Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘This is not saving some little kid,’ the older man pointed out.

  ‘Maybe not, but you know, right now I can only think this kid’ll know I lied. He’ll know there is no difference between us and the people we bring in.’

  ‘What do you care what a kid like that thinks?’

  ‘I don’t know but I do. And what if Jack’s wrong and he didn’t do it?’

  ‘He’s probably done plenty of things we didn’t catch him for.’

  The young policeman sighed and turned back to the new-agers. They were sitting in a circle and singing Blowin’ in the Wind. Their arrogant naivety made him want to bloody weep.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  John looked up. He focused his concentration and his eyes on the stars and wondered how one chose, when any choice would be a betrayal.

  … the watcher recoiled from the fierce questing purity of that gaze, understanding it as both an accusation and a plea. But for what?

  23

  At last, despairing, Lanalor understood that nothing

  in the universe

  was more wondrous than the Unykorn, and so he used his powers

  to enter the Void in search of some new thing to offer Shenavyre.

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  Glynn stared out over the dark sea, dazed at the speed with which things had changed. One moment she had been a prisoner in the haven and the next she was on a ship headed for Fomhika. She was free of Acantha at last and yet in a way she was more a prisoner than ever.

  She looked down with a mixture of compassion and despair at the feinna sleeping in her arms.

  Impossible to believe that it was only yesterday she had wakened from her abortive attempt to escape the haven to find Bayard staring at her in astonishment. Glynn had known how she must look, scraped to hell with a lump the size of a hen’s egg on her forehead. The night’s efforts had scooped her out and she simply sat there blinking at the draakira helplessly, without the energy even to attempt an excuse.

  Incredibly, instead of interrogating her, Bayard had gone away and returned with a bowl of warm water and an array of soothing salves. As she tended the cuts and scrapes, she smiled.

  ‘The feinna has fed you visions. This is wonderful because it means it has truly formed an intimate attachment,’ she explained, swabbing the graze on Glynn’s forehead gently. ‘This,’ she gestured at Glynn’s head, ‘has happened to me, too, and more than once. I was black and blue until I found the trick of shutting the visions out.’

  Glynn was hard pressed to control her expression. Relief at the older woman’s misunderstanding made her tremble.

  ‘Last night went even better than I had hoped it would. I was not distracted at all by the feinna.’ Bayard examined the cut on her elbow with a grimace. ‘Nasty, but in truth we are both fortunate that it sent the visions to you, rather than to me.’

  Glynn did not know what to say. She had fully expected Bayard to have known of the escape attempt because of her link with the feinna, but perhaps the link did not work in quite the way Bayard imagined. Maybe whatever happened between the animal and one person with whom it had linked was completely separate from another person with whom it had formed a bond. Which explained why Bayard could believe Glynn was linked to the feinna as she was.

  ‘The Draaka was very pleased with me,’ Bayard continued complacently. ‘For the first time in an age, I was able to fall into a trance and properly serve as a medium for the Void spirit.’

  ‘Trance?’ Glynn stammered.

  ‘The Void spirit communes with the Draaka through me,’ the elderly draakira said with pride. ‘But since my encounter with the feinna it has been difficult for me to reach the depth of trance needed, and hard to sustain it when I did. Others have had to act as a medium, but none are so receptive. The Draaka has not been happy with the situation.’ A fleeting distress passed like the shadow of a cloud over her homely features and Glynn knew, as clearly as if she had been told, that the Draaka had wanted to kill the feinna. Obviously Bayard had pointed out that her own well-being was now connected to the animal’s.

  ‘Last night I told her I felt very receptive, and so she used me. Fortunately my trance was deep and prolonged. The Draaka said I had served the Void spirit well.’

  Glynn struggled to comprehend that the nightmare voice she had heard came from Bayard. Horrifying in a way, and yet infinitely preferable to it belonging to the sort of monsters her unconscious had produced. The older woman had to have been given a hallucinogenic to enable her to assume the persona of the Void spirit. Her words suggested that she had no memory of how she sounded or what she said when she was entranced.

