She followed him beyond the boulders. The power assaulted her, a force like a solid sound that hammered against her suddenly clammy skin. Her knees threatened to give in, but she refused to step away. The barrage was like a massive drumbeat against her sensitive ears, loud yet low, the tone so deep it went below the lowest musical scale she knew, as if it wasn’t sound but rather a rarefied form of pure volume. The surges threatened to crumple her skull.
To escape she took her awareness forward and away, and as she did so her pain became displaced; the agony was left behind in her aching body. She ranged ahead quickly, trying to perceive the source of the resonance before her strength gave in. Clear essence shimmered in a corded web before her, a web that became denser in successive layers the higher up the pass she searched. The patterns within the essence were complex, the clarity intense, yet despite the order of the weave, there were places where it was disturbed, as if a wind had swirled through the finely threaded pattern and twisted it awry, leaving caverns of stillness within the malignant thrumming web. Tabitha tried to understand the pattern of the spell, but the many layers of the coiled network prevented her from sensing a signature in the essence. Perhaps at the terminal face of the Shield it would be clearer to perceive.
The deepsound was everywhere ahead. The resonance sought to crush her into an extremely dense, unified, fused being. She turned her gaze away from the power. It was too much; she couldn’t bear it any more. She choked and coughed, and staggered away, back toward the boulders, but as she did so she noticed pale marks upon the rocks, a ghostly imprint of feet which veered away from her own trail. She spun around. The pale trace of the footprints stretched onward, beside Garyll’s tracks, past him and toward the mists.
She couldn’t breathe for the pressure on her chest. She retreated to the rocks, where the sudden release from the spell left her heaving for air.
Garyll returned a moment later. He’d been farther in than Tabitha. He rested on his knees while he stared at the ground and coughed quietly. Tabitha rested her hand on his shoulder. “Someone’s come through here recently,” she said, when he had recovered. She pointed to the separate trail, which she could see held two pairs of feet. Both prints were mid-sized. It had to be Bevn and the Shadowcaster.
Garyll shook his head. “I don’t see a thing.”
She walked downhill to where an imprint lay faintly in a depressed patch of moss. “Here,” she said to the others. “Those aren’t my prints, and they’re too small to belong to any of you.”
“You have sharp eyes,” said Garyll. “I saw nothing there, but I think you are right. One set.”
“Two,” she corrected, pointing to the ghostly image upon undisturbed soil. “I see a second pair.”
Garyll squinted his eyes and then shook his head, but Tabitha knew that he believed her.
“The prince and another?” he asked.
“Could be.”
“So we have no choice. We must go on.”
“Ngo!” objected Mulrano. “Ik gek werff! Hu’ve beeng owngyee ing egg! Werff vang a hoff kikker ing yo heg. Fuk!” He punched the air in frustration at his words.
“I could help,” offered Ashley. “He meant to say—”
Tabitha held up her hand. “It’s all right, Ashley, we got the gist of it. Mulrano, I have to try it to be sure, “but it doesn’t look as harsh all the way through. There are pockets where I think we might shelter. Maybe Bevn disturbed the spell by passing through it.”
Garyll was at once attentive. “How far in?”
“Twice as far as you went and off to the left a bit. That’s the first one.”
“The horses won’t like it,” Ashley noted.
Tabitha hadn’t considered the horses. Ashley was right, they’d hate it. She wondered if they might have to leave the beasts behind, but knew at once that they couldn’t. The horses were loaded with provisions, including the food for the riders. If they had to carry all those packs themselves, they’d never catch up to the prince and the Kingsrim. Besides, with the prince on foot, they’d soon be able to ride him down. They needed the horses more than ever.
“I might be able to do something,” Ashley said suddenly. He rubbed the nose of his grey mare tenderly, gazing into her eyes. The mare tossed her head and snorted, but only the once, then she seemed to become calm. Ashley grinned, pleased with himself. He backed beyond the boulders, and the mare followed, but although he seemed to have comforted the horse, he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t feel the awful pressure himself. He grimaced, and his hands began to shake.
