The Singer of All Songs (18 page)

After a pause, Darrow went on. ‘Did you not hear him by the river?
Let us prolong the hunt a little longer.
It’s a game to him. He is more than halfway to his goal. It is finished.’

Calwyn’s heart was pounding. She reached out a hand to Darrow, but he flinched as if her fingers were made of ice. ‘Halfway is not the whole way!’ she cried. ‘He still has to find the Power of Beasts, and the Power of Winds. And the Power of Becoming. You said that nobody knows the chantments for the Power of Becoming, or even what people were entrusted with them by the Ancient Ones. He’ll never find them.’

‘Depend upon it, there is some land, some people, in some corner of Tremaris, where those secrets are known. And he will find them. He is like a hunting dog to the scent of magic. If they are there to be found, he will find them. Or perhaps the Powers he has already will be enough to draw the others to him, like ants to honey.’

Calwyn stamped her foot. ‘I think you
want
him to become the Singer of all Songs! Why don’t you just go back and help him? Why are you giving up so easily?’

Darrow rounded on her. ‘I? I give up too easily? You are a fine one to make that charge, Daughter of Taris! You who handed over the Clarion, our last hope, without so much as a whimper. Did he win you over with his fine words and his princely manners? How dare you speak to me of giving up!’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ Calwyn shouted. ‘Do you forget the danger you were in? How could I have borne it, if he had killed you?’ The words almost choked her, but anger swept her on. ‘You should be thanking me, for saving your life! How many times is that now? Three, or is it four?’

Darrow said nothing for a moment, staring ahead at the horizon. Then he turned his grey-green gaze to her. ‘I would rather you had let me perish four times over, and saved Xanni just once.’

A sob burst from Calwyn’s throat. Groping blindly, she pushed her way pastTonno along the length of the boat to the prow, where she hung over the edge as far as she could, so that the fine spray from the waves splashed at her face, and she could no longer tell the difference between the salt of the sea and the salt from her own tears.

Presently she became aware that someone had lowered himself to sit beside her, and then she felt a hand on her shoulder. Roughly she shrugged it away.

‘I am sorry for what I said.’

But she didn’t answer, and after a few moments she heard Darrow struggle to his feet again and limp away.

That night she was woken by the sound of voices overhead: Tonno’s angry rumbling, and the plaintive squeak of Trout. Moonlight streamed in through the little porthole above her bunk; she had forced it open to let out some of the heat that built up in her small cabin during the day, and now snatches of Trout and Tonno’s argument were carried in on the cool night wind. She lay still for a moment, listening:
not too late to
turn around – listen to what a pipsqueak like you says – not my fault your
brother –

Calwyn heard Tonno spitting onto the deck, and then an inarticulate roaring, and desperate shouts. She rolled off her bunk and headed out onto the deck, clutching at the rungs of the stepladder as
Fledgewing
swayed beneath her. The boat was pitching more violently than usual; at first she thought they must have caught a stronger wind, but once she was up on the deck she saw thatTonno andTrout were wrestling over control of the tiller. Trout must have caught Tonno off his guard, or he would never have got a hand to it, but now he struggled breathlessly to hang on, pale and frightened, but utterly determined. Tonno’s face distorted with rage as he tried to prise Trout’s hands from the tiller, but Trout kicked out and winded him so that he doubled over gasping.

‘Stop! Stop it!’ cried Calwyn, running forward. The wind knocked her sideways; the moonlight dimmed as if a lantern had gone out, and she missed her footing on the plunging deck.

‘Get away, lass!’ Tonno bellowed, staggering toward Trout, who was hauling recklessly on the tiller, trying to turn back. But that meant sailing against the wind; the timbers screamed and the canvas of the sails cracked like whips, and the boat tilted onto its side so that Calwyn had to grab at the cabin wall to stop herself falling.

‘Trout!’ Darrow’s voice was quiet, but somehow they all heard it over the roar of the wind and the fierce slapping of the waves. He was balanced in the hatchway, swaying with the ship. ‘Let Tonno have the tiller.’

‘No!’Trout clutched at the tiller with both hands, his body bent over the shaft.

‘Give him the tiller, or we will all be drowned. There is a storm rising.’

