Firesong (31 page)

Don’t make me do this, Kess.

Let go
, she answered him.
Be still
.

I won’t hurt you, Kess. But I won’t let you stop me.

He summoned up greater powers, and bore down upon her, to break her resistance. Under such an assault, he expected her to crumple to her knees, but she didn’t move by so much as a shiver. Then, to his shock, she struck back. The mind-blow made him stagger.

Kess! Don’t fight me! I don’t want to hurt you.

You can’t hurt me, Bo.

Why are you doing this?

To make you understand.

She struck him again. Again he staggered back. Tears came to his eyes, not of pain but of distress. He turned to Jumper, and saw how he watched them with a look on his face that showed he had expected this.

This must be it, Bowman thought. This must be the final test of my training. I must lose all and give all. I must even lose my sister, who is half myself. I must be free to do what I was born to do.

Armed with this new conviction, he called up all the power he possessed, and hurled a blow at Kestrel that sent her flying across the cave, rolling and tumbling to crash against the rock walls on the far side. As soon as he had done it, he made himself go still, and quietly sang his own song, to restore the power he had unleashed.

Kestrel stood up, and stepped softly back towards him.

CRACK! An explosive force struck Bowman and lifted him up into the air, hurling him twenty, thirty feet up. He struggled to slow his fall, and gained control just before his feet touched the ground.

At once he threw a mind-blow at Kestrel, and felt her meet it with a wall of power, and strike back. He brushed her strike aside, and hit again, and again, hammering at her defences. She was strong: much stronger than he had expected. He changed tactics, and focusing all his power into one narrow beam, he drilled into her mind, so that he could possess and subdue it. Instead of meeting this attack with a resisting mind, she gave way at once. He found himself tumbling into her mind, through curtains of longing and fear and ferocity and love, through the part of her that loved him, into a far place he had never known before, where there was a vast stillness.

Here his attack ended. There was nothing to strike, no enemy to subdue, no prisoners to take. Instead it was his own furious power-driven mind that was subdued, and taken prisoner. He knew he could not compete against this, any more than he could sweep away the ocean, or hurt the sky.

It has to be this way, my brother. Do you see it now?

Gently, Kestrel released him from the fortress of her stillness.

I’m the one who will go
, she said.
I’m the one who will die.

Bowman looked around him. The Singer people were all gone, but for Jumper. He could hear their song still. They had not gone far. He tasted salt on his lips, and realised tears were streaming down his cheeks. He heard his own voice, saying, lost and afraid,

‘I would have given all I have.’

So you shall.

‘What am I to do?’

Go back to our people. They need you.

Bowman wanted to ask, For what? But no words came. Then Jumper spoke, in his slow kind voice.

‘You’re the meeting place.’

The meeting place? An odd thing to say, and yet familiar. He had never heard it before, and yet he understood it. The understanding broke through in a rush, like the shock of a suddenly-opened door that reveals an unexpected road ahead, a different road, a new vision of the future.

Of course! There must be a meeting place. Was he not a child of the prophet, trained by the Singer people? And had he not been touched by the Morah? He was the meeting place of the passions of mankind, of the hopes and the fears, the kindness and the cruelty. His destiny was not to be the saviour, but to be saved.

In that flash of revelation, he saw the simple truth of his childhood journey into the halls of the Morah. That moment of ecstatic power and shameful weakness, that knowledge that had never left him since, that willed and guilty union with the Morah’s million eyes, that had been the entire and necessary purpose of his coming there. Not the saving of Aramanth, which had not been saved. Not the return of the voice to the wind singer, which had been burned. All that had endured from that perilous journey was the silver voice that Kestrel wore round her neck, and his own contamination by the Morah.

He almost laughed out loud as he saw it all.

Sirene watches over you
. It was written on the old map. Oh, they were clever, these Singer people. They were hunting bigger game than an old wooden tower, built long ago. They had been preparing the next generation, that would build the world again, after the wind on fire.

