by Tanya Huff
They stood, or knelt, perfectly still, their faces blank.
* * * *
Staggering back under her brother’s weight, one hand clamped over the wound, Magda would have fallen had Karlene not lowered them both to the ground.
“Can you Heal him?”
Brows knit together, Magda took a quick look at the bloody gash, then clamped her hand down again, her relief so great it took her a moment to find her voice. “He doesn’t need Healing,” she sniffed, trying to sound unconcerned for Gerek’s sake, “he needs to be sewn up and bound in clean linen packed with comfrey, but since I don’t have a kit with me …” She sent a watery smile in the bard’s direction. “I Healed Gerek while still in the womb. There isn’t anything about his body I don’t know. Which, I might add, is a disgusting amount to know about your brother, in spite of what the girls in the village think.” Lower lip trembling, she drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her eyes unfocused as she laid both shaking hands over the wound.
Gerek screamed and nearly threw himself out from under her touch.
An instant later, Magda sagged forward over an indented line of pale pink skin.
Her own heart beating uncomfortably fast, Karlene stroked damp hair back off Magda’s face. “Are you all right?”
“I hate hurting people,” she whimpered.
“It’s only one quick pain against months of pain. I think Gerek understands.”
“He passed out.”
“I hear that often happens.”
“I think I’m going to faint.”
“Not now,” Bannon called softly, in his thickly accented Shkoden. “Trouble comes.”
With Kars’ limp body cradled in her arms—he was nothing but skin and bones, the bulky robe weighed as much as he did—Vree crossed the yard toward the gate. The dead faces turned toward her as she passed, but that was the only movement they made. Vaguely aware of a confused wailing that seemed to come from the air around her, she laid the body down and turned to Karlene.
“He’s dead.” That was obvious to them all. The heads of the living never rested at quite that angle. “But he’s still in there.”
Thirteen
“It’s been too long,” Karlene said, sagging down onto her knees by Kars’ body and pushing damp hair back off her forehead. “With the others, I used the Song to show them where they should go, but for Kars …” She sighed and spread her hands. “It’s just not enough.”
“We have to do something,” Gyhard murmured through Vree’s mouth.
“I know.” Kars had been responsible for dark and terrible things, but he had suffered as much torment as he’d caused and had been trapped in the darkness far longer than any of his companions. Pity had proven stronger than revulsion and anger both. “Someone has to show him the way.”
“You mean that someone has to die?”
Head bowed, exhaustion dragging her shoulders forward, Karlene nodded.
*Vree, I …*
*No.* Her body jerked with the force of her denial. *Not you.*
*I have lived as much past my time as he has.* He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek.
She lowered it again. *I don’t care.*
*Vree …*
*Don’t leave me.*
He looked down at Kars, at the tortured and undying creature his love had inadvertently created, then he looked into Vree’s heart and wondered how many people were given such a second chance.
Leaning on the open gate, arms folded over his chest, Bannon nodded toward the neat line of dead bodies laid out along one side of the yard. “Should’ve thought before sending them off then,” he snorted.
Karlene glared up at him. “They were suffering, and I had no way of knowing!” He shrugged and she barely resisted the urge to smack him. Besides, considering that he poisoned their entire family, I doubt any of them would be willing to do him a favor.”
“Point,” Bannon admitted after a moment’s consideration.
“Thank you.”
“No one dies,” Magda declared from her place by Gerek’s side.
Dropping her gaze to the young healer, Karlene gentled her voice. “It’s the only way,” she insisted softly.
Eyes narrowed into obstinate slits over purple shadows, Magda raised a hand from the rise and fall of Gerek’s chest and pulled a curl of hair from the corner of her mouth. “Find another.”
A heavy, uncomfortable silence settled over the living. Almost certain she could hear individual heartbeats, Vree asked, “What about Kait?”
Bard and healer both instinctively clapped their hands over their ears as the background wailing only they could hear grew in volume. It rose to a painful crescendo of grief and loss, slicing back and forth through their consciousness like hot, serrated knives.