  The older woman had shot her a quizzical look. ‘You are not listening to me.’

  Glynn forced herself to attend. ‘I am sorry … My head is hurting …’

  Technically she did not have a headache, but she could feel one building in the tightness of her sinuses and the tense muscles clenching across the back of her neck.

  Bayard nodded understandingly. ‘Put some more of the salve on the cut. I was telling you that because the Draaka was so pleased, I judged it timely to confess to her that I had withheld the sharap’n. That is the name of the drug, which drones are given. She was not happy that I had done this without informing her, of course, but she agreed it had been wisely done, given the success of the rituals. She has said that I may keep you undrugged, as long as there was no chance of your escaping.’ She eyed Glynn’s wounds thoughtfully. ‘I think that she need not trouble herself about the possibility of your escaping, though, for the link with the feinna must be stronger than I realised. I wonder how strong exactly …’

  She lifted the feinna into its old position around her neck, and bustled out the door, locking it behind her. When she did not return for some time, Glynn stood and did a series of strenuous warm-up exercises to get some blood into her muscles. After a short time she was dripping with perspiration. She stopped to rub some salve on the cuts, which had begun to sting, when a faint cramp twisted her stomach muscles. She kneaded her abdomen, thinking she had probably overdone the exercises. Rather than abating, the intensity of the cramp began to increase.

  With a groan, she doubled over and dropped to her knees. It felt as if something were being removed from her stomach without anaesthetic. The pulling sensation was incredibly painful. She crawled to the wall and used it to haul herself up, with the dazed idea that she was allergic to the salve, and must summon help. As she hammered on the door, the cramps became a surging pain. Panicking, she wondered if something poisonous had bitten her.

  Then all at once the pain began to decrease. In moments she was panting but without pain.

  Twenty minutes later Bayard returned with a triumphant expression. Clinging to her neck, the feinna was trembling.

  ‘It was remarkable and completely unexpected,’ Bayard said. ‘I had thought the link between the feinna and myself was an aberration and unrepeatable, but the feinna has clearly formed a link with you. There must be some reason it linked with us specifically. It seems the two links are quite separate, for I felt none of the feinna’s pain at being separated from you. That is puzzling …’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Glynn demanded.

  ‘I took the feinna out of the range within which I can bear to be separated from it, to see how you would react. Nothing happened, but in case your field of tolerance was higher I went further. Though I felt nothing, the feinna began to show signs of agitation. It was clearly reacting to being taken too far away from you. There can be no other explanation. I do not understand how or why, but it has definitely formed a link with you. I suspected it when I saw your state this morning, but this has confirmed it.’

  Glynn made no response. Could it be that the awful pains she had experienced were really the result of some sort of mental or emotional bond that had developed between her and the feinna?

  ‘This means that, like me, you cannot be physically separated from the feinna,�
� Bayard said succinctly. ‘Your link with it is obviously a lesser link, because I could not be so distant from it.’

  ‘What just happened …’

  ‘Will occur whenever you are too far away from the feinna. I do not know what would happen if you were forced apart further – perhaps the link would break, given it is a lesser or secondary link. But the feinna experiences the same pain as you. If you struggle to escape, it will suffer exactly as you do. I suspect if it were in terrible pain, I would be aware of it, but clearly the link it has with you is not connected to the link it has to me. If it died …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, we have spoken of that eventuality.’

  Glynn was reeling. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I can’t be separated from the feinna, and it can’t be apart from me or you?’ Bayard merely nodded. ‘How long will this last?’

  ‘Possibly it will end with the birth of the feinna’s young, or at any rate the link may weaken enough to be broken without danger. That is my own hope, but it is impossible to know precisely. You are more fortunate than I was, for I had no one to explain this to me. I had to figure it out for myself. I understand how you feel now, because I felt the same, but believe me, you will become accustomed to it in time. In fact it will even serve you well, because you will no longer have to be confined to this cell once I explain to the Draaka that you are bound by the link. You will be free.’

