Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘He was awake and lucid for a while but he spent most of the night raving and I could not stop him rolling around and disturbing the wounds.’

  ‘He is not far from help. I have given some thought to what might be done when we dock …’ Ember interrupted to outline the story she had thought up for Bleyd to tell the white cloaks. ‘That will do nicely to explain his state,’ she approved. ‘But the immediate problem is to get you from the ship without being seen. To this end, I have used the ship callstone to invite aboard a seerat. He will be waiting with a closed carriage and a cluster of attendants to board when we dock. He will bring his attendants and perform a telling. When it is done, you and the Fomhikan will leave the ship as two of his party. He will take you to the white-cloak shelter, and later I will come there to speak with you. I will represent myself as a senior shipman checking on passengers who have signed up for a coming journey.’

  ‘Won’t it be noticed if two more people leave with the … the seerat?’ Ember asked, having no idea what a seerat was. Her expression must have made this obvious, for Revel explained.

  ‘The seerat is a set of bone disks marked with various obscure images, each with a given meaning. The disks are thrown from a salver and then read according to their random formations. The practice began initially on Iridom, and was quickly adopted by other septs. Like most faddish things, people lost interest in it after a time, except on Iridom and here upon Vespi, perhaps because we are by nature superstitious. Seerat is also the name of those who use the disks. They are always men.’ She gave Ember a swift sardonic smile. ‘Some say the seerat is no more than a man who envies the soulweaving tendencies of women, which few men display, but the seerat is actually nothing to do with predicting the future. Seerats claim their minds are focused by the disks so that they can absorb and vocalise the secret motivations and flaws within our own minds, which work against our conscious desires.’

  The seerat sounded like a combination of tarot cards and psychoanalysis. ‘Won’t people find it odd that you have invited a seerat aboard the ship the moment you dock?’ Ember asked.

  ‘The manifest will show that I am to go out again very soon, and many shipmasters do not set out on a crossing before having a seerat tell them that they actually want to arrive safely, and these tellings usually occur aboard the ship to allow as little as possible to intervene which might alter the telling. I do not ordinarily summon seerats, but it will be assumed that the storming shook me. The other advantage is that if a telling is bad it is customary for shipmasters to apply to delay a journey, or even to arrange for another to master the crossing. Therefore I will be able to use it as an excuse to delay my departure from Vespi if it is becomes necessary,’ she said.

  ‘I thought nothing was allowed to delay or alter the course of a crossing,’ Ember said.

  The Vespian shrugged. ‘Not once a journey begins, except under very specific circumstances. But officially, ships are between crossings when they reach Vespi for it is the beginning and the end of all journeys. Therefore changes can be made to a course here. But the main purpose of the sham is to provide cover for you and the Fomhikan to leave the ship. I doubt we will be watched by any but casual spies who are unlikely to notice that the seerat leaves with two more attendants than those that came aboard.’

  ‘Not even if one is veiled and the other injured?’

  ‘The veil will not be unusual in that company,’ the shipmistress answered cryptically. ‘As to the Fomhikan, the seerat will have a carriage and he can be carried upright to it by the attendants. Given the level of pain he is like to endure, we will have to drug him to prevent him crying out. I will give you something.’ She went to the panel cupboard and withdrew a small phial of purplish powder. ‘This is what most people use to endure crossings.’

  ‘What about the seerat and his attendants?’ Ember asked, watching the shipmistress mix a small measure of the dust with water.

  ‘The seerat is my friend and he will concoct a tale for his attendants. In any case, they will do as he commands because seerats are supposed to be able to invoke the blackwind against anyone who offends them …’ She gave the gamine grin that Ember remembered from the first time she had seen the Vespian on Ramidan, teasing Feyt. Then she held out the mixture. ‘You will have to dribble it into his mouth and rub his throat to make sure it goes where it is supposed to go.’

