His fists on his hips, with a toss of his head he sang his refusal, and Melba gave the reply:
Then the Council orders you submit to our judgment.
Justice calls for your death!
On cue, the outlaws mocked a gasp. He and Melba took turns introducing themselves as this and that wizard, then sang the narrative chorus together. Meylnara lived in a fortified castle built by her Kragnashian slaves. Beating the tambourine, he marched with Melba toward the siege, then sang of their first attack, the speedy defeat. Six measures into the soldier’s dirge, Melba grabbed her chest and fell into the dust, gasped a death rattle, then popped up to choke out another verse. Ashel kneeled beside her, singing a widow’s grief; Melba elbowed him out of the way so she could repeat the chorus. The rustlers roared as Ashel thrust her back and held her squirming on the ground until the widow’s song was over.
When he let her up, she pinched the back of his hand, her eyes piercing. He gave her a tight grin, belted out his next solo, the first of six weaving melodies in which the Council wizards dueled, plotted, formed and broke liaisons. Halfway through the system, Melba took up Saelbeneth’s part. Written for a contralto of Melba’s range, it was the only operatic role she’d ever played. Why she switched to the women’s roles he couldn’t guess, but the only response was to sing Thabean’s part of the duet.
Dropping out of falsetto into baritone was like coming home. Thabean wanted to attack Meylnara directly, the twelve Council wizards alone against her, no troops or Kragnashians. Wrapping his counterpoint around Melba’s melody, Ashel tied the herders up in rapture. He knew very well the power of his voice, relished the chortles dying into silence, the cultivated boredom falling from Kelmair’s face. Thabean’s argument swelled with contrition, contracted with spite, broadened again with his commitment to the Council’s cause. Filled with asides, throbbing bass lines, grand melodrama, the descant rolled out of him, broad, complex currents like a river, the joy of the stage suffusing his blood, pushing everything aside. Here, under the stars before a flaring campfire, his stomach taut with sustained breath, Ashel longed for the lamps and spots of the stage. His parents, his sister, Vic, Lornk—all their ambitions for him drowned in the flood of music.
Taking his hands, Melba slid out of “Forge On” and into the final verse of “Wizard’s Last Embrace.”
In the sun, the flowers unbend,
Their light opening toward the dawn.
So my life has opened up to you,
But the sun must set, or the flowers die;
Too much of life leads to death.
This song was about the doomed love between Thabean and Victoria, his protégé. But it was also about forgiveness. While he stared at her, she repeated the last line, her fingers pressing into his hands an urgent message, her eyes shimmering with fought tears. His anger melted, and he offered the reply.
Forgiveness is the dream of those who love,
And so I forgive you and the man you loved before me.
But fate remains unforgiven
For bringing you to me, too late for either life.
With a squeeze, Melba released him and delivered the story of Thabean’s death, chanting the stanza from Elberon’s epic about the Council. Outlaws brushed their cheeks, laughter forgotten but not one of them lost. In unity solid as a practiced duo, he and Melba rolled into the finale of “Forge,” and the final battle that destroyed Direiellene’s rainforest and left a desert in its place. The herders gave them a standing ovation, and they took their bows, Ashel’s face and hands warm, alive.
As the applause tailed off, he followed Melba outside the circle. They settled onto prickly grass and watched Elesendar paint plains and steeds an iron gray. Far off, a lupear howled, mournful and hungry. A cloud sailed across the sky, a blot on the glittering carpet of stars.
“Hasn’t she hurt you enough?” Melba asked.
His missing fingers ached. “Not having her hurts more.”
Lips sour, she yanked out a tuft of grass and tossed the blades into the wind. “I know, Ashel. Too well.”
A herder sawed on a squeezebox, and the others belted out a raucous song. Ashel leaned close. “Once we’re in Fembrosh, we’ll make a break for the outpost on the Mora road. They can’t take the whole herd into the forest, so I expect it will be Kelmair, Febbin, and just a few others. It’ll be our best chance.”
“Febbin? He’s just a boy.”
