The Song of the Sirin (Raven Son Book 1)

by Nicholas Kotar

  I have seen evil. I have felt it in my blood and in my bones. I have been it. And I survived. But after it all ended, after I paid the ultimate price, the question still remains. Did the Raven control my actions without my will? Or did I willingly let him into my body?

  -Unsigned note found among the personal effects of the Karila embassy

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Last Battle

  “You are mad!” Yadovír shrieked, sick with nervous excitement. His clerk had just burst in on him, announcing the victory of the Vasylli warriors over the enemy. Yadovír was so shocked, he even forgot to hold the lavender-scented kerchief to his nose, as he did ceaselessly now, only to have the stench of the Raven inundate him again. He raised his now-skeletal white hand back to his nose, and stamped his foot, whining.

  “You lie, you gullible fool. How can that be? The day is not even far gone, and already we are victorious? Impossible. You lie! Get out. I do not want to see you anymore. Out!”

  Yadovír was aware that to others he now cut a rather pathetic figure, always shuddering, muttering to himself, and holding his scented kerchief to his nose, but his mind was as keen as ever, and he took special pleasure in storing hatred for every slight—perceived or otherwise, it didn’t matter—for the right moment.

  “Ha! It seems they have done it,” he said aloud after the clerk left him. “Now what will you do?”

  The appearance of solitude belied the obvious presence—unseen, but sensed by creeping skin, foul stench, and slithering voice that was and was not in Yadovír’s head.

  “It is unbecoming of such a noble heart to stoop to foolishness, my rat.”

  The Raven’s tone oozed malice and calm. Yadovír’s momentary excitement shattered, and the voice laughed, almost in spite of itself.

  “My very own fool,” he hissed. There was even a kind of unctuous tenderness in the voice. “Your people truly are fools if they think to have won any victory.”

  “Fools that somehow managed to beat off your creatures.”

  Yadovír felt a chill of displeasure from the presence.

  “Yesss. There was perhaps a moment or two of unexpected bravery there. But no matter. It just makes your part in all this a bit more urgent, nothing more.”

  “You have c-c-come to d-demand payment, h-have you?” Yadovír’s assumed bravado was completely betrayed by the unfamiliar stammer, which had begun to decorate his speech at the most inopportune moments.

  “Y-y-yes, I h-h-have,” the voice mimicked with half-suppressed laughter.

  “Will you leave me alone then, after I have done your dirty work?”

  “What? No demands that I install you in a position of power over those you hate? No pathetic attempts to wrest terms from the jaws of the pitiless Raven?”

  “I don’t n-n-need you for that,” Yadovír said.

  “Oh, I see. You rely on my munificence to keep you alive as a boon for your treachery, and then you plan to take advantage of the ensuing commotion to murder your enemies in their beds, is that it?”

  Yadovír stamped his foot again in frustration. The Raven laughed inside his head.

  “Do not worry, you will get all you wish for in that quarter. But you can give up any puerile hope of my ever leaving you alone. You are my favorite plaything.”

  Yadovír almost gagged at the feathery touch on his arm.

  “What do you want of me?” Yadovír nearly screamed.

  “What do I want? I want you to be happy. I want you to feel the pleasure of vengeance, my rat. Not to wait and wait and wait. When all this is done, you can punish Sabíana in whatever twisted way your strange mind desires. Now go. The Gumiren are waiting for you. They have already cleared the blocked passage. Open the hidden way into the city.”

  “But how will I protect myself? I don’t want to be known as the man who betrayed his people.”

  “Of course, how noble of you! I have a very special idea on that score. Come, my stupid little one. I will explain everything on the way.”

  Sabíana rushed into the palace proper, surrounded by her generals. Contrary to her own common sense, she had summoned the Dumar, reinstating their privileges, hoping the victory would rally the representatives to her. Her sense told her that there was little chance of that. She battled a heavy dread, fearing that everything she had just witnessed—all the monsters, the carnage—was all a play, a farce to distract her from something else, something she could sense with every cell of her body, but could not see. She tried to maintain the appearance of confidence.

