Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  Solen had confessed his relief at being able to throw off the shambling, doltish persona that he had taken such care in constructing, although this had been brought about by exile from his home sept, and meant the end of his usefulness there to the Shadowman. He had told her softly at some point in the night just passed, ‘Perhaps in the end, one finally becomes what one pretends to be, if the pretence is deep and lasts long enough.’

  On Fomhika he had immediately thrown himself into a punishing training programme and the flab he had deliberately accumulated was gone. Now, his toned body matched the ascetic lines of his face and Glynn saw clearly the man she had sometimes puzzlingly glimpsed through the dissolute facade. The hawkish expression in his eyes was a true marker of his inner strength. The desire for perfection and determination to succeed in his goals were traits he shared with Wind. But, he differed at the deepest level from the Chinese man, because Solen’s desires were things that could be attained, though they might demand incredible effort. The Acanthan’s soul was an arrow which knew its target. But Wind had said of himself and Glynn that their souls sought a purpose and meaning beyond the mundane. They sought a target that might not exist.

  ‘What happens when the arrow that flies finds no target?’ Wind had asked her the night before he had drowned himself.

  It falls, Glynn thought with a pang of remembered grief. It falls.

  She wondered sadly if Wind’s suicide would ever really make sense to her. Because in the end, Wind’s answer to his endless yearning was not hers. There was some stubborn bit of Glynn, maybe even a sort of stupidity in her, which simply would not allow her to relinquish hope. She knew it from her martial-arts bouts. It was what had allowed her to sometimes win against better, stronger opponents. Stupidly or blindly or pointlessly, she would go on because she didn’t know how to give up.

  Wind had focused his entire self in his longing for the unnamable, so that mundane life had little savour for him. But she had always been capable of finding pleasure in such small things – making a bed with fresh white sheets, stroking a cat on a wall, washing dishes, running or swimming, caring for Ember, doing the grocery shopping, smiling at an old woman watering her roses. She had felt herself to be flawed and trivial alongside the shimmering purity of Wind’s yearning, but perhaps this aspect of her character was the very thing that held her to life, even despite the gaping emptiness she had once felt.

  Solen tilted his head quizzically at her, and his resemblance to Wind vanished. Wind had loved her but his eyes had never so intimately offered their feelings to her. There had been a secret core to him that she had never been allowed to penetrate.

  ‘Glynn?’ Solen prompted, reminding her of his question about the Draaka.

  ‘I’m sorry. My mind is all over the place,’ she said. ‘I wonder why we haven’t been allowed to land.’ She turned back again to contemplate the city that was the island’s only settlement. The call from the citadel commanding the Waterdancer to anchor off shore until further notice had come just after dawn. It was now nearing dusk but still there had been no permission to land, no explanation for the delay.

  To Glynn’s relief, the young shipmaster had decided against rousing the drugged and slumbering passengers until he had permission to dock. He said bluntly that he did not want the Draaka under his feet demanding answers and wanting to use the ship’s callstones, but soon enough the potions taken by the travellers would begin to wear off of their own accord.

  ‘Are you sure the delay doesn’t have anything to do with the Draaka being aboard?’ Glynn asked worriedly. The Draaka and a delegation from her cult had been invited to the citadel palace to present themselves to Tarsin, but it was not he who had sent the invitation. That had come from his mother, the Iridomi chieftain Coralyn. This and the fact that the Draaka openly opposed the mode of Choosing which had brought Tarsin to the throne, might easily be seen as reason enough for an unfriendly welcome by the Keltan Holder.

  But Solen shook his head. ‘If you look about, you will see that there are other ships anchored offshore as we are. There must be a general directive from the cliff palace. The only person other than Tarsin who could prevent ships landing here would be Fulig himself and Colwyn would have said if there was a Vespian black ban on Ramidan.’

  Glynn thought it likely the delay in permission to land was the Keltan ruler’s doing. His mental problems were at least part of the reason for all the political strife on Keltor. He had been Chosen by Darkfall in a traditional appointment, but he had become mentally unbalanced in recent times, splitting Keltor into two main camps: those who thought he should be replaced – which included the Draaka and her followers – and those who felt that Darkfall had some particular reason for Choosing as they had done.

