DARKFALL

Seeing that nothing in the world made by the Song

could be more fair to Shenavyre than the Unykorn,

Lanalor delved into the very nature of life’s Making

and sang a twisting of the Song

to create a thing that had not been –

a black flower which, eaten, would bestow sweetest ecstasy.

This he offered to Shenavyre,

but she shrank from the unnatural blossom,

and stroked the Unykorn s pearled horn …

LEGENDSONG OF THE UNYKORN

After a breakfast she managed to purge by insisting she needed to relieve herself, Glynn was taken back to Bayard. She was still trying to think of some simpler way to avoid consuming the drugged food when they arrived in the scroll library. It was no longer raining and the long corridor of rooms seemed unnaturally silent.

‘Wait out here,’ her draakira escort ordered, and entered the scholars’ room alone. A short while later she returned, scowling, and told Glynn to go in.

The warm, dark ante-room rustled with its busy, fluttering moth-scholars and Bayard was waiting for her. This time she was without her pet. Glynn was conscious that the older woman’s eyes gleamed with an interest that had been absent the day before.

‘Come with me,’ she said, and cut and weaved through the tables and scholars to a door Glynn had not seen the previous day. All the doors in the haven seemed to have this subtle quality of self-effacement. Beyond the door was a room that was little more than an oversized cupboard. There was no furniture in it other than a lantern hung on a wall bracket, and a pile of grubby-looking cushions. It smelled strongly of urine, and even as she glimpsed a box of straw in the corner, a movement of the cushions revealed that this was where Bayard kept her pet.

The cushions shifted and a pale furred head appeared. The animal’s eyes were bright and curious.

‘Go over to the feinna,’ Bayard commanded. ‘Make no attempt to touch it. Just sit down on the cushions beside it.’

Glynn did as she was told. The animal regarded her for a moment, then made a chirruping noise. Its teeth showed briefly, sharp as needles.

‘Stay,’ Bayard said firmly and promptly departed, closing the door behind her. There was the sound of a key turning and her footsteps receded.

Glynn had no idea if the instruction to stay had been directed at her or at the animal, which had not taken its eyes off her. She decided not to provoke trouble by staring back. Dogs hated it when you did that. They regarded it as a challenge to which there were only two responses: yield or attack.

Instead, she turned her attention to the room. There were no windows or vents, though it was not as stuffy as she would have expected if the room was completely sealed as it appeared to be. From the corner of her eye, she saw the animal settle back onto its haunches, but it went on watching her.

Half an hour later Glynn’s back was beginning to ache from the stiff position she was sitting in, and her leg was numb where it was doubled under her. She had to move. She turned her head a fraction to study the feinna and was relieved to see that it had gone to sleep.

Easing herself very carefully into a more comfortable position, she looked at the animal again, only to find its bright button eyes open and fixed on her. She fidgeted uneasily and wished the draakira would return. To her relief, the animal’s eyes began to droop. With an oddly human sigh, it curled back to sleep, snout tucked neatly under its tail. It had a thick pelt and was plump enough to be on the verge of being over-fed, but otherwise it gave every indication of being a wild thing. In any case, Bayard’s comments suggested that, despite its diminutive size, it could be as vicious as the mink it resembled.

Time passed and Glynn had begun to drift off when, all at once, the feinna awoke and sat bolt upright. It started to whimper; a slight breathlessness with a whisper of sound which gradually increased in volume. It began to pace, first around the cushions and then around the whole room, whimpering and stopping to claw at the door occasionally. It behaved as if Glynn were not there.

The noise rose gradually to an ear-splitting yowl, and the feinna started to shiver and moan, flinging itself at the door and biting at the wood. Glynn was afraid the elderly draakira would return and think she had done something to the wretched animal. What on earth was the matter with it?

The feinna gave her a distracted look, then went back to scratching at the door. Maybe it smelled something outside. Glynn wondered if she should bang on the door and get some help. At the same time she felt a wave of pity and fellow-feeling for the creature, locked up in this terrible room.

