The griffin shot away from the beasts and winged higher and higher, spiraling into the sky. There he collected himself, hung for a moment spread eagled against the pale light of the moon, and then dove.
“Gundhrold!” Birdie sprinted toward him, knowing in her heart that it was already too late, that nothing she could say or do could stop him.
His melody rang with purpose.
He crashed into the first beast with such force that the two went tumbling together, wing over beak over horns over tail, into the second beast, and all three dissolved into a roiling mass of flying feathers, fur, and scales. Their roars blended with the wild cacophony of their melodies, until the sound was deafening, eclipsing even the noise of the siege. But through it all, Gundhrold’s melody pulsed on, throbbing peace, peace, peace with every beat of his heart. And the beautiful hope of it whispered through Birdie’s veins even as she charged back toward him, hands clenched around the hilt of her axe.
A resounding boom echoed through the valley, but it was the shock of the quiet that followed that brought Birdie to a halt, eyes drawn despite herself to Cadel-Gidhar on the opposite bluff. Even the pursuing Khelari halted and turned to watch. The fires blazing along the ramparts cast the fortress and its surroundings in a ghastly glow. Dwarves lined the ramparts, silhouettes—tiny at that distance—bristling with weapons. Below, Khelari clustered at the base of the walls.
All had gone still.
No weapons sang. No catapults loosed their fury. Even the mass of quimram had gone silent. The gates shivered but did not fall. Behind her, Birdie was vaguely aware of the gasps and the thumps and the savage tearing of the griffin and the monsters locked in combat, but she could not look away from the ravaged fortress. Could not shake the sense that something was about to happen.
A long, dissonant note floated across the valley, and the lone figure of a man emerged from the mass of soldiers and walked up the curving, white roadway to the fortress. Wreathed in early morning mist, the figure moved with slow, purposeful strides until he stood before the battered gate and the dull blaze burning beyond in the crumbling gatehouse towers.
“The Takhran?” Ky’s voice drifted to her ears from farther up the slope. In the dead silence that had fallen, his voice sounded as loud as a shout.
Birdie shook her head. It was not the Takhran. She could not say how she knew, but there was no denying the certainty she felt. It was someone else. Someone no less frightening. A powerful Shantren? Her mouth had gone dry.
“Earthshaker.” The quiet, measured voice of the saif fell suddenly upon her ears. So soft spoken she did not startle so much as catch her breath. Frey stood at her side, a creature of the night. If she did not focus her gaze upon him, he melted into the shadows. She did not question his appearance here. In the same way that she knew it was not the Takhran upon the road below, she knew that Frey’s coming was right.
As if a strand of melody had suddenly shifted into place.
“Beware, Songkeeper—”
The figure below began to sing, cutting off Frey’s words. At the first deep notes of his voice, the earth trembled. Earthshaker. Only a tremor at first, a faint rumble that grew until the foundations of the fortress shivered, though the mountains themselves did not move. They remained firm and unyielding beneath Birdie’s feet, and yet she could feel the terrible echoes of the rumbling through her bones. It stole the strength from her limbs, left them feeling weak and useless beneath her.
Soft fur brushed her arm. Frey pressed against her side, steadying her.
Once. Twice. Thrice, the figure sang.
The third note strengthened into a resounding blast that sent a shockwave through the gatehouse towers and gate, tearing mortar from stone, rending wood from iron, and sending the shattered pieces flying in a cataclysmic explosion. It swept dwarf warriors from their feet and flung them out over the valley, melodies trailing off into panicked wails and then silence. Chunks of stone whistled through the air and landed with a crash below. Another wave of melodies snuffed out. A chorus of voices silenced, gone in a breath.
And in that breath the resulting quiet was unbearable.
The night breeze was strangely cool and wet against Birdie’s cheeks. Only when the strangeness of the sensation struck her did she realize that her face was wet with tears.
She did not try to wipe them away.
