As Kensal fell, the Duke started forward. Welram caught at him with his free hand. “Not with swords,” the Wyrd gasped, so low Emereck could hardly hear him. “Need magic. Use Windsong.”
“You!” Shalarn’s voice surprised Emereck; he had almost forgotten her presence. She was staring at Tammis with undisguised loathing. “Servant of the Shadow-born!”
“How clever of you to notice,” Tammis said. “Yes, I serve them. As you have.”
“No! I hate them!”
“You have served them nonetheless. How do you think I found out about all this in the first place? Your captain was helpful, but hardly knowledgeable enough to lead me to this.”
“My captain?” Shalarn stared down at the man’s body.
“Your captain,” Tammis said, mimicking Shalarn’s tone. “Why do you think he started this fight?”
“You told him to?”
“Very good. There were a few too many of you for me to handle alone, but you killed each other off quite nicely. Rylorien was a surprise, but she’s no threat now.”
“I’ll kill you!” Shalarn’s fingers curled into claws.
“I think not.” Tammis smiled with maddening certainty. “I’m afraid I took the precaution of smearing poison on my raven’s-feet. Neither you nor the Duke there will last much—”
Tammis broke off, and her head snapped in the Duke’s direction. “What are you doing?”
Duke Dindran had not moved, but somehow he seemed to have grown taller and more substantial. His expression did not change, but his eyes met Tammis’s and she swayed as though she had been struck. Shalarn glanced quickly from Tammis to the Duke, then reached into a black velvet pouch by her side and withdrew a small gold sphere. She breathed on it, then closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath.
Tammis was concentrating on the Duke. She raised the smoky crystal, and the darkness in the air intensified. The Duke’s lips tightened, as though he were bracing himself for something. At that instant, Shalarn opened her eyes and threw the gold sphere like a dagger at Tammis.
With a brilliant flash of light, the sphere struck the blackness that surrounded the Cilhar sorceress. Tammis jerked, and the bolt of black energy she had intended for the Duke skimmed over his head and demolished part of a tree. The music of the wind-sculptures grew louder, and the darkness thinned.
Tammis whirled. Shalarn’s face was pale and tense with concentration. The golden sphere hung coruscating in the air, slowly eating away at the shadows Tammis had made. With a snarl, Tammis struck at it with her crystal, then spun back to face the Duke once more.
The sphere exploded in a shower of brilliant sparks. Shalarn turned chalk-white; as Emereck watched, she swayed and slid slowly to the ground. The Duke’s eyes narrowed. The wind-music skirled angrily, and the darkness around Tammis thinned still more.
Emereck was almost close enough to strike. He looked quickly around. Liana was barely two paces from her bow. Ryl was still fighting the spell Tammis had thrown at her, but it was clear that both her strength and that of the Wyrd was dwindling.
Emereck’s eyes flew to the Duke, but Lord Dindran showed no sign of weakness. The invisible battle continued unabated, with the shadowed air and the swirling changes of the wind-music the only outward indications of its progress. Tammis took a step backward, then another. Emereck held his breath and raised his knife.
A ray of blackness licked out from the crystal Tammis held, but it struck Liana, not the Duke. The arrow Liana had been aiming went wide. “No!” Emereck screamed, and brought his knife down. Tammis dodged in a sinuous sideways motion, and Emereck’s blade caught only the edge of her cloak.
“Stop!” Tammis cried. “One more move from either of you, and the girl dies.”
Emereck froze. Half-unbelieving, he looked at Liana. She had not fallen; relief made his knees weak. Then he saw the dark glow that surrounded her, like a bubble of black glass. His skin crawled, and he looked back at Tammis in horror. She was panting slightly, her hand still holding the crystal high. Her eyes were fixed on the Duke, who had turned to look at his daughter.
Duke Dindran turned back, and his face was grim. “No,” he said. “I cannot—”
As he turned, Tammis gestured. One of the black rays stabbed at the Duke. He reeled and fell to his knees. Emereck tried to lunge at the sorceress, but found himself unable to move. Tammis struck again. The Duke raised an arm as though to block her, then toppled. The music of the garden slowed, became a dirge. Breathing hard, Tammis looked at her erstwhile opponent.
