‘I don’t think he will hear you,’ the nurse said, suppressing an absurd surge of disappointment. Looking up from her station into that pale intense face with the dreaming eyes and strong chin, she had caught her breath and had felt a moment of electric hope. It had been as if a battered angel had wandered into the hospice, whose touch and voice would succeed where medical science had failed.
‘Can I … sit with him for a while?’
‘Of course,’ the nurse said kindly, feeling foolish and suddenly close to tears. ‘Stay as long as you like. That’s how it works here. People come when they can and stay as long as they can. Until …’ she stopped abruptly and withdrew.
Left alone, the youth sat down beside the boy. Again the watcher entered his mind. Instantly, he was aware that the Song in him had weakened, though it was still pure. But when the youth took the limp hand of the boy into his own, the Song flared in him. Oh, there was so much locked up in this almost-man, so much potential and brightness, and yet here he sat, grieving for a boy he hardly knew and for the world that had brought him to such a sad, quiet end.
For a time the watcher felt that the Song might die in the youth, even as it watched, and this time it resolved to witness it, but instead, something in the youth rallied. All at once, he sat forward and called the boy by his nickname again. There was no evident response but again the aura fluttered blue and white as the youth began to whisper to the boy of the moments they had shared; of a night when the child had come to sleep at the older boy’s house. His wonder at the pigeons and their obvious affection for Sean. They had eaten burgers prepared by Sean’s mother and had watched television half the night. Nothing much and yet Shadow had seemed almost delirious with joy. Incandescent. Sean had grieved for one whose life had been so dark and joyless that such a simple evening had seemed so special. But now, strangely, the memory of Shadow’s happiness filled him with such a pure joy that it was almost painful to bear it. And unbeknown to him, the Song grew and swelled within him.
The child felt it and his comatose soul unfurled fractionally, but Chaos within him roared and snarled, and the boy’s soul wound tight again.
The watcher drifted away, feeling its own helplessness as never before. Matters were beginning to slide and shift, and nothing was predictable.
It segued …
31
Worlds have dreams as well as people, I think, and Keltor is a dream
of my world. If I am right, then it might be true that my world is
also a dream …
SCROLL OF STRANGERS
‘You have a sister here?’ Soonkar stared at Ember in disbelief.
‘I have seen her in visions. She is on Ramidan, I think, or she will be.’ Ember felt distant from the halfman but the pain had always done that to her, separating her from the world and from herself. In the last hours, it had become savage enough that she had been unable to conceal it from the dwarf, but for the moment, it was in abeyance.
The dwarf’s astonishment faded into a narrow-eyed thoughtfulness, and he scratched the bristles on his chin as if they irritated him. ‘I wonder what Darkfall makes of the two of you?’
‘I’m not sure if they know about Glynn,’ Ember said. It was exhausting to talk, but better that than to be left alone with her fears and the jabbering glee of dark Ember. ‘Alene might have mentioned the vision when she called to Darkfall to tell them about me, but I didn’t know she was my sister then and I’m pretty certain that Alene thought it was a false vision. Feyt was going to try to find out about her, somehow. The night Bleyd and I left Ramidan, when I remembered that Glynn was my sister, Feyt swore to find her, but I don’t know what she may have done about it.’
‘What exactly did Alene tell the soulweavers about you?’
‘I don’t know. She had to go to the top of Skyreach Bluff to call and she left me in the hut with Tareed. But she said she wanted to find out if anyone had dreamed of the arrival of a stranger who looked like Shenavyre.’ She frowned, remembering something else. ‘She was worried because the silvery distortion caused by the tumour in my blinded eye made it look like soulweavers’ eyes look, and would mark me a stranger. She would have told them that. And when she came back, she said that none of the soulweavers had seen my coming but they wanted me to come to Darkfall so they could try to figure out what it meant.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Tareed and Bleyd were convinced that it is a sign the Unraveller is coming.’
‘Maybe they are right.’
‘How can a person from another world be a sign in this world?’
