DARKFALL

‘These are not the most precious scrolls we have, but they are valuable so you must be careful,’ Bayard said.

Glynn nodded, relieved to have something to occupy her. She had slept badly, dreaming strange chaotic dreams she was not sure were her own, and had pleaded with the draakira to give her something to do before she went crazy.

Bayard had looked around the tiny fetid cell as if seeing it for the first time, then she had gone away and returned with an armful of scrolls, a pot, a tiny brazier and a brush. As she unpacked them, she explained that the feinna’s natural habitat when it was pregnant was an almost completely enclosed bower, hence the small stuffy room.

‘Now,’ she said, gesturing at the scrolls, ‘the lettering in these is beginning to fade because the ink used was flawed. The wax resin in the pot must be painted over the faded patches of script to preserve them from further deterioration. It stabilises the old ink, but it needs to be heated before you can use it.’

She lit the brazier, then balanced the pot atop it, removing its stopper. Bubbles began to form in the resin, and when it was completely liquefied she lifted it off the flame. ‘If it is overheated it loses its usefulness.’

She unrolled one of the scrolls and found one of the affected sections. Dipping the brush into the resin, she painted it onto the scroll in thin even strokes. It then had to be held flat to dry for the count of fifty.

Glynn located a faded patch further down the same scroll, painted it deftly and held it flat to dry. Bayard looked pleased. ‘You have a good touch. Too much resin ruins the scroll. I wish you had come to the haven seeking to become part of our scholarly community here. It can be a rewarding life. The Draaka understands us and is very generous. You might consider joining us.’

‘I have my own life. My sister is dying …’ Glynn said without thinking what she was saying.

Fortunately, Bayard seemed not to have heard. Her hearing appeared to be entirely contained within the field of her own interests. Useful in one way, but absolutely insular.

‘From my mother,’ Glynn said. ‘She was a scholar and very different from me. I think I disappointed her.’

‘I would be surprised to hear a parent would be disappointed by a daughter with honour.’

‘I feel it to be so. But, more importantly, the feinna would not have tolerated you if you lacked it.’ She cast a fond glance over the animal, which was finishing its breakfast.

‘I would not have thought human ideas of right and wrong would mean anything to an animal,’ Glynn said.

‘Nor do they,’ Bayard agreed. ‘But the feinna is troubled when I say one thing and think another. The inconsistency disturbs it. I call the feinna my conscience because for its sake, I must obey mine, but it is also a truth detector. When people around it lie, it reacts.’

‘Not quite,’ Bayard smiled and Glynn acknowledged that, against all odds, she was beginning to like the draakira. Bayard became brisk then, saying she must go but that she would return later in the day. After she had gone, Glynn ate most of the porridge Bayard had brought earlier, wondering how it had been procured, since it was not drugged. Probably it was part of her own breakfast. Glynn was on the verge of finishing the last spoonful when she caught the feinna’s eye. It was staring hard at her and she grinned and put her bowl down.

Glynn turned her attention to the scrolls, searching for faded patches and laying on resin as she had been instructed. It was dull work, but better than stewing over her impotence, or worrying about what might happen that night if the feinna still interfered with Bayard’s concentration during the Draaka’s rituals.

Holding one of the scrolls flat so a painted section would dry, she began absently to read what was written on it.

‘To call the Chaos spirit evil,’ the scroll said, ‘is as meaningless as declaring day good and night evil. Yet so arbitrary were Lanalor and his sister Alyda …’

She sighed. More of the same sort of thing she had been hearing since she’d set foot on this myth-smothered planet. Did no one write or speak of anything but the Legendsong and Lanalor? She read on.

‘Chaos or disorder is a natural part of life. From Chaos springs much that is good and fresh and new. Did not we and our world spring from the Song of Making, which itself rose out of Chaos? How can the Chaos be evil if the Song is not? Chaos is merely the unformed beginning of all things. It can be dangerous but no more so than the wind or the rain. We do not suggest ending rain or stopping the wind. Nor should we attempt to eradicate Chaos from our lives. It cannot be removed like a wart, and it is dangerous to repress it. That has been the aim of the soulweaving sisterhood. To repress it, or pretend it is evil and say it must be destroyed. We must accept the violence and passion of our human nature that is Chaos, unless we would turn away and inward, eschewing life, as do the soulweavers. Does not the Legendsong itself say humankind contains an emptiness? A Void. And that within this Void is the essence of Making? Is it not Chaos which brings us closest to the divine Song? The answer to the dilemma of Chaos is to accept that it is within us, and train ourselves to control and channel it.’

