The song will change if he accepts this, change maybe forever, and my future will be secured. Or my death.
No. It is worth the risk. We are too close to the wakening. It has to be now.
‘May I send for it?’ Enet asked. When he didn’t answer, she rose from the mats and straightened her kilt as she strode to the courtesans’ entrance, then signalled for her guards to bring it in. She took the cloth-wrapped package one profferred her, hummingbirds taking flight in her belly.
Enet hurried back to Xac’s side, noting the wary confusion in his face as they brought in the hooded, bound figure and kicked it to its knees. She flicked fingers in dismissal of her guards and let the Chorus warrior take over, standing above the prisoner with his club ready.
‘Great Singer,’ Enet said and pulled off the kneeling figure’s hood. ‘This is Betsu, a Yaloh spy and a warrior who insulted your name and our Empire. She came here under guise of being a peace-weaver, and then she fled my house in the night and was spotted trying to rouse slaves in the flesh markets to rebellion. I have kept her secure – and she has been brought here in secret.’
Enet watched for the Singer’s reaction as she unwrapped the cloth from the bundle. ‘Great Singer, divine god, I offer you the stone knife.’
The Singer stared at the weapon lying between them, the ritual blade of rare pale quartz knapped to a wicked sharpness, the handle carved from the leg bone of a jaguar. Unique and beautiful and full of magic. Forbidden, ancient magic not used in centuries. The gold in his skin pulsed and flowed as if reaching towards it, urging him to take it up, to wield it on flesh and bone.
Enet’s mouth was dry as the Singer didn’t move. ‘Prisoner, lower your eyes. You have no permission to look upon the holy lord, our living god, our great Singer,’ she snapped. Her voice bounced from the plastered walls to mingle with the choir of children singing somewhere out of sight, the trickle of water, and the chirr of cicadas from the gardens. Beneath them all clanged the song and Betsu’s ragged breathing. The Singer’s own breathing wasn’t much better; his nostrils flared like an exhausted deer’s as he dragged in air, not quite believing what was happening.
‘You shouldn’t have fucking brought me here then, should you, if you didn’t want me to look? Get your stinking hands off me!’ the Yalotl shouted as the Chorus shoved her head down onto the mat and held it there. ‘Not that he’s anything to look at. Hands are soft – has he ever tilled a field or held a weapon?’ The words were muffled but loud enough to reach Enet’s ears. And the Singer’s.
‘What is this?’ Xac whispered, his eyes as round as those of a holy Setat. ‘Is this a joke – or am I the joke here?’ The danger in his voice made Enet’s bladder tighten.
She ran her palm up his arm, across the thick shoulder and down his back. ‘No, holy lord. You want sensation. You want experience. You want to kill, and more than just monkeys.’ He twitched at that and Betsu began to struggle.
‘It is forbidden,’ the Singer said, his words slow and unsure.
They all knew why it was forbidden. The Singer must be surrounded with beauty and strength at all times. The Singer must not be upset or experience strong emotion of a negative nature. The Singer must not be exposed to horrors or criticised or angered. And the Singer must never, ever revel in death, lest it seep into the song and corrupt the millions of spirits bound up in its glory. A strong song meant strong people. A bloody song, though … or at least, that was what the legends said. Enet’s research indicated otherwise and here, now, with her influence and status hanging by the thread of the Singer’s changeable whims, she had no choice but to accelerate her plans.
She lowered her voice to a purr. ‘This woman is no one. She is … invisible. Expendable. Sensation, great Singer: that is my gift to you.’
‘Return to your place.’ The Singer’s voice was a throaty growl.
The Chorus warrior hesitated. ‘It is my duty to protect you.’
‘Do not disobey the Singer,’ Enet snapped, trembling with adrenaline and triumph and not a little terror. There’s no going back. Am I really doing this? Are we doing this?
