The Waterless Sea (5 page)

‘We all had a hand in the battle against Samis,' Tonno reminded her. ‘Or a voice.'

Calwyn ignored him. ‘If we had Darrow' s help in this quest, it would be far easier. But he has...gone away for a time. To be alone.'

‘Alone!' snorted Trout. ‘Even before he left, he wouldn' t talk to us. He hadn' t even come down from his hut to eat with us since the last time the moons were all splinters.'

‘He sat up there and sulked all day,' said Mica, and the anger in her voice barely masked the pain that lay behind it.

He is ill.
Halasaa' s words made them all turn to face him.

‘You' re supposed to be a healer,' flashed Mica. ‘So why couldn' t you heal him?'

The sickness is not in his body, nor in his mind. Darrow' s sickness lies
in his heart, and in his dreams. It is beyond the reach of my gifts of healing.

‘He was so deep in sadness that none of us could reach him,' said Calwyn. Abruptly she pushed back her chair. ‘I' m going to ask Fresca to watch the hives for me while we' re gone.'

She left the cottage, and after a moment Heben saw her in the moonlight, trailing up the hill toward the tall trees at the cliff ' s edge, a solitary figure, with the dark plait down her back.

‘That' s not the way to Fresca' s house,' said Trout.

Mica elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Can' t you see, she wants to be by herself ? She' s gettin as sad as he was.'

Come.
Halasaa stood behind Heben, as tall and silent as a tree himself.
I will show you a place to sleep.

Calwyn pulled a rug around her shoulders, and sat down on the broad stone windowsill in the main room of the little cottage she and Mica shared. The window looked out across the dark, curved hand of the harbour, and the scattering of whitewashed cottages, where a smear of wood-smoke hung in the moonlight. Clouds smudged across the stars and the three moons, and a mist was spreading across the water.

Was Darrow somewhere, in his small boat
Heron
, on that dark sea? It was the time that the sisters of Antaris called the Fingernail and the Quartered Apple. Did Darrow stare at the sky too, at these same moons? Or was he in a tavern in Gellan, listening with his quiet smile to the boasting of men? Or was he wrapped in his cloak, making an uncomfortable bed by a hedge, or snug in a hay-filled barn, somewhere on the plains of Kalysons?

She remembered how they' d sat side by side on this windowsill, in the autumn sunshine, when they were supposed to be making the cottage more habitable.

‘Not like that. Try it again.' Laughter twitched at the corners of Darrow' s grey-green eyes. He was trying to teach Calwyn ironcraft, but he was a more patient teacher than she was a pupil. ‘You must sing the two notes together. One in your throat, and one in your mouth. Like this –' He sang, and the broom swept across the floor by itself.

Calwyn tried to copy him, but the notes buzzed and tickled in her nose, and she burst into laughter. ‘It' s no use, I can' t do it! And everyone knows that women can' t sing the chantments of iron.'

‘That' s not true. I knew female ironcrafters in Merithuros. It' s more difficult for women, but not impossible.'

‘Impossible for me!' She sneezed. ‘There' s too much dust in here.'

Darrow tweaked the end of her long plait. ‘Calwyn,' he said, suddenly serious.

She looked up. ‘Yes?'

He took her hand between his. ‘Calwyn –' But then Mica had come bustling in with a bucket and a brush, and Darrow had let Calwyn' s hand drop, and turned away.

Darrow had hardly spoken to her again before he went away. That winter, he had gradually fallen more silent. He' d withdrawn to his hut on the cliff top, spending less and less time with her and the others. She noticed that when one of them spoke to him, a swift flicker of irritation crossed his face, like the shadow of a sea-hawk flickering across water, and his replies were short and impatient, almost angry.

Sometimes, during those long winter nights when they sat around the fire, sharing songs and stories, Darrow would take out the ring, the blood-red ruby ring that had belonged to Samis, and study it as intently as if he could see visions unfurling in its dark depths. Calwyn saw, and it troubled her, but she said nothing. It was as if the ring had cast some kind of spell over him; she wished that they had left it in Spareth.

At last there came a day, at the beginning of spring, when Darrow readied
Heron
and sailed away. He had told Tonno that he needed time to be alone, to think. To Calwyn, he had said nothing, not even goodbye.

Just once, in all the time since Darrow had sailed away, three full turns of the moons, she had asked Halasaa, ‘Does he still live?'

He hadn' t needed to ask of whom she spoke. He had answered her gravely.
Do you think so, my sister?

‘Yes,' she' d said. ‘I think so.'

Your bond with him is stronger than mine. If you believe he lives, then
he lives.

But she was not as reassured as she had hoped.

With a sigh, she turned from the window. Tomorrow they would begin the long voyage to Merithuros, and it would be wise to get whatever sleep she could, while she still had the enjoyment of a soft bed. Yet she lay awake for a long time that night.

D
ARROW 1

Far away, on a nameless sea, a boat rocked at anchor in the moonlight. It held one lonely, sleepless figure, a slightly-built man a few years from thirty, with fair hair and a silvery scar above his grey-green eyes. He stared at the slow-wheeling stars. A dark light glistened from the great square ruby ring he held, so it seemed that a dark ember, the heart of fire, shone on the palm of his hand. He had not yet slipped the ring onto his finger. It weighed in his hand, as heavy as trouble, as heavy as choice. Then he thrust it deep into his pocket, next to his heart, turned his cheek to the hard boards of the little boat, and tried to sleep.

