The Tenth Power (28 page)

‘Mica! Mica, where are you?’ shoutedTrout, snatching up a dropped spear-shaft. A dark shape blundered into him out of the whirling snow, and he felt a searing pain in his shoulder as his earlier wound was torn open. Trout struck out blindly; his opponent wrenched the spear from him, and suddenly they were grappling hand to hand, stumbling over the uneven ground.

Tonno’s hand had flown instinctively to the empty knife-sheath at his belt. He growled in frustration and grabbed a fallen branch, whirling it furiously around his head. ‘Sing ice under their feet!’ he bellowed. ‘Freeze their hands!’

A handful of sisters sang as he suggested, and for a few moments the warriors’ advance was checked. Then came the sound of yells from the woods behind them: Tonno whirled around to see the villagers of Antaris, hoes and pitchforks in their hands, pouring over the slope to help the priestesses, screaming in rage against the invaders.Tonno held out his tree-branch to bar their way. ‘Wait!Wait!’

One of the villagers bared his teeth, lowered his pitchfork and ran straight at Tonno. Roaring, Tonno parried the thrust, but the force of the movement sent him careering into one of the sisters. She spun around, wild-eyed with panic, her fingers spread and shaking as she sang out a chantment to imprison Tonno’s hands in a lump of ice.

‘Not me, you fool!’ Tonno yelled, but it was too late. His hands were frozen, encased in ice, and someone else was rushing at him. Tonno kicked, and rolled over, and brought down the lump of ice on someone’s skull. He no longer knew who he was fighting against; it didn’t matter any more. Now he was fighting for his own survival.

Trout had lost his assailant; somehow they’d blundered apart in the snow and failed to find each other again. His injured shoulder burned with pain, his jacket was soaked with fresh blood and his left arm dangled uselessly as he stumbled and dodged between the fighters.

‘Mica! Mica!’

If he kept heading into the wind, he thought doggedly, he should find her…

Something squelched and crunched beneath his boot. He lifted his foot and saw the hacked-off stump of a hand, bloody pulp trodden into the mud.

Stomach heaving, he reeled on. A clump of blanch-trees loomed out of the blizzard and he half-fell into their shelter. Sobbing and breathless, he slumped against a slim tree-trunk. Strong fingers clamped around his ankle and he yelped in fear.

‘It’s me, you goose!’ cried Mica, her breath hot in his ear, and there she was beside him, one eye swollen shut and her thick honey-coloured hair matted with blood.

‘What happened?’ groaned Trout, touching her head. But Mica just shrugged. She sang, and the blast of wind that her chantment summoned bent the tree-trunks nearly double. She leaned into Trout, and a spear thwacked into the spindly blanch-tree near their heads.

‘It ain’t safe here!’ cried Mica, scrambling further back under the trees. ‘Where’s Tonno?’

‘I don’t – ’ Trout began. There was a sudden whistling sound, and a handful of arrows trembled in the ground beside them. Dazed and disbelieving,Trout stared at his side; an arrow was sticking out of his ribs. ‘Oh,’ he said weakly. ‘Oh dear.’

Mica’s face went white. ‘Don’t – don’t move,’ she stammered. ‘We’ll get it out of you.’ She looked around wildly, but there was no one to help. There was total confusion in the muddy area between theWall and the woods. People staggered back and forth, or collapsed to the ground, whimpering for help. A villager in a green jerkin sprinted by, knife in hand, his mouth stretched in a grimace of mad rage. A woman stumbled across the battlefield, her bloodied hands clutched over her mouth. A Tree Person with a painted face sprawled close to Trout and Mica, staring sightlessly at the sky. Nearby, hidden in the trees, someone was screaming, one shrill note, on and on. And still the random hail of spears and arrows and ice-stones whistled through the air in all directions, deadly, unpredictable.

Then Briaali’s voice sounded inside their heads. This time she spoke in a faint, despairing whisper: a plea, not a command.
Stop … stop. Look up, brothers and sisters, look up.

Trout and Mica clutched each other tightly. To their left, someone cried with a disbelieving sob, ‘It’s true, it’s true! Taris is come!’