  Her heavy wolf fur chafed at her neck, and she wished she could cast away the heavy curved sword she wore at her side. She had chosen her clothing for a purpose. She needed to be an avatar of victory, as far as the warriors were concerned. She strove to maintain that illusion for as long as possible.

  “We must not become drunk over this victory, my lords. True, our men have outdone themselves today. We must reform and defend the city against any further attack. It seems we have the upper hand now, and perhaps we can even send out sorties into the forest to harry the Gumiren.” Wherever they are, she thought, but did not say.

  “Darina, is it wise to entrust so much of this to the Dumar?” rumbled Elder Pahomy by her side. “They have hardly deserved much trust of late.”

  “They dare not rebel now, not with this success in the…”

  She was cut off by a wheezing intake of her own breath. They had entered the Chamber of Counsel. The room was a lurid mess of bloodied bodies. Every member of the former Dumar lay dead or dying, stabbed many times. The floor glistened with blood. Some still moaned. Only one among them was still lucid—Yadovír, who was also wounded, though not fatally. He wept uncontrollably, his voice like a serrated knife.

  “Darina Sabíana, we are undone! Do not believe anything of what you have seen or heard. We have not triumphed. It was all a ruse of the Raven. One of the clerics did this, possessed by our ancient enemy. I barely escaped with my own life before I stopped him.”

  Yadovír pointed at the body of a young priest holding a long knife, red to the handle. He lay open-eyed in the shocked surprise of death.

  “One of our prized clerics,” screamed Yadovír.

  Sabíana shook like a leaf in a gale and found no voice to answer Yadovír. Her knees no longer supported her; she fell and the shuddering grabbed her violently. Her mind was a protracted scream of pain; her eyes lost their focus, and she felt foam rise to her mouth. Against her will, a moan slithered out of her, and even to her own ears, the sound of her teeth chattering was pitiful and horrifying.

  Two of her guards knelt by her, trying to do something to relieve her, but they had no idea what to do. Finally, the convulsion stopped. Her eyes remained cloudy and unfocused, and she couldn’t speak except to moan without words.

  Yadovír stopped weeping as if he had become another person in the blink of an eye. Cold terror gripped Sabíana; Yadovír seemed to grow in her eyes, as if a shadow spread out behind him like a raven’s wings. His eyes were black fire, and he commanded with the power of a legion.

  “Come,” he said with a voice not his own. “We must see to the order of Vasyllia.”

  To her shock, everyone did as he commanded, crumbling to a will that seemed to be outside him, yet inside him as well. Her two guards picked her up and dragged her. All she could do was moan.

  Rogdai limped back to the city, leaning on Tolnían. By now, most of the warriors had returned, leaving the wounded on the field of battle. An eerie uncertainty hung about the air like smoke, and most of the warriors were intent on the palace, hoping for some word from the Black Sun. Tolnían still clutched the banner as if his life depended on it.

  “That was quite a thing, my boy,” said Rogdai, shaking his head in disbelief. “I did not know they still made warriors like you.”

  “I never made it through the first year of warrior seminary,” said Tolnían and laughed.

  Rogdai struck Tolnían playfully on the back of his head, as if to stop him f
rom becoming too tall in his own estimation.

  Rogdai couldn’t concentrate his vision through the throbbing pain. Everything slowed down through his eyes, and objects didn’t focus unless he looked at them with careful intention. But when he did, they became somehow too real, and he had to look away again. When he heard the marrow-chilling cries coming from the palace, he looked up at one of the turrets to see the pale figure of a skeletal Yadovír holding his hands out. Then the terrible focus came, and the horrifying reality struck him.

  Yadovír’s hands were covered in blood.

  Sabíana was next to him, but she was unrecognizable—white and hardly standing, supported by two of her black-robed guards. They looked like the bringers of death.