The animal ceased its racket and turned to rest those huge, tragic seal’s eyes squarely on her. Startled, Glynn was reminded by its solemn surveillance of a film clip she had seen some years before her parents were killed. It had shown awful, savage scenes of men axing seals and she had wept herself sick over it. Her mother had asked why she watched if it upset her so much. That had made her cry even harder. The universe should protect its creatures, she had thought, if only by making people suffer what they dealt out. The seal-killers should be bashed by the universe.

Glynn edged closer to the feinna, making soft noises as to a frightened child. ‘Come on now. What’s the matter? Eh? Come on.’ Meaningless, soothing gibberish. For the seals, she thought. For all the defenceless, beautiful things that get trampled.

She reached out slowly. The feinna watched her hand draw near, then bared its teeth. Glynn froze, thinking it would fly at her. Then she realised it was not snarling at all, but simply panting in its distress, mouth open and teeth showing. Pity snaked through her and she closed the gap between them and stroked the animal’s pelt with the tip of her longest finger. ‘Come on, little one. What is the …’

She gasped at a shocking mental image of the creature caught in a trap, writhing and shrieking. She pulled her hand away and the vision faded. The creature shuddered and, all of a sudden, it returned to its place in the cushions as calmly as if nothing had happened.

When Bayard came back over an hour later, it was asleep again, though it woke when she entered and clamoured at her legs.

‘Tell me what transpired,’ Bayard demanded of Glynn, lifting the feinna into her arms. There were little droplets of sweat on her forehead.

‘The feinna,’ Bayard said impatiently. ‘Tell me how it behaved while I was gone.’

Obediently Glynn described exactly what had taken place. The animal’s howling and increasing agitation, and her own responses. She dared not leave them out because belatedly it occurred to her that the windowless room might feature a peephole.

‘Once,’ Glynn said dully. ‘It was crying like the aspi cubs on Fomhika when their mothers wean them.’ She was trying to implant the idea that her attempt to comfort the feinna had been an automatic response triggered by the creature’s distress, rather than a calculated gesture.

‘You cared for aspi young on Fomhika? I thought you worked with racing aspi,’ Bayard said. ‘Did you ever birth any?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said recklessly, beginning to suspect that the woman merely wanted someone to care for her pet. Perhaps this whole strange day had been a way of sizing Glynn up as a candidate. A sort of weird job interview.

‘You say the feinna looked at you when you spoke to it?’ the draakira asked. Glynn nodded. ‘Did you … feel anything when you touched her? See anything?’

She wetted her dry lips, thinking of the flashing vision of the feinna caught in a trap. Bayard pounced on the hesitation, seeming almost to have expected it. ‘I deliberately went outside the range of the link between the feinna and myself,’ she said excitedly. ‘I went as far as I could tolerate it. It was hard because the pull to return was so strong, but there were several definite moments when the pull weakened and once when it seemed to vanish altogether. That must have been when the feinna focused on you. That can only mean I have been wrong about how the link works.’ Bayard seemed as disturbed by this as she was elated.

Glynn made no response because she had no idea what Bayard was talking about. The older woman put the feinna down on its cushions and went out of the room looking preoccupied, though she did not forget to lock the door behind her.

The remainder of the day passed very slowly, with little to do but think. No one brought her anything to eat and Glynn wondered why she was not being fed the drugged food. Was Bayard simply so involved in her own affairs that she had forgotten? And why had she left Glynn with the feinna? Was it really that she wanted a caretaker for the animal, and was testing Glynn’s fitness for that role? Impossible to guess, but one thing seemed certain. If there was any possibility of escaping the fortress-like haven, the eccentric elderly draakira might be the key.

Glynn was dozing, her nose against a particularly malodorous pillow, when Bayard entered with a tray containing a stone pitcher of water, a roll and a bowl of milk.

‘Poor enough fare,’ Bayard muttered to herself, pushing wisps of grey drifting hair back from her forehead. ‘But I could not give you what the kitchen had sent or we would be back where we started.’

Glynn sat up, registering the implications of the woman’s words; she was deliberately withholding the drugged food!

Setting the tray carefully on the ground, Bayard lifted the bowl on to the floor alongside the pile of cushions. The feinna gave a pleased chirrup and waddled over to it. The draakira’s rather formless face softened with affection, and she knelt down to fondle its bulging belly.