Glynn knew enough of the much-vaunted Legendsong by now to see that the writer was trying to recast Darkfall’s symbols along Draaka lines. She wished suddenly that she could read the original Legendsong in its entirety. As far as she could guess, it was an epic historical poem like The Iliad and The Odyssey. The scroll she was reading seemed to be a philosophical treatise, rather than a document. Given its didactic tone, it might even be one of the chits sent out by the Draaka, which Nema had mentioned. It was not a bad argument. Humans certainly did have the capacity for chaos, as much here as on her world. Recasting symbols was nothing new either. The early Christians had reshaped pagan mythology to support their dogma and give old symbols new meanings. Symbols were powerful things which seemed to contain a resonance and relevance beyond their ordinary selves. Take a symbol like a flood. How many stories did the flood myth appear in on her world? Dozens. It was as if symbols floated on some level of consciousness that crossed all boundaries, and maybe even worlds.

Beginning to treat a section deeper in the scroll, Glynn was suddenly struck by the astonishing realisation that, by chance, she had stumbled on the perfect opportunity to get the information she needed to return to her own world. Nema had said the Draaka’s tame scholars were authorities on Lanalor’s portal, and here she was in a room next to those scholars, working on scrolls!

Some hours later, she stopped to reheat what remained of the resin, which had gone completely cold while she read.

All of the scrolls were scholarly arguments, most concerned with interpreting Lanalor’s activities as Holder of Keltor, or his personal life leading up to and following his reign. So far she had not come across a single mention of his portal. Either it did not exist or there was a reason for its conspicuous absence. But she was becoming genuinely interested in Lanalor, whose life and work seemed to have had such an indelible impact on his world.

Stirring the thickened resin, Glynn reflected that Lanalor’s adult life seemed to fall into three distinct phases. His early manhood was well documented. Most sources agreed on his doings and motivations. Born on Vespi, Lanalor had risen to rule first his tribe, and then his island. He had eradicated old tribal boundaries, forming the first united island community, which he called a sept; the word derived from an old Vespian term meaning a group that belongs to itself. Vespians had always built ships to cast for waterflyts and for raids on nearby Iridom, but Lanalor had the wavespeakers build an armada of three bigger ships, and set off with a considerable force to explore Keltor.

Beginning with known Iridom, he took over island after island by the simple expedient of landing with all of his force, and taking tribal leaders and their families prisoner aboard the ships.

The dispossessed tribal warlords and their families were brought to Ramidan, which until then had been mainly deserted. Lanalor had been in the process of building a magnificent city on the island, which was to become the personal sept of the Holder and ruler of all Keltor. The old tribal leaders were given places of honour in what would become the citadel and formed the nucleus of the Holder’s court.

The invasions were largely bloodless because the island communities consisted of fragmented groups with local warlords striving for supremacy and no organised defence. Lanalor departed, leaving his brothers or cousins to sort out the chaos left in the wake of his invasion and to rule in his name. He made it clear that the new chieftains ruled their islands absolutely, but were ultimately answerable to him.

Most of the inhabitants quickly learned that they were better off under the new regime, which forbade internal warfare. The quality of life improved dramatically, for Lanalor facilitated trade and commerce between the septs, minted a common coinage and set up a universal system of law based on a loose sort of hearing before a sept tribunal. A higher appeal could be made to Lanalor himself, who would, if he saw reason to question the earlier judgment, appoint a panel of three chieftains to judge the matter anew. One scroll observed that there had been only three cases before a chieftains’ panel.

Lanalor might have failed in his dream of establishing a peaceful, planet-wide community, one scroll had remarked, except that he was Vespian and had the power of the wavespeakers squarely behind him. Vespians built the only ships and they alone had the power to control the waves. No one could cross from one island to another without them. Lacking their support, no one had the means to oppose Lanalor.

The only real concern people had was over what would happen when Lanalor died. It had been woven by many with soulweaving tendencies that he would father no child. In any case, he was violently opposed to blood-descended rule.

The next period of his life was less clear, but it was marked chiefly by his falling in love with the Sheannite woman, Shenavyre; a visionweaver who had not returned his affections. With the help of his sister who had soulweaving tendencies, Lanalor used darklins to enable him to segue in the Void in search of a gift that would win Shenavyre. Whatever he had suffered in the Void rendered him insane. But he was still the Holder of Keltor, and the period that followed was a time of blood and madness, as Lanalor became convinced that there was a plot against him and set up an inquisition.

Painting resin on a new scroll, Glynn reflected that it was little wonder Shenavyre had vanished. But that had not helped everyone else. Vespi would not turn against Lanalor and so there was no way to stop his reign of lunacy. The sole check on him appeared to be his beloved sister, Alyda. It was during this time that he had given her the tiny island of Darkfall, which lay within the almost completely closed Myrmidor harbour – an island within an island. Lanalor had always been fascinated by soulweaving tendencies, and wanted to enable his sister to establish an order of people who would study soulweaving and practise it. Most of the scrolls pointed out at length that the establishment of Darkfall had been accomplished by a lunatic.

