Songs of the Earth (16 page)

Gair opened his eyes. He was back in his bunk. Someone had stripped off his wet clothes and dried him, but his mouth tasted foul and his head was ringing. Alderan sat on the bunk opposite with his back resting against the bulkhead. A book lay open on his lap. Bright sunshine spilled in through the porthole to pool on the deck.

‘Welcome back.’ The old man put his book aside. ‘Would you like some water?’

‘Please. What happened?’

‘You threw up all over Captain Dail’s boots and then passed out cold. We fetched you down here to rest.’

‘I think my head is going to fall off.’

‘If it’s any consolation, it gets easier with practice. It won’t be so bad next time.’ Alderan filled a cup from a wooden jug and held it out.

Gair shoved himself up into a sitting position and took a long drink. The water tasted sweet after the sourness in his mouth. ‘I’ve known about the magic for years, but I’ve never felt anything like this before,’ he said after a moment.

‘Did the Master of Swords never work you so hard that you sicked up? It’s exactly the same thing. Drawing deeply on the Song
is demanding, and last night you drew more than I had any right to expect from you. I wish I’d had time to prepare you better for it.’

‘I think I’ll survive the experience. Barely.’ He kneaded his forehead. ‘Saints, that
hurts
. Was there much damage?’

‘Surprisingly little. The mast is being repaired, and apart from a sprung plank or two where it hit the fo’c’sle, the ship took no serious harm. Do you need something for your head?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘It’ll be worse in the sun. I’ll fetch my scrip.’

Whilst the old man went to his cabin, Gair leaned back against the bulkhead and tried to relax. A pump clanked dully nearby, and overhead the ship’s carpenters hammered and sawed in time with the hammering in his skull.

When Alderan returned, he was rummaging about in his leather satchel. He produced a small porcelain vial and pulled the cork, which he sniffed. ‘That’s the one. Athalin again, I’m afraid, but it does work.’

He tipped some white powder into his hand, added a couple of pinches to Gair’s cup, then topped it up with water. He poured the rest of the powder back into the little bottle and stowed it away.

‘Drink up. By the time you’ve got yourself washed and dressed, you should be feeling more like yourself.’

Gair swallowed the bitter drink, grimacing at the gritty feeling it left around his teeth. ‘You said the storm wasn’t natural. How did you know?’

‘Dail’s an experienced seaman. I trusted his instincts.’

‘That’s not the real reason. You didn’t tell me you knew about the magic, either. The Song?’ He looked up from the empty cup. ‘That you could use it.’

‘True, I didn’t. I owe you an apology for that as well. There didn’t seem to be any time to tell you.’

‘We’ve only been travelling together for two months. Hardly any time at all.’

Alderan smiled thinly at the reproof. ‘Very well, then, there didn’t seem to be a
right
time.’

‘So what else haven’t you told me? There’s more to you than just a simple scholar, Alderan.’

Amusement quirked the fearsome brows and the older man dropped his satchel on the opposite bunk. He sat down and planted his hands on his knees, as if bracing himself for unpleasantness. ‘All right, lad,’ he said. ‘You’ve caught my foot in a snare, good and proper. What do you want to know?’

‘Everything, I suppose.’

‘That could be a long conversation – it’s a big world! Start small.’

Where should he start? Gair had so many questions: where had the Song gone since that day on the road, and why had it come back just when Alderan needed it? He had his suspicions the old man had had some hand in that. Was it really like he’d said: that it never actually went away? Who
was
Alderan anyway? Holy Mother, his head was booming. But he had to start somewhere …

‘The Song – why haven’t I heard of it before?’

‘You probably have and just don’t know it,’ Alderan said, ‘or you’ve heard of it under a different name. You’ll find it in all kinds of legends and stories. The Nordmen, for instance, say it is the song the Lord-Fatherer sang as He worked at His forge, and a fragment of it is captured in everything He made. In other places they say it is the lullaby the Creator sang to Her daughter the World, echoing down through time, which I think is a lovely story and is quite as good an explanation as any other.’

