“So what was all that blather about me needin’ t’ protect the Songkeeper?”
“Blather. But it got you here, didn’t it?”
Amos hesitated another moment and then joined Nisus at the crank. It pained him to admit it, but the dwarf was right. His lass had grown beyond him, as he had always known that she would. She was a Songkeeper in her own right, like Artair had been, and that thought, more than anything else, terrified him. He stood before evidence of what could befall a Songkeeper who stood against the Takhran. The same could befall his lass, and he would no more be able to stop it now than he had been then.
With a heavy sigh, he bent his back to the crank, and together they turned it, lowering the wooden platform in a series of sickening jerks. It was a slow process. The rope was long, the winch old and rusted. Sweat beaded his forehead and plastered his hair to his skull, and with each rotation of the crank, the wooden platform swung just a little bit lower.
Taunting him.
Amos licked his dry lips. Another few inches, and he would be able to look upon the face of his friend. That alone was almost enough to make him relinquish his grip on the crank, but Nisus kept right on turning. Never to be outdone, he carried on as well.
In the Pit, a voice rose in song. Birdie’s voice! An instant later, indescribable light seared his vision. He cried out, staggered backward, scrubbing at his eyes, but all he could see was light, light, blithering light. Blinking finally cleared his vision.
With a roar, a geyser of water shot out of the Pit, enveloping the wooden frame and eclipsing Artair from view.
“Hawkness, help me!” Nisus struggled to hold the winch.
Amos managed to get his good hand on the crank and added his weight to the dwarf’s. The power of the water thrummed through the rope and shook the winch so hard it rattled Amos’s teeth. Then the geyser stopped, and the water fell away. The wooden frame still dangled at the end of the rope, twisting slightly. It was low enough now that Artair’s head was level with Amos’s. Still the same kindly, weathered, bearded face. Deep-set eyes. Thin mouth. Narrow nose with the slight crook where Amos had broken it once in a sparring match. He steeled himself and looked the dead Songkeeper in the eyes.
But Artair’s eyes were closed.
Relief pulsed through him. It was bad enough having to see the gaping wound and ravages of that last brutal beating, without having to look him in—
The thought slipped away as Amos’s search revealed no injuries. Only a thin white scar remained of the slit in his throat.
Dead flesh could not heal.
Artair’s eyes snapped open. His chest heaved, limbs seizing against the restraints that bound him to the platform as he gasped in a long, rasping breath.
He breathed.
For once in his long and varied life, Amos found himself utterly speechless. The words dried up. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. It felt like someone had drawn all the air out of the cavern. He didn’t even see the second spout of water that burst from the Pit until it smashed over the side of the cliff and flung him off his feet.
Stone made for a merciless landing. Wincing at the ache in his bones, he picked himself up again and nearly collided with Nisus. The dwarf bent over, wheezing, with water streaming from his beard. He too seemed unable to speak, just jabbed a finger repeatedly over his shoulder.
The winch . . .
Cursing himself for a fool, Amos spun around. But the torch stand, the winch, the wooden frame, even the spout of water and Artair himself—they were all gone. A thin trickle of water trailing over the edge of the cliff was all that remained.
39
Blink.
So this was dying.
Images blurred. Figures became less distinct.
Blackness crept from the edges of his vision.
Blink.
At first, it had been a blaze of pain. Then a surge of upheaval in his stomach that arced through all his muscles as his body fought and failed to survive. And finally, a slow seeping dread as his limbs gave out and shock seized control.
Blink.
The pain had dulled to a distant fire now. It was there, but somehow out of reach. Smothered by a creeping blanket of ice that claimed first his feet and then his hands and worked its way up toward his chest.
Weights tugged at his eyelids.
He forced them open again.
Blink.
A song filled his ears—Birdie’s song. He had heard it before.
The blackness shifted, banished by a burst of brilliant light and a thunderous roar that shook him to the core of his being. An overwhelming force blazed through his ears, his heart, his mind. It shattered the ice. Quenched the fire. Drove away the pain. Then an indescribable coolness swept him up.
