The Waterless Sea Page 6

  ‘We could try, to keep it at arm’ s-length.’

  Heben hesitated, then gave a brief nod. They all dismounted, and drew the hegesi into a close huddle at the top of one of the dunes. The animals were distressed, bleating and pressing together for comfort. Heben tried to persuade them to kneel, but they would not. At last Halasaa laid his hand on the head of each beast, between their eyes, and, one by one, they knelt in the sand. The travellers piled their packs in the centre of the tight circle, and sat, knees touching, with their backs to the desert. As the wind howled higher, Heben showed Halasaa how to wrap his headcloth across his face. Calwyn and Mica left their faces uncovered as the sand whirled about them.

  Calwyn began a low chantment, a song of the Isles, and Mica joined her. Their two voices rose together, intertwined, sounding frail beside the ever-growing roar of the storm. Calwyn saw doubt in Heben’ s eyes; he feared that their voices were too flimsy to pit against the might of the approaching storm.

  There was a flicker of movement beneath the stirring sand as a small snuffling animal scurried for shelter, its ears as long as a rabbit’ s: one of the nadi Heben had described. Calwyn saw the white flash of its rump as it whisked into a hole. If only they could do the same. . .

  The wind was rising, and their song rose with it, steady and lilting, still audible as it threaded through the howl of the storm. Mica’ s wide golden eyes were fixed on Calwyn’ s face as they sang. Together they wove the chantment, the wind that wound about their huddle of bodies like wool about a spindle, wrapping them around and around, to shield them from the whipping sand. The storm looked like a yellow mist, creeping ever closer. But it was a hot, stinging mist, a deathly cloud.

  Then it was upon them. Heben’ s eyes narrowed above the tight wrapping of the cloth over his face, but he did not flinch. Halasaa had curled himself into the shape of a rock, his knees pressed against his eyes. Calwyn held the cloth up close to her face with both hands, afraid the wind would tear it away. Outside their tight circle, the sand rose in a blinding cloud that blotted out the sky, the sun, the harsh light. The scream of the wind rose too, drowning out Calwyn and Mica’ s song.

  Mica was still singing; Calwyn could see her lips moving, and she herself was singing too, though she couldn’ t hear her own voice. The spell was holding. The space in which they crouched was untouched by the storm, the sand beneath them a smooth circle of calm. But outside that circle, nothing was still. The suffocating sand whirled and stung and moaned. How long would it go on? Did these storms blow through a whole night? Already it seemed that she and Mica had been singing for half a day, and the wind that beat against their magic was as strong as ever.

  And then, more suddenly than it had come upon them, the wind passed. The fine grains of sand floated, a choking cloud suspended in the hard light, and then, slowly as drifting snow, the sands settled. The white sun beat down on them again. The blurred haze that was the storm diminished, moving toward the horizon. The inquisitive face of the little nadu poked out of its hole. Its nose twitched once, then it bounded away. Calwyn nodded to Mica, and they let their song drop into silence.

  Heben unfolded himself, and extended his hands to help Calwyn and Mica up. ‘Let us go on,’ he said, as if they’ d stopped for a meal, and he clucked the hegesi to their feet. But Calwyn thought that after the storm, he spoke to her differently: with less courtesy, and more respect.

  They stopped just before dusk, while there was still enough light for Heben to mend Mica’ s waterskin. They had come to the edge of the dunes. A flat, rocky plain stretched before them, pocked with stones and stunted vegetation, grey-green against the burnt hue of the rocks. There were no more rolling waves of golden sand; that was all behind them. Ahead lay just this red, flat, stony plain.

  ‘Let me sing up some water for the hegesi,’ said Calwyn, eager to make amends for their carelessness.

  Heben looked up from his neat stitching. ‘Thank you, but they don’ t need it,’ he said. ‘So long as they eat enough arbec leaves, they will have all the moisture they need.’

  The hegesi were already tearing at the juicy leaves of the low-growing arbec.

  Calwyn squatted beside Heben. ‘So, if we ran out of water, could we chew the arbec too?’

  ‘No,’ said Heben briefly. ‘It is poison to men.’

  And women? Calwyn bit her tongue. ‘All the same, wouldn’ t the hegesi enjoy some cool water?’

  ‘My lady is more than kind, to think of the comfort of the hegesi before her own,’ said Heben, and bit off his thread.