Shenavyre’s death marked the end of this second period. There were numerous versions of the Sheannite woman’s death: Lanalor had killed her in madness when his agents found her; she had tried to kill him and he had killed her in self-defence; she had been murdered by people who feared her influence on Lanalor; she had killed herself to escape his pursuit. Glynn had heard a number of these already during her time on Acantha. Regardless of how she had died, all agreed that afterwards Lanalor changed dramatically. The inquisition was disbanded and Keltor returned to shattered peace. Lanalor lost all interest in ruling and spent more and more time soulweaving. One scroll said he lost himself in visions of Shenavyre alive, laughing and loving him, among all the possibilities contained within the Void. But most of the scrolls indicated he had a new darker desire in the Unraveller demon. Glynn remembered the balladeer who had suggested the Unraveller bewitched first Shenavyre, then Lanalor.

One scroll observed that Alyda had warned Lanalor that his lack of attention to his office threatened all he had wrought, upon which he bade her soulweave and seek the one who would be best fitted to hold Keltor after him. Other scrolls suggested Alyda’s decision to appoint a successor was her own idea.

The boy named by the sisterhood was an Iridomi called Gia – the son of a perfume distiller and master olfactor. He was given the title of mermod, meaning in an older dialect, He who waits, for, seeing how young he was, Lanalor was forced to delay his abdication for several years. When he succeeded, Gia proved an enlightened ruler. It was under him that callstones had been widely distributed, establishing swift communication between the septs, and it was Gia who decided each island needed a legion to enforce their chieftain’s rule and his laws, since the Holder could not be called to deploy his forces for every small dispute. The sept legions could be called upon at any time by the Holder to swell his own legion if a greater force were needed. It was also Gia who decided Ramidan should have a legion no larger or smaller than any other island, and that the legionnaires of all septs would undertake part of their training on Ramidan to ensure they understood that their highest loyalty was to the Holder of Keltor.

When Gia was middle-aged, the soulweaving sisterhood established by Alyda summoned him to Darkfall and, by Decree, named the son of a Vespian shipmaster as the new mermod. They commanded that the boy be fostered to Gia on Ramidan until it was his turn to rule Keltor.

Glynn was impressed by Darkfall’s foresight. If the next mermod had been anything but Vespian, the whole thing might have fallen apart.

She closed up another scroll and stretched to ease her aching back. She had the feeling hours had passed but there was no way of telling. The feinna had shifted to the cool flagstones and was watching her. She took up the brush again, reflecting that after Gia had become Holder, mentions of Lanalor were sketchy and infrequent.

The scrolls said only that he had retired to Darkfall; most implied that his mind was decaying when he invented or discovered something called the Darkfall process, which was supposed to ensure that someone with soulweaving tendencies would see only true visions. One scroll observed that Lanalor was the last man ever to step onto the misty isle, for henceforth it was forbidden to men. Glynn found no clue as to why, but, remembering the story of the ten-year-old Argon white cloak being sent away by his mother, there was no doubt that the restriction was treated very seriously.

Glynn decided that Darkfall would be her destination if she was ever free of the haven. That was where Lanalor had pursued his interest in soulweaving and where he had presumably died, so it was reasonable to assume he had constructed his portal there.

Piling the scrolls she had finished to one side, Glynn lay back on her bed. She stared at the roof unseeingly, wondering what had become of Lanalor. His last act seemed to have been to write notes for the epic Legendsong, later rewritten in its present form by the soulweavers. He had been absorbed into the pervasive secrecy Darkfall generated about itself, and various legends followed his death.

Had he been a good or bad man on balance? Glynn could not decide. He had invaded and conquered with no provocation. He had set himself up as a dictator, and when he went mad he had invoked a reign of terror. Yet he had also united Keltor and established a system of rule that strove to be incorruptible; he had built a city and established a legal system. Maybe the ambiguity with which he was regarded by the Keltans was nothing more than a reflection of the ambiguity of all human beings. People were, after all, capable of good and evil. And sometimes right and wrong were no more than a matter of perspective.

Inevitably the thought of ambiguity made her think of the enigmatic Solen. Picturing him, she found herself remembering a soldier from the Second World War who had once spat on Wind’s feet. To the soldier, Wind was Asian and therefore he was evil. That was the sort of simplistic thinking governments encouraged in soldiers. How else could so many millions of men be persuaded to kill one another? Perhaps all that made anyone a hero and not a villain was winning, because it enabled you to impose your idea of right and wrong. Inevitably you would cast yourself in the role of hero.