Floating. Weightless.
Blink.
The fog cleared from his head, but his vision shifted and rippled, as if he looked at the world through the facets of a crystal.
Or . . .
Water.
Ky’s limbs jerked. Strength shot through him. Sputtering, he broke the surface and sucked in a lungful of air. Falling droplets misted his face as his kicking feet struck solid ground. He staggered upright, knee deep in a river, trying to make sense of it all. The flood must have swept him downstream a good fifty yards from the twelve columns and the black dome. Everywhere he looked, chaos reigned.
Coughing broke out to his left. Cade. The older boy had pushed up to his hands and knees and was crawling, head dangling inches above the rushing water. Ky splashed to his side, slipping over slick rocks and the uneven streambed, and gripped him under the arms. With a heave, he pulled him to his feet and half dragged, half carried him through the water.
Side by side they collapsed on the bank.
Still spluttering, Cade wheeled his head around, blinking away the droplets of water that ran from the dark hair plastered to his forehead. “What’s happening?”
Ky blew out a long breath.
“I think it’s the end of the world.”
40
Rock pressed against her cheek. Spray misted her face as a current tugged at her legs. Sensation returned in sparks and flashes, and with it came an awareness of where she was and what had happened. Tal Ethel had been unleashed. The strength of the eruption had sent her flying. Her ears rang with the force of it. The Song rampaged wild and free across her senses. She was overcome by it and remade. It shattered her and melded the pieces back together. Left her feeling raw and renewed and aching and filled, all in the same breath.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Birdie lifted her head from the bank where she lay half in and half out of the river and crawled back to her feet. Damp hair lashed her face. Shivering, she turned in a circle, trying to grasp the full impact of what had happened. The sword remained where she had thrust it, buried to the hilt in the dome, but the rock had split. A frothy torrent rushed from the crack, flooding the riverbed.
“You did it.” A faint voice spoke behind her. “You truly did it. You released Tal Ethel.”
Inali.
She had forgotten about him. He crouched on the riverbank, swallowed by a sodden robe that was far too large for his starved frame. So shrunken he seemed, pressed into himself, little more than bones beneath a fragile tenting of skin, burdened by the weight of the talav about his neck. A pitiful figure—and to her surprise, she found that she could pity him.
This was the Takhran’s doing.
Shock and disbelief played across his face. He lifted a hand to the talav at his throat and the look shifted to one of loathing. “Take it. Please?”
But the sight of the talav served as a reminder that this was not yet done. She wheeled around, scanning for enemies. Farther downriver, Cade and Ky had crawled up onto the opposite bank. Captives huddled on either side of the rushing flow, gazing around with shocked expressions on their faces. Almost half of the Shantren and Khelari were missing, swept away, it seemed, by the initial onrush of the flood tide. The others lay scattered across the floor of t
he Pit like fish stranded upon the shore after a wave. The arch that had supported the Takhran’s throne was gone too, blown away by the force of the released river.
And the Takhran . . .
He lurched past her toward the water’s edge, sodden robes flapping about his legs. Teeth clenched in a fevered grin, eyes alight with desire. His sand-colored hair hung about his face in twisted strands. Straight into the current he charged, until the water reached his waist. Then he plunged his hands beneath the rushing flow. The talav pulsed crimson about his neck, and the Star of the Desert blazed from its place on his chest. With his head tipped back, eyes pressed shut, murmuring beneath his breath, he seemed to be waiting for something.
His frenzied movements left her even more unsettled than his usual frightening calm. The river shifted in response. Birdie sensed a pulling away of the Song from the Takhran. Everywhere else the river surged on unabated, but around his form the level of the water dropped, first to his thighs and then below his knees, leaving him standing in a basin.
His face went livid.
One hand snapped into the air, and instantly Earthshaker and Seabringer scrambled to his side and began a deep, harmonic humming that sent shockwaves rippling through the water.