“You almost won,” she said, half to herself. “I can see I will have to learn more about this castle.”
She turned to Emereck and gestured. He staggered and almost fell as the spell holding him vanished; then he struck at Tammis. She avoided him easily and raised a warning hand. “Not so fast! Have you forgotten?” She clenched her fingers around the black crystal and squeezed. Liana screamed.
“Stop it!” Emereck shouted.
“Drop your knife.”
Emereck did. He felt numb and dazed. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
“There’s no need. You’re no threat to me, and I dislike meaningless waste.”
“What do you call all this?” Emereck said bitterly.
“Necessary.” Tammis smiled coldly. “Now, bring me the harp.”
“No!”
“Do as I say, or…” Tammis closed her hand, and Liana screamed again.
Emereck shut his eyes in pain. “All right! Just stop it.”
Tammis nodded in satisfaction, and the screaming stopped. Emereck’s shoulders sagged in defeat as he turned and walked toward the harp’s hiding-place. He had failed again, and this failure was the worst of all.
He bent and brushed the concealing clothes and bedding away. Underneath, the harp leaned against the white stone of the terrace. It was shimmering faintly with a cold, white light, and Emereck hesitated. It seemed a desecration to give the harp to Tammis, but what else could he do? He was neither a warrior nor a wizard, only a minstrel.
“Bring it!” Tammis commanded.
Emereck bent and picked up the harp. A flash of power shot through him as he touched it, like a joy so intense that it was painful, bringing with it a crowd of memories. Flindaran’s voice: “It might be worth the price.” The Duke: “I will not chance the Harp of Imach Thyssel’s falling into Syaski hands.” The exaltation on Flindaran’s face, as he played the harp. Liana: “Be careful, Emereck.”
Emereck rose and turned, holding the Harp of Imach Thyssel. For the first time since he had found the harp, he felt certain of what he must do. He smiled in pure relief, and drew his hands across the harpstrings.
The harp came alive in his hands. Power crackled through him as he played. He felt it spreading out through the castle and gardens around him, shredding the darkness of Tammis’s spells and making the air sing like chiming crystal. For a moment he thought he had won; then he saw Tammis turn with the slow inevitability of a dream and clench her fist around the smoky crystal.
Emereck tensed as a wave of darkness swept toward him, but his fingers did not falter. The shadows closed around him and he could no longer see the garden or Tammis, but nothing could muffle the song of the harp. The music buoyed Emereck up; as the darkness touched him, he felt only a distant twinge, like an old memory of pain or the faint echo of a broken chord. He almost laughed aloud. Tammis could not reach him! He plucked a chord of triumph, then began a run of notes to dispel the cloud around him. And then he heard Liana scream.
Fear stabbed him. The harp caught at the emotion and intensified it, and the darkness that hid the garden was swept away in an anxious ripple of notes. He saw Tammis’s tight smile as Liana crumpled to the ground, and his fear exploded into murderous rage.
He stared at Tammis, and with a sudden, sure knowledge shaped nightmares in music. The harp sang of loss and power and revenge beneath his hands: deep notes of menace, eerie minor chords of fear, a steadily building rhythm of anger an
d hatred. He saw Tammis lift her hand once more, and he plucked a single high note on a string that shimmered with a faint silver-green light.
The black crystal shattered in Tammis’s hand, showering her with tiny slivers. Her face twisted in terror, and Emereck grinned in savage triumph. With all the power that ran singing through him, he sent her worst fears back to her in music, willing them to destroy her.
The garden shimmered and faded around him. Emereck saw only Tammis, drowning in the sea of music he was making. Exultantly, he forced his fingers to move even faster. Tammis screamed and writhed; then she, too, vanished, leaving Emereck alone with his song of madness and revenge. Emereck laughed, feeling the power of the Harp of Imach Thyssel. His harp. He played on.
