The Tenth Power (18 page)

The black ice of their own river snaked forward and vanished, like a ribbon wound onto a spool, into three frozen whirlpools, cupped in white stone at the centre of the chamber. The edges of the pools overlapped, and coils of ice surged and twisted like petrified rope flung into the air. Each pool was a different colour. One was bright, deep turquoise; the second was the pale, fresh green of new leaves; and the third gleamed red-purple, as if it had been stained with mulberries.

Calwyn unfastened her skates. She knew instinctively that this was a place of such sacred power that to slide on the ice would defile it. On tiptoe, she crept to the very edge of the turquoise pool.

Behind her, Trout whispered, ‘When the waters aren’t frozen, there must be a tremendous noise in here.’

Calwyn hadn’t thought of that. She imagined the deafening din as three whirlpools clashed together, noise reverberating around the chamber. But now it was eerily silent, save for their own breath and the muffled clink of skate-blades.

‘Halasaa, what is this place?’ asked Darrow, and though his voice was hushed, his words seemed jarringly loud.

This is the heart of the Veiled Lands, the most sacred place of the Tree
People.

Darrow nodded. ‘The most sacred place in all Tremaris.’

More sacred than Spareth?
asked Calwyn.
They say that Spareth is the
breath behind every chantment.

This place was here, long before the songs of chantment came toTremaris
, replied Halasaa soberly.

Trout shivered. ‘I don’t think we should stay here too long.’ It was unlike Trout to give in to what he called ‘superstition’.

Darrow took his lips from the Clarion long enough to say, ‘There is a presence in this place. Some spirit, cold toward us.’ ‘Ye-es. I feel it,’ said Calwyn. ‘But it doesn’t seem unfriendly, to me.’

Tonno grinned, a little uneasily. ‘You’re a Tree Person, ain’t you? You and Halasaa, you’re allowed to be here. But the rest of us, we don’t belong.’

‘Tonno’s right.We must go on.’ Darrow picked up a towrope to drag one of the sleds onto the rocky ledge that ran around the edge of the cavern, clear of the three knotted pools. ‘Where to now, Halasaa?’

Halasaa glanced around. Their own river flowed into the interconnected pools; other streams swirled into and out of them, leaving the cavern through half a dozen separate tunnels. For once, Halasaa looked nonplussed.
I do not know
.

Tonno and Trout bent over the which-way. ‘Blessed needle won’t keep still!’ growled Tonno. ‘Swinging around like a flag in a gale.’

‘Maybe we’re too far underground.’Trout frowned.

All this time Keela was silent. She had hung back, shifting from foot to foot. Suddenly, she darted a look at Calwyn: their eyes met.

A strange expression – cunning, frightened, triumphant – flitted over Keela’s face. ‘Catch me, Calwyn!’ she cried. She spun around on her skates, snatched the still-warm Clarion from Darrow’s hand, and sped away, right across the ice to the centre of the turquoise pool.

At once the glow of the Clarion began to fade. The dimming light wavered wildly as Keela swung the little horn back and forth, daring Calwyn to grab it back. Calwyn hesitated for a heartbeat, then sprinted after her. Keela twirled to face her, waving the Clarion like a challenge.

Darrow cried, ‘Give it back!’The yells and urgent footfalls of the others boomed around the cavern.

Calwyn leapt at Keela, and they crashed to the ice in a tangle of skates and cloaks. Calwyn felt Keela’s small, strong hand pushing her away, and a sudden agonising pain as Keela kicked her shins with sharp skate-blades. Something smashed into Calwyn’s knuckles: the Clarion. Keela’s nails raked Calwyn’s face, and she gasped, groping for the Clarion. Keela scrambled free and pushed herself backward; as she fled, she hurled the Clarion away as hard as she could, right into the middle of the interlocking pools, the ridged and knotted heart of the ice.