  Watching their approach to the crescent-shaped island of Vespi through the cabin porthole, Ember was surprised to see a high, jagged range of mountains blanketed in dark green, running along the curve of the island like a spine. From the map cloths she had studied under Alene’s tutelage, she had imagined Vespi as rather arid, but it was clearly not so. The sept town which took its name from the island, like all other capitals, stretched narrowly along the flat sandy inner curve of the island, sprouting numerous sturdy piers at which hundreds of ships were tied up. Clearly the port area of the seafaring sept was the town. When the Stormsong came about and she could see no more, Ember blocked the door with a chair and washed her face and brushed her hair before plaiting it and binding it around her head. She resumed her veil as soon as she could feel that they were tying up but left her face bare. Revel had disagreed with Bleyd’s idea that she should paint her face, pointing out that on Vespi such paint was used more often by performers and extreme individuals who wanted to attract attention, and would seem odd worn in conjunction with a privacy veil.

  Ember heard the grate of wood on wood, then there were heavy footsteps and an unfamiliar booming voice. She composed herself in a chair at the bedside to await the seerat and his attendants. She had dressed Bleyd in a long tunic that the shipmistress had given her, for there had been no question of putting trousers of any kind or a shirt on him. As it was, the tunic would stick to the moist wounds, but at least white cloaks would be removing it. Bleyd had cried out when she began to dress him but, at some point, he had seemed to fall into a deeper state of unconsciousness, and now he lay as one dead. Ember did not know if it was the drugged water she had fed to him or his own pain that had caused his comatose state, but a sour sick smell now rose from his fevered body and, for the first time, she found herself wondering if he would survive.

  The door swung open and Revel entered, followed by a huge, bald man in a shimmering tunic and an astonishing, fluttering, chattering crowd of middle-aged women dressed in trailing skirts and shawls and beads. At least three of the women were fully veiled like Ember, and several more wore half-veils that covered their noses and mouths, but left their eyes bare. They were all either very plump or very thin and they appeared oblivious to the fact that the cabin they had entered was occupied. Their attention was entirely focused on the only man in their midst, who turned to Revel with a great swish of his cloak. ‘So, at last you seek my help. What is it that you require of me?’

  7

  Returning to the dying Shenavyre, Lanalor confessed his evil, but

  Shenavyre smiled on him and rejoiced. ‘For,’ she said, ‘the Unykorn lives

  and, while it exists, it may come again.’

  LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

  The seerat had a loud, deep voice but the look he gave the Vespian was light and almost flirtatiously malicious. ‘What is it that prompts you to come to me for a telling after all this time?’

  ‘I would prefer to explain my need alone,’ Revel said gravely. ‘Will you enter my chamber for the telling, Seerat?’

  ‘Of course nothing need be kept secret from my pretty darlings but it shall be as you wish.’ The seerat made a grandiose gesture to his attendants with an enormous hand. ‘Prepare the restorative, my pets, and disport yourselves as you will in my absence.’

  The women gibbered and giggled and simpered at him as he swept out. Then they set about opening lavishly embroidered drawstring bags and removing pieces of what looked for all the world to Ember like the parts of a machine. Once assembled, though, it was revealed to be a sort of elaborate Russian samovar. Bags and phials were produced and arra
nged about it, containing greenish leaves, a maroon powder, yellowish sand and an almost fluorescent lilac-hued syrup. These were pressed or dribbled into reservoirs in the brazier before the wick under it was lit. The women then clustered about it chattering and giving shrieks of laughter as the room slowly filled with a purplish fug, and a smell that was surprisingly like freshly-brewed coffee arose from a green liquid which dripped from a gleaming nozzle into a small gilt jug. The women busied themselves setting out thin cups without handles and plates of tiny sweets and biscuits. When the jug was full, they added a few drops of the dark-green liquid to water or warmed let milk, all the while chattering and singing absurd little snatches of song.