  It took her several attempts to get it right. At first she sang up a thin sheet of ice that melted quickly on the warm ground, but it vanished into the dirt before the hegesi could come near it. Then she sang a solid block of ice that Heben eyed with astonishment. But the hegesi didn’ t know what it was, and wouldn’ t lick it. At last she found a hollow in the top of a rock, and sang up a handful of snow that melted into a little crystal pool that the hegesi lapped at eagerly. When Mica’ s waterskin was mended, she filled it with the same swift-melting snow, and filled the waterskins of the others, too. ‘There,’ she said, proud of her efforts. ‘You need never go thirsty in the desert with a chanter of ice in your company!’

  Torn between admiration and suspicion, Heben dipped his finger in the pool and tasted the water. ‘How can it be? How can you make water out of nothing?’

  ‘Not from nothing. Out of the air. There’ s water in the air, even here, all around us, always. All chantment does is wring it out.’ Calwyn pressed her hands together as if she were squeezing a sponge. ‘We can’ t make something out of nothing. Even the illusions of the Power of Seeming only draw out what’ s already in the mind.’

  ‘What is this Power of Seeming?’ asked Heben.

  ‘Chanters of seeming create illusions. They can make you believe you see and feel things that aren’ t real.’

  ‘Samis once made himself look like Darrow, and even Cal couldn’ t tell no difference,’ put in Mica.

  ‘Only at first!’ said Calwyn, slightly stung.

  All life, everything that is, is the river. Halasaa’ s eyes were bright. Chantment is only an alteration of the river’ s flow.

  Involuntarily Heben made the gesture to ward off evil, then looked embarrassed. ‘I know nothing about sorcery. I could never understand how the twins could make solid objects fly through the air, or spin about. Or how they could crack open a log of wood for kindling without an axe. It is a fearful thing.’

  Calwyn said, ‘One day, no one in Tremaris will think it fearful, or strange, to see chantment at work, and it will be as commonplace as mending with a thread, or harvesting vegetables from a field, or fishing with a net.’

  ‘I am a son of the deserts, and those last two things are strange to me also,’ said Heben with a small, tight smile. ‘You should say, as common as milking a hegesu, which I must do now.’

  Darkness was falling fast as Heben squatted beside one of the hegesi and squirted yellow milk into a battered tin cup. He held out the cup to Calwyn. The milk tasted almost sour, but it was more refreshing than her own snow-water, and she drank every drop.

  As they crossed the stony plain they spent the nights under the shelter of the tents. As soon as the sun set, the cold came crashing down with the force of a rock fall. They would light a fire and sit shivering around it; apart from hegesi dung, there was little to burn. The low arbec plants were not good fuel and the clumps of dry-grass that grew here and there as high as Calwyn’ s throat, had razor-sharp leaves that crackled up in a flash: good for starting fires, but useless for sustaining them.

  On the third night of their journey, Heben shyly took out a flute made from the leg bone of a hegesu. He played a thin, eerie melody that wound its way into the night; the canopy of stars and moons shone with a brilliance that was almost violent in its intensity. Mica was nodding with sleepiness. Before long she and Halasaa crawled into one of the tents and lay down on the hard sand, with nothing beneath their aching bodies b
ut the folds of their robes, which were so hot and cumbersome by day, yet so thin and inadequate by night.

  Heben and Calwyn stayed by the glowing pile of coals. Heben put his flute away, and Calwyn began to sing: no chantment, but a melancholy song of her childhood, a song of the Goddess bereaved, a song of cold and loneliness and aching sorrow. When it had finished, Heben bowed his head toward her.

  ‘Is that a song of Antaris?’

  ‘Yes. It’ s a winter song. It seemed cold enough to sing it here.’ Calwyn smiled. Her breath made white clouds in the icy desert air.

  Hesitantly Heben said, ‘I have brought you a long way from your home, my lady.’

  ‘And you had to travel far from your home to find us. Don’ t fear, Heben,’ she said. ‘We won’ t let you down.’

  A distant howling broke through the silence of the night. On and on it echoed, a deep, sinister call, unutterably wild.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Calwyn. ‘Not a hegesu?’

