The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  “Sing it . . . you mean tell me in verse?”

  “No, I mean show you. I can sing it so much better than explain it.”

  Rakaia’s heart skipped a beat. “You mean you want to use the Song of Gimlorie on me.”

  “Not to coerce you, Rakaia. I would never do that to you, I swear. Besides, it’s like I told you . . . if the listener knows they’re being influenced, they can block it out.”

  “If I can block you out, then what’s the point?”

  “Because this isn’t coercion,” he assured her. “I can just make you see what I saw, what I felt . . . then you’ll understand.” Her hesitation seemed to wound him. “I love you, Rakaia. I would never do to anything to hurt you.”

  “Now you’re trying to manipulate me.”

  “I could have just started singing and not warned you at all, if I wanted to do that,” he pointed out. “I think you’re afraid.”

  “Of course I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “What do you think? You can wield the power of a god, Mica. And now you want to use it on me.”

  “Take this, then,” he said, leaning across the fire to hand her the little golden lyre on its fine gold chain.

  The gesture amused her. She accepted the necklace and held it up to examine it in the dying firelight. “You think you can bribe me with this cheap trinket?”

  “It’s not a cheap trinket,” he said. “It’s the God of Music’s Covenant token.” Mica spoke as though his words should impress her.

  “Is that supposed to sway me?”

  “I stole it from the Temple of the Gods in the Citadel.”

  “So it’s a stolen trinket. You’re not exactly making your case here, Mica.”

  “When the gods brought the Harshini into being, they made a pact with each other,” he explained. “They realized their wars were getting out of hand, so they agreed to let the Harshini act as . . . I don’t know . . . like a bridge. They allowed the Harshini to use their magic, to petition them on behalf of humans . . . That’s why they can’t lie, why they can’t get angry or even really sad. The gods didn’t want them to be anything other than evenhanded.” Then he added with a smile, “It’s why there are demons, by the way. They’re little and harmless and by nature are all the naughty bits the gods wanted to remove from the Harshini.”

  “I know all this, Mica. It might be a revelation to someone raised to believe in the Overlord, but in Fardohnya, we’re taught all this at our mother’s breast.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t learn about the Covenant.”

  “What is it? A treaty?”

  “It’s more than a treaty,” he said. “It’s a magical bond that holds the Covenant of the Gods together. All the gods had to surrender something of their essence to forge it. If it’s ever broken, the deal would be off and the Harshini would cease to exist.”

  “What about the gods?” Rakaia asked, still not sure she believed a word of this.

  “The Primal Gods would still be there, but they wouldn’t be able to interact with humans the way they do now. And I suspect a lot of the Incidental Gods would cease to exist, because most of them started out as demons, and if the Harshini were gone, they’d be gone, too.”

  She held up the necklace and examined it more closely. It still looked like a cheap trinket to her. “And you think this bauble is the essence of the God of Music.”

  “I know it is. That’s why he can’t find me. It protects the wearer from his influence. It will protect you when I sing for you. It’s how I was able to escape.”

  “Escape from where?” she asked in exasperation.

  “Let me sing for you, Rakaia, and you’ll understand.”

  Rakaia stared at him in the dim light of the fire, wishing she knew if Mica was as genuine as he seemed or a master manipulator. The trinket in her hand might be no more than a placebo, and she was walking into his trap like a blind fool.

  But then, she’d been on the road with Mica for weeks now. Surely, if he wanted to mess with her mind, he could have done it any time before now. She’d held him as he slept to calm his nightmares. She’d listened to him sing a thousand times. She made love to him over and over and she was certain to the core of her being that she had chosen to do so of her own free will, not because he’d made her do it.

  But most of all, she was filled with doubt. And it was that which reassured her. She’d seen the ferryman propose to Olena. There hadn’t been a doubt in his mind once Mica had sung to him. If Mica were forcing her to do anything against her will, the first thing he would rid her of, she reasoned, would be doubt.