  But many of Darkfall’s supporters were unhappy about having a deranged king. Someone had even recently tried to poison him, failing only because of the intervention of a visionweaver with soulweaving tendencies. ‘Maybe the delay has something to do with the poisoning attempt,’ Glynn mused.

  ‘They have to have someone to blame for it,’ Solen said, his eyes narrowed. ‘Unless they have released Bleyd of Fomhika and are seeking the true poisoner.’

  ‘You don’t think he is guilty?’ Glynn probed.

  ‘Bleyd is not reputed to be a subtle man, but he would never take such a lunatic and dangerous course as trying to remove Tarsin from the Holder’s throne by killing him. Nor would he so stupidly incriminate himself if he had done. Besides which the man is known to be strongly loyal to Darkfall.’

  Glynn couldn’t help but think that a man could still be loyal to the soulweavers and decide to assassinate a ruler who was mentally unbalanced. He might even tell himself that he was doing Darkfall a favour. Personally, Glynn thought the soulweavers’ stance ridiculous. Insanity was as much an illness as cancer, and if a king had an illness that stopped him fulfilling his offices, he ought to be replaced. Surely it could not be so hard. The Holder’s successor had been named at the time of his coronation, so it was just a matter of officially removing the right to rule from Tarsin and passing it on to the mermod. But that was a simple solution, and nothing was simple on Keltor. Glynn had known that ten minutes after her arrival.

  She said nothing of her thoughts, though, for Solen, like many of those who cleaved to Darkfall, believed that Tarsin must rule Keltor until the soulweavers decreed otherwise, or until he abdicated of his own free will. Dismissing from her mind the complex mysticism of Keltan politics, Glynn resumed her examination of the citadel palace. Built along a jagged cliff edge above the town, it was accessible only by a long broad flight of steps leading up to wide gates from the city spread out about it. Whether it was the effect of the red light from the sinking Keltan sun, Kalinda, or the stone from which it was built, the walls of the palace were red hued. In the dusklight, the colour had deepened to a bloody crimson, and it was hard not to think of it as an omen.

  Glynn suddenly realised that she had been naive to believe that getting to Ramidan would solve her problems. She had intended to leave the draakan delegation as soon as the ship tied up on Ramidan, and to seek an audience with the soulweaver Alene. But the soulweaver dwelt within the palace and, seeing it, she understood that there would be no casual entry to the fortified and forbiddingly elevated complex; especially not for a lone and unknown woman who could not make the necessary explanations. There would be guards and official routes and protocol, and to negotiate them without calling attention to herself would take time and connections, neither of which Glynn possessed.

  There was only one swift, sure route into the citadel palace.

  ‘I need to go below and collect my bags. Will you come with me?’ Solen broke into her reverie.

  ‘I will stay here. I have been alone before and I will be alone again,’ Glynn answered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, hearing the finality in her tone.

  She met his eyes squarely. ‘I mean that for the time being I need to stay with the draakan delega
tion.’

  ‘But Bayard and the She-feinna are dead, so you cannot be held hostage by your mind link to them. In all courtesy to this Bayard, you must make some explanation of her death to the Draaka, but neither she nor her followers will dare use force against you here. You can speak with them and then leave the ship with me. We will …’

  ‘Solen, I cant go with you,’ Glynn cut him off. ‘I have to get into the cliff palace as soon as possible, and the Draaka has an official invitation.’

  ‘The Draaka will move against you as soon as she learns that she no longer has any hold over you,’ he protested. ‘She will fear that you mean to accuse her of drugging and holding you prisoner on Acantha.’

  ‘I won’t be accusing her of anything. I’ll be meek and obedient and ask to go on serving her. I’ll pretend to have been damaged by what happened to Bayard and the She-feinna. The Draaka knows I was mentally linked to them, and so it’s reasonable that I would be affected by their deaths. I’ll tell her I’m scared of being alone and that Bayard said she’d look after me and protect me. I’ll say I’ve had nightmares and beg her to let me stay on.’

