The Tenth Power (6 page)

As Calwyn crossed the yard outside the bath-house, she caught sight of another cloaked figure: it was too short to be Tamen. ‘Good night, sister,’ murmured the priestess. It was Janyr, who tended the goats. Calwyn bowed her head and hurried past in silence, her heart thumping. Janyr might think it strange that she hadn’t returned the greeting, but she couldn’t risk having her voice recognised. Like most chanters, the Daughters of Taris had sharp ears. Calwyn glanced over her shoulder. Janyr had vanished into the Middle House.

Calwyn had decided to look for Lia in the House of Elders. It was near the centre of the Dwellings, close to the kitchens, the bath-house and the old infirmary, so that the old women could be carried easily from one place to another. It made sense that Lia, too, would have a room there.

She skirted cautiously around to the rear of the House. No lights showed in the windows. Someone coughed fretfully. Calwyn pushed at the heavy back door and it swung open onto a deserted corridor. Again that restless cough sounded, and a rustle of bedclothes as someone turned over.

Calwyn crept forward. There was a faint edge of light under the last door in the corridor. Calwyn quickened her pace, tiptoeing on the stone flags. The door was ajar. Calwyn could just see a shadowy figure sitting up in bed with a shawl around her shoulders. ‘Lia?’ whispered Calwyn, as loudly as she dared.

‘Come in quickly, and close the door.’

Calwyn obeyed. The room was very cold, and their breath made clouds in the icy air. Calwyn’s cloak was draped over the end of Lia’s bed; she seized it gratefully. She could just make out the pale oval of Lia’s face and her blazing dark eyes. ‘Were you burned last night?’

Lia’s face twisted. ‘A little. But I can’t feel it. Ursca has put honey on the burns. I’m more concerned about you. Did you touch Athala’s body?’

Calwyn looked down. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I haven’t caught the snow-sickness.’

Lia let out a deep, fierce breath. ‘Thanks be to the Goddess!’ She reached out and clutched Calwyn’s hand. ‘The one who can set us free from this terrible evil must be someone with special gifts. Gifts like yours, Calwyn.We have prayed toTaris to send you back. Ursca and I, Gilly and Janyr, and Rina, too…’ Her voice caught, and she gave a bitter laugh. ‘Old women, and young girls, and a cripple. None of us is strong enough to defy Tamen. All too tired, and too hungry, to fight.’

‘But you are strong, you have defied her!’ whispered Calwyn fiercely. ‘In the kitchens, you argued with her. And Ursca and Gilly are defying her every day that Marna lives.’

‘Marna, yes. She has kept herself alive. Waiting for you!’ Lia’s face was lit with a sudden, savage hope. ‘Marna believes you were born for a wonderful destiny. She has great faith in you.’

Stricken, Calwyn stared at Lia. How could she tell her that she had no gifts any more, that she was as broken and helpless as Lia herself ?

‘Marna told me something – some hidden lore?’

Lia held up a hand to silence her. ‘I know nothing of those matters. That is dangerous knowledge, revealed to only one priestess in each generation. You mustn’t speak of it to me.’

‘So it is true – not Marna rambling? But what if she dies before she can tell me the secrets? All the knowledge will be lost!’

Lia shrugged. ‘If everything had gone as it should, the hidden lore would have passed to your mother, and then to you.’ Her expression softened. ‘Calida was not the most gifted chanter among us, but she had a light about her – when we were young, we would have followed her anywhere. Maybe even across theWall, if she’d asked it. She was born to be a leader.’

‘So were you!’ said Calwyn impulsively. ‘The novices, all of us looked up to you!’

Lia made an impatient gesture. ‘What’s done is done. When Calida died, Tamen became the Guardian of theWall. Marna made a mistake there; she knows it.That’s why she has waited for you. You must learn it all, before it’s too late.’

Close by a hinge creaked. Calwyn shot upright.The light of an approaching lantern showed under the door. Calwyn bolted to the window, pushed it open, and swung herself up and over the sill.When she’d dropped to the snow outside, she reached back cautiously and pushed the window closed. She caught a glimpse of yellow light, and Tamen’s forbidding figure looming over Lia’s bed; she could just hear their conversation.

‘Still awake, Lia?’

‘You know I find it hard to sleep, Lady Mother.’ Lia’s voice was taut with suppressed dislike.

‘You should ask Ursca for a sleeping draught.’

‘Yes, Lady Mother. I will do so tomorrow.’

The circle of light swung around the room as Tamen peered into every cranny. Calwyn ducked beneath the sill, heart pounding. Lia asked, ‘Have you found the girl?’

