The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III Read online

  His hackles rose for just a moment at that—but a heartbeat later, he smoothed them down. While the face of this man might be implacable, his eyes were warm and full of approval. He had heard T’fyrr out, and he seemed to like what he heard.

  He knows the truth when he hears it. He is hard and cannot he shaken, but he is no fanatic. He knows reason; he does not let fear blind him. And he is no one’s tool or fool.

  It was this man who approached them first, while Nightingale swallowed and groped for T’fyrr’s hand. He clasped it, reassuringly. The Bishop’s eyes flickered down to their joined hands as the motion caught his attention, then they returned to T’fyrr’s face with no less warmth in them than before.

  And he sees nothing wrong with a human and one who is not being together. That alone shows more of an open mind than I had dared to hope for.

  “You are a remarkable speaker, musician,” the old man said in a surprisingly powerful and musical voice. “Your command of rhetoric is astounding.”

  T’fyrr bowed a little, acknowledging the compliment. “It is not just rhetoric, my Lord Bishop,” he said in reply. “Every word I spoke was the truth, all of it information gathered not only across this city, but across the Twenty Kingdoms.”

  “That is what makes it astounding,” the Bishop said with a hint of a smile. “Rhetoric and the truth seldom walk side-by-side, much less hand-in-hand. And that was what I wished to ask you, for some of those rumors I had not heard in this city. So the poison spreads elsewhere?”

  T’fyrr nodded, and the Bishop pursed his lips thoughtfully. “That seems to match some things that I have observed within the Church,” he mused. “And—I believe I agree with you and your friends. There is a force moving to destroy our freedoms, a secular force, but one with fingers into all aspects of life, including the Church. Would you not agree, Ardis?” he called over his shoulder.

  The woman in the robes of the Justiciar Mages stepped forward, regarding T’fyrr with eyes that were remarkably like that of a Haspur—clear, direct and uncompromising. “I would agree, my Lord Bishop,” she said in a challenging voice as remarkable as the Bishop’s. “That, in fact, was why I was visiting my friend Ruthvere. His letters indicated to me that there were some of the same elements moving in Lyonarie as had been at work in Kingsford just before the fire that destroyed our city. I wanted ta see if that was the case and do something to prevent a similar tragedy if I could.”

  A thread of excitement traced its way down T’fyrr’s back, but it did not come from him but from Nightingale. She knew something about this woman—something important. He would have to ask her later—

  But then the woman turned her eyes toward Nightingale and said, in a tone as gentle as her voice had been challenging before, “Please tell my good cousin, Talaysen, that I miss his company—and far more than his company, his wisdom and his gentle wit, and if his King can spare him for a month or two, I have need of both in Kingsford. It need not be soon, but it should be within a year or so.”

  Nightingale bowed her head in deepest respect—something T’fyrr had never seen her do before to anyone. “I shall, my Lady Priest,” she replied. “I believe that I can send him word that will reach him before the month is out. I will tell him to direct his reply to you with all speed.”

  The Justiciar Mage smiled. “I had thought as much,” she said, and turned back to the Bishop. “My noble lord, are you satisfied now that Ruthvere and I told you nothing less than the truth?”

  “More than satisfied—I am in fact convinced that there is more amiss than even you guessed.” He extended his hand to T’fyrr, who took it—a little confused, since he was not certain if he was to shake it or bow over it. The Bishop solved his quandary by simply clasping it firmly, with no sign that the alien feel of the talon disturbed him. “Sire T’fyrr, I thank you for your courage and your integrity—and your dedication. Rest assured that there are enough men and women of God in the Church to take the reins of the situation there and bring it under control. I wish that I could promise you help in the secular world as well, but I fear it will be all our forces can muster to cleanse our own house. At least you need not look for attack on one front.”

  He let go of T’fyrr’s hand then, and turned toward the rest of the Priests. “My brothers and sisters—it is now our task to go and do just that. Let us be off.”

  With that, he strode through the group, which parted before him and formed up behind him, and led the way to the Priest’s door at the rear of the choir loft. They were remarkably well organized and regimented; within moments they were all gone, with no milling about or confusion.