“He’s just a boy who can make a steed do anything he wants it to. Steeds don’t like wooded areas where predators can sneak up on them. Febbin commands the trust of these animals more than Joslyrn or any of the others. He was with Joslyrn and Kelmair in Narath, wasn’t he?”
“He was. But if the others can’t bring steeds into Fembrosh, what makes you think you can make Meager go where you want her to?”
“I probably can’t, but I’m going to try. And once we’re in the Kiareinoll, we’ll have the Kia to hide us.”
“Will it? What can we know of the way of trees, Ashel?”
His smile was bitter. “Nothing. That’s what faith is for.”
A Task for an Alnan
Ears intent, Geram thwacked the post with his spear. The whistling haft gauged his speed. Each knock and clack spoke the truth or falsity of his aim. Gravel ground beneath soles as his weight shifted, crunched as the spear butt slammed the dirt and pain webbed out of mangled muscle, down into his knee and up into his hip. Panting, he clung to the haft. Sweat dripped off his nose and chin, pattered on the ground. Rivulets trickled down his spine and seeped into damp trousers. His arms and shoulders quivered with fatigue.
Trees whispered, and the predawn breeze caressed slick skin, gentle and cooling. Hefting the spear, he attacked the post, pushing tired limbs to thrust and swing, jabbing stone blade into wood, wondering if steel would be easier to drive into thick, chitin shells. It surely would, but not even fieldmarshals carried swords. Iron and steel were not only costly, metal offended the Miners, who traded in crystal, not ore. “Get people killed,” he muttered.
“What will, lieutenant?”
The spear missed his mark, its momentum pulling his weight onto the bad leg. Pain spiraled outward; knee, hip, and shoulder smacked the ground and gravel scored his skin.
“Your Majesty.” Instinctively, he grabbed Elekia’s vision and found a gaze lingering on the dirt-streaked muscles of his chest and stomach. Coughing, he released her sight and hauled himself up the spear haft. “Did you need something?”
“An answer to my question. What will get people killed?”
Her breath huffed in soft, quick pants, and he recalled she ran around the perimeter of the grounds each dawn. The idea of glistening skin and a heaving bosom quickened his blood. Cursing himself, he bowed his head and prayed she didn’t notice the flush flooding up past his navel. “The lack of steel weaponry, Majesty.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve been thinking on those lines myself. I’ve completed my morning exercise. Would you walk with me back to the Manor—if you’re finished, that is?”
“Of course, Majesty. Let me get my shirt.” He hobbled across the yard and patted the rail, her gaze like a poker between bare shoulder blades. His palms found fabric, and he wormed into the tunic. The collar chafed his throat. Laces tickled his spine. Dundlehead, you put it on backward. Heart pounding, he twisted the fabric the right way round. Thank Elesendar, dawn was hours away yet on the plains. By His grace, Ashel slept soundly while Geram stood here like an ass, struggling to don a shirt while the other man’s mother leered at him. Or was he only hoping she leered at him? Shrine’s bitch, ever since he’d learned she’d used her powers to keep him alive while the surgeons worked, he’d fought a mad desire to rub up against her like a tomcat licking scraps off his mistress’s fingers. Of course she wasn’t leering. She was the Ruler of Latha, a paragon of virtue, and he was a fishlicker from Alna.
With a final tug, he straightened his tunic and measured his steps to the graveled path, us
ing the spear as a crutch.
“How is your leg?” Her scent wrapped around him, seeped into his lungs and blood like vapor in a bliss dive.
He pulled his shoulders back and stood at attention, clinging to a soldier’s discipline. “It’s getting stronger, thank you. I was told you . . . helped . . . when the Healers were stitching me back together. I’m very grateful.”
“The Manor’s Healers are, thankfully, discreet. I did not wish to lose the advantage of your abilities.”
Gravel crunched beneath his limp. He didn’t need her vision to know the way—he’d memorized all the Manor paths and could walk them unaided—but he gave into the temptation to see. Her eyes flicked over flower beds and shrubbery, paused on a cerrenil raising its limbs to greet the sunrise, then rested on him. Heat flashed up his neck and he released her sight.
“What do you know about Fensin of Alna?” she asked.
“I imagine nothing you don’t, Your Majesty.”
