The Singer of All Songs (31 page)

She didn’t stop to think; in that instant nothing mattered but the terrible danger to Darrow. She forgot that in doing Samis’s bidding, she might give him absolute power. She forgot her misery and despair, forgot that they had come here to defeat Samis, and yet at every step he had tricked them into helping him. Everything left her mind but the need to save Darrow.

She raised her hands, threw back her head, and sang. The craft of ice-call was deep in her blood, she had been learning it longer than she could remember, and to exercise it now was as simple and effortless as curling her hand to grasp a cup. She sang the ancient chantment, slow, inexorable, precise, older than fire, older than life, the power of cold and darkness and death.

As she sang, shadows appeared in the chamber. Between the bright tongues of flame there grew deep pools of pitch blackness, as black and fathomless as the spaces between the stars on a night of moondark. Wreaths of cold air crept across the ground, and breaths of mist rose where the flames met the darkness. Faintly, as if in a dream, she heard a voice shouting her name, calling her to stop. But she could not stop. The flames still writhed around Darrow, and she must put them out. Swaying, her eyes tight shut, she sang.

‘Power of Ice, I command thee! All of the Powers, the lesser and the greater, obey their master!’ The hum of the spinning sphere rose to an unbearable scream as Samis’s voice echoed through the chamber. ‘I call upon the first Power! The Power of all that is, and everything that is not, the Great Power, the unknown and unknowable, the mystery that lies beyond our understanding –’

But before the sorcerer could cry out the final words
I
command thee!
there was a deafening explosion as the great silver sphere burst apart. Calwyn’s eyes flew open. A flood of brightness, of light and song mingled, erupted above their heads. Calwyn gave a cry, and thrust her hands into the air, just as she had done when she was a little child in Antaris, running out to greet the first snowfall, holding up her face and her hands to the sky in sheer delight.

With a roar that shivered through the ground, the tower split outwards like the cracking of a seedpod. Silver segments peeled back, curving slowly out and down to the ground, silver arc after silver arc, thrusting the floor of the chamber upwards, so they stood at the heart of a great gleaming flower.

Calwyn saw that it was night. The mists had cleared, revealing the sky spangled with stars and the three moons shining down on the ruined city. And now she felt the light and the shadow and the song and the silence raining down on her, soaking into her being. And when at last it died away, she lowered her face and looked around at the others, and she saw the same uncomprehending happiness on their faces that glowed on her own.

The cage that trapped Tonno and Mica had fallen away, and Mica leapt to Calwyn and threw her arms around her. Dazed, Calwyn hugged back. Trout stood nearby, looking sheepish, a slingshot dangling from one hand.

Tonno said, ‘Samis –’

Calwyn had forgotten about him, but now she saw the fallen figure in the centre of the chamber. The mighty sorcerer lay crumpled and diminished, all power gone out of him, an ordinary man. Darrow knelt by his side.

Calwyn rushed over. ‘Is he – ?’

‘Dead,’ said Darrow abruptly, and he drew the grey cloak over the face that gaped up toward the sky, hiding the blank, staring eyes. One hand protruded from the cloak, the golden ring with its square red stone glimmering dark as blood. Darrow eased it from the lifeless finger and held it up. ‘The Ring of Hathara,’ he said softly, and slipped it into his pocket. He saw Calwyn’s shocked look. ‘It never belonged to him. It is an ancient object of power, from the first days of Merithuros. I will take care of it, for now.’

‘What happened?’Tonno shook himself, like a dog coming out of water.

‘I think it was me,’ said Trout shyly. He held up the slingshot. ‘You were all acting so strangely, seeing things that weren’t there. Tonno and Mica were in that net thing. And then Calwyn was singing, and she looked – well, the way she looked, it was the end of everything. And so
someone
had to do
something
. And there was only me. And this was all I had –’

‘It was the fire – Darrow would have been burned alive –’ stammered Calwyn.

Trout shook his head. ‘I did see the flames when
he
blew the Clarion. But they weren’t going to hurt anyone. They were – well, they were
beautiful
, I suppose.’ A dreamy look drifted across his freckled face.

Tonno grunted. ‘You didn’t think of shooting Samis, instead of that silver ball?’

