Darksong

by Isobelle Carmody

  To her amazed delight, the feinna was there, gazing up at her, the moon twinned in its eyes.

  Sisterling, it crooned and she gathered it into her lap and laid her cheek against its soft thick fur.

  ‘I know you’re not real but it is so good in this dark moment to look at you and hold you,’ Glynn whispered.

  All that can be dreamed can be real and sometimes that is the only beauty, the feinna said, and it stroked her cheek with a velvet paw. Beneath its love for her was a sadness so profound that it brought a mist of tears to her eyes. Soon you must go back, for your body needs you to survive this hurting.

  ‘I’m not afraid to die,’ Glynn said, shivering a little, for the feinna’s words brought back the awareness of her flesh, which was now being cut. Oh, the pain of returning would be terrible. Fear was like black ink trickling into her veins.

  Dying is not hard, the feinna sent. It is only surrendering to all things. It is only Becoming. But you must return before it is too late, for you are needed. Remember that fear claws deeper than pain.

  Needed? Glynn wondered, and this brought her an image of Ember, and the realisation that, even here on Keltor, Ember was dying. Somehow she had forgotten that. It was this that gave her the courage to will herself back into her own flesh …

  She screamed at the shock of pain so suddenly present in all parts of her body. But all that came from her mashed lips was a dribble of blood and a moan of agony. Her heart pounded and it hurt to breath in. She wanted to abandon her body very badly. It would be so easy, but if she did, she would never have the courage to return. She breathed in and then out carefully. It hurt. She had broken ribs. I have had them before in bouts, she told herself. The feinna self picked up the thought and detailed the injuries: a battered face, blackened and swollen eyes, three deep knife stabs just above her knee and seven shallow ragged slashes to her right arm. Four broken fingers and one savagely mashed foot, and a badly bruised ankle. No major bones broken, miraculously. No bad internal injuries, though her kidneys were bruised. First degree burns to her stomach and cheek and to one hand. She was bleeding in a dozen places but not to death; she was battered but not broken. So what had the feinna meant by saying that her body would die without her spirit?

  She needed no answer, for now her feinna senses detected the minute beginnings of infection from the knife Kalide had used and from his filthy hands and nails, from the chair she was sitting on and the fouled water he had thrown over her. This was the real danger. She discovered with wonder that her feinna abilities were instinctively holding the multiple infections at bay. But they would do so only while she was conscious.

  Slap! ‘What have you done!’ A woman’s voice, vibrating with fury. Glynn had not felt the slap. Was she too numb? She forced her swollen eyes open a slit and saw Kalide cringing before the towering fury of his mother, clad in a gleaming red gown. The headdress which clasped her scalp hid her baldness except for two side panels where the scalp was tattooed in an intricate pattern that glimmered as if darklinstone dust were embedded in her skin. ‘How many times have I told you to leave the head alone!’

  ‘I interrogated her …’

  ‘I told you to use drugs.’

  ‘I did but she would tell me nothing!’ Kalide snarled, directing a look of hatred at Glynn. ‘She claims to have had nothing to do with Aluade’s death. She pretends to know nothing after she was hit on the head outside Moon Song of Lidorn, until she woke this day in a rubbish trough.’

  ‘You drugged her and did this, and she admitted no secret plot or accomplices?’ Coralyn’s voice was sharply curious. ‘She admitted no connection to the missing mermod or the myrmidons?’

  ‘I … I interrogated her but she would not tell me …’

  ‘So you have said. Do not repeat yourself to me, Kalide. It is a bad habit of yours. And you did not interrogate her. I have only to look at this mess to know that you lost control, just as you did with Asa. Did it never penetrate your zeal that she might have been telling the truth!’

  Kalide scowled. ‘She is lying. And so was Rilka. I will have her and that mask-maker she was visiting brought here and I will interrogate them both …’

  ‘You will do nothing. Clover is an artist.’

  ‘That was what you said of the visionweaver,’ Kalide sneered. ‘But she never wove your face, did she, Mother?’