First you destroy, then you rule.

‘I’m the meeting place!’

Jumper watched, and saw that the boy was ready now.

‘We have given you all we have to give. Use it well.’

Kestrel had followed her brother’s tumble of understanding, and now she too understood. Her hand reached inside her shirt and drew out the silver voice. It burned her as she touched it, but she wasn’t hurt. This is what we found the voice for, she was thinking. Not for the wind singer. For now. For this. To lead me to the wind on fire.

She looked up at her brother, and saw the gleam of tears on his cheek. She heard the song of the Singer people filling the air above.

‘They wait for me.’

Jumper bowed his kind old head. Then silently he floated up into the air, and left brother and sister alone together beside the tomb of the prophet, to say their farewells.

Now that the moment had come, Bowman found himself at a loss.

‘I can’t live without you, Kess.’ It wasn’t a plea. Bowman understood what was to happen. It was a statement of his own conviction. ‘If you die, I’ll die.’

‘But if you live, I’ll live.’

She came up close before him, and he bowed his head, and they touched brows. Standing quietly in this way, as they had done countless times since they were very small, they let their fears and dreams join, and be shared.

‘I’ll never leave you,’ she said to him. ‘Feel me now.’

He felt her, entering her mind with his, deep, deeper than he had ever done before, deeper than he had thought possible, and deeper still. She opened before him, and fell away, emptying herself even as he sought her, until he was lost in her mind, and still he had not touched her. He no longer knew where to look. She was gone. The form of his sister still stood before him, his hands could hold her, but she herself, all that he knew of her, was gone.

‘Kess! Where are you?’

‘Here, Bo. Here.’

He turned like a fool, expecting to see her behind him, but there was no one.

‘Where?’

‘I’m with you!’

He found her then: so close that he couldn’t see her or touch her or sense her in any way, except as part of what he saw and touched and sensed for himself.

‘Do you feel me now?’

That was his own voice speaking, and yet it was Kestrel’s. He looked at her, smiling before him, and saw her dear face: only it was his own face he saw, and he was seeing with her eyes.

‘Yes. I feel you now.’

‘We go together,’ said her voice that was also his. And his voice answered, that was her voice,

‘Always together.’

Hand in hand, they rose up into the moonlight, past the sheer rock walls of the cave, to the sloping hillsides of Sirene. Here the Singer people waited in their thousands, covering the slopes entirely, so that the island seemed to be formed of robed men and women, clustered close together. They looked west, towards the mountains of the mainland, and their song grew stronger all the time.

While Bowman and Kestrel had been down in the cave, the night had slipped away. Now behind them the first light of winter dawn was glowing on the eastern horizon. Then as they waited and watched and sang their wordless song, a wind came rippling over the sea. The wind flurried their robes and clattered the leaves in the olive trees.

‘It’s time,’ said Jumper.

All together, like some vast flock of birds, the Singer people lifted up into the air and letting the wind take them, flew west over the water. Kestrel and Bowman flew with them, and Mist the cat, following the long stream of robed men and women as they skimmed the roiling sea to the far shore. As they flew, they sang. The ever-strengthening wind blew their song away, but no one cared. They sang not to be heard, but to be changed.

Bowman knew now he had no part in this. His life lay elsewhere. There were no more words to say. There comes a time in partings when all that is left to be done is to part.

‘Are you coming, Mist?’

Bowman spun himself round in the air for one last look at Kestrel, one last salute, and then peeled away to the north, flying fast and straight like an arrow towards the mountain pass. Mist, taken by surprise, lagged behind for a while, mewling crossly as he paddled the air.

‘Wait for me!’

The Singer people paid no attention to his leaving. The wind was come, they had begun their last journey, their eyes were on the mountains, their minds on their song. Only Albard, who had once been the Master, turned and watched Bowman all the way out of sight.