With a final rumbling, the earth stilled, the dust settled, and the last echoes of the note died away. Below, the Khelari army sprang into action with a deafening roar, monsters at the forefront, surging up the white roadway to clamber over the piles of fallen debris and the twisted bodies of the slain. Fighting broke out on every level of the fortress. The dark shapes of the quimram ran rampant through the lower streets, trumpeting and bellowing, demolishing walls as they went, and the screams that rang out over the clatter of falling stones were like a knife thrust to Birdie’s heart.
A strangled sob sounded behind her. The runners had come to a halt, scattered beneath the stands of weeping thrassle that peppered the slope above her. Closer than the rest, a dwarf girl clutched her hands to her face, cheeks glistening with tears. Somehow, the sight of another’s anguish was enough to draw Birdie back from the brink, back to herself and to the peril clustered below. Their pursuers were regrouping, rallying for a final charge up the slope.
Frey tensed at her side, muscles quivering and taut as a bowstring.
“Ky!” She sought him across the intervening runners. He was hunched over with his back to a tree, a hand clutched to his chest. In pain or shock, she could not say, but at her call he drew himself erect. “Get them out of here!”
His voice rang out. “Runners, with me!”
Clenching her axe in both hands, Birdie dashed down the slope toward the griffin. Frey hesitated and then skittered after her. His trust warmed her even as it stirred the ache of responsibility, for he followed her, and she did not know what she intended. She knew only that she could not leave Gundhrold behind.
Even if it meant falling by his side.
No longer locked in battle by tooth and claw, the griffin crouched before the two beasts, wings trailing in the dust, exhaustion and pain drawn in every trembling line of his body. And yet, he still stood. And still the Khelari hung back, not daring to venture within his reach. But the chimera were bred to boldness and brashness. Bred in the horrors beneath Mount Eiphyr to brave greater perils than the griffin. Roaring their fury to the skies, the two monsters charged, and Gundhrold staggered forward to meet them.
“No!” Birdie broke into a run, his name on her lips and his melody on her tongue. But it was too late. Already too late. He fell before their onslaught, borne down beneath their weight and their fury. “No!” The icy tide of her anger pooled in her grip on the haft of her axe.
A tendril of the Song beckoned to her as she crashed down the slope, trampling sage and flattening heather. It touched her mind, but she turned from it, heedless in her rage, intent upon the weapon in her fist and the destruction she would unleash. She did not know if Frey followed still, nor did she care. She was the Songkeeper.
But the axe felt suddenly heavy and unruly in her hands. A dull weight. A hapless thing.
Her steps faltered.
The Song beckoned to her again. No gentle whispering this time, no soft voice singing a melody of hope and comfort. This was a raging fire. A turbulent flood. A howling gale.
It demanded that she give it voice.
The axe slipped from her nerveless hands. Scarce an arm’s length from the horror of the fight, she halted, lifted her face to the sky, and poured forth the Song in an anthem that rose to greet the distant stars. And it seemed that the stars and the moon and the very rocks on the hillside sang in answer.
A long, hollow note rang out from her own throat, and the hair stood up on her arms at the sound of it. The mountains themselves trembled, shivered to the very core. Rocks cracked. Trees split in two. A rift tore through the earth before her feat, and an enormous geyser of wat
er burst from the ground. Like a pillar, it rose, a wall of churning white that trapped the moonlight and the dull glare of the burning fortress and dispersed it in a thousand falling rainbows.
For a moment, there was nothing but the roar of the water and the trembling of the earth and the ceaseless force of the Song flowing around and through her. Then the geyser dwindled and died, and when she came to herself, she found that she knelt, soaked to the bone, in a stream of water that trickled away down the slope between the skeletal shapes of shattered rocks and uprooted trees. Of the chimera and the Khelari who had been pursuing them she saw no sign. Perhaps they had been swept away by the flood. Perhaps they had merely fled.
In the end, it did not matter.
They were gone, and Gundhrold . . . Gundhrold . . .