It was the losers, she thought, who became evil and were reviled in retrospect. Maybe war was not even a matter of fighting for perceived right, but to become right. Winners wrote history, not losers.

Glynn’s smile faded as she thought of the bleak future faced by the little animal. Disliking the tenor of her thoughts and mindful that she did not want to communicate negative moods to it, she sat up, carefully sliding the drowsy animal into her lap.

She found a small faded patch in the scroll she had been working on and dabbed on the last of the resin. She read, ‘It is told by the Legendsong that within the Void the essence of Chaos infected Lanalor …’

Glynn yawned and wished she could go for a walk outside. But all at once the hair on her neck stood up on end with the sudden conviction that someone was watching her.

In her lap the feinna wakened and growled, a low rumble almost like a purr and yet unmistakably a note of warning. That scared Glynn, until she realised it was probably only responding to her own fear. It was impossible to be spied on in a room without windows, she chided herself.

After some time, Bayard brought a lunch consisting of a roll stuffed with some sort of paste, a small jug of cirul, and a bowl of milk-soaked bread for the feinna. She smiled approvingly at the sight of it in Glynn’s lap and Glynn was provoked to ask the question uppermost in her mind. ‘How is it that none of these scrolls mention Lanalor’s portal?’

The draakira gave her a sharp look. ‘Of what interest is the portal to you?’

Glynn was suddenly keenly aware of the danger of revealing herself to be a stranger. ‘It is nothing to me,’ she said casually. ‘I just wondered, but if you don’t know …’

Bayard shrugged, seeming to lose interest. ‘The scholars are using all the scrolls that mention the portal.’

Glynn remembered that Nema had said the Draaka’s scholars were composing chits suggesting Lanalor had been insane when he created the portal.

‘I was just wondering where it is supposed to be,’ she said vaguely, hoping it was a reasonable thing to say.

Bayard looked irritated. ‘Of course it does not have a location as does a tree or a building, else we of the faithful would long ago have destroyed it. It is invisible, but it is generally believed to open out somewhere near Myrmidor as most of the demon strangers were found in Myrmidori waters.’

‘Water?’ Glynn’s heart jumped and she must have sounded odd because Bayard gave her a sideways look.

‘It is believed the great water touches at some deep points on the Void. Vespians believe this very strongly. They also say stormings are children of the mating between Chaos and the waves.’ She sounded amused.

Bayard frowned, which Glynn deciphered as meaning she was pushing her luck. ‘Soulweaver’ was a dirty word here. ‘They claim to believe it passes through the Void and reaches to a world beyond the mists. They say strangers were brought here by it randomly and accidentally from that other place.’

Random sounds right, Glynn thought. ‘What happened to the demon strangers?’ She put it that way to mollify the older woman.

‘Those caught were slain, of course,’ she said. ‘They were killed in rituals to prevent their returning in spirit form to strengthen the Unraveller demon. Now listen, speaking of rituals, I will not return this evening, for the ceremony is long and will end very late. Look after the feinna and let us hope it does not hamper me tonight.’

Glynn took a bite of the roll that Bayard had brought, pretending hunger, though her throat was clenched shut with fear. The draakira gathered up the completed scrolls and went out, saying she would bring more scrolls and resin the following day. When the door closed Glynn spat the roll out, unable to swallow. She was shaken to the core by the way gentle, doddery Bayard had spoken of rituals of killing. There was no doubt that the older woman would see her killed without a qualm if she knew that Glynn was a stranger. She had been insane to come here – a stranger coming to a place where strangers were slain as demons.

The air vibrated with the pounding of drums. This had been going on for more than an hour. Glynn lay on top of her bed fully clothed. Her fingers ached because she had bitten her nails down to the quick. She would have liked to be in the darkness, but if she extinguished the lantern she would have no way of relighting it.

She wondered only slightly about the ceremony taking place; the cause of the drums. Her interest lay in the likelihood that all of the draakira would be attending, crowded together into the altar room, and the servitors would be slumbering heavily, locked into their rooms.

If caught, she would almost certainly be killed or made into a drone. There would be no talk of caring for the feinna, she knew. But still she must try. Bayard’s easy talk of the ritual killing of strangers had given her a premonition of doom.

Dimly she heard the hypnotic thrum of some new instrument join the drums and, finally, what she had been subconsciously waiting for: voices chanting – the signal that the entire haven community was assembled.

Glynn got up and crossed to listen at the door in her bare feet. The flags were cold but sandals made too much noise. She had already tied them flat against her chest. She listened for the sound of boots or of doors slamming or the hum of conversation.

Glynn turned to find the feinna watching her, its eyes shimmering with lantern flames. She felt bad leaving it, but knew it could not come with her even if she would take it, because of its link to Bayard. Her biggest worry was that it would be upset by her departure and would somehow transmit this to the older woman.

