by David Weber
Brandark chuckled and shook his head again, and Bahzell looked over his shoulder to survey the others. Tothas looked much better than he had when they half-carried him into the cave, and Zarantha and Rekah were curled up like kittens under the blankets they shared. The soft, steady sound of breathing carried through the musical patter of water and the crackle of the fire, and an odd sense of safety—of comfort—seemed to fill the cave.
He turned back to join Brandark in watching the cave's narrow stone throat, and a companionable silence enveloped them. They'd have to move on in the morning, and the fact that the rain had eased for now was no guarantee tomorrow wouldn't be still worse, but all that mattered just now was the peace of the moment, and he savored it almost sensually.
He didn't know how long he'd sat there when he heard the abrupt scuff of a boot on stone. He stiffened, ears rising, and felt Brandark tense beside him, but neither said anything. They just sat there, staring down the narrow passageway, and the boot scuffed again. And then, suddenly, a small, slender, brown-haired woman in a rain-beaded cloak turned a bend and stopped dead.
Bahzell's ears went straight up in astonishment as the woman found herself face-to-face with two hradani and simply stood there. She didn't yelp in panic, didn't turn to flee—didn't even stiffen in surprise. She only gazed at them with grave brown eyes, then shrugged and walked calmly forward.
"Good evening," she said in a soft, husky contralto, and Bahzell blinked. He turned a look of disbelief on Brandark, and the same expression looked back at him. Then the two of them turned as one to the newcomer, and Bahzell cleared his throat.
"Ah, and a good evening to yourself."
"Would you mind dreadfully if I shared your cave?" she asked in that same calm voice, as unruffled as if things like this happened to her every day. "It's rather wet outside," she added with a small smile, and Bahzell shook his head in bemusement. "Thank you," she said, and untied her cloak.
She must, the Horse Stealer thought, be insane. She had to have seen the light of their fire before she ever started up the entry passage, but not only had she walked slap up to them and refused to turn a hair when she found a pair of hradani, she wasn't even armed—not with so much as a dagger!
She seemed totally unconcerned as she stepped forward, draped her cloak near the fire, and unslung the small harp case she'd worn on her back beneath it. She settled down beside the fire and cocked her head as she regarded them with those huge brown eyes.
"Something smells good," she announced.
"Ah, help yourself," Brandark invited, and gestured at the covered pot of beans and salt pork left over from supper.
"Thank you," she said again, and reached into her belt pouch. The knife she produced would have been as useless for self-defense as the fork and spoon that came with it, but gems glittered in their handles, and Bahzell's eyes narrowed. Those eating utensils would have been at home on a duke's table; no one in his right mind flashed something that valuable before two unknown warriors of any stripe, much less two with the reputation of hradani. He watched her select a tin bowl and ladle food into it, then cleared his throat.
"Don't be taking me wrongly," he said carefully, "but are you after being in the habit of walking up to strange camps like this?"
"Like what?"
"Like what?!" Bahzell blinked and glanced at Brankdark again. "What I mean to be saying, ah, Lady, is that, well, not everyone's exactly— I mean—"
He broke off in unaccustomed confusion, and she smiled at him. It was quite a lovely smile, he thought, watching it light her triangular, spritelike face, and felt himself smile back for no good reason.
"Thank you for your concern, but I'll be all right. I'm only a wandering bard, after all. No one would hurt me."
"Begging your pardon," Brandark said, "but I wouldn't count on that. What my friend means is that one of these days you're likely to run into someone who will hurt you—or worse."
"Well, you two won't, will you?" Amusement flickered in her grave eyes, and the hradani found themselves shaking their heads in unison. "There, you see?" She swallowed a mouthful of food and sighed. "Ummm! Delicious. I miss good, simple cooking like this."
"Uh, yes," Brandark said helplessly. Someone should lock this lunatic up in a nice, safe cage, but her simple confidence in her own safety was a shield that baffled him. He knew she was insane, and so did Bahzell, but how did they tell her that?
She smiled at them and returned to her food with slow, obvious relish. She cleaned the bowl of the last morsel, chasing the final bean around and around it with almost childish delight, then sighed once more.
