Darkfall

by Isobelle Carmody

  Either way, she wanted to have seen it.

  She stumbled and scowled down at the stubbled grass. She didn’t like horses and had never ridden one or wanted to. Comet was her mother’s horse, so why didn’t she feed it herself, or give it away to some horse-mad little kid? Of course no one would want such an old horse. It was out to pasture, which meant waiting to die. Belinda was convinced it would live forever and that for years she would be having to feed it. Stupid ugly old nag. Why didn’t it just die and be done with it?

  She reached the paddock gate and untied the bit of rope to let herself in. She glanced around but for once the greedy old thing wasn’t breathing and snorting down her neck. She was tempted to just dump the feed and go, but she was supposed to check the water. She hadn’t the last two times. She walked over to the water trough.

  There were a few centimetres of greenish water in the bottom and that made her feel guilty. Lucky she hadn’t left it for another day. She went to switch on the tap to the little water tank. Water began to trickle out and she sighed. It would take forever to fill at this rate. She glanced round looking for the horse. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Squinting, she scanned the paddock. It looked grey-green at this hour and you could hardly see the fences, but right down in the back corner she noticed a pale blur in the grass.

  Her heart bumped against her ribcage. ‘It’s all right. He’s just lying down,’ she told herself. But she ran down the paddock because Comet always got up when he heard the gate, if he wasn’t already waiting at it.

  The horse was lying on his side with his legs out, and she could hear him wheezing as she approached. That reassured her. For a minute she had thought he was dead.

  ‘Comet. What are you doing?’ His ears pricked and one hoof twitched feebly. Belinda noticed a little froth of drool on his lips.

  ‘Shit,’ she whispered, dismayed.

  She ran back to the house and burst through the door to the kitchen, gasping.

  ‘Don’t slam the … What’s the matter?’ her mother asked sharply.

  ‘It’s Comet, Mum. He’s lying down and I think … Well, I think he’s sick,’ she finished lamely. Somehow she couldn’t say that she thought he was dying, but her mother understood anyway.

  Pale too, now, she waved her hand. ‘Go back with him. I’ll get the vet on the phone.’

  Belinda nodded and ran back. Comet was in the same place and now she knelt right down beside him. ‘Poor old Comet,’ she said, full of remorse for not bothering with the water. Could drinking that brackish water have caused it? Maybe that green stuff on the bottom was poisonous.

  Comet’s ears quivered, and on impulse Belinda lifted his head onto her knees. It weighed far more than she would have imagined. From that angle, the horse’s eyes looked unblinkingly into her own, and she found herself grown small in his eyes. She seemed to see, too, the gentle inevitable approach of his death, and in a strange way, at the same time, all the life that had preceded it: the wet foal born into a dewy field; the warmth of his mother’s tongue and sweetness of her teats; the sour smell of the first human who had named him, and the fear and anger of being broken; the first owner who had kissed his muzzle; the cheers as he won this or that championship; her own mother as a young woman, riding for the ribbons now thrown in an old box in the attic; his bones growing sore and his knees aching as age came upon him; the long lone days grazing in this last paddock, broken only by her short resentful visits.

  She had always thought Comet stupid, but now it seemed to her the horse was wise in some deep wordless way that no human could understand; wise like a stone or a river or a storm. He did not hate her for the way she had been. He simply accepted with a grace that shamed her to the depths of her soul.

  Suddenly a wind blew up out of nowhere. Distracted for a moment, Belinda looked up and watched it riffle though the pine trees along the property border, and then run across the dry grass like a wave. Her own hair whipped about her head and her dress fluttered; then the wind was gone. Belinda frowned at the sudden quiet, and looked back down at Comet, but as if the wind had borne away his spirit, the horse was dead, his eyes turned upward.

  … the watcher withdrew, shattered, for it had witnessed the birth of the Song in the girl, where before there had been nothing but a grey emptiness. But what had brought it? Need? Compassion? No, there had been more than that. Looking into the eyes of the dying horse, the girl had seen something extraordinary, and from the wonder this evoked in her had come the Song, and with it, compassion.

