The Tenth Power

by Kate Constable

  At last, Samis pulled out something from inside his jerkin. The chunk of dark stone looked very small in his large, bony hand. He flung it to the floor, then hunched into a tight knot of pain. Calwyn could just hear him moan, ‘Please – please – ’

  She darted forward and scooped up the precious half-Wheel. As soon as it was safe in her hands, she stopped singing. The only noise in the round tower was Samis’s jagged breathing. His hands were pressed to his eyes; blood seeped between his fingers. Calwyn let herself slide down the silvery wall. She leaned over and vomited between her knees, again and again, long after there was nothing left inside her.

  DARROW, MY BROTHER? Are you awake?

  ‘Let him sleep,’ begged Keela in a low voice. ‘He needs to rest.’

  He needs to hear this also, my sister. Darrow, my brother, wake!

  Darrow was breathing deeply, buried in sleeping-furs. He had fallen asleep over his meagre dinner, as the snowstorm rose outside the tent, and Keela and Halasaa had bundled the furs around him where he sat. But now he snapped cleanly out of sleep, his eyes alert as ever. He croaked, ‘What is it?’

  I heard her.

  ‘Calwyn?’ Keela looked from one to the other. ‘Calwyn spoke to you?’

  Halasaa shook his head. She did not intend to cry out to us. She is in pain.

  ‘In pain?’ said Darrow sharply. ‘Where is she, what’s happening? Can you still hear her?’

  ‘Is she with Samis?’ asked Keela.

  I cannot tell. I have called to her, but she cannot hear me, the distance is too great. But the pain – the pain was in her heart, not in her body.

  Darrow passed a hand over his eyes. ‘How far did we come today? How close are we to Spareth?’

  There is still far to go. But this is the river that leads to the ruined city.

  ‘Here, drink.’ Keela pushed a cup of broth into his mittened hands. ‘Halasaa kept it warm by the fire-pot.’

  We will go far tomorrow, when this storm is past. Halasaa put his hand on Darrow’s shoulder. The wind will drive the snow from the ice.

  ‘No need for Mica’s chantments after all.’ Darrow’s hands trembled as he sipped at the broth.

  ‘We should go back to sleep,’ said Keela. ‘But we need more fuel for the fire-pot. Is it your turn or mine, Halasaa?’

  ‘Don’t go out.’ Darrow put down his cup. ‘I’ll sing some more wood into the tent.’ He had done this before, slipping firewood through the tent-flaps to spare them a trip out into the snow.

  As usual, Darrow parted his lips to growl out a chantment of ironcraft. But though he sounded the words and the notes, the chantment would not catch. In that instant Darrow knew that the last trace of his powers had slipped away. He did not speak, but something changed in his face. In a heartbeat he looked ten years older than before.

  Keela swallowed. ‘I’ll go,’ she whispered. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  CALWYN DID NOT know how much time passed as she sat hunched over the broken disc of black stone. She became aware that Samis had rolled over and was watching her through swollen eyes, rimmed with a dark crust of blood. When he blinked, he closed his eyelids slowly, wincing, and his breath came in ragged gasps of pain.

  Calwyn could not bear to look at him. She fumbled to free her own half of theWheel from the inside pocket where she’d kept it since leaving Antaris. Her hands shook as she fitted the two halves together.

  Samis murmured, ‘You were not ready, until now. When you asked…I guessed you must have the second piece. The one who gave it to me believed the Wheel was an object of power. Let us see the truth…Make it whole, my queen!’

  Calwyn held the Wheel together, one half in each hand, and sang a chantment of ironcraft to join the two pieces together. Gradually the crack down the middle of the little disc sealed and vanished.When theWheel was whole, Calwyn held it in her hands; her eyes shut, she stroked her fingers over the stone as she sent the healing magic of the Power of Becoming into the disc. Then she rested the Wheel on her knees and lifted her hands away.

  She stared down at the object of such power, the dread secret that the High Priestesses of Antaris had guarded for generations, the stone that had stopped spring from coming and released the snow-sickness across Tremaris.

  The Wheel lay lifeless and inert in her lap. It was a dead thing. The Clarion had pulsed with life and power, even when it was not being played; it was always charged with magic. But the Wheel was not like that. There was no power in it. Mending it had achieved nothing. There was no magic here.

