Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  Faye was shaking her head. ‘In his mental state I think the last thing he needs to do is eat lotuses. I think he needs to atone for what he did. I wish I could persuade him to come around in the bus with me until you’re up again, Tabby.’

  ‘You could ask him to dinner and suggest it.’

  ‘Maybe, but if I cook I’m just as likely to kill him. I wish you were back.’

  ‘Me too, but listen, what about asking him to do that comet concert with you since it looks as if I won’t be out in time. It’d be less depressing for him to help hand out condoms, doughnuts and health literature than dragging glue-sniffers out of the garbage, and the concert is for a great cause. It’s really getting some fantastic publicity. I just heard the guy talking about it on the radio.’

  ‘I might give Johnny a call and mention the concert,’ Faye said, sounding distracted. ‘I thought I might go and visit that kid, too. Our glue-sniffing shadow. They’ve taken the poor little bugger to Dead Wait. Pretty grim.’

  ‘Take a book and read it aloud to him. Or maybe a comic,’ Tabby suggested.

  The watcher segued …

  13

  There are those who wonder why the Chaos spirit agreed to give my

  brother the power he needed to open the portal that would bring the

  Unraveller, and that is a question worth asking for had it not won with

  the binding of the Unykorn? The answer is that it had won only a

  partial victory that might, in time, become a greater victory as the Song

  languished. But the Chaos spirit was greedy and so it gambled what it

  had to gain something greater. It agreed to give my brother such power as

  would be needed to open a way for one who might free the Unykorn,

  risking the possibility that, should such a one come and succeed, a vision of

  perfection would be restored to the Lastmade, and then would the Song

  of songs sound in the silent void within each person, causing them to cast

  Chaos out and strive for completion. In exchange for this possibility of

  freeing the Firstmade, it was to hold Lanalor’s living soul in its keeping

  until such time as the Unraveller failed or succeeded. To have the anguish

  and despair of a living soul in its power offered a richness to the Chaos

  spirit that could not be derived from the brief regrets and sorrows of the

  souls of the dead that passed through the Void, or from the souls of those

  able to enter the Void while they lived. For such is its sustenance. But

  the greatest prize would come if the Unraveller should fail, for then

  Lanalor’s soul would belong to the Chaos spirit for as long as Lanalor’s

  flesh endured. And who knew what it would do with the power it obtained

  from it?… But all of this gives rise to a question: where is the flesh of

  Lanalor, if the Chaos spirit has only his soul? Does the Chaos spirit

  keep it safely somewhere, awaiting the outcome of the bargain it made?

  I can not imagine that Lanalor would trust the Chaos spirit to hold it.

  Therefore it seems to me that my brother somehow contrived to hide his

  flesh somewhere, to await the outcome of his wager with the Chaos spirit.

  I know not how he could have done this. Nor do I know how his flesh

  could live, lacking a soul. And what will happen as the aeons pass and his

  flesh ages and withers, for in the end all flesh comes to dust… These

  are the riddles of Lanalor.

  THE ALYDA SCROLLS

  There was a knock at the door and Ember drew her veil down over her face before answering. It was the nightshelter hostess’s daughter, Sharra, who had brought her breakfast earlier. The girl had a lovely face marred by a jagged scar that pulled at her eye and cheek.

  ‘What is it?’ Ember asked.

  ‘Forgive the interruption, Songmaker Gola,’ Sharra answered softly. ‘May I present the dressmaker, Berya.’

  Only then did Ember see the old woman behind her carrying two bulging cloth bags. The dressmaker made a perfunctory bow. ‘Greetings Songmaker. I am sorry that I was unable to come last night, but Anousha explained your needs, and I have taken the liberty of bringing a number of garments which might be remade quickly, if you would not be offended to wear clothes begun for others.’

  Sharra departed as the dressmaker entered and divested herself of her burdens. She then removed her coat and withdrew scraps of material and various tools including a knotted length of cord with which she began to make measurements, muttering to herself as she did so. Ember gradually relaxed, seeing that she was not to be subjected to questions. Berya’s interest in her appeared to be entirely centred on the dimensions of the body she was to cover.

