Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘You were … Never have I …’ Muttering incoherent praises and bowing to the audience, she led Ember through the crowd. At the foot of the stairs, Ember inclined her head to the woman and then to the room one last time before ascending alone. Behind and below her the noise rose to another crescendo, a sea of sound that bore her further upward than the next floor.

  Closing the door to her room, she leaned back on it and could still hear the muted din of applause. She crossed to the bed and collapsed onto it feeling an absurd desire to burst into tears.

  So this was what it meant to perform!

  She had always thought that performing to an audience would be meaningless. People who heard it would tap their feet or clap, without ever appreciating what the music cost its maker, or what it meant at its deepest levels. They would pay to hear her, but it was she who would pay the true cost. But it had not been like that at all. In offering her music, she had awakened something in her audience, melting their resistance and releasing them from the stranglehold of their own personal lives, so that they in turn offered themselves to her. And in surrendering to them, she had deepened her own music.

  Why had she not realised that an audience could be part of the act of creating music? That it could be a shared joy?

  If only dark Ember had realised …

  Then it came to her that dark Ember had realised. That was why she had withdrawn so far and so deeply tonight. Not out of disgust at a man’s request for a happy song, but out of fear of what the melding between a performer and an audience could evoke. Dark Ember had not expected this when she took control because she had not offered the music to the audience. But Keltans were Songborn, and the love of music was woven into the very fabric of their being, and even dark Ember’s chilly songs had called to them. That was why Ember had not found any difficulty in resuming control of herself. Dark Ember had felt their response and she had fled, knowing that it would diminish her precious indifference.

  ‘In the end, it is you who were the coward!’ Ember whispered.

  Despite being deeply fatigued, she forced herself to strip and clean the paint from her face before extinguishing the lantern and slipping between the sheets. It was not long after that she heard a soft knock at her door.

  ‘Songmaker Gola …?’ It was Sharra but Ember lay still, feigning sleep. She could not bear to dilute her experience of the night with conversation. The door closed quietly and, as if it were a signal, sleep came at last, rolling over her senses like a heavy mist. As her eyelids began inexorably to close, her last thought was of the manbeast and how it would feel to sing to him and to surrender herself to his response …

  She dreamed of a Chinese boy with eyes like drops of liquid night. He was sitting with a woman who looked old and weary, and wore a threadbare dress. His grandmother? They were holding hands, and Ember saw that the woman’s were stained a dirty grey and there was filth under the nails.

  ‘I will grow up and protect you, Mama,’ the boy whispered. Ember was aware that he was speaking in another language, yet she could understand what he was saying.

  ‘You must grow and be strong and happy and bear many children and love them,’ the woman answered in the same soft voice, but her sorrow shimmered in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to go to another house. I don’t want another mama.’

  ‘Shhh. You must be good. She can have no children and she will love you.’

  ‘I won’t love her,’ the little boy promised, sounding sleepy.

  ‘Yes you will, for it is better to love than hate. There is too much grief in the world my darling. My little fish.’ The boy had fallen asleep and the woman disentangled their fingers and laid him down beside her and drew a shawl over him.

  Ember slipped from this dream into one of a man and woman lying in bed clinging to one another. They radiated grief so strongly that Ember felt suffocated, nevertheless she could not muster the will to abandon the vision.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ the woman whispered in a voice thick with tears.

  ‘We knew this might happen,’ the man said. ‘We knew and we must think of his little life as a precious gift. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? We are more than we were because of him.’

  ‘My baby! I wouldn’t care now if he was blind,’ the woman sobbed. ‘I wouldn’t wish him any different if he would just be here with us.’

  ‘Don’t,’ the man whispered, and then he began to cry too; a creaking difficult sound that seemed to grate against the air …

  Ember wrenched herself from the pain congealing about the couple and found she was segueing in the Void. A storm raged, preventing her from controlling her movement even with her music and she was buffeted and turned violently. But it was to escape the unbearable shrilling wail of the Void that she entered one of the bubbles. Experience allowed her to eschew the dark-streaked nightmare bubbles for a pale golden orb, and she found herself a schoolgirl in the playground of her primary school in Quarry. Glynn was beside her, tall and long-legged as a stork.

  ‘Mother doesn’t love me,’ Glynn said in a low, sorrowful voice.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Ember said, sounding annoyed. But from within, Ember understood that she was annoyed precisely because she thought it might be true.

  ‘She doesn’t love me because I can’t hear music properly,’ Glynn went on. ‘There is something wrong with me.’

  Ember was startled to hear Glynn voice her own secret judgement of her twin’s inability to hear music. She didn’t know what to say because she couldn’t imagine how it would be not to hear music. She thought she would rather be dead than that. Submerged within her younger self, Ember shivered at the realisation that she had metaphorically offered her life for her music.

  She felt her younger self struggle to formulate something that would please her twin. ‘Daddy loves you.’

  Glynn smiled wanly, her expression telling Ember that she knew this, at least, was true. ‘But it’s not the same,’ she said sadly.