  Then she had lifted her gaze and it was as if her eyes and the eyes of the young policeman in its earlier weaving became the eyes of the dying horse; mutely acknowledging the loss of hope in their world. They lifted their heads as if straining to catch the fading of the Song.

  And it was fading, that much was all too clear. Chaos was growing in the Unraveller’s world, even as the Song was diminishing.

  Were all the eyes of the Unraveller’s world now to strive upward like questing arrows, to stab it with their accusations? And if so, what answer could be made? It could do nothing in that world. Was it enough to watch? To be a witness?

  All at once a violent wind passed from the dead beast in the Unraveller’s world across the web of connections to Keltor, and the watcher segued with it; rode the wind …

  30

  Lanalor wove again into the abyss, seeking an answer to

  his hatred.

  The Chaos spirit whispered to him

  that though the Unykorn could not be killed, it might be bound

  so that Shenavyre could never look on it again.

  Thus would the Unykorn be as dead to her.

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  Standing on the lurching deck, Glynn felt an answer to the storming that had blown them willy-nilly far off course shape itself in her blood.

  Hard to believe it was only that morning they had boarded the Waterdancer on Fomhika with Kalinda glaring down on them out of a cloudless sky. As soon as they had lost sight of the aptly named green isle, the weather had darkened and before long they had been overtaken by a storming. Colwyn had more than once come near to losing his ship in the boiling sea.

  Now the weather seemed relatively calm but there were ominous clouds building again, and Colwyn said it was not over yet.

  In the brooding calm, her thoughts inclined as ever towards Ember and melancholy but she resisted because, for the moment, she was further from home than ever, bound as she was to the feinna.

  The little creature had been restless from the minute they had boarded and Glynn asked Bayard if there was any likelihood the feinna was near its time. The draakira answered shortly that the feinna was upset because of being on the great water. As anyone with sense ought to be.

  Glynn lay on her own bed and stroked the feinna as the draakira dosed herself on sleep potion. The small beast rubbed its head and forehead scent glands lovingly against her.

  ‘It would be highly inconsiderate if you have your younglings while we are aboard this boat,’ Glynn whispered to the feinna. The animal had tilted its face quizzically then curled to sleep in its favourite position, sleek head tucked into its distended belly.

  Glynn had gone up on deck, wondering why she felt so unsettled. She ought to have been pleased that Bayard and others of the Draaka’s entourage were groaning in their beds or drugged since it left her quite free to do as she pleased. There were other passengers crossing from Fomhika to Ramidan, for the vessel operated as a normal carrier on this section of its trip, but they were no concern of hers. She could do as she liked, even read through Bayard’s precious scrolls, but she had felt too restless and unsettled. Pacing the deck, she even tried to distract herself by pretending that the ship was hers and that it was taking her where she wanted to go.

  Almost contrarily, the ship had proceeded to take itself pretty much where it wanted to go, for the storming which hit soon after had blown them so far off course they had ended up at the mouth of the Turin Straits. Colwyn had b
een forced to bring them into the straits in the hope of breaking out of the storming’s ferocious centre. Though the crew looked anxious when he had announced his decision to traverse the straits, Colwyn himself seemed cheerful enough. Putting her odd mood down to the weather, Glynn had felt a secret thrill at the thought of seeing the straits after everything she had heard about them.

  ‘Why is it so rough when we are out of the storming?’ she had asked.

  Colwyn explained that the savage undertow tossing them around was caused by the way the waves were sieved through submerged rock formations at the entrance to the straits. Even in the fairest weather the waters were far less hospitable than in the open sea between Acantha and Fomhika, he said. But at least with such rough waters, there would be no bittermute algae to worry about.

  The straits had been every bit as spectacularly beautiful as Lev and Colwyn had promised. Cliffs and jagged shoals reared out of the sea to incredible heights on either side, strangely pale and sometimes transparent, carved into fantastic shapes by the combination of sea and wind. They reminded Glynn of pictures she had seen of Arctic ice caves and glaciers, and as night fell, limned with glittering phosphorus, they resembled enchanted palaces.