Like a burning coal on a slab of butter, the Clarion cut a neat hole in the thick crust of ice. A brief glow of gold lit up the ice of the three pools as the little horn sank, and Calwyn and Keela were suspended on a floating floor of gold.Then, in perfect silence, the ice dissolved, melting outward from the spot where the Clarion had disappeared. The ice beneath Calwyn gave way, then Keela screamed as she, too, tumbled into the water. At that moment, the light went out, and the whole cavern plunged into darkness.

This is how it feels to die
, thought Calwyn. The water was so cold that her heart stopped beating. She was in a void of freezing blackness. It stopped her ears, blinded her eyes, filled her mouth. Everything was gone, snatched out of existence: the cavern, Keela, the ice, the Clarion. Her hands, her feet, churned the water, but there was nothing to grasp, nothing to save her.

There was time to feel regret, for Darrow, for Halasaa, for her quarrel with Mica. There was time to grieve for the very last breath that bubbled from her lungs. She was moving, carried sideways by the water. She felt her hair wrap across her face, and the tug of the silver chain at her throat. The whirlpools were not frozen after all. Under the crust of ice that had seemed so thick, the waters surged and clashed as fiercely as ever.

Down in the depths, very far away, there was a faint greenish light, as dim as the stars when the moons were full, so dim it was hardly visible. Calwyn fixed her gaze on that faint starlight, and as she sank toward it, the light grew brighter. The Clarion was inside the light, a speck of gold, calling to her. Stars were falling around her like snow. And the blue-green light was singing, singing to her, and she had never wanted anything so much as to be wrapped in that radiant song.

Then Calwyn saw the limp body of Keela floating above her, lit from below by the blue-green light, hair swirling in the water. Keela was not falling into the light. Keela was drowning.

Anguish pierced Calwyn like an arrow. She would have to give up the light, give up the song, to help Keela.

Calwyn opened her mouth in a wordless cry of grief, and all her sorrow, all her loss, poured out of her, and the blue-green light poured in. It filled her, overflowed her, and she was breathing light as she breathed in water, and the force of it pushed her up and up. Suddenly her heart began to beat again. It was insistent as a drum, thudding so hard it seemed about to burst from her chest. Her heart dragged her upward, a cork rushing to the surface.

First Calwyn’s hands, then her head, burst into the air, and she gasped, treading water in an ice-cold bowl of light. Keela floated beside her, face-down, circling in the current. Calwyn was dreaming, a dream where anything was possible. She had breathed the water in, but it had not killed her: instead, it had filled her with a radiant, effortless strength. It was the easiest thing in the world to slip her arm under Keela as she drifted past, and hold her face above the surging water. Keela seemed weightless. Calwyn could feel the fierce, slow tug of the water, but she kicked against it easily, gracefully.

The light from the bottom of the pools streamed upward, illuminating the whole cavern. A cluster of tiny, dark figures waved and gestured at the edge of the whirlpools. With one slow kick then another, Calwyn swam to the rim, holding Keela afloat, and the shards of ice parted to let her through.

The others were there, with eager hands, to haul Keela’s limp body from the water. Calwyn didn’t need their help; she put her hands on the stone and raised herself effortlessly from the pool. Light and water streamed from her. She was made of starlight, and she laughed as she stood there, dripping wet, ecstatic. Blue-green light flowed from her fingertips, from her hair; she stood in a puddle of starlight.Then, like quicksilver, the puddle merged into the larger pool. And then the light went out, and the dark returned.

Only a dozen breaths had passed since the ice gave way.

In the pitch blackness, everyone spoke at once.

‘What
was
that, where did that light come from?’

‘Is the lass all right?’

‘Keela’s not breathing – Halasaa, quick!’

‘Calwyn?’

‘Where’s the Clarion? Darrow, play the Clarion!’

Calwyn stood oblivious. She was not cold; on the contrary, she was warm through, and tingling all over. Every breath she took was charged with life, every sense was sharpened. She could feel the cold disc of the half-Wheel through her shirt. She could hear each individual breath of her companions, the tiny rustlings of cloth and fur; she could hear the knitting of the ice as the broken whirlpool began to refreeze. Just a moment longer and she would be able to see in the dark.

