“Where is The Song of Elenet?” The voice that said this was almost too genteel to be believed. It carried to every corner of the Carmelia with a soft-spoken lilt, tinged with an accent Barad could not place. The crowd near and far fell silent. “Tell us where it is. Our time to have it is now.”
“More courtly than the Tunishnevre, that’s clear,” Hanish said. His eyes just happened to touch Barad’s. He paused, surprised to see the man staring at him. He nodded and, looking straight at him, he said, “Still, I don’t like their tone.”
Barad did not return his greeting, but even that was a form of communication between them. It was all he had time for.
“How does one speak to madmen?” Corinn asked. No one hearing it would have known she had just watched these men slaughter soldiers with a gesture of their arms or had turned falling arrows to flying dart birds. “I wish I knew, for surely you are madmen. You seem not to know that you are speaking to the queen of the Acacian Empire. You seem to not know that you’ve interrupted-”
“We know,” another of the sorcerers said. He stood at the second landing now, again having paused there. His voice dripped sickly sweetness, as if he were answering the question of a toddling child. “Give us The Song and we will bless your reign with wizardry you have not yet even imagined.”
Corinn’s mouth hardened. “Madman, what name do you claim?”
“I am Nualo,” the first man said. He gestured to the others. “We are the Santoth. We are Tinhadin’s chosen warriors. We are the exiled returned. We who have been imprisoned are free.” And then, proudly, “You both know us. We called to you, but you would not listen.”
“You can’t be. The Santoth are exiled.” Corinn snapped a quick glance at Aliver. “Do you know these intruders?”
The prince mouthed something-the name the man had given, Barad thought-but did not say it out loud. Turning to her, he said, “If-if this is them, they have changed.”
“Are they the Santoth?” Corinn pressed.
Aliver hesitated. Was what he wanted to say at odds with what Corinn wished him to say? Or was the hesitation something else? Barad could not tell. “They were not like this before. They were… wise men. Peaceful men.”
“We still are,” another Santoth said.
“Why did you kill?” Aliver asked. “Nobody here deserved death. The Santoth abhorred killing. They wouldn’t-”
“We defended ourselves,” Nualo said. “That is all. It is not our fault that the Giver’s tongue has curdled within us. We abhorred corruption in the song. We want it cleansed and sweet in us again.” As he spoke, he unfastened the clasp that secured his cloak. He shrugged it from his shoulders and let it drop in a heap on the stones. Beneath it, he wore a breastplate, snug trousers, and thick warrior’s boots. “We are just men, like you. But we have been in torment for so long. In exile. With corruption roiling in our heads. You cannot understand this.”
Another of them turned as he spoke, letting his words sweep across the crowd. “When the song is corrupt, there is no joy in it. Let us have it true again, and we will serve you.”
Shaking his head, Aliver said, “You are not the men I knew.”
“I don’t care what they were,” Corinn said. “Say it simply: Are these the Santoth?”
Though she looked focused on the exchange, Barad could sense something happening around her. He could partially see it-a blurring disturbance in the air around her. He could partially hear it-something like music almost too far in the distance for him to hear.
Staring at the one who had last spoken, Aliver said, “Yes. I see you, Dural. You are not the quiet one I met in Talay, but I can see you.” He glanced at another. “And you, Abernis. Tenith. All of you. I can see you all. Nualo, I see you most of all.”
“You have living eyes, then,” Nualo said. “It is good that we have come, if you see us true.”
Corinn gathered her answer around her like comfortable armor. She spoke impatiently, as if she would spare them only a few more words before returning to the interrupted ceremony. “No, it is not good. As Santoth you breathe by our leave. You should not be here without our permission. You were exiled. This is no place for you unless we ask for you. We do not. Go back to exile.”
At the same time as she said these Acacian words, something else came out with them, woven through them. The Giver’s tongue. That was what he could almost see and hear. A spell. Barad heard it writhing through the words. So, too, did the Santoth. For a moment the order seemed to have power over them. As a group, they were pushed back on their heels, off balance as if hit by a gust of wind that no one else felt. But they came back to flat on their feet fast enough.