Calwyn looked up. One by one the stars were being eaten up by darkness; clouds gathered swiftly, blotting out the moons and the spangled sky. It was true: a storm was rising all around them, howling over the sea. She could hear someone’s sobbing breath, and realised it was Trout. His head was lowered, the bright discs of his lenses suddenly darkened. Calwyn heard herself whisper in agony,
oh be quick, be quick!
There was a distant low rumbling of thunder, and she felt the first splashes of rain on her cheek.

‘Come, Trout, be sensible.’ Darrow’s voice was as calm and unhurried as if Trout had the whole night to consider his answer, as if
Fledgewing
were not leaping up and down against the waves like a goat bucking on a mountain track. ‘If you wish, we can put you ashore at the next land we come to, and you can make your way back to Mithates.’

‘Aye, and perhaps we’ll put you ashore too!’ shoutedTonno, turning on Darrow suddenly. ‘You and your accursed chantments! Or mebbe I should put you overboard now, and let you swim back to Merithuros where you came from.’

‘Tonno,
stop it
!’ screamed Calwyn. ‘In the name of the Goddess, take care!’

Abruptly Trout let go of the tiller. At once
Fledgewing
twisted back under the force of the wind, and they all staggered. Trout fell to his knees, and began to crawl back toward the hatchway, one hand blindly shielding his lenses from the rain that splashed down now in earnest on the deck. Tonno leapt for the tiller, and bawled afterTrout, ‘
Boy
! Stay on deck! We need all hands now!’

‘Trout, Calwyn, with me.’ Darrow was still astonishingly calm. ‘Help me trim the sail.’

Calwyn hauled on the ropes as Darrow directed her, and fastened them as she’d been shown. Across the deck she could see Trout doing the same. For all their quarrelling, now they must work together, like it or not. The mainsail was growing smaller and smaller, giving the wind less canvas to catch, and
Fledgewing
bucked less violently before the storm. Calwyn could sense how the tiller had eased under Tonno’s big sure hands. The boat moved more smoothly, but fast, so fast, through the water. The rain was driving down hard on her back, and streamed into her eyes. Then Calwyn heard a noise she hadn’t heard for many days: the deep uneven boom of the sea crashing against rocks, somewhere ahead on the port side. She yelled out to Darrow, ‘Land ahead!’

‘We are at the Mouth,’ he shouted back.

She nodded to show that she had understood, her hands still busy trying to fasten down the many tie points that held the sail in place, her fingers slippery and clumsy with the rain, and the deck unsteady beneath her feet. Xanni had told her about the Mouth – it seemed a lifetime ago – the place where the Bay of Sardi joined the wide Great Sea beyond. It was a narrow and dangerous gap, flanked by cliffs, and the strait between them was dotted with treacherous rocks that sailors called the Teeth. Some of them thrust high above the water, but others lurked just below the waves. She glanced up, squinting against the rain, and saw one of the rocks slide past, silent and sinister, looming up out of the dark then vanishing once more. It was so close she could have touched it with her hand. But there was no time to feel frightened; already Darrow was calling to her to help him batten down the cabin where the water was getting in. She remembered with a pang that she had left open the porthole in her cabin too. All her bedding, all her clothes, would be drenched and damaged.

As she and Darrow struggled with the hatchway, she put her mouth close to his ear and yelled, ‘Will we be past the Mouth soon?’

‘Not past,’ he shouted. ‘Through.’

Calwyn gaped at him. ‘Into the Great Sea?’

He couldn’t have heard, but he saw the movement of her lips, and gave a nod. Then he was gone, hauling himself along the tilted deck to where Trout was struggling to stow some ropes that jumped and slithered from his grasp as though they were alive. Another of the great sharp rocks loomed up out of the dark, then another;Tonno’s face as he hung onto the tiller was set with a scowl of grim concentration. The storm was too strong for them to do anything but let it drive them through the Mouth. Tonno and Xanni had gone through the Mouth before; she had heard them speak of their voyage north to Nesca and Liminis, as far as Gellan. But they had only done it once before, and that was not in a storm, and not in darkness.