  He glanced over at Nightingale. “What was that business with the woman all about?” he asked.

  Nightingale shivered, but not from any sense of fear, more of a sense of awe, a reaction he had not expected a Priest to invoke in her.

  “Lady Ardis is Master Wren’s cousin,” she said quietly. “Talaysen trusts her more than anyone else in the world, I think. I knew she was a Priest, but I didn’t know she was a Justiciar Mage! They may be the strongest mages in the Twenty Kingdoms—and I know that they are the best schooled. Could you hear the power in her?”

  Now that he thought about it, there had been a deep and resonant melody about her, though not of the land he associated with Bardic Magic. Not precisely droning—more like the kind of chant that he recalled from Nightingale’s healing magic. But stronger, richer, with multiple voices. He nodded.

  “I’ve never heard anyone like that,” Nightingale continued. “Never! With power like that, she doesn’t need rank; in fact, high rank would only get in her way.” Exultation crept into her voice. “And she’s on our side! Oh, T’fyrr, this is the best thing that could have happened to us!”

  Father Ruthvere turned his head toward them for a moment. “Between Ardis and the Lord Bishop, we do not need to worry about the Church aiding our enemy, I think,” he said, his voice sounding more relaxed and confident than in the past several days. “As the Bishop said, this means one less front to guard; it means that I have leave to do whatever I can to help you, including offering you the sanctuary of the Church if you need it.”

  “And it means one less ally for our enemy,” T’fyrr added. But Father Ruthvere was not finished.

  “I do have another concern that Lady Ardis’ presence reminded me of. There is one other thing I believe you have not made accounting for,” he said, and worry entered his voice again. “Magic. Our enemy has not been able to silence you by direct attack, or by indirect. That leaves Magic. Ardis and her companions cannot stay for they will be needed in Kingsford, and there are no Justiciar Mages in Lyonarie who can devote themselves to your protection.”

  Magic! That was one thing he had not counted on! He had witnessed so little magic in his life, and most of it was of the subtler sort, the kind that Nightingale used. “But what can they do?” he asked, puzzled. “Surely anything magical can be countered.”

  But Nightingale’s hand had tightened on his own spasmodically. “They can do quite a bit, T’fyrr,” she said hesitantly, “if they have a powerful enough mage. I have seen real Magic, the kind that the Deliambrens do not believe exists. If I told you some of what I have witnessed, you would not believe it either. I think perhaps I had better call in someone I had not intended to ask favors of—”

  He shrugged, unconvinced. “If you will,” he said. “You know more about this than I do. But in the meantime, I will not be stopped. We have momentum now, and we must keep it going! Any hesitation at this moment will bring everything to a standstill!”

  Father Ruthvere nodded agreement, and turned his attention back to the assembled group below. The crowd had thinned somewhat, but those remaining were the leaders of their own little coteries. And all of them, human and nonhuman, seemed inspired to work together.

  “We need to get back to Freehold,” T’fyrr said in an aside to Nightingale, as the bells in the tower overhead chimed the hour. “We still have the meeting there this afternoon
. That will be as much your meeting as mine.”

  She knew the folk of Freehold, the customers, the staff. She knew them the way he never could, for she had been reading their feelings for the past several weeks. He might be able to make a fine speech to rouse those who were unaware of what was going on around them, but for those of Freehold who knew only too well the rumors circulating, the harassment, and the sabotage, it would take another skill to rouse their courage and show them that they must work together—that they literally dared not stand aside at this moment.

  She squeezed his hand. “I think Father Ruthvere has this end well in hand,” she agreed. “Let’s go.”

  ###

  Perhaps T’fyrr didn’t realize it, but Nightingale knew only too well how much of a target he had made himself. He was the obvious focal point of this new organization; he was the King’s Personal Musician, the one who came and went from the Palace, who presumably had the King’s ear at least part of the time. On his own, he had no more power or wealth than any of the denizens of the neighborhoods around Freehold, but they didn’t know that. The folk of the streets saw only that here was a powerful courtier, a Sire, no less, who was urging them to .stand up for their freedom and their rights against the nobles, the fearful or uneducated, and this unknown enemy.