‘Some might say it would make perfect sense for the person heralding the arrival of the Unraveller to come from the same world,’ Soonkar said. ‘There are deep links between these two worlds that go back to well before Lanalor built his portal, so perhaps there is some deeper reason for you looking as you do.’
‘But how could our worlds be linked, and by whom, if not Lanalor?’
‘I do not know. It may be that such a question is akin to asking why trees have seeds. Or who made it that way. It is just how things work. Unless you happen to believe in gods, which I do not.’
‘I don’t think my looking as I do is anything but coincidence, but even if I am a sign, then I have fulfilled my purpose.’
‘A fine point to put upon it,’ Soonkar conceded. ‘However, if you recall, your face came to me in a dream so I reserve the right to believe that your coming here had a purpose beyond being a signal.’
‘If it was my face you saw and not Shenavyre’s.’
‘It was you,’ Soonkar said with quelling certainty. ‘And if you are right about your sister being here, then there is probably a reason for that, too. There is a saying on Keltor: Each thing has its song to sing.’
‘I have heard it, but you don’t know Glynn,’ Ember said. As a young child she had been irritated by her sister’s clumsiness, which had seemed to her to be connected to Glynn’s inability to hear music and her propensity to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ember glanced out the window at the sea shimmering under the twin moons, and reckoned it close to dawn. For the time being the ratty gnawing of the pain at her head and neck had ebbed, like the tide, but soon it would come again, and it would be worse than before. She shivered. Hope was a frail web that she had spun for herself, connecting her to Glynn and to Duran and to Signe on Darkfall. But now Duran was ensnared in a trap, and Glynn was who-knew-where on Keltor walking towards her doom on a cliff edge. The one clear remaining hope was Signe and her ability to heal Ember, but the soulweaver was on Darkfall and now it would be a race against time and the inexorable tide of pain to get there before it was too late. There was no possibility now of pretending that hunger or fatigue or anything else was affecting her. The tumour was growing and its poisons were spreading through her. She imagined her chakra and aura would glow blackly around her now, and shuddered inwardly.
Rising, Ember acknowledged that she ought to have slept during the long wait in the upper rooms of the small nightshelter, as Soonkar had urged, but she had been too restless, and at times the pain had been too great. Soonkar had come and gone several times throughout the day. He had not managed to learn what had become of Fridja and the others, though he had visited their new headquarters, but had found it deserted. He had also learned that Revel had returned from the palace and had gone aboard her ship, but still there was no talk on the piers of the Stormsong leaving. Soonkar had wanted to warn Revel of her danger, but he had seen her speaking with green legionnaires, and that had seemed reason enough to stay away. Ember had been despondent to think that she and Bleyd might have brought harm to the shipwoman, but there was nothing she could do about it. Even giving herself up would not help Revel now.
‘Did you tell Duran about being a stranger?’ Soonkar asked, coming to stand at the window beside her.
‘Somehow the right moment never came.’ Ember turned to him with sudden impatience. ‘How are we supposed to go aboard any ship if there are legionnaires aboard
all of them?’
‘The fact that they are all being watched helps us, for the green legionnaires are spread thin.’ He brought a flat case of face paint out of his pocket with a flourish. ‘I bought this so that we can transform you into a balladeer. We can paint you up to make it look like your resemblance to Shenavyre is artifice, and try to bargain for a cheaper fare by offering a performance. Have no fear, for it is the sort of thing balladeers always try, and it never works. I decided against your being a songmaker because the a’luwtha is like to be part of the description they are circulating by now.’
‘My eye?’ Ember said faintly.
‘You will have to wear an eye patch as if you have been injured,’ Soonkar said succinctly.
That his plan was little more than a bluff sent a shiver of fear through Ember, but there was no point in complaining because there was no other way off Iridom. Yet it was as if a strong wind plucked at the final thread of hope, taunting her with its fragility.
‘How do you feel?’ Soonkar asked solicitously.
‘I am fine for the moment,’ Ember said a little stiffly.
‘I don’t think so,’ the dwarf said. ‘Tell me about your illness.’
