The Singer of All Songs

by Kate Constable

  Obediently Calwyn knelt and spread out her hair with her fingers before the flames, glad of the dark curtain that hid her face, and the sudden smile of wild joy that she couldn’t suppress. For the first time since she was a baby, she was outside the walls of Antaris; who knew what wonders and terrors lay before her? At her side, the river gurgled, as though it were laughing with her, and the whole forest sang with birds.

  Presently Darrow covered the fire with earth, and they began to walk again. This time there was no path to guide them. They followed the river as closely as they could, though trees clustered thickly along the bank. Darrow pointed toward one of the mountain peaks. ‘We must head that way, to the peak shaped like a hawk’s head. There’s a pass that will lead us through to the lands of Kalysons. That’s how I came here.’

  ‘We call that mountain the Falcon. That’s the way the traders come.’

  Calwyn was tired, her clothes were still damp, and it was not pleasant to walk in wet boots. She thought longingly of the breakfast of warm bread and honey that she would have had if she’d stayed on the other side of the Wall. But all the same, as the sun came up, touching the tops of the sparse trees with gold, she wouldn’t have wished herself back in her narrow cell for anything in Tremaris. She breathed deeply. ‘The air tastes like – like queen’s jelly!’ she exalted. Had her mother felt like this, at the start of her adventures?

  After a time she asked, ‘Do you think Samis will follow us?’

  For a moment Darrow did not reply. ‘I think he will stay in Antaris for now. Having come so far, he won’t wish to leave without the chantments of ice-call. True, he will be disappointed to lose his quarry. But it is the hunt he loves above all, and the hunt is not over.’

  ‘He might never find us,’ suggested Calwyn buoyantly; anything seemed possible this morning.

  ‘Maybe not,’ agreed Darrow, with the shadow of a smile.

  By afternoon, Calwyn was dropping with weariness. Darrow noticed it.

  ‘We should sleep now,’ he said abruptly, when she yawned for the third time, ‘while the sun will still warm us. We can walk by moonlight.’ He pointed with his stick toward a sunlit glade. ‘That looks comfortable enough.’

  Calwyn thought he must be teasing her again, but he scraped together a heap of leaves and lowered himself to the ground. Hesitantly she stood and watched as he rolled himself in his cloak. She chose a spot a little apart from his, and lay down with her back to him. Tired as she was, she was painfully conscious of Darrow’s presence only a handspan away, and the sound of his quiet breathing. It was lucky they were sleeping by day, she thought drowsily; at night they would have been too cold to do anything but huddle together . . .

  Her eyes flew open. Was that why? Was he as shy as she was? But she was too exhausted to ponder such mysteries for long, and soon she was asleep.

  It was true that travelling made Darrow cheerful. In all the days of their long trek eastward, he was in better spirits than Calwyn had ever seen him in Antaris, joking and teasing her, singing and telling stories.

  It was not an easy journey. Darrow’s foot was still not completely healed, and though he used his stick and his chantments in equal measure, he was always in pain. There were days when they covered hardly any ground. All too soon they emerged from the shelter of the woods, and found themselves in a different kind of wilderness. Cruel spires of rock thrust toward the sky, as if in imitation of the towers of Antaris that they had left behind, and the path skirted precipices that fell away so steeply they couldn’t see what lay at the bottom. It was grim country, grey and stony, and by night Calwyn shivered as the wind moaned between the crags.

  In truth, the traders’ path was scarcely more than a track. If not for the age-old campsites that they passed, and sometimes used, Calwyn would have feared that they’d lost their way. But the blackened rings of ancient campfires, the shallow caves the traders used for shelter, and the odd scraps of cloth and piles of bones were some reassurance that they were not wandering blindly in the desolate landscape.

  Then one day they had to scramble for cover as the traders themselves passed by. Hidden behind boulders, Calwyn and Darrow listened to the grumbles of the men and the rattling of the handcarts they dragged behind them, piled with cooking pans, silk threads and spices. It seemed a long time before the line of clanking carts disappeared up the track.

  After they’d gone, Calwyn said, ‘I wonder who will open the Wall for them this year.’

