The Singer of All Songs (2 page)

Plump Gilly, one of the younger novices, nudged her and grinned. It was Gilly’s very first Strengthening that day. Calwyn thought she looked as excited and scared as if this were her first Festival of Shadows, the one night of the year when the priestesses mingled with the men chosen from the villages, under the warm shelter of spring moondark. Although the novices took no part in that ritual until after their initiation, Gilly was already beginning to flirt and stretch her eyes at the lads who tended the fields and cut up the firewood for the sisters. Calwyn herself was to become a full priestess next midwinter, but when Gilly asked her who had caught her eye, she had no answer. There were plenty of handsome youths among them, but they were all so juvenile, so absorbed in skittles and kick-ball and bantering with the village lasses, that Calwyn had no time for them.

‘They’ll be lining up to dance with
you
around the fires, with your big black eyes and your long black hair!’ Gilly had said more than once. ‘Though it
is
a shame you’re so tall and skinny –’

‘I’m not very good at dancing,’ was Calwyn’s stiff reply. In truth, she wasn’t looking forward to the Festival of Shadows. Now she gave Gilly a quick, distant smile, and turned away.

Marna, the High Priestess, was standing on the wide steps, robed in the same regal dark blue cloak that Tamen wore, and holding the silver-topped staff of her office. She wore no jewels, but her silver hair was piled high on her head like a crown. She raised one hand, and in her clear voice sang out the blessing of the Goddess upon them all as they set out to perform Her work. With heads bowed and hands clasped in their sleeves, the sisters listened, and then, as the last faint notes died away, they turned and began the steady shuffling march away from Marna, finding the paths that radiated out from the Dwellings in every direction toward the Wall.

As they walked, they began to sing. Calwyn heard the sweet clear notes rising around her on all sides, a net of chantment that spread slowly out from the heart of Antaris toward the Wall, a golden mesh of magic woven from their voices, with her own voice one strand of gold among many. The sun was coming up, flooding the valley with light, and she could see the narrow path that her feet followed, winding away through the orchard and across the river. Already to her left she had lost sight of Gilly; she’d vanished behind the outbuildings. But she could still hear Tamen’s strong voice on her other side, and see her tall unbending figure as she made her way along the neighbouring path. These were not the everyday paths that the sisters used, broad and indistinct, blurring into the grass. The paths that were used only for this ritual were narrow as one foot’s width, worn into a deep groove by generations of priestesses, back and back to the first days of Antaris.

Calwyn sang, and as she sang she felt her sleepy crossness fall away. As always the ancient song flowed easily, dreamily, from her lips, the words so old that their meaning shimmered just out of reach of sense. In the apple orchard, pale buds starred the branches where the trees were coming into blossom. The dark mounds of the beehives slumbered at the end of the orchard. Lately, Marna had decided to make the keeping of the hives Calwyn’s special responsibility; Damyr the old beekeeper was too feeble now to turn the heavy frames, or even to walk as far as the hives without help.

The river ran slow and wide at the foot of the orchard. Gingerly, Calwyn crossed the narrow bridge that spanned it, careful not to slip on the dew-damp stone; as with everyone in Antaris, the dread of water and drowning ran deep in her bones. One of her earliest memories was the sight of a fish, plucked from the river, writhing as it choked on the bank.
As we breathe the air, so the fish breathe the water. And just as the fish die
when they come into our world, so we perish when we enter theirs.
She couldn’t remember who had delivered the warning, she’d been so young. But even now she tried not to look at the dangerous water as it swirled beneath her feet, and when the bridge was safely crossed, her song lifted in relief.

As she sang and walked through the woods and up the slope, the sun rose steadily higher, until at last she could glimpse the shimmer of the Wall ahead. The famed Wall of Antaris, smooth, impenetrable, stood as high as the height of three men, as wide as a river, vast and gleaming and slippery in the sun.

As she drew closer, Calwyn held out her hands for the ritual incantations, and almost at once she was aware of the chantment taking hold, the tingling in her hands that signalled the flow of power, and the sudden sharp consciousness of everything about her as her voice rose and fell. Up and down the Wall, the sisters were all singing the same words, summoning the same magic, calling on the Goddess to make the great Wall solid and without flaw, to strengthen the ice barrier between Her daughters and the dangers of the lands beyond.

