Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  Patience, her feinna instincts counselled. A twig snapped loudly behind her and, trying to stand up and turn at the same time, she almost fell into the stream.

  Kerd offered his hand with a wry grin. ‘I always seem to startle you into wild gestures.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am prone to them,’ Glynn admitted, rubbing her bruised buttocks. She noticed suddenly that, although Kerd wore brown as on their previous meeting, today he looked every bit the son of a chieftain, for he wore a tunic made of some rich velvety fabric, thickly worked in gold thread, and there were great clusters of gleaming yellow stones on both shoulders. He also wore a jewelled band about his brow, matching the thin strips atop both of his gleaming brown knee boots. Her minescrape knowledge told her that he was wearing a small fortune in stones, let alone in tailoring.

  ‘You look very grand,’ she said. Kerd sighed and sat heavily on the bench seat beside her, his smile fading to a look of weary despair. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘It is that hall the Fomhikans were just mentioning,’ he nodded towards the other garden. ‘I wish I did not have to go.’

  Glynn decided not to say that she had already been there. ‘Why?’ she asked instead.

  Kerd sighed again. ‘The celebration is so that it can be announced officially that Unys and I are to be joined in life bond.’ He looked at his clasped hands. ‘The trouble is that I have just received a message from my father asking if I would offer a year-end bond instead of a life bond. In truth, I expected him to rant and to forbid the match and I was prepared to defy him. But he speaks with concern for Unys, and asks me to consider her right to be free to make choices when she matures.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Maybe he is right. Unys speaks of wanting us to be together always, and she insisted on life bond though I thought it would anger my father. I wanted a year-end bond, which I could then make a life bond, once my father had come to know Unys better. But there are times I almost feel she hates me … The irony of it all is that I would happily obey my father’s request.’

  ‘What is the problem then? Just tell her.’

  ‘The moment I enter the garden, Coralyn will set the trumpets blaring and make the announcement. I need to be able to tell Unys before any announcement is made, because it would be an unpardonable insult to announce life bond and then withdraw to a year-end bond offer.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Glynn said softly.

  The Vespian stared sightlessly into the stream at their feet. ‘I do not wish to spurn my father’s advice and sever myself from his company and love when there is no need for it. Yet Unys will not forgive me if I insult her publicly.’

  ‘Maybe you had better get sick …’

  Kerd stared at her. You mean … fail to appear? Unys will be humiliated.’

  ‘Send a message that you have fallen ill and no one would be humiliated,’ Glynn said. ‘You would be able to talk to Unys calmly in private and, if she agrees, then she can tell people that she decided that you should both do as your father asks.’

  ‘Lie?’ Kerd asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Glynn answered, simply. ‘Lie to save Unys from humiliation and to enable yourself to keep faith with your father.’

  Kerd sighed and shook his head. ‘Lies never serve, ultimately.’ Then he brightened. ‘But I can tell her and Coralyn the truth afterwards. If only I can make Unys understand that my father’s words signal that he will accept our match.’ His gaze fell on the open cage, and he frowned at it, momentarily diverted from his worries. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I … I am trying to free the pelflyt but I am afraid the poor thing doesn’t know what freedom is,’ she said. ‘The Prime told me that it is to be killed in some ritual way before it is eaten but I can’t bear to take it to her.’ She disliked lying to him, but she was afraid that he might go and denounce the Draaka if he knew what she really intended.

  Kerd looked unexpectedly interested at her words. ‘So you share the Sheannite philosophy of freedom. You are full of unexpected quirks, Glynn of Fomhika … if you are truly Fomhikan.’

  The pelflyt suddenly emerged, fluffing its feathers, and they both watched it hasten away into the bushes without a backward glance. They exchanged a smile.

  ‘It is odd how things, left to their own devices, will attend to themselves,’ Kerd said. His smiled faded. ‘Perhaps I ought to take a lesson from it. We humans always feel we must arrange and control everything for its own good. I will not go to the hall. Nothing good will come of it.’ He smiled at Glynn. ‘You have done me a kindness in helping me to come up with a solution to an insoluble problem. In return, let me do what I offered when we met last and take you to the scroll archive. Afterwards I will take you there and then return to my rooms to send word to Coralyn.’