The warrior hesitated again, testing the very bounds of duty and obedience despite his loyalty to Enet, and then he let go of Betsu’s neck and took a single pace backwards. The Yalotl came up faster than a striking snake, got her feet under her and was halfway to standing when his club smashed into her shoulder and drove her back onto her knees. Enet squeaked at the sudden movement, but the sound was lost under the Yaloh bellow of hurt.
A moment later the Singer’s fist buried itself in Betsu’s gut. She folded over and Xac hit her again, hammering into her cheekbone, snapping her head to one side.
‘Who is your god?’ Enet shouted when the warrior instinctively stepped back in, panic flushing his features at the breach not just of tradition and protocol but of ritual. The Singer must never be exposed to violence. The song must not be blooded. The single most inviolable rule – and the one that Enet was deliberately breaking.
Because it is wrong.
Her question brought the Chorus stumbling to a halt, obedience warring with duty, and in that moment, it happened.
The song brayed. Raw power crackled from Xac, lifting the hairs on Enet’s arms and neck, a frisson of energy and need and dominance tingling from scalp to soles. She shuddered and rocked under its intensity, and then Xac was on Betsu, straddling her waist, fists driving into her head and neck and chest, bellowing with joy, swelling with the thrill of the song, his body expanding, muscles engorged and golden beneath glistening skin until he glowed.
The knife was next to them, within reach of the peace-weaver – if she could free her hands. Another thrill shivered through Enet and she shifted on her knees, facing the Singer, avid, living his joy through the song, buffeted by the storm of his emotions.
The Yalotl was on her back, helpless to avoid the beating, her head snapping one way and then the other. Whatever she was shouting was garbled, lost amid the punches raining on her jaw and mouth until they faded into grunts. Blood and a tooth splattered from her mouth and across Enet’s tunic, up in a line of dots across her throat. Xac paused, staring intently at the blood on her skin, and then he leant forward and licked it from her neck.
The source was swimming with power, so thick Enet couldn’t help but breathe it in like pollen, like sunlight, until it filled her with radiance and need and she found the abandoned knife and shoved it into the Singer’s hand. The Chorus dropped his club and fell to his knees at her side, his hands clenching and unclenching with brimming, uncontrolled need as they watched Xac work, song-driven lust and bloodlust filling them both.
Enet watched her holy lord, her great Singer, her lover, as he peeled the Yaloh face off with the knife and wove her screams into the song until it roared and beat at them, beat inside them until they were all three growling like animals and everything was edged in golden radiance, in power.
Xac pulled Betsu’s face, still blood-warm, over his own and showed it to her. She screamed louder, somehow still fighting, but the Singer was invincible in his magic now and he lifted her in one hand and dragged her, clawing at his arm, to the offering pool.
A Setat rose with a need greater even than the Singer’s. Its song filled the source, filled them with such yearning, such inescapable delight amid the carnage and the power that Enet orgasmed as Betsu, faceless and yet somehow, she knew, smiling, freed herself from the Singer’s grip and walked into the water, arms out to receive the Setatmeh claw-tipped embrace.
They watched the waters turn pink and the Singer threw the woman’s face into the pool and then he returned at a run and fell on Enet like an eagle, his lust swallowing her whole.
And the song roared on.
THE SINGER
The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
The song is mine, my will and creation, my duty and my glory. I craft my greatness into music. My flesh and mind, my soul and intentions. My divinity.
I know the song�
�s needs; I know the Empire’s needs. None may gainsay me or stand against my will.
My magic drives all hearts and stirs all souls, music that resonates through every mind and from every pyramid in this great Empire. Which I have made. Empire and music both.
I am the Singer, glory incarnate. Song incarnate. Magic made flesh. My strength cannot be measured for I have come into my power like the Singers of old and I will raise the Empire to heights none have ever achieved.
I will wake the world spirit. I will do whatever is necessary for glory. The song is mine and it can never be undone, unsung, unheard.
The song is mine …
I am the song.
I am the song that beats in the blood of millions. I am the song that lulls them to sleep and rouses them to war, that succours the fearful and strengthens the weak.
I am the song and the song is me. I know what it needs; I give it what it craves. I strengthen myself to strengthen the Empire.