  ‘Perhaps Samis himself will do it,’ said Darrow with grim humour. ‘That would give them a tale to tell.’

  Even at the height of summer, the mountain passes were colder than the valley; mostly they walked by moonlight and slept by day, grateful for the sun’s warmth on their cloaks. And even in this empty, barren place, there were birds and rabbits. Calwyn used small chantments to catch them, as she’d been taught, and Darrow would roast them over the fire. For the first time she was glad of all the long dull lessons in herb lore she had endured, for there were many edible mountain plants that Darrow did not know. In turn, he showed her how to line her boots with palewood leaves to prevent blisters, and he cut her a staff to help her balance on the steepest paths.

  Every night Darrow scanned the faint stars and pointed out the ones that they should follow. He told her the names they were given in Merithuros and in Kalysons and in Gellan, and she would tell him their names in Antaris. It was strange to think that every land had its own names and stories, that the constellation she knew as the Tree was called Tasgar’s Lantern in Kalysons, and the Shoe in Merithuros.

  By night, his hawk’s face shadowed against the starry sky, Darrow seemed remote from her, more like a teacher than the easy whistling companion of the day. Sometimes he did not seem to know what to say to her, and if they rested, he held himself aloof, lost in his own thoughts.

  One day, out of nowhere, he said, ‘I’ve not had much to do with women.’ He was walking ahead of her, and she couldn’t see his face. ‘Before I came to Antaris, I don’t know that I’d ever spoken more than ten words to a woman. I have always thought them strange creatures.’

  ‘And now?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

  ‘Now I think them much the same as men,’ came the reply, and she didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed.

  Gradually the steep, stony ground gave way to gentler slopes, where the trees grew more thickly. The air was hotter every day, and Calwyn found that breathing made her giddy.

  ‘The air is not so thin here as it is in the mountains,’ Darrow told her. ‘You will find that you can walk longer and endure more than the people of the plains, for you can better use your breath.’

  They walked now in the cool of the morning and evening, and took their rest at midday and the middle part of the night. At last there were signs that people had touched these lands: a stump where a tree had been cut down and hauled away, a broken-down hut, the remains of a stone wall. The track grew wider and easier to follow, and there was crumbling earth under their boots now, rather than skidding stones.

  The first time Calwyn saw a distant farmhouse nestled between the folds of the hills, she strained forward eagerly, like a beast catching a scent, and she would have broken into a run if Darrow had not held her back.

  ‘Calwyn, we must not be seen,’ he said urgently. ‘These people will not welcome us, believe me. And when we reach the plains, where there are soldiers patrolling from Kalysons, we must be even more careful to keep hidden. And never, never, let anyone see that you are a chanter. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’ She was disappointed; she had hoped for a meal with bread and cheese and spices, and perhaps a warm bed, from some friendly farmfolk. But she was beginning to realise that Outlanders were just as wary and suspicious of strangers as the people of Antaris, shut inside their great Wall. Somehow she had expected it to be different, outside.

  They travelled through the hill country, and then on to the wide plains, sleeping in barns and windmills, foraging fo
r whatever food they could find along the way: wild berries, vegetables scrounged from the fields, duck eggs found beside the streams that criss-crossed the flat country, linking one farm to the next like a fine mesh of netting laid over the dusty land.

  One whole day they spent resting and catching fish. Calwyn stripped to her undershirt, and Darrow gave her a swimming lesson. He didn’t laugh as she spluttered and coughed, but coached her patiently until she could kick herself along for several strokes. Then she spread her hair over her shoulders to dry in the sun, and showed him how to tease a fish into his hand and flick it out of the water before it even knew it was caught.

  ‘I think I prefer my rod and baited string,’ he said, taking a hasty step back as Calwyn tossed a fish clear and splashed his feet. ‘Your method is so wet.’

  Calwyn sat up on her heels and laughed. ‘But it’s so much simpler to use your bare hands!’

  ‘Very well. I take your challenge.’ He threw his line into the stream. ‘Let us see who’s quickest to catch the next fish.’

  ‘Done!’ cried Calwyn, and when she held up her catch in triumph a few moments later, her happiness was complete.