“What about the others?” Tabitha shouted. “Do you want us to ride them alongside you, or in file?”
“Just keep them close. I’ll do what I can.” He grimaced again as he mounted. “Hurry, lead us in. Let’s try it.”
Mulrano went second. There was a mix of excitement and dread on his face. He loosened his great axe from its baldric, and held it like a staff ahead of himself. He grunted as he entered the affected area, and when he led his stallion forward, it resisted, but Tabitha saw the concentration deepen on Ashley’s face, and the horse stepped up. Mulrano mounted then gestured to Ashley.
“Mulrano thinks it is weaker than normal,” Ashley exclaimed. “Weaker? Just how bad?” His voice trailed off as he conferred in silence with Mulrano. “He says that in this place it was once much stronger.”
“How far in did he go?” Tabitha wondered aloud.
“Beyond where the moss ends, into the shale band,” Ashley called out. “He was young and stubborn. He almost killed himself. Ai! Come, Tabitha, come! It’s bad for me already.”
She moved, and the pain came upon her. Both her horse and Garyll’s behind her reared against the wall of magic, and both times Ashley appeared to take more of a load before they calmed. He began to look greyer than his mare. “I don’t know how long I can do this and resist the pressure,” Ashley pleaded hoarsely as she passed him. “I’m going to lose one of them. I get all their pain, all of it!”
“Then ride!” she answered, jumping to her saddle and spurring her horse into a gallop to take the lead. They charged against the deadly threaded matrix of the Shield.
The deepsound threatened every part of her body; she fled by projecting her awareness again, but the sanctuary eluded her, for the projection only allowed her to sense the whole valley thrumming with that one fusing note. The awesome volume rose against her with every stride her horse took. The sky descended upon her shoulders. She was pressed hard into the ground. The air stamped against her head, her streaming eyes felt ready to burst and the air was like cold treacle in her lungs. What if she was wrong? What if they reached that space in the spell ahead and found nothing changed, or found the pressure to be worse? Her horse neighed suddenly, and wrenched at the reins. It bucked her from the saddle, and she caught at its neck as she fell, able to steady herself as her feet reached the ground. She couldn’t ride it any more, but she had to go on, and she would not abandon her horse where it was. She gathered the reins and strained forward in a faltering run. Ashley must have helped her, for the horse followed her and did not fight.
Before long she could hardly walk. She dragged the horse after her, pleaded with it, coaxing it until there was just one last step. And there, just as the mist wrapped around them in a thin veil, silent and sinuous, Tabitha reached the first haven.
The pressure was off. The filtered sun cast an eerie light upon the green moss. She sank down beside her horse. The others were almost there; they’d make it for sure. Relief washed over her and she cried softly as the pain eased from her limbs. That had been bad—far worse than she’d expected.
Mulrano came in fast behind her, leading his stallion, but Garyll laboured with Ashley at the edge of the mists. The Lightgifter clung to Garyll’s belt, his feet dragging across the rocks and moss. Garyll hauled the two horses behind him as well, using the crook of his elbow to hold their reins, and they weren’t calm. Tabitha winced as Garyll’s roan stallion reared and landed heavily with its h
ooves either side of Ashley.
She wanted to get up and run to help him, but her body refused—her legs wouldn’t respond. She knew she had taken too much pain in the crossing and she could not bear any more. She had reached her limit. No, she had pushed beyond it, and now she was paying for it. She watched helplessly as Garyll crumpled to his knees, then rose again, then fell. He was spending too long in the pressure. He was being crushed because he was held back by Ashley and the horses.
Mercy! It was even worse for Ashley, she realised. He’d taken on the pain of all the horses, as well as his own. Tabitha cried out as she realised how much agony she had caused them all with her impatience to be through the Shield. It was all her fault.
Without a word, Mulrano surged to his feet and charged into the barrage again. When he reached Garyll, he took Ashley from him, scooping him up in his corded arms as if he weighed no more than a child. They shouldered their way toward Tabitha, and at last, they broke through.
