Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  Glynn noticed that the room was several degrees warmer than the rest of the apartment, which meant that there was probably some sort of furnace in the walls to heat water. Glynn walked around the pool until she found a flapped wall recess which hid the capped metal tubes that served as taps on Keltor. She completely uncapped the hot one, and partially uncapped the cold before searching vainly for a plug. But after a moment it was clear that the pool was filling.

  Glynn wanted to sit as she waited for the huge bath to fill, but she was afraid she would fall asleep. Instead, she walked around the room noting that the steps were formed from slabs of a bluish marble-like stone, the uprights polished to a high gloss and tiled in gold and green tesserae. The bottom level was wide enough to allow for towel racks hung with thick, soft-looking towels and a number of long tubular glass vases filled with the same fiery blooms that had been in the foyer fountain. The flowers so exactly matched the colours of the Draaka cult emblem that again Glynn wondered if what might be taken as mere flattery was a reminder that whoever had provided the flowers had the ability to gather detailed intelligence.

  On the next level there were a number of exquisitely embroidered jade couches with carved legs and small matching tables and ottomans; Glynn remembered reading that Winston Churchill had eccentrically held war-cabinet meetings while bathing. Given the seating, maybe this was how things were done on Ramidan. She yawned and again resisted the urge to sit.

  Glancing up, she noticed a ceiling ornament suspended above the bath: an exquisitely shaped cluster of glass icicles. It looked as if it had been created by the same person who made the foyer dome. As she stood still, looking up, a tendril of her hair blew forward, and immediately she was alert. Scanning her surrounds, she noticed with excitement that the wall farthest from the door was a great curtain of pale-green silk which undulated slightly at one end. Remembering the curtain in the foyer, she hurried across to it. The fabric was very heavy and there seemed no way of drawing it aside so she lifted the hem and slipped underneath.

  It was so dark that at first she could see nothing, but she could feel glass and, groping about, she discovered two hinged sections in the enormous window through which flowed the peculiar, pungent smell of the Keltan sea. She breathed deeply, and thought irresistibly of Solen. All at once she had a vivid mental image of him striding along a dark lane. She tried to focus the image but it was gone as suddenly as it had come, and Glynn wondered incredulously if she really had seen Solen for a moment. She groped for the link between them and was dismayed to find that it lay within the numbed part of her mind.

  She was still gazing out into the darkness when, little by little, she discovered that she could see, despite the dense blackness of the so far moonless night. The feinna link was again enhancing her vision. There was no draining of energy in this use of her senses she noticed, perhaps because this sensory enhancement was like an extension of her normal responses, needing only the faintest will on her part. Trying to tap into people’s emotions, on the other hand, demanded an immense effort of will. Maybe that was why it was so exhausting.

  Now she could see well enough to note that the bathing-room window did not overlook an internal courtyard or garden as she had half expected, but opened directly above the citadel. That meant the Iridomi enclave, or at any rate this part of the guest apartment, lay at the outer rim of the palace at a point where the steepness precluded the need for a high protective wall. Lacking the street lights, neon signs and car headlights of her own world, the citadel was a maze of inky runnels that bled at the edges into absolute blackness. Her feinna-enhanced vision allowed her to see, but there was little to be seen. There were some lights, but they showed only as dim smears – like glow-worms in the middle of the bush at night; you could see them but they illuminated nothing. The cities of her world must once have been this dark, she thought – especially the ancient ones like Rome and Prague and St Petersburg which had existed long before the invention of gaslight or electricity. Walking through them in the past, Glynn remembered how she had tried mentally to filter out the trappings of the modern world, in an attempt to imagine herself into the past, but she had never thought of how dark the ancient world must have been until now. It gave new meaning to the title the Dark Ages.

  And is your world not suffering its own Dark Age, even now?

  Glynn’s reverie was broken by the voice in her mind. Not Wind’s nor her father’s voice, but that of a man accustomed to authority. And familiar in the way that a voice heard once or twice might be familiar. Perhaps it was the voice of a teacher or radio announcer that had lodged in her subconscious, stirred to life by changes wrought in her by the feinna bond. Or by fatigue. In any case, the voice had spoken the truth she thought sombrely. If one saw darkness as symbolic of ignorance and evil and violence, then indeed, her world was dark and growing ever darker. Even impossibly removed from that world, she experienced the same old dreary surge of guilty despair and helplessness at the thought of the problems faced by her own world. Because how could her world be healed? There were so many complicated conflicts and problems so entwined in the way her world operated. Conversely, there were dozens of cults and spiritual orders and ecological movements searching for solutions on all levels, and individually there were a lot of good people trying to make things better, but somehow things kept getting worse.

  If it wasn’t for Ember, Glynn thought, I wouldn’t want to go back. The only people who had loved her on her own world were dead – her father and Wind. There had been no real love between her mother and herself, she thought sadly. She had never really admitted that before. That she could do so now with only a little of the old hurt said, more than anything else, how far she had come since arriving on Keltor. She would go back because of Ember, but she would not pretend to herself that Ember loved her. Glynn had once heard her father remark on it to her mother after Ember’s tumour had been stabilised, saying that just as people suffering from leprosy lost the ability to feel sensation, Ember’s sickness had made her unable to love.