Faces formed in the haze around him: a Guild-Master he disliked, a fellow-student who had been deliberately offensive, a merchant who had cheated him. Emereck smiled. With the harp to call on, he could send retribution on them all. He could do anything, he could—
Another face formed in the mist before him. Emereck’s heart lurched and his fingers slowed. It was Flindaran. He looked gravely at Emereck, without speaking. The memory of Flindaran’s betrayal swept over Emereck, bringing with it a mad desire for revenge.
Emereck drew a sobbing breath. The other images disappeared; Flindaran had done far more to hurt Emereck than any of them. The face hung in the air, waiting, while the strings of the harp pulsed with a song of revenge and hatred and insanity. Waiting for Emereck to set the magic of the harp free to do its work.
“No,” Emereck whispered, and muted the droning of the lower strings. His mind cleared a little, and he shuddered at the thought of what he had almost done. He was worse than Flindaran; his friend had never sought to use the harp in anger and hatred. Emereck looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. “About everything.”
The last shreds of the hunger for revenge left him. Flindaran smiled. As the haze around Emereck began to clear, the smile became Flindaran’s old, mischievous grin, and then the apparition vanished.
The Harp of Imach Thyssel still hummed beneath Emereck’s fingers. He looked up from his playing, and saw Tammis lying motionless in front of him. Involuntarily, his head turned toward Liana, and the harp sang sorrow in his hands. Then, as he started to turn away, he saw her fingers twitch.
Almost without his willing it, the music of the harp swelled once more. His mind spread out along with it, filling the garden. He could hear the song of the castle, powerful and complicated and constantly changing. Held within it was a soft, fading melody that was Liana’s link to Windsong. He heard another, similar melody as well, deeper and stronger but slowly waning; the Duke, too, was not yet dead. Only the magic of Castle Windsong had kept them both alive this long.
Quickly Emereck plucked two high, sweet chords, sending a surge of healing toward Liana and another toward the Duke. The magic did its work almost instantly; he could hear their new strength in the music that was Windsong. Then he remembered Kensal, and looked for him. There was nothing, not even a dying echo. Emereck felt a stab of sorrow, but he had no time to indulge his grief. There were still Ryl and Welram to consider. Emereck turned his attention in their direction.
Instinctively, he recoiled from what he heard. Ryl was trapped in a harsh jangle of sound, a twisted parody of music that should never have existed. He heard it below the music of the harp, behind the music of the garden, as a greedy, strident discord. A delicate web of harmony was all that kept the deformed spell away from her. Welram’s magic was a steady accompaniment supporting the fragile defense, but it was clear from the slowing tempo that the Wyrd was almost exhausted.
Cautiously, Emereck plucked a chord, then another. Power vibrated through the harp, but he dared not add it to Welram’s efforts. The balance of harmony in Ryl’s defenses was too delicate; one wrong note, or one played a fraction too loudly or too late, and the protective melody would be drowned out by the twisted horror around it. Emereck paused, listening to the inaudible echoes of the spells. Then he began to play once more, improvising an accompaniment to the distorted music of Tammis’s twisted spell.
It took all his skill to follow the changing dissonances, but he made no mistakes. His fingers danced over the strings, resolving phrases the spell left hanging, modulating from one key to another, shaping the disordered cacophony into something like music.
Power poured from the harp as he played, reshaping the spell as he reshaped the music. As the harshness of the noise softened into melody, Emereck added a run of high, sweet notes, sending healing toward Ryl and Welram as he had done for the Duke and Liana. The sounds of their magic grew stronger, surer. And slowly they began to win.
Finally it was finished. Ryl sat up, blinking; beside her, Welram relaxed in relief. Emereck smiled and let go of the magic that flowed into him from the harp. But the music did not stop. Emereck’s smile faded, and he tried to stop playing, to pull his fingers from the strings, to throw the harp aside. He could not do it.
His hands continued to play without his willing it. He looked up, and the garden was changed. More clearly than ever, he could hear the web of magic woven through it, molding the wind and the music of the statues. Liana and the Duke were part of it, focal points that fit seamlessly into the overall harmony that was the castle. Welram was a warm, deep sound, like a set of bass pipes. And Ryl… if there was anything Ryl resembled, it was the music of the harp itself, clear and pure and powerful.