Halasaa’s head swung round.
Look, there –

A flaming torch appeared at one of the tunnel-mouths, and the white quartz nearby burst into a million glittering fragments, gold and scarlet, yellow and orange, very different from the eerie blue-green glow that had shone from the pool. A hush fell over the travellers.

A band of half a dozen people stood in the pool of torchlight at the mouth of the tunnel. They were dressed in grey and white burrower pelts. Their long dark hair was bound, or heaped onto wooden combs, and, like Halasaa, tattoos covered their arms and chests and faces. Calwyn heard Darrow’s sharp intake of breath. The last time they had encountered Halasaa’s people – her own people! – they had been driven away.
Voiced Ones are not welcome here
.

Trout whispered, ‘We can see them, but they can’t see us, not with the light in front of them.’

‘By the gods, where’s that Clarion?’ hissed Tonno.

But the Clarion of the Flame was gone, lost in the waters of the whirlpool.

Halasaa stepped forward.
Greetings, sisters and brothers.

The torch swung to light them up where they stood clustered around Keela. An old woman stepped forward to answer Halasaa.
My name is Briaali
.
We have come to fetch you away
from here.

Tonno said, ‘One of us – I think one of us has drowned.’

The tiny woman bent her head gravely.
It is forbidden to enter
theWaters. They quench life’s flame.

Calwyn used mind-speech without thinking.
Please – I was
in theWaters, too. And –
It was only as she formed the words that she knew they were true, and she felt a thrill of joy as she spoke.
Keela is alive, too!
Calwyn’s sense of becoming had returned. Keela was weak, and her pulse was feeble, but she had not been drowned.

‘Thank the gods!’ breathed Tonno.

The old woman stared searchingly at Calwyn.
To the one who
gives life for the sake of another, the Knot of Waters gives a new life. You
saved her?

Yes.

Briaali gave a brusque nod.
You have been granted a rare gift,
daughter.
With sudden impatience, she clapped her hands and beckoned.
You must come outside now.

‘Outside?’ exclaimed Trout. ‘But we’re so far underground!’

Briaali shook her head.
Not far. Your friend needs warmth and
care.

Tonno hoisted Keela into his arms, and in subdued silence the travellers edged their way around the cavern. The ice was hardening across the pools, but no one ventured onto it; those who had not already removed their skates did so now. Trout and Halasaa fetched the sleds, and Darrow sang a low chantment of iron to help move them to the tunnel where the Tree People were waiting.

Unnoticed by the others, Calwyn knelt by the rim of the turquoise-coloured pool. Her heart was beating hard, thudding against the brokenWheel inside her jacket. A thin crust of ice had re-formed on the surface of the pool. Calwyn broke it, and scooped up some water. Swiftly, in a whisper, she sang the simple chantment that she’d learned as a little girl in Antaris.

As she sang, the little puddle hardened in her hand. Hardly daring to breathe, Calwyn took the clear disc of ice between her fingertips and held it up. The torchlight sent a scatter of tiny rainbows dancing through it. Calwyn laughed, a strange breathless laugh that was almost a sob of disbelief.

Darrow! Darrow!
She ran across the cave toward him, flourishing the little disc.
I can sing – I can sing!

She was about to throw her arms around him, but abruptly he flung out his gloved hand and thrust her away so hard that he almost knocked her down. ‘Calwyn, you fool! If you can sing again, you mustn’t touch me!’

Calwyn stared at him, eyes wide.Then she covered her face with her hands.The disc of ice shattered into a thousand tiny shards on the white stone floor.

Come, all of you!
Briaali’s voice was stern.
It is forbidden to stay
too long by theWaters.

Calwyn stood still, her face hidden, as one by one the others trooped past her down the narrow tunnel. Halasaa was the last and, without speaking, he put his arm about her shoulders and led her from the cavern.

nine
The Arrival of the Voiced Ones

IN SILENCE, THEY
followed Briaali through the steep tunnel. The passage was so narrow and twisted that it blocked every particle of sunlight, but after a surprisingly short time they emerged into a cave that opened wide onto the snowy forest.