  She nodded slowly, gathered up the necklace and chain, and closed her fist over the tiny golden lyre. “Alright, then,” she said. “Sing to me, Mica. Show me what happened.”

  She expected him to reach for his lyre, but it seemed he needed no accompaniment to work his magic. He closed his eyes and began to sing, a haunting, lilting song in a language Rakaia didn’t understand.

  She waited, not sure what she expected to see, beginning to doubt Mica had any magic at all, but then she realized she was no longer sitting in the lee of a rock outcropping. The temperature grew colder and she glanced around.

  She was in a tent, held fast in the grip of a strange man. She was paralyzed with fear. A trickle of blood oozed from her neck where the man held the point of his sword to his throat, ready and determined to run him through.

  I am Mica, she realized. I am seeing this through his eyes.

  “Damin, Brak and I need to take care of this,” a woman’s calm and reasonable voice said behind them.

  The man holding her—Mica—was Damin Wolfblade. “This child is a member of my household. He tried to kill a guest under my roof. Even if you weren’t the demon child, R’shiel, the penalty for such a crime is death.”

  “If you kill him, Damin, we won’t be able to question him.”

  “What’s to question? The child is Karien. He obviously follows the Overlord. What more do you need to know?”

  “We need to know why he turned from Dacendaran,” a voice said. The speaker moved in front of Damin and Mica and Rakaia realized she was facing the legendary Brakandaran the Halfbreed. He proved to be something of a disappointment. Given the stories she’d heard about him, she’d expected him to be ten feet tall. But he was really just a little taller than a normal man with dark hair and a pleasing face, seemed to be aged somewhere between twenty and forty, and was otherwise quite unremarkable. “The God of Thieves took a personal interest in this boy, and somehow he’s been subverted. I don’t want to interfere with your idea of justice, Damin, but if you harm that boy before we have a chance to talk with him, you’ll regret it.”

  Damin glared at Brak. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes, Damin,” the Halfbreed replied. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  For a long, tense moment, Rakaia waited as Damin Wolfblade stared at Brak, then he lowered the sword and thrust Mikel at him. “You have an hour, Brak. Ask him what you want, do what you want. But in one hour that child dies for what he’s done. R’shiel, I hope you will forgive this grievous insult.” He sheathed his sword as Brak caught Mikel, who was shaking so badly he could barely stand. “Oh, and by the way, don’t think to leave this camp with him,” the High Prince added with an icy glare at Brak. “If you do, I will simply turn around and go home. I’ll call off my Warlords, and the Medalonians can face the Kariens on their own and to hell with them.”

  Damin Wolfblade strode out of the tent without another word. In the distance, Rakaia could still make out the strains of Mikel’s strange song, but she was quickly becoming lost in his memories.

  Brak pushed Rakaia down onto the cushions and looked over at Adrina. Mikel followed her gaze and saw that Adrina was heavily pregnant.

  “Can you talk him out of this?” the Halfbreed asked her.

  Adrina shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  “You’ve got an hour, Adrin
a,” R’shiel pointed out.

  The demon child had not changed at all since Rakaia had last seen her in Testra.

  Adrina nodded. “I’ll do what I can, but he may not listen to me. I was the one who brought Mikel here.”

  “Then you’d better do something about keeping him alive, hadn’t you?” the demon child said unsympathetically.

  The dream faded for a moment, and Rakaia found herself back in front of the fire. Mica still sang, but his cheeks were wet with silent tears. The moment was fleeting and she was back in Mica’s body, seeing the world through his eyes as the God of Thieves appeared.

  R’shiel must have summoned him. She sat huddled on the cushions, her knees drawn up under her chin, tears streaming silently down Mikel’s face. In the warm glow of the candlelight he was an island of misery and dejection.

  “What do you want, demon child?” Dacendaran asked as he materialized behind R’shiel.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded as she spun around to face him.

  “I’m busy,” Dace muttered, scuffing the rug with a boot that did not match the other he wore.

  “I want to know what happened to Mikel.”

  “You stole him from me.”

  “I stole him from you? Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not a god! How could I steal him?”

