Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘But the Draaka does not control Acantha. Jurass rules us and …’

  Nema broke in, ‘Jurass rules Acantha, but he is ruled by his hatred of Darkfall, which the Draaka feeds. Therefore the Draaka rules Acantha in all but name. Make no mistake, it will be she who will judge your precious brother when his journey to the Darkfall landing is revealed.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Hella was ash pale.

  ‘I am saying that Solen has put himself in grave danger. I will tell you a thing that I have told no living soul. As a young woman, I had some slight tendency to soulweave, and I dreamed once that I would some day set the chieftain’s circlet around Solen’s brow. It was clear to me, even then, that my own son did not have the strength needed to bear the burden of leadership. But then Garad left us and Solen grew to be weak-willed and worthless. My son took on the chieftainship fired by hatred and Acantha languished. I thought I had been deceived in my weaving for the Void holds all possible ends. But Solen’s deeds of late have proven to me that he might yet be redeemed and lead Acantha as it should be led. If he can be saved from the doing of those deeds! And he must be saved, because Acantha needs him. Though he is my son, Jurass should not be chieftain.’

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’ Hella whispered.

  ‘To confirm what I both feared and hoped – that Solen had taken Flay to Darkfall. And if it was true, to help him. His only defence is to make himself even less than he has been before, so that his act will be seen as a single, crazed moment unlikely to be repeated. It must be put about that Flay threatened to betray some secret liaison of Solen’s to force him to accompany her.’ She looked hard at Glynn. ‘Be vague about his rescue of you. If it is mentioned, belittle it. For my part, I will do what I can to temper my son’s reactions. He will want to cut down Solen as an example to the supporters of Darkfall, and so he must be convinced Solen will damage Darkfall more alive than dead. But the effect of my suggestions will be directly related to how little danger Solen seems to offer to the Draaka. If she influences Jurass, I fear your brother will die.’

  Hella stood up hastily, wringing her hands. ‘I must find Solen.’

  ‘Go softly, Hella, for if you leave here in a panic, I will surely suffer. I have given my son to believe I am turned against Darkfall, and he must continue to think this is so.’

  ‘But what will you say we have been speaking of now?’

  ‘There will be a wing hall soon. You two will come as my attendants. I have been guilty of such whimsy before. But the important thing is to make sure Solen understands what is at stake. I would speak with him myself. Indeed I sent word for him to attend me before I understood what I was dealing with. That was a mistake, but we will turn it to our advantage. I will tell my son I am angry with Solen for his failure to answer my summons and that I wish to slight him by banning him from the occasion, while inviting you two. My son will appreciate such pettiness. Now you had better go.’

  segue …

  Again the watcher allowed itself to be drawn into the Unraveller’s world …

  A woman was walking along a dusty road, a pole balanced on her shoulder. Two woven baskets containing coal were suspended from either end of the pole. It was heavy, but heavier still was the decision she must make concerning the adoption of her son. It came to her sadly that she was foolish to pretend there were any choices to be made. There were patterns in all matters and echoes and circles that one simply followed. Had not her own brother been adopted? No one knew what had happened to him, but it was said he had gone across the sea to another land and had prospered there.

  As a young woman, she had gone to the edge of the Yellow Sea and had gazed out to the horizon, imagining her brother looking back from an unimaginably far shore. She had believed that he would come back as a prince or at least some important official, wealthy and powerful. She had thought he would because when the rich man’s servant had come for him, Wind had kissed her and had said he would return.

  But of course he had not come. She did not blame him, for a boy may promise many things in his innocence. A grown woman must learn to deal with reality.

  She sighed and knelt down.

  Freed from the weight of the coal, her shoulder felt strangely light. The pole had dragged her towards the earth, but now her shoulder seemed to be tugged up to the sky. She began to unload the lumps of coal into a scuttle. Matt-black dust coated her hands so thickly that it seemed to her that she wore velvet gloves.

  She stared at her hands, remembering a moment when she had looked through the window of a wealthy home and had seen a woman in black gloves and diamonds dancing with a tall man.

  She seemed to hear the music she had heard that night in the chill air, and prayed it was an omen that fortune might smile on her at last …

  The watcher brushed against the dark nap of the woman’s fears, and considered the need of humans for signs. Yet was not the Song in her thoughts truly an omen? It pondered the possibility that the woman’s longing had conjured the Song as a kind of echo, or was it that the Song would arise spontaneously wherever Chaos laid its spore?

  The presence of both Chaos and the Song in the Unraveller’s world was a mystery, but more puzzling was the multitude of connections between Keltor and that world. The link between the Chinese peasant woman and her brother and the child-woman he had loved should have been severed when the man gave himself to the Void. Yet a connection remained between the two women as if waiting. But for what?

  The watcher segued, drawn by another echo of the Song …

  13

  The Firstmade adored Shenavyre,

  protecting her and healing her when she ailed …

  Above all things, it loved to hear her sing.

  In return, it told her stories.

  Entranced by their beauty and wisdom, Shenavyre wove them

  into cloth.