To be without me is to be without hope, without faith, without will or might or cunning. To be without me is to betray, to lie and wail and know defeat. To be without me is to die.
I am the song and the song is me. I am unlike all others and my song shall be the lasting melody of the world. I am the sum and pinnacle of all life.
It is my song that raises us up. It is me. My will. My divinity.
My blade.
For I am the song. And the song is me.
TAYAN
Great Octave’s estate, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
175th day of the Great Star at morning
Death stalked him.
He’d promised Betsu he would wait a month before leaving, but he was half convinced he wouldn’t live until duskmeal, let alone another two weeks. Something had happened, something momentous that had changed the song, driving it out of its usual beautiful strength into something … lustful.
It had taken hours to settle, imperious as ever, but there was a wildness to it even now, two days later, an edge of danger, as if it danced on the very cusp of madness and the Singer was unable to tame it. Or perhaps he did not want to.
Tayan hadn’t seen Enet since it had happened and none of the slaves would answer his questions or allow him anywhere but the few rooms he’d been granted access to and a small part of the gardens. He ate and sat and walked in silence, in isolation. He didn’t know what had happened, and without the usual excursions the Great Octave had taken him on, he had nothing to distract himself from wild speculation.
Since Betsu’s departure, Enet had taken him into the city most days in a blatant attempt to overwhelm him with Pechaqueh society. They’d visited gardens and fighting pits, markets including flesh markets, where she pointed out how they selected the appropriate profession for the new slaves, and they’d visited temples to admire the murals of holy Setatmeh and Singers past. He had seen much and learnt very little. It was all empty, a formal nonsense intended to cow him into submission, to reinforce the belief that they could never defeat the Empire of Songs and that the proposed surrender was the only rational choice. Even worse, a small, traitorous part of him was beginning to believe it.
Tayan barely slept, and not just because of the nightmares he’d suffered ever since the ritual at the river. The slave’s face, barred with the Drowned’s fingers and claws, bleeding. Each night, the face changed – sometimes it was Xessa’s, other times it was Lilla’s. Once it had been his own. And through it all the song, worming through his skull and bones like a million ants.
But now, finally, she had summoned him to the so-called small room with its views of the garden. Tayan hadn’t seen most of the other rooms, so its size meant nothing other than that it was almost as big as his and Lilla’s entire home.
They sat, a pitcher of honeyed water and fine pottery cups on the low table between them. ‘Is the holy lord quite well, Great Octave?’
Enet jerked and looked at him. Her eyes were bright – too bright – as if she’d swallowed journey-magic, and although she sat apparently composed opposite him, her hands were rarely still. Her fingers twined and curled about each other like a nest of mating snakes and flickers of emotion raced across her face that she seemed unable to control. She kept running her tongue around her gums, as if she had seeds stuck in her teeth. He hadn’t thought she could be so preoccupied, so vulnerable.
‘What? Of course. The great Singer is in perfect health,’ she said, waving a hand in poor imitation of airy dismissal, and that’s when he identified it. Deep inside, behind the walls and masks of power, privilege, and arrogance, Enet was frightened. Terrified down to her bones.
And that frightens the shit out of me.
Something had happened. When the song had veered so wildly out of control, when it had reverberated with fury and lust and a dark, red-edged cruelty that had made his pulse thunder in his ears, something had changed for Enet, too. While she had remained frustratingly vague on the magic that powered the song, he knew enough to recognise that something momentous had occurred. He’d witnessed the hunched shoulders and lowered voices of the slaves, the hurried, anxious whispers as they went about their tasks. He’d seen the ones in the gardens staring at the estate wall as if they could see through it all the way to the pyramid and within, to learn the cause of this change. And what it meant for them.
Perhaps it was the sound of the Singer’s decision to go to war. Perhaps Tayan’s ruse had failed. Enet had assured him that she would tell the Singer and the council that the Tokob and Yaloh had agreed to surrender to preserve their lives, but maybe she hadn’t, or he hadn’t believed her. Maybe what Tayan was hearing now was the call to war, summoning the Melody from their massive fortress somewhere to the south.