“Hush … Kait.”
The wailing stopped so suddenly its absence echoed.
Breathing heavily, Karlene nodded down at Kars’ body, her gaze moving quickly enough to avoid eye contact. “Thank you.” Looking up, she swayed and pushed a hand against the ground to brace herself. “Kait’s as lost as Kars is,” she explained when the world stopped moving.
“No one dies,” Magda repeated, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Too many people have died already. Here, in Fortune …”
In Fortune. Karlene started. She could hear the music—if she could only identify the Song. Her fingers closed around a handful of earth. In Fortune, where all four quarters had been Sung the night of Third Quarter Festival. “Jazep!”
“Jazep’s dead!” The protest brought a sudden renewal of grief. There were so many dead …
To Magda’s astonished indignation, the bard laughed and held out a fistful of dirt. “He’s dead, yes, but he’s not gone. His kigh went into the earth. He Sang Third Quarter Festival with me!”
Although Magda and Gerek stared at her in bewilderment, the absolute certainty in her voice kept them from arguing.
Rocking back onto her heels, Karlene surged up onto her feet, exhaustion pushed aside, words tumbling over each other in her eagerness to be heard. “Kait has no effect on the others because they can’t Sing the kigh, but she kept attacking Magda and me because we can. Suppose, after Jazep Sang the dead away in Fortune, she attacked him? Suppose she’s what killed him? He knows what she needs! What Kars needs!” She brandished the fistful of dirt. “That’s why he stayed. To show them the way!”
“Even if that’s true …” Even with a limited understanding of how things worked, Vree had her doubts anyone, even a bard, would stick around to help the one who’d killed them. “… the dirt he went into is back in Fortune.”
“Essentially, true; he went into the earth in Fortune but all kigh are part of a greater whole. There’s only one earth kigh—just as there’s only one air or fire or water.” Exalted, Karlene threw open her arms. “Jazep’s here, back in Fortune, checking out the gardens in Vidor—he’s everywhere!”
“But I thought there were no kigh here.” Vree jerked her head toward Kars without really looking at him. “Because of him.”
“Jazep’s a bard. Kars isn’t going to be able to stop him.”
“Even if you’re right, Karlene …” The young healer’s subdued tone suggested she thought the possibility remote. “… we’d still have to Call his kigh.”
“It’s a fifth kigh,” Karlene began, but Magda cut her off.
“I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anyone but Kars and Kait. I can barely feel myself.” She sighed deeply, looked up and held the bard’s gaze with hers. “And you don’t Sing earth.”
“I do.”
One moment Magda was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her brother, the next she was wrapped in the embrace of a not very tall woman wearing travel-stained clothes and boots marked by a long, hard journey.
“Mama! Oh, Mama.” Face buried against her mother’s neck, Magda couldn’t stop herself from bursting into tears.
Eyes closed, Annice murmured comfort with such fierce intensity that even Kars sig
hed and allowed his head to sag forward on the ruin of his spine.
Vree tried not to stare. *You have to believe her when she says everything’s going to be all right.*
Gyhard smiled. *It wouldn’t dare not to be.*
Swallowing sobs, Magda pushed herself out to arm’s length, her face blotchy and her lashes in triangular clumps. All children believe that in times of trouble their mothers will miraculously come to the rescue, but Magda not only considered herself too old for that particular bardic tale, she’d never heard of it actually happening. “Mother, what are you doing here?” Then she scowled, the effect somewhat ruined by the grip she maintained on Annice’s hands. “You’ve been using the kigh to watch me, haven’t you?”
“You and your brother,” Annice admitted easily, throwing a quick, grateful smile at Karlene. “But, as it happens, that’s not why I’m here.” She sighed and suddenly looked very, very tired. “I felt the dead walking, Maggi, and when Kovar told me you’d left Elbasan, I knew what you were going to do—what you had to do. Under the circumstances, I thought you might need some help.”
