Song of Leira

by Gillian Bronte Adams

  Seabringer’s voice rose in challenge. He stepped forward, and the earth steadied beneath his feet. As his voice crescendoed, crimson droplets floated from the dry streambed, coursed from the twelve, and drifted toward him, coalescing into a pool at his feet.

  The earthquake stilled.

  Jaw clenched, Birdie rose to a crouch. Without warning, the crimson liquid shot toward her and slammed into her chest like the blow of a fist. It knocked her back. She gasped for air.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Earthshaker stalk toward Cade. On the ground, the boy scrambled toward the sword, arms and legs flying. Birdie’s warning cry reached him as he yanked the covering away and seized it by the hilt. The crackle of ice searing flesh was unmistakable. His face clenched with the pain. Earthshaker was almost upon him.

  Behind him loomed one of the chimeras.

  “Cade!” Birdie lunged to her feet and broke into a run. She didn’t know what she intended, only that she had to do something. But Seabringer stepped into her path. A tendril from the crimson pool wrapped around her ankles, snapping her from her feet. Her forehead slammed into the stone.

  Pain blazed through her skull. Blood trickling into her eyes, she forced her head up in time to see Cade steady the sword in both hands. His face had gone ashen white. He swept the sword into a tremendous upward swing toward Earthshaker’s chest.

  The chimera pounced on Cade before the sword struck. The lion’s teeth sank into his shoulder, piercing chain mail, while claws tore his breastplate and pauldrons away. The chimera shook him like a dune rabbit and then flung him away. His body snapped against the dome and crumpled into the streambed.

  The sword slipped from his blackened fingers.

  “Cade!” Ky spun back toward the fight, but two Shantren seized him from behind. He yelled and fought against them, but they held him fast.

  Birdie blinked the blood away. She had not even heard them approaching. Too many melodies clashed and battled at once. She could not sort through them all.

  This was beyond her.

  Please, Emhran, help me.

  She closed her eyes and focused on Seabringer’s melody. Blotted all else out and hummed it back to him, cleansed, renewed, refreshed. For an instant, his hold on her lessened. She broke free and staggered to her feet—

  Rough hands seized her from behind, shoved a gag between her teeth, and cinched it fast. They hustled her forward, and she caught only a glimpse of blue robes and crimson talavs as they shoved her and Ky before the throne.

  Cade’s broken form sprawled at her feet, sword lying beside his ruined hands. She tamped down the maelstrom of anger and pain. Beyond, her gaze snagged on a redheaded figure bound to one of the stone columns. She recognized him from her visit to the Underground, so long ago. Paddy. Ky’s friend. Had the melody flowed through his veins too? Had he ever discovered his gifting, or had the hounds merely sniffed out his blood? She sought Ky’s eyes, but his face was set forward, relentlessly fixed upon the Takhran.

  All this time, the withered figure had remained seated on his throne while they battled vainly at his feet. Now he rose. Defiant, she lifted her face to him . . . and was stung by the amusement that twisted his features. Was that what they were to him? Merely entertainment?

  “Little Songkeeper . . .” He rolled the words over his tongue as he descended, moving with the shuffling gait of an old, ache-ridden man. “Ever the thorn in my side.”

  Ky wrenched against his captors. “Just leave her alone.” The strength of his voice was swallowed by the vastness of the Pit.

  Birdie stood still, eyes fixed upon the Takhran. Her head pulsed with pain. Yet it was nothing compared to the ache of the hollowness that filled her chest or the sickening emptiness that yawned within her stomach.

  She had come at the Song’s command. It must do something.

  The Takhran tilted his head, considering her pityingly. “For all your nuisance, you accomplish nothing, little one.”

  “Nothing, huh?” Ky rolled his head around to stare at the Takhran. A wry grin twisted his lips, but there was no humor in it. “Heard that your fleet’s at the bottom of the ocean. Shame, that. Pity about your slave camps too—so many slaves walking free and taking up arms against you. Wonder how that happened? Or how we got here, into the heart of your fortress. Yep. That all sounds like nothing to me too.”