  Thus came to humankind the power of immortal remembering …

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  It was dawn, and Ember had slept little. Every time she closed her eyes, she found herself in the same dream. She was in a forest clearing and there was music. She would speak or move and the music would stop. Then she would have the feeling of being watched, and this would grow until she woke, sweating and trembling, terrified of the darkness that loomed on the edges of the dream.

  Giving up trying to sleep, she rose, pulled on a silken robe and padded barefoot through the now all-too-familiar soulweaver’s apartment.

  In spite of all Feyt’s fears, Alene had not been thrown into the palace dungeon on her arrival at the palace. Nor had any of them been summoned to an audience with the Holder.

  ‘Maybe he has forgotten about us,’ she had suggested to Alene after some days had passed.

  The older woman had replied soberly that the opposite was almost certainly the case. ‘This is an old game of power that Tarsin plays. He commands me to come at once, and then keeps me waiting indefinitely. Eventually he will send someone to say I may go from the palace without his seeing me. Or he may send for me with no notice at all.’

  The soulweaver had said that although Tarsin showed no interest in them, if they tried to leave the citadel they would be brought back by legionnaires and probably imprisoned. They were free to roam as they liked in the cliff palace and even in the citadel, but Alene had asked Ember not to leave the apartment.

  That had not seemed a difficult promise to make when she had first arrived. After walking the length of the citadel with Feyt, running a gauntlet of hostility aimed at the amazon and suspicion at her own veiled state, she had arrived at the steep steps leading to the palace gates swaying on her feet with exhaustion. Feyt had wordlessly picked her up and carried her past the startled legionnaires stationed at the gate. Tareed had let out a cry of consternation when they entered the apartment, thinking Ember had been attacked.

  ‘No one touched her,’ Feyt had assured her.

  ‘Lay her down,’ Alene had murmured. The older woman had laid her fingers on Ember
’s clammy forehead, and a cool wind seemed to flow under her scalp, blowing the sick weariness from her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Feyt had demanded of Alene in an alarmed voice.

  Alene had made some response, but Ember had slipped through the words into a deep, dreamless sleep from which she had wakened the next day completely refreshed. Her collapse had given the soulweaver the idea of telling everyone in the palace that Ember was ill.

  ‘Revel did us no service in telling Asa you were a visionweaver because, as so few Sheannites come here, you are a curiosity.’ She sighed. ‘I can hardly complain since I gave Revel the lie, though I did not know where it would lead us. But we have to keep people away from you, and a serious sickness which is possibly contagious will ensure you are left alone. The fact that you were carried into the palace is already being talked about.’

  The soulweaver’s apartment was beautiful. There was even a small swimming pool on a private terrace overlooking the citadel on one side and the sea far below the cliff palace on the other. But you could swim in the red sun and stare at the view and eat and sleep just so much.

  She had far too much time to fret about her amnesia. Alene claimed it was the result of the crossing between worlds, but Ember believed that something had happened to her in her own world before the crossing, that had caused her loss of memory. Something to do with dying horses and being in the ocean fully clothed. Whatever it was had been so horrible that her mind had shrunk from it, and the hovering darkness in her recurring nightmare symbolised it.

  With nothing else to do at the cliff palace but think, she had replayed the dream images over and over, trying to find some clue as to what it could have been that had made her forget.

  She pushed open the fragile woven shutters to the balcony a crack and a cool breeze flowed through the gap. The sky was stained with dawn colours that softened the bloody stone of which the majority of buildings in the citadel were formed. She would have liked to go out onto the balcony, but she was not wearing her veil and felt too lethargic to go back to her bed and find it.

  She turned away from the window and her gaze fell on a long instrument like a narrow guitar. No doubt it had been a gift from one of Alene’s visitors, because she had not noticed it before. Ember experienced a strong desire to take up the instrument, and was surprised to find herself imagining the fingering required to reproduce the music of her dream. Her fingers had moved so swiftly and with such confidence in the fleeting vision, that she looked down at them. Her hands were thin, but capable-looking compared to the rest of her. The nails were long, but their length annoyed her, as if she were not accustomed to it.

  Could it be that she was a musician? Perhaps the music in her dream also, had some connection to her loss of memory.

  ‘This is absurd,’ she said aloud, turning again. She would make herself mad thinking round and round in ever decreasing circles. Maybe she was right about the dream being connected to her lost memory, but mooning over it and making herself sick was not going to help, even if she was supposed to be sick.

  If only Tarsin would let them go.

  Patience, Alene had counselled, saying it would be to their advantage. If the fickle palace court grew bored with talk of the visionweaver, Tarsin was far more likely simply to allow Ember to leave without wanting to see her, even if he did not release Alene.

  Am I patient? Ember wondered. She had the feeling she might be, but she did not know. She had the idea she was not only quiet but very self-contained, for she was perfectly content to sit without saying a word to anyone for hours, her hands still in her lap. She would just think about things. I am a thinker, she told herself, but what else am I?

  ‘When you get to Darkfall my sisters there may be able to restore your memory as I cannot,’ the soulweaver had promised. That ought to have comforted her. The trouble was she had to get to Darkfall, and that depended entirely on the whim of a mad king. What if he decided to keep her here for years?