“Magda shook her head. “Mother, if you were in Ohrid … I mean, we were riding—there’s no way you could have got here …”
“Jazep made sure I’d arrive in time.”
“Jazep?”
“Karlene’s right. When I Sang earth at Third Quarter Festival, Jazep Sang with me as well. He led me here.”
“Then you know what’s going on.”
Annice swept her gaze over the others, noting the blood on Gerek’s shirt and his newly healed wound, noting two kigh in one body, noting the piled bodies of the dead, and finally noting the dead man watching her with what could only be called hope. “No, dear,” she said, almost smiling in spite of accumulated horrors, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
The sun was setting by the time explanations were over, and the valley looked as though it had been gilded with fire.
“Lost,” Annice murmured, one hand holding tightly to Magda, the other to Gerek as though keeping them from being lost as well. When Gerek had opened his eyes to see her bending over him, he’d smiled and said with very little surprise, “Hullo, Nees. Have you come to make it all better?”
“Yes.” She’d kissed him on the cheek, helped him to sit up, and only then allowed Karlene to recount everything she’d missed since she came close enough to lose the kigh.
“Lost,” she said again. She could feel Kars watching her from where he lay, wrapped in the gathering shadows. If he was lost, it was long past time for him to be found. She stood, and pulled both Gerek and Magda to their feet. “Well, then, let’s get to it before we lose the light. Gerek, go sit over there with Vree and Bannon. All three of you, try to stay out of the way.”
Brother and sister exchanged wary glances.
“Out of the way of what?” Gerek asked.
“The Song.” She took Magda by the shoulders and walked her around to stand at Kars’ head. Beckoning Karlene closer, she joined her left hand with Magda’s right, then moved herself so that the healer stood between the two bards.
Karlene looked a question at Magda who shrugged, equally confused. As everyone’s position received a last assessment, the younger bard murmured, “Annice, just what exactly are we going to do?”
“What has to be done. It’ll all be over soon,” she promised, squeezing her daughter’s hand. Breathing deeply, she moistened her lips and began to Sing.
To her listeners it seemed as if the Song grew roots that reached down into the center of the earth. It thrummed through the ground and vibrated up through the soles of their boots. The Song was earth the way bards had Sung since the very first Song, but then Annice reached deeper, added the four notes of Jazep’s name, and it became something more.
The kigh formed at Kars’ feet. First head, then shoulders, then the barrellike torso, then finally the legs that weren’t quite long enough to put the whole thing in proportion.
Magda blinked away tears and found a smile to answer the smile her name-father Sang at her.
For a moment, Jazep Sang with Annice, then the harmonies began to subtly change as he began directing the Song. They were Singing the fifth kigh, Karlene realized, but it wasn’t the Song she Sang—it was more like a part of a larger Song, one she knew, although she had no idea when she’d learned it. Squeezing Magda’s fingers in hers, she added her voice.
All at once, Kars’ body was only that. A body. No longer a prison.
Jazep looked at Magda and nodded.
It took her a moment to understand and then she reached out with the part of her that healed. *It’s time, Kait. They’re waiting for you.*
In the last of the light, three translucent figures stood hand in hand. The young man, who, had he been born in another place would have been one of the greatest bards the four quarters had ever known, looked down at the ruin of his body and then at Magda. *Would you tell Gyhard I loved him, even when I forgot what that meant.*
*I will.*
*And would you tell Vree that trust …* His smile was sweet and a little tentative as he broke off and shook his head. *Never mind. I think it’s something she has to learn for herself.*
The girl looked up at him with a puzzled frown. *You’re not my father.*
*No.* He took her free hand with his, completing the circle. *I’m Kars.*
Jazep smiled on them both and although Magda was sure she heard him speak, she could still hear his voice in the Song. *Come, children. It’s time to go home.*
As the earth kigh lost its shape, the Song rose until it filled the valley and for a moment, the moment between one heartbeat and the next, Magda heard another voice join in. Not Kars. A silent voice. A gentle voice. A strong voice. And one she knew.