‘Is it magic?’

‘Define magic.’ The old man’s shoulder lifted in a shrug. ‘If you define it as a natural force or energy that is an intrinsic part of every living thing and the world around you, then yes, the Song is magic. It’s an ugly label, though, don’t you think? It has too many connotations.’

Gair remembered the shrillness of Kemerode’s shriek, the way her face had been leached of all colour by the light he had made. ‘At the Motherhouse they called me hidderling,’ he said, ‘and back home, the housekeeper thought I was shadowkin – half-human, half— Well, something other. She said the feylings had left me on the chapel porch as a trick.’

Alderan pursed his lips. ‘The Hidden Kingdom is a mutable, treacherous place, and its denizens are devious, but leaving half-blood babies to be taken in as foundlings? No, that’s the stuff of storybooks. The creatures beyond the Veil live long and they breed rarely. Their seed is far too precious to them to spend on idle mischief.’ Looking at Gair, he asked shrewdly, ‘Did you believe it? That you were not entirely of this world?’

‘I didn’t know what to believe. I knew I was different, and I knew why, but I didn’t know whether it was the magic that made me different, or the other way about. Then I was sent to the Motherhouse, where everything I was taught came straight from the Book of Eador.’

‘“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”,’ Alderan said. ‘That’s a harsh lesson to teach a boy.’

‘They didn’t know what else to do with me. They were raised in the faith – chapel every Sunday and twice on saints’ days. I learned my letters copying out psalms for Father Drumheller. Where else were they going to turn?’

That drew a grunt. ‘We should keep churchmen well away from the education of children. They shut young minds up in a box like veal-calves, then when they’re let out, they keep the shape of the box.’

Though he had not parted from his foster-parents on the best of terms, Gair felt obliged to defend them. ‘They thought they were doing the best they could for me, Alderan.’

The old man grimaced down at his hands, rubbing his fingers together as if they were dirty, or itching. A long pause was filled with the slap of water on wood and the sound of carpentry.

Behind it Gair heard the Song itself, melodious as distant singing, rhythmic as the purr of a contented cat, yet rippling and changing like a running stream.

‘Once, they would have known,’ said Alderan quietly. ‘Your gift would have been recognised for what it was and instead of being punished for it you would have been given the opportunity to develop it. You would have been respected instead of reviled.’ He looked down at his hands again. ‘You were born a thousand years too late, I think.’

Too late for what? ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Throughout the First Empire, the Guardians of the Veil were accorded the respect they deserved. They maintained colleges in all the great cities, and no talent was lost that did not have to be. If you’d been born then, you would have found high honour in their Order. After the Founding, though, everything changed. In the space of fifteen years, the Guardians were persecuted almost to extinction, and their names were even erased from the histories, thanks to the Inquisitors.’ Alderan’s lips twisted sourly. ‘Not Mother Church’s finest hour.’

Shocked, Gair asked, ‘Because they thought these Guardians were using magic? But you said the Song was part of the world around us, a natural thing. Why would the Church think it was so wrong?’

‘They didn’t understand it, and folk always fear what they don’t understand. They couldn’t see the difference between what the Guardians did and what was done by Gwlach’s sorcerers. To them, it was all one.’

Fragments of Father Drumheller’s lessons surfaced in Gair’s mind, and snatches of booming, spittle-flecked sermons echoed down the years, reminding him of the secrets he had fought to keep. ‘Doctrine teaches that the only power in the universe devolves from the Goddess and Her Grace,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that mean that the Song devolves from Her as well?’

‘The lectors don’t see it that way. They cannot accept that there
can be any force at work other than the divine, so anything else must be by definition diabolical.’

‘Evil.’

‘Yes, in a word – to them, anyway. Why don’t the stars fall down, you ask, and the lector replies, because the Goddess put them there. Why does a stone hit the ground if I drop it? Because the Goddess wills it to fall. Why can a woman lay her hands on a sick man and see that man rise up healed? Because she is a witch.’ Alderan pulled a face.

