The Tenth Power (7 page)

Calwyn dashed the tears from her eyes, and her voice wobbled in childish protest. ‘But she didn’t tell me everything! There wasn’t time. She was going to tell me about the Tenth Power, about theWheel – ’ Ursca held up a hand. ‘Ssh! I am not learned in the secret lore, these are not matters for my ears,’ she said severely. ‘Whatever our dear Lady Mother left unsaid, you must find out for yourself.’ The lines of exhaustion on her face were more deeply etched than ever. ‘Stand aside, dear,’ she said more gently. ‘I must wrap the body.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘Nothing done properly, no oils, no shrouds! Our High Priestess to be laid to rest in a bedsheet!What has become of us?’

‘Let me help,’ begged Calwyn. ‘Please!’ She took a deep breath. If Marna had known, then Ursca should know too. ‘No harm can come to me. I – I am not a chanter any more. I lost my powers of magic half a year ago, in Merithuros.’

Ursca stared at her, and put out a hand to steady herself. ‘Oh, my dear child,’ she said softly. ‘My poor dear child. The snow-sickness?’

‘No. Not that.’

‘That Merithuran’s work then, no doubt!’

Calwyn smiled weakly. ‘No, Ursca. I tried a chantment that was greater than my strength. It wasn’t Samis’s fault. It was my own.’ As she spoke the words, she knew that they were true, and a small part of the bitter weight she carried lifted from her. ‘Please, Ursca. I’m not a priestess, or even a novice any more, but I loved Marna. Let me help you.’

Ursca hesitated. Then she said, almost to herself, ‘Yes, it’s fitting you should tend her. If you’d stayed, you would have been the one to light her pyre and scatter the ashes beneath the blazetree.’

Calwyn felt sick with fresh grief. Traditionally, it was the successor to a dead priestess who lit her pyre. Lia had said the same: that Marna had intended Calwyn to follow her as High Priestess. If Calwyn had stayed in Antaris, everything would have been different. After her initiation, Calwyn would have replaced Tamen as Guardian of theWall; Calwyn would have been governing Antaris now, notTamen. If Calwyn hadn’t run away with Darrow, there would have been no sacrifices to the Goddess, and Marna would have died in her own bed, surrounded by those who loved her. Perhaps she would never have caught the snow-sickness. Perhaps there would be no snow-sickness, if Darrow had not come.

Calwyn put the thought from her mind. It was too late now for regrets.Tenderly, she and Ursca washed and dried the High Priestess’s body. Trout and Mica sat quietly in a corner of the loft, sensing that this moment was not for them to share.

While Ursca dressed Marna’s body in the dark blue robes of the High Priestess, Calwyn combed out the thin, tangled hair and plaited it smooth. Then she fixed it with pins from her own hair, so that Marna looked regal again, as Calwyn remembered her. As she slid the last pin into place, she had never felt so lonely. Ursca wept as she worked, but Calwyn was too numb to cry.

They wrapped the old woman’s shrunken body in a sheet, leaving only her peaceful, serene face exposed. After dark, Gilly would drag the body on her sturdy sledge to the village of Anary, where there were people who would help them. Marna would be buried with the common folk in the Anary graveyard.

‘That our High Priestess should lie there, not in the sacred valley where she belongs,’ mourned Ursca, then shook herself. ‘The Goddess’s light shines there as much as anywhere else within theWall, I suppose. And there are worse things to cry over, these days.’ She darted a look at Calwyn, who turned away.

Ursca and Lia and the others who had hoped so much from her return would surely feel betrayed, now that her secret was revealed.With a heavy heart and aching eyes, Calwyn bid Ursca farewell, and went to sit with Trout and Mica.

‘You all right, Cal?’ Mica slipped an arm around her friend’s waist. ‘When my grandma died, I felt like someone ripped my heart out.’ Mica’s grandmother had been murdered by slave-traders; Calwyn was touched that the younger girl regarded her loss as equal to her own.

‘I’m sorry, Calwyn,’ said Trout awkwardly. ‘At least you spoke to her before she died.’

‘Yes.’ Calwyn hugged her knees and stared across the loft to where the white-wrapped body lay. ‘A little. But there was so much left unsaid, so much knowledge lost forever. She told me there’s a Tenth Power – can you imagine that? But now we’ll never learn its songs. I don’t even know what sort of magic it is, what it controls.We’ll never find out now.’

