A puzzle, that’s what this situation with Slack was. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t work out the right or wrong of it. If there was one thing he had learned from having Dizzier as his “older brother,” it was that you could bully a fellow into fear or submission, but you sure couldn’t bully him into respect.
Respect had to be earned.
That sounded grand in theory, but the only way Ky knew to earn respect was to live worthy of it and be willing to give it in turn. That was challenge enough without dealing with someone who saw respect as a sign of weakness.
5
An evening breeze stirred over the mountain, rattling the stalks of sage and heather and sending cooling puffs of air slithering across Birdie’s cheeks. It bore the scent of distant rain and faint wood smoke from the Underground’s cooking fires below. Even in the wind she heard the echoes of the melody. It wove through everything, a thread of power that sustained and gave all being. Beneath her feet the mountain trembled to its roots with a succession of deep notes. The wild grasses lifted high, sibilant voices, while the trees themselves sang in slow, breathy, earthy tones. All a part of the grand orchestra, all singing the same five notes of a grander song.
Ever since the voice had spoken to her in the mountains surrounding Serrin Vroi, offering to sing her a Song, she had become more aware of the half-melody that resided in each and every part of her world, and the vast melody—the Creation Song—that hovered nearby and hummed through each breath of her being.
It was not a part of her, to be commanded or controlled at her wishes.
Rather, she was a part of it.
“Anything?” Gundhrold’s soft voice called, barely audible over the music.
Her eyes were closed, but the light of the setting sun shone full upon her, outlining her lids in dull red and turning them almost translucent. She squinted tighter, focusing, narrowing in like an archer sighting on a target. Once she honed in on a voice, she was able to distinguish it from the rest of the vast symphony, pull it aside to search for any taint of the dark melody that marked the servants of the Takhran, and then release it again into the sea of music. It was a lengthy process that required intense concentration and effort, but it was necessary if she was to listen for concealed enemies.
If they were to count themselves truly safe.
With the griffin standing guard at her back, Birdie ventured out upon a rocky outcrop sheltered beneath the scrubby branches of a hallorm tree overlooking the clearing where Ky and the others labored to set up camp and prepare for nightfall. The breeze bore their melodies to her, and she sought to dispel them, banishing them from her search.
There were no enemies below.
Were there?
The thought struck a note of discord, snapping her from her concentration. Her eyes shot open, tracking the clusters of Underground runners scurrying to and fro, a miniature army in motion. Danger, it seemed, so often came from those she regarded as friends. Both George—the yellow cat from the Sylvan Swan—and Inali had managed to deceive her, proving Amos’s suspicions right. Dear Amos had seen through them from the start. What use was her ability to distinguish the melodies if she could not reliably tell friend from foe, if the Takhran’s Shantren could manipulate their melodies through the talav?
How could she trust anyone?
“Is all well?” The griffin’s voice was nearer now. Harsher too. He must have noticed her hesitation. “What do you see?”
Birdie raised a hand, forestalling him, and dove back into the web of music. Trust was a thing to be earned. It could not be given lightly. One by one she selected the songs of the runners and examined them. It never ceased to amaze her how much of a person’s life saturated those five simple notes—so much heartbreak, so much suffering, so much indomitable hope. She felt that she pried into the hidden corners of their hearts.
She hesitated when she came to Ky’s.
Then forged mercilessly ahead.
At last, when all the melodies had been examined and proven innocent, Birdie pulled back and opened her eyes. Her axe lay on the ground at her feet where she had discarded it, bloodstains on the haft gleaming in the light of the setting sun. She knelt to lift it then paused, studying it with a critical eye. Amos would have called her a boggswoggled fool for not abandoning it for a better weapon. It was wrong for her—a touch too big, too bulky, the sort she had used often enough as a tool for chopping wood to feed the fires of the Sylvan Swan but never in actual combat—and she knew it.
And in a small, strange way, that made it right somehow.