Calwyn’s senses were so heightened now that she could almost hear the sunlight falling on the trees and the sweet grass, and smell the scent of each tiny wild herb that grew in the moist shadows of the Wall. She could hear the unfolding of every leaf toward the light, and the gentle gurgle of the distant river, and far off in the orchard the familiar hum of the hives. And now, very faintly, she could hear the voices of the other priestesses joined in song, a shimmering web of chantment that rose and fell, circling the lands of Antaris. Now there was nothing else but the rush of power, making whole what was damaged, making strong what was weak, drawing together the humming of the morning into the fabric of song. There was no Calwyn, no Wall, no path beneath her feet, only the light and the song and the ever-shifting eternal bright movement of chantment.

Calwyn did not touch the Wall. The power that hummed and crackled through it was so strong that only the Guardian herself could lay hands on it safely. As Calwyn sang, she could feel in every fibre the pulse of the living, dangerous flow of magic between herself and the Wall that was the presence of the Goddess, called up by her voice and the ritual words she sang. The ice seemed to set before her eyes; in the places where the sun’s growing warmth had produced a slippery sheen, the ice grew hard and brilliant once more. Calwyn began to walk slowly along the length of the Wall. the sun at her back, singing as she went. She walked with care; the path was uneven, a rough groove beside the towering rampart of ice, and she was light-headed from walking and chantment and going without her breakfast. The sisters always fasted before embarking on important rituals. She would not eat before sundown, when she returned to the Dwellings.

All morning she followed the path she knew so well, singing without cease, giddy with magic, methodically checking the surface of the Wall for any weakness or flaws. It sometimes happened that the earth shifted, or a rock fall from the mountains might crash against the Wall’s far side and crack it. Even the digging of rabbits and burrowers beneath the Wall might weaken it a little.

She was just past the panna groves when she saw him.

Calwyn stopped in her tracks, and her song faltered on her lips. For the space of a heartbeat she thought she must be dreaming; the steady chantment she’d been singing without pause since dawn jerked almost into silence.

A young man was lying across the path. His eyes were closed: he was asleep, or dead. She could see at once that he was not a man of Antaris. His face was pale, and his hair was fair as straw, rather than dark and glossy. He was slightly built, not stocky like the men of the villages. His jerkin was too short, and his mud-stained cloak was too long. He did not belong here.

Her first thought was for the Wall; there must be some breach, some gaping inexplicable wound through which he had entered. It was her fault. This was her stretch of the Wall. the half-day’s walk from the crest of Goats Hill to the river. She must have been careless that last Day of Strengthening, in the depth of winter. There was a blizzard that day, the whirling snows so thick that she couldn’t even see the Wall ahead. Priestesses had been lost in blizzards like that before, but this time the Goddess had watched over them all, and every one of Her daughters had stumbled back safely to the Dwellings. Could it be that she’d missed something in the blinding snowstorm, some crack, some crumbling, that had let this man inside their lands?

But the Wall was whole. There was nothing, no gap, no crack, not even a patch of roughness that might give toehold to a climber. It stood, shining, impervious, rearing up beside the path, as solid as ever. Relieved, she turned her attention back to the unmoving body of the stranger. She took a step closer, still singing the words of the chantment of strengthening. Its rhythms were so familiar, and she had practised it so often, that she could sing it without thinking; she could have sung it in her sleep. The man did not move. Surely he must be dead. The Goddess had seen his presumption and struck him down. Calwyn could see now that his foot was injured, twisted back on itself, and there was blood on his boot. There was blood on his head too, from a great gash across his forehead, matting the straw-coloured hair.

Still singing, Calwyn took another few steps forward and bent to study his face. He was older than she’d thought at first, nearer thirty than twenty. His features were boyish, but his nose was slightly beaked, giving him a hawk-like look, and there were lines around his closed eyes, as if he’d stared long into the sun. He looked pale and peaceful, and cold, lying there in the Wall’s shadow. Should she leave him here to rot in the woods at the mercy of the Goddess, or should she run back along the Wall and fetch Tamen? Tamen would know exactly what to do. Somehow it seemed wrong to leave the body of an Outlander untended, so close to the sacred Wall. But she couldn’t move him by herself. She would have to go back to the Dwellings, and bring a party of men to carry him –

Suddenly the stranger’s eyes flew open.