  Her mind drifted.

  The dressmaker had called the nightshelter hostess Anousha, and Ember realised that she had not bothered to ask the woman’s name, although she remembered one of the drinkers using it when she arrived. Glynn had once told her that people liked it when you remembered their names. It had been long before the tumour had made its ugly self known; before their parents had died; back when the thing that had troubled Ember most had been Glynn’s infuriating inability to hear music. For a time, she had believed that her twin must be pretending not to hear, because how could you not hear music?

  These thoughts brought back the fragment of a dream from the previous night. Glynn had been standing in a dark reddish room filled with a wind-like force that had blown wildly about her. Her hair had flown out in streamers and Ember had woken with a hammering heart and the powerful feeling that her twin was in terrible danger. She had found it hard to sleep afterwards although she had decided that the dream had an exaggerated, nightmarish quality which suggested it symbolised her general apprehensions rather than being a vision of Glynn in real danger.

  The dressmaker finished her measurements and took a silk-wrapped bundle from her backpack. Inside was a dress in vivid shades of red. Ember would never wear such colours, especially not now when she was desperate to avoid attracting attention. She could not imagine what Sharra’s mother had told the dressmaker for the woman to bring such a dress.

  ‘Perhaps it will not suit your performance,’ Berya said. Belatedly Ember realised that the dress was intended for a theatrical performance. Although she had no intention of performing, she decided that she had better seem to be readying herself until Revel appeared.

  If she appears, dark Ember sneered. After all, she did not come last night as she promised.

  ‘Songmaker Gola?’ Berya prompted.

  ‘The dress is perfect,’ Ember said, collecting her wits. ‘But it looks a little large for me and I was merely wondering if it could be made ready for me in time for tonight.’

  The dressmaker insisted that it could be done directly. ‘If you will allow me …’ She helped Ember to remove her own dress, which was still damp from its wash, and eased the red dress on, taking obvious care not to disturb the veil. Then she pinned the cloth until the dress fitted her snugly, threaded a needle and began to sew. Ember stood passively, telling herself that whatever had caused the shipmistress to leave the healing centre in such a hurry the previous afternoon, had merely delayed her promised visit to the nightshelter, but she was beginning to wish that she had never allowed the nightshelter hostess to believe that she was a songmaker. Now it was only half a day before she was to perform and what on earth was she to do if Revel did not appear by then?

  Ember was less worried about the seerat’s dwarfish carriage driver, Soonkar, who had seen her silverblinded eye, thereby recognising her as a stranger; but he had agreed, albeit wordlessly, to say nothing of it to anyone and she believed him. It was that simple. Looking back, she wondered now if it was not because he was so perfectly balanced between beauty and ugliness that she had felt able to trust him. He was a walking ambiguity – the opposite of the kind of pers
on who was simplistic and certain about their opinions and prejudices. Also, he was associated with the seerat who was a friend to Revel.

  Common sense told her that he would almost certainly tell someone what he had seen – a friend or an acquaintance in a nighthall after a few too many drinks, but hopefully not before they left Vespi.

  ‘Be still, please,’ Berya muttered through a mouthful of pins.

  Ember obeyed, deciding that the moment the dressmaker left, she would go down to the ship and see for herself what was happening. To be safe, she would first circulate in the inevitable pier crowd and listen to gossip to make sure she was not walking into some sort of trap. Then she would board. If Revel was not aboard, the first mate would surely have some information about his shipmistress.

  ‘You see?’ Berya said, straightening.

  Ember stared at her reflection in the mirror, surprised at how the altered dress emphasised her small breasts and hips. Seeming to read her mind, Berya said, ‘The sheen of the cloth gives your body a more womanly fullness. When Anousha described you, I thought at once of this dress. The woman who ordered it was older than you, and taller, but she, too, was slight. The needlework is more hasty than I like, and you should have it re-sewn when you reach your destination, but it will do for tonight.’

