The Singer of All Songs (11 page)

‘Indeed,’ said one of Darrow’s friends suddenly, coming up behind them. He was a short, curly-headed man, a few years younger than Darrow, with bright dark eyes, his face crinkled with lines of cheerful humour. He seemed to bounce along, ready for any mischief or merriment. He grinned at Calwyn. ‘I’m sure you’ve done a good deed tonight for all the young girls of Kalysons. Those louts will think twice before they tease anyone else.’ He held out his hand to Calwyn. ‘I’m Xanni. That miserable oaf is my big brother, Tonno.’

The taller and burlier of the pair, still walking behind them, raised his hand in a brief salute. He was dark and curly-haired, like his brother, but he had an ill-tempered, surly look, as if he had been dragged away in the middle of his meal, and his bushy eyebrows were drawn together in a permanent scowl.

‘My name is Calwyn.’

‘And you come from Antaris. I can see that with my own eyes, even if Darrow hadn’t told me.’ Xanni nodded down at Calwyn’s yellow sleeve. ‘We’ll have to get you some new clothes, you can’t run about the town looking like that. It’s not safe.’

Suddenly Calwyn felt a pang of perverse attachment to her robes. It was true, they marked her out at once as a priestess, or a witch, for those who knew or had heard the tales, and yet she couldn’t help feeling that to put the yellow robes away would be a kind of betrayal. No one would know that she was a sister of Antaris, a handmaiden of the Goddess. It would feel like losing part of herself.

They came to the brothers’ boat. Xanni jumped down onto the deck, and casually, without making a fuss about it, extended a hand to help Darrow. Calwyn hesitated on the jetty; she had never set foot on a boat before. What would be between her and the deep dark water? Only some thin pieces of wood, nailed together.

Tonno growled, ‘Jump down, lass, we haven’t got all night.’

Calwyn jumped, and staggered. Though the boat was still, she was certain she could feel the unsteady bed of sea water shifting beneath the soles of her feet. Darrow saw her uneasy look. ‘You’ll get used to it soon enough. We shall make a sailor of you, never fear.’

‘You won’t send me back to the mountains, then?’ she said.

‘Not tonight,’ he said gruffly. And he held out a hand to guide her to the hatchway.

Down below the deck, Xanni was busy with the lanterns, filling the snug cabin with a warm glow of light. The interior was as cosy as a tiny cottage, with a long table and cushioned benches on either side, storage cupboards and lockers, and a doorway onto a lower cabin lined with bunks. Peering eagerly about, Calwyn squeezed herself into a corner behind the table.

But she had little time for staring before Xanni andTonno rummaged in the lockers and produced some food. It was only hard bread, a cold leftover stew of fish and beans, and some dried fruits, but Calwyn fell upon it as gratefully as if it had been the feast she’d been dreaming of all day. ‘If we’d known you were coming, we would have stocked up the larder.’ Xanni grinned broadly as he watched Darrow tear off a large hunk of bread. ‘But Tonno will make you his
particular
hot potion.’

Tonno was already at work over the little stove in the corner, and soon the cabin was filled with a delicious smell of ginger and spices. Presently the drink was slopped into four tin mugs, and Tonno shoved one across the table to Calwyn. ‘There’s honey in that from Antaris.’

She inhaled the sweet clear brew with her eyes closed, and shook her head. ‘Not from Antaris.’

Xanni and Tonno exchanged glances, and Xanni laughed. ‘It was bought at the fair last autumn, and they swore blind it was best Antaris honey.’

‘We paid good coin for that,’ grumbled Tonno. ‘How do you know it’s not mountain honey?’

‘I should think I’d know the scent from my own hives.’

‘Calwyn was beekeeper to the sisters there,’ said Darrow.

‘It’s very good, all the same,’ said Calwyn hastily, butTonno only grunted.

‘And now that you have eaten badly and drunk well,’ said Xanni cheerfully, settling himself at the table across from Darrow, ‘I think it’s time for the tale you owe us, my friend. How did you come by that limp?’

‘How did you come by
her
?’ growledTonno from the steps, as he packed some dried leaves into the bowl of a pipe. Calwyn watched as he lit it, drew back and blew the smoke out through the hatchway into the night air. The blue tendrils smelled of cherrywood and some other pungent scent she didn’t recognise. She leaned back against the warm planks of the cabin wall and wrapped her hands around her mug. A pleasant tiredness was beginning to creep over her; dreamily she thought how easy it would be to fall asleep here, sitting up on this hard bench.