  “People of Vasyllia,” roared Yadovír. “Fell deeds have been done. The Dumar has been infiltrated by treachery. Every last one of your beloved councilors lies in his own blood. I alone escaped by a miracle. Who could have done such a deed? The Gumiren, you say? No. One of our own people has perpetrated this atrocity. One of those sworn to protect us, to minister, care, and watch over our lives with benediction is a traitor. One of our priests has sold himself to the enemy, for I know not what price. His knife it was that brought death’s swift bite to our own people. A priest! We are betrayed by one of our own!”

  Yadovír foamed at the mouth. A young priest, one of those who had just fought at the wall, stepped forward to protest, but his words stopped short. Silence filled the open courtyard where he stood. The priest, fair as a spring lily, was alone, ringed by warriors who looked at him in disgust. His eyes rolled back, and he rattled at the back of his throat. A sword’s point thrust through his chest, and Rogdai, red with fury that he did not realize was there until this moment, held the sword.

  “Death to all traitors of Vasyllia!”

  Rogdai’s cry was taken up all around him. Swords were unsheathed yet again. He was the first among them, charging at any priest he could find. Some were in mail and fought back, but none could withstand his fury. He no longer felt the pain of his ankle, rushing back and forth, stabbing and slashing and hacking. When three bodies lay at his feet, he pursued the fleeing priests. He ran into homes, broke down doors, overturned tables and ripped off curtains to find the cowering traitors. The shock and pain he saw in their eyes only fed his hatred. He spit on them as he skewered them.

  When he had run out of priests to kill, he stopped to look around, finally noticing that his right leg could no longer support his weight. The streets were spattered with red, and everywhere the open eyes of the dead clerics stared at him from dead pates. There were even a few dead women—wives, sisters, daughters—who had tried to appeal with their bodies to the mercy of the sword. There was one in particular, a girl hardly out of her childhood. There were tears on her dead face.

  It was that detail, not the blood and carnage, that thrust into his mind the realization of what he had done. He tore at his hair and screamed.

  Tolnían, still clutching the banner, ran from the scene of carnage back to the gates of Vasyllia. He had tried to fend off Rogdai himself, but he could not, and nearly everyone else had followed in Rogdai’s madness. Vaguely, he hoped that some of the still-returning warriors might help him. As he turned a corner, he ran into a wall of men. They were not Vasylli.

  The Gumiren surrounded him, silent as hunting cats. They crawled out of every street, every shadow in the city. Tolnían thrust the point of the banner into a crack between two flagstones, drew his sword, and sang a challenge. The banner fluttered slightly, showering Tolnían with dappled sunlight. The enemy advanced.

  As they attacked, he lost sense of his own arm. It flailed back and forth, striking everywhere with deadly accuracy. Like being possessed by a High Being, he thought. Two of them were at his feet. Another three came down in two strokes.

  When he came to, ten mangled figures lay before him. He stopped to breathe, and iron pierced his left side. He fell and his eyesight began to dim. All he saw was five curved blades above his head, rising with the war-shriek of the Gumiren. They waited for the command to hack him to pieces.

  Suddenly, light streamed from his banner, striking them like spear-thrusts. They screamed and retreated from him. Leaving him alone, they walked around him, not daring to approach the image of the Sirin in flight. They passed by and continued toward the palace. Tolnían succumbed and fell unconscious.

  The despair that followed Rogdai’s madness choked him. At that moment, when the last hope shriveled within him, Gumiren warriors—hundreds, thousands of them—entered the courtyard, and with them came smoke and fire.

  The war-wind abandoned Rogdai. He hardly tried to ward off the avalanche of curved blades rising high against him. He fell. He saw his brother-warriors around him fall like wheat cut down by a scythe. All of them—dead or wounded.

  Within minutes, not a single armed Vasylli stood against the invaders. Rogdai, blood pouring from three wounds, lay on the ground, trying to rise only with a left arm. His right arm lay near him, hacked off by the Gumir who stood over him now with death in his eyes.

  A loud retort of an ox-horn stopped the Gumiren, as though they were one man.

  Yadovír, white as death, stood next to Sabíana, looking down on Rogdai and the rest of Vasyllia as though he had just given birth to a stillborn child.

