The Dowry Blade (47 page)

Ashe faltered, hands misplaced, meaning adrift; distracted by a wavering darkness that called weakly to her, writhing against the pull of the music she tried to thwart. The darkness struggled to take on form. Ashe recognised with a sickened horror, that this was what remained of Sorcha – this shadow. Ashe was suddenly aware of screaming. She abandoned her battle with the music, reaching out, touching the writhing darkness, her mind open to anything that it had to tell her. Without knowing how she did it, Ashe pulled Brede from that darkness, all of her, body and spirit. She found use for her hands now, not in speaking but in comforting and soothing the anguish that roared into her own bones as she touched Brede. Aware that she must somehow stop the singing, and that she couldn’t do so whilst she protected Brede, she forced her mind away from that pain, reaching out for help in her own turn, reached out with her mind, seeking a mind in tune with her own, and finding one.

Islean felt the touch of an alien mind in hers, and stopped singing. She saw with other eyes, saw a mind and body in torment, heard a voice she hadn’t expected to hear, Ashe’s voice, screaming at her. Her sight cleared, and she clapped her hands together sharply, singing her companions to silence with swift harsh dissonance. A dreadful continuo of screaming sobs continued, out beyond the walls of the singing room.

Searing anger held her silent, shuddering with revulsion. Islean was the keeper of those songs too dangerous to be committed to memory; she should have recognised the danger behind Saraid’s music. She condemned herself for not taking that responsibility to heart.

‘What do we do here?’ Islean whispered. ‘Are we singing Sorcha through the Gate or are we tearing a living soul from its body?’ She leapt to her feet, and grasped Saraid by the shoulders, wanting to shake her. ‘What would you have us do? Make the same mistake that we condemn Ashe for? Dear Goddess, do you not hear what we’ve started?’

Saraid wavered on her feet, then nodded slowly, acknowledging her error, her responsibility. Islean let her hands fall away from her, as though the very touch would burn her, and Saraid sank down at her feet. The silence was viscous with the weight of the Songspinners’ expectations, their uncertainties, waiting for Islean’s lead.

Islean stepped away from Saraid and opened the door. Ashe stood before her, rigid with outrage, not yet ready to believe that Islean would put right what had been done. Islean could not quite credit that this woman, who was once her lover, who was now nothing to her, a no-voice, less than human, had spoken into her mind, and made her follow her will.
Ashe
had done this. Islean quickened to the smell of power, the fleeting wild touch of a new strength. She reached out to touch Ashe, to renew something she thought was dead, completely distracted from her purpose. Ashe pulled away, refusing her, forcing her to see the why behind the how of that unexpected burst of power.

Huddled at Ashe’s feet, Brede sobbed, mirroring and outstripping Saraid’s despair. Islean was sickened by the comparison. She gathered the woman to her, singing in an undertone, almost soundless, but no less vital for that. The sobbing eased and Brede drifted into unconsciousness. Islean felt the dead weight of her drag on her arms, and let Brede down gently into Ashe’s embrace. She saw the care, the tenderness with which Ashe folded the unconscious woman to her, and she almost believed that it was too late to mend what she had so carelessly discarded. Almost she believed it, but her belief in herself was stronger.

Chapter Fifty-One

Brede jerked awake, and was amazed that she had woken. She gazed at her hands, astonished that flesh still covered the bones, that there was no pain. And still there was that tremor of existence that was Sorcha, untouched, wrapping her against harm.

Brede threw herself from the bed, crackling with fury. Her mind caressed the thought of Sorcha. But it was Ashe she had called for in the extremity of need. Brede wrapped herself in a cloak, feeling cold and afraid, and went in search of her.

She found Ashe sitting at the window, her hands involved in spelling out a new song, another song about which Brede had been told nothing. The secrecy alarmed her, but she admired the skill in Ashe’s fingers, she faltered only rarely. The light played on Ashe’s frown, concentration making her look older than she was. The blue jerkin she wore reflected sullenly on her cheek, as she stared out beyond the town, to the forest, to the bare branches, bleak with waiting for the snow to cover them.

Brede watched Ashe’s hands turning, her head tilted as she listened to the music from the next room, trying to fit the signs to the rhythm. She was finding it difficult.

She had tied back her hair, but it wasn’t yet long enough in front to hold tight in its bonds and a few strands had worked loose to cast shadows across her eyes.

One hand ceased its movement to push the dull mousy wisps away. Mechanically, she returned to the song. Brede couldn’t hear the words through the doors, but could read them from Ashe’s fingers. She had not quite dared to do so, but a repeated sign inflicted itself upon her.

Bright
, Ashe’s fingers said, over and over; but her mind didn’t say
bright
, it said
Sorcha.

Brede paid closer attention to the words. Another requiem. Shadows closed about her. Brede couldn’t shift the movement of Ashe’s hands from her sight: telling her again and again, as she tried to fit the metre of the song, that Sorcha was gone.

‘Who are you trying to convince?’ Brede asked. ‘Sorcha?’