  That day stood forever in her memory as a golden time: sitting in the sun with Darrow, feasting on fish so hot from the flames that they tossed it hand to hand.

  ‘I’ve never eaten a finer meal,’ sighed Calwyn, licking her fingers.

  ‘There is a saying in Penlewin that hunger is the finest sauce,’ Darrow told her.

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve quoted me a saying from the marshlands.’ Calwyn looked at him sideways. ‘Is that the land where you were born?’

  ‘The people of Penlewin have a stock of wise sayings. But that’s not reason enough to claim kinship with them.’

  And her curiosity had to go unsatisfied again. No matter how often she asked him about his past, he never would give her a direct answer. But he had finished carving all the lines on her wooden globe now, working at it while they rested, and he was happy to tell her the names of every land he knew, and the stories of each place. Though how he had ever learned the stories of any people at all when he was so determined to hide himself, and dive off the road at every passing stranger, she did not know.

  They saw few people on the roads – perhaps a farmer’s field-hand or herder, walking from one farm to the next with a laden goat-cart – and they always concealed themselves in a ditch before they could be seen, pulling their cloaks over their heads until Calwyn thought she would stifle in the heat. Once, from the shelter of the hedgerow, they saw a patrol of soldiers from Kalysons, with swords and clubs slung over their backs. Calwyn watched, hardly daring to breathe, as they went by; a miserable-looking youth shuffled in their midst, his hands and ankles bound loosely with rope.

  ‘They are taking him back to Kalysons for judgment,’ whispered Darrow.

  ‘What has he done?’ she whispered back.

  ‘He might be a thief. There is great hunger in these lands. Perhaps he took some eggs from a pantry, or cheese from a dairy shed.’

  Certainly the youth looked thin and wretched as the guards jostled him along. ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘If he’s lucky, not much. The patrol will beat him and let him go, to find his own way home. If he’s unlucky, the Proctors will sell him as a slave on the Gellanese galleys, or banish him to Doryus.’

  ‘And what if we were captured?’

  ‘If they found out that we’re chanters, the same,’ said Darrow, staring with narrowed eyes after the dust cloud that marked the passage of the patrol. After that, Calwyn didn’t complain when Darrow told her to move off the road and hide.

  Every day they heard the ululating songs of the farmers echo across the plains as they drove their goats and oxen and called to their ducks. ‘Are they songs of chantment? Is this the Power of Beasts?’ Calwyn asked, but Darrow shook his head.

  ‘Once these lands held the secrets of the beasts, but now the animals obey no longer. The songs that the farmers sing are a shadow of the old chantments, but without the same power. You can see how thin the oxen are. And look –’ He plucked a handful of grain from the field and crushed it in his hand; the hot wind blew a cloud of dust from his fingers. ‘The crops do not flourish here. The life is drying up in everything; this land is pinched and mean.’

  ‘The people, too?’

  Darrow gave a crooked smile. ‘Especially the people. That is why we ask for nothing, and keep our heads low.’

  Calwyn said cheerfully, ‘If all the old chantments are forgotten, then at least Samis will never learn them.’

  ‘There is enough of the old knowledge left that he might be able to piece it together, perhaps. But not enough to let the lands prosper. You saw how the farms in the foothills have been abandoned. Every season the farmlands shrink a little more, and there is less food for the farmers to sell to the city.’

  ‘Is that why there are so many soldiers?’ The closer they came to the city of Kalysons, the more frequently they had to hide from the patrols. ‘To frighten the farmfolk into handing over their produce?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Darrow was silent for a breath or two, and then Calwyn heard the low growl of chantment that meant his foot was giving him pain, and she asked him no more questions. But she thought often of that hungry youth, and the hopeless dragging of his feet on the dusty track.

  They had been travelling for many days, a full turn of the moons, before at last they set eyes on the city of Kalysons. They paused under a windmill at the top of a low hill, and gazed down at the sweep of the plain, and the city nestled below them. Unlike the blue-grey stone of Antaris and the mountains, the earth of the plains was a greasy yellow-grey. Kalysons looked like a city built from blocks of lard.