She closed her eyes and began to doze, half-aware of Darrow’s voice as he wove the tale of his journey across the mountains, how he had injured himself crossing the Wall. how Calwyn had found him and brought him to the Dwellings, and how Samis had followed him there at last. Even the story of that final dreadful night seemed hazy and unreal, as if it had happened to someone else. Then he was telling how they had fled together down the river, floating and tumbling and drifting, carried further and further away . . .

She was woken by the sound of Xanni’s laughter. ‘Fetch a pillow, Tonno, it would be a shame to wake her now.’

‘I am awake.’ Sleepily, Calwyn dragged herself upright and blinked in the lamplight.

‘So,’ said Tonno, ignoring her. ‘You managed to escape him this time.’

‘This time. But perhaps we can turn the chase around, and hunt the hunter.’ Darrow leaned forward eagerly. ‘I’ve been thinking about something that Calwyn said to me when we were in Antaris, that the best way to stop him from carrying out his plan might be to gather a band of chanters and face him together. I saw in Antaris, when all the priestesses sang together, how it weakened his powers.’

‘But he still defeated us that night,’ said Calwyn sharply. ‘And almost killed one of the sisters, besides.’

‘True, but most of his victories come more easily than that. You were right that day, Calwyn, though I wouldn’t admit it.’ Fleetingly his eyes met hers, and he smiled at her astonished face, then looked quickly away.

Xanni began to laugh. ‘It will be the simplest of tasks! Look, we already have an ironcrafter and a priestess of ice-call. At this rate, by summer’s end
Fledgewing
will be so heavy with chanters we won’t be able to move through the water!’

‘
Fledgewing
is the name of this good boat,’ Darrow said to Calwyn, patting the warm timbers. ‘I hope it will take us to Mithates for the next stage of our quest. With its crew, of course. If they are willing.’ He raised an inquiring eyebrow to the brothers. Tonno merely grunted, and glared at his pipe, but Xanni clapped Darrow warmly on the back.

‘By all means! We haven’t forgotten the promise we made to you in Gellan. We’ll take you wherever you wish, and gladly, whether it be Mithates or Merithuros or anywhere in between.’

‘Steady,’ muttered Tonno. ‘He’ll promise to sail you from one moon to the next if you let him.’

‘Mithates is the land of the guardians of the Power of Fire, isn’t it?’ said Calwyn hesitantly, struggling to remember what Darrow had shown her on the little wooden globe.

‘It was so, once,’ Darrow corrected her. ‘But now chantment is outlawed, and the colleges of Mithates spend their days making weapons to sell to whoever will buy them.’

For once Xanni looked serious. ‘Aye, they pride themselves on having no enemies. They’ll sell spears to Rengan and swords to Baltimar, and call them both friend, and the two lands jumping to cut each other’s throats.’

‘With friendship like that –’ Tonno left his sentence unfinished, and spat out of the hatchway.

‘But if there are no more chanters in Mithates, why are we going there?’ asked Calwyn.

‘I said that chantment was outlawed, not that there were no more chanters. There are chanters in every corner of Tremaris, if you know how to find them.’

‘You think we’ll find someone there to help us fight Samis?’ ‘I am sure of it. The Power of Fire is the third of the great Powers. If we can find a master of fire to help us, perhaps we will be almost strong enough.’

‘When would you have us sail?’ Xanni ran an eager hand through his curly hair, as if he would be happy to start at once.

‘As soon as we can be ready.’

Xanni nodded. ‘All we need is one day to buy provisions. And find some clothes for the lass. We could be gone by nightfall.’

From the steps, Tonno said, ‘Perhaps Enna’s clothes will fit her.’

‘I was thinking the same thing.’ Xanni turned in his chair. ‘Enna was our sister. She was a tall lass too, like you, and not yet in skirts.’

Calwyn had not seen a single woman in the city streets wearing a tunic and trousers like her own. In Kalysons, it was the custom for girls of marrying age to wear long full skirts and aprons. Calwyn couldn’t imagine what it would be like to walk or run or climb, dragging those cumbersome wide skirts.

Shyly she asked, ‘What happened to your sister?’

Tonno gave a grunt, tapped out his pipe, and abruptly hauled himself onto the deck. Xanni said, ‘Enna died of a fever when we were young. She wasn’t even sixteen summers.’

‘Oh – I’m sorry –’

Xanni smiled sadly. ‘Aye, well, it was a long time ago. Tomorrow I’ll go to the house of our aunt, where our childhood things are stored, and we’ll make you look less like a priestess and more like a fisherman’s daughter.’