“He represents your city. Did you vote for him?”
“There’s never anyone else to vote for.” Foreboding stirred. “You don’t want me to—”
She laughed. “No, lieutenant, I don’t want you to challenge him. The Senator from Alna is by definition the monarchy’s opposition—that is a matter of law, not merely custom, and I want you by my side.”
He coughed. By her side? The odd phrasing stirred hope and dread alike.
“Are you ill? You keep coughing.”
“It’s the spring air, Majesty. Sometimes the blossoms make it harder to breathe.”
“Hmm, that must have made spring campaigns very challenging during the war. You’re right that we need steel to defend ourselves against the Kragnashians, and anyone else who might come through the Device with the Kragnashians’ aid. Until now, the Miners’ crystal blades have always sufficed, but the world is changing. There are rumors of ore discoveries in the Plenetor. That provision my daughter so blithely agreed to, about the Penance, I fear it may be Latha’s doom.”
He stopped walking and pulled the threads together. “Earnk Korng is Relmlord now. You believe he’s colluding with his father and the Caleisbahnin to shut Latha out of whatever resources might be mined south of Relm? And you think Fensin is involved because of his ties to the Caleisbahnin.”
“Yes—very good, lieutenant. Earnk Korng may have denounced his father, but those two always find a path to reconciliation. What was your impression of my nephew?”
Geram swallowed bile. Elekia’s adopted sister had been Earnk’s mother, another knot in the tangle of jealousy and vengeance that had led to Latha’s long conflict with Relm. During the months between the battles of Olmlablaire and Re, when Earnk had traveled with the Lathan army, Ashel’s rancor toward him had faded into an almost friendly regard, but Geram still despised Lornk’s son. He thought for a moment, composing a counselor’s objective reply. “Earnk’s actions seem driven by his emotions, the dominant of which is guilt. He lacks Lornk’s ruthlessness, and I don’t expect him to remain in the Seat of Relm. He is a Listener, though,” he added. “Ashel and I were even more closely connected than we are now, for a time, and Earnk helped us to separate to the degree that we have.”
“Out of guilt or mercy?”
“Both, I think. It was after Earnk tried to kill his father, and Lornk imprisoned him for treason. We were all together in the prison hospital, put there by a fever that swept through prisoners and guards alike. It’s what made me blind.”
“I thought Lornk did that to you.”
“Only indirectly. Ashel resided entirely in my mind for a while, and it drove me mad. I tried to tear out my own eyes. Between that and the fever . . .”
Fingers touched his temple, glided across his cheek. Nerves afire, he gripped the spear with both hands, his breath short and shallow.
“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done,” she whispered aloud. “For your discretion, your loyalty, and your sacrifice. Is Ashel asleep now?”
“Yes.” If he’d replied aloud, his voice would have cracked, like a youth meeting his first courtesan.
“Is he safe?”
His shoulders fell from his ears as he realized the emotion thickening her voice was for Ashel, not him. “He’s still with the Herders. He thinks they’ll enter Fembrosh tomorrow or the next day, and he plans to escape once he has the cover of trees.”
“I hope Vic will find him before Lornk does.”
“She will, if anyone can.”
She grunted, and they traveled several paces. “I need you to go to Fensin’s office and ask him for funds to buy steel spearheads in the Senate. You will appeal to him as a fellow Alnan and a disgruntled veteran who fears the Ruler’s stubborn commitment to the Miners has left her guards in danger. Then you will cultivate a relationship with him. Do you understand?”
He bristled. “Being a Listener doesn’t make me a spy.”
“The night the Manor was attacked, you asked me what a blind Alnan fisherman could do. Now I’ve told you.”
“I also resigned my commission that night.”
“Yet you’re still here. Lieutenant, however much you train, however lucky you were to survive your encounter with the Kragnashian, you are ill-suited as a Manor guard, just as you’re not suited to be my aide or my clerk or even my Listener. Your talents transcend all those things, and I need you to fulfill your potential.”
“You want me to be no more than a liar.”
“Another one of your talents. You hid your connection to my son quite well.”