Splashing steps snapped her gaze away. A man slogged his way upstream from somewhere downriver. Seemingly unconcerned with the chaos unfolding around him, he waded past the Takhran and the two Shantren without drawing their attention. He halted before Inali and beckoned to him, and the Saari rose hesitantly and, with a low, hooded glance at Birdie, slunk after him. Speechless, Birdie gaped at the stranger, and he nodded as he passed.
His eyes snagged her gaze.
Muted brown. The color of zoar bark in autumn, of summer earth heated by the sun, and of Quillan’s mead in firelight. Kindly eyes flanked by smile lines that creased the corners of his eyelids. His melody was a breath of fresh wind, spring rain caressing the earth, a sip of water on a hot day. And it was complete. Not merely five broken notes but a whole melody that harmonized with and echoed the Master Song.
The force of the current did not hinder him as he strode up to the split rock. Unlike with the Takhran, the Song coalesced around the stranger, a spinning whirlpool centered upon him. He stretched out his hands, and the torrent parted, revealing the hilt of the sword. His fingers closed around the grip. The metallic edges of the sword’s melody faded, melting into the man’s song, which in turn blended with the grand melody erupting from the depths of the earth.
One with the master melody. A terrible, glorious beauty.
With both hands, he drew the sword from the broken rock, unleashing another jet of water that shot up into the air with a roar. And in its voice Birdie heard the thunder of the Song. The sides of the Pit groaned, and the cavern shook. The entire mountain trembled. With a blast so loud that it left her ears momentarily deafened, the water tore upward.
The force shot down the walls of the cavern and shivered throughout the Pit. It drove her to the ground. Water and rubble rained down around her. She ducked with her arms covering her head, expecting at any moment to feel the snap of a rock striking her skull, but she was unharmed. The shrieking in her ears faded to a dull whine and then dissipated.
She put down her arms and cautiously lifted her head. Everywhere, people were picking themselves up again. This blast of water had laid them all flat, but she did not see any sign that anyone had been crushed or injured by falling debris. The river had expelled the Takhran and the two Shantren, flinging them high on the bank just downstream from her, beside a fireless torch. All the torches had gone out, winked into nothingness by the rain.
But she could still see.
The thought drew her eyes upward. High above, far beyond where the edges of the Pit broke out into the cavern, pale daylight filtered down, leaving those below in a muted sort of twilight. Her mouth went dry at the realization. The stream of water had burst through the mountain peak and blown an opening in the cap.
Her gaze fell to the stranger standing, sword in hand, before the riven stone. Standing, when all others had been shaken from their feet.
“You.” The Takhran hissed. A thin trickle of blood trailed from his taut lips as he rose to his feet with the calculated intensity of a lion readying for the strike.
The man turned. His stance was not threatening. Merely ready. And yet standing between the two, Birdie felt as though she were caught between opposing thunderheads, waiting for one or the other to lash out first. Earthshaker and Seabringer fell into place behind the Takhran, talavs pulsing around their necks like the embers of a fire.
Water lapped at her toes.
She jerked back a step, gauging the water level. The river was rising. Fast. It had nearly reached the top of the bank. But reinforcements had come to the Takhran. What was she to do now? Tal Ethel had been unleashed, yes, but—
Peace. Be still.
“It should have listened to me.” Bitterness laced the Takhran’s voice. He took a step forward, and the two Shantren trailed him like shadows. Birdie eased closer to the stranger. Regardless of who he was, he wielded the sword without pain, and that alone was enough to earn her trust. “It will listen.”
“It is not yours to command.”
A dangerous light flared in the Takhran’s eye. “Ah, but Artair, that is where you are wrong. Where your kind has always been wrong. Power must be seized. It will be mine to command, because I wish it to be so, and you and your Emhran and all your Songkeepers have never been able to stop me.”
Artair?
Birdie’s eyes widened.