  ‘Free?’ Glynn had asked ironically, hopelessly.

  Bayard had given her a look of reproval. ‘There is no need for melodrama. You see yourself as chained to the feinna, but think of it: if you had not shown an affinity with it, you would now be a drone. In a sense that potential for linking saved you, for after a time, the sharap’n fed to the drones to make them willing and docile causes permanent damage to their bones. That is one of my objections to its use. You escaped that fate and you have at least a limited freedom because of the link. And who knows, when the younglings are born safely, I think it very likely her bond with both of us will cease or weaken to the point where it can be broken.’

  ‘How long until the feinna gives birth?’ Glynn asked flatly.

  ‘I do not know the gestation period of its young, but I suspect a matter of weeks. Now I must go and convey what has happened to the Draaka. I doubt you will want to repair scrolls with those hands. Use the salve if they trouble you and rest. I suggest you use this time to think well of the alternatives you have escaped, and be grateful for your link with the feinna.’

  Grateful!

  Glynn took a deep breath of the Keltan sea air, and expelled it forcefully. Perhaps because of the enormity of what had befallen her, she had slept almost at once when Bayard left her – a deep healing sleep blissfully uninterrupted by dreams, for the draakira had taken the feinna with her. Bayard had returned in the evening with the feinna, food and unexpected news.

  ‘The Draaka has received an invitation from Coralyn of Iridom on behalf of her son, the Holder of Keltor,’ Bayard had said, pink spots of excitement on her sagging ivory cheeks. ‘She is to come immediately to Ramidan where she will be received as an honoured guest and where she may explain her philosophies to the citadel court.’

  Bayard appeared to have had no recollection that she had announced this already in her Chaos spirit persona. Chilled, Glynn had wondered how Bayard could possibly have known that the invitation was coming unless she really was acting as a medium for some other force. That the nightmarish voice might belong to something that had possessed Bayard, had filled Glynn with black dread. Until she remembered that the Draaka used darklins in her rituals. No doubt these had supplied one of their rare true visions to Bayard.

  ‘It would have been better if the invitation had come from Tarsin, of course,’ Bayard had continued. ‘But no harm will come to us under the Iridomi chieftain’s protection. We will simply have to be careful how we phrase some of our beliefs, lest they be perceived as an attack on Tarsin. I will have to rewrite some sections of the new scrolls …’

  ‘So the Draaka is going to Ramidan?’ Glynn had said.

  ‘Have I not just said so? The ship which brought this message has been chartered to bring us to Fomhika. Colwyn shipmaster has said he will wait but one day here because he is scheduled as a public ship from Fomhika to the citadel harbour, and one day standing offshore from Acantha is all his schedule allows.’

  ‘She will go tomorrow?’

  ‘It will be a hasty departure,’ Bayard had sighed. ‘We will have to leave very early tomorrow to reach the ship in time. The Draaka has already requested windwalkers of Jurass.’

  ‘You will go with her?’

  ‘The Draaka must have an appropriate entourage of draakira, and of course I will be going, for she will need to have the means of communing with the Chaos spirit during her journey.’

  Confused, Glynn stammered, ‘I thought you and the feinna could not be parted.’

  ‘Nor shall we be. Apart from anything else, the birthing may very well occur during the journey. Since it would be painful for the feinna to separate from you, and convenient for me to have you to occupy and care for it, you will be accompanying us also.’

  Glynn’s heart had lurched into overdrive, for although she had decided against Ramidan, it came to her at once that there was a soulweaver within the citadel. If she could get to the woman …

  ‘Will I be locked up?’ Glynn had asked.

  ‘That very much depends on you,’ Bayard answered slowly. ‘I should like to be able to tell the Draaka that you have given your word to act as my servant and to say nothing of the drugging of drones.’