  Glynn felt slightly sick to realise that she was cultivating the Vespian’s friendship just as she had been ordered to do. It made her feel helpless; as if she had no choice in what happened. That reminded her of the Draaka’s belief that she was a tool of the Chaos spirit and would do its bidding of her own free will. She resolved to be constantly on guard against being forced or manipulated into anything, even by seemingly random circumstances, which meant that maybe she ought to refuse Kerd’s offer. ‘What if you are seen wandering around when you are supposed to be ill?’ she temporised.

  He smiled. ‘Almost no one goes to the archives, and those who do are unlikely to care anything about halls or bondings, year-end or otherwise. Please let me do this.’

  Glynn found she could not resist his wistful plea, besides which, she really did want access to the archives since she might be reliant on them for the information she needed. But as they rose, something else occurred to her. ‘What about … those Fomhikans you talked to? What if they speak of seeing you?’

  Kerd frowned. ‘They will have left the palace by now and I doubt they will be involved in the sort of conversation with anyone that would elicit gossip.’

  ‘Those people we overheard … one of them was Poverin’s daughter, Rilka?’ Glynn ventured.

  Kerd nodded absently, not surprised that she should know this. ‘Poverin sent them, of course. But they are wrong about Coralyn. I have been fortunate enough to see a side to her that few have done and she is not so coldly manipulative as is thought. I have found her always kind and courteous despite the difference in our beliefs. Fomhikans lay too much blame and sinister plotting at her feet. What will you do here?’

  Glynn looked at the cage critically then lifted her foot and brought it down hard on the broken side so that the edges split apart more widely. Kerd looked startled. ‘I fell and the pelflyt escaped,’ she said.

  Kerd smiled a little and reached out to take it from her hands. ‘Are you all right to walk now?’ he asked, obviously remembering that she had been unconscious when he had found her on the stairs.

  ‘I’m fine. It was just … a dizziness that came over me for a moment and made me fall,’ Glynn said. ‘What brought you here to Ramidan, anyway?’

  Kerd looked at her in mild bemusement. ‘Surely you know that all sons of chieftains come to Ramidan to dwell for a time. Unless you mean that I am somewhat older than most?’

  Glynn was actually not sure what she meant. But she nodded.

  He shrugged. ‘My father was reluctant to send me, knowing that Coralyn spent much time here. He does not accept that what happened with his brother, Ranouf, while tragic, cannot be laid at Coralyn’s feet. I wish he could hear how tenderly and with what pity she remembers my uncle. And how she regrets that he did not hear her pleas to put aside his wayward and destructive passion for her, and adhere to his journey-bond. And Ranouf was not a boy but a grown man with a man’s mind. Despite all of the training in discipline and duty that any prospective chieftain is given, he chose of his free will to break his journey-bond, forfeiting sept and chieftain’s seat. I do not blame Coralyn for that. She has been wonderful about Unys and me, and speaks of our match as a healing of rifts of many kinds. But perhaps that is how my father views it now, given t
he mildness of his last scribing to me.’

  Glynn wondered at the streak of naivete in Kerd that stopped him seeing that the Iridomi chieftain would obviously approve of an alliance between the son of Fulig of Vespi and an Iridomi girl, since he would one day rule Vespi and control that sept’s sea power. No wonder Coralyn was gracious to him! The only puzzlement was why Fulig was suddenly so mild.

  ‘I guess it could be argued that a man has to be allowed responsibility for his actions, if he is sane, even when his actions seem like madness,’ Glynn murmured, thinking tangentially of Wind and his suicide.

  ‘Exactly,’ Kerd said forcefully. ‘I am glad that you see my point.’

