Songkeeper

by Gillian Bronte Adams

  “Careful!” Paddy barked. “Take it easy, laddy-boyo, ’less you want to be buried too.”

  Ky’s head brushed the ceiling, and he instinctively ducked, shivering as dirt slithered down his collar. There was no seam between earth and roof, no crack or breath of air to point to a continuation of the passage beyond. So this was it. A wasted trip and a pointless argument.

  There was no way out, not through the city and not beneath it.

  Or was there?

  Pawing at the rubble cleared a wallow the size of a lion’s head in short order. He seized a handful of earth and shifted it through his fingers. The outer layer was loose—easy digging material. No telling about the interior layers or how deep the cave-in extended, but it was a start, and right now, that was enough.

  Back on solid ground, he extended his handful of dirt toward Paddy. “How far do you reckon we are from the wall?”

  “City wall? I dunno. Don’t imagine anyone does.”

  “Well, you’ve got a good head for figures. If anyone can figure it out, you can. We’ll need tools, too—lots of them—and runners willing to work.” He released his fingers and let the clump of dirt spill around his toes. “We’ve got digging to do.”

  17

  Birdie held Artair’s sword to her chest as she slipped through the low doorway of the donkey shed and let the door swing shut behind her. Even with the door closed, there was more than enough afternoon light seeping through gaps in the wood and holes in the roof thatching to see her surroundings. The donkey’s stall was empty—knowing Balaam, he was probably out grazing—but the ramshackle hayloft over the far half of the shed sagged beneath the weight of the griffin. And he was the one she had come to see.

  The griffin crouched cat-like, neck cocked, wings folded over his back, peering at something below the loft. Birdie followed his gaze. A spear whipped past her face and stuck in the wall to her left. She stumbled back until her heels struck the door, and she half drew Artair’s sword, expecting an attack.

  But Sym came into view, moving slowly, purposefully, a spear in each hand.

  Her eyes were closed.

  Sym stamped her feet—one, two—then lunged. Stabbed one spear forward and then the other. Stood erect and leapt to the side, braids flying about her face. Did a quarter turn, then stamped her feet and lunged again. Four times in total, until she had faced each point of the compass.

  She pulled back from the lunge, struck downward with one hand and thrust upward with the other, whirled away and brought both spears flying around to strike with the points behind her and the ends forward. Crouching, she shuffled forward then back, thumping her heels against the ground so it provided a sort of rhythm to her movement, keeping one spear in guard position and one ready to throw.

  With a yell, she dashed forward, striking in the air, blocking, and spinning back around. Birdie watched in amazement. Sym moved with the speed, agility, and fluidity of a cat. One moment, she gave the appearance of one fighting for her life, and the next, that of a dancer, graceful as a wisp of cloud, such as one might see dancing for coin in the village square. But no matter how quickly she brought her spears or body whipping around, she seemed to be in perfect control.

  She ended with a quick double step forward then kicked a leg behind her and rotated her body through the air, landing with one knee down, one spear point in the ground, and the other guarding her head.

  Gundhrold clacked his beak in appreciation, and the sound recalled Birdie’s purpose to her mind. She ventured away from the entrance. “It looks like a dance.”

  Sym rose and retrieved the spear she had stuck in the wall. “It is a dance, but it is also useful for training. Some of it can be used in combat. Some is just for show.” She sent the spear spinning around her wrist, caught it again and stuck it in her quiver, which was hanging on a peg beside Balaam’s stall. “Waste time twirling your spear in battle, and your foe has time to put a blade in your throat. But it builds strength and teaches control, and these are valuable attributes for a warrior.” She slung the quiver over her shoulder and turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Birdie held Artair’s sword out in both hands. “Can you show me?”

  “My weapon is the spear, little Songkeeper. The sword is a very different weapon.” Sym’s eyes narrowed, focusing her piercing stare on Birdie. Whatever she saw there, after a moment, she shrugged, hung her quiver back on the hook, and folded her arms across her chest. “Amos or Brog returned from scouting yet?”