Again Emereck tried to stop playing, without success. He could not halt the magic that flooded him. He could feel himself drowning in the music, as Tammis had drowned, and he was afraid. He thought of the price the harp exacted, and of the Prince of the Kulseth who had been crippled by the power of the harp. Perhaps this was what had happened to him: the harp out of control and the power of its music building and building, until at last it burned him up from the inside. Emereck swallowed hard, wondering how long it would take.
He could hear nothing now except the music of the harp, and the ringing power in his ears, and, very faintly, the song of the wind on the sculptures. The song of the wind… Emereck’s eyes widened in sudden hope. He could not set the harp down, but perhaps he could control what he played. And if he played simply to make music, instead of to use the harp for revenge or healing, perhaps the power would stop.
Emereck looked down at the harp, and shut out everything except the movement of his fingers and the music of Castle Windsong. He began to improvise more consciously, choosing notes himself rather than allowing the harp to direct his fingers. He ignored the power that filled him, then forgot it. His whole being was concentrated on the music.
The harpnotes wove in and out of the melody the castle played. After a few moments, Emereck realized that the music of the castle was changing, adapting with the skill of a Master Minstrel to what he played on the harp. Emereck grinned. This was a game he knew well; at the Guildhall students had often displayed their skills by improvising a duet, each trying to outdo the other. His fingers flew over the strings, and music swirled through the garden.
A small part of his mind was aware that his gamble had succeeded; the power of the harp was draining away. Emereck no longer cared. He was a minstrel, and the harp was meant to make music. Nothing else mattered. He called on all the skill he possessed, for no reason but the sheer joy of creation.
At last he stopped, exhausted. His fingers hurt from plucking the harpstrings; his arms were sore from holding the instrument for so long. He sighed in satisfaction and set the harp on the ground, then lowered himself to sit beside it. Only then did he realize that Ryl, Liana, Welram and the Duke were standing beside the castle gate, watching him.
Chapter 25
RYL BROKE THE SILENCE. “Well done, minstrel, and very well done. I did not think it possible for anyone to do what you have just done.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Emereck said, still feeling somewhat bemused. “It was the harp.”
“The Harp of Imach Thyssel has g
reat power, but your mind and will directed it.”
Emereck looked at the bodies sprawled behind her and shuddered. Shalarn lay face down where she had fallen; slightly ahead of her, the three crumpled heaps of the captain and his guards formed a half-circle around Kensal. Just beyond was a body so twisted that it was only by eliminating everyone else that Emereck could identify it as the Cilhar sorceress, Tammis. Emereck thought of the music and the madness, and the glee with which he had hurled nightmares at her. He looked away, feeling sick.
Liana’s eyes followed his. “You can’t blame yourself for all this, Emereck,” she said.
“Can’t I? None of it would have happened if I hadn’t been fool enough to take the harp.”
“Then remember that there has been healing here as well as death,” Ryl said sternly, “and do not seek to carry more blame than is your share.”
“There has been healing,” Emereck said in a low voice, “but not enough.” His eyes sought Kensal’s body once more.
“Kensal told me once that few Cilhar die peacefully,” Liana said half to herself. “I don’t think he really wanted to be one of them.”
“He chose his death,” Welram put in unexpectedly. “I saw it in his face.”
“Yes.” Ryl’s voice held a distant sorrow. “He knew better than to expect a sword to be of use against such magic as Tammis wielded.”
“Then why did he attack her?” Emereck said.
Ryl looked at him. “Why did you?”
Emereck glanced at Liana and felt his face grow hot. “I had to,” he said shortly.
“As did Kensal. I think he hoped to distract Tammis enough to allow one of us to defeat her.” Ryl sighed. She looked back at Kensal’s body, and her expression became remote. “I will remember him.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then the Duke of Minathlan said, “My sympathy is yours, lady. But do you have any objection to disposing of the bodies now?”
Ryl did not respond. The Duke seemed about to repeat his question, when there was a brilliant flash of light from where Kensal’s body lay. A wave of heat struck Emereck. When the brief dazzle cleared from his eyes, Kensal’s body was gone. A dusting of ash hung in the air, to be dispersed almost at once by the singing winds.
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