  Baiting the Takhran accomplished nothing.

  Birdie tried to get Ky to meet her gaze, begging him to stop with her eyes. She cried out to the Song for an answer, for guidance, for anything. But the Takhran towered over her. The stench of his withering body caused her stomach to churn.

  “You did me a disservice when last we met, little one.” Clouded eyes flickered balefully at her. “But if there is one thing I have learned over the centuries, it is patience. Vengeance is for fools. But when the judicious course walks hand in hand with vengeance, who am I to deny it?”

  His eyes were dead. Void of emotion. Lacking any hint of life. She recoiled from them.

  An animal snarl twisted his face. In his hand, a blade flashed bronze in the light of the torches. The Shantren holding her tightened his grip on her arm. Quick as a striking snake, the Takhran pivoted to the side and slashed the dirk across Ky’s throat.

  Birdie screamed into the gag.

  White rimmed Ky’s eyes. His body jerked against the restraining hands of the Shantren. Then his limbs folded beneath him, and he pitched forward against the dome beside Cade, blood spilling out over the rock.

  37

  Every muscle in her body trembled. It felt as though her bones would fly apart before the tempest raging within her. She fought furiously against her captors, but their weight bore her down. The cold edge of a blade stung her own throat.

  She went still.

  Through the knotted strands of her hair, she saw familiar eyes blinking owlishly behind spectacles, set in a bronze-skinned face that she knew only too well. Inali. The Saari warrior who had betrayed her to the Takhran on her last journey into the Pit. His jaw clenched and unclenched. Furrows dug across his brow.

  “I am sorry, little Songkeeper.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “I tried.”

  Pain flashed across her neck, followed by the rush of warm blood seeping out over her chest. A strange heaviness weighted her limbs. She slumped against her captors’ hands, catching a glimpse of Inali falling to his knees, his face a mask of pain and rage.

  Her vision blurred. She blinked away the haze.

  The Takhran reached into a pouch at his waist and drew out the massive crystal that Inali had stolen from the Matlal’s throne when they had escaped Nar-Kog. The Star of the Desert. A ragged breath caught in her chest. The Takhran knelt and immersed the crystal in the blood pooling in the streambed at her feet.

  Red suffused the crystal.

  So this was the making of a talav, a bloodstone.

  The bronze dirk flashed again as the Takhran slit his wrist, catching the spilled blood in his cupped hand. He bathed the crystal and his hands together, humming a strange, dark tune, and the liquid swirled within the crystal in answer.

  When he lifted his head, gone was the parchment-thin skin, the cavernous eyes, and the gaunt visage. Once again he had become the striking young man she had seen on her previous journey into the Pit. He slung the crystal on a chain and held it aloft toward her, as if in salute. “The blood of a true Protector. It is a rare thing indeed to find it beyond griffin veins.” His voice sounded heady, almost drunken, in his exultation. “But the blood of a human Protector and a Songkeeper mingled in one talav—in this, the purest crystal in Leira—will be the rarest and most potent of all.”

  The Shantren released her then.

  Let her fall.

  She caught herself on hands and knees beside the still bodies of her companions. Her limbs nearly gave out. She let her throbbing head dangle as her eyes drifted shut. The blood loss and shock of the wound left her reeling, drained her strength. And yet, it could not be deep, or she would sur
ely already be dead.

  A sob constricted her chest. With trembling fingers, she eased the gag from her mouth. Dragged herself forward, inch by painful inch, to Ky’s side. Raised a hand to the jagged wound in his throat. Air gurgled through the opening. His chest did not so much rise and fall as jerk in and expel shallow breaths. Her gaze skipped to Cade. Panic rose in her chest, threatening to drown her. She could scarce believe her ears. Their melodies were weak, erratic. They were not dead yet, but they would be soon unless she could save them.

  Behind, a horn blared, sending brazen echoes skittering throughout the Pit. Some distant part of her was aware of the rise in the melodies and the thunderous tramp, tramp, tramp of approaching feet, but she searched instead for the quavering wail of the sword. Her eyes latched on the blade. It lay just on the other side of Cade, within reach at last. With her last ounce of strength, she lunged for it, and her fingers closed around the hilt.