Calwyn gave a little scream, and was instantly ashamed of herself. But the Outlander was as startled as she; he struggled up on his elbows and tried to pull himself away, dragging his broken foot across the ground. His eyes, grey as a winter sky, were wide with dread. And then he did something that surprised Calwyn utterly: he began to sing.

It was a shaky chantment, to be sure, and the stranger stammered as he sang, but although the notes were low and growling, from deep in his throat, completely unlike the high clear chantments she knew, it was unmistakably a song of power. Calwyn’s hands began to tingle as they always did in the presence of magic. And then she felt the oddest sensation, as though someone had grasped the back of her tunic and tugged it firmly. She actually turned her head to see if someone had come up behind her, but there was no one there, only this invisible force pulling her backward, a force that came from the Outlander and his song.

She threw out her hands. She couldn’t speak; she was forbidden to use her voice except for chantment until the day’s ritual was complete. Yet surely even Tamen would say that to combat an Outlander was to serve the Goddess, the highest service there could be.

Calwyn made up her mind. The rule must be broken, for all their sakes. She breathed in deeply, as she’d been taught, raised her hands, and sang. She sang a spell of cold and ice, a chantment to weave a shadow of icy air all about the stranger, so that his hands shook and his teeth chattered. Still he managed to keep up his own song, growling it out through teeth clenched against the cold, and Calwyn felt the unseen hand at her back grow suddenly stronger, yanking her backward with unexpected force, and she fell onto the grass, breath and song knocked out of her. But then, just as suddenly, the invisible hand released her. She sat up, shaken and a little dazed; the Outlander, the last of his desperate strength exhausted, had collapsed back across the path, and there was silence.

Calwyn went to kneel beside him. It was obvious that he was at the very end of his strength; his eyes blazed with fever, he was thin and weak. Perhaps he had lain there helpless for days. When she tried to brush back his hair to look at the cut on his head, he pushed her away, but only feebly. ‘Get back,’ he croaked, and at once began to cough, fighting for breath as those from outside always did in the high lands.

‘Peace,’ said Calwyn. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ His foot was more severely injured than she’d thought; now she could see, through the torn leather of his boot, the gleam of crushed bone and the mangled flesh beneath. No wonder he couldn’t move himself from the cold breath of the Wall into the warmth of the sun. He caught at her sleeve.

‘I know you – you have not deceived me.’ His voice was only a whisper, but it was fierce and urgent. ‘You have not deceived me! I am not persuaded! I have found you out!’

‘Very well, very well,’ Calwyn soothed him. Before old Damyr had taken her to be apprentice beekeeper, she had spent a year working with Ursca in the infirmary, and she had seen people delirious with fever before. This man was very ill, and perhaps badly hurt. She knew that a cut to the head might bleed heavily and not be serious, or it might scarcely leave a mark and yet lead to death from bleeding inside the skull. She said, ‘Can you sit up?’

‘I must get away from here.’ His voice was weak, but much more reasonable than before. ‘He will find me if I stay in the open for long.’ His voice had a stilted, foreign lilt to it, though it was not the accent of the traders from Kalysons.

‘Who will find you?’

‘
He
will. You know who I mean.’ He peered at her face. ‘Is it you? I am not sure of anything any more – Who are you?’

‘My name is Calwyn. Listen to me: I’ll try to take you back to the Dwellings, the sisters there can help you more than I can. Do you think you could stand? Here, lean on me.’

The Outlander struggled to his feet, wincing with pain and leaning hard on Calwyn’s arm. Though she was tall and strong, and he was slight and barely as tall as she, his weight was heavy on her shoulder, and she staggered to support him. ‘I can make it easier, a little,’ he said, and from deep in his throat he began to sing another low, gurgling chantment. His crushed foot lifted off the ground, and it seemed to Calwyn that his weight on her shoulder did ease slightly. Slowly, very slowly, they were able to limp along together.