  Glynn had not exactly conceded his point, but she held her peace because, little as she liked the sound of Coralyn, she had already come to her own conclusion – the woman could not be blamed for what had happened to Ranouf of Vespi. They came to the steps that would bring her back to the level of the Iridomi enclave, but Kerd continued on along the path, saying, ‘All chieftains’ children are fostered for periods of their youth to broaden them, but I think that my father felt I have been turned away from my proper calling by my time here, because I have extended it. He can not see past his own thwarted longing to be wavespeaking to understand that a man can love more than one thing. I, too, love the waves and the feeling of sending my mind into the currents and merging with their dance. But I love scrolls more. In the ocean of knowledge that they offer, one can also find an ebb and flow and a clean cold dance of light. And I love Unys.’ He gave her a sheepish look. ‘I am sorry. I tend to go on about such things. It maddens Unys. Do your parents approve your interest in scrolls?’

  ‘My father was a great reader,’ Glynn answered, without thought.

  ‘Was?’ Kerd asked. ‘He is dead?’

  Glynn was unsettled by the slip. She said, ‘My parents died in an accident, but I do not like to speak of it.’

  ‘Some pains are too great for words,’ Kerd murmured. ‘My mother, too, died in an accident.’ He stopped suddenly and Glynn saw with surprise that they had come to a door set into the wall of the cliff. Kerd reached for the metal handle and turned it, saying over his shoulder, ‘This is not a very respectable route for a noble, especially dressed as I am. But it will nicely serve the dual purpose of bringing us swiftly to the archives and keeping me away from the eyes of any nobles who are not at the hall.’

  Behind the door was a tunnel, well lit by lanterns. Kerd entered and Glynn followed, stifling slight claustrophobia at the thought of being underground again. But this tunnel was a long way from the cramped and filthy minescrape tunnels on Acantha, and it was not long before they came to a set of steps that brought them up to a wide branching of ways. At the end of the short passage chosen by the Vespian there were steps down again. And so on. Glynn had completely lost her sense of direction by the time they came back outside onto a path running between two buildings. Fortunately they had not reached the limit of the feinna link because, although Glynn was now confident that she could reach out and offer the needed closeness mentally, she would not have liked to try it having already drained her strength.

  ‘We are on the level of the archive,’ Kerd announced, pushing through a dingy door into a wide hallway of such startling opulence that Glynn stopped and stared around in wonder. The floor was made of highly polished interlocking stones in a creamy pink shade, and all along one wall were long, narrow, beautifully crafted windows that offered a view of the citadel and the sea beyond. Along the opposite walls were huge murals that had been designed to reflect the same view as the window opposite offered, though of course that view was of another era, so many details differed, but this alone would have made the walk fascinating. Glynn would have liked to study the differences between past and present, but Kerd had gone to the window and he beckoned to her to come and look. ‘It is almost shockingly beautiful, isn’t it, when you look at it from up here,’ he said softly. ‘One would never guess how much strife seethes down there.’

  ‘I should not be here,’ Glynn said apprehensively, glancing around.

  ‘No one will trouble you so long as you are with me, and besides, anyone who is anyone will be at the garden hall,’ Kerd said. Nevertheless, he must have remembered that he had yet to send a messenger, for he began to walk briskly along the corridor until he came to a smaller passage leading off it, hung with tapestries and floored in a thickly woven rug. Lanterns suspended at regular intervals from the roof had been lit to compensate for the lack of windows, and their muted light bestowed a jewel-like depth to the colours of the hangings. Most featured the Firstmade and his beloved Shenavyre and, skin prickling, Glynn was struck anew by the resemblance between Ember and the legendary figure. She had noticed it before of course, but never so strikingly as now, faced by a hundred different images of the long dead Sheannite woman. It was an eerie sensation to know that in this world had once lived a woman who looked so like her sister. A true twin.