  The chill coursing through the metal shocked her enough that it drove the daze of pain from her mind and reawakened her senses to the pull of the Song.

  Gripping the blade, she crawled toward the dome.

  “Go ahead, my dear.” The Takhran’s pleasant voice pursued her. Doggedly, she set her face forward, pressing on through the tears of pain and exhaustion that blurred her vision. “Release Tal Ethel. Fulfill your destiny. Send the river flowing though Leira once more. The spring will be tainted as it rises. It will answer to me and me alone.”

  She risked a glance over her shoulder and felt the dread plummeting in her stomach as his meaning became clear. Hundreds of Khelari marched into the cavern, herding hundreds of men, women, and children—all captives, judging by the iron collars fastened around their necks—and forcing them into lines kneeling along either bank of the silent river. Weapons raised, the soldiers took up positions among them. Hundreds of melodies assailed her ears, crying out for deliverance. Even so, it took Birdie a moment to realize what the Khelari intended.

  Mass slaughter.

  To slay them all and hurl their bodies into the streambed. Tainting the water with their blood. Among so many, surely there were some who were gifted as Songlings. Maybe that was the purpose of the crystal columns. With their deaths, could he infuse the crystals as massive bloodstones, as a way to contain or channel the power of the Song?

  Her horror must have shown in her eyes.

  “That’s where the power lies, my dear. In the water and the blood.” The Takhran settled the talav that had been the Star of the Desert around his neck. In the torchlight his eyes glistened red. “Life and death mastered. So it has been sung. You need not resist any longer. Not even the master melody can withstand me.”

  Teeth clenched, Birdie staggered to her feet, clasping the sword in both hands to her chest. Blood trickled down her arm, slicking the hilt beneath her grip. A drop ran down the length of the blade. She swayed, half expecting the Shantren to attack, but the Takhran issued no command. Their eyes rested upon her, waiting to see what she would do.

  If only she knew.

  The Takhran’s words rang still in her ears. It seemed pointless to resist now when she wasn’t even sure what resisting meant anymore. Everything that she had learned since visiting the Hollow Cave months ago seemed to point toward releasing Tal Ethel, but if it was what the Takhran wanted—if this was his scheme—then how could she do it?

  Help me.

  Everything within her cried out in a single, wild, desperate note of prayer as she stood, bleeding and drained of strength, over the forms of her dying friends. It burst from her lungs and stabbed toward the ceiling where Artair’s broken body hung over them. And then there was nothing left within her. All had been expelled in that final, aching call. No courage. No pride. No hatred or defiance. Just cold, gaping emptiness like the maw of the Pit.

  And something answered.

  The Song blazed through the emptiness. Its fierce torrent dashed against the walls of her heart and seeped into all the hidden places where fear lurked. Blinding light soared across her vision, blotting out the leering Shantren and the gnawing hunger in the eyes of the Takhran, until all she could see was the even brighter blue-white light of the sword pulsing in her hands.

  Listen, Songkeeper.

  Listen!

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Time seemed to slow. Her vision cleared. Crimson drops spiraled before her eyes, falling, ever falling, to strike the dome of rock imprisoning Tal Ethel.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  She tracked the drops to the rough patch that had been worn into the rock’s smooth surface. Eirnin’s words resounded through her head. Centuries of effort, and still the Takhran had been unable to break the dome and release the spring. And yet the blood of a slain Songkeeper had eaten into the stone. The implications of that notion made her dizzy, but she did not give herself time to think. Did not give the doubts the opportunity to rise and enslave her again. The river cried out from within the rock. The Song impelled her forward.

  With the melody coursing through every fiber of her being and pouring from her lips, she spun away from the Shantren and the Takhran and past the chimeras flanking the dome and plunged the bloodstained sword two handed into the rock.

  Water and music exploded. The shock flung her backward. The force tore her grip from the sword and swept her away, as the world was consumed in a wild, rushing cascade of roaring water and a thousand voices singing in fierce, concussive harmony.