"Oh, that was nice!" She closed her eyes as if to savor some special treat, then opened them with another smile. "Thank you for your generosity."
"It was only a bowl of beans," Brandark protested, and she shrugged.
"Perhaps. But it was all you had, and you shared it with a stranger. How can I repay you?"
"Brandark's the right of it," Bahzell said uncomfortably. "It was naught but a bowl of beans, and it's welcome to it you were."
"Oh, I insist on paying something," she said with yet another of those lovely smiles, and reached for her harp. "If you won't accept anything else, perhaps I could sing for my supper?"
Eyebrows arched above brilliant eyes, and the hradani nodded like puppets as she uncased her harp. A corner of Bahzell's brain said something very strange was happening, but the thought was tiny, lost and unimportant.
She drew out her harp, and air hissed between Brandark's teeth. The strings shone silver in a frame of midnight ebony, and faceted gems flashed back the fire from the tuning pegs. The forearm was a woman, draped in a flowing, archaic gown, mouth open in song, and the Bloody Sword blinked as the bard tucked the instrument against her shoulder, for the carved face matched her own. He started to speak, but then her fingers stroked the strings and he froze, mouth hanging open, as music filled the cave.
No one could wring that rich, rippling purity from a harp that small! It wasn't the sound of a single harp at all—he knew it wasn't. Viols and lutes sounded in the background, laughing dulcimers wove in and out between the harp notes, bassoons and oboes crooned to violins and the deep, sweet voice of cellos, and he knew it couldn't happen even as it did. But then she opened her mouth, and he forgot the music, forgot the smell of horses and smoke and wet cloth and the rock he sat upon. He forgot everything, for there was nothing—nothing but that voice.
He could never remember it clearly later. That was the cruelest curse and the greatest blessing of all, for if he had been able to remember, his love of music would have died forever. Who could be content with the mud pies of children playing in a ditch when he'd seen the work of Saramantha's greatest sculptors? If he were able to remember—really remember—that voice, he would hunger only to hear it once more, and its perfection would turn all other voices, all other music, to dust and ashes in his mouth.
Yet if he could never recall it clearly, he would always know he'd heard it once. That for a single night, in a smelly winter cave, he'd experienced all the splendor after which he'd fumbled for so many years. Not death itself could take that from him, and he knew he would hear its echo in every other song.
She sang words they'd never heard, in a language they'd never known, and it didn't matter. They sat motionless, two barbarian hradani, lost in a beauty beyond imagining, and she took them with her. She swept them away into another place, where time was irrelevant and there was no world, no reality, no meaning but the music of her harp, the majesty of her voice, and the glow of her huge brown eyes. They soared with her, flew on her wings, tasted things for which there were no words in any language, and then, as gently as she'd borne them aloft, she returned them to their own world, and the greatest magic of all was that she did not break their hearts. That they returned unscarred, content to be who and what they were, for it would have been so easy—so unthinkably easy—to surrender all they'd ever been for the chance to become two more notes in that glorious sound.
Her voice died, her hand stilled the strings, and Brandark Brandarkson went to his knees before her.
"My Lady," he whispered, and tears fogged his voice and soaked his face.
"Don't be silly, Brandark." Her voice was no longer a weapon to break men's hearts but laughing and tender, and her slender hand brushed his head. She gripped an ear and tugged, and he looked up, his own eyes suddenly laughing through his tears, and she nodded. "Better," she said. "Now stand up, Brandark. You've never come to me on your knees before; I see no reason to begin now."
He smiled and rose, and Bahzell blinked like a man waking from sleep.
"Who—?" he began, but then words failed him. He could only stare at Brandark, and the Bloody Sword touched his shoulder.
"Chesmirsa," he said very, very softly. "The Singer of Light."
Bahzell's eyes flew wide, and he jerked upright. He towered two feet and more taller than the woman by the fire, but she'd put aside her mortality. He was less than a child before her, and fear and confusion boiled through him.
"I—" His voice died, and she smiled once more.
