The talav.
“We are the Shantren.”
Already Amos could hear the baying of hounds in the distance and the clatter of swiftly approaching iron shod feet. Khelari, as luck would have it. Far better than monsters. Muttering a prayer for their luck to hold, he dropped into the hole where the false floor had caved in, managing by some miracle—or rather, a marvelous display of skill, as he preferred to think it—to land clear of the debris and scramble to Sym’s side.
She moaned and stirred before he even reached her, but it was only with his help that she managed to sit. Judging from the hand she pressed to her side and the taut expression on her face, she had broken at least a rib or two. A cut on her forehead dripped blood into her eyes, giving her a wild, almost savage look.
“Easy there, lass, put yer arm around my shoulder.” Hefting her weight, he helped her stand and then hastily collected the spears that had tumbled from her quiver in her fall. “Best we were movin’.”
But the boggswoggling lass resisted his tug, even though she swayed on her feet and looked about ready to fall over. “Inali . . . Birdie . . . where are they?”
“Gone ahead, an’ we’re tryin’ t’ catch up, just by a slightly different route.”
“Do you know where to go?”
“Aye.” He stumbled over the rubble, turned back to help her cross, then set his shoulder beneath hers. “Inali said t’ stick t’ the right, so”—he ducked down the first right-hand passage he saw—“we’ll stick t’ the right.”
It was far from easy going. Even though he was practically carrying Sym, Amos kept to a jog down the steep corridors and around narrow bends, spurred on as much by the sounds of pursuit that seemed to be coming from all sides now, as by the thought of his lass here below Mount Eiphyr without him. But there was a sense of wrongness to their route that gnawed at him, though he couldn’t have said whether it came from his own heightened sense of alertness or some hazy recollection from his previous journey through the tunnels.
After a good hour of running, he puffed to a stop in front of the next fork in the tunnel and set his back to the wall to keep from falling over. His legs quivered and specks of light darted across his vision. Sym started to gasp a question, but he flung up a hand and managed to silence her before she could distract him from listening . . . and sniffing.
Bilges, what a stench!
Ash, rotten eggs, and stale meat—the place reeked of it. And it wasn’t the first time he had smelled it either. Cold sweat trailed down his back. He shoved away from the wall. “We need t’ go—”
Something moved within the right-hand tunnel. Something large. He heard the rasp of clawed feet against rock, the scrape of a hefty bulk against the sides of the tunnel, and the shriek of an indrawn, heated breath.
All this, his mind registered in an instant.
“Down, Sym! Down!”
He yanked her to the ground and dragged her away from the tunnel, shielding her body with his. Just in time. A spout of flame shot out, singing the back of his head. The heat sizzled on down his back, but he rolled away, putting out the sparks, and back up to his feet, dirk in hand.
For once, it seemed a worthless weapon.
Out of the tunnel came a beast of nightmare. To be sure, it had stalked his dreams since that fateful night when he first braved the horrors of the tunnels, but night terrors were nothing compared to seeing such a monster again in the flesh. Three heads joined at the shoulders above a massive muscled chest. In the middle, it had the head of a lion, flanked by the head of a long-horned goat on one side and a fanged serpent on the other. Hunched back with knobs of spine jutting like blades. Long, strong forelimbs. Short, squat hindlimbs. Body covered in patches of scales, hide, and tufts of fur.
The goat head bleated.
Amos would have died before admitting that the bleat of a goat could sound menacing, but the utter wrongness of the sound from such a beast made his hackles rise. Cursing their luck, he carefully maneuvered in front of Sym, giving her time to regain her breath and her feet. “Get up. Slowly. Walk t’ the end o’ the tunnel. Then run an’ don’t look back.”
“Sigurd’s mane!” Her hissed oath echoed from the walls. “What do you take me for?”
“Bilges! Just do what I say.”