‘Not yet.’ Tamen moved closer to the bed and laid her hand on Lia’s. ‘Why, your hands are so cold, sister. Are your feet cold, too?’

‘Lady Mother, you know I cannot feel my feet.’

‘Yes, Lia. I know. Just think, if you were to catch the snow-sickness, you wouldn’t know until it was too late.’ Tamen’s voice was very soft, but her words were as menacing as if she held poison to Lia’s lips.

Calwyn didn’t wait to hear any more. Keeping to the darkest corners, she darted around the House of Elders, behind the bath-house and away. Snowflakes drifted down, filling in the marks that her feet left behind.

WHEN SHE RETURNED
to the loft, she found Gilly, Trout and Mica all seated on hay bales, talking. Famished, Calwyn fell on the food that Gilly had brought. The peppery herbs in the spiced mash helped to disguise the dull, dusty flavour of vegetables that had been stored too long. She wondered why Trout and Mica had stopped eating, and why Trout’s face was so grey. Then she began to listen to Gilly, and her own appetite faded away.

‘ – and Rina was another,’ Gilly was saying. ‘She wasn’t even ill. But she’d said things against Tamen. So Tamen poured bitterthorn down her throat and put her into theWall.’

Calwyn put down her bowl, remembering the catch in Lia’s voice when she mentioned Rina’s name.

Gilly looked directly at Calwyn. ‘They’ve been waiting for you, you know. Praying to the Goddess, to send you back in time.’

‘I don’t – I don’t know what I can do,’ faltered Calwyn.

She couldn’t help feeling that it was all so unfair. She had travelled back to Antaris, hurt and tired and hoping to be cared for, but instead everyone expected her to take on these enormous problems, problems that she was totally unequipped to solve.

‘Don’t fret,’ said Mica, with a squeeze of Gilly’s arm. ‘We’ll help you somehow, won’t we, Cal? P’raps Trout can build a machine, and we’ll bundle that Tamen up like a bale of hay!’

Gilly giggled. ‘I would like to see that! And the goats, nibbling on her hair.’

After Gilly had gone, Mica said decidedly, ‘Well, she’s all right, anyhow.’

Trout smiled. ‘It’s your charm, Mica. You are irresistible, you know.’

Mica snorted, and threw a twist of straw at his head. ‘Any of that mash left? Reckon I could eat some now.’

CALWYN
WAS WOKEN
by someone whispering her name. She started up. By the golden glow of the Clarion, she saw Marna staring at her, flushed and wild-eyed.

Calwyn hurried to her side. ‘Lady Mother, are you all right, are you in pain?’

Marna shook her head. ‘No time to waste. Must teach you …the shadow chantments.’

‘Is that the Tenth Power, Lady Mother?’

‘No, no. This must come first…the hidden face of the Goddess. Taris is the Mother of death and pain, as well as ice and cold.This is dark magic, child. But no High Priestess can leave this knowledge unlearned. You must be armed against – against evil.’ Marna closed her eyes, and for a moment Calwyn saw the bones of her skull just beneath her skin. ‘Dark chantments that can kill in a dozen different ways, chantments to cause illness…to paralyse, and to bring pain… put someone into a sleep so deep that only another chantment will wake them.’

‘Lady Mother, I can’t – I can’t learn these chantments,’ stammered Calwyn.

‘I understand, child. I felt the same, when my turn came. But without the dark, there can be no light. And dark defeats dark. – There are no shadows at moondark.’ Marna looked directly at her, and said clearly, ‘I let the sorcerer live. I lacked the courage to act. Do not make the same mistake.’

‘Lady Mother,’ whispered Calwyn, her eyes downcast.

‘Listen. I must teach you these chantments piece by piece, so their power is not released.’

Calwyn was filled with misgivings.This was knowledge that should only be passed from the High Priestess to her successor; without the power of chantment, Calwyn could never fill that role. In any case, it was knowledge that Calwyn did not want, a dark and dangerous power. But she listened as Marna sang the secret chantments, in a soft and quavering voice, section by section, never singing one complete chantment. Calwyn was used to learning things by heart, and she was able to repeat the fragments back to Marna after a single hearing.

It was almost dawn before they finished their strange, murmuring duet. At last Marna leaned back against the wall of the loft. ‘It is done,’ she whispered. ‘I know you will remember. Don’t speak of this … to anyone.’

