The Singer of All Songs (9 page)

C
ALWYN HELD OUT
her tingling hands toward the fire. Darrow had made her run about the grove, to gather wood and warm herself, before he lit the fire with his flint. Only then did he let her sit down, wrapped in his dry cloak. Apart from the crackling of the flames, there was silence. It was almost dawn now; only one moon remained, shining pale above the dark mass of the trees. All around them, birds had begun to stir at the approach of morning, first one tentative call, then another, until the forest rang with their twittering.

Calwyn blinked, and sniffed hard. She
would not
cry in front of Darrow. But it was too late; he was frowning at her.

‘What is it?’

In a muffled voice she said, ‘I’m ashamed.’

Darrow seemed at a loss. He poked another stick into the heart of the fire, and sparks shot into the air. ‘There is no shame in being afraid to drown when you have never been taught to swim,’ he said at last. ‘They say that children of Penlewin can swim before they can walk. Between the sea and the marshes, they have little choice. But I’m sure there is not one among them who can tame a swarm of stinging bees without flinching.’

Her teeth were chattering so hard that she had to force the words out. ‘I would have drowned if not for you.’

‘Ah, well.’ He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Then I owe you my life only twice now, not three times over. But all the same, you’d better learn, and quickly. I wouldn’t want to fish you out a second time.’

She gave a shaky laugh. ‘So you will take me with you?’

He stared into the fire, not meeting her eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought to take an apprentice. But I can hardly send you back. And I suppose I’m still in your debt.’

This was not the hearty welcome Calwyn had hoped to hear. ‘You’ll need my help in the mountains; you know yourself that your foot isn’t mended yet.’With a sudden flare of temper she added, ‘And I don’t want to be your apprentice. I have my own power; I am your equal in chantment.’

‘Though not in swimming,’ said Darrow gloomily.

Calwyn’s indignation was so great that her tears vanished. ‘If you think I’ll hinder you, then I’ll go on alone,’ she flashed, and started to her feet.

Darrow said mildly, ‘Then I’ll thank you to return my cloak.’ And Calwyn saw a smile in his grey eyes. ‘Come, dry your hair, don’t waste the fire. I would like to get some distance between us and Antaris before we rest again.’

Obediently Calwyn knelt and spread out her hair with her fingers before the flames, glad of the dark curtain that hid her face, and the sudden smile of wild joy that she couldn’t suppress. For the first time since she was a baby, she was outside the walls of Antaris; who knew what wonders and terrors lay before her? At her side, the river gurgled, as though it were laughing with her, and the whole forest sang with birds.

Presently Darrow covered the fire with earth, and they began to walk again. This time there was no path to guide them. They followed the river as closely as they could, though trees clustered thickly along the bank. Darrow pointed toward one of the mountain peaks. ‘We must head that way, to the peak shaped like a hawk’s head. There’s a pass that will lead us through to the lands of Kalysons. That’s how I came here.’

‘We call that mountain the Falcon. That’s the way the traders come.’

Calwyn was tired, her clothes were still damp, and it was not pleasant to walk in wet boots. She thought longingly of the breakfast of warm bread and honey that she would have had if she’d stayed on the other side of the Wall. But all the same, as the sun came up, touching the tops of the sparse trees with gold, she wouldn’t have wished herself back in her narrow cell for anything in Tremaris. She breathed deeply. ‘The air tastes like – like queen’s jelly!’ she exalted. Had her mother felt like this, at the start of her adventures?

After a time she asked, ‘Do you think Samis will follow us?’

For a moment Darrow did not reply. ‘I think he will stay in Antaris for now. Having come so far, he won’t wish to leave without the chantments of ice-call. True, he will be disappointed to lose his quarry. But it is the hunt he loves above all, and the hunt is not over.’

‘He might never find us,’ suggested Calwyn buoyantly; anything seemed possible this morning.

‘Maybe not,’ agreed Darrow, with the shadow of a smile.

By afternoon, Calwyn was dropping with weariness. Darrow noticed it.

‘We should sleep now,’ he said abruptly, when she yawned for the third time, ‘while the sun will still warm us. We can walk by moonlight.’ He pointed with his stick toward a sunlit glade. ‘That looks comfortable enough.’