Ashe jerked in surprise, but the steady movement of her hands resumed at once. The music from the next room rose, then ended. Ashe’s hands stilled, and she stretched them before her, still holding the last word, as though she would create something new from it. Then she sighed, and her hands fell into her lap. She smiled, a smile at odds with her half-angry concentration of a moment before.

They still try to
, her hands said;
I try to add my own version.

Brede sank down beside her, covering Ashe’s hands with her own, as though to silence her.

Trying to persuade Sorcha to pass the Gate? Will you not give up? All the song making in the world is not going to free her.

Brede didn’t trust her voice for this; her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She made her words against Ashe’s fingers, as though she were whispering. Her memory had spared her nothing, she remembered exactly what had happened and why.

We must
, Ashe replied.

Brede stared out at the forest, rubbing her hands against her face. She forced her voice into working order.

‘Can you do it?’

Ashe shook her head. They had the words, they even had the right tune, there was no question of that; but instinctively, she knew that there was something missing. Islean’s song would not be enough to unravel Sorcha’s hold on the living: on herself, on Brede.

Ashe wanted to take back that denial. Brede’s grief was a cold wind. She wanted to wrap herself about Brede, to stifle that coldness, to end her mourning; something she could do no better by her caress than she could by singing. She could still see the shadow that was Sorcha wrapped about Brede. But Brede had called
her
, not Sorcha; she didn’t quite dare believe it, or what might come of it.

Brede stirred herself, remembering why she had come looking for Ashe; she had a debt to pay.

‘I’ve something of Sorcha’s that I want you to have.’

Ashe looked up at her, sharply anxious.

Brede rubbed her thumb for the last time over the only thing she had left of Sorcha, and almost changed her mind, but the stones had no place in her life now. If the witches couldn’t free her of her dependence on Sorcha, then she must do what she could for herself. She stretched her hand to Ashe.

The stones lay across Brede’s fingers on their braid of hair, as if they were innocent trinkets. Ashe pushed Brede’s hand away.

You must give them to Aneira or Islean or Melva
, her hands whispered.

Brede frowned.

‘Why?’

I am not a Songspinner.

Brede’s hand closed over the stones.

‘Yes you are,’ Brede said, but she kept her hand closed over the stones. She remembered clearly that it was Islean’s voice that was raised in protest while she fought for her life. She would not trust any of the other witches with her precious last gift, nor did she wish to hand it over in public.

Brede laid the stones before Islean, her hand trembling at the magnitude of letting go of this one last thing. Islean didn’t attempt to touch the stones. She saw at once that she had been given the key to the puzzle. She glanced at Brede, saw her wretchedness, and another realisation came to her.

‘I’ve been a fool,’ she said, delighted with her sudden enlightenment. ‘You are part of this binding after all. You, and Ashe who has spoken with Sorcha’s voice. You must both be part of the unbinding.’

‘I can’t sing,’ Brede protested, hoping that there was nothing more to be demanded, her trust in Islean already unravelling.

‘No, but I see now that I’ve been too concerned with what has happened and what has been sung. I’ve lost sight of the people those things have happened to. Do you know what these stones are?’

Brede shook her head.

‘These are the Singer stones. We assumed they had been lost and that we would never be able to choose one of our number for that honour again. How did you know to save them?’

‘I didn’t. It was all I had left.’

Islean controlled her elation.
All she had left
; but there was no way for a no-voice to keep something so vital, so precious.

‘I thank you for your trust in me,’ she said formally.

Her words seemed hopelessly inadequate. There would be time enough for appreciation when Brede saw the difference these stones made. She looked again, saw for the first time the braid of hair holding the stones together.

‘Is that – is that Sorcha’s hair?’ she whispered. Brede nodded, and almost grabbed the stones back.

‘That will help too,’ Islean said, standing. ‘Come with me now, I want to do this straight away. We must find Ashe and as many Songspinners as we can. Bring the stones, I mustn’t touch them.’

Islean almost ran to the door, then realised that Brede was still standing immovable, staring at the little stones. Islean stepped back and touched her arm.

‘We will only need a strand.’ she said, that
all she had left
echoing into Brede’s silence once more. ‘Please?’

Brede nodded, clasped the stones tightly, and followed her.

Ashe saw the singing room with the eyes of a stranger, someone with no right to be there. She looked at the patient, puzzled women who had answered Islean’s urgent call, not believing that they would be any more successful with this singing than they were before. Ashe allowed herself to feel superior when she heard the gasp of concern that greeted Brede’s entrance, the murmur of excitement when she placed the Singer stones into the offering circle.

Brede resisted the music when it began, fighting its entrapment. Fear that she was once more to be offered up as an unwilling sacrifice held her rigid and wary, the talisman of Sorcha’s hair wrapped tight round her fingers. Despite her rebellion she was caught, trapped in the web of their words, the skein of song.

The notes lifted her up and whirled her about, entangling her in the brightness and joy of the music. Her fingers tried to encompass the words, and she recognised some of them as her own – words spoken to Saraid, and to Ashe, stolen words.

She reached out for support, unable to stand against the tide of the melody. It didn’t seem possible that so few voices could make so many threads of sound; they conjured Sorcha, embodied her in their music.

