The Tenth Power (23 page)
Again, Calwyn was acutely aware of his smell, like the spices of Merithuros, and the powerful, healthy body shifting beneath the folds of his cloak. ‘Sleep, little one,’ he said softly. ‘Tomorrow will be a momentous day.’
CALWYN
WOKE FROM
a natural sleep, not one imposed on her by a chantment of seeming. She sat up, stiff with cold, and drew the striped Gellanese blanket round her shoulders. The moons had sunk into the west, and a faint light in the east announced the coming of dawn.
Samis loomed above her, a black silhouette. He pointed down. The mass of cloud below had dissolved, and Calwyn could see the bumpy surface of the snow-covered forest.Then her heart skipped a beat as she glimpsed a sheet of smooth, glittering ice at the horizon: the sea.
Samis crouched beside her. ‘Spareth.’
The boat swayed as they leaned over the side. The rising sun slanted through a tangle of silver spires and domes, tinting them in shades of rose and amethyst and gold. It was Spareth, the abandoned city, thrusting up through the forest.
Samis manipulated some levers, and the silver bubble drifted down toward the ruins. The towers and roofs loomed larger and larger, the city spreading itself around them, as Samis steered the craft down into an empty plaza with a spire in each corner. He sang a chantment of iron to hold the cloud-boat to the ground while Calwyn climbed out. She was tired and sore, and glad to feel the solid grey stone under her feet.
Samis stepped out of the boat, and changed his growl of chantment.The silver bubble floated up and away into the pale sky, a dazzling globe lit by the morning sun.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Calwyn.
‘We won’t need it again.’ Samis smiled. ‘And to leave it here would be too great a temptation for you, my dear.’ His cloak billowed behind him as he turned and walked away.
Calwyn hurried after him along the empty streets. The crumbling walls and bare trees glittered with frost. Even the gentle curves of the silver domes and the tall, slender towers looked as if they had been carved from ice.
Samis strode past the site of their last encounter a year and a half earlier. The long splinters of the tower that had burst apart when Samis’s magic failed lay where they had fallen, like segments of a discarded seedpod. Samis walked on without a backward glance, but Calwyn couldn’t help staring at the place where they had left Samis’s body, apparently lifeless, shrouded in his grey cloak.
‘You dwell too much on the past, my dear,’ said Samis crisply, as if he had read her thoughts. ‘You must learn to look forward, as I do.’
They climbed a hill and entered a small square bathed in morning sunlight, with a view of the city’s shimmering spires and domes. The shallow fountain in the square’s centre was a sheet of ice, with dead leaves frozen into it.
Samis swept his cloak around him and sat down on the fountain’s edge. ‘This place will do. Time for our lessons to begin.’
‘More chantments of ironcraft and seeming?’ Calwyn remained standing. ‘What about your promise? You said you would give me the – the relic of the Goddess.’
‘Yes, yes. All in good time, my dear.’ His hooded eyes gleamed at her. ‘But first, little priestess, I will teach you something that the rest of the world has forgotten. I will teach you the Tenth Power.’
‘The Tenth Power!’ Calwyn stared at him. ‘The power in –’ She just managed to stop herself in time. Did Samis truly not understand the magic of theWheel? Could he really mean to teach her these darkest, most powerful chantments?
‘Sit down, little one.’ Samis drew a slim silver tablet from his pocket and showed it to her. It was the size of his hand, and covered in tiny etched marks that shone like flecks of gold in the sunlight. He said softly, ‘The Tenth Power is the Power of Signs.’
Calwyn blinked in confusion. This was not what she had expected.
‘Signs?’
‘Each of these symbols represents a sound.’ Samis explained, pointing to the tiny marks. ‘This one shaped like an egg is
aah
. This forked sign is
ee
. And this humped symbol stands for the sound
lll
. Do you understand?’
‘I – I think so.’ Drawn in despite herself, Calwyn moved closer to peer at the silver tablet.
‘The combination of signs spells out a chantment.’ Samis’s arm was pressed against Calwyn’s.
‘So here, the humped sign and the egg together, is
laa
?’
‘Bravo, little priestess! There are only three dozen or so signs. Once you have learned them, you can read the marks of every chantment.’