  Glynn felt the hot lava swell of Coralyn’s anger. ‘Do not make the same mistake as your brother, Kalide,’ she said softly.

  ‘I am sorry, Mother,’ he muttered.

  ‘Very well. But I did not come here to discuss the finer points of interrogation. I have come here to tell you that Duran will soon be within the cells of the Iridomi palace.’

  I will take the next ship to Iridom,’ Kalide cried eagerly.

  ‘No. Think of what happened when the myrmidon, Feyt, was questioned last night. One answer she gave, and then she passed into a swoon from which no one has been able to waken her. Asa used to say that the myrmidons have some sort of mental control which causes a coma so that they can not be forced to betray their sisters, and it may be so. I will need to find some means of stepping around whatever geis may have been set in Duran’s mind before she is questioned. Imagine what could be learned if that mind were laid bare.’

  ‘All of the myrmidon defences and tactics. All of their secret bolt holes …’

  ‘That and more, for as leader of the manwomen, she will know many of the secrets of the misty isle.’

  ‘Will you go to Iridom then?’

  ‘I will leave for Iridom as planned, after the betrothal ceremonies are completed. There is no particular hurry to question the myrmidon at this point. I have ordered that none will question her until I arrive, although I have given leave for the torturer to ply his arts on the myrmidons taken with her. Oh, and an Acanthan girl was taken. It seems she is the sister of Solen of Acantha who died when he fled from Jurass’s legionnaires. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Have her taken discreetly to our apartment. I do not want the Draaka to get wind of her presence here while she is in this state. You had better summon a white cloak to tend her wounds. Not one from the palace.’

  ‘You still mean to gift her to the Draaka, then?’

  ‘I will decide that after I have formally met with the Draaka this afternoon,’ she murmured. ‘Now I must go. See to it that the legionnaires redouble their efforts to find the mermod. It will simplify matters if he is dead and the myrmidon blamed for it. There was a small silence. ‘Better to drug the drone insensible so that she will be silent when she is moved.’

  There was the sound of movement nearby and Glynn withdrew mentally to prevent herself jumping involuntarily when she was touched. Something was forced between her bruised lips. Her feinna senses told her that it was a sedative and a painkiller so she allowed it to enter her system and the world faded.

  She woke to something wet pushing against her nose. She turned her head to escape it. There was pain in the movement but not as much as there should have been. Glynn opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying in a small but lavishly appointed bed chamber. A window, half shuttered, revealed enough of the sky for her to see that it was night, though probably not much past dusk. Coralyn was standing beside the bed splendidly clad in a sinuous green robe and matching jewelled headdress and behind her was Kalide, his expression sullen. He, too, had changed and his hair was sleek and freshly washed.

  ‘Do you understand my words, girl?’ Coralyn inquired. There were spots of colour on both cheeks and her eyes glittered with a mixture of excitement and fury that made Glynn’s feinna senses shrink. She nodded and winced. ‘Speak. It will be less painful,’ the chieftain suggested calmly.

  ‘I … under … stand,’ Glynn said, exaggerating the difficulty of speaking, but not by much. Coralyn frowned in irritation and moved away, returning with a pot of salve which she applied thickly to Glynn’s lip. Her touch was deft and
her fingers cool, and the pain in Glynn’s lips and nose faded, leaving only a slight, pleasant tingling sensation.

  ‘Are you a myrmidon?’ Coralyn asked suddenly, lightly.

  ‘No,’ Glynn said.

  ‘What were you doing in the wilderness?’ Kalide demanded.

  ‘Do not waste time on more foolish questions,’ his mother snapped. ‘I have told you that she could not have gone into the wilderness, for how could she have re-entered the citadel unseen with our legionnaires watching every gate into the city?’ She turned back to Glynn. ‘What does the Draaka want of you?’

  ‘I … do not know,’ Glynn murmured and then she let her eyes fall closed and feigned unconsciousness.