"Sit, Bahzell." It was a request when she could have commanded, and he sank back onto the rock while he stared at her. She nodded to Brandark, and the Bloody Sword sat beside him once more, eyes fixed upon the goddess' face. "Thank you," she said softly. She laid her harp in her lap and leaned forward across it, still a slender, brown-haired woman and yet infinitely more, and her gentle eyes were compassionate. "I know how confused you are—both of you—and I suppose I was wicked to sneak up on you, but would you really have preferred a flash of light and a roll of thunder?" All the merriment of a universe danced in her dimpled smile, and they felt themselves smiling back. "Besides," she added, "to be greeted as a mortal and offered the kindness of mortals—that, my friends, is a gift whose value you cannot begin to imagine."
"But . . . but why?" Brandark asked, and the silver, rippling magic of her laugh went through them like a sword.
"Because of your friend, Brandark—and you. You were the only reason I could come here, and I have a message for you, but it's Bahzell's stubbornness that brings me to deliver it here and now."
"My stubbornness?" Bahzell rumbled, and she nodded.
"Your stubbornness. Your elemental, pigheaded, stiff-necked, iron-pated, wonderful hradani stubbornness."
"I'm not after understanding," he said with unwonted uncertainty.
"Of course not; you've been fighting for months not to understand."
"The dreams?" His voice was suddenly sharper, and she nodded again.
"The dreams." A touch of sternness gilded her reply. "You've been doing the equivalent of jamming your fingers in your ears and drumming your heels on the floor long enough, Bahzell."
"Is that what I've been doing, now?" he asked more challengingly. Brandark touched his arm, but the Horse Stealer's eyes were fixed on Chesmirsa's face, and she cocked her head.
"Of course it is. Come now, Bahzell, would we send you dreams you couldn't understand if we had a choice?"
"I've no way of knowing," he said flatly. "I'm naught but a hradani, Lady. We've no experience with how or what gods send to folk they care about."
Brandark inhaled sharply, yet the goddess didn't even wince. Sorrow dimmed her glorious eyes for just a moment, but not anger, and she sighed.
"I know how you feel about us, Bahzell Bahnakson," she said gently, "and who are we to blame you? If you were less of what you are your anger with us would be less, as well . . . and the time to send a hradani dreams would not have come."
"My anger, is it?" Bahzell rose once more, meeting her gaze on his own two feet, and his eyes glittered. He felt her presence, knew she was veiling her power, that if she'd loosed it upon him he could never have stood before it, but he felt no awe. Respect and wonder, yes, but not awe. His people had suffered too much—been left to suffer too much—for that.
"Yes, your anger. And your fear, Bahzell." His eyes flashed, and she raised a graceful hand. "Not of us, but lest we `betray' your people once again by turning our backs upon them. But I tell you this, Bahzell Bahnakson, and I do not lie; what happened to your people was none of our doing, and its wounds cut deeper than even you can imagine. We've labored for a millennium to undo it, whether you knew it or not, but the final healing must be yours. You must take the final step—you and all your people. No one else can take it for you."
"Words, Lady," Bahzell said stubbornly. "All I hear are words."
"No, Bahzell. All you've heard so far have been my words, and this task isn't mine. It was laid upon my brother Tomanak—and upon you."
"Upon me?!"
"You. It will be no easy task, Bahzell Bahnakson, and it will bring you pain beyond your dreams, for my brother's province is war and justice, and those are hard masters for man or god. But this is the task for which you were born, the proper challenge for your strength and courage and stubbornness, and there will be joy with the pain. Yet it's also a burden no one can compel you to shoulder, one no unwilling back could bear even had we the right to demand your obedience."
"Lady," the Horse Stealer spoke slowly, each word forged of iron, "I'll bow down to no one, god, demon, or devil. What I do, I'll do because I choose to do it, and for no other reason."
"I know. We know," Chesmirsa said. "Nor is it my task to ask you to accept this burden. I ask you only to consider it, only to be willing to hear so that you can choose when the time comes. Is that so much for anyone to ask?"
Bahzell met her eyes levelly, then shook his head, almost against his will.