  38

  All paths, it seemed, did not lead to the Pit.

  Or at least, not directly.

  Amos cursed beneath his breath when the wayward tunnel spat them out into the midst of the vast subterranean cavern that housed the Pit instead of out onto the floor of the Pit itself. And then he cursed a second time when he realized exactly where the tunnel had decided to drop them—beside the lone torch stand overlooking the Pit, directly beneath Artair’s broken form. And finally cursed aloud, a third time, for good measure. “Bilgewater!”

  “What is it?” Nisus eyed him warily.

  For about half a breath, Amos contemplated dragging the dwarf back into the tunnel in search of another route to the Pit. But he couldn’t justify the waste of time. Distasteful as he found this place, it was stationed beside the Takhran’s personal staircase. Convenient, wasn’t it?

  Almost too convenient. It grated on his nerves. All this way and not a sign had they seen of any of the Takhran’s bloodthirsty monsters. They’d only had to dodge patrols twice. To be sure, there was a war on and all, but he hadn’t expected to find the mountain emptied. And now, to wind up here of all places, grinding his face once more in the scene of his greatest failure? It all reeked too much of coincidence to sit well with his skeptical blood. At last, the argument for the existence of the Master Singer was gaining some credence. Clearly someone held a grudge. That or his own treacherous feet had betrayed him.

  A shiver seized his spine. Ghost pains gnawed at the old injuries in his hand and chest. Ghost voices whispered from the shadows. Ghost memories assailed him, crawling like phantoms out of the Pit. He broke free of their hold, buried them, and stamped the earth down tight. He couldn’t go there again.

  “Hawkness.”

  He silenced the dwarf with an upraised hand and jerked his chin toward the figure dangling from the wooden frame. Looking up, Nisus stood as one transfixed. The color drained from the dwarf’s face, flooding Amos with the bitter taste of satisfaction. Hearing something was one thing, but he had ever been of the conviction that sight grounded belief. Now Nisus would see, and he would be forced to admit the truth: Artair had failed them.

  A tear glistened on the dwarf’s craggy cheek.

  At the sight, a twinge of shame wormed through Amos’s chest. He set a hesitant hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, sought to lead him away. “C’mon, Nisus. The Pit isn’t far. Got turned around a bit. If these filthy tunnels weren’t so utterly boggswoggling, we’d have been there before this.”

  “But we aren’t there, are we? We�
�re here.”

  “Aye. That’s the problem.”

  “It is, though?” Nisus twisted to face him, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I am not convinced. Why do you think we are here?”

  “Bad luck.”

  “Luck?”

  “Och, fine, fate then, if ye will.” Amos shrugged. “Whatever it is—fate, happenstance, bad luck—’tis time we were movin’ on. Birdie’s bound t’ be down in the Pit. Ye’re the one who insisted I come t’ help her, an’ I intend t’ do just that.”

  Nisus blinked at him. “Is it so hard to attribute aught to the Master Singer?”

  “Aye, it bloody well hurts. Now can we move?”

  “Not yet. There is something we can do here, something we were brought here to do. Forget your doubts, man. Remember what it was like to trust in something, in someone.”

  “Wishin’ somethin’ doesn’t make it so.”

  “Denying something does not make it untrue either.” The dwarf crossed his arms over his chest, belligerent. “We cannot leave him here.”

  “He’s dead.”

  But Amos’s objection fell on deaf ears. The dwarf marched to the winch fastened beside the torch stand, set his hands to the crank, and fiddled with the latch. Gears clicked, metal teeth grinding against one another, and then the wooden platform lurched down, crank spinning free. Only a few feet before Nisus caught the handle. He struggled to hold it steady.

  In the Pit, the earth shuddered. The rumble of it vibrated through the rock beneath Amos’s feet, shivered his skin, jarred his teeth, and set his pulse galloping. The fate of Leira was being decided below, and his lass was on her own.

  He looked to the staircase.

  “Hawkness, the little Songkeeper can stand on her own, and frankly, there is little you can do to help her.” The dwarf glowered around the winch. “But you can help me lower him.”