As she frowned down at the rows of signs, Calwyn was pierced by the sudden sharp memory of Marna’s pale face on a bed of straw. She whispered, ‘Marna knew about this. She tried to tell me. But I wouldn’t listen. I was too busy asking my own questions.’
Samis shook his head dismissively. ‘I doubt that this knowledge survived in Antaris. I found only one man in the whole of Gellan, where chantment is stronger than anywhere else in Tremaris, who knew of the existence of the Tenth Power. I saw nothing in my time with your yellow ladies to suggest that they had preserved this power.’
Calwyn did not reply. All her certainties were tumbling around her. The Tenth Power was not the dark force she had thought it was. But even if the Tenth Power was not to blame for the troubles, theWheel might have held some other kind of dark magic. Marna had said that the Wheel held the answer: Calwyn clung to that memory. Mending the Wheel would still mend the world, she was sure of it.
As Calwyn’s thoughts whirled, her eyes flickered busily over the signs. ‘These marks give only the sounds of the words. How do you know the way to sing them? High or low, the length of the note?’
‘See how the signs ride above or below this line?That gives the pitch. So far above for the high notes, so far below for the lower ones. The gaps between the signs show how long the note is held. It takes some practice to read the signs correctly. But I will teach you.’
‘This is – astonishing!’ The Tenth Power was not a destructive power, but a way of preserving chantments. For a heady moment, she dared to restore her dream of setting up a chanters’ college on Ravamey; she pictured rooms lined with these silver tablets, containing a record of every chantment, collected from all over the world. Nothing could be forgotten, no chantment would ever be lost again. She had no need to feign amazement. ‘How did you discover the Power of Signs?’
‘There was some talk of a lost power among the scholars of Merithuros, though none of the sorcerers knew what it might be. Then, during my time in Spareth, I found many of these tablets, covered in signs. I have you to thank, indirectly, for that discovery.’ He gave her a hooded look. ‘I took some of the tablets to Gellan, where I found Tragg, the man I told you about. He and I puzzled out the code together. It was mostly my work.’ He added, with a smile, ‘You think I am arrogant? Perhaps I am.With the knowledge of these signs, I have discovered all the secrets that the Ancient Ones left behind.’
‘Darrow told me about your friend in Gellan. He said you killed him.’
Samis gave Calwyn a dark, penetrating stare. ‘He was claimed by the chanters’ plague. A terrible loss.’
‘You promised to tell me the truth.’
‘Ah, little priestess.’ Samis shook his head. ‘There are some questions better left unasked.’ He tapped his finger on the tablet. ‘Now, look at this. I copied these signs from the Clarion of the Flame, which Keela borrowed for me. The chantments of fire are not lost, little priestess, while the signs remain.’
She stared down at the silver tablet. ‘They’re here, all here? Are you sure? Have you sung them?’
‘I have tried. But the gift of firecraft has been denied to me.’ Samis’s hooded eyes narrowed, and he looked away for an instant across the cold, empty city. Calwyn felt a quick, unexpected beat of sympathy. Samis turned back to her. ‘Denied to me. But not, I suspect, to you.’ He pushed the silver tablet toward her.
Calwyn shrank back. ‘But – the Power of Fire can only be sung by men.’
‘Oh, and who spread that tale? Men, of course, just as they try to pretend that women cannot sing the chantments of iron. These fire-songs are pitched deep, but not too deep for you. Come now, try it. Haven’t you discovered that with each power you acquire, the next becomes easier to master?’
It was true: each new type of chantment had come more readily than the last. But Calwyn hesitated, clinging to the cold stone edge of the fountain. If she could sing the chantments of fire, she would be the Singer of all Songs.
Samis said, ‘You are afraid.’
‘The prophecy said that the Singer would be as powerful as a god,’ whispered Calwyn.
‘Don’t concern yourself with that, my dear,’ said Samis dryly. ‘If I believed that there was any chance of you becoming a god, I would not put this power in your hands. Here, take it!’ Reluctantly, Calwyn took the silver tablet, and ran her finger along one row of the tiny symbols. Under her breath, she whispered the signs she had learned, guessing at the pitch of the chantment. ‘What’s this? And this one?’