  ‘A pox on it,’ Coralyn muttered. ‘Well at least she can speak and it seems as if she retains her wits. We will see how sharp they are tomorrow. The Draaka told me this afternoon that the Unraveller is now on Iridom. Naturally the Chaos spirit is supposed to have told her this, just as it is supposed to have told her that I was directed to invite her delegation here because the Unraveller was here. Fanatics will rationalise anything that suits their delusions. She did not even see the arrogance of it. But it does not matter. The important thing is that the Draaka obviously imagines that I am under the control of her master. This knowledge may be exactly what we need to manipulate her. It may well be that we can also use Bleyd and the visionweaver, if they can be brought to heel as I have commanded. I have invited the Draaka to the banquet which precedes the formal betrothal ceremonies, and I will tell her that Duran was caught upon Iridom. I will suggest that the sword maid might have come there to meet with the Unraveller, and is being interrogated even now at my command as to his identity.’

  ‘Will she believe you?’

  ‘She will believe anything if it comes in the right form,’ Coralyn said coldly, then she smiled. ‘Tomorrow morning before the formal betrothal ceremony, I will scribe to her that the myrmidon named a number of people but died before we could ascertain which of them was the Unraveller. I will say that they are being held in cells and I will invite her to accompany me to Iridom to identify them. When we speak, for she will certainly seek me out after receiving such a message, I will tell her that I have her trakkerbeast and would fain travel to Iridom with her to identify the Unraveller as soon as my plans are underway. That should overcome her reluctance to allow me to command her followers.’

  ‘But the Draaka will expect to have the drone identify the Unraveller among these supposed comrades of Duran’s when we reach Iridom.’

  ‘Have no fear. I will find some hapless halfwit, and have him drugged into believing that he is the Unraveller. As to the girl, of course I cannot hand her over if she will upset my plans, however I have re-read the spy transcripts and the Draaka told me quite a lot that we did not know about her precious trakkerbeast. Indeed I am beginning to be interested in her. But we will speak further of her later.’

  ‘And if the Draaka accepts this Unraveller, what then?’

  The chieftain spread her hands. ‘She says that the Unraveller is to be killed upon Darkfall, so we will carry him and the draakira along with us. Why not, since it will secure the use of the draakan hoards at the very moment when we bring war to the hags and their protectors? Once it is over, the Draaka can undertake whatever ceremonies she wishes when she kills her Unraveller. With luck, she might need to set fire to a few soulweavers as part of her ritual. In fact, I think that I will have a dream when we land upon Myrmidor, in which the Chaos spirit commands us to roast all surviving soulweavers and myrmidons on a bonfire in its honour.’

  She and Kalide laughed long at this and Glynn heard the same chittering blackness behind it that she had seen in the Draaka’s eyes, and understood that the Iridomi chieftain was indeed possessed by the Chaos spirit, whether or not she believed in its existence.

  ‘What of the feinna?’ Kalide asked. ‘I thought it was bonded to her from what the transcripts said. I thought that if I hurt her enough, it would come to her.’

  ‘So that was the fire that prodded at you. You are a fool. This mind link between that beast and the girl is a myth, though it does give rise to the interesting question of the myth maker.’

  ‘But Mother, the feinna looked at me, I tell you. And its eyes changed colour!’

  Coralyn’s features were rigid with distaste. ‘Control yourself,’ she said icily, and something in her tone made Kalide flinch and step back from her. ‘I have told you before to control your appetites. The world is filled with beasts that can be mutilated without repercussions.’

  All at once Kalide looked bewildered. ‘Did I imagine its eyes changing? Was it another imagining?’

  ‘Shhhh,’ Coralyn stepped closer and folded him in her arms, stroking his smooth curls. ‘Perhaps it was. But once you are Holder, the visions and imaginings will cease to torment you.’

  ‘Are you sure? Sometimes I think that they are getting worse. What if …?’

  ‘Shusha,’ Coralyn crooned and Glynn saw Kalide slowly grow calm in her arms.

  ‘What shall I do, Mother?’ he whispered after a time. His voice was flat and serene, but also despairing.

  ‘You will obey me as you have always done, my darling, and everything will be well. Now, I must go and speak with Unys. She is baulking at her role again.’