  I have long wondered what the fate of humanity is. We have a spark inside, fed by our soul-bond with the Sirin. And it leaves us forever restless, searching for something. But for what? I have heard that some holy men have experienced a change, a transfiguration into something higher, something stranger. Perhaps we have to shed this body of flesh for a body of fire. Perhaps the flame in our heart must engulf us whole. Perhaps only afire can we stand before the throne of the Most High and hear our ultimate fate…

  -From the personal archive of Dar Lassar the Blessed

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Staff in Bloom

  Voran laid Tarin down by the staff that still had not flowered. Tarin’s face was white, but his arms were streaked with blood, and his breathing was labored and heavy. Voran could not believe that the man who had projected such physical strength for so long could simply wither like a rose struck by an early frost. It hurt Voran, more than the river of fire, more than the sword of the Palymi. It did not help that after the war-wind had passed, it left Voran exhausted, his strength sapped.

  Tarin opened his eyes, and still he did not groan or give any other indication of the pain he must be feeling. His young eyes—still such young eyes—were plaintive.

  “Where were you when I suffered?” he exclaimed.

  Voran leaned back, shocked and struck dumb. Then he realized Tarin was not speaking to him.

  “I am your faithful, loving slave.” Tarin’s voice was stoic, lacking any hint of self-pity. “Why did you wait so long to send deliverance in my hour of need?”

  The silence that followed was immense and terrible. But then, the voice. The ineffable voice.

  “I was waiting, Tarin, by your side. I wished to see your greater victory, to grant you the greater reward.”

  Tarin laughed and wept at the same time.

  “Tarin,” whispered Voran. “Was that…Adonais?”

  The look in Tarin’s eyes was strange. Voran didn’t understand it. He had never seen it before.

  “No, Voran. Not Adonais.” He began to cough, and could say no more. The voice spoke again, soft and yet terrifying.

  “Come to me, Tarin. I have need of your counsel.”

  Tarin burst into flame—a bluish, warm flame that consumed his frail body. But it left behind something greater, an ageless warrior with sad eyes and dark hair. Completely alight, the transfigured Tarin stood up and bowed to Voran.

  “Voran,” said Tarin in a high tenor, without the grating heaviness of his usual intonation. “There is much you must still learn. I fear that when you learn the truth about Vasyllia, about the Raven, and about Adonais, you will find no more strength to go on. In that moment, rememb
er me. I have lived my life in the shadows, never thanked by anyone for what I do. And yet, we Warriors of the Word have buttressed the walls that hold up the worlds.”

  Voran said nothing. Pain pressed his heart, and his mind refused to think.

  “One gift I leave you,” said Tarin. “There is a path behind the third shack that leads out into the plains. Follow it. When you reach the end, an old friend will be there. Till we meet again, my friend. Oh, and congratulations on your first three baptisms of fire.”

  He smiled, and Voran was alone.

  The staff was covered in small pink blossoms that smelled of orange. Voran laughed, but his joy was a shard of metal in his heart.

  It was as Tarin had said. The path—curiously untouched by snow—was a purple shadow between snowbanks gilded by the early morning. It sloped upward toward a rise, atop which tall grass waved awkwardly, encumbered by the snow at its feet. During his time with Tarin, Voran had never so much as left the enclosure with the three huts, much less ventured to see the view from atop the rise.

  It was finally his, as he had dreamed of for so many weeks—freedom. He could go anywhere, do anything—a strangely frightening thought.

  He looked around, unwilling to go anywhere. Not yet. For all of the drabness of the huts, this was a beautiful place. In the distance, the mountains peeked out above the line of sentinel trees. All around him, the land rolled up and down like gentle waves, mostly clad in white, but with occasional flashes of color—red berries hanging on for dear life, a sprig of purple heather anticipating spring, the pink flowers of the staff-tree.

  I could stay here, he thought. I could weather the storm here. No one would seek to find me.

  It was a comforting thought, so unusual for a life filled with ranging, training, weeks on the march. Tarin was right. If Vasyllia was to fall, what could he possibly do to stop it, much less bring some dreamy vision of old Vasyllia back to life?