‘You are not going to enjoy tonight, I am afraid, my pet,’ she sighed. Bayard turned to Glynn, her expression growing stern. ‘You will sleep here tonight. Do you understand me?’ Glynn nodded. ‘Good. I will have some bedding brought in later.’ She pointed to the feinna, which had already finished its bowl of milk and was now cleaning itself as fastidiously as a cat. ‘Listen to me carefully. The feinna will expect me to take it with me now, because that is what I usually do. It will be distressed when I go. Do you understand?’

Bayard nodded. ‘I will sleep near enough not to strain at the link between us. But it will be uneasy and your pain tonight will make it frightened.’

‘Pain?’ Glynn was aware even as she spoke that Bayard was expecting her to endure withdrawal symptoms. But why had she withheld the drugged food? And why was she leaving her with the feinna at such a time?

Bayard sighed as if the questions had been voiced aloud. ‘I can explain nothing clearly until your mind is your own. The thing is that I do not want to lose this chance of bonding you with the feinna. Just stroke it if it comes to you and speak soothingly as you did before.’ She mimed stroking the animal and Glynn copied the gesture. Bayard nodded and got to her feet with a grunt. ‘I will speak further of this tomorrow.’

She left and Glynn ate her frugal meal wondering, all the while, how withdrawal pains were supposed to help her bond with a distressed animal. The feinna stared at the door expectantly for a long time but, true to her word, Bayard did not return. It whimpered for a while then went over to the cushions disconsolately, waking only when another draakira brought a ticking mattress, some blankets and a bucket.

Glynn set about making herself a bed. It was none too easy in the cramped space. More than a quarter of the tiny room was occupied by the feinna’s pile of cushions, and she had no desire to sleep next to its sandbox. She set up her own bucket at that end of the room and then laid the mattress over the crack in the flags at the door end. If she wanted to stretch full length, she would have to sleep with her head on the feinna’s cushions. If Bayard meant her to be close to the feinna, she was certainly making sure of it.

Thinking about Bayard’s decision to free her of the drug, Glynn lay down. The trouble was that if she failed to please the draakira, the woman would know she was not drugged, and she would be forcibly drugged again. She reminded herself that, intriguing as the day’s developments were, her priority had to be escape, and she must not lose sight of that for a second. Not that the prospect of escape was high, given that she was locked in a windowless cell.

It took a high order of intelligence to turn disaster into catastrophe, but she seemed to have managed it. Little comfort in the fact that other than feed a bit of cheese to a strange animal, she had done nothing to set these events in motion, nor could she have done anything to shape them differently.

She looked over at the feinna. It seemed very small and oddly pathetic sleeping in its pile of grubby cushions.

The lantern began to gutter as its oil reservoir ran low. Glynn hurriedly removed her boots and got under the blankets. She didn’t feel like sleeping, but the moment her head touched the mattress, tiredness rolled over her. I ought to think about things, she chided herself. But she yawned and yielded to sleep, consoling herself that in the morning when the drugs would supposedly have worn off, Bayard would expect to be asked some straight questions.

She would agree to whatever Bayard wanted, she decided, and hope that, in time, the woman would let her wander around the haven freely. But she would have to be careful of the internal politics taking place between Bayard and the haven Prime.

Walk light when you walk on eggs, someone said in her memory. Who? Not Wind or her father but someone else. An errant thought flashed through her mind, of how much of her was made up of the voices of other people. It was funny how the voices came up whenever she was under stress, as if she split into her composite parts.

She slid into sleep just as the candle began its dying dance in a faint draught.

She dreamed again of being trapped. There was dreadful pain and the smell of the trap was a combination of wet rust and rotten meat. The dream was so real that when she woke, she immediately felt for her stomach where the metal teeth of the trap had all but sawn her in two.

She had no idea what time it was, but she threw the blankets off and did a few simple isometric exercises in the limited space, to drive the dream from her.

Something brushed against her leg and she realised that she had wakened the feinna. It chirruped as if to ask what on earth she was doing at such an hour. Glynn laughed softly.