  There was no ambivalence in the portrayal of Shenavyre in any of the tapestries. She was either a revered heroine or a tragic victim. The devious Shenavyre that peopled the Draaka’s publicly circulated chits, and the Shenavyre dupe that cavorted in songs assayed by some balladeers, was not shown, nor even hinted at here. The tapestries offered a powerful collective argument in favour of Darkfall’s view of Shenavyre, though draakan scholars would probably claim that of course it would, given the visions of Shenavyre were created by Sheannites, who would never portray their most famous daughter as anything but a pure and tragic figure.

  Glynn’s mind shifted to the visionweaver who had saved Tarsin from poisoning, and who seemed to be almost as mysterious and tragic a figure as Shenavyre had been, even to the point that she was ill. Another Sheannite. Maybe Sheannites had a built-in propensity for tragedy.

  ‘What do you think really happened to the visionweaver who saved Tarsin?’ Glynn asked impulsively.

  Kerd had slowed to study the tapestries too, but now he looked at her, a curious expression on his face. ‘I was at the hall the night she was last seen in the palace. The same night Bleyd disappeared from the cells. I saw Tarsin go over to speak with her. She was veiled as always so I could not tell how she responded to his words. Coralyn joined them. Then suddenly Tarsin rose and roared that the visionweaver would to go to the cells to see Bleyd, in order to try to evoke a further vision to learn the name of his accomplices. Coralyn later told me that the visionweaver volunteered to go because she had visioned of Alene in a compromising position. No doubt that vision was an hallucination brought about by her illness. Yet I would not have thought she was volunteering anything to look at her. The opposite. But Tarsin was determined. I told my misgivings to Coralyn who kindly explained to me that the visionweaver had only feared to go to the cells alone. That was what prompted Coralyn to offer her own personal legionnaires as escort.’

  ‘So this Iridomi escort took the visionweaver to the cells, and then what happened?’ Glynn asked curiously.

  ‘After some time, Tarsin sent Asa to see what was happening.’

  Glynn thought of the stumbling, unkempt man who had pushed past her in the garden. That had been Asa, after Kalide had interrogated him, obviously to learn what he had found when he went to the cells. Had Kalide learned anything from his torture, she wondered? Probably nothing more than he had told, if it was true that his real mistress was the Iridomi chieftain.

  ‘When Asa did not return,’ Kerd continued, ‘one of the red legionnaire captains went to the cells and found him unconscious at the top of the stairs. He had been hit on the back of the head. In the cells below, they found Coralyn’s special envoys, drugged. Some sort of olfactor gas, they say, which numbed the legionnaires’ minds and froze their muscles in place. They were actually standing up and staring ahead when they were found. The last they remembered was marching along the stone passage that would lead them to the cells. The door to the cell where Bleyd had been held was open, and there was no sign of a struggle, other than
a bloody smudge part way up the stairs where someone had fallen. There was a massive search of the palace but, when it became clear that neither Bleyd nor the visionweaver were here, the search shifted to the citadel. Then Bleyd’s wrist band was found torn off just outside the walls of the town, and legionnaires combed the wilderness. This has since been judged a false trail laid by Bleyd’s accomplices, since Bleyd was apparently seen within the town. The fear that he was going to try to board a ship made Tarsin order the Edict bell to be sounded, but the search has turned up nothing. It is beginning to be whispered that Bleyd must have left Ramidan immediately after his escape. Many say that the sightings of him in the citadel are no more than a ruse to keep anyone from turning their attention to the ship which might have carried him away, by choice or unwittingly.’

  ‘Do you think the visionweaver went with him?’ Glynn rephrased her original question.

  ‘I do not know. I saw her with Bleyd and I had the impression that she did not much like him. It is possible that she took the fuss of his escape as the moment in which she could disappear and make her way back to the Sheanna isles. Who could blame her when Tarsin would not allow her to leave? I was in the soulweaver’s apartment once when Alene and Feyt were speaking of it. I pitied the visionweaver, so small and frail she seemed, and so young to be dying. I offered to speak with Tarsin or to ask Unys to intercede but Alene reminded me that this would put Unys in a difficult position.’ Kerd stopped before a huge doorway framing two immense, ornate metal doors, saying, ‘The scroll archive.’