The Sending

by Isobelle Carmody

  No, but that man’s hate poisoned me. I want to go into the stream. It sings an end to remembering that I yearn for. But I do not want to take Miky with me. Use the black sword and sever the link between us before it is too late.

  I wanted to argue with him, but I saw that his body was beginning to shift from the brown of living flesh to the dull grey of unliving matter, the pale smoky cord running loosely, thinly, from his spirit to his body fading. I looked at Miky and saw with a sinking heart that the silver-white cord holding her spirit to her body was thinning, too, though the lavender cord binding her to her twin seemed brighter than ever. His flesh was dying and so was hers, though the link between them shone.

  I saw you cutting it, Angina begged. I know you can do it. There is no other way to save her and there is no more time for thinking. This time his voice was barely audible.

  Clenching my teeth, I closed my eyes, reaching down to the dark power slumbering in the deepest recesses of my mind. I inserted a tendril probe as I drew a rivulet of its dark potency into me and felt it move through me. I opened my spirit hands and willed it to flow out, thinking of Angina’s words, his need. I felt a tingling in my hands and looked down to see a sword of shadow, a black sword. Closing my fingers around its hilt, I lifted it and rose through the layers of my mind, point thrust upward. I could not feel anything but a tingling motion, as if icy water were flowing constantly across my palm, but when I opened my eyes in the healing chamber, I saw that I was still gripping the black sword. Light showed at the edges of the darkness of the blade as sunlight shines out from an eclipsing moon.

  I became aware that Darius had dropped his hand. His form was still dim but his eyes now shone silver white. It was such an eerie sight that it frightened me, then it came to me that Darius was evoking his gypsy ability to see the spirit with waking eyes and as his glowing eyes turned to me, I understood that he could see me.

  He reeled back and I saw his eyes widen, but then he stopped and his hand rose. I thought he was trying to make some calming gesture, then I realised he was using Brydda’s signal speech!

  Who are you? his fingers asked.

  I said nothing for I had no voice that he could have heard. Nor could I manipulate my spirit well enough in this realm to use fingerspeech to respond, even had I known more than the few useful phrases I had picked up.

  Darius’s hands moved again. Save her if you can, spirit.

  I turned swiftly to look at Angina and saw that his body was entirely grey now and the smoky silver-white cord had vanished. I looked up at the scaled spirit-form floating above it, held now only by the bright lavender cord that ran from it to Miky’s spirit. I was horrified to see that her flesh was turning grey as well, the silver cord connecting it to her spirit-form thinning and becoming more transparent.

  Bile rose in my throat as I lifted the sword in a two-handed grip above my head, sickened by the knowledge that while Darius had been trying to heal with his spirit, I was about to kill with mine. It did not matter that physically Angina was so near to death. In one stroke I would end his life.

  ‘Forgive me, Miky,’ I thought, and brought the black blade sweeping down on the bright lavender cord that connected her spirit to her dying twin’s, severing it. There was a silent explosion of energy that hurled me violently away. I could feel and see nothing, and thought I might have broken the thread that connected me to my own flesh.

  I woke lying on a pale road, dust in my mouth. Seeing that the hills either side were formed of clouds that shifted and rolled, I understood that I was on the dreamtrails. I sat up and felt the now familiar weight of the wings that were part of my spirit-form. Indeed, it was the pain of one wing, twisted under me, that had awakened me, for upon the dreamtrails spirit-forms were as solid as flesh and could experience pain even as flesh did. And as I knew only too well, any wound taken by a spirit-form on the dreamtrails would result in a corresponding physical wound.

  I stood up and brushed myself off. The twisted wing hurt as a twisted ankle hurt and I flexed it lightly to ease it, gazing at the clouds. The light falling on them and on the road was neither sunlight nor moonlight and, as always, I found myself trying to define it. This time it came to me that it was as if light were being reflected off some other surface, softened as the moon softens the sun’s light. The road glittered a little, and coldly, as snow does.

  I thought of Atthis’s warning to avoid the dreamtrails but especially to avoid them when I was without the protection of either or both of my guardians.