The men tumbled to the ground. Garyll coughed against his knees. Mulrano pressed his head against the stones, and clutched at the moss with clenched fists. Ashley curled into a ball and gulped at the air, quivering where he lay.
Tabitha watched them through her tears. She knew that the farther they went, the deeper the sound would become, deeper and more penetrating. The turf soon became bare rock ahead, stripped of all green by the harsh atmosphere. The spell was horrible—it coursed through everything. It vibrated in her bones even within the queer shelter of the green-aired refuge. And the clear essence became a tight, almost seamless web ahead, disturbed only in a narrow swathe where the trail of footprints lay. There was not enough space for all of them and the horses. Even if she went alone ...
Someone retched behind her. She turned. Ashley’s lips were blue. He arched suddenly, and retched again on the rocks. Then he cried softly, quivering against his pain.
Mulrano was watching her.
“Ngo,” he said fiercely. “Ngo more fo him.”
She met Mulrano’s eye, and nodded. They couldn’t go on, not like this.
She had to face what she was trying to avoid: she had to use her power, reach for the Lifesong, to summon it, regardless of the dread she felt. Reaching for the Lifesong meant reaching for Ethea, but she had no choice. She forced her legs to bear her weight, and fetched her lyre from the pack. Its familiar music would help her find her voice. The deep note of fusion dominated everything. It threatened to bind, to crush, to seal them together. Tabitha tried to block it out of her mind as she sat beside Ashley and considered what she would do. Her body heat was drawn away in the whispering wind; if she waited in this place, it would turn her to stone in the end. At last, she strummed the taut strings of her lyre.
The Lifesong came to her slowly, as if the ancient lore was frustrated by the pounding presence of the Shield. She sang the first stanza once, then again, and the music slowly filled her senses. She set the lyre aside, laid her hands gently on Ashley’s body and continued to sing. His quivering eased, but the pale cast to his face and lips did not. His eyes were unseeing and he looked somewhere beyond her. She couldn’t reach enough of her power to restore him.
No. It wasn’t that she couldn’t reach the power, she was afraid to. She was only pretending to reach for the Lifesong. She had to do more. She sang with a full voice and let herself go, pouring her healing through her hands into Ashley, linking herself to him.
The dimension of the Lifesong opened to her. She raced along threads of shimmering music. Vital cords thrummed with audible colours against the limitless backcloth of eternity. More and more voices joined hers, echoes which reached her ahead of her own voice, drawing her onward to the source. She was drawn away, outward across the stars.
She reached for the power, but just then, as she had feared, she fell, into that spiral of awful power which she had known was coming, the pit of swirling smoke and noise and chaos. As the Lifesong grew stronger in her veins, she was drawn close to the Goddess Ethea, and she saw.
The Goddess was trapped in agony.
Ethea was still upright, shackled to the bare stone, but she no longer stood. She no longer looked to the sky in appeal. Rude iron hasps held her up by her wrists. Her head hung over and her tears dropped like slow pearls to the water covering her slender feet and filling the base of the pit. Rain sheeted upon her from the ruddy clouds, rain that bonded the slack folds of her green garments to her body, driving the iridescence from the plumage of her outstretched wings, leaving the feathers dull and lifeless. Smoke still came from somewhere over the crest of the cliff, acrid and fierce, pouring down into the cavernous pit and swirling with the gusts, driving a scattered mass of feathers across the bloody water. The remains of the little birds, Tabitha realised, those poor creatures that had been sacrificed in Ethea’s presence and left to drain their blood upon the tilted stones forming the semicircle before her.
“Goddess?”
Ethea did not seem to hear Tabitha. She looked down the straight spine of her nose, her beautiful eyes plagued by deep shadows. Despite her immense size, she seemed frail and vulnerable: her long legs not able to bear her own weight and her slender arms bowed under the burden of her sodden feathers. Tabitha dared not disturb her, this great deity, this mystery of divinity, and yet she seemed so helpless.
“Goddess?”
Ethea moved her head and looked at Tabitha through the wet green jewels of her giant eyes.
“Lifesinger.”