  Ember refused to focus on the old woman’s final words. Instead, she told herself that the dress was less gaudy than it had appeared when she had first seen it, perhaps because it had a mandarin collar, underskirt and sleeves in a dark-plum shade. The dress was also revealing in an unexpected way. Rather than showing breasts or legs, it was cut away deeply at the shoulders so that they and the sides of her upper torso were exposed, as well as her upper arms, the slight fuzz of red hair at her armpits and a good deal of her back.

  Refusing to think about the coming night, Ember said, ‘I will also need a less … extravagant gown for day wear. Have you anything that might do?’

  ‘Anousha mentioned that you had lost your trunk,’ Berya said. She helped Ember to remove the red dress and laid it aside with a matching shawl that she explained had been designed to be able to be turned from its red side to a dark-plum side. This would allow a swift change of appearance for more sombre ballads. She then unwrapped a pale yellow gown made up in a cotton-like fabric similar in design to the red dress, except that the neckline was a modest scoop and the sleeves were attached at the shoulders and came narrowly all the way to the wrists. The skirt was slightly fuller, too, and lacked slits to reveal the underskirt.

  ‘Perhaps it is too plain,’ Berya said. ‘I could fuss it up with some gold beading and …’

  Ember protested that the dress was perfect, though it was in fact brighter than she would have liked. But at least it did not make her look like either the missing visionweaver or a performer. ‘Can you make me a veil to match by tomorrow as well?’

  ‘Two layers for the veil, I think,’ Berya said, squinting at the dress. ‘Yellow and a darker shade of yellow so that you can remove one inside or at night.’

  While the dressmaker pinned the dress, Ember chose two more dresses from those she had indicated, one in green and another in blues. All of the cloth proposed by the dressmaker was too light, but there was no way to say so since she had claimed to be bound for tropical Iridom. Now it occurred to her to ask if a cloak could be added to her order, for the cold aboard ships. Berya said that she had several in stock and would send something with the completed order the following day. Ember let herself be helped out of the pinned-up blue dress and into her old dress and they spoke a little further about underwear and footwear before the dressmaker gathered her things and departed.

  When she opened the door to let Berya out, Ember found Sharra on her threshold carrying a tray bearing a huge triangular piece of metal with a handle at its back and a jug of steaming liquid. Berya nodded in approval, before telling the girl that the water in the presser must not be too hot, for the fabric was fragile and would scorch or discolour.

  ‘There is no need …’ Ember protested, seeing that Sharra intended to iron the red dress, but the old woman had already creaked out of sight on the stairs as Sharra entered and thumped the iron on the table.

  ‘Oh, it is lovely!’ the girl cried, gazing in admiration at the red dress and its matching shawl. Then her face fell. ‘But where are the slippers!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter …’ Ember said, but Sharra had already rushed to the door and downstairs, calling after the dressmaker about slippers and dye.

  ‘I said it didn’t matter,’ Ember said when she returned.

  ‘You must have slippers to match,’ Sharra declared, and Ember’s irritation faded as the girl lifted the red dress reverently into her arms. ‘My mother has set up your songmaking bench by the hearth in the taproom, and you will look like a piece of flame that has escaped from it in this.’ There was in the girl that same unquenchable brightness of the sort Anyi possessed and, with a slight shock, Ember understood that the core of their brightness was their lack of self-pity. Sharra’s disfigurement could so easily have reduced her to a sullen recluse, yet she was generous and open-hearted and even smiled as she filled the clumsy iron block with hot water from a jug, and began manoeuvring it deftly about the dress, smoothing seams and wrinkles.

  Ember watched her, realising suddenly that this might be the moment to get directions to the pier. But it must be done carefully for, as a songmaker, Ember would be expected to know her way around Vespi. Alene had explained that the function of a songmaker was not merely to entertain but to teach, to inform and to collect information about prevailing attitudes and major events affecting the populace of Keltor. For this reason, apprentice songmakers travelled from sept to sept, dwelling for extended periods upon all septs and learning about them so that they would be better able to represent the whole of Keltor in their songs. They travelled a good deal after becoming songmaker journeymen too, and were probably as knowledgeable about all of the islands as most other people were about the island of their birth.