  The clouds were churning more furiously now, seeking a form in my thoughts that would give them substance. I concentrated on thinking about the last time I had been at the ken; the eyrie of the Agyllian eldar atop a pinnacle of stone that rose up to the clouds in the high mountains. I pictured it as clearly as I could, but although the clouds of the dreamtrails turned pink and blue, they would not take form.

  I wondered what I had done wrong. When I had dreamtravelled with Maruman seeking the carvings that had once been part of the front doors to Obernewtyn, the old cat had bidden me summon up a memory of the doors, and immediately the clouds had turned into the whispering dark green trees and the curving hedge and driveway leading to the front entrance of Obernewtyn. Concealed within the trees I had actually seen Rushton step out onto the moonlit road leading to the house, after my younger self had passed by in a carriage, though in reality I had not met him for some time after my arrival. In some mysterious way, the dreamtrails allowed you to visit a memory and then go beyond its boundaries. But acting upon the dreamtrails changed them. If I had stepped out and allowed Rushton to see me before we had met in life, all the events that came after would differ on the dreamtrails, and I would never again be able to return to any point after that action. It was as if the dreamtrails reflected life exactly, unless you entered them and changed something, which set in motion a different course of events. It was possible to return to a place I had visited before on the dreamtrails, but only if I had been very careful to alter nothing or if I could hold in my mind the changes I had made with perfect clarity.

  But I had never summoned up the ken before. Maruman had done that at Atthis’s request, taking me with him. It struck me that, for the first time, I had interacted freely with Atthis without worrying about what would happen. Was that why I could not return to the moment now? Or was it possible that Atthis herself was somehow opposing me. She had never approached me, save through Maruman’s labyrinthine mind, except on the one occasion I had seen her in reality, when she had healed me after the firestorm in the White Valley. And she had warned me not to come alone to the dreamtrails.

  I sighed and was about to will myself awake when I felt an unfamiliar weight at my side. Looking down, I saw a black sword belted at my hip. Puzzled, I drew it from its sheath and understood with a prickle of uneasiness that it was not a thing I had willed into being, as I had once willed myself to be holding a stick of charcoal and a sheet of parchment, or as I might have willed a change of clothes. The sword was a part of my spirit-form. A part of me.

  I noticed that the blade was transparent, as if formed of ice, but when I touched it with a fingertip, I felt the dark power that lay sleeping inside me. The sword was a conduit, but how had I come to have it?

  Suddenly I was afraid. Clamping down on the apprehension blooming in my breast, I sheathed the sword and prepared to will myself to wakefulness.

  Then I thought of Straaka. Bruna had claimed that the tribesman’s spirit would find me, and yet as far as I understood such things, a spirit severed from its flesh should have been drawn immediately into the mindstream. His spirit could not have hung in balance as I had learned to do because that required an equalising of the opposing forces of the pull to rise to life and the pull from the mindstream. For him, there would be only one force.

  Remembering the description in the dream-books of a man of smoke roped to a woman of flesh, I wondered if it was possible that the tribesman’s spirit had formed a link to Miryum’s flesh tha
t kept his spirit from the mindstream. Bruna and Ahmedri had both claimed the dead tribesman’s spirit would not be able to enter the mindstream until Miryum had been freed so that she could reveal the whereabouts of Straaka’s bones. But what if the real point was finding Miryum so that the connection between her spirit and Straaka’s could be broken? Perhaps there was a ritual, connected to Straaka’s bones – which were all that remained of his flesh – that would be enacted to sever the connection.

  Bruna had told me Straaka’s spirit would lead me to Miryum and that she would reveal the whereabouts of the tribesman’s bones. Only he had not sought me out. Perhaps he could not reach me while I was awake, but here I was unconscious and on the dreamtrails, and still there was no sign of him. Was it possible that he could not come here? Certainly I had never seen a bodiless spirit on the dreamtrails. I thought of the realm above the dreamtrails where I had encountered two other spirit-forms: one a melding of beast and man, and the other a voice, urging me to wake. What if Straaka was to be found in that high strange realm?

