Free The Waterless Sea by Kate Constable Page A

admitted, ‘I did not expect your sorcery to be so useful. We might have perished in that sandstorm, if not for you. And it is good to have water whenever we wish it.’
    Calwyn inclined her head. ‘And without your desert-craft, Heben, we would have perished a dozen times over.’
    â€˜Thank you – Calwyn.’ With a bow and a whisk of his robes, Heben disappeared inside the tent.
    Calwyn looked up at the sky. How far away Antaris was, and yet the same three moons sailed here, huge and very clear, so that she could see every mark on their silver faces.
    As always when she stared at the moons, her thoughts turned to Darrow. Where was he now, and when would she see him again? Did he ever think of her? Did his heart ache, as hers did? She laid her cheek against her knee, and began to sing the sad winter song once more.
    The next day Heben did not ride off ahead as usual, but waited so that Calwyn could ride beside him. For a time they went on in silence; Calwyn had little energy for talking. Her whole body was sore to the bones, and her eyes ached from squinting into the glare. Yet she had begun to see a harsh beauty in this parched land, with its red sands and blazing sky. Presently she sang up a breeze that cooled her face and Heben’ s before drifting to Mica and Halasaa behind them. Halasaa was trudging on foot again, his face lowered, and puffs of dust rose where his bare feet shuffled. When he felt Calwyn’ s breeze, he looked up with a brief smile of gratitude. Calwyn felt a stab of worry for him. This journey seemed to be harder for him than the rest of them.
    Heben cleared his throat, looking at her sideways, as if he had something to ask but was too shy to begin.
    â€˜What is it, Heben?’
    â€˜Can any sorcerer do what you’ ve done, turning the storm aside, and making water out of the air? Could the twins learn to do as you did?’
    She shook her head. ‘No. Only a daughter of Antaris can sing the chantments of ice. And the winds can only be controlled by one born to windwork, like Mica, a daughter of the Isles.’
    â€˜But you sing up the winds just as she does. Weren’ t you born in the mountains?’
    For a moment Calwyn didn’ t reply. She didn’ t like to speak of the fact that she, like the dead sorcerer Samis, possessed the rare gift of mastery of more than one kind of chantment. Samis had thought that gift entitled him to rule the whole of Tremaris. Calwyn didn’ t think that. She didn’ t want to think about it at all; her mind shied away from the matter like a mackerel from a shark.
    â€˜I was raised in Antaris, but not born there,’ she said at last. ‘I’ m not certain of my fathering. I must have some island blood too.’
    Shock flashed across Heben’ s face. ‘You are not certain? But –’
    Calwyn gave a dry, forced laugh. ‘Fathers are important in Merithuros, I understand that already. But where I come from, it’ s mothers who matter more. Any child born to a priestess of Antaris after the Festival of Shadows will always be a little uncertain of their fathering, though boy children, and the girls who have no gift of chantment, are often fostered by their fathers. But the girl children who can sing are raised as sisters together, and the High Priestess is mother to us all.’ She fell silent, remembering Marna’ s kindly blue eyes and her regal smile. Would she ever see her again, would she ever return to Antaris? Suddenly the mountains seemed so far away, they might have been on one of the moons. She shook herself. ‘My mother’ s name was Calida,’ she said briskly, to forestall his pity. ‘She bore me somewhere in the Outlands, and took me back to Antaris before she died. I was only a baby then. I don’ t remember her.’
    â€˜I’ m sorry,’ stammered Heben. To be a fatherless child in Merithuros was an unthinkable misfortune. Even though his