‘Yes, Lady Mother.’ Calwyn wished with all her heart that she could forget what she had just learned. The malevolent songs writhed and spiralled in her mind like a nest of snakes. The dark chantments were like, and unlike, the other chantments of ice-call; there was no joy in them. Even hearing them in fragments had sent chills down Calwyn’s spine, and when she sang what she had heard, her lips felt numb, as if she’d rubbed them with ice. She would never feel the magic rise as she sang the chantments complete, and for the first time since she’d lost her powers, Calwyn was almost glad of it. She whispered, ‘And the Tenth Power?’

‘Later,’ murmured Marna. Her eyes closed. ‘I must … rest.’

Calwyn, too, was exhausted. She pulled a sleeping-fur over herself and fell asleep where she sat, close enough to Marna to feel the old woman’s breath on her cheek.

GILLY
DID NOT
come next morning. The freeze had broken and it was snowing hard; it would be difficult to find an excuse to go outside.With three of them in the barn to see to Marna, it would be an unnecessary risk.

Calwyn rested her aching head on her knees. The shadow chantments whispered in her mind, and so did other voices.
Marna has always had great faith in you.
Lia had faith in her too, and Gilly and Ursca, but she didn’t have the courage to tell them there was nothing she could do to help.

Darrow had thought she might be healed in Antaris. He remembered Antaris as a peaceful place, filled with song and light and healing. But there would be none of that for her.

‘Cal!’ Mica called softly. ‘She’s awake.’

Calwyn threw herself down by Marna’s side and clasped her soft, wrinkled hand between her own. ‘Lady Mother?’

Marna murmured something, so faintly that Calwyn could only catch a few words here and there. ‘No time… the secrets …this is my punishment.’

‘No, Lady Mother!’ Calwyn spoke in a fierce whisper. ‘You always taught us that the Goddess doesn’t punish – ’ She stopped. Hadn’t she, in despair, wondered if her own loss was a punishment from Taris? But it was true: Marna had always taught them to know a loving Goddess, whose ways might be mysterious, but never cruel. Calwyn smoothed the thin, silky hair.

Very slowly and shakily, Marna raised her other hand and touched the end of Calwyn’s long plait. ‘Don’t grieve, child… for what you have lost.’

Calwyn blinked back tears. So Marna knew. How long had she known?

The High Priestess’s lips moved. ‘You live in darkness now, but the darkness will end, as the night ends…and the winter turns to spring.What is broken…will be whole again.’

Calwyn could not speak. Marna’s cool fingers rested in her own, reminding her of Halasaa’s healing touch. But not all hurts could be healed, and not all winters end in spring, Calwyn thought. Perhaps this winter would never end.

‘Lady Mother, please, tell me!’ she whispered. ‘What is the Tenth Power?’

‘Find theWheel.’ Marna’s voice was so faint that Calwyn had to put her ear almost to her lips. ‘Time for song…and time for silence. You must learn…to
listen
.’

‘Yes, Lady Mother.’

‘We sing, but we are also sung,’ whispered Marna. ‘Little daughter, the Goddess sings for me.’ Her blue eyes closed, and she sighed, as if she had laid down a heavy burden after a long journey.

Calwyn rubbed Marna’s cool hand between her own. ‘Lady Mother? Please, tell me – ’ ‘Calwyn!’Ursca’s voice was sharp. ‘Stand back! It won’t help anyone if you catch the sickness, too.’

Calwyn dropped Marna’s hand abruptly. Ursca’s cloak and hair were crusted with snow, and her face was pink with cold. She knelt on the floor and gently touched Marna’s face with her gloved hand. ‘Taris whispered it to me, that it would be today! The Goddess has taken her daughter.’

Ursca folded Marna’s hands on her breast, and reverently touched her forehead, her throat, her heart. Even when Ursca unpinned her hair and began to croon the lament for the dead, Calwyn did not believe it.

Mica touched her shoulder; her face was frightened. ‘Is she dead, Cal?’

‘She – she has gone to – ’ Calwyn’s voice choked in her throat. Wordlessly she turned, and Mica’s arms went around her. Calwyn clutched her tight and let her tears soak into Mica’s tunic, wishing that Darrow were there to hold her. Trout patted her awkwardly on the back.

‘No, no!’ Calwyn struggled free. ‘I must help sing.’

With shaking hands, Calwyn unbound her own hair and shook it out so that it fell loose around her face. The low, mournful swell of the lament to the Goddess mingled with the doleful howling of the blizzard outside, as Ursca and Calwyn did honour to Marna. Then Ursca recited the prayer for the dead, her hands cupped before her. A troubled frown puckered her face, as if to say: this is not my task, this is one more thing that should not be.

When the prayer was complete, Ursca covered Marna’s peaceful face with the sheet. ‘She was waiting for you, Calwyn. She held herself here until you returned, and she had said what must be said.’