Abruptly Trout stuffed the slingshot back in his pocket. ‘No. I didn’t want to do that. I mean, that was the logical thing to do. But it didn’t seem right. And anyway,’ he added candidly, ‘I’m not that good a shot, and the sphere was a bigger target.’

‘The sphere was the focus.’ Darrow looked up. ‘It bound the chantments together. You chose wisely, Trout.’

The Voiced Ones used this place in ancient times.
Halasaa had flung himself to the ground, exhausted, but glowing with joy and exertion.
Here they called upon their gods. The sorcerer knew this.

‘Trout,’ said Darrow. ‘Come here a moment. You say that we saw things that were not there? But you didn’t see these things? Calwyn, sing a note, if you please. The highest note you can.’

Obediently Calwyn sang.

Trout shook his head apologetically. ‘I can’t hear it. I’m a bit deaf, you see. There was an explosion in my workshop about a year ago, and it hurt my ears. I can’t hear anything really high, like whistles, or insects.’

Darrow caught Calwyn’s eye and gave a small smile. ‘So you will never hear the chantments of seeming, the highest pitched of all the chantments.’

‘No wonder you never believed!’ Calwyn began to laugh, weak with relief and happiness. Her head still swam with the memory of Halasaa’s dance, and the chorus of life and being that it had summoned into her awareness. She felt dazzled, as if sparks still darted across her inner vision. Even the departed glow of Samis’s life seemed to echo somewhere in her consciousness. It would take some time before this new sense of hers lay quiet and harmonious again.

Mica jerked her thumb at the body that lay covered in the grey cloak. ‘What Trout did – that killed him?’

Unexpectedly Darrow said, ‘Even without Trout, I believe he would not have succeeded.’

‘What do you mean?’ exclaimed Calwyn.

This life is a dance, not a battle.
Halasaa’s eyes were closed, but the look of exaltation had not left him.
The Powers cannot be
fought or conquered. We must dance within their bounds. There can be no
conqueror.

‘Speak plain, can’t you?’ growled Tonno.

The sorcerer thought himself stronger than the Voiced Ones of ancient
times. But he was overreaching himself.

‘His own greed would have been his undoing,’ said Darrow. ‘He was not the Singer of all Songs, and he knew it, for all his fine words. If he had called upon the Great Power at the last, it would have consumed him.’

‘Are you certain?’ Calwyn cried. ‘Is that why we followed him here, why you wanted to wait?You knew he would destroy himself –’

Darrow passed a hand over his eyes. ‘I guessed, and hoped. But I am glad that, in the end, that hope was not put to the test.’ He turned his back on the still and silent shape. ‘Enough. Let us leave him here.’

‘Aye,’ said Tonno. ‘Leave him. He’s gone where Xanni is.’ And a look of pain crossed his face.

Halasaa opened his eyes.
Do not envy him. Change will come in
its own time. It is happening now, all the time. Let it flow as it should. You
too will join the Great Power, when your day comes.

Quietly, one by one, they moved away from their circle, to wander slowly between the curved silver petals that had formed the tower, or to sit on the fallen stones nearby.

‘Look! The Clarion!’ Trout pounced on the little battered horn where it had rolled away across the stones. For a moment he hesitated, holding it in his hands; he looked to Darrow for guidance, but Darrow had walked away by himself. Trout said to Calwyn, half-defensive, half-defiant, ‘He did steal it from me, you know.’

‘You found it, Trout,’ said Calwyn. ‘Back in Mithates, before Samis ever did. If anyone has a right to be its guardian, surely it must be you.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Trout, a little shyly, and he tucked the horn deep inside his shirt, next to his heart.

The air was cool and fresh on their skin, everything washed clean and bright in the moonlight, as if a storm had passed. There was a fountain on the far side of the square, filled with rainwater. Calwyn and Mica wandered away from the others to take a drink, and Mica washed the blood from her arm where the barbed net had scratched it.

Calwyn said, ‘I think I understand it now. I think Samis never learned the chantments of ice-call in Antaris, after all. Perhaps Marna was right, and no man can sing them.’

‘Then how come he could sing seeming?Them chantments are higher’n yours,’ said Mica.