  And Ruthvere had been absolutely right. Their enemy had tried every other way to eliminate T’fyrr’s influence, and that had been before he went on his campaign to organize the nonhumans and their human supporters and friends. Now he was not only an influence, he was a danger. He reminded them all that the Twenty Kings, the Court, and the High King himself ruled only as long as the people permitted it.

  Those were frightening words to someone whose ultimate goal was surely more power.

  If there was one thing that the powerful feared, it was that those they sought to rule discovered that ultimately the real power lay only in their own acquiescence to be ruled.

  Lions can only be convinced that they are sheep as long as no one holds up a mirror to show them their true faces.

  All attempts to silence T’fyrr, open and covert had failed. But their foe had not yet tried magic. If ever there was a time when he—

  Or she, Nightingale reminded herself, yet again.

  —or she, would use magic, it was now.

  They had a little time before the Freehold meeting, and Nightingale used it.

  T’fyrr was in the bathroom, and he was a most enthusiastic bather. He would be in there for some time, giving her a space all to herself.

  She settled herself cross-legged on her bed as T’fyrr splashed water all over her bathroom, and laid her right wrist in her lap. The thin band of Elven silver gleamed beneath the lights of her room, a circlet of starlight or moonlight made solid.

  She had been given a gift, she had thought; could it be that it was not a gift after all, but a promise? The Elves had a flexible view of time; sometimes their vision slipped ahead of human vision—seeing not what would be, but all of the possibilities of what might be. And sometimes, when one was markedly better than the rest, they would move to see that it came to pass.

  No one with ambition for ruling all the Twenty Kingdoms could afford to let the Elves live in peace, she thought soberly. They are too random an element: unpredictable and unreliable, and most of all, ungovernable. Whoever this person is, he cannot allow the Elves to remain within human borders. So perhaps that is why the second bracelet came to me.

  She laid her left hand over the warm circle of silver and closed her eyes. As she held her mind in stillness, listening, she caught the distant melody of Elven Magic, so utterly unlike any other music except that of the Gypsies.

  She added her own to it, brought it in, and strengthened it. It must carry her message for her, and it had a long, long way to travel.

  She sang to it, deep within her mind, weaving her words into the melody, to be read by every Elf that encountered it. The more that knew, the better.

  First, her Name, which was more than just a name; it was the signature of her own power, her history, and her place among her Elven allies. Bird of song, and bird of night, she sang, Healing Hands and Eyeless Sight Bird of passage, Elven friend, walks the road without an end. Pass the wall that has no door, sail the sea that has no shore—

  No one but the Elves would know what three-fourths of that meant; it was all in riddles and allusions, and if there was anything that the Elves loved, it was the indirect. There was more of it, and she sang it all. One did not scant on ceremony with the Elves, especially not with their High King. He might have been her lover, once—but that had been a long time ago, before he became their High King. It had been nothing more than a moment’s recreation for him, and scarcely more for her. He had been the ease after Raven—a physical release. She had been—amusement. Later she became more than that, once he learned of her power and heard her play; that was what had made her an Elven friend, not the idyll amid the pillows of his most private bower.

  But that was part of her history with them, and she could not leave it out without insulting him.

  When she came to the end of her Name, she began the message; first, a condensation of everything she had learned here, beginning with the fact that it was the Elves who had asked her to come here in the first place.

  And lastly, her request, a simple one. It was couched in complicated rhyme, but the essence was not at all complicated. I may need you and your Magic, and if I do, my need will be a desperate one. You know me, you know that I would not ask this frivolously; if I call, will you come?

  She had not expected an answer immediately. She had no idea, after all, how far this message would have to travel, or how many times it would be debated in the Elven councils before a reply was vouchsafed her.

  She had most definitely not expected a simple answer. She had never gotten a simple answer more than a handful of times in all the years she had known them.

  So when she sent the message out, and sat for a moment with her mind empty and her hand still clasping her bracelet, it was not with any expectation of something more than a moment of respite before T’fyrr emerged from his bath.