  ‘It might work, but Glynna, I thought that after all that happened …’ He glanced down at the tiny He-feinna cradled in Glynn’s arms and instinctively she gathered it closer to her chest. Images of the long, stormy night floated through her mind: the elderly draakira, Bayard, stumbling and falling into the churning waves; Solen carrying her below deck, racked with pains from the She-feinna’s labour and the shock of Bayard’s death; Solen trying to resuscitate one after another of the stillborn younglings.

  The windwalker’s eyes widened, as if he had seen the same rush of images. ‘I hoped you would want to come with me,’ he said at last, his eyes violet.

  ‘I do, but I can’t,’ Glynn said.

  ‘You do not trust me.’ Solen’s voice was brusque.

  ‘I do trust you. How could I not, now?’

  As if it sensed the reference to its birth, the feinna youngling stirred in her arms and a rich molasses smell filled the air. The birth link forged between them seemed to be feeding her sensory information directly, as if the feinna’s nerve impulses were being redirected through her on their way to its brain. But she had no idea what the scents it exuded from time to time meant.

  ‘You need not remain with the Draaka to get into the palace, Glynna,’ Solen said urgently. ‘I will help you.’

  ‘You offer help but you don’t know anything about me, except that I lied about being Fomhikan, and that I am in the employ of your enemy.’ Glynn spoke harshly, addressing her own yearning for the Acanthan as much as responding to the man himself.

  ‘The lies you told were only to protect dangerous truths. As were my lies to you. My last day on Acantha, I told Jurass you were a mere chance-met who meant nothing to me. I sneered publicly at you to cover a truth I dared not speak, for fear it would put you in danger. When I saw you standing at the hall as golden and shining as the flame of a candle …’

  ‘No!’ Glynn said sharply, flinging up a hand.

  ‘Must all things between us be left unsaid, Glynna-vyre?’ He reached out a wide brown hand and laid it warmly on her bare shoulder, his thumb against her collarbone.

  Glynn could not speak for the longing to go into his arms. In desperation she summoned up a mental picture of Ember. There was no future with Solen, no matter how strongly they felt for one another, because she had to get back to her own world. She stepped away from his touch resolutely.

  His hand fell to his side. ‘You understand that I ask nothing but to be permitted to help you.’

  Glynn shook her head in exasperation. ‘Oh Solen, you are an exile from Acantha and you work for the Shadowman who is wanted by legionnaires all over Keltor for the things his followers do. Followers like you, who also have prices on their heads.’

  ‘The Shadowman’s resources are enormous. He could find your sister far more quickly than you, even if she is within the palace.’ Glynn was shocked to hear him mention Ember, but of course she had spoken of her sister to the myrmidons on Fomhika, and they would have reported her words to Solen. Naturally he would assume that this was her reason for wanting to get into the palace.

  ‘The Shadowman is …’

  ‘I do not criticise what your leader does or why,’ Glynn said firmly. ‘It is nothing to me, just as the Draaka’s machinations are nothing to me. But I can’t afford to be involved with someone who is sought after by the legionnaires.’

  ‘You are afraid,’ Solen said with a flash of his old bleakness.

  ‘I could not be frightened of you.’ Glynn flushed to find herself referring openly to the bond that had grown up between them during the feinna birthing. More had been born that night than a youngling.

  Solen’s mouth softened, though his eyes grew sad. ‘Yet again does the cause I believe in sever me from that which I care about most deeply.’ Glynn reached out instinctively to touch his cheek and something like electricity ran between them in a jolting current. The Acanthan’s eyes darkened and she sensed his intention to kiss her.

  ‘Please. I … I can’t!’ she cried, starting back. Solen’s eyes widened and she saw how much she had revealed in those few words.

  ‘Very well,’ Solen said evenly. ‘I will accept this decision because I have made such decisions myself, despite the pain they caused me and those I cared for. But know this, Glynna, I will not wait forever. If you do not come to me, I will come to you, wherever you are. Even into the cliff palace, if I must.’

