An arm of water slithered from the wall holding back the ocean and latched onto his ship, righting it, sweeping it back toward the sea. Birdie focused the Song upon that spot, and the water dashed away. Crunching the keel of the ship again upon the seafloor.
On and on she sang while the armies fought, until her knees began to tremble, her chest ached with the strain, and dizziness swept through her head. Then in the midst of the chaos, Frey’s melody came alongside. With his antlered head passed over her shoulder and his body supporting her from the back, he held her steady while the battle raged.
30
Birdie could no longer feel her legs. Numbness climbed from her ankles to her knees, advancing with a creeping, tingling sensation that gradually gave way to deadness. Without Frey, she would have collapsed long since. And without Sym circling them in defense, the Khelari would have silenced her before then. Over a dozen slain soldiers lay in a ring about them, courtesy of Sym’s spears. Countless more from both sides lay sprawled amongst the yards of sea fans and coral separating her from the nearest ships.
And still she stood. And still she sang.
Out in the midst of the exposed seabed, the free tribes had battled the Khelari as the hours slipped past, until one by one the ships fell. Whenever her voice faltered and the Song slackened with it, the Khelari rallied. But when the Song flowed strong, the army had been strengthened with it. Now the burning, forsaken hulks were all that remained of the ships, while swarms of Adulnae and Saari escorted their prisoners past her to shore.
Some of the Khelari cast her dark looks as they marched past. Others refused to meet her gaze as she sang. She waited until they had scaled the rounded mountain slopes and then waited again until the field of battle had been checked for wounded and stragglers. Then Sym nodded the “all clear,” and she let her voice die away, releasing the Song’s hold upon the sea.
With a sound like rolling thunder, the wall of water crashed down upon the burning ships, smashing them to driftwood and sweeping away the last traces of death and destruction. The tide raced toward her, refilling the seabed. Relieved of the strain, Birdie’s limbs gave out and she crumpled to the ground. But Sym swept her up onto Frey’s back, and the saif sprang away with the ocean hissing at his heels.
He did not halt until they were well up the mountainside, and even then he was loath to let her dismount. No sooner had her feet struck earth than a heavy hand clapped her on the shoulder and Jirkar’s voice boomed in her ear.
“Well done, miss! Well done.”
Then Nisus was there, patting her other shoulder and offering congratulations, and in a moment she was surrounded by a swarm of fighters. They pressed in about her until she found it hard to breathe. A wild range of emotions ran through their melodies—shock, joy, amazement, grief—and they were exuberant still with the thrill of the fight. Then a space cleared, warriors shuffling aside, and the Caran and Sa Itera strode toward her. Both had been in the thick of the fight. Blood trailed from a cut on Itera’s brow beneath the lion’s teeth of her battle headdress and seeped from a rent in the mail covering her shoulder, while the Caran’s sling hung in shreds and had been replaced with a belt that held his injured arm to his chest.
But even he was smiling. Covered in the muck and sweat of battle, with sea kelp clinging to his boots and a limpet latched to his breastplate, the Caran looked more at ease than she had yet seen him.
Without breaking gaze, Itera snapped her hand up. One of the Saari sprang to her side. “Dispatch the first lion rider. We must relay this news to Matlal Quahtli immediately.”
The Saari snapped a salute and hurried away.
Birdie had not seen any lions in the two weeks since she had arrived. Strange for the Saari to have chosen not to ride them into battle. She cleared her throat. “Lion riders?” Summoning her voice to speak was a challenge after so many hours of singing. It sounded strange in her own ears. Coarse and rasping.
Itera nodded, lifting one hand to wipe away the trickle of blood on her brow. “Indeed. We left relays of lion riders concealed upon the southward road. With traveling through the night and changing out relays, the news should reach the desert three days hence.”
The crowd stirred as Cade shoved his way through, followed by Tymon mumbling apologies left and right. “No sign of Seabringer among the captives.” Cade paused at the sight of Sa Itera and smoothly dipped his head in her direction—“M’lady”—then toward the Caran and Birdie too. From what Ky had told her, Birdie had no doubt that was as close as he and his stiff neck ever came to bowing. “None of the captives wear the talav. Either Seabringer escaped somehow, or his corpse is buried at the bottom of the sea.”