Calwyn thought he must be teasing her again, but he scraped together a heap of leaves and lowered himself to the ground. Hesitantly she stood and watched as he rolled himself in his cloak. She chose a spot a little apart from his, and lay down with her back to him. Tired as she was, she was painfully conscious of Darrow’s presence only a handspan away, and the sound of his quiet breathing. It was lucky they were sleeping by day, she thought drowsily; at night they would have been too cold to do anything but huddle together . . .

Her eyes flew open. Was
that
why? Was he as shy as she was? But she was too exhausted to ponder such mysteries for long, and soon she was asleep.

It was true that travelling made Darrow cheerful. In all the days of their long trek eastward, he was in better spirits than Calwyn had ever seen him in Antaris, joking and teasing her, singing and telling stories.

It was not an easy journey. Darrow’s foot was still not completely healed, and though he used his stick and his chantments in equal measure, he was always in pain. There were days when they covered hardly any ground. All too soon they emerged from the shelter of the woods, and found themselves in a different kind of wilderness. Cruel spires of rock thrust toward the sky, as if in imitation of the towers of Antaris that they had left behind, and the path skirted precipices that fell away so steeply they couldn’t see what lay at the bottom. It was grim country, grey and stony, and by night Calwyn shivered as the wind moaned between the crags.

In truth, the traders’ path was scarcely more than a track. If not for the age-old campsites that they passed, and sometimes used, Calwyn would have feared that they’d lost their way. But the blackened rings of ancient campfires, the shallow caves the traders used for shelter, and the odd scraps of cloth and piles of bones were some reassurance that they were not wandering blindly in the desolate landscape.

Then one day they had to scramble for cover as the traders themselves passed by. Hidden behind boulders, Calwyn and Darrow listened to the grumbles of the men and the rattling of the handcarts they dragged behind them, piled with cooking pans, silk threads and spices. It seemed a long time before the line of clanking carts disappeared up the track.

After they’d gone, Calwyn said, ‘I wonder who will open the Wall for them this year.’

‘Perhaps Samis himself will do it,’ said Darrow with grim humour. ‘
That
would give them a tale to tell.’

Even at the height of summer, the mountain passes were colder than the valley; mostly they walked by moonlight and slept by day, grateful for the sun’s warmth on their cloaks. And even in this empty, barren place, there were birds and rabbits. Calwyn used small chantments to catch them, as she’d been taught, and Darrow would roast them over the fire. For the first time she was glad of all the long dull lessons in herb lore she had endured, for there were many edible mountain plants that Darrow did not know. In turn, he showed her how to line her boots with palewood leaves to prevent blisters, and he cut her a staff to help her balance on the steepest paths.

Every night Darrow scanned the faint stars and pointed out the ones that they should follow. He told her the names they were given in Merithuros and in Kalysons and in Gellan, and she would tell him their names in Antaris. It was strange to think that every land had its own names and stories, that the constellation she knew as the Tree was called Tasgar’s Lantern in Kalysons, and the Shoe in Merithuros.

By night, his hawk’s face shadowed against the starry sky, Darrow seemed remote from her, more like a teacher than the easy whistling companion of the day. Sometimes he did not seem to know what to say to her, and if they rested, he held himself aloof, lost in his own thoughts.

One day, out of nowhere, he said, ‘I’ve not had much to do with women.’ He was walking ahead of her, and she couldn’t see his face. ‘Before I came to Antaris, I don’t know that I’d ever spoken more than ten words to a woman. I have always thought them strange creatures.’

‘And now?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

‘Now I think them much the same as men,’ came the reply, and she didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed.

Gradually the steep, stony ground gave way to gentler slopes, where the trees grew more thickly. The air was hotter every day, and Calwyn found that breathing made her giddy.

‘The air is not so thin here as it is in the mountains,’ Darrow told her. ‘You will find that you can walk longer and endure more than the people of the plains, for you can better use your breath.’

They walked now in the cool of the morning and evening, and took their rest at midday and the middle part of the night. At last there were signs that people had touched these lands: a stump where a tree had been cut down and hauled away, a broken-down hut, the remains of a stone wall. The track grew wider and easier to follow, and there was crumbling earth under their boots now, rather than skidding stones.

