The Song of the Sirin
Raven Son: Book 1
by Nicholas Kotar
THE SONG OF THE SIRIN
(Raven Son: Book One)
Copyright © Nicholas Kotar 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Cover Design by Books Covered Ltd.
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
Published by Waystone Press 2017
ISBN: 9780998847917
LCCN: 2017908889
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE - The Song
CHAPTER TWO - The Pilgrim
CHAPTER THREE - The Market
CHAPTER FOUR - At the Potter’s
CHAPTER FIVE - The Story
CHAPTER SIX - The Dar's Daughter
CHAPTER SEVEN - Sister of the Pariah
CHAPTER EIGHT - The Sirin
CHAPTER NINE - The Fall
CHAPTER TEN - The Dumar
CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Changer
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Waystone
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Island
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Healing
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Conspiracy
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The Gumiren
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - An Ordeal of Stories
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Sore
CHAPTER NINETEEN - Sabíana's Test
CHAPTER TWENTY - A Narrow Escape
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Complications
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - The Wedding
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Training
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - The Raven
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - The Warrior of the Word
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Contagion
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Black Turnips
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - The Funeral
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - The River of Fire
CHAPTER THIRTY - Bayan's Last Song
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - The Last Battle
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - The Staff in Bloom
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - The Raven's Choice
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - Healer
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Covenant
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The song of the Sirin can overthrow kingdoms. I know. I have seen it. I have seen the song make gods of men. The song carved the eternal city of Vasyllia out of the mountains. The song transformed queens into healers, so that thousands were made well with a single word. But ever it comes as a harbinger of affliction. Only in the fire of adversity does the pure water of healing flow.
-from “The Journals of Cassían, Dar of Vasyllia” (The Sayings, Book II, 3:35-43)
CHAPTER ONE
The Song
The song teased Voran at the first hint of sunrise. His sister Lebía still slept, and he rose quietly, trying not to wake her. Outside his window, the trees were encased in overnight ice. Branches, like freshly-minted blades, clanged against each other in an almost military salute. As Voran leaned against the sill, the sun breached the summit-lines, and the ice-encased branches glowed from within. The song rose in a vast crescendo, then faded again. It stopped his breath short like a punch to the chest.
“Ammil,” said Lebía from across the room, her hair rumpled from sleep.
“Ammil, little bird?” he whispered, hoping she would turn over and fall asleep again. It cut him deeply that she still could not sleep on her own, despite her sixteen years.
“The sun’s morning sparkle through hoarfrost,” she said, laboring through a yawn. One of her eyes remained stubbornly closed. “That’s how the Old Tales call it. Ammil. The blessing of Adonais, you know.”
Voran smiled, though there was little to smile about in the purple shadows under her eyes. She needed to sleep if she were ever to find her joy again.
“What is that?” She indicated the parchment lying on the sill, garish in its profusion of purple and red.
“One of the Dar’s huntsmen claims to have seen the white stag.” Personally, Voran doubted it.
Her second eye opened. “The white stag? Dar Antomír wishes to hunt the deer of legend?”
“He’s anxious to begin as soon as possible,” said Voran. Too anxious, he thought, but kept it to himself. “His advisers are less sure. The Dar’s called together a small council this morning.”
Privately, Voran wondered at the Dar’s eagerness. Yes, catching the white stag was supposed to bring prosperity to the hunter’s city for seven generations. But although legends grew in Vasyllia with the same profusion as lilac trees, they mostly stayed bound to the page.
“Why does he want the approval of his advisors? Couldn’t he just announce the hunt, and be done with it?” she asked, rubbing her right eye with the heel of her palm.
“It’s complicated…” Only last week, the Dar’s head drooped in sleep during a small council. “Dar Antomír is of a different time. Most of his advisers are young, and they would prefer to leave old tales and superstitions behind. In fact, I think there are some who wouldn’t mind so much if Dar Antomír retired from public life and allowed Mirnían to take a more active role in Vasyllia.”
“I see. Meddling nags.”
Voran laughed. “I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.” He would much rather wander the wilds than sit in council with the representatives of the three reaches of Vasyllia.
“Do you have to be there? Why not stay at home for once?”
She looked away as soon as she said it. His conscience pricked him. Lebía was practically begging him, and he knew how much she hated to beg. It had been far too long since he stayed with Lebía at home, helped in the kitchens, took a long walk through the family vineyards, or actually read something with her. But Dar Antomír depended on him. Even more than he depended on his son, Mirnían.
“I wish I could…”
“Oh well.” She put on a feeble smile like a mask. “Never mind. Only please don’t stay at court the whole day. You can’t imagine how oppressive this house can be.”