‘P’raps we’ll find out some other way,’ said Mica stoutly. ‘Can’t be a whole other power of chantment just
gone
. Everyone thought the Power of Beasts was lost, but you still knew it. And the Power of Fire was lost, only you found the Clarion, and saved it.’

Trout coughed indignantly. ‘
I
found the Clarion!’

Mica waved her hand. ‘
Someone
found it, that’s what I’m sayin. It weren’t really lost. And this power won’t be neither, you’ll see.’

Calwyn frowned. ‘There was something else: a Wheel.’ ‘Marna said it’s an object of power, like the Clarion; she said it holds the answer to ending the long winter, and this sickness.We have to find it.’

‘An object of power. That isn’t much to go on,’ said Trout gloomily.

‘Wait. Marna did say – she said
the Wheel is safe with your
friends.’

‘
Us
?’ squeaked Mica. ‘We ain’t got it! If we had somethin else magic like the Clarion, we’d know it. You could feel the Clarion buzzin from the bottom of the sea!’

‘Darrow then?’ suggestedTrout. ‘Could Marna have given it to Darrow before you left Antaris?’

‘Don’t be a goose!’ exclaimed Mica. ‘He couldn’t have carried somethin magic around for two years without knowin it, any more’n we could!’

‘Then Marna must’ve been talking about your friends here in Antaris,’ said Trout.

Calwyn was silent. She had never had many friends among the sisters.The older priestesses had kept their distance, and so had the other novices. Darrow was the first person she called a true friend; a lump came into her throat at the thought of him. She had spent her time at the top of the western tower, gazing across the forests, or else down in the orchard, with the bees.

Marna had smiled, and her breath went
zzzz
.

With a cry, Calwyn scrambled to her feet. ‘That’s it!That’s what she meant! Mica, I need you to come with me. I know where we’ll find theWheel.’

four
The Treasure of the Bees

AT NIGHTFALL, THE
snow-storm was raging as fiercely as ever. Mica peered through a chink in the wall. ‘Gilly ain’t comin through all this. There’s bits of ice big as your hand flyin round out there!’

‘Gilly is a priestess of ice-call,’ said Calwyn. ‘She’ll be able to sing a clear path.’

‘Here she comes!’ Trout ran to let down the ladder, and Gilly’s head emerged into the hayloft. She was out of breath and red-eyed; she stole one glance at Marna’s white-wrapped body, then turned quickly away, saying, ‘It’s wild out there! I cleared the snow, but the wind nearly blew me down!’

‘I could’ve kept the winds off,’ said Mica almost shyly.

‘That’s right, you’re a chanter of the winds.’ Gilly pushed back her hood and the two girls looked at each other for a moment. ‘We’d make a good team! Could you – would you come with me to Anary tonight?’

‘I need Mica tonight,’ said Calwyn abruptly. ‘She and I are going to the orchard.’

‘To the
orchard
?Whatever for?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ snapped Calwyn. ‘It’s secret lore Marna told me before she died.’

‘Oh.’ Gilly’s eyes dropped. ‘Then I suppose you have to go. But be careful, Calwyn. If Tamen finds you, she’ll put you in the Wall with the others. She wants to make an example of you. It was your disobedience that started everything going wrong, she says, and all this is the punishment of the Goddess.’

‘You don’t believe that, surely,’ said Trout.

‘It’s what Tamen believes that counts,’ said Gilly. ‘Even if she knew Calwyn couldn’t sing any more, it wouldn’t make any difference – ’ She stopped, and bit her lip. ‘Ursca told me. I’m so sorry, Calwyn. You were the strongest chanter of all of us.’

Calwyn could not bear Gilly’s pitying look. She felt herself flush. ‘We must go.’ She turned away to fasten her cloak, and to hide the Clarion safely under a pile of straw. ‘We’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘I’ll help Gilly with the sled,’ said Trout. ‘I can’t sing the winds away, but I can help pull.’

Gilly gave him a quick, grateful smile. ‘Thank you.’ She hesitated over the High Priestess’s silver-topped staff. ‘What should we do with this? It doesn’t seem right to leave it here, in the hay.’

‘I’m sureTamen would like to have it,’ said Calwyn bitterly, but Gilly shook her head.

‘She’s afraid to touch anything that belonged to Marna, in case she catches the snow-sickness.’

‘Well, leave it there,’ said Calwyn. ‘It’s safe enough for now.’