  ‘I do not see why such a fuss must be made of her and that idiot, Kerd. I am the one who …’

  ‘Shhhh, my love. Remember, this betrothal banquet to welcome Fulig and the formal betrothing tomorrow are no more than a diversion and a sleight of hand. They will both bow down to you, as will all of Keltor, when you ascend the Holder’s throne.’

  ‘But what about Tarsin?’

  ‘Forget Tarsin,’ Coralyn said.

  segue …

  The watcher was drawn to the Unraveller’s world by the occurrence of something unexpected and utterly dangerous. The red-haired youth Sean was approaching the hospice where the clarinet player’s mother lay. The watcher dipped into the boy’s mind to discover why and was plunged into the memory of a dream the youth had experienced of flight on great, wide, violet wings. The dream was so richly intense and so densely embroidered in detail that it was like drinking some sort of narcotic elixir.

  The watcher withdrew to hover outside the youth, trying to calm its apprehensions.

  It pondered the impulse that had led it to this place so long ago, and to the exertion of powers which had created a nexus within which certain things could occur. Was it possible the nexus had begun to act as a focus?

  The youth was now speaking to a nurse, explaining that he wanted to see a boy who had been admitted. ‘The glue-sniffer,’ he said simply and bluntly. ‘They told me at the hospital that he was sent here.’

  The nurse blinked, then nodded. ‘You know the boy then? We have been wanting to identify him …’

  But the youth shook his head. ‘I don’t know his real name. I only know him from the street. He called himself Shadow.’

  ‘Apt. Do you know where he came from? His family might …’

  ‘I don’t think he has any family. I mean, any that would care about him. He said once that his mother had died and another time he was talking in his sleep about his father. I think he used to bash him.’ The watcher saw the memory of the child tossing and moaning in a borrowed sleeping-bag on the floor of the red-haired boy’s bedroom.

  The nurse nodded vaguely. ‘There were indications of savage abuse from a very early age on the x-rays. Poor little kid.’ She drew herself up. ‘Technically we’re not allowed to admit anyone without the permission of family, but in the case of the boy, perhaps it might help him to hear your voice.’

  ‘The hospital said he was in a coma and that they sent him here because he won’t be waking up.’

  ‘Some do wake up,’ the nurse said brightly; the unspoken but obvious addition was: but not many. ‘What is your name? I need to fill in the visitors’ log.’

  ‘Sean Holland.’

  ‘Good,’ she sai
d vaguely. The youth noticed absently how she kept her fingers neatly together when she wrote and then laid the pen down. His habit of noting detail had become so intense that it now seemed distracting to him.

  Dipping into the boy’s mind as they walked, the watcher saw that it had been strangely easy for the boy to gain access to this place, despite all of the wards it had set and despite the sort of place that had grown here because of the wards; a place of rules and locked doors and careful order. But things happened in a nexus which could happen nowhere else. Nothing was quite impossible there. Space bent under the pressure of bearing the weight of so many important events and things connected oddly or even distorted. Perhaps the nexus had gone from being closed to open, in which case, instead of closing itself from the world, as it had been intended to do, it had begun to summon extraordinary people and events and potentials.

  The unconscious child lay curled in a foetal position that only the watcher recognised as being identical to the way he had lain when the two women had found him under the bridge. He was thinner than ever and terribly pale with black bruises under his eyes. A darkness hummed in his aura which was shot with black and lit intermittently and almost impossibly by flashes of pure white. It was as if the boy was some sort of metaphorical battlefield for the two opposing forces. The watcher dared not enter the boy’s dreams for Chaos raged in him through a direct link to the Void.

  ‘Shadow?’ Sean called softly. There was no evident response, although the watcher saw the boy’s aura shudder and pulse white and then blue. The youth looked at the nurse. ‘Can I touch him?’ She nodded and he reached out and laid a finger on the boy’s cheek. The flesh burned under his finger and his breath hissed out in dismay. He shifted his hand and shook the narrow shoulder. It was like shaking a fresh-killed dog, the movement flaccid and heavy in some sickeningly fluid way.