The Tenth Power Read online

  KATE CONSTABLE was born inVictoria but spent much

  of her childhood in Papua New Guinea, without television but

  within reach of a library. She studied Arts/Law at Melbourne

  University before working part-time for a record company.

  The Chanters of Tremaris series has been published in the USA,

  Japan, Denmark and Slovenia. Kate now lives in Melbourne,

  Australia with her husband and two daughters.

  The Chanters of Tremaris

  BOOK 1 The Singer of All Songs

  BOOK 2 The Waterless Sea

  BOOK 3 The Tenth Power

  Praise for the Chanters of Tremaris series

  ‘I love the Tremaris series; I can hardly put the books down.’

  MELISSA, USA

  Praise for The Singer of All Songs

  ‘Kate Constable writes with such grace and clarity

  that she stands out from the pack.’

  SARA DOUGLASS

  ‘A terrific book, wonderfully written,

  with rich and fascinating magic.’

  GARTH NIX

  Praise for TheWaterless Sea

  ‘This fantastic book takes you through a journey of courage,

  determination and friendship. The story keeps you guessing and

  wanting to read more. If you’re looking for a worthwhile read,

  then definitely go for TheWaterless Sea.’

  BIANCA, AUSTRALIA

  Chanters of Tremaris

  BOOK THREE

  • THE •

  TENTH

  POWER

  KATE

  CONSTABLE

  First published in 2005

  Copyright © Text, Kate Constable 2005

  Copyright © Illustrations, Beth Norling 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander St

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Constable, Kate, 1966– .

  The tenth power.

  For children.

  ISBN 1 86508 976 1.

  I. Title. (Series: Constable, Kate, Chanters of Tremaris; bk. 3).

  A823.4

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover image: Ice-scape (Roine Magnusson)/Getty Images

  Set in 12 pt Centaur by Tou-Can Design

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Michael

  Contents

  Moondark

  Bitterthorn

  Snow-sickness

  The Dark Chantments

  The Treasure of the Bees

  The Red City

  The Frozen Forest

  The Time of One Egg

  By the Knot of theWaters

  The Arrival of theVoiced Ones

  The Boat in the Clouds

  The Silver Ship

  The Secret of theWheel

  The Flight of the Goddess

  One Music

  The Singer of All Songs

  Moondark

  THE AUTUMN NIGHT was chilly, and the skies over Antaris were black.The three moons had turned their faces away, as if they could not bear to watch the scene below. Even the stars were hidden behind a bank of cloud, and the priestesses stumbled in the uncertain flicker of torchlight.

  If the procession had led to the sacred valley there would have been music. The initiation of novices would have been accompanied by solemn, joyful songs, by chimes and drums. But on this night, there were no songs; there was no ritual music for what they were about to do.

  The Guardian of the Wall led the way, torch held high. Her plait swung heavy down her back, black and silver intertwined, and her thin lips were pressed together. The sisters followed in silence. The hems of their wide yellow trousers were splashed with mud, dark as bloodstains.

  At last the Guardian halted and turned. Behind her towered the Wall, the impenetrable barrier that protected the community of Antaris from the world outside. It was made of ice, high as three men, and wide as the nearby river. The Guardian raised her torch, and theWall reflected glints of fire in its depths: cold fire, without heat or warmth.

  The silence of the sisters deepened and widened. Just as they sang together in their rituals, so now they were silent together, and the silence of many was stronger and more dreadful than the silence of one alone. The spit and hiss of the torches seemed unnaturally loud.

  The Guardian beckoned, and one of the priestesses stepped from the crowd. She was a strongly built woman of middle age; the flames picked out gleams of red in her dark hair. Her skin was very pale, her face stiff and expressionless, as if carved from white marble. As she moved toward the Guardian, someone sobbed, ‘No! ’

  The Guardian uncorked a small earthenware vial. With unsteady hands, the other priestess took it, tilted back her head and swallowed the liquid within.When she lowered the vial, her lips were stained black. She closed her eyes, and swayed; she reached back and unbound her long hair, shaking it loose around her face in the traditional gesture of mourning. Without a sound, she crumpled to the ground. The little vial rolled away, a few drops of dark bitterthorn brew trickling from it.

  The Guardian nodded, and two priestesses wrapped their hands in their cloaks and propped the fallen woman carefully between them.

  The Guardian raised her hands in a movement that was more challenge than entreaty. For the space of a breath, two breaths, there was no sound but the crackle of torches, the distant hoot of an owl in the forest, and the rushing of the river. Then, unsteadily, one priestess began the chantment of unmaking.

  One after another, the sisters took up the song. Behind the forbidding figure of the Guardian, the Wall began to melt, revealing the deep dark of the forest outside as it dissolved. Some priestesses averted their eyes, either from the black night beyond the Wall, or from the pale, slumped body of their sister, or both. Hidden in the centre of the crowd, someone was weeping.

  When the breach in the Wall was large enough, the Guardian held up her hands to halt the chantment. The two sisters clumsily manoeuvred the limp body into the gap. The Guardian sang a swift chantment, and a husk of ice swam up to enclose the body and hold it erect.Without pausing in her song, the Guardian gestured to the assembled sisters to begin a new chantment.