  Ember had reached the door that led from the apartment to the rest of the palace. It was locked from the outside, which meant Tareed and Feyt had gone out to exercise and practise with their weapons. She sighed and turned away, envying them. She had paced the apartment so often that she knew it intimately, even to the number of steps it took to get from one part of it to another.

  Alene had not yet arisen. No doubt she was tired. She had had a constant stream of visitors since their arrival. The number seeking her aid and advice did not gel with the treatment that had been meted out to her in the town but, as Feyt had pointed out, it did reflect the political situation. Most callers came from those islands openly loyal to Darkfall. Vespians were in the majority. No Sheannites came – but only because there were none on Ramidan. Sheannites were pacifists and disliked city life, Tareed had explained, but Sheanna was as loyal to Darkfall as Vespi. There were a few from Acantha who called themselves refugees and begged Alene to speak to her sisters about some matter on their island. Ember had been sent into another room to substantiate the rumour of her contagious illness and, with nothing else to occupy her, she had listened at the door to the exchanges.

  There were even several obviously wealthy nobles from the palace itself, but Ember had the feeling they merely came to gather material for their gossip. There were only three Myrmidori islanders who came, but again this had more to do with the current climate of hatred of myrmidons than anything else. Feyt had explained that the Myrmidori who had come were not the sworn spear maids known as myrmidons, but natives of Myrmidor, though people who hated Darkfall did not differentiate. In truth, Myrmidor stood with Darkfall. Significantly, not a single person from Iridom came and, for obvious reasons, most of the poor were Ramidan islanders. With a few notable exceptions, visitors from within the cliff palace could be as easily foes as friends, the amazon had said cynically, for those in the palace seldom wore their true faces.

  All of Keltor’s volatile political currents seemed to break on the rock that was Darkfall. Everyone could be divided into those who were for the misty isle and those against it. Generally speaking, anyone against Darkfall was also against myrmidons. But on Ramidan there was a ruler utterly straddling the debate for and against Darkfall; he had been crowned by the soulweavers, yet now appeared to have come to despise them. A lot of the people who visited Alene asked when the soulweavers would deal with Tarsin. She had told them coolly and very sternly that they must not speak thus of their Holder; that they must have faith in the misty isle.

  The ambivalence in attitude to Darkfall even showed in the soulweaver’s luxurious apartment. Of course, the apartment had not really been given to Alene by Tarsin. It had been bequeathed to Darkfall in perpetuity by the first Holder, Lanalor, who had clearly valued his soulweaver far more than Tarsin did Alene. Tareed told Ember that Lanalor had, in between making laws, ruling Keltor and setting up the Darkfall order, designed the cliff palace. He had also been mad for a time.

  There was, Ember reflected, a lot of madness on Keltor.

  She stared down at the floor. It was streaked pink marble and overlaid with beautiful rugs. Her eyes ran slowly along it to the walls of the apartment and up, until they rested on a dazzling tapestry featuring a red-haired woman in a long gown, caressing the neck of a white unicorn.

  Ember thought that this was quite possibly the loveliest thing she had ever seen. Without intending it, she drifted across the apartment to stand before the tapestry. She was fascinated by the intricacy of the needlework. The face of the unicorn was incredibly detailed, and therefore very real-looking.

  The eyes brought her back again and again to the tapestry. They were so lifelike.

  A strange, compelling stillness came over Ember and, with it, an intense feeling of deja vu.

  ‘This is the only thing I miss when I go away from the palace,’ Alene said, having come up quietly beside her.

  Ember started, but did not look away from the tapestry.

  ‘It is a visioncloth made by the Sheannite visionweaver, Galen
,’ the soulweaver continued. ‘He is said to have been the most gifted visionweaver ever born, and from the line of Shenavyre herself.’

  Ember turned reluctantly from the tapestry. ‘That is Shenavyre, isn’t it? In the visioncloth?’ Tareed had seemed unusually evasive the one time Ember had tried to ask her about it.

  Alene nodded. ‘Aye. Shenavyre and the Unykorn – Firstmade of the Song of Making.’

  Ember turned back to the tapestry. She had guessed as much. Tareed was not subtle in her evasions, and there was enough of a resemblance for it to be obvious that this was who she, Ember, was supposed to look like. Both she and the woman in the tapestry had long red hair and were finely built. Even their faces were slightly alike, but beyond a superficial level the similarity was not so very pronounced. She found the presence of a unicorn in the tapestry far more astonishing, for how had an image out of the myths in her world come to this world? Coincidence?

  ‘Where I come from, there is a mythical creature called a unicorn,’ Ember said slowly.

  ‘So says the Scroll of Strangers, which you may be interested to examine when you reach Darkfall. Some of it was written by strangers themselves. It is not surprising that you have that image there,’ Alene added lightly. ‘It is told the Firstmade flew through many worlds not Made by the Song, and that his image remained there.’

  Ember did not know how to respond to this. It seemed to her this was like Adam and Eve or Jesus in Christian mythology. Some believed they were real people, while others thought of them as theological or philosophical metaphors. She found it hard to believe unicorns could be real, but who knew? This was, after all, another world. Clearly Alene and Tareed were convinced they were real. She was not so sure about Feyt though.