Brede felt the layers of darkness between herself and Sorcha stripped away and felt again the hands gripping hers, Sorcha’s hands, holding her from death.

There was an imperceptible break in the song, as though they all breathed in at the same moment. Then Brede heard a tune she recognised, a song of death; heard it not from Sorcha’s weak and choking throat, but from the throats of the women about her. So far they sang it, but no further, holding the tune wordlessly for a few seconds, resolving the chord, and again, the breath of silence, allowing the echoes almost to die and then, one after another, their voices spiralled down, unbinding, setting free, letting go.

It was unspeakably beautiful, and terrible.

Brede was light-headed with the very breath of it. She didn’t understand the words, but she felt a loosening about her, as though a protective arm had been drawn away, felt a chill at her back.

Almost she called out to Sorcha, to call her back. Almost, but the breath she took in to mould into words, she let loose again in a sigh. It was too late to call Sorcha now.

Brede opened her eyes, aware of the speaking silence about her, the waiting; and realised that for all their powers, these women couldn’t tell whether their sorcery had been effective. They didn’t know whether Sorcha had gone.

Brede looked across at Ashe, who nodded slightly, clear-eyed and certain amidst the clouded uncertainty of her sisters. Together they shaped the words on their hands.

She is gone.

The silence ended, a rustling of movement, as the tension of waiting gave way to the relaxation of sudden weariness. It had been a hard spinning. Islean stepped into the offering circle, and for the first time touched the stones. Her hand barely grazed them and they rolled away from her, separated from one another, no longer bound.

Gone
, Brede buried her face in her hands.
Gone finally
.

She could feel the difference in the air she breathed, but for this departure she felt no grief. Her choice; she had done with grieving.

Well then, there was a new life you were planning: time to be about it. There is nothing here for you.

Ashe sat for a long time, unable to contend with movement, feeling both emptied and replete, feeling that she had been given something precious. She searched about in her mind, trying to place her mental clutter as it should be, searching for what it was that she had gained, but it eluded her.

She was brought back to herself by Islean’s voice, asking who would take up the stones. She stared across at the woman still standing within the circle, and realised what she was doing: seeking a new Songspinner. Ashe glanced quickly around, picking out those who had any hopes.

Islean had already tried and failed, the stones rolled away from her; now she stepped out of the circle, giving way to whomever wished to try. Aneira of course, and Ceridwen; and Melva, who was perhaps too old now, her voice beginning to weaken. There was no one else among them who had the power to even consider trying for the Singer stones, apart from Saraid. Ashe glances nervously at her, but Saraid had no plans to attempt this. She had no plans at all.

Brede packed her few belongings, and walked slowly back towards the singing room, hoping to encounter Ashe, hoping to at least say her farewells and to give her thanks for Ashe’s part in her release. Brede was uneasy with her new freedom, feeling unexpectedly alone. She had thought the emptiness was a part of the grief, but here it still was.

Brede didn’t want to enter that room again. She stood at the door, seeking out Ashe.

Ashe saw Brede waiting uncertainly at the door and stood to leave – this ceremony had no place for her, a no-voice. As she stepped past Islean, her one-time friend stayed her with a hand on her arm, holding Ashe still to watch as each in turn failed to touch the stones. Ashe tried to resist, but Islean would not allow her to leave, not until she had tried one last move: Islean pushed Ashe gently into the circle. Ashe’s presence there was greeted by an angry murmur from her sisters. Pride made her pull the shreds of her dignity together in the face of their hostility, she knelt and reached towards the nearest stone. It didn’t roll away from her. Ashe picked it up, and then another, and another. She hesitated, momentarily doubting that they were the same stones, but she knew them, could feel the gentle hum of them against her palm. She reached for the last stone.

Ashe held out her left hand, palm downwards, the four stones resting uneasily on the backs of her fingers. She turned a cautious circle, so that the assembled witches could see she had them all. The angry muttering was silent now, as they watched, willing her to fail, as they had failed. Ashe could feel that wishing, souring the air about her, and she believed with them, that she couldn’t do this thing. But what more could she lose? Ashe tossed the Singer stones into the air.

To complete the ritual Ashe should call the stones by their names and catch them again. How should she, having no voice, do this? The Songspinners stirred, watching those stones spin upward. Ashe looked up too, and smiled, caught suddenly by certainty and triumph; she spoke their names on her fingers. The stones waited for her stumbling signs to finish, and then dropped lightly, one by one, into the palm of her hand.

Power rushed, humming, through her bones, and Ashe feared it. She wasn’t ready for this; she didn’t
want
this; it made a mockery of her choices. Pride had fooled her once more.

Brede saw the change in Ashe, not something she could put into words, but something – her heart twisted, and she turned away, stumbling slightly in her fearful haste to get away from the power she recognised, and had seen only once before in Ashe.

Ashe turned to Islean, but Islean raised her hand, warding off her anger. She had done nothing but guess at what choice the stones would make; hoping that Ashe would regain her voice, or at least some of her power, that she would step once more into an existence that Islean could recognise and love.