"Thank you," she said softly, and her eyes told him she knew how hard it had been to make even that concession. "But as the choice must be your own, so must the decision to hear. You will be troubled by no more dreams, Bahzell Bahnakson, but think well and hard upon what I've told you. When the time comes that you're ready to hear, then hear you shall. And if you never decide you're ready, then we will leave you in the peace you desire."
Bahzell recognized an oath when he heard one, and he bent his head in acknowledgment. The goddess gazed at him for one more moment, then turned her eyes to Brandark, and her face lightened.
"And so to you." The Bloody Sword looked up once more, his eyes bright, and she smiled. "Ah, Brandark! Brandark! What shall I do with you?"
"Do with me, Lady?" he asked hesitantly, and her smile became an urchin's grin.
"Alas, Brandark, you have the soul of a poet, but the other tools—!" He felt himself blush, yet her eyes lit a bubble of laughter in his heart even as she shook her head at him.
"I do my best, My Lady," he said humbly, and she nodded.
"That you do, and always have. But the truth, Brandark, is that you were never meant for the task you thought. You are too much my brother's, too apt to other tasks. You will never be a bard."
"Never?" Brandark Brandarkson had never dreamed he could feel such sorrow—or that so much joy could wrap itself about the hurt—and his goddess smiled upon him.
"Never," she said firmly. "Music you will have always, and my blessing on your joy in it, but another career awaits you. One that will demand all you have and are, and which will fill you with a joy you never knew to seek. I promise you that, and—" her eyes danced at him "—I think you'll find it one to suit a poet's soul. Live it well, Brandark."
"I'll . . . try, My Lady," he whispered, and she touched his head once more. Then she returned her harp to its case and slung it upon her back. She shook out her plain, everyday cloak and draped it across her shoulders, and smiled at them.
"You are not quite what we expected, either of you. And yet each of you is precisely what you must be. It's only that you're so much more than we dared hope, my children. Farewell."
She vanished. One instant she was there; the next she was gone, and the hradani shook themselves. The gray light of dawn glimmered in the hole in the cave's roof, and Bahzell frowned as he tried to calculate how many hours must have sped past in what had seemed so few minutes.
Yet the fire still burned, the horses and mules still drowsed in their corner of the cave, and their three companions slept on, untouched by all that had happened. He should have been exhausted from a sleepless night, but he felt rested and restored, and he looked at his friend.
Brandark looked back, his eyes huge with bemused sorrow and joy. And as they looked into one another's eyes, the Bloody Sword felt unseen fingers tug gently at his ear once more while a husky contralto voice ran around the cave like the laughter of the first day of creation.
"Remember, Brandark," it said softly. "You may have another task, but you do have a poet's soul, and that means a part of you will always be mine. Live your life well, Brandark Brandarkson. Take joy of it, and remember I will be with you to its end . . . and beyond."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A south wind blew misty rain into Bahzell's eyes as the gray walls of Angcar rose before him. It was two hours till gate-closing, but lanterns already glimmered from the battlements, and he blinked away water, looked back over his shoulder, and bit his lip. All of them, including those who'd slept through Chesmirsa's visit, had felt invigorated and renewed when they left the cave. But they'd no sooner set out once more than the gray, persistent rain had returned, and flooded valleys and mud-treacherous slopes had taken toll of their mounts and slowed them badly. The rain looked like blowing itself out at last, but Tothas was hunched in the saddle, his face pinched and gray, and his harsh, rasping cough came all too often. Short of funds or no, they had to get him under a roof, Bahzell thought grimly, and increased his pace toward Carchon's capital.
They'd fallen into the habit of letting Tothas act as their spokesman in the towns they passed, for he was less threatening than a hradani, but he was folded forward over his saddle pommel in a fresh, wracking spasm when they finally reached the gates. Bahzell stood beside his horse, one hand on the beast's neck, hiding his anxiety as best he could while he watched the armsman cough, and Brandark trotted ahead to state their business.
The guards, already surly over pulling gate duty on such a miserable day, looked less than pleased to see a hradani, but Bahzell had little worry to spare them. The rain was far worse on Tothas than the dry cold had been. Finding the cave had been greater fortune than they had any right to expect, and what would happen to the Spearman if they met the same weather in deep wilderness frightened the Horse Stealer.