‘Thank you.’ Calwyn’s face was split by a sudden yawn she couldn’t suppress.

‘She is falling asleep where she sits,’ said Darrow. ‘You had better show her a place to lay her head.’

Xanni laughed. ‘Never fear, my friend! We have quarters fit for your little priestess.’

Calwyn had already glimpsed the lower cabin with its four deep bunks, each screened by a curtain. But Xanni opened a small hatchway she hadn’t noticed, in the bow of the boat, and revealed another tiny cabin. The space was cluttered with nets and coils of rope, which Xanni hauled out, clearing two more narrow bunks lying along the prow. ‘It’s a long time since we had a cabin boy,’ he said. ‘We can tidy this better in the morning light.’ He stood aside to let Calwyn through the little hatchway. ‘I’m sorry it smells so strong of fish,’ he said doubtfully, but after nights of sleeping on bare planks or straw, with only her cloak for shelter, Calwyn was beyond caring. Rolled in a blanket, with the luxury of an old feather pillow beneath her head, her eyes were soon closing. Faintly she heard Darrow’s cross voice say, ‘not
my
anything’, and the explosion of Xanni’s laughter. But gently rocked by the boat, and lulled by the soft slap of water against
Fledgewing
’s sides, she was asleep before she had taken ten breaths.

When Calwyn woke, it was broad day, and Darrow andTonno had already disappeared into the city.

‘Gone to find someone who can tell us the best sailing to Mithates,’ Xanni said. ‘
Fledgewing
and Tonno and I know this side of the Bay well, and we have travelled north to Gellan, but we’ve never been so far west as Mithates.’

They ate their breakfast on deck, perched on upturned fish baskets. Sitting in the sunshine and blinking at the light that gleamed off the mirror of the harbour, it was impossible not to be excited at the idea of sailing off toward that wide horizon. Calwyn bit into her biscuit with a light heart. Xanni, who was never long without a smile, grinned at her.

‘Tell me, Xanni, how did you become friends with Darrow?’

‘Hasn’t he told you that tale? We met him in Gellan last winter just after he quarrelled with Samis, and gave him passage back to Kalysons.’

‘Quarrelled with Samis? You make it sound as if they started out as friends.’

‘But they were friends.’ Xanni saw the look on her face. ‘He hasn’t told you that, either?’

Slowly Calwyn chewed, and swallowed, but the biscuit suddenly seemed to have turned to sand in her mouth. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I thought they had been enemies as long as time.’

‘Oh, no. They were close as brothers when they studied together in Merithuros, even though Samis was a son of the Emperor, and a good bit older. But when Samis told him of this plan of his to be master of all chantment, and the king of the world, Darrow wanted none of it. Samis stayed in Gellan to learn more about some kind of magic.’

‘Gellan. That’s where he would have learned the Power of Seeming.’

‘Aye, that’s right. And Darrow sailed south withTonno and me. But Samis followed him, and found him here, and said that he would rip out his heart, and all manner of nonsense, if he wouldn’t help him, and Darrow took off for the mountains – but you know that already.’ Xanni wiped up the last of his porridge with a piece of bread. ‘It was a great sorrow to him to lose that friendship, aye, more than that, to have it turn so sour. Near broke his heart, I reckon. I’ve never heard him speak of any family or any other friend apart from Samis.’

‘But now he has you and Tonno.’

‘Aye, that’s true. And you.’ Xanni looked at her shrewdly. ‘But I daresay you know by now he’s not the kind to be sentimental. Especially not with business like this afoot.’

‘No,’ said Calwyn uncertainly. ‘I suppose not.’

Xanni jumped to his feet. ‘Come on. If you’re to be our deckhand, I’d better teach you how to do some hard work.’

‘I learned hard work in Antaris,’ said Calwyn indignantly, but as usual, Xanni was grinning.

There were many chores to be done aboard the boat, and Calwyn was keen to show Xanni that she was no spoilt and pampered priestess, but could work just as hard as he could. Willingly she scrubbed at the decks and swilled them down, and coiled ropes and folded nets, while Xanni told her the names of the different sails and riggings.

She eyed the brasswork around the portholes, which was stained with salt and green marks. ‘Do you have any beeswax for polishing?’

Xanni found her a rag and an old lump of soft wax wrapped in a cloth, and before long the first of the portholes gleamed softly as she rubbed at it. Xanni whistled. ‘I’d almost forgotten it could shine like that.’

‘The more often it’s done, the easier it is,’ said Calwyn pointedly, pausing for a moment to wipe her forehead.