  Clutching the Wheel tightly, Calwyn ran to the window and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Snow was falling, thicker than before, hiding the silver towers and domes. Heavy clouds blotted out the sky. Even as she watched, frost crackled across the window. The world was deep in winter; the chanters were still sick. Darrow was dying. In her blind arrogance, she had fixed all her hopes on a worthless chip of granite. She was the Singer of all Songs, and there was nothing, nothing she could do.

  A sound behind her made her turn. Samis had sat up; he took his hands from his face and Calwyn saw that he was not weeping, but chuckling softly.

  ‘Well done, little priestess!’ His deep voice hummed with pride. ‘I thought you would be afraid. But the Singer of all Songs must embrace the dark as well as the light. Do not be afraid of the dark, Calwyn. There is power in darkness.’

  ‘But there is no power in the Wheel!’ cried Calwyn. ‘Nothing’s changed. Nothing!’ She turned back to the glass. Shadowy snowflakes danced before her eyes, and her head felt dull and heavy. She pushed the useless Wheel deep into her pocket.

  Samis’s voice echoed behind her, deep with disappointment. ‘So.Your priestesses were mistaken.The stone is worthless.’ He came up and kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘But you have proved yourself tonight, my queen, my empress! Power flows through you. Day after day I watched it growing stronger, but now – you are alive with it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I can hardly look at you. You are the Singer of all Songs at last.’ He seized her hands and spun her around and around. ‘This is the dawn of a new day forTremaris!The old gods are dead. We are the new gods!’

  Round and round the tower they whirled, until Calwyn was dizzy, and the stars and moons blurred together. Her long plait came unbound, and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. When Samis halted, she collided with him, breathless, and he threw his arms around her and held her tightly. Her face was turned up to his, and his heart pounded madly beneath her hands. The whites of his eyes were yellow, with tiny spots of red where the splinters of ice had pierced. He brushed back the hair from her face with blood-blotched hands, and murmured, ‘With the secrets of the Tenth Power, and our mighty ship, nothing can be denied to us. Forget Tremaris!We can leave this frozen, wasted, sickly world to rot. Together, my Calwyn, you and I – ’ He whispered, ‘We will rule the worlds beyond the stars.’

  Calwyn stared up at him, unable to tear her eyes from his. He is mad, she thought. In a sudden frenzy, she pulled his face toward her and kissed his burning, bloodied eyes over and over, his forehead, his lips. She tasted salt: Samis’s blood, Samis’s tears. One of his hands was in her hair, while the other slid down her body. Calwyn pressed herself against him.

  ‘My queen,’ he murmured. ‘My little empress.’ All at once he sprang up, grasping her hand, and tugged her up the spiral ramp and into the smaller room above, which she had never seen. ‘Come, let me show you, the greatest secret of all – ’

  The small room at the very top of the tower was also circled by a seamless window, with a low shelf running below. A group of high-backed chairs clustered in a ring, facing out to the curved window.

  Samis spread his arms wide as if to embrace the chamber and all it held; his dark cloak swirled behind him. ‘This is where the Ancient Ones sailed their ship! Sail it for me, Calwyn, my queen. Let us make Spareth sail!’

  He whirled her into one of the high-backed chairs. Calwyn clutched at the arms of the seat. Her hands sank de
ep into the soft, shining metal and were held there. It was a strange, but not unpleasant sensation, like resting in cool jelly. She sensed the first faint twinges of chantment coursing from her fingertips, down into the cool receptive material of the seat. Intuitively she understood that this cluster of chairs acted as a magnifier, weaving together and intensifying the power of the chanters who sat there.

  Samis lowered himself into the seat beside her, and the yielding material encased his hands up to the elbow. He gave Calwyn a long look from his weeping, blood-crusted eyes.

  ‘Let me go,’ he murmured. ‘Let me go.’

  Calwyn stared at him, the taste of his blood sharp on her tongue.The fog of misery and grief that had clouded her mind dissolved, as though a cold breeze had blown through her.

  ‘Samis?’ she whispered, but he had leaned back in his chair, a trance-like look masking his face. He began to sing a steady drone of chantment, and with a strange, fateful sense of calm, Calwyn added her voice to his.