‘Hello to you too,’ she whispered, and reached down to stroke the silky, heavy fur. ‘My poor little cell sister. It feels like morning but it’s hard to know when you’re in solitary …’

She started violently at the sound of the key turning. Bayard entered with a fresh lantern, and did not seem much surprised to see Glynn standing. The feinna gave a squeak of excitement and ran at the draakira. Bayard set the lantern on the ground and gathered the animal up into her arms with a sound that was as much a groan as a laugh.

‘It is very early but I slept badly, though not as badly as I expected. There seemed no point in simply lying there …’ She looked speculatively at Glynn. ‘How do you feel? You look better than I anticipated.’

Glynn licked her lips. ‘What is happening? I remember you were going to test my darklin to see if you could give me any coin for it. Why am I here?’

Bayard closed the door behind her, then lowered herself to the end of the bed with a grunt. The feinna coiled itself in her lap. ‘Forget about the darklin. It was useless to us. Now listen to me very carefully. I am going to speak of matters for which I would be censured, should it be known we had this conversation. You, on the other hand, would be restored to your state as a drone, or perhaps you would be killed.’

Bayard made an impatient gesture. ‘The food you were given on your first day here was drugged with a rather virulent Iridomi potion which renders the person who consumes it docile and obedient. Until last night, you were completely enslaved by it, but I withheld the food, which would have fed your hunger for the drug.’ The draakira gave her a long cool look. ‘Do not misunderstand this. I am loyal to the Draaka. Keltor is enmeshed in lies and moribund myths surrounding natural forces, and Darkfall is an archaic order clinging to the past. I believe in the Draaka, though I do not believe, as she does, that we need to drug people to have them serve us.’

Glynn was disappointed to find that Bayard was motivated by internal politicking. If the draakira had been against the Draaka, she might have found an ally. But in that case, what was she doing disobeying her mistress?

Bayard nodded approvingly. ‘Good, you have a brain. The Prime sent you to me thinking that your experience with aspi might enable you to assist me with the feinna. It is common knowledge that the Draaka resents the animal because it distracts me from my duties as a draakira. This is so. But in giving you to me as a drugged drone, the Prime reveals how little any of them realise the exact nature of the problem I have with the feinna. I have tried to explain but they do not understand. Nor did they comprehend that, as you were, I could have no use for you. I meant to say so to the Prime and the Draaka, but when I saw the feinna watching you, it came to me that if you were clear of the drug, you might indeed be of use to me. Unfortunately I could not simply say this to the Prime, because she fully supports the Draaka’s use of the drug on servitors.’

‘Why should I help you?’ Glynn asked. ‘I might not be drugged, but I’m no less a prisoner locked up in this airless hole.’

‘That is true, and if you do not wish to aid me I will return you to the Prime.’

‘I did not think so. I have a proposition for you. Do you know anything about feinna?’

‘Not much,’ Glynn said. The way the question had been framed suggested it would be a reasonable answer.

‘It would not have surprised me if you had never heard of them, for they are very rare now. Certainly I know of no other that has survived in captivity. They occur naturally only on Acantha. It is said that Lanalor caught a few pairs and released them to breed up in the wilderness on Ramidan, but they were never seen again. They were once quite numerous here, but they were over-hunted. No one cared that they would become extinct. They were not lovable, you see, and could not be made into pets. They were untameably ferocious with a savage hatred of humans.

‘I saw it first near a trap containing its dead mate. I was with the draakira who had set the trap. He shot the feinna with an arrow that did not kill it, but pinned it to the ground. As we went closer, I saw that it was female and pregnant. Even as I watched, the feinna went into labour. It was staring at me and I … Well, the other draakira told me to get away so he could kill it, but I would not let him.’ She shrugged diffidently. ‘He took the dead male and the trap and left me.’