18

Into the beautiful land

B
owman flew over the snow-covered plains, a little higher than the treetops, driving himself towards the mountains as fast as he could go. He never stopped to think how strange and glorious it was that he could fly, that the woods and fields, farms and villages, slipped past below him almost as soon as they came into view; nor did he think of Kestrel, who he would never see again. Instead all his attention was on his people waiting at the mountain pass, who needed him; and on the suffering of the land he was passing, the unknown world unrolling below him.

This was the time of cruelty, cruelty beyond control, cruelty that fed on cruelty and begot cruelty. Village after village was burned and looted. Haystacks still smouldered in the snow-bound fields, and cattle lay dead, abandoned, prey to carrion birds. Here and there Bowman saw people moving through the ruins, but they were scavengers, not survivors, and even as he flew past overhead he could smell their violence and their fear. He passed over a large farmstead that had not been destroyed, and saw that its terrified owners had turned it into a fortified camp, and huddled within its walls, not knowing when the marauding gangs would attack again. Not far from this farm, a brake of trees was burning, a stripe of bright fire across the snow. Beyond the burning trees, some children were making their way up the high road, small children, no more than six and seven years old. Bowman felt the waves of panic that surrounded them, but he could do nothing for them. He flew on, knowing the misery below was too great for his own small powers, but he felt sick and angry at the waste of the world, and longed for the coming of the wind on fire.

Now as he flew he saw a column of mounted soldiers, and riding after them a ragged following of men on horseback. He saw them ride into a village, and torch the houses. He saw the hiding villagers come running out, and saw the horsemen ride them down, and heard their screams of terror as they fell. This was one of the free companies, the remains of defeated armies, that now roamed the land destroying all before them. Here was the horror of these times: that men killed and burned not for gain, not for power, not even for pleasure, but because they craved destruction. They had lost everything. Now they were determined that everything should be lost. If their lives were ravaged, let the world be ravaged. They who had received no mercy gave no mercy. As their victims screamed, so the killers screamed, until it was impossible to tell who was suffering the more.

So Bowman passed over the grieving land, his sensing mind reaching down to embrace all the people below. He let himself feel not only the fear, but the hatred; not only the grief of those whose loved ones had been killed, but the passionate anger of their killers. He wept for those who suffered and for those, almost equally helpless, who inflicted the suffering. I understand you all, he called down to them. I am the guilty one who will be saved for you and with you, so that the world may start again.

Ira Hath sat in her litter, framed by the V of hills, and looked out over the homeland. The red sky of dawn was gone. The snow cloud, with its flurry of slow-falling flakes, had blown by. But she had seen it, just as in her dream, and now she could go. It had been hard holding on for these last days. She had become so weak at the end she had not been able to eat, and she drank only because Hanno poured water over her mouth. Most of it trickled away down her chin, but some passed her lips. Now, as if her eyes had waited only to see the homeland, she found she was losing her ability to see. People’s faces were blurred, and although she knew the sun was rising, the sky seemed to be growing darker. She could hear, when Hanno spoke to her, or Pinto, but she could no longer speak in reply. She lacked the strength. How surprising to find that mere speech required so much work from so many muscles. So instead, to show she heard and understood, she gave a very slight pressure, with the tip of one finger. Hanno sat beside her, her hand in his, and he could feel her movement and understand her. The code they had established, without ever once discussing it, was this: a movement of her finger meant yes. No movement meant no.

Ira felt her own dying very clearly now. She was not afraid. She had played her small part in life, and she was willing to go. Her body felt light, no longer under her control. She could not stand upright unaided, and even if she had been able to, this rising wind would have blown her away like a winter leaf.

So it was come now. She too must sing her song to the end. It was hard to leave her dear Hannoka, and her children; but harder still to stay. And why linger? Her little ones were grown big, she must move aside, so that they could blossom into life. This is why we have children, she thought, smiling to herself. So that we can die gracefully.