  Birdie shook her head.

  “Then there is time to spare. What training do you have with the sword?”

  “Only the little that one of the Adulnae taught me.” Thinking of Jirkar and his brother Nisus brought a little smile to her lips. She hoped the Khelari had not yet managed to conquer their homeland too.

  “Adulnae?” Sym arched an eyebrow. “Show me.”

  The Saari warrior vaulted up onto the rail of Balaam’s stall, leaving Birdie alone in the middle of the shed, uncertain as to what she should do. Jirkar had taught her several different guard and strike forms, but she had never performed them without someone calling the commands or sparring with her.

  She could feel the griffin’s gaze resting on her but could not bring herself to meet it. If she did, she knew she would tear the shred of courage fluttering within her and miss out on an opportunity to learn. She seized the sheath and the sword slid free like a knife through butter. The chill of the blade worked its way through her hands and up her arms and settled as burning ice in her shoulders.

  She fell into a fighter’s stance and loosed a few experimental slashes, then pulled back into a standard guard position. Her slashes were weak, and she knew it.

  Off-balanced somehow.

  “Picture your opponent,” Sym prompted. “Know where you are aiming. Imagine where he will strike and then respond. Simply beating the air will gain you nothing.”

  Birdie tried to envision an enemy standing before her. Carhartan’s stern, weathered face flashed before her eyes, but he was dead. He no longer possessed the power to haunt her dreams. Even her old childhood tormentors, Kurt and Miles, were gone. The Khelari still pursued her, it was true, but they were shadows in dark armor, a faceless enemy no less than their master, the Takhran.

  The sword was vibrating in her hands now, and the hum of it seeped beneath her skin, settled in her bones, and grew in volume until it became the melody and her voice awoke in answer. Singing softly to herself, almost beneath her breath, she ran through the guards and blocks that Jirkar had taught her. Slowly at first, then faster, smoother, more instinctively, as the pace of the melody increased and seemed to guide her limbs from one movement to the next.

  Not until she came to a breathless halt did she realize her eyes had been closed the entire time. She opened them and nearly dropped the sword in surprise. The blade glowed with a pale shimmering light, like that of the moon. It rippled beneath the surface of the metal, fading now as she gazed upon it.

  Trembling, she bent to retrieve the sheath and conceal the sword. Her gaze strayed through the veil of her hair to the hayloft. Gundhrold dipped his head at her, but did not speak.

  “Well.” Sym dropped from her perch on the stall railing. “That was . . . something …” There was a strange look in her eyes, so Birdie couldn’t tell if something was to be considered good or bad. Sym rummaged in her spear quiver, speaking without turning her head. “You know the correct form. Your Adulnae friend did a fine job of laying the foundation. What you need now is practice and a strong sparring partner to teach you how to avoid taking a hit and how to recover from one. Hawkness would be best.”

  Quick as an arrow, Sym spun and tossed a broken spear shaft across the shed. Birdie caught it in one hand and rotated her wrist, judging the feel of it. About the same length as Artair’s sword, though not so heavy. She backed away and propped Artair’s sword beside the door, then found s
he was strangely loathe to let it leave her hand.

  It felt right in her grasp, somehow.

  And she felt naked and defenseless without it.

  Sym cleared her throat, already standing in a spearman’s stance in the center of the shed. Her dark eyes twinkled with a hidden smile. “Since Hawkness is absent, I suppose you’ll have to make do with me.”

  The next hour passed both far quicker and far slower than Birdie could have imagined, and by the end of it, she was sore and winded and only too willing to hand over the broken spear shaft, despite Sym’s insistence that she had made good progress. Perhaps she had, if progress consisted of getting knocked on one’s face countless times. That was one skill she had mastered.

  Birdie retrieved Artair’s sword and waited until Sym exited through the low doorway, then squinted up at the griffin in the hayloft. “Shall I come up?”