The first time Calwyn saw a distant farmhouse nestled between the folds of the hills, she strained forward eagerly, like a beast catching a scent, and she would have broken into a run if Darrow had not held her back.

‘Calwyn, we must not be seen,’ he said urgently. ‘These people will not welcome us, believe me. And when we reach the plains, where there are soldiers patrolling from Kalysons, we must be even more careful to keep hidden. And never, never, let anyone see that you are a chanter. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ She was disappointed; she had hoped for a meal with bread and cheese and spices, and perhaps a warm bed, from some friendly farmfolk. But she was beginning to realise that Outlanders were just as wary and suspicious of strangers as the people of Antaris, shut inside their great Wall. Somehow she had expected it to be different, outside.

They travelled through the hill country, and then on to the wide plains, sleeping in barns and windmills, foraging for whatever food they could find along the way: wild berries, vegetables scrounged from the fields, duck eggs found beside the streams that criss-crossed the flat country, linking one farm to the next like a fine mesh of netting laid over the dusty land.

One whole day they spent resting and catching fish. Calwyn stripped to her undershirt, and Darrow gave her a swimming lesson. He didn’t laugh as she spluttered and coughed, but coached her patiently until she could kick herself along for several strokes. Then she spread her hair over her shoulders to dry in the sun, and showed him how to tease a fish into his hand and flick it out of the water before it even knew it was caught.

‘I think I prefer my rod and baited string,’ he said, taking a hasty step back as Calwyn tossed a fish clear and splashed his feet. ‘Your method is so
wet
.’

Calwyn sat up on her heels and laughed. ‘But it’s so much simpler to use your bare hands!’

‘Very well. I take your challenge.’ He threw his line into the stream. ‘Let us see who’s quickest to catch the next fish.’

‘Done!’ cried Calwyn, and when she held up her catch in triumph a few moments later, her happiness was complete.

That day stood forever in her memory as a golden time: sitting in the sun with Darrow, feasting on fish so hot from the flames that they tossed it hand to hand.

‘I’ve never eaten a finer meal,’ sighed Calwyn, licking her fingers.

‘There is a saying in Penlewin that hunger is the finest sauce,’ Darrow told her.

‘That’s the second time you’ve quoted me a saying from the marshlands.’ Calwyn looked at him sideways. ‘Is that the land where you were born?’

‘The people of Penlewin have a stock of wise sayings. But that’s not reason enough to claim kinship with them.’

And her curiosity had to go unsatisfied again. No matter how often she asked him about his past, he never would give her a direct answer. But he had finished carving all the lines on her wooden globe now, working at it while they rested, and he was happy to tell her the names of every land he knew, and the stories of each place. Though how he had ever learned the stories of any people at all when he was so determined to hide himself, and dive off the road at every passing stranger, she did not know.

They saw few people on the roads – perhaps a farmer’s field-hand or herder, walking from one farm to the next with a laden goat-cart – and they always concealed themselves in a ditch before they could be seen, pulling their cloaks over their heads until Calwyn thought she would stifle in the heat. Once, from the shelter of the hedgerow, they saw a patrol of soldiers from Kalysons, with swords and clubs slung over their backs. Calwyn watched, hardly daring to breathe, as they went by; a miserable-looking youth shuffled in their midst, his hands and ankles bound loosely with rope.

‘They are taking him back to Kalysons for judgment,’ whispered Darrow.

‘What has he done?’ she whispered back.

‘He might be a thief. There is great hunger in these lands. Perhaps he took some eggs from a pantry, or cheese from a dairy shed.’

Certainly the youth looked thin and wretched as the guards jostled him along. ‘What will happen to him?’

‘If he’s lucky, not much. The patrol will beat him and let him go, to find his own way home. If he’s unlucky, the Proctors will sell him as a slave on the Gellanese galleys, or banish him to Doryus.’

‘And what if we were captured?’

‘If they found out that we’re chanters, the same,’ said Darrow, staring with narrowed eyes after the dust cloud that marked the passage of the patrol. After that, Calwyn didn’t complain when Darrow told her to move off the road and hide.