Yes, I can, he thought. Why do you think I avoid it so much? Nothing like an empty house to remind you of your parents’ absence.
“I expect I’ll be back before evening,” he said, and his conscience pricked him again. He doubted he’d return before night. “Sleep now, my swanling. You need to rest.”
She looked at him without blinking for what seemed an inhumanly long time.
“Voran, do you think…maybe if I had done something differently—”<
br />
“Lebía, don’t.” He hurried to her and sat by her on the bed. “You were the least problematic child in Vasyllia. Mama’s disappearance wasn’t your fault.”
“I remember there were times when Papa looked at me with those heavy eyes, you know? Like he was trying to remember what it was like to love me. To love Mama. Could he have really—?”
“Lebía, don’t believe the gossip. The bruises on Mama’s arms were part of the disease.”
She nodded, thoughtfully.
“I don’t know why she left when she did, swanling. But the fact that he went to find her proves that he loved her, don’t you think?”
Her look only mirrored his own thoughts. He didn’t love us enough to stay.
“Please, Lebía, you need your sleep.”
She hugged him and turned over. Within a minute, her breathing had deepened into sleep.
May all the Powers damn him for leaving you, Lebía.
The curse did not give him the pleasure he hoped. It gave him no sudden illumination about the nature of Aglaia’s disease. It suggested nothing new about Otchigen’s madness and subsequent disappearance after implication in the mass murder of other Vasylli. Nothing but questions, as always.
At this early hour, he went out the back door of the wine cellar, chary of waking the servants. He managed to close the door with no noise, but the gate at the end of the overgrown back garden moaned like a thing diseased. It always did, but Voran always forgot. Cursing inwardly, Voran looked back at the house. No one seemed to stir within.
The house’s two stories lurched over him, the shadows thrown back by the morning sun, threatening him. As though the house itself were angry that Voran was master instead of his lost father Otchigen. As though it were Voran’s fault that his mother had fallen prey to a strange illness, then disappeared inexplicably.
The song appeared again, hardly more substantial than the red alpenglow on the underside of the clouds. Voran’s heart swelled as he turned away.
Otchigen’s house was nestled among the other estates of the third reach of Vasyllia. Voran loved to walk the flagstoned road through the reach as it crisscrossed the cherry groves of the noble families. Amid the trees, the mansions—each a fancy in carved gables, lintels, and columns—stared at each other as though they, like their masters, were jealous of each other’s status. Some of the most extravagant even sported gilded cockerels on the roof. Voran was grateful that it was generally considered in bad taste.
Every house was built on a small mound, to better overlook the other two reaches that extended downward and outward along the slope of the mountain, like the skirts of a great dress. Voran knew that, if looked at from below, the houses sparkled like jewels every morning: a reminder to the lower reaches that such opulence was as far out of their reach as the Heights themselves.
Voran stopped at a crossroads where stairs carved into the mountain led down to the second reach. Just to his left was the Dar’s palace, its seven onion-domed towers carved out of marble blocks, each larger than a single man. He hesitated, unwilling to brave the nagging of the small council yet. The second reach spread out beneath him in clean lines of austere homes set apart by stone hedges, staircases, and canals, all in keeping with the military calling of most of the inhabitants.
“Make way,” said a voice behind him. Before Voran could turn around, a mail-shod shoulder pushed him off the path. Voran landed knee-first in mud.
“Well, well, it’s the son of Otchigen,” sniggered Rogdai, the chief warden of the gates of Vasyllia. “You seem to have lost your warriors’ edge. No graduate of the seminary should ever allow himself to be surprised by an enemy in the open. I’ll have to speak to the elders about it. Maybe they can find you a post in the Dar’s library.”
The two sub-wardens flanking him laughed, but their knuckles were white on their pommels.
“Ever the paragon of civility, Vohin Rogdai,” said Voran, forcing his tone to remain calm. He would have preferred to knock the idiot’s teeth into the back of his head. “Thank you for pointing out the weakness in my defense. I will gladly accept your further instruction in the sword-ring.” Where I’ll poke more holes into you than a sieve.
“A pleasure. It’s been years since my sword has tasted traitor’s blood. Shall we say… this evening? I’ve always thought swordfights are best done in torchlight.”
Where fewer people can see how bad you are, Voran thought, or how you cheat.
“I’m afraid today I’ll be too busy hunting and catching the white stag.”
“You?” Rogdai spit. “You’ll catch that beast as soon as the sun sets in the middle of the day.”
“I smell a wager,” said Voran. “My father’s entire wine collection if I don’t bring it back by midnight.”