A penance, as it were. A tiny taste of suffering in recompense for the lives lost, the lives she had been unable to save, the war she had been unable to end. No matter how she explained it, Amos would never have understood. But oh, how she would have welcomed the chance to try. If only to hear him call her “a boggswoggled fool” one more time.
“What did you hear, little one?”
“Nothing.” She laughed humorlessly and bent forward to gather the axe, allowing her hair to fall across her face to conceal the tears glimmering in her eyes. Folding her fingers around the rough wooden handle, she took the axe in her hands and stood again, feeling its weight. With a deep breath, she shook her hair back from her face. “Nothing to hint of danger. There are no strangers nearby. None I can hear, at least.”
The griffin hissed in a breath. “You refer to the traitor Inali?”
“Or others like him, like Zahar.” She tightened her grip on the axe. Even now those names evoked terrible memories. She turned back to survey the clearing below. “What do you think of this camp?”
He hesitated before speaking. “The younglings are resourceful. That much I will admit. They know the rudiments of fortifying their position. And this cave is well-hidden. But if they desire a permanent hiding place, they should look farther afield. Should the fortress eventually fall, this region will be flooded with Khelari.”
“It could be now.”
Gundhrold gave her a sharp look.
“There were many Shantren beneath Mount Eiphyr, Gundhrold. Gifted with all sorts of strange powers and abilities—Inali told me so himself. And some are gifted in such a way that they could be here, among us, and I might never hear them.” She let the haft slip through her fingers and grounded the axe head with a thud between her feet. “We are not safe.”
“A Songkeeper is rarely truly safe,” Gundhrold replied. “Thus the need for a Protector.”
“Even you cannot fight an army.”
“Granted. But with an army of her own, a Songkeeper can.”
Birdie almost scoffed aloud at the words. As if she would know what to do with herself in a battle of that magnitude, let alone with an army.
“Or have you another plan in mind?” A hint of stiffness crept into his voice. “You must know that the Songkeeper’s place is at the front of this battle, not hiding far from the lines in some mountain cave with a ragtag band of younglings.”
The words stung, and yet the sting served only to stoke her anger. “I have no plans, Gundhrold. I never have.”
From the beginning none of this had been her plan. She had only ever been an unwilling, and far too often unwitting, thread in the tapestry of this life she did not comprehend. Forced from the Sylvan Swan by Carhartan, rescued by Amos and drawn on a path of his choosing to Bryllhyn, captured by pirates and carried away against her wishes, released by the impetus of the Song. And then, once again, she had followed at Amos’s coattails to Nar-Kog and beyond. Even the scheme to infiltrate Serrin Vroi had been suggested by Inali, the words and visions of the Hollow Cave tainted by his interpretation. The one time she had thought she chose her own course and sought to fulfill her role as the Songkeeper, it was only because a traitor had readied the way, manipulating her like a puppet on a string. But now the griffin had made it clear that he would abide by her choice. For once in her life, matters rested firmly in her hands . . . and she had no idea what to do.
“Come away, little one.
” Gundhrold’s golden eyes held her captive, lit from within by the blaze of his fervor. “Tonight. Let us try for Cadel-Gidhar. I flew there while you all slept. The Khelari’s initial assault failed to take the fortress. It was a test. Nothing more. Now they know they must build war-machines and siege engines and gather their strength for a stronger next assault. Let us strengthen the armies of the Caran with the might of the Songkeeper while we can. Let us win this war once and for all.”
Once before she had attempted to end the war. Charged recklessly into danger, staunch in the belief that her strength as the Songkeeper would carry her through and bring victory. Only to watch those she loved fall, see the sword of legend lost to the Takhran’s hand, and feel hope perish beyond recall.
She could not risk it again.
“I . . .” She failed to utter the cowardly words that shivered on her tongue. “I must think.”
A shrewd look passed over his face. With such a piercing gaze, the griffin was not easily fooled. But he simply gave a half-hearted, rumbling assent and turned aside. “Do not think too long, little one, or I fear what chance we might have had of success among the dwarves will be gone.”