She staggered upright and caught sight of him lying on the riven ground not far away. Numb legged, she stumbled to his side, ignoring the terrible fear that pulsed through her with each beat of her heart. Moonlight painted a harsh picture of his wounds. Savage claw marks raked his sides interspersed with the scoring of deeper wounds where the goat’s horns had stabbed into his flesh. Pitted fang marks oozed venom that hissed and bubbled against his tawny coat. His wings lay broken beneath him, a twisted mass of feathers.
His beak was open.
Breathless, she knelt beside him, sliding her hands beneath his limp head to lift it into her lap. It was so heavy she scarcely managed. A pained breath escaped his parted beak, and his eyes rolled back to meet hers, but he did not try to speak. She did not even know if he saw her. But there was a light behind the dullness in his eyes that seemed to point to a vision of a far different place.
With a shudder, his eyes turned to the sky, and a note of that incomprehensible sense of peace, peace, peace washed through his melody and through it to her . . .
And then he was gone.
Part Three
18
Birdie left her axe where it had fallen, blade bitten into the shattered earth, not far from where Gundhrold lay. It was a piece of her that she could leave with him—a hard, cold, bloodthirsty piece. She wanted no more of it. And yet it seemed fitting, somehow, given the way that he had died. Torn to shreds by the monsters of the Takhran, torn to protect her, the Songkeeper that he dreamed that she could become.
What use was an axe against monsters such as those they faced?
The Song alone had been able to save him, and yet it—or Emhran—had chosen not to.
A mist clouded her vision. She blinked and found that it was just tears welling up, turning the world into a watery blur. She whispered a silent farewell to Gundhrold and swung up onto Frey’s bowed back, gripping his narrow rib cage tightly with her thighs. His lithe limbs carried them swiftly up the slope, past the slaves and runners standing once again in stunned huddles, past Ky’s slumped form—bowed over his knees, shoulders shaking—to the front of the line. The saif’s cloven hooves made little noise as he assumed the lead and forged onward into the night, fleeing the slaughter in the valley below and the attention her song must have drawn. But she saw no pursuit, and Earthshaker did not sing again. Birdie did not attempt to guide the saif, nor did she wonder if he would lead them true. It did not seem to matter anymore.
Little did.
Stifling a groan, she clenched her fists in the saif’s downy mane and lifted her face to the crisp night air. She had not sung Gundhrold’s soul to sleep. Had not been able to bring herself to yield voice to the Song that whispered in her soul—an echo of the peace and joy that had swept through his melody in that breath before the end. For in that instant, she had realized that she was drowning, but he was not. She was lost. He had found the way.
She could not sing.
But his song had begun anew.
And oh, how she had longed to join him in it. Soft footsteps had whispered behind her, and Frey’s melody had washed over her. But she had thrust the knowledge of his presence aside, not wanting anything, even comfort, to disturb the sorrow and sanctity of the moment. She had buried her hands in Gundhrold’s ruff, stroked the curve of his russet feathers, bent to kiss behind one tufted ear, and at last let the tears fall freely upon his coat.
Death had reigned in the fortress across the valley, and the dark melody had soared in triumph, a hideous clanging noise that reveled in bloodshed and broken corpses strewn across soiled earth. But there, upon the hillside, something else had been at work. A hidden thread of music that somehow reached beneath the vast symphony of the world, supported it, and bound it all together. It eased her at the same time that it disquieted her. Left her raw and aching and yet lifted by a mysterious hope that refused to abandon her even now as she clung to Frey’s mane.
Listen, Songkeeper.
The voice of Emhran had whispered those words to her months ago upon another hillside, and oh, how she clung to them still.
Let me sing you a Song.
•••
Tauros had long since ridden past noon by the time they emerged from the forest and came to a ragged halt in the clearing. Ky caught himself against a tree, legs trembling with exhaustion, while all around him runners slumped to the ground and freed slaves gazed about wide eyed. The claw wounds in his chest throbbed incessantly, a pulsing fire that scattered steady thought and left him grasping to make sense of it all.
It was done.
The mission had been completed.