Betsu will warn them. They’ll be ready.
But the song didn’t just sound different. It felt different. It was similar to those times he used old journey-magic ingredients whose potency was diminished – he still journeyed, though with difficulty, but when he came back he felt … grubby. On the inside. As if he needed to shuck his skin, turn it inside out, and scrub it clean.
And none of that explained the fear the Great Octave was struggling to hide.
The shaman had become so used to the song in the last weeks that he didn’t think of it any more. The change had reminded him and now it was as it had been those first days inside the Empire: he couldn’t ignore it. It was in everything, flavouring his food and colouring the things he looked at. Affecting his mood. Because this song was victorious; it was triumphant; and it was vicious. It made Tayan want to be vicious. Earlier, he’d even insulted a slave who hadn’t made his cornbread with enough chillies.
As if I’m a fucking Pecha. The shame of it – and the insidious, creeping fear of it – filled him. This is what the song does. I feel what it feels, what it tells me to feel. And it is telling me that I am better than these slaves.
And I am not. But he didn’t like how long it had taken him to remember to add that qualification. He clutched at the yellow marriage cord around his neck, running his fingers over the familiar knots and tiny charms to ground himself. It didn’t help; was he becoming like them?
‘What happened to the song?’ he asked abruptly. His voice came out too loud, too demanding, and he flushed, but again Enet barely seemed to notice.
‘What?’
‘Why is it different? What has happened? Is it some sort of Empire-wide message?’ He tapped his fingers against his knee in indecision. ‘Is it broken?’ he added and Enet flinched.
Her hand jerked up in a short, abortive gesture that nonetheless took in the room and beyond. ‘You live within the song now. It has taken you and woven you into its whole. You are a note within it. Tell me, does it feel broken to you?’
Tayan considered her, fidgeting and afraid and trying hard to hide it. ‘Not broken,’ he said slowly, ‘but not … controlled, either. It no longer whispers; it shouts. Why has it changed?’
The Great Octave forced a derisive laugh. ‘Why would I discuss
such things with you?’ she asked.
He took a soft, slow breath in. ‘Because you can’t discuss them with anyone else,’ he suggested and she started, eyes widening and then, an instant later, narrowing with suspicion and contempt.
‘Are we friends now, peace-weaver of the Tokob? Should I confide in you?’ She sniffed and looked away, shaking her head as if at a foolish child.
‘Do you want to?’ he asked and she forced another laugh.
‘I think not,’ Enet said softly, and then straightened, as if reaching some sudden decision. ‘We are done here.’
Tayan’s smile congealed and then slid into polite puzzlement. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You yourself have said you will surrender, and so the peace-weaving is concluded. I am too busy to waste any more time on you, and have done you courtesy far above your status. You will return home today.’
The change in the song had unsettled him, planting a seed of anxiety in his belly that was swiftly growing. He’d wanted to leave, had spent much of the last two days trying to work out how to escape unscathed, half convinced that he was going to be killed in some ritual to calm the song. Now here she was, pushing him out, eager to see him gone, something like relief breaking like sunlight across her face as she spoke and yet he was … reluctant.
When he crossed eventually back into Yalotlan, he would no longer hear the song. Which was a good thing. Soon after, he’d be back in his land, surrounded by the spirits and his ancestors and his family. His husband. And yet. Tayan felt a part of something greater now, the way he did when he journeyed but all the time. It was powerful and it was seductive and he could no longer imagine what it would be like to not hear the song.
No. No, Tayan. Get a fucking grip.
Deliberately, he thought of Lilla, the tilt of his head when Tayan said something stupid, the curve of his mouth in the dark, the heat of his flesh and the strength of his body. He thought of his laugh, low and infectious and more beautiful by far than this fucking monkey-chatter. That was the real music of his life. The only song he needed was Lilla’s voice.
The Stone Knife Page 23