‘But she’s just using the Song to make him well again?’

‘Actually, she’s using the Song to make the man make himself well again, but you’ll have to ask someone more gifted than me to explain the finer points of Healing. I can draw a splinter and stop the bleeding if you’ve cut yourself, but that’s about the limit of my skill. My talents lie in other directions.’

When the realisation struck him, Gair could only wonder why it had taken him so long to see. A school on the Isles. Old books. All the pieces clicked into place. ‘You’re one of the Guardians,’ he breathed.

Smiling, his hand pressed over his heart, Alderan gave a little bow. ‘You could say I am
the
Guardian. It has been my life’s work to try to rebuild our Order and safeguard what knowledge of the Song remains. It is all that preserves the Veil between the worlds.’

This was beyond incredible. The ember of hope burst back into flame. ‘
That’s
how you know so much,’ Gair exclaimed, ‘and all this time, you let me believe it was just a hobby, something that interested you! You devious old—’ He bit back on the word he was about to say. ‘Is that why you were waiting for me in Dremen? You want me to join your Order—’

But Alderan was already shaking his head. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure than if you joined us, but that is a decision which only you can make. A gift not given freely is no gift at all. No, I was in Dremen because an old friend asked me to help you because he knew no one else could. I was happy to do so.’

‘Was it Ansel?’

‘No, and don’t ask who it was, because I can’t tell you. I gave my word and that I don’t break.’

Gair took a deep breath. This might be his only chance, and if he did not ask now, he would never know. ‘Could you teach me?’

‘That depends on why you want to learn.’

‘I don’t want to be afraid of it any more.’

‘And knowledge equals power. Good answer.’ Alderan pushed himself to his feet and paced across the cabin, his arms folded across his chest. ‘If I choose to take you as a student, Gair, there is something I must make clear to you at the outset. You are one of an increasingly rare breed. You can hear the songs of the earth, touch a power so great it can raise mountains, yet so subtle it can furl a thousand petals into a chrysanthemum bud the size of your thumbnail. That is a gift beyond measure, and access to that kind of power comes with a price. That price is restraint.’

The old man swung round on his heels. ‘What you do with the Song
counts
, and
why
you do it counts even more. You must take responsibility for the results, whatever they may be. Sometimes the difference between acting and not acting is the difference between folly and wisdom. Knowing how to use power is meaningless without also knowing when and how
not
to use it. That’s the first lesson I teach.’

Gair blinked. He had never heard Alderan speak like this before. He had grown accustomed to the man’s easy humour; this side of him, so steely and commanding, came as a shock. After a moment, he said, ‘I understand.’

‘I was sure you would. If you had not, or I had any doubts whatsoever, I would have refused to teach you anything more than just enough to stop you tearing yourself apart. I have no use for people consumed with arrogance or greed, or obsessed with their own aggrandisement. The Song does not exist to serve you, although it will. Anyone with the gift can shape it to whatever
purpose they choose, therefore those who can use it have an obligation to ensure it is used wisely.’

Alderan paused, his mouth shaping words as if he had more to say, then he changed his mind.

Gair wondered what had been left unsaid. Just for an instant, before Alderan’s expression smoothed, he had glimpsed an old pain, but in a blink it was gone and the old man was scratching vigorously at his beard, chin stuck out like a dog pursuing a troublesome flea.

‘So,’ he declared, brisk again, ‘what can you do already? Can you do this?’

No sooner had Gair felt a tickle in the back of his mind than a pearly-white globe the size of a walnut appeared in the air between the two bunks. It cast a gentle, silvery light: Lumiel in miniature. Inside him, the Song leapt. Concentrating, Gair made a globe of his own. It was more blue than white, and it swirled as if filled with smoke, but it was equally bright. That was the second thing he had learned how to do, after exploding a lot of candles.