‘I am sorry, little seal-eyes,’ she murmured. ‘I wish I could help you but even if I stayed I could do nothing for you. I have never delivered anything in my life.’

The feinna’s eyes looked deep into hers and Glynn felt shabby. ‘If it were not for Ember …’ she began, but the feinna turned away. Curled up in its cushions it yowled again, a soft forlorn sound, and Glynn felt a wrench of her heart.

She went and sat by the cushions, and stroked the little creature gently. It purred like a cat, arching itself up against her hand. When it succumbed finally to sleep, Glynn’s eyes burned with tears as she got carefully to her feet again.

She listened at the door again, then tried opening it. It was locked. She shrugged. It was no more than she had expected, but she had needed to try. She knelt and pulled the mattress aside. Underneath, the cracked flagging had been levered up and a cold draught of air fanned her cheeks.

She had explored the crack the previous night, after noticing that a draught of fresh air was coming through it. Once Bayard had left in the afternoon, Glynn had torn the mattress aside, pushing her fingers down the crack that ran across the floor and tearing several nails before managing to get a grip on the broken edge of one of the flags.

Underneath she had found the web of rope which supported the interlocking flagstones. Something very heavy must have been dropped to have made the crack in the stone floor, and the web was torn. Holding the lantern over the gap left by the dislodged stone, she had discovered that there was a space between the web and the hard-packed earth below it. The outer haven ran right to the ground, but the breeze coming from below the floor could only mean there was an opening somewhere in the wall.

She positioned the lantern by the crack and, using both hands, lifted the weighty flag carefully aside. The cold, stone-scented air of freedom touched her cheeks and ruffled her hair as she bent to take a grip on another flagstone.

After some minutes she had made a space wide enough to fit through, and she took up a rough-edged stone to widen the hole in the net. When this was done, she steeled herself to climb through it, trying not to think of how shallow the gap was between the ground and the flagstones.

The drums and voices changed beat and her heart rate accelerated in response. She had no time to waste. She cast a final look of farewell at the sleeping feinna and squeezed herself through the hole in the net into the space below.

It was even smaller than she had expected. Barely big enough for her to fit. Both floor above and earth below seemed to press against her and she felt a moment of blind panic.

She reminded herself of Wind’s formula for bearing pain: ‘What cannot be tolerated, may be borne, if one isolates fear …’ She lay completely still, relaxing physically, until calmness returned.

Repeating Wind’s words over and over like a mantra, she tried to move. There was so little space she could not bend her legs, and was overcome by another surge of fear at the thought that she might not even be able to get back out of the hole. She fought it by relaxing again and forcing herself to calmness. Trying to contain fear was like trying to cage butterflies, but she managed it by considering how she could better manoeuvre in the constricted space.

When she felt calm enough, she stretched herself full length. Then, by moving her buttocks and shoulders, she began to inch along like a worm.

In minutes she could feel sweat pouring off her. It was amazingly difficult, but she dared not stop because now she had travelled some distance from the hole in the floor of the room. She could still see where it was by the lantern’s light. There were stumps going from the flags down to the dirt and she used these and the light to keep her bearings. She had decided that rather than following the draught, she would take the shortest route to the outer wall, then make her way around it until she found the hole through which the air flowed.

After a time, Glynn found she could move more quickly by using fingers and heels as well. She began to long for moonlight, because it would mean a way out.

Aware that the drums were louder, she knew she must be drawing nearer to the altar room. She shivered and resisted the urge to strike off in another direction.

The sound of voices chanting was clearly audible, though the words were muffled to gibberish. When the noise became suddenly louder, Glynn reasoned that she must be directly below the room in which the Draaka was meeting with her followers. She tried to increase her speed, though there was no way anyone could know she was beneath the floor.

There was an eerie howling and suddenly, more than anything in the world, Glynn wished she were back in her stone cell, fast asleep, preferably drugged senseless.

The howling increased and a second voice seemed to rise out of it. A sibilance that spoke of snakes and wet fires. ‘The One who waz promized iz come.’

‘The Unraveller?’ The Draaka sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears, and for a moment her voice lost its manic quality.

‘The Unraveller iz on Ra mi dan,’ the hissing voice confirmed. ‘You will travel there. You will find and capture the Unraveller.’

‘How will I know who it is?’ the Draaka asked, her voice trembling with excitement.

Glynn’s teeth were chattering so loudly she wondered that the Draaka did not hear her. She forced herself to go on, and tried to concentrate on the rhythm of her movements: heels, hands, heels, hands …

‘When the Unraveller iz deztroyed, all that haz been promized will come to pazz, and more,’ the voice hissed.