  Glynn looked at her reflection in the dark glass and noted that she was pale, her eyes too large and dark. She looked through her reflection to the city below and acknowledged to herself that, despite its troubles, Keltor seemed young and full of promise in comparison with her own world. Ecologically it was pristine. Humans lived very lightly on it, maybe because there was so little space for them to inhabit; in addition, most of the planet was liquid and filled with inimical life forms, which might have given the humans here a humility that the people of her own world lacked. Or maybe it was simply that they hadn’t had time enough to begin destroying their world, Glynn thought with a sudden stab of cynicism. After all, she had seen cruelty and indifference and hatred and pain and violence since coming here; all of the things that made humans in her world what they were, in fact. That some Keltans could levitate, or sing to plants or weave while in trances or dream true, didn’t ultimately make them better people.

  Maybe it’s just us humans, Glynn thought, her mood darkening still further. Maybe humans were a flawed form. Corrupt flesh around a black hole of nothingness that just sucked everything into itself and gave nothing back.

  She was startled to feel a tear trickle down her cheek and realised that she had let her tiredness spiral into depression. She forced herself to concentrate on the city again. From what she could see, the citadel was designed like a labyrinth and, as such, it reminded her far more of an old European city than a modern city with its gridded streets and shining skyscrapers.

  She smiled suddenly, realising the absurdity of staring into the stygian night of an alien world, thinking about European architecture. Her mind was wandering stupidly, but it was better than letting herself become maudlin. She noticed a dim circle of light bobbing along the street directly below; someone out walking with a lantern. It was still relatively early in the evening, but she wondered how safe it was to walk along a dark street in Ramidan. She had heard more than one story about people vanishing
here. She had nearly found herself shanghaied during an evening walk on Fomhika, which was far less sinister in reputation than Ramidan.

  Islands of condensation had begun to form on the glass and were fast becoming continents. She was kneeling to check the water level in the bath when the Prime’s voice came eerily through the white mists that now veiled the room, Glynn hurried over to the door where the Draaka stood with the Prime, and stifled a gasp. Bare faced and wrapped in a red bathing robe, the Draaka looked old and ill and her mouth hung slack and wet with spittle. She looked as hollow eyed and vacant as one of the drugged servitors in the haven. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who had demanded to have Solen turned over to her, so that she could correct him.

  ‘I should be careful of my expression, girl. Now leave us,’ the Prime snapped.

  Glynn hesitated, knowing this might be the last chance she had to speak privately to the Prime. ‘Uh … Prime, I heard what that Iridomi man said about me being a myrmidon. I don’t want people to stare at me like he did …’

  ‘You had best mind your manners,’ the Prime said icily. ‘Sire or Lord is the correct form for the Iridomi noble who escorted us here.’

  ‘He thought I was myrmidon,’ Glynn repeated, allowing a whine to creep into her voice.

  Irritation flitted across the Prime’s features. ‘Kalide is not the first to think you a myrmidon.’

  ‘But I am not a myrmidon,’ Glynn said, trying to sound stupidly stubborn rather than contentious. ‘I want to cut off my hair.’

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ the Prime snapped. ‘This is no time to discuss such matters, and the Draaka might well find your … controversial … appearance useful. A fact that you may wish to consider if you truly desire to remain with the delegation. Now go. You will find a sleeping cell with the draakira in the servitors’ part of this place. Make use of it while you have the chance, for the Draaka will wish to speak with you about Bayard’s death when she wakens.’

  She turned away dismissively, and Glynn scooped up the feinna before slipping from the room.

  The air was cold on her damp skin after the moist heat of the bathing room, and the ends of her hair brushed wetly against her cheeks when she stopped to fold the cloak more securely around the feinna. The feinna stirred slightly, and began to exude a sweet, light scent that reminded her of the trees in Wind’s tiny garden. She wondered if the scents might not be responses to her own emotions, rather than to physical stimuli experienced by the little animal. Certainly feinna were far more sensitive to emotions than humans, and the effect of their bond had been stronger on her in that area than in any other. She was trying to remember when and where she had first noticed the scents and what she had been feeling at the time, with the intriguing idea that one might be able to map emotions as scents, when she realised that she was approaching the foyer.

  She stopped on an impulse of caution and peeked out. The two draakira assigned to guard the apartment were now standing by the door, their expressions alert. This could only mean that they had been given a stimulant, and her time in the haven had taught her that the stimulant most favoured by the draakira rendered its users aggressive and quick to violence.

  Glynn decided that she had better go on behaving as if she were a dull but competent servitor. She doubted any but senior draakira knew that she had been drawn into the mind link between Bayard and the She-feinna, or would even be aware yet of Bayard’s death. Nevertheless it was hard to step out into the entrance because she was horribly aware that she was carrying the sleeping feinna. The heads of the draakira snapped around, and their eyes followed her progress coldly as Glynn passed by them, fighting the urge to hurry. But nothing was said and in seconds she was closing a door gratefully behind her.