Ember wanted to refuse, but she understood that he would need to know what lay ahead, especially if he would have to procure drugs to dull the pain and keep her quiet. So she told him about her illness and the symptoms and the tests and, last of all, about the reprieve in the form of the yellow pills.
‘But of course you don’t have them here.’
Ember shook her head. ‘Alene kept draining off the poisons while I was with her. At first I did not even know that she was doing it. I think she arrested the tumour for some time, or at least slowed it right down. But it got too much for her. When she said they wanted me to go to Darkfall, she told me then that Signe would be able to heal me.’
‘Signe?’
Ember nodded, puzzled at the sharp note of enquiry in his voice. ‘Then what? After Darkfall?’
‘I … I don’t really know. I would be content to discover that there is an after.’
Without warning, the door to the stairs leading down to the public taproom burst open and the owner of the establishment lumbered in. He was built like a bear and seemed to Ember bearish in all respects, including the rank stench he emanated. But he had been kind in a rough way and Soonkar had assured her that he was as stalwart as a rock. ‘Trouble,’ he growled now.
‘Downstairs?’ Soonkar had risen to his feet like a cat. He was oddly graceful in all his movements except walking.
‘Not downstairs. Did you not hear? They are ringing the Edict bell.’
Soonkar scowled and shook his head. Then he slapped his friend on the back saying lightly, ‘Well, we will have to wait until it rings again to leave. Is there any chance of some warmed cirul and fresh bread?’ Ember did not know what he had told the other man, but his pretence of indifference over the Edict bell suggested it was not much.
‘I will bring you something but you can not stay here for much longer, Soonkar. If the greens are looking for someone, eventually they will come here. You did say they wanted you, and they wont overlook you, however distracted they may be by whoever caused them to ring the bell.’
‘We will be out of your hair sooner than you think, Gopan.’
The big man looked gloomy. ‘It is not that I want to turn you out, Soonkar, but I have children and …’
‘You have done me a great service and I will not forget it, my friend,’ Soonkar said with, as far as Ember could tell, genuine warmth. He stopped the big man in the act of turning away. ‘There is one other thing. Could you obtain some lirium for me?’ Gopan looked disapproving but he nodded. When they were alone again, the dwarf turned to Ember.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked and, as if in answer to her question, the pain began to flow back into her, sharp enough to silence the fear of it that rose in the lulls between attacks. She thought how strange it was that the pain was preferable to the fear of it. Maybe death would be preferable to the fear of death.
Soonkar had begun to pace.
‘They are taking extreme precautions to stop you, given the Edict bell inhibits trade and the Iridomi generally allow nothing to get in the way of their pleasure or their profit. Infesting the ships and shore with green legionnaires should have been more than enough for them to feel you were safely bottled up.’
‘Why do they want us so badly?’ Ember whispered. ‘You’d think Coralyn and Kalide would be content with having discredited Bleyd and got rid of him. And all I am to them is the visionweaver who inconveniently saved Tarsin from drinking poison, whom he thanks by turning into a hunted criminal.’ Ember felt that if she could just lie down now, she would sleep for a hundred years, except of course she didn’t have a hundred years. She felt dark Ember gloating at her despair.
‘How much time do you have left?’ Soonkar asked, as if he had read her thoughts. He was peering through the windows at the piers, which looked deceptively peaceful in the solitary light of Onyx, for Aden had already set. The question was so calmly put that for a moment Ember could not take it in. Then she realised that no one had ever asked her this before, certainly not so casually.
Perhaps that was what made it possible for her to answer. ‘Not long. A week if I am lucky. Maybe only a couple of days. There are a lot of signs. The doctors – the white cloaks from my world – said that the end would come quickly when it came. I would know it was close when I was experiencing blackouts, headaches, delusions and pain in my spine. I have endured all of these symptoms since coming to Keltor. Nausea, sleeplessness, no interest in food and worse pain would tell me that the end was very near, and the last sign is full blindness and more pain. Terrible pain,’ she added bleakly. ‘If I reach either of the next stages, you will have to drug me and make me unconscious to get me aboard.’ A thought struck her. ‘Is that what the lirium is for?’