The beast’s eyes settled on him. All six of them. And he didn’t need a Songkeeper’s abilities to know the creature’s blind, rabid, unreasoning hate. Fire smoldered in the lion’s throat, and black venom oozed from the serpent’s fangs to sizzle against the tunnel floor.
Right. Avoid the fire. Don’t get bitten. Steer clear of the horns.
Simple.
Chin lowered, he stalked toward the monster on stiff legs. “Aye, beastie, over here. That’s it. Look at me, ye foul, putrid, malodorous spawn o’ the Pit—”
With a roar and a burst of flame, the beast sprang at him. He dove sideways, narrowly missing the sweep of the goat’s horns, slammed into the tunnel wall, and stumbled to regain his balance. There was a lot of power in those squat hind legs. Like springs. Probably the goat in it.
He’d have to keep that in mind.
The beast checked itself and spun around. A risked glance over Amos’s shoulder confirmed that Sym was up, but not running for her life as instructed. Fool girl even had a spear in her hand.
“Hawkness!”
Her shout brought him reeling around just in time to dodge a snap of the lion’s massive jaws. Bloody monster was fast. He slashed away the serpent’s head and swung out of reach of the lion, but the goat rammed into his side. His feet left the earth, and he crashed onto his back beneath the beast’s feet. The breath burst from his lungs in a groan.
Scrabbling claws tore at his legs and the rock beneath. He jerked out of the way as the serpent’s fangs came down only inches from his throat. With a yell, he brought his dirk around with all the force he could muster and hacked through the serpent’s neck. The severed head landed, mouth gaping, eyes glazing over, on his chest, and he wrenched away from the venom leaking from the fangs.
On hands and knees, he scrambled away from the beast. But not fast enough. It pounced on him, knocked him flat. His chin slammed against the ground, rattling all the bones in his head. The dirk flew from his hand. With a swipe of a clawed paw, the monster rolled him over on his back so that he stared straight up into the yawning gulf of the lion’s blazing throat and read his death in its eyes.
Claws sank like barbed knives into his flesh. The beast’s weight settled on his chest until he felt sure his ribs would crack beneath its bulk. Lungs heaving for air, body seizing against the pain, Amos managed to work one arm loose and reached out as far as he could, fingers groping for his dirk.
Gray tinged the edge of his vision.
Distantly, he heard a Saari battle cry, and out of the corner of one eye, he saw Sym leap into the fray. Her spear thrust clattered off the goat’s horns. It batted her aside with a twist of its head. She landed hard.
No dirk met his searching fingers.
No trace of metal. Not even a bloody rock to bludgeon the beast to death.
Naught but a scaled head.
Without a breath for thought, Amos seized it, ignoring the burn of venom across his fingertips, and drove the serpent’s fangs into the lion’s neck. The beast roared and flames curled from its mouth but sputtered out before reaching Amos’s face. He shut his eyes against the blast of heat.
A sickening thunk.
Then another. The beast’s body shuddered, swayed, and collapsed on top of him. Amos just lay there, groaning, almost smothered beneath the weight. Then a hand seized his wrist and hauled him backwards, and that awoke the fight in him again. He shoved and kicked until he was free, then collapsed with his back to the wall.
Sym leaned over, clutching a hand to her side and breathing in short, pained gasps. Two of her spears protruded from the three-headed beast
’s side, driven in nearly half their length. Took quite a bit of force to do that.
Amos squinted up at her. “Worried about me, eh?”
She glared at him. Only a moment’s glance, then her eyes flickered back to the beast and the tunnels. There was the slightest hint of frenzy in her voice when she spoke. “We should be moving. There may be more—”
“Oh there’s more all right, but not here.” Amos gritted his teeth as he did a mental survey of his injuries. Nothing life threatening or even incapacitating. But that didn’t mean it didn’t bloody well hurt. “Not here, or we’d be dead already. Sit an’ rest a moment. Ye’ll need it.”
She nodded her chin toward the monster. “What was that?”
“A chimera is—I think—its proper name. Boggswogglin’ nasty is what I call it.”