  Heben laughed grimly. ‘No. That’ s a wasuntu, a wild hunting dog. The hegesi are their prey, and people too, if we don’ t take care. They hunt in packs, but they won’ t come near so long as we have a fire. I’ ll tend it. You go and sleep.’

  ‘I’ ll tend the fire,’ said Calwyn firmly. ‘And when I’ m tired, I’ ll wake Halasaa. You don’ t have to coddle us, Heben. You forget, we’ re used to sailing through the night, taking turns at the tiller. You can trust us to mind a campfire. Go and sleep. I’ d like to sit up for a while.’

  Heben hesitated, then bowed deeply. ‘Thank you, my lady.’ ‘Heben!’ Softly Calwyn called him back. ‘Heben, my name is Calwyn. There’ s no need to call me my lady, as if I were a High Priestess. We must be equals in this quest, or we will fail.’

  Heben looked startled. Unwillingly he admitted, ‘I did not expect your sorcery to be so useful. We might have perished in that sandstorm, if not for you. And it is good to have water whenever we wish it.’

  Calwyn inclined her head. ‘And without your desert-craft, Heben, we would have perished a dozen times over.’

  ‘Thank you – Calwyn.’ With a bow and a whisk of his robes, Heben disappeared inside the tent.

  Calwyn looked up at the sky. How far away Antaris was, and yet the same three moons sailed here, huge and very clear, so that she could see every mark on their silver faces.

  As always when she stared at the moons, her thoughts turned to Darrow. Where was he now, and when would she see him again? Did he ever think of her? Did his heart ache, as hers did? She laid her cheek against her knee, and began to sing the sad winter song once more.

  The next day Heben did not ride off ahead as usual, but waited so that Calwyn could ride beside him. For a time they went on in silence; Calwyn had little energy for talking. Her whole body was sore to the bones, and her eyes ached from squinting into the glare. Yet she had begun to see a harsh beauty in this parched land, with its red sands and blazing sky. Presently she sang up a breeze that cooled her face and Heben’ s before drifting to Mica and Halasaa behind them. Halasaa was trudging on foot again, his face lowered, and puffs of dust rose where his bare feet shuffled. When he felt Calwyn’ s breeze, he looked up with a brief smile of gratitude. Calwyn felt a stab of worry for him. This journey seemed to be harder for him than the rest of them.

  Heben cleared his throat, looking at her sideways, as if he had something to ask but was too shy to begin.

  ‘What is it, Heben?’

  ‘Can any sorcerer do what you’ ve done, turning the storm aside, and making water out of the air? Could the twins learn to do as you did?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Only a daughter of Antaris can sing the chantments of ice. And the winds can only be controlled by one born to windwork, like Mica, a daughter of the Isles.’

  ‘But you sing up the winds just as she does. Weren’ t you born in the mountains?’

  For a moment Calwyn didn’ t reply. She didn’ t like to speak of the fact that she, like the dead sorcerer Samis, possessed the rare gift of mastery of more than one kind of chantment. Samis had thought that gift entitled him to rule the whole of Tremaris. Calwyn didn’ t think that. She didn’ t want to think about it at all; her mind shied away from the matter like a mackerel from a shark.

  ‘I was raised in Antaris, but not born there,’ she said at last. ‘I’ m not certain of my fathering. I must have some island blood too.’

  Shock flashed across Heben’ s face. ‘You are not certain? But –’

  Calwyn gave a dry, forced laugh. ‘Fathers are important in Merithuros, I understand that already. But where I come from, it’ s mothers who matter more. Any child born to a priestess of Antaris after the Festival of Shadows will always be a little uncertain of their fathering, though boy children, and the girls who have no gift of chantment, are often fostered by their fathers. But the girl children who can sing are raised as sisters together, and the High Priestess is mother to us all.’ She fell silent, remembering Marna’ s kindly blue eyes and her regal smile. Would she ever see her again, would she ever return to Antaris? Suddenly the mountains seemed so far away, they might have been on one of the moons. She shook herself. ‘My mother’ s name was Calida,’ she said briskly, to forestall his pity. ‘She bore me somewhere in the Outlands, and took me back to Antaris before she died. I was only a baby then. I don’ t remember her.’