  The spell of strengthening was faint and reluctant at first. But as more of the sisters joined in, the ice slowly thickened, and the body of the red-haired priestess was sealed in the very heart of the Wall. The Guardian lifted her hands, and the chantment ceased.

  ‘It is done.’ Her low words fell like stones into an icy pool. ‘Now let us sing the song of mourning for our beloved sister Athala. We sing the song for those who die in childbed, giving life. Our brave sister has given us all the gift of life, this night.’

  The Daughters of Taris loosed their hair around their shoulders, and took up the lamentation, singing now with their whole hearts, drawing comf
ort from the familiar ritual. Many of the sisters wept, and covered their faces with their yellow shawls.The procession turned, with the Guardian at its head, and wound its way swiftly back toward the Dwellings.

  Only one priestess lingered, the chill breath of night on her face as she gazed at the lifeless body within the ice. ‘Taris, Lady Mother!’ she whispered. ‘Deliver us from this darkness!’ She scanned the sky, but the lowering clouds still veiled the stars. Winter was coming. Shivering, the priestess rubbed her hands together.They were so cold – and her feet were cold, too.

  The priestess stifled a sob, and she stumbled after the others along the path to the Dwellings, where she had always known safety and welcome. But her home was safe no longer.

  one

  Bitterthorn

  THE FOREST WAS a sheet of white, streaked with charcoal and daubed with blue shadow. Snowdrifts were heaped beneath the trees, and each twig was outlined with a silvery coat of frost. Day after day the freeze had continued, and the sky was a clear, crisp blue. Here and there, the tracks of birds and burrowers marked the coverlet of snow, but bears and other animals dozed, waiting for the sun’s warmth to wake them.They could not know that this winter had lasted too long, and the time for spring’s return had already passed.

  The only sign of movement in the vast silence of the forest came from three small figures, stark shadows against the snow, their breath puffing in the air.

  Calwyn tucked the end of her dark plait securely into the hood of her fur-lined cloak and kicked snow over the remains of the fire. Smoke and steam rose with a hiss. It was midday, but the sunlight was weak and watery where it filtered through the trees.

  Calwyn’s face ached with the cold, and her eyes were sore from squinting into the glare. Under her cloak, she wore a padded jacket, thick trousers and several layers of woollen undershirts and tunics. A sharp hunting knife hung from a sheath at her belt, and she wore a small wooden hawk on a silver chain around her throat. Rabbit-skin mittens protected her hands and a woollen scarf partly hid her face. Her dark eyes stared out beneath straight eyebrows, level and watchful. Calwyn did not often smile, these days.

  Balanced on iron blades strapped to her boots, Calwyn crunched across the snow to where her companions squatted by the bank of the frozen river. She was taller, stronger, and, at eighteen, a little older than her two young friends. This was her journey. She was taking them to the place she thought of as home: Antaris, locked away behind its great Wall of Ice. They had been travelling for more than twenty days, almost a turn of the moons. They’d been lucky with the weather; in all that time the freeze had held, and there had been no snowstorms. But even so, the journey from the coastal city of Kalysons had not been easy: they had skated along the shore of the Bay of Sardi – frozen across for the first time in living memory – then upriver through the mountains.

  Calwyn watched as Trout and Mica, heads close together, struggled with Mica’s skate-blade. Trout looked tired, and when Mica glanced up, Calwyn saw the bruise of shadows under her eyes.

  ‘You see the moons last night, Cal?’ she asked eagerly. ‘It were theWhale’s Mouth.’

  It was the formation that the priestesses of Antaris called the Goat andTwo Kids. ‘Yes,’ said Calwyn. ‘The middle of spring.’

  ‘So why’s it still winter?’ Mica shivered. ‘It ain’t right. I don’t like it. Remember when you sung up ice for me that first time, Cal, and I got so excited? Reckon I’ve seen enough ice and snow now to last me all my life.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Calwyn shortly. Mica’s face fell.

  ‘Don’t wriggle, Mica.’Trout frowned with concentration as he tugged at the leather thong that fastened Mica’s skate to her boot. He was seventeen now, a serious young man, no longer the nervous boy that Calwyn had met almost two years before. But his blue eyes were still round and questioning, and his thatch of brown hair still flopped untidily over his forehead. As usual, his bootlaces were strung through the wrong holes, and one of his coat buttons dangled by a thread. He sat back on his heels. ‘There, that should hold it.’

  ‘Trout, it’s too tight! My foot’ll fall off!’ Mica winced as she wriggled a finger through the lacings. She, too, had grown up in the past year; she had become a striking young woman, with her golden eyes and thick, honey-coloured hair. But she looked miserable now; her nose was red and swollen, her lips were chapped, and her eyes streamed with the cold.

  ‘Better too tight than too loose,’ said Trout mildly. ‘You’ll twist your ankle again if you’re not careful.’

  ‘Look.’ Calwyn opened her mittened hand and showed them a prickly sprig. ‘It’s bitterthorn. Ursca uses it to dull pain and help bring sleep. It grows near theWall.’