With his warning ringing in her ears, Birdie made her way down the slope, leaving the griffin to keep watch over those below. By the time she emerged from the copse of trees, most of the Underground runners had begun their meal and sat in huddles before the cave. A few still waited in line before the cookpot, where a scowling girl with short, curly black hair manned the ladle, divvying out steaming scoopfuls.
Ky met her at the edge of the clearing, moving with the quick, earnest, slightly forward-leaning stride of his that he fell into whenever he was intent upon some mission. It made him look like he was on the verge of breaking into a full-out sprint. “Any sign of danger?”
“None. Gundhrold stayed behind to keep watch.”
“Good. I’ll relieve him in a bit. You hungry?” Without waiting for her answer, he led the way to the cookpot in the middle of the clearing. The dark-haired girl’s scowl deepened at their approach. Birdie recalled her melody from her search, a swift repetition of the five notes that was just as likely to rage with anger as gush with joy. But beneath the varying emotions flowed an unwavering line of pain.
She knew it well. The same pain formed an undercurrent to everything she did these days as well. The Song whispered inside of her, and Birdie longed to bring the girl peace—and somehow at the same time to find peace herself—but she did not know where to begin. What was a Songkeeper supposed to do in the face of suffering?
So she just stood there, helpless.
Without a word the girl ladled a scoop into a makeshift bowl fashioned from rough-hewn hallorm bark and shoved it in Ky’s direction.
Birdie nodded at the bowl, more to have something to say than anything else. “Clever.”
“Huh? Oh yes, it is at that.” If his tone was anything to judge by, he seemed less than thrilled about the admission. “Slack’s idea, and isn’t she just full of them? Here.” He held the bowl out to her. “You want it? Lost my appetite.”
She leaned in for a closer look and caught another whiff of something burnt from the gloppy, brown mess in his bowl. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the bogs that pitted the moors of the Westmark. Looked just as appetizing. “What is it?”
“Food, that’s what.” The girl tossed her ladle into the cookpot, and Birdie watched as it sank beneath the bubbling surface. “It’s all that was left in the supply sacks, and you lot can be grateful there was this much. Honestly, Ky, I’m not a magician. I can only work with what I’ve got. At least Cade made sure we had supplies.”
“Tomorrow,” Ky said. “We’ll send out—”
She cut him off. “You want some, you can help yourselves.” She plucked the bowl from his hand and stormed off to sit beside the tall girl with long blond braids who had been fighting with Ky when they arrived. Slack, was it? The two whispered together, and Birdie could practically feel Ky bristling.
He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stand up in spikes about his head the way Amos’s always had when he was angry. “You wouldn’t know anything about hunting, would you? I mean, you can talk to critters, right? Could you, I don’t know, lure some in for us?”
The thoughtlessness of the question caught her off guard. “That’s . . .” She caught herself and took a second look at him. Bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, ringed about by dark circles, limbs drooping with exhaustion as he gazed unseeing across the clearing. It brought to mind the way he had spoken of the Underground in the hold of the slave ship. Whatever had happened over the past few months to bring them all here, so far from Kerby, it had not changed his sense of responsibility toward them.
If anything, it seemed to have deepened it.
She hesitated over her answer. “That’s not how it works. I don’t control them. It’s no different than talking with you right now. And even if I could summon them, I wouldn’t.”
“Means I’ll have to ask Slack, or maybe the griffin?” His eyes lit up. “Think he’d help?”
“I can ask.” But she doubted it. Gundhrold was not a trained beast to be dispatched on errands at a whim. If he deemed it necessary for their survival, he would do it, but grudgingly. For him, she had gathered, maintaining his independent nature was a matter of pride.
“Good.” Ky grunted. “I’ll talk to him too. They say I can be . . . persuasive.” His voice twisted on that last part, as if there were some bitter jest hidden within that Birdie could not understand. “Best we do something about those supplies though, before Dor starts a riot. Or the rest of the runners do after eating this slop.”