  Pleased by her enthusiasm, Colwyn explained that the deepest beauties of the straits were seldom seen by other than wavespeakers, because of the roughness of the passage.

  ‘Most passengers travel these waters locked in Iridomi dreams,’ he said, showing her the securing ropes and urging her seriously to fasten one around her waist. ‘For all you walk like one born to the waves, this is a precarious passage. You must have some few drops of Vespian blood to have lasted so well, though I admit you do not have our look about you. Do you feel the song of the waves in you at all?’

  ‘I … I love the se … the great water, but I do not hear any song, believe me,’ Glynn said.

  The wind picked up as they approached the end of the straits, and Colwyn responded like a thoroughbred born to it, nostrils flaring as he scanned the clouds on the horizon. For a moment Glynn had an apprehensive feeling of deja vu, because the last time he had looked that way, the silfi had risen.

  But he had merely looked back at her saying, ‘It has been a rough journey for my Waterdancer and I am afraid it is not over yet. But we will fare well enough, as long as the storming does not turn around and come after us.’

  ‘Can they do that?’

  ‘I swear sometimes stormings have a life of their own and a malevolent will,’ Colwyn said. ‘Are you sure you will not go to your cabin? If you were swept overboard there would be no saving you,’ he warned her gravely.

  ‘I will be careful,’ Glynn promised, tying the mast rope around her waist, and wondering if falling overboard would bring her home in a reversal of her journey to Keltor.

  What an irony it would be if, all along, it had been that easy to go home. Certainly the sea seemed to be connected with Lanalor’s portal and for a second she was tempted to throw herself into the waves to test the theory. But the cost of failure was too high, and common-sense prevailed. If she wasn’t eaten by the silfi who infested the straits, she was sure to drown or be smashed to pieces on the rocks. How would the feinna fare then?

  In the end, everything came down to the link spun between her and the feinna. She had no idea how it worked, but it had some unexpected side-effects. When they were about to board on Fomhika, Gedron had peered at the feinna and it had suddenly reared up and bared its teeth at him, hissing savagely. Glynn had simultaneously experienced a powerful surge of dislike for him.

  He had recoiled in fright, then reddened, a murderous expression on his face.

  Her amusement faded as she considered what she had heard that morning of the attempted murder of the Holder of Keltor.

  Pombo had been supervising the serving of a lavish breakfast on a sunny terrace facing the sea, and Glynn had been on her second generous helping of pancakes, when he had dropped his bombshell.

  ‘It is madness for them even to suggest that Bleyd tried to poison Tarsin,’ Pombo muttered apropos of nothing. ‘Never was there a boy to whom honour meant more. By the Horn, he was all honour and reckless courage as a boy. Living on Ramidan could not have changed him so drastically.’

  ‘Poverin’s son tried to poison Tarsin?’ the Draaka had demanded.

  ‘That is the rumour,’ Pombo said. ‘Bleyd is said, even now, to be awaiting judgment in the cliff dungeons of the citadel. There is even a scurrilous suggestion that our own chieftain sent the poison to Bleyd. Fool gossip, of course. Poverin would not do such a thing, regardless of his ambitions. Even if it meant he would become Holder himself, he would not put Bleyd in mortal danger. That young man is his father’s heartsong.’

  Once Pombo had left the room, the Draaka’s eyes had glittered with excitement. ‘If Bleyd and his father are judged guilty of this, one of our own will be chieftain of Fomhika.’

  The town had been busy as the carts ordered by Gedron traversed the road through it, but the Fomhikans seemed subdued. There was, perhaps most significantly of all, no singing. Which suggested they were not as sure as Pombo that this Bleyd was innocent, or that their own chieftain was not involved in treason. Glynn would not have thought Poverin the poisoning sort. He struck her as a man more inclined to wordy intrigue. Though given what Pombo had said, maybe the idea had been the father’s and the execution the son’s.