  “You gave him to Gimlorie.”

  “Oh,” R’shiel said, suddenly looking guilty. “That.”

  Brak glanced at R’shiel for a moment and then looked down at Mikel. “Why did you give him to the God of Music?”

  “I needed to make sure the Kariens would leave, so I asked Gimlorie to help.”

  “What exactly did you do, R’shiel?” Brak asked.

  “I asked him to teach Mikel a song that would instill an irresistible longing for home in the Kariens. I knew it might be a little bit . . . dangerous . . . so I asked Gimlorie to make his brother Jaymes his guardian. That way, if he got lost in the song, Jaymes would be there to pull him back.”

  Brak muttered a curse. “R’shiel, have you any idea what you’ve done? A guardian is only effective if he’s in touch with his ward. Once Jaymes left his side Mikel was vulnerable to this sort of manipulation.”

  “Hey, how come suddenly this is all my fault? He tried to kill me!” Neither Brak nor Dace answered her. “I needed to turn them back,” she added. “It seemed like a really good idea at the time.”

  “Gimlorie’s songs are dangerous, R’shiel. They can twist men’s souls around. You should never have taught one to this boy.”

  “I didn’t teach it to him. Gimlorie did. He didn’t seem to mind when I asked him.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t mind. Every soul who hears it hungers for him more. But it’s what it has done to Mikel you should be concerned about.”

  “Are you saying Gimlorie is the one who turned Mikel into an assassin?”

  “No,” Dacendaran said. “Gimlorie wouldn’t do that. But what you did do was leave Mikel vulnerable to Xaphista.”

  “Humans need faith to believe in the gods, R’shiel,” Brak added in a lecturing tone. “What you did was take away Mikel’s freedom to believe or not believe. You destroyed his free will and made him a creature of the gods. Any god.”

  R’shiel turned to Mikel and stared down at him impatiently. “Is that what happened, Mikel? Did you go back to worshipping the Overlord?”

  Rakaia could feel Mikel shake his head silently, too distraught to speak.

  “Then why? Who told you to do this thing?”

  “The old man,” she replied in a voice so low even Dacendaran had to strain to hear him.

  “What old man?” Brak asked.

  “The one in Hythria. At the palace. He told me to give the demon child a gift. He said it would help her see the truth.”

  “What old man is he talking about?” R’shiel asked Brak.

  “It was probably Xaphista himself,” Dace shrugged.

  “Can he do that?” The God of Thieves gave the demon child a withering look. “Oh, well, I suppose if you can do it, so can he.”

  She turned and studied the miserable figure hunched on the cushions for a moment, then turned to Brak. “Why Mikel?”

  “Because he’s young, he’s impressionable, he’s feeling guilty for turning away from his god in the first place, and,” he added with a frown, “you left him wide open to manipulation when you opened his mind to Gimlorie’s song.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know it would do that? The Harshini sang it all the time in Sanctuary. It didn’t seem to bother them.”

  “The Harshini are already a part of the gods, R’shiel. But even they will only share it among themselves. No Harshini would ever share the song with a human.”

  “So what do we do with him?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ve got about half an hour to make up our minds,” he reminded her grimly.

  “Dace? Can’t the gods do something?”

  The god shook his head. “You can’t un-teach him, R’shiel, and he’s done the Overlord’s bidding. None of the gods has any interest in saving this child.”

  “But he was your friend, Dace!” The god stared at her. His smile faded and for a moment Rakaia saw the true essence of his being. Mikel whimpered with fear.

  Even the demon child took a step back from Dacendaran in fear.

  “Do what you want with the child,” Dacendaran said in a voice that chilled Mikel to the bone. “His fate is of no concern to the Primal Gods.”

  Dace vanished, leaving them alone in the tent. R’shiel appeared to be having trouble breathing. Mikel had still not moved.

  The vision flickered again, and Rakaia became aware of Mica’s voice wavering. This was taking a great deal out of him, to show her this. She wanted to tell him to stop, to turn away from the terror of a small boy fully aware that he was about to die for a crime he was not responsible for, even if it was one he had tried to commit.