  ‘Why would she or you believe me if I promise that to you?’ Glynn had asked truculently.

  Bayard smiled. ‘I put my faith in the feinna’s perceptions of you as one who does not lie. Of course, if you speak out, it will simply be denied and you will be set free before witnesses as a servant prone to hysteria. None will know that you are not able to go far from us because of your link with the feinna. And when you return – as you will have no choice but to do – you will be savagely punished.’

  For a moment there had been something dangerous in Bayard’s eye.

  What choice had there been but to give her word, and console herself with the possibility of freedom once the feinna had given birth to its younglings? Bayard had said it would not be long before the animal reached its term. More importantly, she would at least have a chance to speak to a soulweaver.

  She had been given a set of travelling clothes – a warm shawl, a long, slightly shaped grey dress, flat lace-up boots and an overdress. There was also some underwear, a skirt and loose trousers, two lightweight short-sleeved shirts, a big thin jumper and a bag in which to carry them.

  It was very early when they had all emerged from the haven the next morning, both blue and green moon still showing above the luminous line of the horizon. Glynn was laden with sacks of scrolls which Bayard regarded as essential, as well as Bayard’s and her own baggage. The Draaka came out when they were all assembled in the chilly grey pre-dawn, shivering in an icy wind. Wrapped in a thick scarlet-hooded cloak lined with dyed crimson fur, you could barely see her nose. Glynn had been afraid of being questioned, but the Draaka stood for some minutes talking closely with the cold-faced Prime, who wore a thick grey cloak. Glynn assumed she was giving the woman some last-minute instructions, but when they set off, the Prime accompanied them. There were about fifteen in the party and all but she, the Draaka and the Prime wore grey draakira tunics with the red sun insignia.

  It had taken them until late in the morning to reach the platform where Glynn had landed on her first day on Acantha. Jurass and a gaggle of his attendants had been waiting there to farewell the Draaka, together with the requested windwalkers needed to transport them to the ship. There had been an absurd cliff-top breakfast complete with a lacklustre performance by a shivering female balladeer. Jurass made a speech which the rising wind and snapping cloaks devoured, and then the windwalkers flew them one at a time down to the deck of the ship
.

  Glynn had been unable to avoid thinking of Solen, and then of Hella, wishing for the hundredth time that she had been able to contact the girl to explain what had happened. She had even asked Bayard outright if she might send a chit but had been refused.

  ‘Forget your past life,’ the draakira had advised her sternly. ‘For the time being, you have no access to it. Regard it as something that belonged to someone else. If the spirit wills it, you shall return to it some day.’

  Glynn had wondered disconsolately if the draakira was right about resigning herself to her fate. Am I just kidding myself thinking I can get home? she asked herself.

  Once they were assembled on the pitching deck of the ship, they were formally welcomed aboard by the young shipmaster, Colwyn, with grave courtesy. What he lacked in age he made up for in authority as he warned them all that they could expect a rough journey caused by a series of stormings locked into a wind cycle between Acantha and Fomhika. But he promised the weather would improve for the latter part of the trip.

  Most of the Draaka’s entourage were seasick by the time his welcome had ended, for the sea was choppy and covered in whitecaps. Glynn remembered Solen being surprised that she did not suffer from seasickness and decided it must be a common malady on Keltor. Other than the Vespians, Keltans generally seemed to dislike the sea, even if they did not suffer from seasickness.

  ‘Come below now.’

  Glynn returned to the present with a start, and saw that she was alone on the deck with a rather bilious-looking Bayard. Everyone else had gone below. Obediently she followed the weaving draakira downstairs to a public salon where rooms were being allocated. The moment this was completed, the whey-faced Draaka announced her decision to retire. More than half the passengers followed her example. Those who did not take to their beds remained huddled in the salon drinking cirul and playing dice games. The large porthole shutter remained firmly closed over the glass, as if even the sight of the sea was abhorrent to them.