Ethea’s expression was so anguished. Tabitha wanted to rush to the Goddess and enfold her in her arms, but the impossible dynamics of the projection kept her where she was, standing upon the bedrock of the amphitheatre, waist-deep in the corrupted water. She was so small compared with Ethea, and her own body was only an outline, a faint form of shimmering clear essence, strangely doubled as if there were two of her. She could sense everything around her. She could feel the liquid against her legs and the rain on her face, but she guessed she probably couldn’t affect anything because she wasn’t wholly there. The mighty figure of Ethea towered over her.
“I am coming, my Goddess, I will search for you.”
“Why have you not come already?” Ethea asked forlornly, her shaky tearfulness expressing a depth of abandonment. Tabitha felt guilty at once. She had promised to come before, during her previous vision, and yet she had avoided reaching for Ethea because of the horror of the place she was now witnessing. Here, it seemed, she could do nothing about it. So she had set her mind to finding Ethea, and she had begun her quest as soon as she was able to. It had taken four days and she was at the edge of Eyri. She suspected it was going to take much longer than four days before she found the lowlands of Oldenworld, and even longer to locate the Pillar where Ametheus ruled. Didn’t Ethea understand it would take a long time for Tabitha to reach her side?
Ethea was a Goddess, accustomed to an eternal existence. Maybe she did not appreciate the limitations of time and place as Tabitha understood them. “I—my body is elsewhere, Goddess. I must travel far to reach you, it will take much time.”
“But travel is being in another place, is this not so?” Ethea asked slowly. Her face shimmered as she spoke, and sound came off her in little waves of pressure, like ripples in reality. Her skin was alive with a green and growing power. “You do not need time to travel, I know this. I have seen this, there are some of your kind who move within everything. I thought you were one of those.”
Tabitha remembered the strange spell which Twardy Zarost had cast upon her to save her from death in Stormhaven. He had taken her to the stars and brought her back. Maybe that was what Ethea referred to—the movement through infinity. She had no idea how to do what he had done.
“A wizard? I, well, I am new at it. I haven’t learnt to move in that way.”
“And yet you are here.” It was an observation, not an accusation, but Tabitha could see Ethea still did not understand.
“I can see ... into ... this place where you are. I am not here. My body
is where I am.”
“You mean you are trapped, as I am, yet somewhere else? Oh-ay-a-way.” She gave a sonorous sad trill, and her skin rippled with power that sparkled greenly in the rain drops before turning them to mist. A thrill of music passed through Tabitha, but the rain returned.
“No, Goddess, I am not trapped. I am free to move but it will take time for my body to find your body.” Why was it so hard to explain? The Goddess seemed to have difficulty with the concept of separation. Yet she had breathed life into every living thing. Tabitha had expected that she would know everything about their condition, but this was clearly not so.
“Aah.” Ethea blinked slowly, the great lids coming down and rising again like a door to another world. “You are like only one note taken out of the song. You have not sunk into the song yet. You have not yet heard that you are all of it.”
“All of it?”
“Music is unbroken, little one, from high to low, from soft to loud. All of the notes are available to be sung. You can be any part of the song you wish to sing, because it must all be there, if you are there.”
Now it was Tabitha’s turn to be puzzled. Ethea’s terms of reference were so different to her own.
The sound of frantic flapping came from behind Tabitha. She turned and saw that a white swan had been brought to the edge of the slippery rock slope, held by its feet by a man with a red helmet. He wore a glistening sealskin coat, open at the chest. Whether it was the same man who had performed the previous sacrifice that Tabitha had witnessed she couldn’t tell, but he had the same sharply-pointed dirk, and the same murderous purpose.
The blade rose. It fell.
The swan’s blood ran freely onto the sloped stones, washing with the rain to swirl through the polluted water around Ethea’s ankles. “No, no, no,” moaned Ethea, her great eyes glistening with tears once more. “How can you use lives like that?” she cried, glaring down at Tabitha. “How can you people kill creatures for the effect killing will have on others?” Tabitha felt Ethea’s horror and revulsion. She couldn’t bear to watch to see what the man would do with the bloodstained body of the swan.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 19