Outlined against the moons, poised high on the back of a dark eagle, the Goddess rode across the sky. She was tall and slender, lit with silver; her hair was black as a moon-dark night, and her eyes shone like stars.The comet had come, and now the Goddess flew, wrathful, beautiful. She wheeled above the scorched land and the wreckage of battle, above the smoke and the snow.

Mica pinched Trout’s arm. ‘That ain’t no old goddess! Look, Trout! That’s Cal, our own Cal up there!’

Calwyn wheeled the sled above the ragged gap in theWall, the blackened scar where the huge fire had been, and the battle in the clearing. Here and there a frightened face turned upward, but most people still staggered about, or raised their arms to strike or hurl a spear, or lay motionless on the mud-churned ground.

Calwyn’s companions clung to the sled behind her, peering down. Halasaa’s voice sounded in her mind.
They have not stopped
fighting.

Keela said softly, ‘I thought – when they saw you – ’

The few who had seen the vision in the sky were struck dumb with awe and terror. But most of them had not looked up.

Darrow whispered, ‘Do what you must, Calwyn. Put an end to this.’

She nodded.
Hold on.

Subtly Calwyn changed her chantment of the winds, and the sled swooped low over theWall, onto the broad canopy of a spander tree. Even with her new powers, she could not sing two songs at once. But the moment the sled landed on the stiff branches, and she knew that the spander tree would hold their weight, she began to sing a different chantment.

She sang one of the high-pitched, bitter songs that she had learned at Marna’s death-bed, the chantment to paralyse. The dark chantment numbed her lips and tongue as it unfurled across the battlefield, rippling out from the tree like a black mist of poison gas. One by one the fighters were struck by the dark magic; one by one they froze in mid-action, and toppled into the mud, stiff as skittles. Calwyn struggled against a rising nausea as she sang, and she wrapped the ropes tightly around her wrists to hold herself upright.

Dawn was breaking. A watery light and a dreadful silence spread across the valley. Smoke and steam billowed from the remains of the fire. The last snowflakes of the priestesses’ chantments settled into the mud, and the last ice-stones dropped from the sky, until the only sound was the uncoiling of the high, discordant chantment. Calwyn let her poisoned song fade, then she spoke into every mind, with a quiet, terrible authority.
Hear me. It is finished.

No one could raise their head to stare, no one could quake or tremble, but she knew that her voice held them in thrall, and she felt the thrill of that power. Briefly, she thought of Samis. From her viewpoint high at the top of the tree, she scanned the sea of bodies until she found the one figure she sought.
Briaali. Rise up.
Using the skills she had learned from Samis, she sang a directed chantment of undoing that freed the old woman.
Find your people. You will gather the weapons and throw
them on the fire.

Briaali moved among the fallen, touching a shoulder here and there, and Calwyn freed those she touched. Without moving her eyes from the scene below, she sang to release her three companions from their frozen positions behind her.The sled rocked as Keela and Halasaa sat up. The Tree People moved back and forth, prising stone knives and spears and hoes from paralysed hands, and piling the weapons on the smouldering embers of the bonfire. Calwyn sang out a deep, ringing chantment, and at once the fire leapt into blazing life, belching black smoke as the weapons were consumed.

I release you all. There will be no more fighting.

Calwyn sang, and all over the battlefield, slowly, stiffly, people sat up.

Now Calwyn spoke aloud; her voice carried effortlessly. ‘Where is the High Priestess?’

‘I am here,’ came a low, clear voice. Lia stepped forward; her hair was dishevelled, her pale oval face smudged with dirt and blood. Her chin thrust upward, and she clasped her hands tightly before her. If she was destined to meet the Goddess face to face, to answer for her actions, she must do her best to meet her fate bravely.

The Goddess, more clearly visible now in the strengthening sunlight, turned to face her. ‘Lia, Lady Mother.’

Lia’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. This was not the Goddess, but somehow, it was not Calwyn either. The girl shone, as if she had bathed in starlight.

Calwyn spoke. ‘People of Antaris, People of the Trees, be at peace.The wounded among you must be tended.The High Priestess welcomes you all within the Dwellings.’

‘But – so many men … ’ murmured Lia.

‘The High Priestess welcomes you
all
,’ said Calwyn.

Lia croaked, ‘TheWall – theWall must be mended.’

Calwyn gave her a stern look. ‘Leave it! The harm has already been done. I have more important work for you.’