‘Szzz! The Promized One muzt be zlain according to the ancient ritez and in the correct plaze. But do not imagine it will be eazy. Lanalor haz assured hiz chozen one will be protected, but thoze protectionz are weak now. Act zwiftly. Go to the zitadel.’

‘Szilence! I have prepared the way. An invitation haz even now reached Jurazz from the Iridomi chieftain, inviting you to pay allegianze to her zon and exzzplain your philozzophy. You will travel az sshe zuggestz. Fail and my wrath will be terrible. Do not think I will allow a proxzzy then.’

There was a sizzling sound, and the Draaka screamed. ‘Master!! I will not fail!’

Glynn panicked and began to wriggle as hard as she could away from the voice as the hissing intensified.

Some sort of animal began to bleat piteously. They are sacrificing it, Glynn thought in horror, and envisaged the stone altar covered in sticky blood. There was a scuffling noise and the drums quickened.

There was a prolonged squeal of terror and Glynn bit her tongue to keep from screaming out. The drums ceased and the chants rose again but Glynn did not hear them because she was propelling herself as fast as she could away from that hissing nightmare voice and whatever had been killed. She was in flight, and mindless, until she jarred her elbow savagely against stone. In a flare of pain, her wits returned. She stopped and lay for a moment gasping and trembling.

Refusing to dwell on what she had heard, she reached out a throbbing arm to find out what she had banged into. She was expecting to feel a stump, but was elated to discover that she had reached the outer wall.

Her heart leapt and she began to follow the wall. There was slightly more room, and Glynn turned with relief onto her belly. This way, she could propel herself more swiftly forward. The wall went right to the ground as she had remembered, but the breeze was still blowing into her face, chilly with promise.

On and on she crawled, aware that she was using what her father would have termed a leopard crawl. She was thinking of his smile at the exact moment she found the opening. The wind in her face came suddenly from the side, cold and fresh with the merest elusive hint of sether. There was no moonlight after all, but she lifted her hand and ran it along the wall until she found the edge of the opening. She thrust her hand out into freedom and gave a laughing sob.

She brought her hand slowly back, and clasped the stone lip with both hands to heave herself out. Then she felt them. Bars.

‘No, please!’ she whispered in disbelief. It could not be that she had endured this ordeal only to be stopped on the very threshold of freedom. There must be a space between the bars that she could get through.

But no. She put her head against the gap between the bars but it would not fit. She pressed her face to the metal as if it would give way before her consuming desperation. But the bars were mute and impervious.

For a long moment, she lay beside the opening in black despair. But in the end, she knew she must go back to the cell. Heavy-hearted, she peered into the darkness in search of the lantern light. It was not visible and she realised that it must be obscured by the stone stumps.

She turned onto her back and forced herself to make her way from the wall and towards the centre. As she progressed she thought only of the light; her eyes wove back and forwards in the blackness, searching for it.

At length she stopped to rest. She could hear nothing other than the shifting of earth under her feet and hands and her own ragged breathing. No drums or chanting. Perhaps the ceremony had ended.

‘Please don’t let Bayard come to check on me,’ she prayed. ‘Let her come tomorrow as she said she would do.’

On and on she went like a worm. She was so hot. The air seemed to have thickened and congealed, and would not be brought easily into her lungs.

Don’t panic, she told herself fiercely when, some time later, she had still not found the light. She had to fight the urge to start pounding at the flags and screaming. She stopped and closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe normally.

‘This time when I open my eyes I will see light,’ she whispered, and opened her eyes to scan the darkness around her.

‘Just calm down,’ she said savagely. ‘You have all night to find the crack.’

You’re imagining things now, she told herself, clinging desperately to common-sense. You’re letting this get to you. Concentrate. The opening has to be close.

A rat? Do they have rats here? Glynn wondered. Could a snake come through those bars?

That was bad enough but then a worse thought occurred to her: could whatever owned that voice she had heard with the Draaka be down here? Creeping along in the darkness whispering, Feed me …

Something touched her arm and terror bubbled up in her throat in a lunatic gurgle. A kind of madness filled her and she jack-knifed forward, smashing her head through the net onto the stone flags above.

He is trapped-dying-hurting. She is running-running biting-man-thing. She digs-claws under man-thing, but deep-too-deep. He sends image of She-going. She sends image of She-staying. He spirit-soul-flame gutters-dying!

Youngling-seeds inside clamour, ready-coming! But how without He? He soul-spar fading. Pain! Man-thing stabs-pins-holds She. Clamouring young-seeds send urgent-urgent. He soul-spar gone. If She soul-spar fades-too they-younglings will never-be. If never-be, never-live never-die never-hear-Song.