‘Not quite. It will stop the pain but you will be able to walk aboard. I am afraid we have no hope of getting away if you can not do that.’
‘A strong pain suppressant that will let me stay conscious and move sounds perfect,’ Ember said.
‘One would not use it except at great need, for it has a strange disorientating effect upon a person who takes it, and it is very, very addictive. It is also a slight but cumulative poison.’ Soonkar did not say what they were both surely thinking: that perhaps she would not live long enough to become addicted or to consume enough to be poisoned. Instead, he reached out and took her hand. ‘Have courage.’
‘Courage for what?’ Ember asked as, inside her, dark Ember hooted with laughter.
‘Have the courage to hope,’ the halfman said. He patted her hand once, and let it go to resume his pacing. ‘The way I see it, we have only one chance of escaping this cursed place now. We will have to steal a ship.’
‘What!’ Ember gaped at him stupidly.
‘It will not be as difficult as you might think. Despite the Edict bell, a lot of people will be about: servitors dispatched to collect valuable cargo or parcels, or to collect perishable cargo that will need special storage or selling up. The legionnaires will still be about, but they will be less watchful because of the ban on shipping. All we have to do is make our way to the Wildwind and slip aboard. The only things holding a ship to its tethering place are rope loops, no more than four and sometimes only two. Keltan ships do not use anchors in port. We need only throw off the binding ropes, then the tide and currents will carry us out to sea before anyone is the wiser.’
‘But even if we could manage to get aboard and untie the ship without anyone stopping us, we would just drift without a wavespeaker to make the ship move, and what happens when some silfisense us?’
‘The crew will be aboard because of its looming departure, and once the ship drifts free of the land and is outside Iridomi jurisdiction, I will tell the truth to the shipmaster and beg him only to continue on to his scheduled destination. There he can duly hand us over t
o the authorities in bindings if he wishes, and he can quite truthfully claim that he did not break the Edict. The beauty of the plan is that he could not return to shore even if he wanted, because the Edict specifically forbids any ship coming to shore, as well as any leaving.’
‘But what if the shipmaster just decides to head straight back to Vespi and turn us over to his own authorities?’
‘That would be breaking journey-bond, on the other hand it is a possibility. But your question has given me an idea. We will not take the Wildwind after all. We will take the Stormsong. We will not need to convince Revel to carry us to Myrmidor, since she will still be bound by the friendbinding she made with Alene.’
‘I thought that we agreed that the Stormsong might be a trap.’
‘It might have been, but no one will see it that way now because it would be judged that you and the Fomhikan would not come near the shore given that the Edict bell has rung.’
‘I do not think that Revel will be overjoyed to see us,’ Ember said.
‘I think you are wrong. She will be more than eager to leave Iridom, given the length of time that she has been delayed by bureaucratic malice, and if she knows that she in under suspicion, she will be relieved to be away from Iridom.’
‘How do you know that she is not already some sort of prisoner?’
He shook his head. ‘If that were so, she would have found some way to fly the secret signal that warns any friend to Darkfall of danger aboard. No, if a trap was set, she is the bait without knowing it. I have just had another thought, too, that makes the Stormsong a good choice. There are warehouses near where it is moored and, if memory serves me, one of them used to be a myrmidon bolt hole. We can go there now and wait until the moment before we would act.’ Soonkar was already pulling on his boots and Ember hastened to do the same before donning her cloak and taking up the a’luwtha bag.
Just as they had risen to their feet, the door opened to admit the bearish Gopan carrying two mugs of hot cirul and a loaf of steaming bread. Soonkar took the proffered loaf and thrust it into his bag, then he took both mugs, handed one to Ember and drained off the other in one mighty draught. Ember lifted the bottom of her veil and took a sip. It was strong enough to drive a fiery fist into her belly, but it also cleared her mind of the fog for a moment.