  Without a word, Gundhrold dropped to the floor of the shed. He landed heavily in a flurry of dust, reminding Birdie of the damage done to his wing on the beach outside Bryllhyn, and sat back on his haunches to preen his neck feathers. “Much more comfortable down here, I imagine. The loft is crawling with mice.”

  Birdie sat down cross-legged with her back to the empty stall and smoothed her crumpled tunic over her legs. Gingerly, she set Artair’s sword across her knees. She fiddled with the fringe on her leggings, not sure where to begin on a list of questions that was as long and confused as the road she had traveled since leaving the Sylvan Swan.

  The griffin clacked his beak softly. “I have long promised you answers, little Songkeeper, and yet kept you waiting. My knowledge is incomplete, but I will answer as best I can. This I swear.” His voice lost its usual rough, rasping edge and became softer, more refined, almost gentle. “There can be no secrets between a Protector and his Songkeeper.”

  “No secrets.” Birdie repeated it in a whisper. What a beautiful world that would make—a world without secrets behind every smile or lies behind every offer of friendship. She trailed a finger across the sword’s gold crossguard and pommel. “This was Artair’s sword. Did you know him?”

  “I met him, but I did not know him well. Your grandmother, Auna, trained under him. He was a good man, and a Songkeeper like none before him.” Gundhrold’s gaze flickered to the opposite wall, but one glance at his eyes told her that he was seeing something more than gray, splintered wood. “For centuries, my kind have served as Protectors for the Songkeepers and for anyone who showed promise of possessing their abilities—Songlings, we called them. Once we discovered Auna was a Songling, I was assigned to protect her. She was already a mother with two sons when her full gifting came upon her.”

  Birdie wrapped her fingers around the hilt and tightened her grip until the cold seized the bones in her hand and cooled her heated skin. Her heart was racing. “Do many Songlings become Songkeepers?”

  “Nay, little one, only a few. There is generally but one fully-fledged Songkeeper at a time—generally, though there have been rare instances of two—and there may be many others who have hints of the gifting. This, I expect, explains what happened with your friend Inali. Sometimes the gifting passes through a family. Other times Songkeepers and Songlings have been completely unrelated. But the new Songkeeper almost always manifests their full gifting before the passing of the previous Songkeeper, leaving them time to be trained.”

  “But what of me, Gundhrold? I know so little. How can I become the Songkeeper?”

  A strange hissing sound came from the griffin’s throat. It took Birdie a moment to recognize it as laughter. “You do not need to become the Songkeeper. You already are. As for training, I will do what I can, and Hawkness as well, but the best way to master any skill is through practice.”

  “But Amos glares at me if I so much as utter a single note. He is afraid that my singing will summon the Khelari. Is that even possible?”

  “Hawkness is afraid of many things, and most rightly so. It is possible, perhaps. I cannot say for certain.” The griffin rose and stretched, forelegs low to the ground, back arching behind him. It was such a cat-like action that it looked terribly out of place on his enormous, winged form. “Know this though, little Songkeeper, there are others with powers in this world, who are sworn to the Takhran’s service. It is his hand that bestows their powers, his hand that maneuvers them like playthings. They are called the Shantren . . . and they are dangerous. It is wise to be wary. We must be on guard at all times.”

  In the middle of the shed, Gundhrold crouched, obviously gathering momentum for a leap back into the hayloft. Birdie didn’t try to stop him. She had more questions, dozens of them, and she suspected she always would, but there was only one thing that truly mattered right now.

  Somehow she found herself muttering words she never meant to admit out loud. “I don’t know how to do this . . . any of it.”

  The griffin’s gaze slammed into her. “You have a gift that no one else can even fathom. Emhran, the Master Singer Himself, speaks to you through the Song.” There was awe and wonder in his voice. “You must listen, little one.”

  With a grunt, he launched up into the hayloft. The whole structure shook, showering flecks of hay into Birdie’s hair. Motionless, she sat, clutching the sword, if only to have something solid to hold onto in a world that seemed all too fragile, watching dust motes swirl in the beams of light that pierced the cracks in the walls.

  Listen, little one.