  But she got far more than she had reckoned on.

  The spell of music and message she had sent out had been a delicate, braided band of silver and shadow. The reply caught her unawares and wrapped her in a rushing wind, spun her around in a dizzying spiral of steel-strong starlight, surrounded her with bared blades of ice and moonbeams, and sang serenely into her heart in a voice of trumpets and the pounding sea.

  And all of it, a simple, single word.

  YES.

  When T’fyrr emerged from the bathroom, he found her still shaking with reaction and the certainty that if their reply had been so ready and so simple, there must be a reason. So she sat, and trembled, and she could not even tell him why. She could only smile and tell him it was nothing to worry about.

  She moved through the day holding onto each moment, savoring every scrap of time with him—but trying her best to act as if nothing had changed between them. He knew there was something wrong, of course, but she was able to convince him that it was only her own fears getting the best of her. She told him that she would be all right; and she bound herself up in the rags of her courage and went on with all their plans.

  But when the blow came, as she had known it would, it still came as a shock.

  He had spent the night at the Palace, hoping for a summons from the High King, but not really expecting one. She was expecting him in midmorning, as always; she sensed his wild surge of delight as he took to the air, and went to the roof to await his arrival.

  She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered upwards into the blue and cloudless sky, even though she knew she would never see him up there. It would take the eyes of an eagle to pick out the tiny dot up there; if she’d had a hawk on her wrist, it might have looked up and hunched down on her fist, feathers slicked down in fear, all of its instincts telling it that a huge eagle flew up there. Nothing less tha
n a hawk’s keen senses would find T’fyrr in the hot blue sky, until the moment he flattened out his dive into a landing.

  But she always looked, anyway.

  She was looking up when the blow struck her heart, and she collapsed onto the baked surface of the roof, breath caught in her throat, mouth opened in a soundless cry of anguish.

  It was pain, the mingling of a hundred fears, a wash of dizziness and a wave of darkness. She could not breathe—could not see—

  She blacked out for a moment, but fought herself free of the tangling shroud of unconsciousness, and dragged herself back to reality with the sure knowledge that her worst nightmare had come to pass.

  They had taken T’fyrr, snatched him out of the sky by Magic.

  And there was nothing that anyone could have done to prevent it, for the sky was the one place where they had thought he was safe.

  T’fyrr was gone.

  ###

  “You’re sure?” Tyladen said for the tenth time. She bit her lip, and said nothing. She’d already told him everything there was to say, at least three times over.

  But Harperus, who had a listening device of his own, growled at both of them from his room in the Palace, his voice coming through a box on Tyladen’s desk. “Of course she is sure, you fool! Didn’t I just tell you that he left here an hour ago? He went straight from my balcony—and he was going directly to Freehold! If Nightingale says he was kidnapped, then you can take it as fact!”

  “B-but magic—” Tyladen stuttered. “How can you kidnap someone with something that doesn’t—”

  “These people believe that what we do is magic, child,” Harperus interrupted. “If you must, assume it’s a different technology; for all we know, that’s exactly what it is! Just accept it and have done! Nightingale, what can we do, if anything?”

  She had thought this out as best she could, given that her stomach was in knots, her throat sore from the sobs she would not give way to, and her heart ready to burst with grief and fear. “I don’t know yet,” she said honestly. “I’m not certain how you can combat magic. I have to do something myself—I was promised help from the Elves, and I’m going to get mat help when I am through talking to you. I think that I can find T’fyrr myself, or at least find the general area where he’s being held. After that—I may need some of your devices, if there are any that could find exactly where he is in a limited area.” She had some vague notion there were devices that could probably do that, some Deliambren equivalent of a bloodhound, but that those devices probably had a limited range. They couldn’t scour the whole city for her, but if she could give them a small area, they might be able to narrow down the search to a specific building. “I do need someone to watch the High King and the Advisors around him. Father Ruthvere will provide sanctuary if we are being hunted from the Palace, or by someone connected with the Palace, but I need to be warned if someone comes up with a charge against us. If you can think of anything—”