The Singer of All Songs (27 page)

Darrow said, ‘We intend no harm to you. We are travellers.’

But at the sound of his voice, all the forest people backed away; some clapped their hands to their ears.

They may not come to Spiridrell!
The woman’s eyes were gleaming with fear and anger.
Take them away. We want no Voiced
Ones, no singers of songs here. Take them to your own place, and take the
harm they bring upon yourself alone!

For a moment the young man stared back at her, then without replying he turned and beckoned the crew of
Fledgewing
to follow him back through the forest. Calwyn saw that his dark eyes were shining with unshed tears, and impulsively she put her hand upon his arm. He did not smile, but he looked at her steadily, acknowledging her touch, then slipped through the trees the way they had come.

‘What’s this?’ mutteredTonno to Darrow. ‘Are these people fighting among themselves?’

‘We cannot expect them to agree on everything, any more than the other peoples of Tremaris.’

It is more than that.

The young man did not turn round but it seemed to Calwyn that his back was stiff as though he had been beaten and was trying not to show his pain.

They have cast me out. The Elders will not suffer me to live among them.
I must live apart from Spiridrell.

‘Why’s that?’ asked Mica.

I speak with the beasts and understand them. And I have other skills,
skills that others do not share. The People have no love for me.

‘They fear you,’ said Darrow quietly. ‘They fear what they do not understand. It is the same everywhere. There’s not one of us that could not tell you the same story. Everyone who works with chantment knows what it is to be feared, and to be hated.’

‘How do you speak with the beasts, if you have no voice?’ said Trout, puzzled as usual over a practical question. The young man turned around at that, smiling at Trout.

I speak with them as I speak with you.

Suddenly he raised his arms high at his sides and threw back his head. Calwyn heard no call, no chantment, but at once they were surrounded by a whirring of wings, and from everywhere there swooped and fluttered dozens of the bright forest birds that they had glimpsed before. This time they did not dart away into the cover of the trees, but answered the silent call of the young man; they settled on his shoulders, his outstretched arms, his head and back, even clinging to the fibres of his robe with their claws, so that he was covered from head to foot in their jewelled feathers, a living garment of iridescent colour, with just his proud, serious face visible between the curving wings. Mica clapped her hands and laughed in delight.

Again the young man gave some silent signal, and the birds flew away, all but one bright green-and-yellow bird that remained perched on his shoulder.

Come. We are almost there.
And as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he turned and walked on through the forest, with the little bird looking back at them, still chirruping quietly.

At last he halted.
We have arrived
.

They were standing in a grove with tall trees on all sides. A dense canopy of leaves cast a deep veil of shadow over the forest floor; a stream gurgled over a bed of smooth stones with a sound like laughter.

Then Mica thought to look upward, and gasped. Far above their heads, partly hidden by the thick cover of foliage, was a large platform, like a raft sailing on the sea of green leaves. A rope ladder dangled down to rest on the ground just in front of them.

Darrow looked inquiringly toward their guide. The stranger nodded, and put his foot to the ladder, and in a moment had run up the rungs as nimbly as if they were an ordinary flight of steps. Trout gulped. Tonno said, ‘I don’t know if that contraption will bear my weight.’

‘There is only one way to be sure,’ said Darrow. He tested the first rung with his boot, then began the laborious process of hauling himself higher and higher, trying not to put too much weight on his crooked foot. The others followed him.

Calwyn was the last to pull herself up onto the platform. She stood for a moment blinking in the flood of sunshine that greeted her, for the structure was level with the treetops, bright and warm with sunlight, floating above the shade below as a boat floats above the depths of the sea. It was a large flat wooden deck, sturdily built, and hemmed by the treetops so it seemed that a hedge of green grew along its edges. A ladder led to a smaller platform, higher in the tree. Flowering vines spilled untidily over the smooth planks, filling the air with a dizzying perfume.

Welcome to my home.
The stranger regarded them solemnly.
My
name is Halasaa.

Darrow stepped forward, and spoke each of their names in turn. Halasaa bowed, then fetched a carved wooden cup. Calwyn took it, and inhaled a strange wild scent like the flowers. ‘Careful!’ she heard Trout hiss at her side. But she tipped the cup; the sweet drink left her lips and tongue tingling. Halasaa handed the cup to each of the others. Only Trout would not drink; he sniffed the cup, and sneezed, and set it down.

Halasaa gestured to them to sit. He watched as Darrow lowered himself awkwardly, holding his foot out stiffly before him.

You are hurt.

‘An old injury, long healed. It no longer gives me pain.’

But it impedes you.

Darrow gave a wry smile. ‘Yes, at times.’

Let me see it.

Darrow hesitated for a moment, then unlaced his boot and stretched out his twisted foot. Halasaa looked at it carefully, then laid his brown tapered hands on it, closed his eyes and began to move his fingers up and down rapidly, gently pinching and tapping in an elaborate rhythm so quick that Calwyn could hardly follow the flickering movements. A shiver travelled down the back of her neck. Once again she had the sensation, as she had when she stood beneath the blazetrees, of hearing a song half-remembered, half-understood, but just out of her reach. This was chantment, but a strange silent chantment, without words or music. She could not understand it, but she knew that whatever Halasaa was doing, it was as magical as any song. She heard Darrow take in a sharp breath, and saw his hands press hard against the planking, the knuckles white and bloodless. Halasaa shifted his hands, and the rhythm of his movements slowed to a firm, kneading pressure. Then the chantment ended, and Halasaa opened his eyes and lifted his hands away. Darrow’s long thin foot rested on the floor, as straight and whole as if it had never been hurt.