Abernis smiled and said, “We are free from the curse. The girl released us. We will not go back.”
“What girl?”
“This one’s daughter.” He pointed at Aliver. “Shen. An Akaran. She released us.”
Barad heard Hanish make a sound low in his throat.
“Lies,” Corinn said. She might have been refuting either Abernis or Hanish. “He has no daughter. You wish to trick us into truly letting you free. I don’t acknowledge it. Go back to exile!”
This time, both the spoken words and the spell imbedded in them flew, propelled by anger. Barad watched it leap, not from Corinn’s mouth but from her shoulders, a coiled thing that struck like a snake secured around her neck.
The Santoth flicked it away, just as they had the arrows. The spell skimmed across the air above them, transformed from something nearly invisible into writhing, wormlike shadows that splattered across portions of the crowd. Where it touched, people died. The liquid shadow cut through them like molten steel thrown against bare flesh. Barad was not sure if the others saw it as he did, but they certainly saw the ghastly result.
Panic rose again. People near the shattered doors started pushing and shoving, rushing out even as they craned their heads back to see what other horrors might come. Some in the upper tiers climbed over the back wall, even though there was nothing there but cliffs and rocks and the sea below.
“Your song is pure, Corinn, but you are not powerful,” Nualo said, ignoring the confusion below him. “We are powerful, but our song is not pure. Where is The Song of Elenet? Tell us. Give it to us.”
“If you do, we will make the world beautiful for you. All of it, for you,” Tenith said.
Nualo nodded as if he had just been about to broach that topic. He hooked his thumbs through the cord at his waist. “That is so. We owe you much, Corinn. The girl released us, but you taught us much of the Giver’s tongue again.”
“I did not,” Corinn said. This time her words were tentative. A trace of doubt trailed them.
“You sang it, did you not?” Abernis asked.
“That is my right as Tinhadin’s heir.”
Nualo brushed that away. “By singing it, you released it into the world again. We had only to listen to hear. And we did listen. You are foolish, Queen Corinn. Foolish for reaching into death. Foolish for spinning trinkets for your child. Foolish for taking creatures already warped by unpure magic and making them all the greater. Foolish for taking from one place and giving to another, with no understanding of balance. You have no control over any of the things you’ve done. You see? Your world needs us to correct your errors. Give us The Song and we will help you.”
“No.”
“Give us The Song,” another Santoth said. Several others said the same. Then they all spoke at once. A bombardment of entreating voices, all asking for The Song, all promising to serve her. Swearing to do only her bidding, trying to explain the torment they lived in. It was too much all at once.
Corinn stopped it by asking, “What would you do with it if you had it?”
“Whatever you wish.”
Hanish said, “I don’t trust that answer. Make them be more specific. Will they destroy the world in flaming retribution? Enslave us as punishment for-”
“Shut up!” Corinn snapped, turning to spit in the man’s face. “Be
gone you fool! Let me think.”
Hanish blinked his dreamy gray eyes closed. “As you wish, my love.” He bent his head and disappeared.
Those around Corinn looked at her with troubled eyes. The charlatan, Delivegu, wrinkled his face in a manner that made him look momentarily absurd. It was so hard for Barad to remember that only he saw and heard Hanish.
To the Santoth, Corinn said, “Would you destroy the Auldek in our name?”
“Of course,” the sorcerers answered. “In your name, we would.”
No, don’t believe them, Barad thought.
“Would you defend Tinhadin’s line and protect me and accept my heir?”
“Yes,” came back all twenty-two voices.
“I don’t have it,” Corinn said.
“You have it!” Nualo’s voice boomed. Nothing about his gestures or expression changed, but in the moments he spoke it was as if there were no other sound in the world. His voice was everything. Inside Barad’s ears. Inside his head. When Nualo spoke, it felt as if the beat of his heart hitched itself to the rhythm of his words. “We know it. We can feel it singing around you. We knew when you read it. We know!”