  ‘I … I hope that I do not interrupt your practice …’ Sharra said nodding at the a’luwtha that lay on the bed. Ember had been playing it earlier and the look of longing on that poor ruined face cut through the tangle of Ember’s conjectures and before she could think it through, she found herself reaching for the instrument. She positioned the a’luwtha and played a soft song that she had heard Alene play, humming rather than singing to it so that she would not have to reveal her ignorance of the words.

  When she stopped, Sharra was gazing at her in wet-eyed awe, iron and dress forgotten. ‘That … that was truly wonderful, Songmaker Gola,’ she whispered. ‘I have heard that ballad before, but never was it played as you play it.’ She hesitated and then asked swiftly, ‘Will you … sing something?’

  Ember was beginning to regret that she had played anything. The truth was that the look on Sharra’s face discomfited her because it seemed to offer something that she did not deserve. She was on the verge of shaking her head when Sharra said in a voice bald with pain that she had meant to offer herself to the Vespian songmaker academy before her face had been scarred.

  ‘I … I love music more than I love anything in life,’ she said sadly, returning to her ironing. ‘My mother laments about my face.’ She touched the eye on the scarred side of her face. ‘But I could endure being disfigured and half-blind if only it had not kept me from my music.’

  Ember felt a peculiar lurch in her chest at hearing that the girl was also half-blind – for a moment she feared that she might actually faint – but the sensation ebbed. ‘Why would blindness or disfigurement stop you being a songmaker?’ she forced herself to ask, for all soulweavers were blind and most were accomplished musicians, from what Tareed had said.

  Sharra finished ironing the dress and laid it carefully aside before answering. ‘The blindness does not matter to the music, of course. But I … songmakers are always beautiful,’ she stammered finally, her face flushing red then paling to white as if the word
s took her through the entire spectrum of human emotion. ‘All the songs say so,’ she added in a lifeless tone.

  Ember pitied her, but she also felt exasperated. ‘The beauty that can be found in a face or form is short lived and shallow,’ she said sternly. ‘There is deeper and longer lived beauty to be found inside people; in the things they do and say. Even in the things they hope for. And there is another kind of beauty that lasts forever – the beauty of a song.’

  Sharra stared at her. ‘I … I never thought of it like that.’ She hesitated, said, ‘My … my father did this to me. He was drunk and I angered him. He did not mean to scar me but my mother made him go away. I loved him very much …’

  Something prompted Ember to hold out the a’luwtha to the girl and ask her if she would like to play it. Sharra gaped at her. ‘Songmaker! You know that an a’luwtha can only be played by one to whom it has been given. Even when a songmaker dies and bequeaths her a’luwtha, it is said the instrument chooses who will take it. If I were deemed worthy, I would be given one at the academy, and I would carry it until I die. By this gesture you mean to shock me into seeing what I have not had the courage to strive for …’ she added in a low voice.

  ‘Perhaps you have found the courage,’ Ember said, wondering again why Alene had given her the a’luwtha. I never thanked her for it, nor for all of her help, she realised suddenly, and felt ashamed.

  Sharra was folding the shawl carefully, and she said, ‘You have made me want to try. Yet still it may be that I am not good enough.’

  ‘I will play and you will let me hear you sing,’ Ember said. ‘I promise that I will tell you what I truly think.’ Ember began to strum the tune she had played before, and which she thought of as Alene’s Song. The Vespian girl looked as if she would burst with joy as Ember played the lead in. Then she began to sing, hesitantly at first, and then with increasing certainty. Her voice was genuinely lovely; deeper than her speaking voice, it had a slight burr that gave it a huskiness which could be used to great effect as she developed as a singer. Remembering her own voice lessons, Ember stopped several times to correct the girl’s phrasing or breathing, and to suggest exercises that would correct or define aspects of her voice.