The Waterless Sea (10 page)

Moodily he spooned up the soup. Then he gave a grim little laugh. It was what he deserved, to come back and find her gone off on an adventure of her own. He had no right to expect that all her thoughts and her actions should revolve around him, that she would sit quietly by her hearth and wait for him to return. But he wished with all his soul that she hadn' t chosen this particular quest. To venture into the heart of Merithuros, to the Black Palace, the secret stronghold of the chanters of iron: she had no idea what she would have to face. Even with Halasaa and the others to help her, he feared for her.

With a clatter he pushed away the empty bowl. ‘When did they leave?'

‘Let me think.' Fresca leaned against the table. ‘It was when Big Fish Swallows Small Fish. The Fingernail and the Quartered Apple, Calwyn calls it.'

‘Twenty days ago,' said Trout.

Darrow groaned. If only they had waited! He could have persuaded her not to go, or if that failed, he could have gone with her. But that chance was lost. There was only one thing to be done now. Perhaps this was his answer, after all . . .

‘I' ll go after them,' he said. ‘I have business in Merithuros in any case.
Heron
is not so fast as
Fledgewing
, but I know the deserts, and I can travel swiftly once I arrive. With luck, I might find them before they reach Hathara.'

‘ Tonno told me he' d wait for them in Teril,' volunteered Trout.

Darrow nodded. That was good; they could take
Fledgewing
round the coast together. ‘I' ll leave tomorrow at dawn,' he said.

Fresca looked at him in horror. ‘But Darrow, you' ve only just arrived! You need to rest, you' ll have to stock your boat. Wait a day or two at least, what difference can it make?' But she knew, as she looked at his face, that no amount of argument would dissuade him. With a sigh, she began to bustle around. ‘Let me wash your clothes at least. Trout, fetch him something clean to wear, go on now. Darrow, you can lie down on that bed and sleep. You' ll be no use to anyone without a good night' s rest behind you.'

‘I would rather go up to my own hut.'

‘Rubbish! That cold, damp shack! No one' s aired it out for a turn of the moons. You won' t sleep there, you' ll catch your death.'

‘No, he won' t.' Trout turned back to argue. ‘It' s the middle of summer.' Darrow gave the smallest of smiles.

‘I don' t care. Get along, Trout! Darrow, you go and lie down on that bed. When Trout comes back, we' ll see to your boat, we can get your supplies together. Go on now! I' ve enough to do without chasing around after you.' She scolded Darrow out of her kitchen as if he were one of her own children.

He allowed her to shoo him into the other room. After all, it would be pleasant to sleep on a feather bed after so many nights on
Heron
' s hard planks. Fresca' s bed was covered in a cheery patchwork quilt. Darrow sat down and tugged his boots off; it would be a shame to dirty that quilt with his muddy feet. . .

But he got no further before sleep overtook him, and when Fresca came in to fetch his clothes for washing, she found him sprawled across the bed, fully dressed and fast asleep.

Darrow woke in a lather of sweat. The covers were twisted around his neck, choking him, and he fought his way free with his heart hammering. The cool night air dashed against his face, and he gulped it in with relief.

For a moment he didn' t know where he was. Moonlight streamed through Fresca' s window. He wondered how many other people all overTremaris lay awake, staring at the moons. Some herders, perhaps; fisher-folk, waiting for the schools to rise. And the astronomers of the Black Palace, who slept by day and made their observations all night long. Was Calwyn awake somewhere in those deserts to the south, watching the moons? He thought of her long hair, the way it fell in a shimmering curtain to her waist, darkly glinting.

Darrow hunched the quilt over his shoulders, turned his face toward Merithuros, and tried to sleep.

Mouse has gone. The boy is older now, and when he is called anything, he is called by the name of the ship he was stolen from: at first Gold Arrow, then Darrow. When he came to this place, he dreamed every night that the captain and his mother and Arram and the other sailors would come storming over the dunes and take him away, back to the ship, back to his home. But that hope has faded slowly, and the boy' s memories of his parents and the ship grow dimmer with every turn of the moons.

It' s hard to measure the passing of the years, for the days are all alike, and there are no seasons in the Black Palace. The chanter children live day and night, year in and year out, within its dark walls; among themselves, they call it the Black Place. The sorcerers light the rooms with dim lanterns, continually refilled with oil by some complex mechanism that the children are not permitted to understand. Without sunlight, the children are as pale as ghosts, and the sorcerers are pale too, gliding about silently in their long black robes. The boy does not know which of the sorcerers stole him from his parents, so he hates them all, with an equal, secretive passion. There are one or two girls among the children, but all the sorcerers are men.

He understands now that Arram, the old sailor, was once one of these children.
They steal them away to the middle of the desert
and eat them up!
It' s true. He is being eaten up; day by day, a little more of him disappears.

The Black Palace has no visible doors, no gates or windows. When the sorcerers wish to leave or enter, they cut open a doorway in the smooth sheer walls with chantment, and seal it behind them. The boy has never forgotten his first sight of the huge black monolith, when he was carried here on the back of a
hegesu
with a band of other abducted children. The Palace rises on a plateau in the centre of the vast plain called the Dish of Hathara: a polished black cube, stark against the red dirt.

Inside, the cube is a succession of vast, empty rooms, mostly of polished black stone, relieved here and there with geometric patterns of dull red or bone white, to mark out a passageway or frame a door. The sorcerers' robes whisper on the smooth floors. It' s possible for the boy to tell where he is inside the cube by the temperature of the rooms. Near the surface, it is baking hot; in the depths, chillingly cold.