“It is a pity we cannot be certain.”
Itera’s relentless gaze flickered to Birdie again, and she shifted uncomfortably. What did she expect? That Birdie could somehow command the waves to drive his body to shore?
If he even was dead . . .
“Come, Sa Itera, the victory is won.” The Caran raised his shoulders and then winced and adjusted his sling. With the outcome of the battle, it seemed an enormous weight had been lifted from him. “Let us rejoice in that. Without the fleet or lion riders of his own, Seabringer would be hard pressed to strike the desert as we feared.”
Sa Itera made some reply, but Birdie did not hear it. A familiar melody claimed her attention—a bright, sprightly voice that whisked in and out of the thicket of melodies surrounding her. A flash of orange caught her eye. Khittri darted around her legs, quivering from whiskers to tail and chittering nonstop as she wove a ceaseless figure eight. Birdie had to kneel to make out the words.
“They’re leaving, they are. They’re leaving. Taking the dark one and going away.”
“What are you saying?”
Khittri stilled and stared up at her, muzzle twitching. Her eyes watered, and the wing flaps that ran from forelimb to hind limb looked dry and shriveled. Whatever news she had to relay, it must have been important to drag her so far from home and in full sunlight too. Here on the open coast where there were few trees to offer shadow or shelter, when petras by nature sought moonlight. “The two-legs, Ky, and his hunters. They took the crippled one from the well, drew him up, and prepared for attack. Grim, they looked. Very grim and determined.”
Eirnin.
Birdie’s eyelids sagged shut. She rubbed her pounding forehead. Damp hair fell across her face and hands and left wet trails on her skin. She tried to reason her way around Khittri’s stream of words. If Ky had pulled Eirnin from the well, it could only mean one thing. He had grown weary of waiting for her to return. He planned to march with the raiders to attack Dacheren without the army.
Without her.
She shot to her feet before the impulse of the Song. A step brought her to Frey’s side. One look at her face and he knelt, and she swung up onto his back. Surprised murmurs rippled through those around her. Though she trembled from exhaustion, the heady sense of the Song’s purpose drummed through her veins. She raised her voice, and they fell silent.
“The fleet is destroyed, as I promised. Will you march now with me to Dacheren and Serrin Vroi, as you promised?”
The Caran cast a long, slow look around, and the smile on his face widened into one of determination. “The mountains are with you, Songkeeper.”
“As is the desert.” Sa Itera inclined her head.
Birdie nodded her thanks. “I go to Dacheren.”
“But Songkeeper,” Nisus objected. “There is much to be done here. We must deal with the prisoners, tend our wounded, account for the dead.”
“He’s right, miss. Our forces are weary. We cannot press them into another march without a moment’s rest. And if I may say so, you look like you could do with a sleep yourself.”
“It is not wise to rush blindly to battle, and an assault on Serrin Vroi cannot be taken lightly. We cannot succeed without the full force of the desert. Our forces are already mustered on the borders. Once word reaches the Matlal, they will march on Mount
Eiphyr.” Sa Itera took a step nearer and laid a gentle hand on Birdie’s knee. Her tone softened. “Wait awhile, Songkeeper. You cannot do this alone.”
Birdie could not deny the truth of their words. The hours of battle had taken their toll, and a wearier, more disheveled lot she could not imagine. Doubtless she was the worst. And yet she could not deny the knowledge that even if she could wait, Ky would not. Nor could she deny the insistence of the Song.
It pulsed against the corners of her mind, demanding she follow.
“Ky goes to take Dacheren, and I must help him.” She nodded at the Saari and Adulnae. “Come when you are able.” Then she gripped Frey’s mane in both hands as he whirled around and bounded off into the sunset.
•••
Drengreth was deserted.