  Inali was propped up in his bedroll beside the hearth when Birdie eased open the door of Brog’s hovel. She paused with one foot on the threshold, still warmed enough by her practice with Sym to withstand a few more moments out in the chill wind. Fresh blood stained the bandage that covered Inali’s shoulder and bound his arm to his chest, but the color seemed to be returning to his face at last. It was the first time she had seen him looking truly awake and alert since he had been injured.

  He had his head tilted back to watch Sym as she stirred something in a pot over the fire. “You stayed.” His voice was weak, but there was also a sense of vulnerability in his tone that made Birdie pause a moment more before entering. “Even though I dragged you into this. That must mean something.”

  Sym ladled a bowl of soup, plunked in a spoon, and offered it to him.

  He took her hand instead. “Since when does the huntress Sym Yandel play nursemaid to a wounded warrior?”

  “Since when is Dah Inali considered a warrior?” The words sounded harsh, but even from the doorway, Birdie could see the twinkle in Sym’s eyes. It made her uncomfortable, as though she strayed upon a scene she was not meant to see.

  “One of the Sigzal tribe taken down by a single fighter? The mahtems would never believe it.” Sym pulled free and pressed the bowl of soup into Inali’s hand. “Eat and regain your strength, and perhaps then you can regain your honor as well.”

  Inali obediently picked up the spoon. “Still, you could have gone back.”

  The expression on his face was hopeful, expectant, but Sym just turned back to her cooking, humming tunelessly to herself. Birdie slipped inside, let the door slam shut behind her, and made a show of stamping her feet off. She still tracked muddy prints to the table, though she doubted Brog would care. Gently, she set Artair’s sword down and then dropped into a chair, stretching her legs out before her with a heavy sigh.

  Sym passed her a bowl of soup. “Any sign of our scouts returning?”

  Birdie shook her head and gulped down steaming mouthfuls of soup, wincing when it burned her tongue. Both sparring with Sym and her conversation with Gundhrold had left her hungry enough that she didn’t care. Inali was only half done with his bowl when she went back for seconds.

  He motioned with his bowl. “I cannot eat another bite. No offense meant to the cook.”

  “Maybe not.” Sym breezed past with a pail of water and plunked it down on the hearth to heat for washing dishes. “But offense is taken all the
same.”

  Inali gestured again with his bowl, trying to catch Sym’s eye and failing. His face assumed the miserable expression of an abandoned puppy until Birdie took pity on him and retrieved his bowl. It seemed a shame to waste good soup, so she dumped the leftovers back in the pot when Sym wasn’t looking and slipped the bowl into the wash pail. She started back to the table with her refilled bowl, but Inali’s voice stopped her before she could reclaim her seat.

  “My satchel. I . . . I need it.” He seemed anxious, running a hand through his knotted hair until the beads rattled and clacked against one another. “Could you get it for me?”

  With a sigh, Birdie left her soup bowl steaming on the table and ventured into the cluttered mess Brog called his home. She found Inali’s satchel buried beneath the haphazard pile of their belongings and tugged it free by the strap. It was heavier than she had expected. She nearly ran into Sym and quickly sidestepped so the Saari warrior wouldn’t drop her stack of clean bowls. The strap caught on a chair and ripped, spilling the contents of the satchel over her feet.

  “Sigurd’s mane!” Inali’s cry tore her shocked gaze to him—he was trying to rise—and then back to the jumble of parchments, charcoal sticks, quills, and ink bottles scattered across the floor. Sym’s stern voice rang out, ordering Inali to lie back, and his own rose in argument.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Cheeks burning at her own carelessness, Birdie scrambled on hands and knees to collect Inali’s belongings: a spare fringed jacket, drawing supplies, the black tube and darts he had used to stun Sym—a spear pipe, she thought it was called. One drawing caught her eye when she picked it up, and she couldn’t keep her hands from trembling. It was the charcoal image of a serrated mountain peak with an enormous fortress built into its base, and a vast city spreading out across the plain in front.