Suddenly
Fledgewing
was climbing a sheer cliff of water, flecked with white foam, rearing up and up; then they dived down the other side, skidding into a glassy chasm. Without warning, something smacked Calwyn off her feet and sent her sprawling to the deck, the breath knocked out of her. Helplessly she slid toward the edge of the boat and the yawning abyss of the waves, desperately scrabbling for something, anything, to cling to. But now
Fledgewing
rolled the other way, and she slithered back, cracking her head on the cabin wall, dazed and drenched and sobbing for breath. Tonno shouted at her to get up, to make herself fast, but she could only clutch the cabin railing as the next wave threw itself onto them. Above the scream of the storm there came the most terrifying sound of all: a tremendous creaking groan, louder than the nearest thunder, a noise that made the whole boat shudder from bow to stern. Calwyn heard Trout shriek, then the terrible
crack
as the mast snapped in two and crashed down onto the deck in a tangle of wet canvas and ropes. And then everything was chaos.

When the storm cleared, it was morning and they were adrift on the Great Sea. It had been morning for a long time, behind the clouds and rain, without their noticing. But now they were able to see exactly what damage had been done to
Fledgewing
, and to each other.

The top half of the mast was gone. There was a great gap in the coaming where it had crashed down, half-on and half-off the deck. With the mast had gone the mainsail, cut free and then washed overboard in the desperate panic to clear the Teeth. Trout had a gash on his forehead where he had been struck by flying debris. The others were all bruised and battered to varying degrees, andTonno had difficulty breathing after a crack that had broken at least one of his ribs. But the greatest catastrophe was the loss of the mast. Until they reached land, and land where tall trees grew, they had no way to repair it. With the big sail gone, they could still limp along, but it would be all but impossible to turn and sail against the winds and the currents, back toward the Bay of Sardi.

Down in the cabin, Darrow and Tonno debated in low, fierce voices. No one had even begun to clear up the mess below decks; if everything had been properly stowed away in the lockers, it would not have been so bad, but food and plates and cups and clothing had been flung about and trampled in the confusion of the storm.

Darrow knocked a stump of candle from the bottom of his boot and hurled it across the cabin. ‘We must have a new mast. Without it, we are drifting, as good as helpless.’

Tonno shook his head. ‘We must turn back to the west, try to run into the headlands of Kalysons.’

‘That will take too long. And even if we reach the cape, the currents are too swift there, we will never be able to land. Better to keep going east. We are bound to come across the Isles of Doryus before long.’

‘Finding the Isles is like finding one grain of sand hidden on a beach! I don’t know these waters. We must go back,’ insisted Tonno.

‘I have sailed this sea before, and I tell you the Isles are strung out across the Eastern Sea like the beads of a necklace.’

‘But who’s to say we’re in the Eastern Sea? By now we might have been swept into the Southern Straits, or even the Outer Sea.’

‘That’s absurd

–’ ‘Who’s the sailor here, you or I?’

Back and forth they argued, while Trout and Calwyn sat up on deck, one on either side of the tiller. Calwyn grasped it firmly; it made little difference to the direction they drifted, but at least she felt as though she were doing something. She had no wish to join Darrow and Tonno’s dispute. The brief truce of the storm had dissolved again; everyone was quarrelling, worse than ever.

‘Why don’t we turn back?’ said Trout. ‘We can’t go on drifting like this, in the open sea.’

‘The current won’t let us turn back. We have no choice but to go on.’

‘Go on into what?’Trout waved his hand at the vast expanse of empty ocean.

Calwyn didn’t answer; she had no answer to give. She didn’t know what lay ahead. Perhaps they would go on and on for ever into the wastes of the sea, never touching land, until they starved or died of thirst, helpless and drifting. She tightened her grip on the tiller. ‘Darrow and Tonno will find a way.’

‘Your
chantments
don’t seem to be much help to you now,’ said Trout gloomily, but with a trace of smugness.

‘The ocean’s too deep here for Darrow to use his powers,’ said Calwyn shortly. She had been racking her brains all day long for some way to use her own arts to aid them. But she could think of nothing.

‘We could take what’s left of the mast, and splice it in half. Except it wouldn’t be strong enough to hold up the sails. Or we could make a pair of giant oars. If we had anything to make oars with. Or we could catch a sea serpent, and it could tow us to land.’ Trout whipped off his lenses and polished them on his shirt, as he often did when he was agitated.

‘Have you suggested any of these things toTonno?’ Calwyn could imagine his reaction.

‘I
think
he was quite impressed with the idea about the sea serpent.’