Pink-hairless man-She comes touches-She. Nausea-hatred-fear burns She. But She must-live for-younglings.

But youngling-seeds-come clamouring-terror-fear. Reaching-reaching for He. Man-She does not send soul-spar to younglings. Not-know not-understand. Younglings-dead. Cannot fade because of soul-spar binding She to man-She.

Glynn woke to a grinding pain in her head. She opened her eyes and found there was no difference between having them closed and open. There was complete darkness. She tried to move and could not. Something was holding her shoulders. She remembered going under the floor in a useless attempt to escape. She had become lost and then something had frightened her, and she had panicked and knocked herself out.

She moved her head, and felt something brush against her cheek. She whimpered in fear. Then she heard an anxious chirrup.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried in vain to move. She must have turned slightly while unconscious, jamming her shoulders. Easing herself around, she was able to get free. She was still unable to see the lantern light; without it, she doubted she would find her way back to the cell.

She thought for a bit, round the edges of the pain in her head. Hearing the feinna breathing gave her an idea.

‘In the tray. Food. Go get it,’ Glynn whispered. Please, she thought. Please go back to the room so I can find my way out. Remembering that Bayard had said the animal communicated in images, she visualised a bowl of creamy porridge on the floor of the cell as vividly as she could.

The feinna touched her arm with its wet nose and Glynn saw again the He-feinna dying in the man-thing. Man-thing?

She could hear the feinna moving away and, abandoning conjecture, began to follow after it. Her fingers and heels were grated raw and her head clanged but she did not stop. The feinna waited until she caught up, then went on. It was a new kind of nightmare, but Glynn did not allow herself to give way to despair. Better to die trying than to let the soul-spar fade.

The feinna chirped, stepped on to Glynn’s chest and then was gone. Hardly daring to hope, she reached up and found the torn net. The relief was indescribable and weak tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.

Gathering herself, she wriggled and fought her way up through the net and the crack into the room. It was pitch dark, which meant the lantern had run out of oil. No wonder she had been unable to see anything.

She groped her way to the bed and sat down and then it came to her: it had all been for nothing! All that effort and struggling and fear. She was scratched to pieces and had a gash on her forehead she would have no way of explaining. The tears felt like stones forcing themselves out of her soul, for shedding them was an admission of defeat she would not make. Yet she could not stop. It was as though an ocean of tears was draining through her.

The feinna made a small miserable sound and Glynn felt for it in the darkness. Her anguish was hurting it; she forced herself to calm down. Remembering her strange dream, Glynn understood that somehow she had relived the feinna’s capture and the death of its mate. This sobered her, for what was the terrible night she had endured, compared to the feinna’s suffering? The savage death of its mate, the crippling of its soul-spar in an unnatural shape to link with Bayard, and to no avail, for its babies had died anyway.

The feinna was trembling and pressing itself to Glynn. Its round belly rested in her hand and she could feel the little animal’s heart beating; the warmth of the younglings in its belly.

I remember what it was like to have them inside, she thought incredulously. She held the feinna close. We remember. We will not let the flame go out. We will protect the younglings.

After a long time, Glynn forced herself to get up. She lifted the now-sleeping feinna onto the bed, and unstrapped the sandals from her chest, thinking it a miracle that they had not been dislodged. She pulled off her clothes, wincing where they were stuck, and found her way to the feinna’s water trough. Grimly she sluiced her face and hands and neck. She stung in a dozen places and the gash on her forehead throbbed as she patted it dry with her shirt. She was a mess and she had no idea how she was going to explain it to Bayard. Was too tired even to be concerned.

Even so, she replaced the flags and pulled the mattress flat over them, before crawling into bed beside the feinna. Without waking, it shifted close to her and pressed its swollen form into her neck until hair and fur were so close there was no knowing where one ended and the other began.

Glynn’s mind swam with images of running and floating and crawling through tunnels. And of the younglings.

Poor little desperate mother, she thought dreamily. Both of us wanting so badly to protect what maybe can’t be protected. ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.

segue …

The watcher withdrew, struck with wonder at what it had witnessed. The Song had woven itself deep into this strange bonding and who knew what would come of it. It had not been predicted; was not predictable.

The watcher segued following the theme of love and sacrifice which resonated powerfully across the web, and set up echoes of response from many points in the Unraveller’s world.

It entered a woman who had once known the girl Glynna …

‘What’s the matter?’ a man asked the woman.