His pulse throbbing, he expelled one hot breath after another. Elekia had cornered Ashel like this a thousand times and always gotten him to do what she wanted. Shrine, how he hated harboring those memories.
She clasped his arm. “I need you to help me save this nation by going to Fensin and learning what you can from him about the Caleisbahnin and Kragnashians who freed Lornk Korng. I need to know what else they have planned.”
“What if he doesn’t know anything?”
“Then I want you to remain close to him, in case that changes. In the meantime, Fensin is a wily and devious politician. Observing him is an education by itself.”
He ground his teeth and thought of home. There was nothing in Alna for a blind, lame fisherman but a barstool and a tankard. A breeze wafted her scent—earthy and salty and sweet—and the mad desire to clasp her face had his palms itching to go back to the training yard and bash a pole with a stick until his hands bled.
“Do you understand your orders, lieutenant?”
He swallowed a sigh—or perhaps it was a growl. “Yes, Majesty. I’ll go to Fensin and present myself as a frustrated Alnan.” That much, at least, was true.
The Challenge
The granite slab rose out of the forest like an anvil. As soon as they arrived, Febbin climbed to the top and came down claiming he had spotted Mount Mirkeldirk’s snowy shoulders.
“It’s just a thunderhead, boy,” Erik said. Shaking an empty flask, the crew chief grumbled and pulled a small barrel out of the baggage. “Anyone seen the tap?” he asked.
“It’s got to be Mirkeldirk,” Febbin said. “Ashel, come up with me so you can vouch for it.”
“You should bind them, not let them climb rocks!” Kelmair protested.
“Here it is.” Erik pried out the bung and slammed the tap into the hole. “We’re to wait here, Highness. Meet could be hours, days, or weeks from now, depending on what tribulations our patrons encountered along the way. It’d be uncomfortable for you and a bother for us to have to keep you bound. So as long as you don’t try to run off, you can move freely about the camp. Joslyrn, keep a solid eye on Minstrel Melba.”
The older outlaw assented, gaze scuffing the ground.
“Come up, Ashel,” Febbin repeated, angling his head at a steep crevice in the rock face. Ashel followed the boy, finding good toe and handholds to the top, where moss filled the pebbly cracks around a single stunted geilmor, quive
ring in a stiff breeze. Shading his eyes, he looked to the southwest. The sky was clear, but he could see nothing but the expanse of Fembrosh.
Febbin grasped his arm. “The cavalry outpost is forty miles south. I’ll take you there.”
Eyebrows popping, hope twining with suspicion, Ashel stared at the youth.
“If you tried to ride Meager there alone, you wouldn’t be able to stop her going back to the plains and the herd. But I can get you to the outpost by morning.”
“Won’t they come after us?”
“Erik brought a cask for the pirates, and you can see he’s already started without them. Joslyrn will stay with the steeds.”
“Joslyrn and Kelmair concocted this whole show.”
“Joslyrn’s only doing this because he’s desperate to keep the herd and crew together. He feels real bad about it, and I don’t think he’d be too upset if you and Melba escaped. Kelmair, well, she’s another story. I’ll take care of their mounts, make sure they can’t follow.” He swore softly. “It’s not fair to the boys, but, well, it’s got to be done. You’ll know it’s time to go when I water the steeds.”
Ashel began writing as soon as they came down, quickly laying out a score, using a code of musical notes from his apprentice days. He hoped Melba remembered it. Marking the passage allegro, he took her the paper. “Can I get your opinion on this?”
She looked up, eyebrows cross. “I can’t believe you’re composing now.”
The sinking sun streaked the cerrenils red. “The muse is upon me. Look at it.”
She ripped the sheaf out of his hand, and Ashel strolled to his bedroll. Leaning on an elbow, he watched Erik squat near the fire, sipping steadily from his flask. Joslyrn diced with Febbin, and Kelmair paced, her neck shrunk into her shoulders. Their steeds clustered beneath the outcropping, heads low, manes twisting.
Hooting victory, Febbin snatched the dice off the gaming board.
“Go tend the steeds, boy,” Joslyrn reached for the teapot in the coals.
“Next time we’ll play for chores,” the youth ventured. “I can’t wait to see you hauling water, old man.”
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