All kigh were part of a greater whole. Earth kigh. Air kigh. Water kigh. Fire kigh. The kigh they called the fifth kigh because the bards had Sung four before it. All kigh were part of a greater whole.
Annice and Karlene Sang the gratitude alone. As the last notes rose up into a sapphire sky, they were nearly blown over by the rush of air kigh demanding their attention. They barely noticed when Magda pulled her hands free and walked over to join the others by the stockade wall.
“You okay, Maggi?” Gerek asked, draping an arm over her shoulders and pulling her close to his side.
She nodded, then, as the euphoria began to fade, she frowned. Something still wasn’t right.
* * * *
Vree and Gyhard found him in the root cellar, pressed up against the earth wall. He’d obviously relieved himself where he sat, and he stank. At first they thought he’d hidden there from Kars but when they led him—not so much unresisting as uncaring—out into the yard, Magda took one look at him and began to shake.
“I think,” she said through clenched teeth, “that I’m going to be sick.”
“Smells bad,” Bannon agreed, moving upwind.
“It’s not that. He’s dead. His body is alive, but he’s dead.”
Holding the lantern up by his face, Vree looked into his eyes and quickly looked away again. “She’s right.”
Gerek shook his head. “That’s impossible,” he began but fell silent when Vree turned toward him.
“I’ve seen enough of the dead to know when I’m seeing another,” she snapped. “I don’t give a shit if this one’s breathing, he’s dead.”
*I think,* Gyhard told her slowly, trying not to remember the feeling of being dragged out into nothingness and suspecting that he’d never forget, *this is what Kars tried to do to me, just before you killed him.*
“A dead kigh in a living body.” Magda chewed over the words. It should have been horrible, it was horrible, but suddenly all she could see was the answer they’d been searching for all along. “A dead kigh in a living … Gyhard!”
“What?” The exchange happened almost effortlessly now.
“This is your body!”
“What!”
“He can’t want to stay, he’s dead.” Breathing
shallowly through her mouth she stepped forward and took the unresponsive hand. “You don’t want to stay, do you?”
*When the body dies, I am free.*
The word “free” reverberated off the inside of her skull. “Except we don’t want the body to die. What’s your name?”
*Enrik.*
“Okay.” She released him and couldn’t stop herself from scrubbing her hand against her thigh. Feeling as though she’d been stretched out by the events of the day, she gritted her teeth, determined to hold together until the end—she only hoped it would be soon. “Enrik here wants to leave. So Karlene …” She grabbed Karlene’s arm as the two bards joined them and pulled her forward. “… Sings him out of his body and away.”
“Maggi, this is a dead man in a living body!” Annice exclaimed just as Karlene demanded to know what she was talking about.
Magda sighed, explained, and finished with, “Once he’s out of the body, Vree gives a little push and Gyhard moves in. Simple.”
“Simple?” Gerek muttered. Bannon indicated complete agreement with the raising of both brows.
Gyhard studied Enrik in the lamplight. He was probably in his mid-twenties, brown hair bleached out by a working day spent in the sun, skin bronzed by the same. His nose had been broken at least once. His hands were rough, the nails ridged. It was hard to determine anything else under all the dirt. “The funny thing is,” he said so quietly only Vree heard him, “my family owned a timber-holding. If I hadn’t met up with those brigands, this might have been me.”
*You’re going to do it?*
He thought of all that it would mean. *If it can be arranged as simply as Magda thinks, yes.*
*What about me?* She could feel the emptiness surrounding her. Waiting. *What about us?*
*Vree …* Confused, he paused. He could feel her distress, but he didn’t understand the source. *You’ll still be you,* he hazarded at last. *And we’ll still be us. The body’s young and strong and …*
“No.” Vree’s head snapped back and her eyes narrowed. “NO!” You’re not going to leave me, too!” She flung the lamp to the ground and in the sudden darkness raced for the gate.