She looked at him for a moment, unseeing and full of a strange tugging sadness. What had he asked; if something was the matter? She cast through her unravelling thoughts. She had been thinking about taking him to the airport and deciding she must ring her agency to find out if anyone needed short-term home nursing to fill the time when he was away. Then she had started thinking about a queer anxious dream she had experienced in which she had been pregnant and trapped underneath something. Then she had been wondering whether she had enough cat food to last her cat the two days she would be absent. That had led to thoughts of a book she had been reading in which a cat had been left to die of thirst in an empty house. How often life imitated itself in that intriguing random way; a thing happened and then it would be replicated in some slightly altered form, seemingly for no reason. On her good days she felt there was a reason for everything, but on blue days like this, everything seemed pointlessly cruel or cruelly pointless.

How could she put all of that into the sort of a coherent statement he liked to hear formulated?

‘Nothing. I don’t know,’ she said finally. But the sadness had grown heavier. ‘Let’s go.’

He paid for their lunch.

The sky was heavy and rain started to fall as they climbed into the car. By the time the seatbelts were clipped, the windows were fogged; a thing about her car that always irritated him. It was a black sports car, but there were dents along the side where she had run into a lightpole and the targa top was cracked because someone had dropped something on it. Before his time, of course. Then there were the windscreen wipers that screeched and the door and boot that wouldn’t open and the seals that leaked around the windows …

He looked at her, and she had put the shades on. A sure sign something was wrong, and a sure sign, he thought, that she wanted him to know something was wrong. He was annoyed that she didn’t just say it, but concluded that she was quiet on the drive because she was feeling sad about him going away.

‘What is it?’ he coaxed, feeling tender.

She saw that his eyes were soft and softened, too. What was the point in saying she felt guilty about the cat, and about her family and her friends, because when he had come along everything, including the animal, whom she had regarded as her closest ally, had of necessity been relegated to a minor role. In a strange way, the cat symbolised her life before he had entered it. It had been given to her by a family with whom she had once stayed for months. She had nursed one of the daughters, who had been dying of a tumour. She had not wanted a cat, but when the blonde daughter offered it, she sensed the girl needed her to take it. All attention in that family had been focused on the ailing daughter, and half the time neither the parents nor anyone else even seemed to notice the other one.

So she had taken the cat out of pity for the girl, and she had come to love it. It had filled an emptiness in her life she had not been aware of. She had needed that cat. But when she went with him to his side of the world, the cat would be left behind with her mother.

It was her decision and her desire to go, and she was living with it because she wanted to be with him and what else could you do? The cat was too old to endure the long journey and the far longer quarantine such a removal would entail. It wasn’t his fault or hers, but just the same she often felt that her devotion to the cat had been abandoned through expedience, and that it had deserved better from her. She felt mixed up and guilty and sad, but also resolute because life just wasn’t black and white and there were no simple right decisions.

‘I’m feeling sad about leaving the cat. That’s all,’ she said at last.

Immediately his underlying irritation flickered to life. The cat again! ‘Why didn’t you stay with it then, if you feel that way?’

She withdrew into herself at the harshness of his tone. He saw it happen and it irritated him further. Any minute now she would accuse him of hurting her feelings. Jesus, how he was sick of that phrase. Women always expected you to soothe their feelings if something you said – never mind that it might be true – upset them. Somehow you were supposed to separate their feelings from everything else.

He started the car.

‘We have to get petrol,’ she murmured in that emotionless monotone she adopted when she withdrew, and which he hated. They drove in silence to the petrol station.

‘I know how you feel about the cat. But we have to live!’ he said, striving to be calm because he did not want to leave her in turmoil. Thinking at the same time: Here we go again. God, he would be glad to get away from her for a while. Her habit of changing her mind every five minutes and her precious feelings and her quick thoughtless decisions that always ended up backfiring. The cat was just a symptom.

She wanted to say that the cat had rights, too, and it had been there before him. But that would be absurd. She didn’t want him to do anything, she realised. She just wanted him to understand how torn she was sometimes.

‘I said I felt sad about leaving it, that’s all,’ she began. Then she stopped abruptly, wondering what the hell she was doing arguing with him. As usual, he would consider that she was getting over-emotional about something minor and turning it into melodrama. She was so tired of hearing how inconsiderate and selfish and thoughtless she was. If he would just look at himself once in a while and see that he could be selfish, moody and inconsiderate, it wouldn’t be so bad. Jesus, neither of them was perfect, but it would be nice if he could acknowledge it once in a while.

Putting their two lives together meant compromising, which never sounded hard until you tried it. All the love in the world wouldn’t make a square peg fit into a round hole.

Depressed, she wondered why it was so difficult to keep your ideals. Everything shining seemed to tarnish after a while, or crumble to nothing in your hands.

The watcher segued, puzzled to find the blonde girl’s pity for the feinna so perfectly mirrored by the woman’s feelings for her pet. Were they separate sadnesses that simply mirrored one another, or were they somehow the same thing? Were the two worlds now wound together so that what occurred in one must occur in the other?

21

segue …