Only it wasn’t, was it? It was all a horrible tangled knot of good and bad, success and failure, stupidity—his stupidity—and sorrow. Sorrow. He clenched a hand to his forehead in a pitiful attempt to ease the bombarding thoughts. It didn’t help. Blood stained his palm, lining the cracks in his skin. His blood. Khelari blood. In the end it was the same. He lifted his other hand, only to realize that he still clenched his sword and sling. It took a mighty effort to peel his fingers away from the hilt so he could sheathe the sword, and even then, it felt as though he had left a layer of skin and blood behind.
Across the clearing, the strange beast halted before the mouth of the cave, and Birdie slid from its back. She didn’t enter the cave, just stood there swaying, eyes unfocused. She looked about as lost as he felt. He swallowed hard and skimmed his gaze across the slaves instead. Some had peeled off during the long march and gone away on their own until it was mostly the old and young that remained—about twenty all told. There was no sense of companionship or unity among them. Even in the midst of the group each sat alone, huddled over their own bodies, thin limbs protruding from ragged clothes. They were a filthy, stinking bunch, covered in oozing sores and raw whip marks.
Birdie and his crew had freed them, and every bone in his body knew that it had been the right thing to do. But what in the world was he to do now? Soon there would be problems to solve, questions to answer . . . and he was the leader. He had proven it. But he couldn’t bring himself to move. He felt paralyzed, without an ounce of strength left in his limbs or mind. And the cuts on his chest throbbed with an intensity that robbed each breath of force.
Gritting his teeth, he gripped the tree a little tighter and shook the haze of pain and exhaustion away. A fellow only could move one step at a time. So . . . first step: food and water. Bandages next. Shelter and security later. He attempted to stand beyond the support of his tree. His legs felt unsteady, but they would hold. They had to.
“Gull.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and repeated the call, aware that all eyes had latched onto him the moment he spoke. “Oi, Gull.”
The boy appeared at his side. “Oi.” His bow was slung at the ready over one shoulder, but only three arrows rattled in the quiver. Ky logged the observation away. Resupplying weapons—another step for later.
“Gull, see if you can’t get Dor started passing out food.” A nagging sense of unease pushed to the forefront. “Check in with the sentries too.” He hadn’t seen a sign of them on the way in, and with so many strangers in the group, they should have been challenged. “Remind them to keep a sharp eye out. Want to make
sure we weren’t followed.”
“Right-o.” Gull dashed off a salute and loped toward the cave.
Ky gnawed at his lip. The silence from the sentries bothered him. They were a part of Slack’s crew, but that didn’t give them the right to ignore their duty. And where was Slack? No point in denying the frustration that simmered in his gut as he scanned the area for her. It irked him that she hadn’t bothered to come out of the cave, not even to help with the injured. Just another way for her to dig her heels in and jostle for control.
“Oi!” Gull burst from the cave. “They’re gone, Ky. All of them.”
“Who?”
“Everyone we left behind. Took food, weapons, even their bedrolls with them.” Gull sucked in a breath. “They’re just gone.”
The words bounced around in his brain. Refused to sink in. “Not . . . Meli too?” A nod. Ky forced himself to breathe. “They could just be out scouting, right?”
“You ever take your bedroll scouting? Fire is cold too. They must have left not long after we did. Just packed up an’ left, without us.”
Gone . . .
Before he knew it, he was lurching forward, tripping over arms and legs as he stumbled through the seated runners and slaves toward the cave mouth. Gull must have missed something. It was a trick. He had to see it for himself.
But even when he saw it, saw the openings in the line of bedrolls, the missing weapons, the lurking emptiness of the cave, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Because surely even Slack wasn’t capable of this. Sure, absconding with the Underground, nabbing them when his back was turned, just like apple bobbing in the market—that, maybe, he could believe. It was a very Underground thing to do. Seize the opportunity, keep up, look out for yourself, and all the rest of the mumbo-jumbo rules Cade had invented. But taking Meli just to spite him? And Syd too? Surely Slack wasn’t that heartless.
He heard his own voice speaking. “It’s a mistake . . . It must be. They’ll be back soon.”
Song of Leira Page 21