  A jolt of immense power ran through the base of the seats and into the floor of the chamber, shuddering down into the base of the tower. The two chanters were singing a chantment to prise loose something held fast, and Calwyn felt the magic build and build below her, as if she perched on the rim of the fire-mountain of Doryus as it was about to erupt. She tried to grip the arms of the chair, but her fingers just sank deeper into the fleshy metal.

  The tower shook violently, and there was a vast, thunderous rumbling all around them, as the foundation of the city strained to free itself. Like a tree being pulled up by the roots, the city, the silver ship, lurched. Through the window, Calwyn glimpsed toppling trees and clods of frozen earth flying through the air as the ship tore itself from the ground where it had been buried for so long.

  Samis’s head was thrown back; his closed eyes were two rusted slits. Calwyn sat bolt upright on the edge of her seat, every nerve tingling. The rumble became a roar that drowned out the sound of their chantment. Calwyn’s teeth rattled; her hair fell into her eyes. Still she and Samis ground out their song, and still the power built. Once before, Calwyn had summoned up a chantment that was beyond her control, and it had nearly destroyed her. This magic was almost as great as the strength of that chantment, and she prayed to the Goddess to protect her.

  Just as the vibrations reached such a pitch that it seemed Spareth would shake itself to pieces, the ship broke free. Calwyn was slammed back into her seat, but almost at once she felt an exhilarating sense of lightness as the immense silver ship soared into the air. Miraculously, everything fell quiet. There was no roaring or rumbling now, only their jerky, breathless throat-song of iron. Calwyn leaned forward. The vast silver ship was clear of the ground, suspended over the forest. Below them was the enormous crater of raw, churned earth where the city had been, and the white sea of the frozen forest that lapped around it. Flurries of snow were settling in the crater as the snowstorm died.

  Samis’s eyes were squeezed shut, his face grey, showing none of Calwyn’s exhilaration. Calwyn realised that his voice had failed; she was singing alone. The vast swooping ship was under her control.

  Swiftly, subtly, she changed her song, and the ship angled to the ground and swung so low that it barely skimmed the treetops. The flat, silver-lit, winding river was just below. In one smooth movement, Calwyn wrenched herself from her chair and dived onto the long, low shelf that ran beneath the curving window. As she sang, she clung to a section of the silver shelf. She altered the chantment again, and the shelf tore free and was hurled at the window. Calwyn ducked her head and braced for the shattering of glass, but the window parted and re-sealed as she hurtled through it, like the membrane of a soap bubble.

  The icy air outside made her gasp. The long silver shelf plunged with Calwyn clinging to it, her hair streaming behind her. She sang out, and the shelf swooped, clear of the ship, down toward the treetops. Just as her feet brushed the snowy twigs, the shelf levelled, and paused. Calwyn hung in mid-air for a heartbeat, then crashed down, knocking the snow from the intermeshed branches as she fell.

  The deep snow broke her fall. She tumbled against a tree trunk, scratched and bruised, but not badly hurt. Instantly she scrambled up. Only the space of a breath had passed since she’d torn herself from the high-backed chair. The ship was still afloat, directly above Calwyn’s head, a huge, round silver platter. It was as if one of the moons leaned across the gulfs of sky to aim a drunken kiss at the face of Tremaris. The ship’s pocked and pitted underside was so low it blotted out the sky; and it was slowly falling closer. Calwyn threw back her head and sang with all her power.

  The strength of the chantment surged up through her body, as if the whole sphere of Tremaris pushed behind her. Her voice was stronger and more confident than it had ever been, the double notes of ironcraft buzzing from her lips. Magic crackled from her raised fingertips and shot out to repel the silver shape that had been Spareth, the vessel that had carried theVoiced Ones across the stars.

  The silver platter hovered and steadied. And then, slowly, it began to retreat. A dark fringe of night sky appeared around its edge, a margin that grew steadily bigger as the silver disc moved higher and higher.When it was the size of her hand, Calwyn felt her first twinge of doubt. Ironcraft worked by pushing from the ground. As the ship moved further away, would the chantment buckle and let the ship crash down? Would a chantment of the winds be safer?