  The attendants ignored her and Bleyd so completely that Ember decided that the women must have been ordered to do so, but then, to confound her, one of them approached her with a platter of sweet-smelling cubes, powdered like Turkish delight, and a cut-glass goblet of cirul. Accepting the goblet, Ember puzzled about the women’s apparent lack of curiosity, until it struck her that they also did not speak of politics or philosophy or recent events on Keltor. Their conversation revolved almost entirely around family, friends and neighbours. If you discounted their attire and extravagant gestures and mannerisms, they could almost have been any group of middle-aged women on her world meeting for coffee. Ember understood then that she had been moving so exclusively among the great and infamous of Keltor that she had forgotten that there must also be thousands of ordinary people who would never see Tarsin, let alone meet him, and might know their chieftain only by his laws and taxes, and by rumours filtering from the citadel palace.

  She wondered, then, what the women were to the seerat. Employees or devotees or something more intimate? It was impossible to tell and Ember decided she was not interested enough to wonder about it. She was beginning to feel thin and stretched sitting in their midst, stiff with tension while she waited to see what would happen next. Her mind seethed with questions she had not thought to ask Revel, such as where she was to go while Bleyd was being treated at the white-cloak centre. Perhaps she would have to wait there the whole time, pretending to be a worried sister.

  All at once, the inner door of the chamber opened and the seerat reappeared, mopping his brow with a silk square. His attendants converged on him, patting his arms and stroking his hands. ‘A difficult reading, my pets,’ he boomed. ‘This Revel has a dark mind under that innocent face. I had to dig very deep. The restorative!’ This latter was all but a shout.

  The women hastened to prepare a large cup of the greenish brew, undiluted by hot water, as the seerat sank into a chair that groaned under his weight. He drank the cup straight down, though it must have been boiling, and then two more after it, before turning to Revel. The shipmistress stood slouching in the doorway with a look so bland that Ember could only guess she was trying not to laugh. One of the women brought her a cup of the restorative and she drank it with a grimace of disgust.

  This done, the seerat clapped his hands. ‘Now my pets, listen carefully for we are to take part in a scandal.’ The women looked enthralled rather than alarmed, but Ember’s heart began to pound unpleasantly. ‘The man lying over there is ill and must be taken to the white-cloak shelter, but he and his sister can not be seen leaving the Stormsong and so we will take them with us when we leave.’

  ‘It is a love affair?’ one of the women asked avidly.

  The seerat gave her a bright glance of approbation. Then he said, ‘Now, quick quick. You must donate some of your pretties as disguises.’

  The women began divesting themselves enthusiastically of their shawls and various hanging draperies and transferring them to Ember.

  ‘The brother must also be disguised,’ the seerat commanded. ‘He and his sister will travel with me in the chair instead of you, Ulrika.’

  A plump, grey-haired matron with pink-rouged lips pouted. ‘It is such a long way to walk back, Master.’

  ‘I have seen that it would serve you well to walk this journey,’ he answered in a sudden sepulchral voice that made all of the women fall silent. Ulrika blanched. ‘Come now,’ the seerat continued impatiently, and the women fell to draping Bleyd as best they could with him unconscious and lying down. ‘Enough,’ the seerat announced. ‘He will do, as long as there is no one specifically watching out for him.’ Now there was something in his tone that made Ember certain that Revel had told him the truth about Bleyd. She also had the sudden odd thought that this was something that the seerat and his women had done before.

  Revel went to the doorway and shouted for her first mate, the shipson, Mysel, who had helped carry Bleyd aboard the ship on Ramidan. ‘We’ll get him on deck and then your attendants must manage him,’ she told the seerat.

  ‘It would not be the first time one of my pretties drank a little too much restorative and had to be carried away from a telling. But you will have to get him to the end of the ramp between you, my loves, then Soonkar will take over.’

  Ember followed the crowd of attendants up on deck, staying close and trying to emulate their fluttering mannerisms. There were at least seven ships tied up on the pier that Revel had chosen, and the amount of activity on the ships either side suggested that most of them had arrived that day, given that their cargoes were in the process of being unloaded. No one seemed to be particularly interested in her, though it was impossible to be sure in the sea of faces.