The sorcerers have their own way of keeping time. There is an enormous sand-clock at the foot of the central staircase, connected to a series of bells and hammers which strike out the quarters of the day. At sunrise, noon, sunset and midnight, the deep bells ring, up and down the spine of the staircase that links the many floors of the Palace.

The chanter children are told to be grateful. They are told they have been rescued from the dangerous, ignorant world outside. They are told, ‘There are no Clans here. We are all brothers.' The children are forbidden to speak of their homes or their Clans, but stubbornly, children of the same Clan affiliation seek out one another and cluster together. Children from the same province eat at the same table, sleep in the same dormitory, lend washcloths and blankets and hand down clothes to one another. The boy has no Clan. He eats and sleeps alone, and rarely speaks. At first he finds it difficult to understand what the sorcerers and the children say. That passes, but when he speaks, he has an accent different from theirs, and they mock him. He finds it simpler to be silent.

He is always hungry. The children and the sorcerers eat the same monotonous diet: tasteless leaves, mushrooms, soft
hegesi
cheese. There are arid gardens on the plateau all around the Palace, and flocks of
hegesi
graze close to the monolith. One turn of the moons he spends outside the walls, helping to watch over the flock, milking and shearing.

One day during that time, he sees something among the
arbec
plants. Curious, he wanders over to investigate. It is a long, black-wrapped bundle, stretched on the red dirt. He turns it over with his foot, and then jumps back. A mummified skull grins up at him, and a skeletal hand dangles from the folds of a sorcerer' s black cloak.

A voice sounds behind him. ‘We are not prisoners. We may leave if we wish.' It is a young sorcerer, tall and very thin. His name is Amagis. The boy does not like him; he is cruel to the younger children. Amagis lifts the corpse' s dry, fleshless hand, shakes it gruesomely at the boy, then lets it fall. He grins at the boy, without warmth. ‘Do
you
wish to leave?'

The boy shakes his head. He takes a step backward, and Amagis laughs.

The boy does not forget the mummified skull of the runaway, dried by the winds. But he also remembers Arram. Arram must have escaped. Others must have escaped too. But the boy is not a child of the deserts. He knows nothing of how to live in the barren lands. This is not his place. He could never survive.

But he dreams of his time with the
hegesi
for a long while after he is sealed in the Palace again. He dreams of the sun on his skin, the smell of the clean wind, the warm greasy wool under his hands. Another time, he takes his turn singing round the great millstone that grinds flour out of dune-grass seeds, for their bread. He hopes that one day he might be sent to gather the dune-grass, and then he might see the ocean. But the sorcerers never assign him to that task.

No one knows when one of the sorcerers might swoop down like a vengeful crow and carry off a child for theTesting. It might be in the middle of a meal, or halfway through a lesson. Sometimes a child vanishes from his bed. Those who have passed never speak of it. Nor do those who fail: they disappear. The girls always disappear; they always fail. Like the dead, the ones who disappear are not spoken of. But unlike the dead, the names of the disappeared are never mentioned again, even after the moons emerge from darkness. It is as if the unlucky ones had never existed. The boy works feverishly at his studies. He knows he is in the first rank of the chanter children, but still he lives in terror, as they all do, of failure in the Testing.

The boy still carries the carved mouse in his pocket. Occasionally he takes it out and turns it over in his hands, but he never makes it dance or twitch its nose any more. In secret, he has made himself a tiny knife, which he also keeps in his pocket, and from time to time he steals a wooden plate from the dining hall. He sits by himself and carves. It is an eccentric habit; if he wished, he could carve without the knife, and a hundred times quicker, but the subtle movements of the knife comfort him, and in the act of carving he keeps alive the memory of the sailors who carved toys for a little boy, long ago. He makes tiny wooden fish, and boats, and sea birds. When they' re finished, he hides them around the Palace. It gives him a sense of power to know that his carvings lurk in unsuspected corners, safe from the sorcerers' eyes, tucked in a nook behind a lantern, or pushed into a crack under the stairs.

One day, between the end of lessons and the evening meal, he sits in a cold corner, absorbed with the scratchings and gougings of his little knife. Something makes him shiver, and he looks up to see black robes looming over him. He jumps up, expecting to be punished. But the sorcerer ignores the knife. He is a grim man with darting eyes and very long arms and legs; the children call him The Spider. He gestures to the boy to follow. The boy feels a shiver of fear that runs from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. This is the Testing.

Terrified, he followsThe Spider down the shadowy corridors. His feet slip on the polished stone, and the whispers of the other children echo after him. They avert their eyes as he goes by, as if from a corpse. He doesn' t blame them. How many times has he done the same, how many times has he given thanks that some other child has been chosen, not him?

He follows The Spider down corridors he has never entered, into a part of the Palace he has never seen. Soon he is shivering with cold as well as terror.

At last The Spider leads him to a room with white walls. The room is empty. The Spider motions him to go inside. Dry-mouthed, the boy asks what he must do.

The sorcerer smiles a mirthless smile. ‘Nothing,' he replies. He stands outside the room, and sings a droning chantment, and the wall seals itself.

The boy cries out. He is in pitch darkness. And once again he is a small boy, suffocated by musty black robes, borne away from his mother and father and everything he knows. He opens his mouth and gasps for air; his throat is dry with fear.

Blindly he walks forward, hands outstretched, until he bruises his hands on the cold stone. He feels his way around the entire room; it is small and polished and featureless. Blood beats in his ears. He feels the walls again. The room is smaller than before; it is shrinking around him, the walls are pressing in. He cannot sing, he cannot breathe, he cannot stand. Now he is on the floor. His mind is blank with fear. The room tips and spins around him. It makes no difference if his eyes are closed or open. He gasps like a fish out of water. He is dying; that is all he knows, and that knowing swallows him like the dark.