Mica gasped, and Tonno shook his head in wonder. Quietly Darrow said, ‘I thank you.’ He took his foot between his own hands and felt it quickly all over, then without fuss reached for his boot and pulled it on.

Trout gaped. ‘How – ?’

Halasaa smiled.
My father taught me the old craft. He was as I am.
He taught me how to dance with the force that binds and flows in all living
things, in you and me, in the trees of the forest, in the birds and the arakin
and the creeping beasts of the ground. All of the world sings, and dances too.
All is one, all are joined in the great river.

‘The fourth Power,’ breathed Calwyn. ‘The Power of Becoming.’

Yes. He taught me that there is no ending to the river, only a ceaseless
changing flow. Nothing leaves the river, and nothing remains the same within
it. All is change, all is movement, yet the river is always the river.

‘How can you heal what’s broken?’ asked Tonno.

When a rock or a tree branch is placed in a river, the water’s flow is
altered a little. Have you not seen this? Our dances are pebbles and twigs,
we make a little ripple in the great stream, that is all. Nothing leaves the river.
This is how healing is accomplished.

‘You say that nothing leaves the river,’ saidTonno, and now his voice was harsh. ‘But what about the dead? Is it in your powers to bring back the dead?’

‘Tonno,’ said Darrow softly, warningly.

Calwyn felt a quick eager rush of hope. But Halasaa was shaking his head, gazing sorrowfully at Tonno.
You have suffered
a great grief. I too suffered when my father left me. But the one you have lost
cannot be restored in flesh.

‘Some other way, then? Is his spirit, his life force, whatever you like to call it, is he still in this river you speak of ?’Tonno could not look at him; there was a terrible angry hope in his voice. Halasaa laid a hand upon his arm.

His spirit is there, yes. But we cannot call it back. The spirit is always
part of the river, just as your own spirit is. After the great change which we
call death, the spirit mingles joyfully and disperses in the great stream. All is
change, all is movement, yet the river is always the river.
Halasaa’s words were very gentle;Tonno bowed his head, and did not speak for a long time.

Darrow got to his feet and walked slowly about the platform, gingerly testing his weight on his newly healed foot. ‘It feels strange indeed to walk on a straight foot after hobbling so long on a crooked one.’ He paused by the railing and looked over the treetops. Halasaa and Calwyn joined him there, and Calwyn gazed out toward the glittering band of blue that was the ocean, jewel-bright in the light of the declining sun. But Darrow was staring the other way, deep into the forest, and then Calwyn saw it too, far off across the trees. The platform on which they stood was not the only one perched high in the roof of the forest. In the distance were others, a flotilla of rafts buoyed by the treetops, a whole city riding high above the ground, linked with narrow rope bridges and broader walkways. She could see the tiny figures of people moving about on the platforms; men sat in groups, one woman combed out another’s hair, and children swung nimbly up into the branches of the trees and ran about as easily as though they were on the ground.

Darrow turned to Halasaa. ‘You know so much about us. Is that the place we seek, the Lost City of the Ancient Ones? It is not as I expected.’

Halasaa tipped back his head in a soundless laugh, and the little bird on his shoulder gave an indignant cry and flapped away to preen itself.
That is Spiridrell, the Place of Trees.
He sobered suddenly, and when he looked toward the city his face was sad
.
I know the place you seek, but it is not here. My people are the Tree People,
not the Ancient Ones you speak of. They were here long before the Voiced
Ones ever set foot upon this world. But I know the Lost City. My father
took me there when I was a child.

Darrow’s grip on the railing tightened. ‘Do you know how to get there? There is one who we must meet in that place, a sorcerer –’

Halasaa frowned.
The arakin have told me of another, a singer of
songs also. This one chased them from his ship with his magic, and tormented
them.

‘That sounds like Samis,’ said Calwyn ruefully.

Darrow asked urgently, ‘Was he ahead of us, or behind?’

The arakin did not tell.

‘We must reach Spareth before him,’ said Darrow. ‘Can you take us there?’

If you wish it, I will take you.

‘Then let’s go now!’ Tonno jumped to his feet. ‘We’ve wasted enough time here already!’

Be still. You are too impatient. All is as it should be. You will rest here
tonight, and tomorrow we will sail for Spareth.

nine
The Desolate City

C
ALWYN LAY ON
her back watching the dappled play of green leaves, layer against layer. Sometimes the white light of the sun lanced through them and made her blink, but mostly the pattern was transparent green, a shifting dance of light and shadow, pale and silver and dark. She could almost imagine herself back in Antaris, lying in the orchard and staring up at the sky through the leaves of the apple trees. But the trees in the orchard would be bare now; after the fruit, the leaves would have turned to gold, and fallen. The younger novices would be shovelling them up for the bonfires the men would set alight, chasing one another and shouting.

Did winter ever come to this part of the Wildlands? She had asked Halasaa, and he had assured her it was so, and put pictures into her mind, images of theTree People making their long yearly trek to caves in the mountains, children and elders gathered close about a fire in the darkness, and hungry men and women searching all day in the bitter cold for food. His face had clouded
. Many Spiridrelleen die in the hungry season. It was not
always so. When the Voiced Ones came, the Tree People were driven from the
warm lands of the north, where we could dwell in the forest all year round.

‘I’m sorry.’ Calwyn hadn’t known what else to say.

There are fewer of us every year. And now that my father is gone, I am
the last to know the dances of healing. There is no other.

‘Then they should cherish you all the more –’ Calwyn had stopped. The priestesses of Antaris had cherished her. But when Halasaa had spoken of being shunned by his people, and feared by them, she had understood.