  To Ember’s horror, the seerat strode to the side of the ship and bellowed a name. Everyone within hearing distance turned to gape at him and at the thickset little man sitting in the drivers seat of a carriage draped luridly with purple and mustard-yellow stripes, who jumped down and made his way to the end of the gangplank connecting the ship to the shore.

  ‘Master?’

  Ember realised then that the seerat’s carriage driver was not just short as she had thought, but an actual dwarf. Or whatever the Keltan term was for such a man. He was thick in the legs and possessed the broad shoulders and muscular arms of a much taller man. He was also quite possibly the handsomest man Ember had ever seen. He had dark, lustrous curls, a straight patrician nose, beautiful blue-grey eyes fringed with long sooty lashes and perfectly sculpted sensual lips. If he had been normal height, he could have been a model. But as it was, the extreme combination of beauty and deformity was too shocking to be anything but pitiable.

  ‘Soonkar, one of my beauties has restored herself to unconsciousness,’ the seerat announced, striding down the plank to the pier. ‘She will journey back in the carriage with me.’ He spoke with all the exaggerated pronunciation of an actor reciting lines, and quite a number of people had drawn nearer to watch as he began to declaim about the fates and portents and the blackwind and his own great gifts. Behind him, Ember and the attendants descended en masse to the pier and passed behind him with Bleyd propped up awkwardly in their midst.

  Ember was close enough to see that the dwarf’s face showed no emotion as he took Bleyd’s full weight with apparent ease and carried him to the carriage, surrounded by the attendants who fluttered and gawped and shouted instructions and admonitions, all the while managing very efficiently to shield Bleyd from curious onlookers. Fortunately he did not wake or begin raving, although Ember now had no doubt that the women would be prepared for this, and burst into song or begin to laugh to cover it.

  ‘One of you had best come with us in case she needs care,’ the seerat said, when Bleyd was safely installed inside the carriage. With seeming carelessness, he nodded to Ember, who climbed gratefully into the carriage. It was hung with gorgeous skeins of maroon and indigo silk matching the thickly upholstered seats and cushions scattered liberally about. It was beautiful but Ember almost gagged at the reek of a dozen exotic and incompatible odours that puffed up from the cushions whenever she moved, and she wondered if it was evidence of the different tastes of the women who attended the seerat, or some sort of peculiar air sweetener.

  As Soonkar helped his master in, the vehicle creaked and swayed alarmingly und
er the weight of him, and Ember was all but crushed as he settled himself beside her. He could not sit on the other seat because the carriage driver had laid Bleyd full length upon it.

  The seerat leaned out to bid Revel farewell. ‘A journey to my favourite gemeller might go some way towards paying for such an unexpected and strenuous telling, my friend,’ he said loudly.

  ‘You’ll get what you deserve from me,’ Revel said.

  ‘I fancy a foamstone toe ornament,’ the seerat said as he let the curtain fall closed. The carriage interior became a womb-like reddish dimness and the seerat reached up and rapped smartly on the side of the carriage. It set off with a jerk and Soonkar could be heard shouting and cursing at people to make way for the master seerat of Vespi. But gradually their speed increased and the noise of the crowds receded. Ember was relieved because she had half imagined that the carriage would crawl along at a snail’s pace so that the attendants could keep up. If this was Revel’s idea of secrecy she dreaded to think what public might mean. They could not have drawn more attention if they had gone along the pier announcing Bleyd as the much-sought poisoner of Tarsin!

  ‘Sometimes things of value are best hidden in loud and garish places,’ the seerat said laconically and Ember stared at him, for he had surely read her mind. ‘Even veiled a face and gestures speak to the eyes and perceptions of a seerat,’ he explained lightly. ‘Yet you are harder to read than many.’ His gaze was penetratingly intelligent and the silence between them lengthened until the seerat smiled. ‘And you do not take the bait of conversation. That makes you a more difficult subject. I would judge you a soulweaver by this silence. Is that what you are?’