Rogdai’s face twisted in indecision. The superstitious idiot was afraid of drinking the wine of a suspected traitor. On the other hand, it was the best wine in Vasyllia…
“Done,” growled Rogdai. “I wager a public feast hosted in the central square by my family in your honor.”
“No, in my father’s honor.” Voran smiled at the way Rogdai twitched. Voran was sure he would just walk away. The coward.
“Done.” Rogdai’s teeth sounded ready to break from the strain of his jaw. “Not one minute past midnight, mind.”
Voran inclined his head.
Rogdai and his flunkeys walked by, their shoulders not quite as straight as before.
The wind picked up and whipped Voran’s hair into his face. Annoyed, he pulled it back. As he did, the song rose as though it were carried by the wind. He gasped for a moment, it was so intense. And it seemed to whisper a thought to him.
Go now. Forget the small council. Go find the stag now. Leave the blind to lead the blind.
Voran was running even before he realized it, but not toward the palace. He angled away away from it, toward the headwall of Vasyllia Mountain.
Voran avoided the streets, sprinting along dirt paths behind the gardens of the third reach. Here, the trees were wilder—native fir and spruce for the most part. Sometimes avoiding the paths outright, Voran veered toward the largest of many canals that watered the three reaches, all of them fed by Vasyllia’s twin waterfalls. As he reached the canal, all signs of domestication faded, replaced by mossy rocks and tree roots. Even the air smelled differently here. The spicy smells of the nobles’ kitchens gave way to the cool scent of pine. Though he knew the way well enough, it took him a moment to find the ivy-encrusted archway that led to a staircase going up, away from the city.
Dar Antomír would forgive him, Voran was sure. Especially if he found the stag. An honor for his family, a boon to his disgraced name. Seven generations of prosperity to his city. If the legends were to be believed, of course. Did he believe them? Voran wasn’t sure any more.
The wind gusted, dousing him with the spume of Vasyllia’s twin waterfalls, thundering on either side of the ancient stairway. With it came the music, louder than ever. He closed his eyes, savoring. Only when he clung to the face of the mountain was the melody this vivid. It sounded as if the mountain, the trees, the clouds all sang. And only for him.
He reached a ledge and pulled himself up. He was soaked from the exertion and the mist. Falling on one knee, he raised both arms toward the rising sun.
“Adonais, accept the prayer of this scion of the dishonored house of Voyevoda Otchigen. May my hunt not prove futile.”
The song hung on the air like a memory, then faded. He leaned back against one of the stone chalices that collected the water from the falls, each taller than Vasyllia’s famed birches. The chalice hummed with the steady rhythm of the waterfall pounding it. At Voran’s feet, a stone mouth faintly reminiscent of a dragon’s head spit the gathered water toward the city’s canals.
How mad and beautiful, he thought, considering the dragon. In the old times things were made with beauty in mind, not merely usefulness. How unlike these times. With the passing of the song, Voran felt emptied, hungry for a recu
rrence of the song. It did not return.
Voran stretched his shoulders, relief flooding into the popping joints. He sat at the ledge's lip, resting his feet on the dragon’s ears. Miles upon miles of the woods beyond the city lay carpeted at his feet. It was the perfect vantage point.
As he stared into the spaces between the trees, Lebía’s shadowed eyes kept intruding on his thoughts. He really should spend more time with her, not conjure up excuses to remain at the warrior seminary after hours, training the boys. Her plea pained him. He had not realized that she was so lonely at home. But of course she was. She had few friends, tainted as she was with their father’s assumed guilt, their mother’s inexplicable disappearance. He promised himself he would take her to the forests more often. Maybe even let her spend the night under the stars with him, as he so loved to do.
He was so wrapped up with the image of her smiling at the innumerable falling stars on a late summer night that he nearly missed it. Something gold flashed in the woods far beneath him. Voran’s heart stopped, then raced forward. A white streak passed through the trees. Fearful of moving even a muscle lest the vision fade, Voran continued to stare. It moved again, now clearly visible. A white stag.
It took Voran a maddening hour to get through the city’s reaches and out the gates. Another half hour away from the paths as he tried to get his bearings in the forests beyond the city. He was intent on his path like a pointer on the scent. But when the howling started, his blood turned to ice in his veins.
He had heard wolves before. This was no mere wolf. The sound was deeper and darker, like the buzz of a hornet compared to a fly. He tried to recall the details of the many stories of the white stag. Was there a legendary predator to accompany the legendary quarry? Not that he could remember.
A blur of white raced before his eyes, so close he could spit at it. In an instant, it was gone.
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