Samis told her. Calwyn found it easy to remember which symbol was which. It was as though her memory, as well as all her senses, had been sharpened at the same time as her gift of chantment had been restored and strengthened. She repeated the scrap of chantment, melding the sounds into a low-pitched, tentative song. Then she sang it again, the deep notes flowing with more confidence, and she felt the tingle in her flesh that signalled the rise of magic. A sudden burst of blue and orange fire flared against the pale winter sky.
Calwyn gasped, and Samis gripped her arm.
‘Well done, Calwyn!’ he cried, and his voice rang with delight and exultation. It was the first time he had called her by her name. ‘The Power of Fire!’ He wrapped his arms around her. ‘The Power of Fire, sung by human voice, for the first time since the death of the sorcerers of Mithates!’
Exhilarated, Calwyn returned his embrace, enveloped in the spicy smell of his iron-grey cloak. His hands were firm on the small of her back. They were larger than Darrow’s hands. Awkwardly she pulled away, avoiding Samis’s gaze.
Am I the Singer of all Songs now? she wondered. She didn’t feel any different. She said aloud, ‘How will this help us end the winter and cure the snow-sickness?’
‘Every chantment ever sung is recorded and kept somewhere in the storerooms of Spareth,’ said Samis expansively. ‘I have found many already, but with two of us to search we will soon discover the spell to reverse the damage done. But you must practise hard, little priestess, to be sure you are capable of singing the chantments when we find them. Now, let me hear more songs of fire!’
One by one, Calwyn sang the chantments that had been inscribed on the Clarion of the Flame: songs to create pools of light, songs to make soft warmth and intense heat, songs to make blazing columns of flame and fiery starbursts. If only she and her friends had understood the symbols before, she realised, their struggles to use the Clarion would have been far easier.There were patterns to the chantments, elegant affinities that she had never noticed.
‘Enough,’ said Samis. ‘Time to work on the Power of Seeming. You hold your jaw too tightly, my dear; stretch your mouth, like this.’
The two chanters created illusions for the rest of that day. Huge trees sprang up, flowered with flames; cascades of molten diamonds foamed through the little square. Samis showed Calwyn how to make time seem to slow down, so that the journey of an ant across her hand lasted for a day.Then he made the sun race across the sky and back in the space of a breath. As he sang, they sat on a raft in a blank green ocean, then swam with the fishes in the emerald depths.
At last Samis stood. The declining sun lit him in orange and gold, and opal glimmers sparked from his dark cloak. Calwyn realised that the whole day had passed. Guiltily, she thought of Darrow. But Briaali had said the healing Waters would hold off his illness; he was safe for now.
Samis said, ‘That will do for today. Tomorrow we will practise the Power of Iron.’
Calwyn bit back a yawn. She didn’t dare ask after the Wheel again; she didn’t want to seem too eager, in case he guessed how important it was. If he didn’t give it to her tonight, she would hunt for it herself tomorrow. ‘It’s almost night.Where will we shelter?’
Samis smiled broadly. ‘I have a story that will surprise you. Come, I’ll tell it as we walk.’
He held out his large hand to her, and, dazed with fatigue, Calwyn took it. As he led her through the chilly, darkening streets, he said, ‘No doubt you believe that our people have lived on Tremaris as long as time itself.’
Yes, my people, the Tree People, have lived here forever!
she wanted to reply.
Samis glanced up at the sky. ‘Our ancestors came to this world in a silver ship.’ There was a strange yearning in his voice. ‘They sailed across the stars as if the sky were a great ocean. That ship is still here, Calwyn.’
‘The ship is here? You’ve found it? It’s in Spareth?’
Samis threw back his shaggy head and gave a rich, deep laugh. ‘Spareth
is
the ship!’ He swept his arm across the silvery towers and domes. ‘The ship is all around us, and beneath us. What you see is only a fraction of what lies below. The Ancient Ones built their first city on the foundation of the vessel that brought them to this world.You will see!You think that Spareth is an empty place, but there are storehouses of supplies, tools, clothing, medicines, devices like the cloud-boat, everything we will ever need.’