  ‘Cheesestone,’ said Darrow briefly.

  Except for the little hillocks raised for the slow-turning windmills, the drab and dusty land was as level as if it had been pressed with a flat-iron, like a ceremonial robe. The mountains that hid Antaris were the faintest smudge of grey on the distant horizon in the west. But Calwyn was not looking at the mountains, nor at the city below. For behind the city lay the sea she had so often dreamed of seeing: the broad curve of the Bay of Sardi, glittering emerald in the sun, a bright ribbon that spanned the horizon. Her heart sang as she drank in the sight of the shining ocean: so vast, so beautiful, so terrifying.

  ‘Come.’ Darrow was already limping down the hill. ‘If we make haste, we can be with my friends in time for dinner.’

  Calwyn’s stomach growled at the thought of a rich stew and a cool cup of milk, and she hurried after him.

  The sun had gone down by the time they reached the city gates.

  ‘They’re shut!’ cried Calwyn.

  The enormous metal gates, set into the thick wall of cheesestone, were definitely, firmly, unmistakably locked. There was no one in sight, but she could faintly hear noises rising from the other side of the wall: the clatter and clamour of a city, the cries of street sellers, a murmuring hubbub. It was like the bees, Calwyn thought suddenly, the busy noise inside a hive.

  ‘The gates are always closed at dusk. It’s not important. We are not going to use the gates.’

  Darrow led her for some distance around the curve of the wall. It was not as beautiful and forbidding as the icy Wall of Antaris, and it was much smaller, thought Calwyn scornfully. Why, this wall enclosed only a city, while the Wall of Antaris stretched around all their lands. And she thought still less of it when she saw Darrow hold up his hands before the greasy stone and sing a low chantment. One of the cheesestone blocks swung slowly outward to reveal a gap just big enough to squeeze through.

  ‘What use is a wall that anyone can climb through?’ she hissed as she followed Darrow through the opening.

  ‘Not anyone,’ said Darrow calmly. ‘Only an ironcrafter.’

  Once they were through, he sealed up the crack with a second chantment. They were inside Kalysons.

  Calwyn realised at once, to her chagrin, that Kalys
ons was much, much larger than Antaris. From far away on the plain it had looked small enough; now she could see that each one of the big, square, squat buildings, which she had thought were the size of farmhouses, was almost big enough to hold all the Dwellings of Antaris. They were standing beside one of these buildings now, hidden in its shadow; it rose so high that it blotted out the sky. Darrow set off immediately, weaving his way through a maze of narrow laneways and crowded squares, and over the humped bridges that crossed the city’s many canals.

  Though it was long after dark, the air was still warm from the heat of the faded day, and the streets were crowded with people. It seemed to Calwyn that the walls exuded a greasy sweat, like a cheese left too long out of the storeroom, and the sweaty odour mingled with the pungent smells of fried vegetables and roasted meats that wafted from the windows. Here and there in the dusk were thicker clots of darkness; wavering lamplight from doorways showed them to be groups of men, standing by the walls, muttering and watchful. ‘Be sure to keep your cloak wrapped tight,’ Darrow said in her ear, ‘in case anyone recognises the garments of a witch-girl from the mountains.’

  At any other time, Calwyn would have protested at being described as a witch-girl, but now she felt very small and insignificant, almost frightened. She kept close to Darrow’s side, and though clutching her cloak under her chin made her hotter than ever, it was a kind of comfort to feel the scratching of the familiar cloth against her skin.

  Darrow led them briskly through the darkening streets, not allowing his lame foot to slow him; for once Calwyn had to hurry to keep up with him. When they turned into a street that was hardly wider than two arm-spans, with pallid tenements rearing up like cliffs on either side, she ventured to ask, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the harbour.’

  Calwyn quickened her pace. The harbour meant the sea; perhaps she might even be able to dip her hands in that shining expanse she had glimpsed from the top of the hill.

  The streets grew yet more narrow and more winding, and the smell of salt told her that they were very near it. And then they turned a corner and saw the rows of boats swaying on the dark water, and heard the soft slap of the waves.