  The possessiveness in his voice thrilled her and Glynn refused to allow herself to think beyond the sweetness of that for the moment. They were too close and he might come to sense what she did not say. To distract him, she asked, ‘How would I find you?’

  ‘I think we would find one another mapless and without directions, no matter if the whole world were between us,’ he said tenderly, then he straightened and became more businesslike. ‘You must find your way to the market in Gia Square. A small lane runs off the Square, called Street of the Face-shapers. There you will find a bakery that sells bread and sweet cakes amidst many mask shops. The bakery is below the establishment of Clover, the finest mask-maker on Ramidan. You might buy some bread, and during the transaction, contrive to remark to another customer that things are not always called by their true names.’

  Glynn gave him a startled look. ‘I have heard that phrase before.’

  ‘It is used by followers of the Shadowman to identify themselves to one another,’ Solen said. Glynn remembered then that the Fomhikan, Donard, had said it to her in Solen’s fell on Acantha.

  ‘Donard,’ Solen murmured. ‘He would have been trying to find out if you were one of us.’ Then he looked shocked, realising as she did that he had answered her unvoiced thought.

  Glynn shook her head slightly, forbidding him to begin talking about what the feinna link had done to them. She could not cope with that now. ‘I thought him mad asking me to pass on a message about casting for silfiwhen you obviously had no interest in such things,’ she said with pointed calmness.

  Solen mastered his own expression. ‘There is much you do not yet know about me, Glynn. But the most important things that lie between us need no words.’ I adore you, he thought, but did not say; a testing that was also a caress. Glynn shivered inwardly with pleasure. The feinna stirred and again a sweet, rich smell filled the air. Solen straightened up and glanced around. ‘I should go below. I do not wish to be seen by the Draaka or her people.’

  ‘Does it really matter if they report to Jurass that you didn’t drown? He can’t do anything to you unless you go back to Acantha.’ The proxy miner, Lev, had told her that chieftains’ laws and sentences were effective only upon their own islands.

  ‘A man who is supposedly dead might be of considerable use to the Shadowman.’

  ‘Won’t the Vespians …’

  He shook his head. ‘There is no reason anyone should think to ask them about me and Vespians do not gossip. Oth
er than making myself known to you, I have been very discreet since my “death”.’ He grinned, then quickly sobered. ‘But it was also out of concern for you that I said I had better not be seen. I do not imagine a friendship with me would help you with the Draaka.’ He hesitated. ‘Glynna, are you sure about this course?’

  She nodded. ‘But, Solen, I mean it when I say the Draaka’s purposes are not mine. I am not an enemy to you or to Darkfall.’

  ‘Remember Duran’s words to you? “Who is not an ally to Darkfall is its enemy”. You will have to take sides in the end. You can not divorce yourself from what is happening, for it concerns all Keltor.’

  But this is not my world! Glynn thought.

  Solen rocked on his heels. ‘Wh … what?’

  Glynn was shaken to think her silent cry had somehow reached him. ‘My purposes are my own and no concern to anyone on Keltor but me,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I know you believe that, but nothing happens in perfect isolation. Everything is connected to everything else. Whether you know it or not, your search for your sister is connected to my work for the Shadowman, and to the soulweavers’ desire to free the entrapped Firstmade. And think on this: if it is anonymity you desire, the Draaka will be much scrutinised once we are on Ramidan, both by those who hate her and all she stands for, and by her secret devotees.’

  ‘The Draaka will be watched, not her followers,’ Glynn countered. ‘I will hide in her shadow. And being with her will give me protection.’

  ‘Protection it may afford, but who will protect you from the Draaka?’ Solen ran his hand over his dark head. ‘I see that you will not be swayed. Therefore, Glynna-vyre, do what you must do in the palace and come to me soon. Bring your sister. Until then, take care of yourself and of the youngling.’ Reaching out, he cupped the feinna’s tiny skull tenderly in his palm. The little creature chirupped sleepily at his touch and the smell of clove and sandalwood filled the air as Solen turned away.