The man—Artair—shook his head. “You are mistaken. The Song is more powerful than you imagine.” He spun on his heel, sword lashing toward Inali. The Saari had only just begun to rise. Terror flashed in his eyes, and he tried to cower, but Artair was too swift. The blade sliced cleanly through the talav, parting chain from bloodstone, and the river swallowed the crystal.
Inali staggered upright, hands rising to his throat.
“If you truly understood the Song’s depth, you would not have dared tamper with it.” Blade lowered, Artair faced the Takhran. “You are finished.”
“No.” The Takhran’s lips tightened into a ghastly smile. “No. I have not endured countless years of this pale and fragile existence to fail now.” His hand snapped up. “Take her.”
Before the weight of his words could sink into Birdie’s mind, Earthshaker seized her. The impulse to flee raced through her limbs a second too late. His whole hand encircled her neck, cutting off her breath and any hope of giving voice to the Song, as he dragged her to the Takhran’s side at the edge of the river.
The dirk—Amos’s dirk—gleamed in the Takhran’s hand. His purpose was clear. He meant to slay her here, to taint the river with spilled blood. Just as he had meant to slaughter the captives. She slammed her heels against the bank, trying to resist Earthshaker’s strength. He lifted her off her feet, his fingers digging into her throat.
A wall of water slammed into them.
Earthshaker’s hold broke, and she landed, gasping, in the shallows.
“You cannot control this river. Not that way or any other.” Artair stepped passed her, sword aglow with a white-blue luminescence, and Earthshaker retreated. “It teems with the force of the Song. Your own pride will be your undoing, Delian.”
With a wild cry, the Takhran snatched the sword from Seabringer and charged to meet Artair with the sword in one hand and the dirk in the other. Their blades met with a ringing crash. Birdie longed to dive into the fray, to strike a blow—for Gundhrold, for the Midlands, for the family the Takhran had stolen from her, for Amos—but the Song pulsed through the river, a summons she could not ignore.
Sing, little Songkeeper.
And so she sang. Kneeling in the shallows with the river spilling over the banks and creeping away across the cavern floor and Earthshaker and Seabringer advancing upon her, their voices lifted in a fierce, dark harmony, and the Takhran and Artair battling knee-de
ep in the current. The deep throb of Tal Ethel rose to blend with her voice. Louder and louder it grew, and a strand of the melody swept the river into a whirlpool around her, lashing it faster and faster until the water formed a spinning vortex that towered over her head and then swept together, forming a dome that enclosed all of them—Earthshaker, Seabringer, the Takhran, and Artair—in its midst.
The water cast a thousand glittering reflections of Artair’s sword, bathing all of them in blued, ever-shifting light. With each stroke the sword sang, and its voice blended with the voice of the river and Birdie’s voice into a masterful song that drowned out Seabringer and Earthshaker’s halfhearted mumbling and swallowed it whole.
Peace. Be still.
•••
Artair was alive.
Over and over, Amos repeated it to himself as he coughed up the debris clogging his throat and dragged himself back to his feet. It was pure luck he and Nisus hadn’t been crushed by the shower of rocks and boulders that had rained down on their heads. It couldn’t be pure luck, though, because Artair was alive, and that meant that something mighty worked here. Something had been at work here all this time.
No matter how much he wanted to deny it, he had seen the life bleed into Artair’s face with his own eyes, and if there was one thing he had ever believed in, it was the accuracy of his own eyes. He wanted to dismiss it. To claim that all of this was some mad, fevered dream. Maybe he had never left the Pit, and this was all the result of some new devilish torture devised by the Takhran. But he couldn’t ignore the awe of the thunderstorm of music and weapons clashing in the Pit below, and the voice that rose beside Birdie’s in song.
He knew that voice.
Nisus staggered upright, looking like a bedraggled cat caught unawares by a downpour, but the grin on his face and the excitement twinkling in his eyes were infectious. “Hawkness . . . can you believe it? It’s true. All of it is true!”
Amos’s spirits lifted in response. Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to end well. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he felt that skittering sensation on the back of his neck, that familiar itch that warned that something was about to go wrong.
Song of Leira Page 39