“Would she?”
His brows drew together, giving his face a hardened expression that Birdie didn’t much like. “Wouldn’t put it past her. She and Slack are thick as only thieves can be.” With a shrug he dismissed the conversation and gestured toward the cookpot. “Want some?”
Birdie shook her head. For lack of anywhere else to go, she followed him as he wove through the clumps of runners. Some glanced up at him with a strange sort of awe and respect on their faces. Others glowered behind his back. Gone was the sense of companionship that she had felt between him and the others when she had last seen him in the Underground. And with that realization, the pieces slowly fell into place. He was their leader now, and as such he had become almost as much of an outsider as she, drawn out from among them by the demands of authority and responsibility.
But if he was their leader, what had happened to Cade?
Ky took a seat just within the shadow of the cave entrance, leaning back against the wall, and she sat by his side, axe reassuringly close to hand. There was so much to ask, and so much that she had to tell, but finding a place to begin was the difficult part, and whatever easiness she and Ky had once found in each other’s company had been shattered by time and distance and the difficulties of the paths they had wandered.
The cave loomed at her back, an empty space that sent tingles down her spine and made her itch to look over her shoulder for fear that something lurked within. With each breath she nearly choked on the cold, musty smell of damp rock and moss. If she let her mind wander, she could believe herself back in the tunnels beneath Mount Eiphyr, summoned by the Takhran, surrounded by enemies, shivering with terror at the sounds of the monsters housed in the dark.
With an effort she pulled herself back to the present.
“. . . all just temporary, really. We need somewhere more defensible, like the cavern. Reckon if Hawkness was here, he could teach us a thing or two. Set things to rights. Is he coming to meet you?”
The weight of the question, spoken so casually, drove the breath from her lungs. Trapped beneath memory and the moment, Birdie could not reply. Once again she stood in the fire glow of the cavern, watching Amos battle for his life against a fearsome three-headed beast. Once again her ears rang with his scream.
“Birdie?”
She followed Ky’s startled ga
ze to find her hand gripped tight around the haft of her axe, though she could not recall willing it to move.
“What is it?”
Her throat had closed up. All she could manage was a whisper. “Amos is gone.”
For a long moment he didn’t speak, and she was glad of it. Words were meaningless compared with the depth of this loss. Then, in a low, halting voice he began to tell her of his travels with Migdon the dwarf, the white fever in Kerby, and the challenges against Cade. Of the tunnel digging and the journey north. Of Siranos, Migdon’s death, and Paddy’s capture. It was a bitter thing, this telling, this sharing of sorrows. And yet Birdie could sense the easing of his burden in the outflow of words. Perhaps someday she too would tell her tale and find peace in the telling. But not now. Not yet.
Silence fell between them, broken only by crackling from the dying fire and muted voices rising from the huddles of runners scattered across the clearing. Here and there a voice rose in laughter or merriment, and the noise eased the ache in Birdie’s chest. No matter what horrors were loosed upon the world, still there was room for joy.
Even when she had trouble finding room for it in herself.
“Paddy isn’t dead.” Ky spoke as one waking from a long slumber. “I know it, Birdie. He was taken, like Dizzier and all the others. Only he let himself be taken for me, so I could escape.” Sorrow thickened his voice, but beneath it Birdie heard a note of iron. Of resolve. “I’ve got to find him. Find him and rescue him—even if it means leaving the Underground.”
6
She fled from the cave into the pale light of dawn.
“Are you well, little one?” The griffin leapt to her side, emerging from the shadows like a wraith from the mist. He had been lying before the entrance, keeping watch through the night behind the screens that Slack’s crew had erected. Birdie flung her back against the solid rock of the cliff, tilting her head to draw in breaths of crisp air and the quiet songs of morning. Sweet relief after the stifling damp within the cave. It helped clear the fog from her mind and dispel the last traces of her dreams.
Song of Leira Page 6