  She was now in a short, narrow corridor lit by a lantern at either end. It led to a bare, circular room filled with doors to passages running in all directions like spokes radiating out from a wheel. Only three of the passages were lit, which meant that the draakira had taken up residence in them. So she went down the smallest of the darkened halls and opened the first door warily. Her enhanced senses told her the room was empty and it was the same with all of the others she passed, but she did not stop until she reached the last room. This would be her room, she decided, and used the lantern to light the one suspended from a chain by the wash stand. She went to the bed farthest from the door and put the feinna on a pillow on the floor between it and the wall before slipping her feet from her sandals. Too tired to undress, she lay down and pulled a blanket over her. She wanted to think of all that she had learned since leaving the ship, and decide what to do next, but her need for sleep was too great.

  She fell into sleep as into a deep black pit.

  Glynn was in the smaller upstairs studio in the old buttery that Wind had transformed into his dojo, The Flying Arrow. The martial-arts instructor was stripped to the waist and facing the big upstairs studio mirror as he and Glynn performed the intricate chain of kata movements.

  ‘Good,’ Wind approved when they had completed a phrase. ‘How is your sister?’ The question was strangely disorientating, but Glynn did not allow it to distract her from the slow glide of a heel pivot, leg held out at a sharp right angle to her body. Wind often asked questions to test the intensity of her ability to focus.

  ‘She is dying,’ she said presently, careful to control her breathing. He always insisted upon her answering direct questions directly. Another kind of test. One could hide exhaustion or bad breathing techniques, but not while speaking.

  ‘Dying is living,’ Wind said, turning again and placing his foot carefully down heel then toe.

  Glynn waited the requisite beat, then moved her own leg. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But Ember can’t think about life when she knows she is dying.’

  ‘We are, all of us, dying, and know it,’ Wind said. ‘What is done on the way to death is what defines the essence of a person. You were off balance then, Glynna. The point of moving slowly is for you to learn balance even in motion. To be in balance yet fluid is the utmost in readiness.’

  Glynn shifted into the next movement, concentrating on maintaining her centre of balance. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to think of the kata as a lethal series of martial-arts movements. It is so beautiful. I even feel beautiful when I am doing it.’

  ‘To be in harmony is beautiful.’ He repositioned her hand a centimetre higher on her chest as she slowed and sank into a crouch and sweat trickled between her shoulder blades and into the sweat-sodden waistband of her pants. The kata was tremendously demanding mentally as well as physically. Holding the mind and body in concert while conversing required even more discipline. She had expected Wind to demand silence in the early days of her training, but he had spoken of many subjects while they trained, and had asked complex questions which he expected her to answer thoughtfully. He said she must learn to carry a node of stillness and calm within herself at all times as she lived an ordinary life. To be attuned to the flow of things must become as natural to her as breathing.

  Now, he said, ‘Violence is ugly because it is disharmony, and one can only truly defeat it with beauty. That is why the defence movements of the kata are beautiful. They flow, one to the other, and are shaped to transform a violent attack into movements that defuse their power by bringing them into harmony with other things.’

  The final movement was executed in silence and, as Glynn came to a stop, she found herself looking into Wind’s eyes. They were very close and she thought he might kiss her, as he sometimes did at this point, but he only tapped her cheek lightly. ‘Search for harmony within yourself, Glynn. Find connection with the flow of events and people around you while maintaining your own stillness and balance in a sense of purpose. Only then will the answers you need come to you.’

  Somewhere a bell tolled, and it came to Glynn suddenly why the conversation felt so strange. Wind had died before Ember’s illness had been diagnosed.

  ‘This is just a dream,’ Glynn muttered t
o herself, amazed that a dream could feel so real.

  ‘Are dreams ever just anything, Glynna?’ Wind asked, smiling at her. ‘Perhaps this conversation is merely a possibility that did not come to pass.’

  ‘You’re not real,’ Glynn said more firmly. ‘You’re in my dream.’

  ‘Perhaps you are my dream,’ Wind responded with a hint of the playfulness that he had sometimes shown in the early days of their relationship. He sighed. ‘You must wake now, but remember what I have told you. Try to understand the flow of events and lives around you. You cannot make decisions based on predictions of a future you do not know. Nor on memories either. Practise the kata often. Harmonise your body and mind with the flow of the moment and do only what is required by each moment. That and nothing more.’

  He vanished and Glynn was left staring into her own face in the mirror.

  She heard the sound of muffled laughter and realised that the room behind her had become smaller and windowless, and now possessed an earth floor and a low wooden ceiling. She turned slowly to find three men seated around a wooden table. One, a thickset giant with shaggy red hair and beautiful blue eyes, said in disgust, ‘Of course we have been blamed.’

  ‘We will always be the perfect scapegoats.’ Glynn was astonished because the masculine voice was coming from her own mouth!

  She was inside someone else’s body!

  ‘I still do not understand what happened to Asa and to those legionnaires of Coralyn’s.’ The words came from Glynn, or from the man she was inhabiting, and this time, she had the feeling that she knew his voice. ‘Drugs do not make a man stand entranced as the legionnaires who brought her to the cells were said to be doing. Tell me about this mysterious visionweaver.’