  ‘So there ain’t far to go?’ Mica’s face brightened.

  ‘We’ll reach Antaris by nightfall.’

  ‘At last!’ mutteredTrout fervently. ‘Hot baths, clean clothes, a proper bed!’

  ‘The beds in the Dwellings are hard, Trout,’ said Calwyn. ‘The sisters of Antaris live simply. Don’t expect luxury.’

  ‘But they have mattresses?’Trout squinted through the glass lenses that perched on his freckled nose. ‘We won’t have to sleep on the ground?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Calwyn irritably.

  ‘Antaris must be like Emeran, where me and grandma lived,’ said Mica wistfully. ‘Like when all the men went out to sea, fishin, and all the women was left behind together. Even better, cos there ain’t no pirates.We had good times, peaceful, all singin and that, with no men racketin around.’

  ‘What’s wrong with having men around?’ asked Trout, slightly hurt.

  ‘I don’t mind you. Boys is all right.’

  Trout screwed up his face, and hauled Mica to her feet. Born in the Isles of Firthana, where snow and ice were unknown, Mica was far from steady on her skates, though her skills had improved greatly since the start of their journey. She slid out onto the frozen river, whirling her arms wildly. Layers of wool and fur made her as round as a little barrel, and only a few strands of tousled hair poked out from her knitted cap. In the middle of the river, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and began to sing a high, lilting chantment of the winds. The snowdrifts, fallen branches and the slush of dead leaves on the ice blew aside, clearing a path for them.

  ‘Mica! Don’t forget the Clarion!’ called Trout. He held out the precious, golden Clarion of the Flame, the last relic of the Power of Fire. At first, Mica had been wary of using such a powerful artefact, almost too nervous to bring it to her lips, but now the slim little trumpet was an old friend.Without the magic of the Clarion to keep them warm, to start their campfires, to clear the snow from their snug tent and to light their way when the dark drew in every afternoon, the three travellers could not have survived this journey. Even when it was not being played to summon the chantments of fire, the Clarion glowed with a steady, comforting warmth. Mostly, Calwyn andTrout let Mica hold it; she had to be warm to sing her chantments, and she suffered from the cold more than they did.

  Mica skated back, grabbed the Clarion and tucked it inside her jacket. ‘Brr, that’s better!This’ll stop my throat-ache.’With a brave grin, she wobbled away again.

  Trout was a better skater than Mica. As a student in Mithates, he had skated every winter. He’d told Calwyn and Mica about skating parties on the River Amith, with races and picnics and dancing on the ice.That was strange to Calwyn. In Antaris, where each novice must cross the black ice of the sacred pool to become an initiated priestess, skating was a skill to be exercised with respect, not a matter for fun and games.

  But Trout was not reckless. He was a sturdy, dependable skater who never showed off. Now he and Calwyn tugged on the pack harnesses and set off in stride together.

  ‘Wait for us, Mica!’ Calwyn called. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, it’s not safe!’

  With a tremendous effort, Mica halted her headlong glide. ‘You say that every day, but the ice ain’t broke once yet!’ she yelled, her breath a white clou
d.

  ‘You don’t know the signs of thin ice, Mica. Keep to the edges.’

  ‘Don’t be cross with me, Cal,’ said Mica plaintively, but in truth she was tired, and relieved to drop behind the others. For a time, the only sound was Mica’s high, eerie song of chantment, and the steady swish of blades on ice.

  ‘Calwyn,’ saidTrout in a low voice. ‘Don’t be too harsh with Mica. This journey hasn’t been easy for her, you know.’

  ‘It isn’t easy for any of us,’ snapped Calwyn. ‘You think it’s easy for me?’

  ‘No, no – I mean – I know why you’re in such a bad mood all the time…’ ‘If you know so much then why talk about it?’

  Scowling, Calwyn tucked her chin into her scarf and scanned the river ahead. Once, if she had seen a crack in the ice, she could have sung a swift chantment to seal it. Once, she would have made this journey singing softly all the way. And as Mica sang to clear their path, Calwyn could have sung to strengthen the ice beneath them.

  Not so long ago, Calwyn had been a chanter, a gifted chanter. Most chanters of Tremaris could sing the chantments of only one of the Nine Powers. Calwyn had been taught the Power of Ice by the sisters of Antaris, and then she had learned the chantments of the winds from Mica. She had also sung the songs of the Power of Beasts, which tamed animals. And in Merithuros, half a year ago, she’d begun to learn the chantments of ironcraft, the power that moved everything of the earth except air, fire and water.

  It was all gone. All her gifts of magic were lost. Merithuros stole them from me, she thought bitterly, though at the time she had given herself freely to try to heal that dry and troubled land. But the task had overwhelmed her – and now this never-ending winter seemed a cruel joke at her expense, reminding her every day of what she’d lost. Her fists clenched hard, and the crushed fragments of the bitterthorn twig crumbled and blew away across the ice.

  Trout ventured a change of subject. ‘Steel blades would be better than iron. Stronger. Lighter, too. Do you ever use steel skate-blades in Antaris, Calwyn?’