The saif skidded to a stop before the well, and Birdie slipped from his back to land on numbed legs. Her hands settled on the stone rim, supporting her, until the tingling faded and feeling returned. She glanced back over her shoulder up the hill toward the web of empty shelters and the fireless ring. Not all of those who had been sheltered at Drengreth could have traveled with Ky and his raiders. There were many elderly and many far too young. Most likely, with their numbers diminished, they were out gathering together. But the quiet still unnerved her.
“Why are we here, Songkeeper?”
Other than Eirnin’s crude map that had depicted Dacheren somewhere on the eastern coast near Serrin Vroi, she did not know where it was. And yet the Song had led her here. To Drengreth. To the well.
To the long, hollow note echoing up from its depths.
“There is something I must do.” She drew the rope from concealment and slung the end down into the well. Armed only with an unlit torch and a tinder box stuck through her belt, she gripped the rope, braced her feet against the wall, and climbed down, step by step into the dark. After a few feet, she looked up. The circular shaft framed Frey’s antlered head against the sky.
His voice drifted down to her. “If you know they are gone, why do you search?”
She hesitated over her answer. All through the journey from the coast, it had troubled her. There was a thread that tied everything together. A thread bound to the well. To the hollow cave. To Tal Ethel and the long-silent, long-empty streambed. A thread that explained the hallowed places and did not merely accept them.
But still it escaped her.
“Songkeeper?” Frey’s voice drew her back.
She shook her head. “I’m not looking for them.” The echoes of her voice bounced off the walls and sent a shiver through the rope. In the wake of the echoes, the broken notes of a song blew through the shaft, emanating from the empty space below. She was not alone.
Amos was down there.
The realization halted her descent. Sent a quiver of anxiety rippling through her, followed an instant later by a stirring of shame.
It was Amos.
Her arms began to ache under the strain of the additional weight of the dwarf-made armor. Gritting her teeth, she lowered herself down until the glow of torchlight lighted the shaft, and then slid the last few feet. She landed heavily. Amos did not look up. He stood a few paces away, hunched over the torch in his hand. Head cocked to one side, chin tucked to his chest, brow furrowed.
Over the past weeks, it had become a familiar expression. Once again he battled the whispers of the ghosts of his past. No surprise he did not acknowledge her presence.
He was not fully there.
“It was a riverbed once.”
The peddler’s slurred words caught her off guard. She blinked at him. “What was?”
Amos swung his head around, encapsulating the wide, open space and the path bored out of solid rock in both directions. “This. The Pit. That Hollow Cave we visited in the desert. All o’ ’em reek o’ this strange, uncanny sense of power. Can ye no’ feel it?” His eyes settled on her, red rimmed, blinking owlishly in the garish light of his torch. Even though he spoke to her, she was not convinced that he actually spoke to her. His voice had a soft, dreamlike tone. “Didn’t notice it until the Pit. Artair used t’ tell us about how a river once flowed through all o’ Leira. Never thought it possible. Naught but a myth. But what if the river flowed underground?”
His words aligned so well with the course of her thoughts that she was at a loss for a response. And so the threads settled into place at last, like a dozen distinct notes of a strangely familiar melody, falling into the correct order and melding to complete the whole. Blended with the slave camps and the diggings and the web of tunnels beneath Mount Eiphyr, it all seemed to point to even more. If all these places were connected by the forsaken pathways of the river, then perhaps infiltrating Serrin Vroi again was not such an impossibility.
What better way than to creep into the heart of the Takhran’s fortress from below?
“All that time, and the beswoggled thing was right beneath our feet.” Shivering as with fever chills, Amos sank to the ground and clenched his head in his hands. “Did Artair know?”
He looked so pitiful that Birdie longed to run to him, wrap her arms around his shoulders, and whisper the peace of the Song into his ears. But he had rebuffed her so many times. Tension formed a parchment-thin sheet of ice between them. She dared not tread too heavily lest it crack.
With a sigh, she started back toward the rope. She could not delay if she hoped to find and reach Dacheren in time. Without Eirnin to guide her, she had little hope. And yet . . .
She paused.
The Song had led her here, had it not? Here and not Dacheren.