  But the magic coursing through her was still strong, and she sang on, thrusting the ship higher. Now it was the size of the largest moon at harvest time; now it was as small as her thumbnail. Suddenly Calwyn felt the connection snap. The power of ironcraft had stretched as far as it could. Calwyn held her breath as she stared up through the lacework of twigs overhead.

  But the ship did not fall. The tiny silver ball gathered a cloak of blue fire around itself.Was Samis performing some chantment? Had he helped her to thrust the ship away? There were secrets of Spareth that Calwyn did not know, devices and machines Samis had never shown her.

  The small, bright sphere did not grow any larger. The ring of blue fire that licked around it flared briefly. And then it streaked away across the night, trailing a spectacular tail of blue and green flame. In a moment it was gone, swallowed up into the darkness between the stars, the same darkness it had come from so long ago.

  Calwyn stood staring up at the sky. She thought of Samis, alone in that huge vessel, hurtling past the moons and out into the vast ocean of stars. He would be staring from the window in the round tower through his swollen eyes, watching the green-blue marble of Tremaris shrink smaller and smaller, knowing that he could never return. He would sail that empty ocean forever, a lonely man wandering the rooms and storehouses of his deserted ship. Had she understood him, was that truly what he had asked of her? If he were not already mad, such a life would surely make him so.

  Calwyn shivered. It is not easy to be alone…my queen, my empress …She covered her face with her hands.

  Then she swept the tears from her face. Her arm ached; she had bruised it when she fell. She laid her other hand on the hurt place.Though she barely made the effort to summon the Power of Becoming, the tips of her fingers tingled with sudden magic, and the flesh of her arm grew warm. Instantly the soreness was gone. The scratches were not worth healing, but she soothed a swelling on her ankle and sealed up a deeper cut on her shin.

  Her eye was caught by a dark shape against the snow: the Wheel had fallen from her pocket, and she bent to retrieve it. Marna had valued it: for that reason alone, she should treat it with respect. Gently she brushed the snow from its surface, and as if in response to her touch, a carved pattern flowered about the rim of the disc. She had never noticed any carving before – then she remembered the faint pits and scratches that had always marked the Wheel’s surface. But until now, they had been meaningless. It was too dark to see clearly; the pattern was very faint, only just perceptible beneath her fingertips.

  Calwyn sang one of the deep, resonant chantments of fire
that she had practised with Samis, and a small yellow-white globe of light blossomed at her shoulder. She tilted theWheel carefully to make out the carvings, and as the light struck the rim of the disc, she saw that the marks were indeed signs of the Tenth Power.

  Calwyn traced the symbols with her finger, sounding each sign as she’d learned. It was not a chantment, only a string of words.

  When the Singer of all Songs shall dance, and the dancers shall sing, then will be the coming of the Goddess, and the healing of the world. For this world breathes chantment as we breathe the air, and drinks in the dance like water, and the song and the dance are one music.

  Calwyn lowered theWheel. This was the secret! This was the message locked in the signs of theTenth Power, the answer that Marna had known was there. But what did it mean? The dancers shall sing…The only dancers Calwyn knew were the healers of theTree People. And they had no voices, they could not sing. It made no sense.

  ‘Taris, help me!’ Calwyn whispered. But the Goddess did not answer.

  Calwyn’s hands were numb with cold; she sang a chantment that shook the ball of light and warmth into a gossamer cloak that she could wrap around herself. The Singer shall dance, and the dancers shall sing. Whoever had made the Wheel knew the worship of the Goddess, and the Tree People’s Power of Becoming.Was the message simply a plea for harmony between the two peoples of Tremaris? But Calwyn felt certain that the words held a more particular meaning.

  She smiled faintly as she remembered how Briaali had warned her against wasting time on ‘idle prophecies’…Briaali – An echo of memory chimed in Calwyn’s mind. Briaali had said something else that night. Calwyn had not paid much attention at the time, and now she struggled to remember the wise woman’s words.

  In the wake of the storm, the night was clear and cold, and Calwyn gazed up through the trees at a slice of dark sky and a sprinkling of stars. She recognised the constellation of the Bell that gleamed in springtime skies. Though it was still deep winter below, the stars wheeled in their proper patterns above, following their stately dance.