had been caught, if she had been questioned. She longed to reach out to him, for she was now certain that it was possible. It had finally come to her that the apparent loss of her feinna abilities had probably only been a period in which her senses had adjusted to the loss of the feinna link. All of her abilities had been restored and she had the feeling that they were fully integrated with her human skills and senses now. But she could not possibly try to reach out mentally while Kalide was hurting her. In any case, she did not want Solen to experience her suffering, as he must if their mind spars merged.

  Slap!

  ‘Why did the carriage leave the citadel?’

  ‘Please, Sirrah!’ Some impulse made Glynn shriek the words, and she almost laughed to see Kalide jerk back in fright, his eyes flickering. Realising that her hysteria had provoked the instabilities of his mind, Glynn took a deep breath to fuel another shout but a fist crashed into her face. If she had not turned aside, he would have broken her nose. As it was, her ear sang and her cheek hurt badly enough that he might have fractured it. Brownish shadows fluttered at the edge of her vision and she realised that she was close to fainting. She wanted to let it happen, but she was afraid of what Kalide would do, robbed of his chance to question her.

  Kick – a hot burst of pain at her ankle.

  ‘Tell me about the Unraveller!’ Kalide said.

  This was a new question and fortunately Glynn was in enough pain that she could not stiffen as she might have done. She could not believe that the Draaka would have told him this much, and suddenly she remembered Tarsin sneering at his mother’s spying. Was it possible that the Iridomi chieftain had been spying on the draakan delegation? Certainly she had felt
many times as if she were being watched and the draakira had spoken of it as well. ‘The Unraveller …’ she said dully. ‘He will come to save the Firstmade …’

  She knew it was a mistake the moment the words left her lips, but she could not draw them back. She felt Kalide’s control break and the desire to smash and rend flowed from him as a boiling tide of violence and lust. Instinctively she retreated, withdrawing her mind from her body in the feinna way.

  She found herself in the memory garden. She could feel blows hammering into her body, but they were far away. Cutting herself from even this dim awareness, she wondered if Kalide would kill her. It seemed likely but she felt no fear. If she died, she would enrich the dreams of all worlds.

  The thought was entirely feinna, and Glynn smiled.

  She began to walk and only then did she notice that it was night in the memory garden for the first time. She could see the single moon and stars of her own world in the black sky, and there was a faint breeze blowing wisps of cloud across the face of the moon and causing shadow scarves to ripple over the dark grass.

  As before, she noticed that parts of the garden had melted away, but it seemed to her that there were new places as well. There was a hedge with drooping bell-like blooms and a heady scent that she had not seen before. And patches of white flowers grew up a tree trunk where the moonlight fell. Maybe the garden was not decaying in the absence of the feinna, as she had thought, but was reshaping itself. She was now quite certain that the loss of the feinna powers had only been a reaction to the breaking of the birth link. She had felt that the feinna abilities were connected to the link, and so she had ‘lost’ them. But they had not really been lost and, in a little while, they reasserted themselves, becoming more central to her consciousness as she understood that they were now her powers.

  She noticed the pebble path ahead. The small stones that made it up shone like pearls in the moonlight.

  ‘Another moon path …’ Glynn murmured, and followed it. There were no flyt calls nor insects now, but she could hear the sound of water falling. The fountain was now limned in moonlight, its waters flowing like mercury and she stopped and stared at it, remembering how the feinna had leapt lightly onto her shoulder, winding itself around her neck just as its mother had once done to Bayard.