‘Feinna are very unusual creatures,’ she went on softly. ‘Some claim they are no more of this world than the elusive Vespari, that they are Void creatures, but I do not believe it. They mate only once in their lives and, at that moment, all of the young they will ever bear are fertilised. At the same time, development of the fertilised eggs is arrested. During this single mating, the pair form a mental link and they cannot ever after be physically parted by more than a short distance. Fertilisation is the same as choosing a life mate. The pair then search for a nesting place where they construct an elaborate bower. When this is done, the female will permit two or three of the young to come to term as a litter. Feinna females have complete control of their reproductive processes. When labour is imminent, the bond between the mated pair becomes very strong, for it seems to play some vital part in the birth process.’

‘You said the female went into labour after it was shot and its mate was dead.’

Bayard frowned at the interruption. ‘Normally the female would have willed itself to death after the loss of its mate because this is also a severing of the link between them, but shock caused the female’s labour to begin at the very moment it would have willed itself to die. Its instinct as a mother warred with its instinct to die. Worse, birth was imminent but, as you have noted, there was no mate to aid in the process. I was there and I pitied the animal. Somehow – and it is still unclear to me exactly how – the feinna drew my mind into a link. I believe that you experienced a fleeting linking with the feinna yesterday, though you may not now remember it. The mated feinna communicate mind to mind in images …’

‘Not properly, for we are not the same kind of thing. Our minds do not match, you see, nor our modes of communication. It is as if a silfi attempted to communicate with an aspi. The very act of linking with me, in fact, could only be accomplished because the female altered itself in some way. If you like, there is a part of it which is human now. That is why it is able to live among humans.’

Bayard sighed heavily. ‘They were stillborn, of course. I do not know what went wrong because I was drawn by the link into the trauma of the birth. Perhaps if I had been able to think clearly, I might have used what abilities I have to try to aid the birthing. When the babies were dead, the feinna wanted to die, but because we were linked she could not.’

All at once, Glynn understood what had motivated the draakira to disobey her mistress. ‘The feinna is pregnant again!’

Bayard nodded. ‘I am afraid so. I do not know why it has elected to bring more young to term, but the link between us allows me to understand that it wants these to live, for it has no more. I fear it will die this time if the birth is not successful.’

‘Indeed. Sad for many reasons. Aside from my concern for the feinna, I very much fear what will happen to me if it dies, for the link is powerful between us. The idea of using you to weaken it came to me when it took cheese from you the other day. It has never shown the slightest interest in anyone else before. What happened yesterday when I left you alone as an experiment proves the link can be affected. I had speculated that it might be so, but now I know it for a fact. It means I might be able to help the feinna birth live young, if you are able to distract it and keep it from flooding my mind with emotion and pain images during the delivery. And even if I fail, I might survive the feinna’s death if the link between us is weakened by your presence. Your own experience of birthing aspi is an unexpected gift, for if I am caught up in the birth process, you can use your skills to deliver the feinna’s young.’

Glynn wanted to laugh hysterically at the thought of delivering anything but newspapers. The only birth she had ever seen had been on video in a pastoral care class, and she had almost passed out!

She decided not to dwell on that. ‘What if the Draaka finds out I’m not drugged?’

‘She would be very angry,’ Bayard said seriously. ‘But if I can convince her that, other than saving my life if the birth fails, your undrugged presence will prevent the feinna distracting me during Draaka rituals, I think she will accept that what I have done is for the best.’

Bayard’s eyes became cold. ‘They are none of your affair. You have a choice now to help me or not, and I put it to you to decide. I can return you to the Prime and confess what I have done. The Draaka will forgive me. The feinna’s young will die, perhaps the feinna also. Possibly me as well. You will be a drone or dead. Or you can try to help me and, in turn, I will see what can be done to help you.’

‘Just so. You will remain here patiently and if anyone comes, you will behave as if you are a drone. Tomorrow night there is an important ceremony here. You will be left with the feinna and I will attend the ceremony. If all goes well and the feinna does not pull at me so deeply, the Draaka will be pleased, and I will tell her the truth.’

‘We will see. It may be that you will be given certain freedoms since you could not escape the outer perimeter of the haven – there is one door and it is always guarded. But even if the Draaka insists I keep you locked up until the feinna young are born, I promise that I will do my utmost to convince her to free you when we have gained ascendancy over Keltor. It is a chance I offer you, and no more. As a drone, you would have nothing – not even your own will.’

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