  I opened my wings gingerly and flapped them once, twice, thrice. I rose a little from the ground and then came lightly down. The wing hurt, but not too much. I flapped my wings again and slowly rose up from the dreamtrails. I was startled to see something small and red floating down towards me, a bit of frayed wool or maybe a flower. I reached up to capture it, but even as I closed my fingers, making a little cage of them so that I would not crush whatever I had captured, I saw an immense darkness forming over me, a dreadful round mouth opening at its centre, ringed with glistening black fangs.

  I did not wait to see what twisted form gathered about that mouth, nor did I waste time trying to escape by flying down. I did as the snarling wolf-headed spirit-form had bidden me do before.

  I coerced myself straight to consciousness.

  I woke to a ferocious headache and a stabbing ache in my shoulder. Groaning softly, I moved my arm and found it numb to the elbow.

  ‘Elspeth?’

  It was Rushton’s voice. I tried to open my eyes but they were stuck together. When I persisted and at last opened them, Rushton was leaning over me, his face and throat softly ruddy in the light of the lantern he was setting down on the bedside table. The darkness told me that it was deep night.

  ‘I thought you were a dream,’ I muttered.

  ‘You are always thinking me a dream,’ he said, smiling. ‘Ceirwan said you had gone to bed this afternoon.’ There was a note of anxiety in his voice and I remembered his concern that he had hurt me.

  I tried to speak but my voice came out as a dry croak. Rushton poured me water and, seeing me wince when I reached for it, looked grim. I drank slowly to give my wits a chance to assemble themselves. The dreamtravelling had confused me, besides which my body ached and my head throbbed from the force of the too-sudden return of spirit to flesh. At least I was no longer feverish. My healing powers had dealt with the chill, but the rigours of spirit-travel exacted their own payment.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘I caught a mild chill from the rain last night and thought to sleep it off so that I would be fresh for the moon fair.’ Rushton looked so relieved that I reached out to touch his face, but the pain in my shoulder made me wince again. It was the physical echo of damage I had done to my spirit-form when I had fallen onto the dreamtrails, I realised.

  And then I remembered abruptly and with a stabbing sorrow what had happened before that. I had gone in spirit-form to the twins and I had severed the link between them, which Elkar had called the goddess bond. It was the force of the energy released that had catapulted me to the dreamtrails.

  ‘I have hurt you,’ Rushton said grimly, misreading my expression.

  ‘Never,’ I said. I was sickened by what I had done but I would not burden Rushton with it. I reached out again, more carefully this time, to cup his cheek. ‘It was perfect.’

  ‘I should have been gentler,’ he said.

  ‘You were perfect,’ I said, and then I let my weariness flow into a yawn and told him that I was sure Kella had given me a pinch of sleep draught in the herbal potion she had mixed for me in the Healing Hall for me to have slept so long.

  Instead of looking reassured, his expression sobered. ‘Roland said you had been there earlier in the day.’ He hesitated, and said, ‘I did not mean to wake you just now. I brought up a tray of travel food Javo wants you to try. Late as it is the kitchen is as crowded with people as if it were midday and the halls seem to be thronged with visitors being shown about.’

  ‘He already sent up a whole tray,’ I protested.

  Rushton shrugged. ‘For some reason Christa suggested that you sample all of the different things being prepared for the expedition to the Red Land, and you know how people take the merest suggestion from a futureteller as if it were a command from the high chieftain. I offered to bring this latest sample because I wanted to make sure you were not fevered. Then you cried out …’

  ‘A nightmare,’ I said dismissively. ‘You rescued me from it. Do you want me to get up?’

  ‘No. Sleep again, for in truth you do not look much rested despite all the sleep you have had. I only wish I could stay with you, but I have yet to deal with a dispute between two stallholders who want the same position and then Gevan wants me to approve those he has chosen to send down to Saithwold on darkmoon eve, to wait for Dardelan and take part in his sortie in Sawlney. I suppose you know about Reuvan’s messages?’

  I nodded. ‘Zarak told Ceirwan and he told me before I slept. The best of it is that Dameon is on his way back.’