Lia swallowed, abashed. Then she cried, ‘Sisters, did you hear her words? Help the hurt ones back to the Dwellings. Fetch goat-carts from Areth for those who cannot walk. Gilly, run ahead.Warn Ursca that we’re coming.’

Limping, bleeding, holding onto one another, people began to move. Calwyn looked over her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

Keela nodded. Halasaa was supporting Darrow, who slumped against his shoulder, his breathing shallow.
He needs
warmth, my sister.

‘I’ll take us to the Dwellings,’ said Calwyn. But as she gathered breath to resume her chantment, she heard a faint voice calling from below.

Trout?
Calwyn glanced swiftly at Halasaa, then she sang. The sled leapt from the treetop, and swooped to the ground. Calwyn and Halasaa jumped from the sled and ran to the little group who had been hidden from view under the trees:Trout, gulping for breath, with pale tear-tracks on his dirty face, and Tonno, kneeling with his back to them.

‘Trout, you’re hurt! Keep still, Halasaa and I can take the arrow out – ’

But Trout pushed her furiously away. ‘Not me, not me!
Mica!
’ Mica was cradled inTonno’s lap. Halasaa and Calwyn flung themselves down by her side.

Trout’s words jerked out, faster and faster. ‘She couldn’t – the spell came and she fell and the spear was coming, we saw it coming, we saw it, but we couldn’t move, she couldn’t get out of the way – ’ Trout sobbed for breath. ‘But she’ll be all right, won’t she, won’t she, Halasaa, she’ll be all right, you’ll heal her, won’t you, it’s a clean wound, you can heal that, can’t you, Halasaa, can’t you?’The last words were almost a scream.

The spear-shaft stood upright in Mica’s chest, like a sapling reaching for the sun. Her eyes were open, her lips parted in surprise. Halasaa pressed his hands flat down on either side of the wound, his palms sticky with her blood.

Calwyn sought his eyes.

Yes, I know
. Halasaa looked at her steadily.
She has gone. But
sometimes we dance for the sake of those who remain behind.

They knelt under the trees, anchoring her beneath their hands, until Trout’s frantic words dissolved into sobs, and Tonno covered his face. Calwyn was numb, paralysed as if her own chantment had engulfed her. She stared down, dry-eyed, at her own slender hands, white with cold, and at Halasaa’s brown hands beside them, with the darker tattooed spirals that curled and uncurled across his skin. The numbness crept through her body; she was floating, far away, flying high above the forest, back and back, far away from here.

Someone touched her shoulder and she returned to her body. It was Keela. ‘Go to the Dwellings.There are things you must do.’ She put her arm around Tonno, and he sagged against her, his face still hidden in his hands. Keela stared at Calwyn with fierce blue eyes. ‘I’ll take care of them. Go.’

Halasaa looked up.
Wait, my sister. I will take care of Trout’s
wound, and then I will come with you.

The goat-carts had begun to clatter down the track from the nearby village of Areth.The sun had risen in the clear sky, flooding the woods with light, and revealing the drab, dirty muddle of the battle site. Wisps of smoke and breath-fog mingled in the crisp air. The wounded staggered along the narrow path to the Dwellings, leaning against each other, makeshift bandages slipping from their limbs. But there were many who had not risen when Calwyn’s chantment ceased.The ground was littered with bodies, and pieces of bodies.

Calwyn stood. The snow where she had knelt was stained with blood. Her heart was a cold, hard stone in her breast, twin to the small, dense disc of the Wheel. Slowly Calwyn climbed back onto the sled. A few moments later, Halasaa joined her, holding Darrow. But Calwyn sat in silence, unable to think what she should do next.

Halasaa prompted her.
Sing, my sister. Sing.

fourteen
One Music

A FIRE GLOWED
in the hearth of the High Priestess’s room, and morning light spilled through the narrow windows, softening the grey stone with pale gold. There was little furniture, but the high-backed chairs and the table had been worn to a rich polish with beeswax and the loving touch of many hands. The rugs on the floor and the tapestry on the wall were threadbare with age, their colours faded to soft pinks and blues and greens. At the sight of the familiar room, where she had sat at Marna’s feet and learned the long songs, Calwyn felt a tug of yearning. This, more than any other place in the Dwellings, had been home.