  ‘Do you think he did it?’ one of the draakira had asked Bayard, as they walked the length of the long, plant-strangled pier back to the ship.

  ‘I do not know anything of the man. But I would not be surprised to find Poverin was involved.’

  Aboard the ship the Prime had asked the same question of Bayard as they watched the shore of that golden island slip away. This time the draakira replied, ‘If Bleyd is judged guilty, and there is any chance Poverin might have incited him to murder, Tarsin can form a Keltan legion to bring him to be judged.’

  The Prime had seemed less elated by that than one would have supposed. Maybe she resented the knowledge that Gedron would have substantial influence on the Draaka if he were both chieftain and a Prime.

  News of the attempted assassination and the accusations had reached the ship as well. The Vespians aboard the Waterdancer had seemed more taciturn than usual. Possibly they believed that Poverin had tried to kill the Holder, and condemned all Fomhika for it. Vespi did, after all, align itself with Darkfall and certainly the misty isle would not want its chosen Holder to die.

  Unless, a dark thought whispered, Darkfall had acted to rid itself of a liability in the shape of a chosen ruler gone unexpectedly and dangerously insane. It would not be the first time a ruler was slain by his underlings, not in her world or, she suspected, in this one.

  But this is not my world, however much the two seem alike, Glynn thought, pushing her face into the stiff breeze and enjoying the icy needles of spray on her bare arms. Her confrontation the night before with the myrmidons seemed, in the light of day, dreamlike and surreal.

  ‘However you frame it, serve the Draaka and you serve the Chaos spirit,’ Duran had warned.

  But she had been wrong.

  Glynn had no intention of becoming any more involved in the affairs of this world than she already was. I work for the Draaka but I serve myself, she thought, hanging on tightly as a wave lifted the prow. The Waterdancer hung in the air for a moment before crashing back down into the water. The force of it drove her to her knees and water streaming over the deck soaked into her breeches. Cursing her clumsiness, she stood up.

  The wind had risen to a howl, flapping her coat around her. Glynn clutched it to her and decided that they were definitely teetering on the brink of another storming. She did not feel the slightest bit afraid. In fact, she felt as if a storming was already raging in her blood. She was amazed that the weather could affect her so strongly.

  An enormous foam-streaked wave broke over the prow, washing her off her feet again and wetting her through. Glynn held fast to a lashed box u
ntil the ship shuddered upright again, then climbed to her feet. It began to rain and she squinted up into a dark sky where black clouds churned backlit by sheets of lightning.

  ‘Are you so hungry for death?’

  That voice!

  Glynn whirled unsteadily. There, with storm clouds as his backdrop, stood Solen of Acantha.

  April fool! Glynn thought, but there was no laughter in his eyes. Nor was she inclined to amusement. In fact what she felt most was blind rage.

  ‘You … you died!’ she stammered.

  ‘Obviously not.’ He reached out to steady her as another wave crashed over the deck. ‘Be careful, I think we are in for another storming.’

  Glynn all but snarled at him that she could figure that out without his help. She had never felt so angry in her life. She was trembling with the force of it.

  Hella had been on Fomhika, as Solen must have been to be aboard the Waterdancer now. Which meant Hella had known her brother was alive when she accused Glynn of betraying him. Donard had known, too. That was why he had not looked shattered when she spoke of Solen’s death.

  And she had wept for him!

  ‘They knew you were alive on Fomhika,’ she said stonily.

  ‘I had forbidden those who knew to speak of it.’

  Forbidden? Glynn thought. Was this the weakling wastrel? But of course he was not those things. That was the lie at the heart of his puzzling duality, so much was clear. Not two personalities, but one worn over another like a mask. How could she have ever believed he was a dissolute weakling? There was not a single yielding or self-indulgent line in that austere monk’s face. He had even lost weight, and she did not find it hard to believe he had deliberately let himself run to fat to preserve the fiction of his degeneration.