They helped Gilly to carry Marna’s body down the ladder from the loft. Calwyn felt a pang of distress that they had to drag their beloved High Priestess about like a sack of apples. But, she reminded herself, this was not really Marna. Their Lady Mother had joined the great river that Halasaa spoke of, the First and greatest of the powers, the joyous flow of being that included the Goddess herself, and the spirit that animated every living thing. Marna was among the stars, and the whispering leaves, and in the sleeping soil that waited for the touch of spring.

Mica and Calwyn lifted Marna’s body onto the sledge, and watched as Gilly and Trout disappeared into the whirling snow.

‘Ready?’ shouted Calwyn. Mica nodded, and sang a chantment of the winds to make a tunnel of clear air through the heart of the blizzard, so she and Calwyn could run to the orchard and the river and the beehives.

Before they reached the orchard the wind dropped. Snowflakes swirled around their heads, and floated silently to rest. ‘You can stop singing,’ panted Calwyn, but Mica shook her head.

‘Gotta fill our footprints in.’

Before long, the gnarled, dark skeletons of the apple trees loomed from the stark white snow. Clouds scudded across the sky, and the moonlight was fitful; from moment to moment, the landscape was illuminated with silver, then plunged into darkness again.

A faint murmur rose from the dark mound that was the first of the domed hives. Mica hung back. ‘Is it full of bees? Ain’t they sleepin?’

‘Bees don’t sleep in winter. But they won’t harm us if we treat them with respect,’ said Calwyn.

Mica screwed up her face. ‘They’ll sting me!’

‘They won’t sting you, I promise! Come on, Mica. There are twenty hives, we must hurry. All you have to do is tell me if you can sense something inside the hive, an object with power, like the Clarion.’

Mica sidled gingerly up to the hive. ‘Do I have to touch it?’

‘Here!’ In exasperation, Calwyn grabbed Mica’s hands and pressed them to the wall. Mica yelped.

‘Ssh! Don’t startle them!’

‘I’m scared of them bees, Cal!’ hissed Mica reproachfully.

Calwyn let go of her hands.What had Marna said to her that very day?
You must learn to listen.
Even Darrow had been wary of the bees at first.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to touch the hives. Just get close enough to tell. I’ll listen to the bees, I’ll warn you if they stir.’

Mica nodded, somewhat mollified. She edged forward, hands outstretched, still expecting the bees to swarm out and attack her. She shook her head. ‘There ain’t nothin here.’

Calwyn tugged her. ‘Let’s try the next one.’

Each hive had a name and a history.This one was colonised in the summer Darrow had come to Antaris. This one had a temperamental queen; it had done poorly two years in a row. This one by the bend in the river was a happy hive, Calwyn’s favourite; she could distinguish the taste of its honey from any other. And this one, in summer, was always surrounded by clover. It was the oldest of the hives, and a crack ran all the way down its side. But Mica couldn’t sense a hint of magic anywhere.

‘You sure it’s here, Cal?’

‘There’s still Timarel hive. It must be in there.’ Calwyn clutched the folds of her cloak tightly under her chin.What would they do, if she had misunderstood Marna after all?

‘Cal!’ Mica clutched her arm. ‘Over there!’

Lanterns were swinging down the snow-covered slope between the Dwellings and the orchard.

‘Quick! Follow me!’ Calwyn dodged past the squat dome of Timarel hive and pulled Mica after her.They darted from one tree’s shadow to the next, heading for the wooden shack of the Bee House. No one had entered it for a long time; snow was heaped waist-high all around, even in front of the door. Calwyn felt a twinge of protective fury. Hadn’t anyone bothered to tend the bees since she’d left Antaris, given them water, or checked them for parasites? There was more to keeping the bees than collecting wax and honey.

Mica was already singing a high, clear chantment of the winds to blow the snow from the doorway. Calwyn was struck by an idea. ‘Mica! Bees hate the wind. Could you sing a storm around the hives and stir them up a little?’

Mica nodded, her golden eyes alight, and as soon as the door was clear she launched into a second chantment. A moaning wind threaded between the hives, stirring up a flurry of loose snow that would also hide their footprints. Calwyn heard a distant grumble of anger from the bees. She pulled Mica into the Bee House and fastened the door behind them. They crouched below the windows, shivering with cold. They could hear the swelling murmur of the bees, roused a second time from their rest, and then shrieks and yells as the sisters stumbled into the maddened guard bees. Mica winced. ‘Poor things,’ she whispered, though Calwyn wasn’t sure if she meant the bees or the priestesses.