  Ember floated out of the bubble to find that the Void had become a shrieking maelstrom. Her head began to hurt. The pressure increased until it was nigh on unbearable, and then she heard a voice of such hissing malevolence that her blood seemed to freeze in her veins.

  I feel you! Sshow yoursself to me!

  Ember felt a scream bubbling up in her throat and deep inside herself she heard the hollow mocking laughter of dark Ember.

  15

  Lanalor struck Kalinda in furious anguish,

  for its light reminded him

  of Shenavyre’s bright beauty, which could not be held.

  But his eyes were blurred with tears and instead he struck

  the planet, Gard, sundering three pieces from it.

  Two pieces came to circle Keltor as the moons

  Aden and Onyx, while the third became the fiery comet, Gardion.

  Some say there were four pieces and the largest fell to Keltor …

  BALLADEER’S SONG – ANON.

  When Ember awoke, the first thing she noticed was that she could not feel dark Ember lying inside her like a stone. The second thing was that her limbs were slicked with sweat. This drove all other thoughts from her mind, because night sweats were one of the signs that the tumour was active, pushing its lethal spores deeper into her head. If she was right, then the pain was not far away.

  The awareness that her reprieve might very well be over should have filled Ember with mindless fear, but she clung to the knowledge that healing awaited her on Darkfall and, oddly, the memory of the bond she had forged with her audience the previous night gave her courage. Unable to understand how or why, Ember nevertheless embraced it and sat up.

  She froze after the movement, waiting for the waves of crippling pain that she had suffered on other occasions, but there was nothing. Not even a headache. She had been holding her breath and she let it out slowly, wondering if, after all, the sweats had merely been some sort of reaction to the highly emotive and exhausting evening.

  W
ith a sense of fragile elation, she crossed the floor and opened the shutters to allow a flood of daylight into the room, for the moment as careless of her nakedness as of her exposed face. She tipped her head back, as if to drink the radiance flooding over her.

  A soft rap at the door brought her swiftly down to earth and she hurriedly pulled on the heavy purple gown and veil that she had worn on the ship. The tentative knock led her to expect Sharra, waiting diffidently without, but it was her mother, Anousha. One look at the woman told Ember that the hesitant knock was a clear reflection of the change in her attitude. Gone was the suspicion that had marked her manner before. Gone was the harshness. Now, Anousha regarded Ember with almost the same awe as her daughter had always done and, oddly, she looked younger and prettier for it.

  ‘Songmaker Gola,’ she all but stammered. ‘We were concerned … you have slept most of the day away … I came to see if you would like some food, and water is even now heating for a bath.’

  Ember rasped, ‘I would like some fruit …’ There would be no time for a bath if it was as late as all that.

  ‘Your … your voice, Songmaker!’ There was such dismay in the cry that Ember guessed Anousha had meant to ask her to perform again. In which case, the croaky voice was the perfect answer; of course her voice was only strained because she had not performed regular vocal exercises since coming to Keltor. Anousha left, promising to send up honey cordial with Ember’s meal. Closing the door behind her, Ember thought it an irony that she would happily have performed again. Except that, aside from the urgency of her own need to get to Darkfall, the soulweaver Faylian had commanded her and Bleyd to leave the island of Vespi.

  The trouble was how this was to be achieved, given Revel’s continuing absence. She realised that she must face the possibility that the shipmistress would not be coming and start thinking about finding passage for herself and Bleyd on another ship bound for Myrmidor. Sharra had named two ships that would leave for Myrmidor this very day and, with luck, there might be time to book passage on one of them. If only she had not slept so late! And what was she to do for coin? She was galled to think that she would have to apply to Faylian for help, but there might be no other alternative. If only the audience the previous night had been as generous with their money as their applause, she might have paid the passage herself. The bills from the dressmaker and carriage driver were another problem but at least she had no need to worry now about what she owed Anousha, since a good performance was supposed to entitle her to one night’s accommodation. Technically she had been in the room two nights, but Ember doubted the nightshelter hostess would now press for payment. With a groan, she realised that there was also likely to be a bill for Bleyd’s treatment that would need to be settled.

  A message would have to be sent to Faylian, carefully worded. Maybe Sharra would deliver it, but how to ask her without exciting curiosity and gossip?

  All at once, a thought struck Ember like a slap in the face.

  She had been waiting for Sharra or her mother to mention a message for her! But why would they mention any message from Revel when it would be addressed to a woman who would have declared herself a friend of the shipmistress! Not to Songmaker Gola hailing from the mountains in search of employment! What an idiot she had been. She all but ran downstairs.

  Anousha looked puzzled. ‘A chit did come from Revel, who minds the Stormsong for her father, if it is she that you mean, Songmaker. It arrived late on the same evening that you came to us. Then another message came yesterday. But the woman who was to have collected them never came. But how do you know of these things? Is the woman known to you?’

  Ember took a deep breath and said hoarsely, ‘I am the woman for whom the messages were intended.’ There was a flicker of the old wariness in the woman’s eyes, and Ember stepped nearer and lowered her voice. ‘Did Sharra mention my trip with her to the pier yesterday?’