Heron
was a light, quick craft, and easy to manage when the wind was in her sails, and as Darrow sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller and an eye to the rigging, he was able to let his mind roam. He was speeding back to Ravamey at last, back to Calwyn. But his thoughts returned insistently to Merithuros, and to Samis. He remembered the beginning of their last voyage together, and how they' d stared across the rail of the big Gellanese galleon, watching as the golden dunes receded into haze. He hadn' t been sorry to leave the Empire behind; he was eager to reach the Westlands, the home of chantment, eager to begin their adventures. And Samis – Samis must have been planning even then. As he stared over the rail, did he vow never to return until he was the Singer of all Songs and Emperor of all Tremaris?

Darrow shivered. Would he ever stop thinking about Samis? The man haunted him. Since Darrow was a child of twelve, Samis had dominated his life. ‘Let me be!' he muttered, and hauled the tiller across, so that the wind bellied the canvas of his sail. He' d hoped that when he left Samis behind in Spareth, dead, their bond would be severed.

Impatiently he turned his mind to the time in his life before he knew Samis existed. He remembered another ship, another voyage, and a small boy, hardly big enough to peep over the side –

The boy was born on the ship
Gold Arrow
. The captain is his father, and the captain' s wife his mother, but the whole crew is his family. He runs up and down the rigging with ease so the sailors call him Mouse. They carve toy mice for him out of whalebone, and teach him how to play dice and knucklebones. He sleeps in a hammock in his parents' cabin, and he rocks with the rhythm of the ship, and watches the shadows swing as the lantern swings. His mother sits nearby with a brush in her hand, and the lamplight glints on the pale shimmering silk of her hair.

The whole ship is his home; he knows no other. He knows that the ship and all the sailors, his mother and father, are from Penlewin, and they teach him to be proud that he is a son of the marshlands. But he has never seen the marshes, and has only the vaguest notion of what they are.
A wet land
, they tell him, and he imagines an endless sea like the one they sail, but crowded with other boats, a community of ships and sailors.

Yet when they come to port, the noise and the crowds frighten him. He clings to his mother' s side. His father calls him a milksop, and sends him back to the ship. ‘He' s only a baby, Jollan,' his mother protests, but the little boy is glad to return to the safety of the ship and his own familiar hiding places.

Arram is a wizened old dark-skinned sailor. The other crew treat Arram with a strange mixture of fear and respect and scorn, but Mouse is fascinated by him and his mysterious eye-patch, and wonders what lies beneath it.

One day Arram sits by himself on the deck, mending a sail. Mouse creeps closer, watching as the old sailor forces the needle in and out of the canvas, pushing it through with a leather pad in the palm of his hand. Then he sees Arram glance about. Mouse shrinks into his hiding place between a barrel and the duck coop. Arram holds the sail out straight and begins to sing, a kind of song that Mouse has never heard before. The little boy sees the needle fly along the seam, darting in and out, but Arram is not touching it at all.

Suddenly Arram looks up, and sees Mouse watching. He stops singing, and the needle drops, lifeless, into his lap. For a moment, the two stare at each other, the old sailor and the little boy. Then Arram smiles his toothless smile, and beckons Mouse closer. ‘You never heard a song like that before, eh, boy?' Mouse shakes his head.

‘I' ll sing you another, if you like.'

Mouse nods. The old man starts a low growling with words that Mouse can' t understand, and the carved mouse in the little boy' s pocket stirs as if it were alive. He pulls it out, and it sits up on his hand and cocks its head at him.

Arram laughs. ‘You' ll trap a fly in there, boy, if you don' t watch out.'

With a snap, Mouse shuts his mouth.

Arram winks at him with his one eye. ‘Our secret, eh?'

Mouse nods his head. Then his mother calls him to a meal, and he scampers away.

Once or twice after that the little boy takes out his toy mouse and stares at it, but it doesn' t move. He waits until he sees Arram sitting alone again, and he creeps up with his hands behind his back. ‘What is it, boy?'

He holds out the mouse on his hand. Arram laughs his silent laugh, and sings softly. The mouse' s tail flicks; its nose twitches. The little boy laughs too, and he listens to Arram' s song, and watches the shape of his mouth as he sings.

Night after night in his hammock, swaying with the ship, he practises the song. It' s very difficult, but the little boy is clever and patient, and at last he makes the mouse' s nose twitch. He does it again, and again, laughing with delight, until his mother comes in to see why he isn' t asleep. He curls up obediently, clutching the mouse tightly in his hand, but he' s too excited to sleep.

The next day he shows Arram what he can do. The old man' s face goes pale under its deep leathery tan, and he looks around fearfully. He seizes Mouse' s arm and shakes him. ‘Never let anyone see that you can do that! Understand me, boy?'

Mouse stares at the old sailor in mute rebellion. He wants to learn more. But Arram is afraid. ‘Tis a fearful thing to be a chanter, boy. I lost my home, my family, everything I ever loved, for the sake of this magic, and I were lucky not to lose my life.' They strike a bargain: the old man will teach Mouse all he knows, in return for Mouse' s silence. He doesn' t have to tell him again to keep their songs secret; Mouse knows. The secret songs are called
chantments
. The magical tricks are called
ironcraft
.

Before long the little boy can toss knucklebones without picking them up, and lace his shirt without touching the ribbons, and at night he makes the little mouse run up and down his arm.

Night had fallen. Darrow trimmed the sail and let
Heron
rest on the waves, rocking gently just as his hammock had in those far-off days. He curled himself in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in a blanket, and stared up at the canopy of stars and the three moons. He had made good progress; the northern stars, the tip of the Spear, showed above the horizon.