“It is not here,” Corinn said, “but if you return to the south I will retrieve it.”
“Do not anger me,” Nualo said.
“Aliver and I will consider your request. As king and queen we will. Not with you here in violation of exile. Not with you demanding what you have no right to demand. We will treat with you fairly, but not like this.”
“You lie.”
“I am the queen of Acacia. If I say a thing, it’s the truth. You see? I cannot lie. Now go back to exile!”
Again, the words flew tethered to magical commands.
This time, Nualo raked them out of the air with his hands, screaming as he did so. He took the stuff that was her spell and blew foulness into it and sent it ripping across the crowd. A swath of people went down, beginning not far from the queen herself. Jason, the scholar Barad had often seen tutoring Aaden, was among them. The curse splashed out in a crimson curve. The color splattered over the crowd, starting wide and thinning as it went, whipping all the way around and snapping out high on the bleachers above the royal dais. The people touched by it writhed. They clutched at themselves and reached out for others, most of whom pulled back in horror. It took Barad a moment for his eyes to understand what had happened. They had not been covered in something. The color had been revealed because they had been stripped of their skin. Flayed alive. Hundreds of them.
Nualo glared at the royal siblings with narrowed eyes. “You did that. Not I. You did that! You make us defend ourselves. You see that, don’t you? We will defend ourselves. Every time. Give us The Song and stop this!”
Queen Corinn stared at the raw corpse that was Jason, and let her eyes follow the bloody path away from him, her face pale, her expression bleak and naked. She and those directly around her were the only ones standing still. The rest of the crowd became a shrieking, maddened mob, clawing to escape, ripping and tearing at one another.
The other Santoth moved to form a ring around Nualo. They began to sing. They built their garbled version of the song and let it loose in the air around them. Barad could not understand a word of it, but it was horrible. He hated it, and he pushed into it with his eyes. It was pain and suffering. It was hunger and rage and spite. It was venom and fire, the breath of monsters and the claws of demons, disease and rot. And there was something else. Something he could almost taste with his eyes. Something he could almost grasp. It was something in the disparity between what they claimed and what was in their sorcery. Their song was corrupted, yes. Even Barad could tell that. He did not need to understand the language to know how wrong it was, how warped and cancerous.
“If you send the song against us, we will throw it like seeds atop your people. Corrupted seeds. Are you such fools? We would give you the entire world, but you scorn us! You want us to return to exile? Why should we do that?” Nualo’s voice slowed. His words gnawed their way through the spell-thick air. “We only ever did what Tinhadin asked of us.”
No, Barad thought. He was certain the answer should be no. He wanted to shout it, but he had no language…
“We were only ever faithful. For that we were exiled? Not again! I say it one last time. After this we will not ask again.”
And then Barad had it. Language. That was what was different between Corinn’s song and the Santoth’s. They were not speaking the same language. Their sorcery was the night to Corinn’s day. It was not a corrupted version of the same. It was fundamentally different. They spoke a different sorcerers’ language, one that was by its very nature warped and horrible. They had power, yes, but nothing like what they would have if they studied the true Song.
“Will you give us The Song of Elenet?”
Another one of them said, “If you will not, we will ask the same question of your son. We will ask it of Aliver. Of Shen. We will ask until we get our answer.”
She is defeated, Barad thought.
“I can’t give it to you,” she whispered. “It’s not here.”
“Where is it?”
Don’t tell them! Barad shouted, but only inside himself. He could not move his tongue. Not open his mouth or push forward toward her. He desperately tried to make his body do this, but he could not.
“In Senival,” she answered.
Noooo! Barad wailed. Silently. Motionless.