  Anousha nodded, eyes agog as she understood that she was about to receive a confidence. ‘She told me of your words to her. Not that she is a gossip. Close-mouthed as a mute she is by nature. But she admires you, Songmaker Gola, and in truth, I think her wiser than her mother in this. Your kindness to her …’

  Ember lifted her hand to stem the tide. ‘Perhaps you have guessed that Songmaker Gola is a false name. My true name must not be mentioned, lest the lethal messengers of an angry bondmate find her. I sent a chit to Revel, whom I know well, asking for passage from this island. She sent word back to me telling me to come here and seek refuge while I waited word from her that it was safe to leave. I had forgotten that any messages from her would not describe me as Songmaker Gola, nor by my true name, but as a humble wayfarer who had mentioned Revel’s name.’

  Wordlessly, Anousha laid down her ladle and rummaged in the front of her voluminous apron, withdrawing two of the twig-like chits that Keltans used to send messages. She held them out.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ember said fervently.

  ‘Revel sent coin for your room and other needs, which I have in my safe box, but of course I will take naught after your performance last night,’ Anousha said. ‘And I think you will be glad that you performed here when you have counted the tithe that was collected. I will send that up along with the coin from Revel when I am finished here.’ She gestured at the pot, then after a moment’s hesitation said, ‘I take it that you will be leaving us?’

  ‘I am to meet Revel today,’ Ember said evasively. ‘But the memory of your daughter and my performance here last night will travel with me as cherished moments. I hope you do not take it as an offense that I keep the secret of my name.’

  Anousha flushed. ‘I take no offense, Songmaker. You have brought luck to this house. May the Song bless you.’

  Ember withdrew, touched, but also anxious to read the chits.

  She had barely closed the door of her room before Sharra appeared with the altered dresses from Berya and the two bags of coins from her mother. She explained diffidently that her mother had taken Berya’s payment from the tithe. Her eyes fell to the two chits which Ember had put on the bed, and her face fell. ‘My … my mother says that you are leaving. I wish you could stay, at least for a while.’

  ‘It is time for me to go,’ Ember said gently.

  ‘Your voice!’ Sharra cried, looking anguished.

  ‘My voice will heal, given time,’ Ember said calmly. ‘But listen to me. I want you to promise that you will audition for the songmaker academy as you said. I did not lie yesterday when I said that you had a voice worthy of it.’

  Sharra smiled tremulously. ‘Last night when I heard you – I was in the kitchen listening at the door – I understood perhaps for the first time what it truly means to sing. It is not about being beautiful and talented and wearing fine clothes or having lovers send you presents. Nor even about how wonderful it is to sing. It is about giving something.’

  Ember felt strangely moved, for had she not learned the same lesson? She was conscious that she was still feeling too much and too intensely because of the previous night’s performance, but suddenly it seemed to her that Sharra would have her heart’s desire, if it was possible to bestow such a thing. She opened one of the coin pouches and drew a handful of the large hacoins from it. She pressed these into the girl’s hands and closed her fingers around the money.

  ‘Do you want me to buy something for you?’ Sharra asked.

  ‘I want you to buy something, but not for me. The coin is to pay Berya to make you a dress and slippers and a cloak for your songmaker audition,’ Ember said. ‘It is not a gift, mind, but a selfishness, for it gives me pleasure to do this.’

  Whatever Sharra might have said was lost in another knock at the door and Ember sighed, wondering if she would ever get the chance to read Revel’s chits.

  ‘It will be the men with the bath and the water,’ Sharra said, jumping to her feet. Then she stopped and stared down at the coins in her cupped hands in wonder. ‘But Songmaker … you can not …’

  ‘You will anger me if yo
u tell me what I can or can not do,’ Ember said firmly, ushering her to the door and opening it.

  Sharra stared at her for a moment, then nodded with a shy smile and slipped away. Ember waited impatiently for the two men to fill the bath, realising that this was Anousha’s way of thanking her and wishing she had time and leisure to soak for hours. As soon as the men had finished, she closed the door behind them and unsealed one of the chits. It contained terse instructions for her to come to the ship by carriage on dusk. The second message warned her not to come to the ship under any circumstances, but to come instead to a certain storage house on the pier road several hours before dusk. Both chits had been sealed but there was no way of telling which had come first. They had been identical before unsealing, too, so Anousha would not be able to tell her which had come first either. Which left her the dilemma of trying to decide what to do.

  Re-reading them, it seemed to Ember that the chit which asked her to come to the ship was less brusque than simply brief. The other chit felt more urgent in tone, and instinct told her this was the second, for Revel might certainly be sharper if her first chit had appeared to be ignored. She had better go to the storage house at the appointed time today, and see what happened. If nothing, she could make her way to the pier afterwards. If the Stormsong had gone, she would book passage for herself and her ‘brother’ on one of the other ships bound for Myrmidor. Then she would go in a carriage to collect Bleyd. But it would be cutting things fine if she had to be aboard another ship with Bleyd before nightfall.

  It was slightly puzzling that neither note had mentioned the Fomhikan, but maybe Revel had assumed that his condition would make it impossible for him to travel, and wanted to offer Ember a last chance to come aboard.