It grew stronger then. Out of the hollow note suffusing the tunnel, the master melody blossomed. It called her to follow. It offered no promises. It made no guarantees. Other than a whispered reminder to seek peace and to be still. She did not know where it would lead—whether she would emerge from the dark in Serrin Vroi or miles away in the Hollow Cave.
And yet she could not ignore it.
“Songkeeper?”
“Frey?” She hurried back to the well shaft, realizing only then the implications of this summons from the Song: the saif could not join her beneath the earth. She would be alone. Again. No matter how often she began the trek with friends or allies alongside, somehow she always found herself marching forth to death or victory alone.
And yet not alone.
In broken sentences shouted up the well shaft, she revealed her plan to Frey and asked him to meet and guide the Caran’s army to Dacheren to help Ky. Even if they could not understand Frey’s speech, Jirkar would be savvy enough to realize that the saif came from her.
“But how am I to find the slave camp, Songkeeper?”
“It’s in the foothills around Serrin Vroi.” Eirnin had told her that much. “Head to Mount Eiphyr. By the time you arrive, a battle will have broken out. You will hear it.”
“Very well, but you will—”
She slipped away before he could finish extracting a promise she was not sure she could keep. Resolute steps carried her past Amos’s huddled figure. On into the dark of the tunnel. She paused. Collecting herself. It seemed colder here. A cold that pierced armor and hauberk, as if the chill carried on its breath the icy taste of fear. It seemed a wild and reckless thing, this blind trust in the hope a legend provided. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t deny that the idea of following an ancient underground water course in the faint and feeble hope that it was somehow connected to the slave camps and the spring buried beneath the Takhran’s fortress was completely mad.
Utter podboggle.
That’s what Amos would have said.
A faint laugh worked its way up her throat. On impulse, she swung back to his side and laid a hand on his arm. “Come with me, Amos. Please?”
He pulled away, horror engulfing his features. “No, lass, I can’t.”
“But I’m alone. I can’t go alone.” Her voice sprang back from the rock walls. The Song sprang up around her, enfolding her tense limbs in a comforting embrace. Peace.
Be still. And yet . . . She knotted her fists. Hating her weakness. “Amos, I need you.”
“No, lass.” His voice was quiet and firm. “Ye don’t.”
And final.
The air she breathed seemed to whistle through her lungs. She reeled away from Amos. Still, the Song beckoned her onward into the dark and unknown. Pausing only to light her torch with Amos’s, she strode into the tunnel as the melody forged a way before her feet.
31
“Down. Get down!”
At the urgency in Eirnin’s voice, Ky dropped into a crouch behind a pricknettle bush. His heart hammered in his throat. In the dark untouched by the waning moon, he couldn’t make out the danger, but that pinch in his gut warned that it was nothing good. Out of the corner of his eye, he made out Eirnin’s form wobbling on his crutches as he tried to stoop. He started to help, but a sweep of Obasi’s elbow knocked him back. The Saari jerked the end of the chain, bringing Eirnin to one knee with a muffled cry.
Ky shot him a glare. Pointless in the dark. But barking at him now might get them all killed, so glaring was the best he could do. Obasi’s handling of their guide had grown steadily worse since leaving Drengreth. First insisting on the slave chain and collar, now the way he drove him, chain taut, pace set painfully fast for a man on crutches—all of it reeked of a level of hatred and cruelty that made Ky’s skin crawl. This was dangerous ground they trod.
Or rather Obasi trod and dragged them all along with him.
Because he hadn’t put a stop to it.
Behind, heather rustled faintly. He glanced back over his shoulder. The line of raiders dropped to the ground, Gull only inches from his heels. Their dark clothes and painted faces melted into the shadows like wraiths in the night. As they had discovered in their last raid, scavenged Khelari armor was bulky and ill fitted for most of them. But the smiths rescued from Al Tachaad had reworked as much as they could in a short time. Most of the raiders had at least some protection now. Even Ky wore a light mail shirt with a breastplate and pauldrons over his leathers. Their ranks, swollen by freed slaves and disbanded soldiers—folk who had chosen to follow his banner instead of marching to war—were a far cry from the urchin band that had struggled to survive in Kerby.
Song of Leira Page 33