  And then she was back in Mica’s body, seeing the world through his eyes, feeling every terrified moment of his past.

  They were no longer in the tent. The hour must be up, she realized.

  Damin Wolfblade had come to kill her.

  “I’ll do it,” Brak said, stepping forward into the torchlight.

  The demon child rounded on him in horror. “Brak!”

  “I’m sorry, R’shiel, but Damin has a point. If he doesn’t deal with this, he’ll never put an end to it. The child needs to die. He has to make an example of him.”

  Damin looked stunned to find such an unexpected ally. “I cannot ask a Harshini to do this. I won’t even ask it of my own men.”

  “I’m a halfbreed, Damin, and it won’t be the worst thing I’ve done.” He turned to the Harshini watching in at the edge of the clearing. “Take the others away from here, Glenanaran. Just pray to the gods that watch over this child that Death comes quickly for him.”

  The Harshini stared at him for a moment. Then Glenanaran nodded solemnly. “We will pray for the child.”

  The Harshini turned and vanished into the darkness. Brak made sure they were gone and then walked across the clearing and took Mikel by the hand.

  Damin stood beside the demon child. He seemed surprised and more than a little suspicious of Brak’s willingness to kill. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

  “This is no trick, Damin.” He grabbed Mikel by the arm and pulled him clear of the guards, then drew the dagger from his belt. He turned it for a moment in his hand as if testing the weight, then he glared at Damin. “Are you planning to watch?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a sick son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  “No, just a distrustful one. I don’t believe you’ll do it.”

  Brak looked down at Mikel. Rakaia couldn’t move. Mica had moved beyond fear and stepped over into paralytic terror.

  “Are you ready to meet Death, Mikel?” he asked gently.

  In the distance, Rakaia heard Adrina choking back a sob. Even the torches were hiss
ing loudly in the unnatural silence.

  But almost as soon as the words left his mouth, the air was filled with unnatural, crystalline music. Mikel’s knees gave way as the figure of Death appeared in the clearing. He wore a long hooded cloak, blacker than the night surrounding him. His face was a pale skull, his hollow eyes radiated light, and he actually carried a scythe in his left hand.

  “This is the child you wish me to take?” the specter asked in a musical voice that boomed through the clearing.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You presume a great deal, Brakandaran.”

  “This is necessary, my lord.”

  Death glanced around the clearing until his eyes alighted on R’shiel.

  “Demon child,” he said, with a slight bow in her direction.

  “Divine One.”

  The creature swiveled his fearsome head toward Mikel then and held out a skeletal arm to the child. “Come.”

  Rakaia couldn’t resist the compulsion to follow him. In a trance, she felt Mikel walk toward Death, unable to resist his song. And she felt Mikel’s fear fall away as he realized this wasn’t Death at all, but Gimlorie, the God of Music.

  The Harshini must have intervened. Perhaps that’s what they did when Brak asked them to pray for him.

  Mica smiled up at the specter as he realized this wasn’t Death. It was theater.

  Gimlorie was taking him somewhere safe. Somewhere he’d never be hurt again. He took the god’s hand willingly as Gimlorie—posing as Death—cast a withering gaze over the stunned humans and disappeared, taking Mikel with him.

  Chapter

  48

  CHARISEE WOKE THE next morning to discover there did not seem to have been an earthquake recently and by the strength of the sun streaming in her window, the sky was exactly where it was meant to be.

  And yet she was lying in a comfortable bed in an exquisitely furnished room rather than a dirty straw mattress in a dungeon.

  She tried to recall what had happened last night, but after Wrayan Lightfinger told her to relax and close her eyes, everything was a blank.

  Charisee was still trying to figure out what had happened when the door opened and a slave entered the room wheeling a cart laden with delicious hot food that she could smell from the other side of the room. She pushed herself up on her elbows, thinking either the Hythrun were astonishingly kind to their prisoners, or she had actually managed to get away with her deception yet again.