“We have legends about such beasts in the desert.”
“Legends.” Amos swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and chin and brought it up to survey the blood. “Ye know, just once, I’d like a good, happy legend t’ turn out t’ be true. Why does it always have t’ be the foul ones?”
Sym chuckled. “Don’t know if I’d call you foul, Hawkness.”
“Oh, so ye believe the legends then? ’bout time, if I do say so.”
She snorted at that, but there was a hint of laughter in it. That was good, that was. Because worse horrors were yet to come. False bravery would prove just that—false. But if a man or woman could look death in the face and march boldly to meet it with a grin on his or her lips, well, that was the only true defense a mind had against complete and total despair.
With a groan, he shoved up to his feet and skirted the beast’s carcass in search of his dirk. He found it lodged beneath the goat’s head. With a toe, he nudged the head aside and then reached down and scooped up his dirk.
“Well, then, shall we be off?”
Before Sym could reply, three soldiers in dark armor and a hound burst from the right-hand tunnel.
29
“Inali, you must tell me why.” Birdie clung to the rusted bars of her cell, hands torn from pulling on the rough metal. Blood seeped from a hound bite on her leg and trickled down the leather fringe of her leggings to leave a trail of crimson drops that glistened in the light of the firepot on the opposite wall. “Why do this?”
The Saari warrior just ducked his head and continued pacing outside her cell. It stood in a row of honeycomb shaped chambers carved from the rock and concealed by heavy draperies from the Hall of the Shantren, the cavernous room where Inali had led her to her capture.
Her head throbbed with the constant pulse of the discordant melody that emanated from this place, and every muscle in her body strained with the longing to fight . . . or die fighting.
Flight had done her no good.
At Inali’s declaration, she had bolted. But mere seconds had passed before a dozen hounds tore at her heels. One sank its teeth into her right leg and brought her down. Another crouched with its jaws poised over her throat. Within moments, her hands were bound and her sword belt torn away. Surrounded by robed figures, she was hustled past a fountain swirling with dark red liquid and the ring of stone benches surrounding it, to this cell, leaving her well and truly caught in the heart of the Takhran’s fortress.
In the place of her nightmares.
The horror of it lodged in her chest, and she let her forehead sag against the bars. Better that she had gone down fighting. “Why would you betray us? I need to know.”
“You need know nothing.” Inali whirled to face her, dusky braids flying about his face in a clatter of clacking beads. “But by Sigurd’s mane, you should be thanking me. I am helping you.”
Helping?
Bitterness welled in her throat at the notion, and she longed to scream and rail at him for the coward and liar and traitor that he was. But somehow, she managed to restrain her tongue and let him speak unhindered.
“Tell me.” Inali snarled, face inches from the bars. “Did It spring to your rescue? I warned you. It is content to use you and abandon you, but there are greater things here than your Song, little Songkeeper.” The wrath eased from his face, replaced by an intense fervor that was no less unsettling. “I saw it in your eyes when I first met you. I knew that you, like me, felt it—the lack of control, the agony of being bound by something greater than yourself, of being used, of being little more than a tool. Believe me, little one, I brought you here so you could be free.”
Everything within her burned to shout at him, spit in his face, and demand to be released, or at least granted a sword so she could die fighting. But she had come seeking answers too, hadn’t she? And Inali, it seemed, was willing to speak.
So she would let him.
“This is freedom?” She dipped her head to the walls of her cell and the bars across the front. “Or will I be free once I take the talav and become one of you?”
“You speak as though it were an evil thing.” Inali hooked a finger through the chain about his neck so the jewel dangled close beside her face. “But it is beautiful. Powerful. Strong. Gifted by the Takhran with abilities to bestow upon the wearer. How could such a gift be evil?”
“What sort of abilities?”