“At Calfa Ven.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Delivegu had never been a soldier. He considered himself a dangerous individual, good in a brawl, quick with a knife, capable of staring down the most belligerent of drunken louts, with a sharp enough mind to outwit even an Alecian senatorial whore. He was his own man, and he rather liked things that way. What use was the discipline of the military? Taking orders; chain of command; subservience to officers; blind, meaningless courage in the face of danger? None of that suited him.
But standing near the Santoth sorcerers throughout their exchange with Corinn, jostled by the nobles around him who were bolting for the exit, he would happily have folded himself under the wing of a commanding officer. He would have run away himself, but his scrotum packed up and climbed inside him when Nualo swept Corinn’s spell out across the crowd, ripping people’s skin from them. And when they stood in that terrible circle, Nualo at the center demanding that Corinn give them some book, Delivegu had wanted to shout at the queen to hand it over. Whatever it was, give them the damn thing! He knew there must be some reason not to, but he just wanted them gone.
Relief, then, when she named the place. Calfa Ven. Having been there so recently, he remembered it well. He thought for a moment of Bralyn, but only for a moment.
Nualo stared hard at the queen. “Calfa Ven?”
“You know the place, surely,” Corinn responded, derision twisting around her words.
“We do.”
“Then go! Leave my sight!”
Delivegu had to acknowledge it. If she had looked at him with such complete scorn, he would have withered and skulked away.
The sorcerers did not even notice. Instead, they flashed glances at one another. Nualo scowled and others scowled back, more like animals that communicated through growls and bared teeth than like men. Whatever they had said with those grimaces, they reached consensus quickly.
“No!” The voice boomed up from at the entry causeway. The place was in turmoil, people still trying to flee, trampling one another, but few of them actually getting anywhere.
The one who spoke worked against this. For a moment Delivegu thought he was another Santoth. He dressed similarly, and he moved with inhuman speed. He seemed to run on top of people’s shoulders and heads, light and nimble, his robes flapping behind him. “Noooo! Nualo, hear me! I can get you what you want.”
Nualo just barely held in whatever foulness he was prepared to scream down on the man, letting him come, until the man stood on one of the torch pillars, near enough to be se
en clearly. His features were normal, battered and aged, those of a man who had seen most of his living days already.
And who, exactly, are you, old man? Delivegu wondered.
“What, Leeka?” Nualo asked. “What knowledge have you? Speak quickly!”
“Leeka?” It was Aliver, looking more stunned than ever.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing low. “I have been with these ones all these years. I know them well, even if they hid the truth from me. They did do that. They hid-”
“What?” Nualo roared. “Speak only to me!”
Leeka held out a moment longer. He did not speak, but he kept his eyes on the two monarchs, looking grave and mournful and strong all at once. Then he turned to the sorcerers. “My knowledge is this: you cannot kill any of Tinhadin’s line. They have only to know that they are safe from death at your hands for it to be true. And now they know.” He looked back at Aliver. “And they cannot-”
Whatever he was going to add he did not get to finish. The sorcerers spat fury at him. When the spell hit, it tore his body to pieces and sprayed him in chunks and splatters across a great swath of people.
“You people!” Nualo yelled. “You see what you make us do!”
Nualo swung back toward Corinn. His hand rose behind him and hurtled over his head, as if he were a hunter wielding a throwing stick. He roared as he did so, a sound that was simultaneously earsplitting and indistinct. Sharp but muffled by the echoes of time and space. Delivegu was certain that the rapidity of Nualo’s throw altered as he released whatever he snapped from the ends of his fingers. Blinding speed one moment; a blurred, slow, tortured syrup of a long moment just after. Corinn’s head reared back, her mouth open and speaking. And then something happened around her mouth. She turned away and fell back into her soldiers too quickly for Delivegu to see. He knew that something had been done to her. He just could not say what.
“Stupid woman,” Nualo said, his features jagged and cruel and-for the first time-mirthful. “It’s true that I can’t kill you now that you know it, but I have not killed you, have I? I’ve done something better.”
The Sacred Band a-3 Page 35