  ‘I’ m sorry,’ stammered Heben. To be a fatherless child in Merithuros was an unthinkable misfortune. Even though his father had cast him out, he knew who he was: Heben, son of Rethsec, son of Cheben, called the Quick, and so it went on, back and back. He said proudly, ‘I can trace my ancestry back to Cledsec himself, who was one of the Seven, the first warriors of Merithuros.’

  Calwyn had to smile. ‘And who was Cledsec’ s father, Heben?Who was his mother?’

  ‘The legends say that the gods sent the Seven from the sky in a silver ship.’

  Mica had been listening. ‘Then you got sailin in your blood after all, same as me!’

  ‘It’ s only a legend.’ Heben frowned. ‘And after twenty generations in the deserts, I think we can claim to belong to this land.’

  No! Halasaa’ s voice was savage inside Calwyn’ s head. A quick glance at the others confirmed that they had not heard him; Halasaa’ s words were for her alone. Halasaa was never violent, never anything but gentle and calm. But the words that tumbled from him now were harsh and disturbed. This land does not welcome his people any more than a corpse sits up and bids welcome to its murderer!

  Calwyn stared at him. ‘Peace, Halasaa!’ she murmured.

  His face set, her friend strode ahead, and the subject of ancestry, whether it was Heben’ s, Calwyn’ s or Mica’ s, was dropped.

  But the image of the murdered land stuck in Calwyn’ s head, and as the day went on, she found herself listening intently to the small sounds of the desert: the shuffling of the hegesi, the crunch of Halasaa’ s footsteps, the scamper of a startled nadu. After a time, she fancied she could hear the breath of the land itself, as if the endless plain sighed like the ocean, or the whispering forests of theWildlands. But this land seemed to murmur of death and decay. The gnarled, stunted shrubs looked like bundles of dead twigs stuck into the dirt. She noticed tiny piles of nadu bones, heaped up like abandoned birds’ nests. The scattered rocks and boulders lay inert and lifeless. The air was so dry in her throat that she couldn’ t sing. At that, panic gripped her, for without chantment, she was no longer herself, and she stopped and took a gulp from her waterskin.

  Despite the protection of the long robes and turban, Calwyn’ s face was flayed by the sun. When at last night fell, the cold air was as welcome as a cool bath on her burnt skin. The others were all darker-skinned, and stood the fierce sun better; certainly she was the only one who glowed red at the end of every day. Halasaa laid his cool hands against her cheeks, and even before he began the subtle movements of healing, she felt better at his touch.

  That night Calwyn slept badly, despite her fatigue. Cold and sore, she
found no comfort on the hard ground, and every rustle of a night creature or crackle of the fire jerked her awake. When at last she did doze off, she was tormented with nightmares, and woke clammy with sweat, heart hammering, unable to remember her dreams.

  On the fifth day they came through the hills, and saw it.

  The Palace of Cobwebs lay along the top of a ridge. At first, except that the hills were too low, Calwyn might have taken the Palace for a snowcap: it was a glistening of white marble, the froth on a wave of red rock, a layering of light that burned across her eyes. That was all that could be seen at first: light, and whiteness, and a shining like glass.

  As they drew nearer, she could see the texture of the whiteness, the shapes of the interlaced buildings with their curved and gleaming roofs, some high, some low. There were domes, and slender turrets, and towers as fine as needles; there was one tower that seemed to pierce the sky. Calwyn, who had visited the most ancient of all cities of Tremaris, the abandoned city of Spareth, felt her memory catch at those shapes. She wondered at the builders who had copied them, and the stories of their patterning that must have been passed from generation to generation until they flowered into being, here, carved from the white stone.

  ‘We’ ll make camp here.’ Heben led them down a narrow path, almost invisible, into a hidden place between two hills, where a small creek ran. There was shelter and shade beneath an overhang of rock, and green plants feathered the banks of the stream. ‘There is plenty of arbec here; the hegesi will be happy, and should not wander. And for us, these fruits are sweet, they are in season now.’

  Halasaa smiled at him serenely. This is the way all your lands used to be, wild and green. In this place, the memory of the lost land still lives.

  As if to prove his point, he threw back his head and gave a silent call, and after a moment a bird appeared, circling overhead: the blue flash of a kingfisher. It hovered above them for the space of a heartbeat, no more, then darted away upstream. But a few moments later it returned, with a silver fish in its beak, and it dropped the fish at Halasaa’ s feet and flew away.