“Wondrous gifts! Similar to those of the Songkeepers. But we Shantren are not left idle and drifting, waiting upon the whim of the Song. The talav bestows power and control.” Inali’s eagerness grew as he spoke. “Some are gifted to speak with mute beasts, others with strength in battle, disguise, powers of healing. The cat that Carhartan sent to spy upon you, he was a mimic, gifted to speak and sing in ways you would trust. I am able to see things and fashion them, a gift of the hands, and to fashion things as I would see them.”
He broke off and rummaged in his satchel, then pulled out the drawing she had seen him working on and held it up to the bars. “Do you not see, little Songkeeper? In the Shantren, all of us are made strong in ourselves. Fear is a thing of the past.”
In any other place, the promise of strength would have been tempting. A chance to be free of the fear that hammered in her chest, to set her own course and have the power to pursue it—for Inali to offer such a thing, it was as if he had laid bare her very soul. But here in this cell, in the grip of her enemies, his words simply served as confirmation that he was a liar, a manipulator, and a traitor.
“What of your melody, Inali? You don’t have one. Is that a gift too?” Her words seemed to catch him off guard, but he gave no answer, and she couldn’t bear meeting his eyes any longer. She slid to the ground to relieve the weight from her injured leg. “And what of Sym?”
He pulled back. “That . . . that was not supposed to happen. It was to have been Hawkness who fell, not Sym. I would never have hurt her.”
“Yet you, my dear Dah Inali, were incapable of handling her.” The quiet voice came from the shadows that lurked beyond the reach of the flickering light. At the sound, Inali instantly fell to one knee, injured arm clasped to his chest. Birdie rose to a crouch and pressed her face against the bars, but could see no sign of the speaker. “Sym Yandel would have seen through you in a moment. Far better to ensure she was out of the way than jeopardize your mission.”
“My lord …” Inali’s face had gone pale, and his voice sounded strained. “That was not part of our deal. The raven . . . it brought word . . . you promised.”
“I recall your promise as well.” There was no mistaking the threat in the weighted inflection of the stranger’s voice. Out of the shadows he came, a tall man clad in a rich blue robe with a dark silver coat fitted to his frame over chainmail so fine it seemed less armor and more ornament. He bore no weapon, but there was something about him that turned Birdie’s blood cold, brought her scrambling to her feet, and whispered dangerous in her ear.
The stranger towered over Inali. “Or have you forgotten?”
Gritting his teeth, Inali patted the satchel at
his side. “No, my lord, I have not forgotten. It is here, as I promised, and I have brought you the little Songkeeper as well.” A hint of eagerness crept back into his tone. “Please, my lord, tell her, as you told me, what the talav can do for her. How it can set her free, bring her strength she has never imagined.”
The stranger’s gaze lifted, and pale blue eyes beneath dark brows locked on Birdie’s. Hair the color of Vituain desert sand swept back from his forehead and fell in waves to his shoulders. A wide silver collar draped over his chest, inlaid with dozens of red crystals like those worn by the Shantren, and in the wake of his voice, a deep note hung in the air. So deep, she could scarce tell if it was a note or merely the throb of a tremendous pressure. It slammed into her, and it was all she could do to keep from sinking to her knees beneath the force.
She tightened her grip on the bars in a vain attempt to still the trembling of her hands, not yet ready to believe what her hammering heart had already acknowledged.
That this was the Takhran.
He halted before her cell, so close she had to tip her head back to look up into his face, and cocked his chin to one side, considering her. “The talav can do nothing for this one, young Inali. I have far better plans for her.”
“Better plans? But my lord—”
Without breaking eye contact, the Takhran lifted his voice, cutting Inali’s remonstrance short. “Come, Zahar. What think you of our little Songkeeper?”
Both the name and the whisper of a soft step drew Birdie’s eyes from the Takhran to the woman who entered, robed in the blue of the Shantren, with hair like autumn leaves that hung in long, silver-banded braids to her waist. A red crystal dangled from a chain about her neck. Save for the dark hollows beneath her eyes and cheekbones, neither age nor worry had yet lined her forehead or marred her skin. Regal, she seemed, even more so than Sa Itera.
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