  Rushton nodded. ‘My thought exactly, for I have sore need of him. It is a pity Dragon is not with him, but I am sure we will find her in time. How else should Maryon and Dell see her in the Red Land, if she is not to travel there with us? Oh, and Brydda just got back with Louis.’

  ‘Has Enoch agreed to come up for the moon fair with your halfbrother?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Linnet just told me Brydda had arrived as I was on my way here. I am going to see him after I leave you. I had Linnet go and meet him.’ Rushton ran a hand through his hair. ‘I begin to wonder at the wisdom of insisting that the moon fair take place as planned, when so much else is happening. It is still two days to darkmoon and Obernewtyn is already bursting at the seams, though fortunately most of the visitors will be sleeping in wagons or in tents. I can hardly believe that in less than a sevenday we will be headed for Sutrium to take ship for the Red Land.’ He sighed. ‘Coerce me when you wake in the morning, my love, no matter how early. We might snatch an hour or two before the day begins.’

  ‘You want me to coerce you?’ I asked incredulously, for he knew well that coercing someone awake who had no coercive Talent would be like greeting him with a slap across the face. He only smiled and said with a lopsided grin that if I hurt him, then I must be prepared to salve the hurt with a kiss. He kissed me then lingeringly, longingly, before he went to bank up the fire. Unwatched, I watched him move about in the flickering play of light between lantern and fire with a helpless blaze of love that seemed to exactly balance the weight of sorrow and remorse I felt at what I had done to the twins. But then fatigue pressed down on me again and it was hard to keep my eyes open until he went.

  I was certain that it was the use of the black power that had drained me. It had always been so. Rushton’s spirit-form had told me it was a part of me and, remembering with sudden clarity how the black sword had become part of my spirit-form after I used it to sever the link between the twins, I knew he was right. The sword could not have become part of my spirit-form unless it was truly part of me. I had never known it because I had always shunned and feared that dark power, regarding it as a secret aberration, a dark force that inhabited me. But it had been no more than a source of potent spirit strength, which I could make use of in my waking life by drawing on it when I used my Talents. I had begun to understand when I chained my secret inside Rushton, but it was only when I formed the black sword with the intention of using
it to sever the link between Miky and Angina that I had truly accepted it. Indeed, perhaps it was that acceptance as much as what I had done with the sword that had fused it to my spirit-form.

  ‘It’s Angina, isn’t it?’ I said softly.

  Rushton went very still for a moment before he set aside the poker and turned. ‘He died several hours ago,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to tell you until later.’

  ‘Miky?’ I whispered.

  ‘She lives yet though she is dangerously weak. Darius was watching over them when it happened and he came out and told Roland. He asked for Rasial and for Hannay. He says he will need them to save Miky.’

  ‘Rasial?’ I echoed, startled out of my guilty sorrow.

  He shrugged. ‘They are there now in Miky’s chamber; Rasial and Hannay as well as Gavyn and that little owl that sits on his shoulder at night when it is not hunting mice. I doubt the lad has much notion of what is going on but you know he will not be separated from Rasial. He is merely sitting quietly in the chamber petting the bird while she sits by the bed next to Darius.’ He came back to the bed and stroked my cheek. ‘This is a sad business, but I doubt you could have done anything to change what has happened, any more than I think Dameon would have been able to save Angina, even had he got here in time.’

  I said nothing, heartsick at the thought that I might have severed the precious spirit-bond between brother and sister to no avail, if Miky now died. Perhaps what I had done was evil and had actually doomed them both when they might otherwise have lingered until Dameon came to save them. But no, I had seen Angina’s body die. And Darius knew what had happened though it seemed he had said nothing of what he had seen. And what had he seen? A spirit-form, which he had bidden save Miky, though I wondered if he had any idea of whose it had been and what I had done. And what if Miky now suffered hideously because of a wound no one could see?

  Rushton brushed my tears away. ‘Angina was so ill for so long, my love,’ he said. ‘I think it must have been a relief for him to go and Miky might live yet. Remember how many beasts Darius saved after Malik’s betrayal in the White Valley.’