‘Darrow explained that to me. He could lift his voice out of the ordinary pitch. But that’s not a natural way of singing. He could sing the very highest chantments of seeming like that, but perhaps not the songs of ice, that are meant for women’s voices. Or perhaps the priestesses wouldn’t teach him. But, you see,
that’s
why he kept luring us on.’

Mica’s eyes widened with comprehension. ‘It were
you
he needed! All along, it were you, not Darrow –’

‘All of us,’ said Calwyn soberly. ‘He needed all of us.’

‘Cept Trout.’ Mica giggled suddenly. ‘He’d be sorry Trout ever came along!’ She swung her feet at the edge of the fountain. ‘Does Darrow know, d’you think? Bout
him
not knowin ice-call?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’ One day she would ask him. But not yet. There was plenty of time.
There are things that you and I
must say
. A slow and private smile crept across her face.

Mica nudged her. ‘Look at Trout!’

He was marching about the tower, studying the material, taking off his lenses to peer at it more closely. They saw him run up to Darrow and ask some question, and Darrow’s dismissive reply.

‘I think he’d be happy to stay here for ever,’ said Calwyn, ‘exploring this strange place, studying its secrets.’

‘Darrow called it the Lost City. Better it stays lost,’ said Mica sharply. ‘What good’s a place that’s all full of pain and bad memories? If I was Halasaa, I wouldn’t come nowhere near it, not if you paid me a bagful of coins. Best to forget it.’

‘We can’t make right the evils of the past by forgetting that they happened,’ said Calwyn. ‘That’s not the way. Samis was partly right. There
is
healing to be done inTremaris, though he was wrong about the way to do it. One person can’t control everything. All voices will be one voice, he said. That’s wrong. True power lies in many voices. But singing together, helping one another, as we have done – that’s where strength lies.’

‘So,’ said Mica. ‘Where’re we goin to start?’

Calwyn looked at Trout, prowling about eagerly with his measuring string and his quick curiosity, and the lump under his shirt that was the precious Clarion. She looked at Tonno, silent and sad, carrying all the grief of a world that had seen too much sorrow, too much waste, and too much poverty. She looked at Halasaa, curled in a sleep of sheer exhaustion, an outcast from his people, yet the wisest of them all.

Lastly she looked at Darrow, the one she had known the longest, the person she knew the least. He was staring down at the grey-shrouded body; his hand was hidden in his pocket, fingering the ruby ring. She couldn’t guess what thoughts were passing through his mind. Was he remembering the days when Samis had been his friend and companion? Or thinking of their long chase to follow him here? Or was he pondering, like Mica, what they would do next?

Calwyn turned to Mica, with her bright impatient eyes, her swift temper and her unswerving loyalty, as she sat waiting for her answer.

Samis’s vision of Tremaris, peaceful and prosperous, was a persuasive one. There would always be scars; no deep pain could be readily forgotten. But the everlasting changes of the river and sea, of the great Powers and chantments, must be wrought to begin the long, slow healing.

She moved her fingers in the water of the fountain. All the lands, like the fingers of one hand; all different, but all connected, all part of the beautiful wounded world on which they spun together beneath the three moons. The mark of the Goddess on her wrist was blurred under the water. She imagined handmaidens of the Goddess, warriors of Merithuros, the silentTree People, even the pirates of Doryus, all the peoples of Tremaris, at peace, not quarrelling and suspicious, but exchanging their magic and their stories, their songs and dances, their food and their handicrafts, all their different wisdom. She pulled her hand from the water and dried it on her jacket. There was something in her pocket. She drew it out: the little wooden globe, the model of Tremaris that Darrow had carved for her so long ago. She closed her hand around it.

‘I’m not sure exactly where to start or how to do it,’ she said. ‘But we must. And it will be hard work.’

‘Hard work don’t scare me!’ Mica tossed back her mop of tawny hair.

Calwyn stood up. ‘Then let’s begin.’

The two girls ran across the wide ruined square, past where Halasaa lay dreaming. Trout, bent over his measurements, did not look up, but Darrow turned his head and watched Calwyn as she ran with Mica, the two girls hand in hand, toward the line of trees where Tonno stood locked up in his sorrow, waiting to be comforted.

Chanters of Tremaris series