The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III Page 35

  The Captain nodded, his face as impassive as a stone wall, but his eyes bright with anger. “I take your meaning, and it’s one I hadn’t thought of.”

  Nightingale shrugged, pleased that she had planted her seed in fertile ground. But the Captain was not yet finished.

  “Lady, I—” She sensed him groping for words through a fog of grief, though there was no outward sign of that grief on his features. “I’ve served Theovere all my life. I’ve seen him at his best, and at his worst, and—”

  He stopped and shook his head, unable to articulate his own feelings. She held her hands together in her lap, holding herself tightly braced against the wash of his emotions, as strong as the tide at its full. Now she knew why every man in the Bodyguards was so fanatically devoted to the King.

  He could inspire that devotion once. Lady, grant we make it possible for him to do so again.

  She caught his eyes and nodded gravely, once, then turned back to the enormous bed and its quiet occupant. “If we succeed, Captain, it will be for the good of all—and if we fail, then at least we will have been able to give Theovere a parting gift of the music he loved so much.”

  “Nightingale,” T’fyrr said suddenly, in the Gypsy tongue, “didn’t you tell me that there might be a—a spirit of some kind, holding Theovere away? Look over there.”

  He pointed with his beak rather than draw the attention of the Captain, and Nightingale stared in the direction he pointed.

  There is a shadow there, where a shadow has no business being!

  It hovered just above Theovere’s head, but it did not feel like Theovere. It felt hungry, cruel, petty—

  What is it? Whatever it was, she knew at that moment that they would have to deal with it before they could bring Theovere back to himself.

  “I think it’s occupied,” T’fyrr whispered, his voice shaking a little. “I think—I think it might be tormenting Theovere.”

  Odd. That sounded familiar. A little like—

  Like the Ghost that Rune fiddled for, that Robin and Kestrel helped to free! It had been bound to a pass by a malicious magician, and had taken out its rage on those who tried to cross the pass by night. If you had something like that—a lesser spirit, perhaps—and bound it to your service—

  Then you might have something that you could set on a man simply by sending him a note to which it had been attached—something that could drive the soul from his body and keep it there. You would have something that would become more and more bitter and malicious the longer it stayed bound.

  Which meant it was half in this world and half in the next; and wasn’t that the definition of those with the Sight? She had it—she just hadn’t used it much, not when her greater power lay with the heart rather than the soul.

  And the Elven message had clearly said, “This is magic of the heart and the Sight.” Elves simply didn’t get any clearer than that. Well, the first thing to do is get its attention. I haven’t invoked the Sight in a long time . . .

  She put her hands on the strings of her harp, and began to play quietly, humming the melody under her breath as she slowly sharpened her focus out of this world and into the next. She sensed T’fyrr following her lead, and wondered if he would share her Sight, or if he had a touch of it himself.

  The room grew grey and dim, and faded away at the edges as she moved her vision into that other world where shadows were solid and restless spirits dwelled. She could still see Theovere, but now—

  Now there were two of him.

  One was in the bed, the other standing at the foot of the bed, an expression of fear and frustration on his face. And hovering above the Theovere in the bed was—something.

  It wasn’t human, not precisely. There was a certain odd cast to the face, as if the structure of the skull was subtly different from a human’s. The red eyes were slanted obliquely toward the temples. The fingers were too long and there were seven of them; the limbs looked oddly jointless. It had the pointed ears of an Elf, but It wasn’t an Elf, either. At the moment, It was watching Theovere, and It was enjoying his plight.

  “Can you See anything?” she whispered to T’fyrr, and she described what she Saw. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head.

  “Only the shadow,” he replied. “I will trust you to know what to do.”

  I only wish I did! she thought; but they were in it now, and there was no turning back. Whatever It was, It didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her or her Music. It also wasn’t doing much—except to keep Theovere from reentering his own body. Which meant—what?

  That It’s probably not all that powerful. That I’m not reaching It. But I’m not really trying. Think, Nightingale! What do you do when you have to reach an audience and you don’t know what they want?

  You try something so beautiful they can’t ignore it.

  She heard It speaking now, faintly; It taunted Theovere with his plight and his helplessness, playing with the symbols of his power that It conjured up into Its own hands. It didn’t have the real crown, rod, or sword, of course—but Theovere didn’t know that.

  Her hands moved of themselves on the strings, plucking out the first chords of “The Waterfall,” one of the most transcendently beautiful songs she knew. She didn’t do it often, because she didn’t have the range to do it justice.

  But T’fyrr did.

  She poured her heart into the harping, and he his soul into the Music—and It snapped Its narrow head around, affixing them with its poppy-red eyes, as the ephemeral Objects of State vanished into the nothingness from which they had been conjured.

  It said nothing, though, until after they had finished the song.

  “What are you doing here?” It asked in a voice like wet glue.

  She started to answer—then stopped herself just in time. To answer It might put herself in Its power; Its primary ability must be to drive a spirit from the body, then keep that spirit from reentering. It might be able to do that to more than one person at a time. But the Laws of Magic were that It could not do so if It did not know her; It must have been fed what It needed to take Theovere, but she was a stranger to It. It needed a connection with her to find out what tormented her.

  So instead, she started a new song hard on the heels of “The Waterfall,” and followed that one with a third, and a fourth.

  I have to make It go away, and I can’t do that by driving It away. It’s already here by coercion. The longer It stayed silent, listening to her, the more she sensed those shadow-bindings, deeper into the shadow-world than It was, that kept It blocking Theovere’s return. But the bindings were light ones; It could break them if It chose.

  So It was here because It liked being here. It enjoyed tormenting people.

  Well, so had the Skull Hill Ghost, but Rune and then Robin had tamed the thing, showing it—what?

  All the good things of the human spirit! All the things that give life joy instead of pain!

  And her hands moved into the melody of “Theovere and the Forty-Four,” one of the songs that she and T’fyrr had used to try and wake the High King up to his former self.

  It was a moving tale of courage and selflessness, all the more moving this time because the Theovere-spirit listened, too, and wept with heartbreak for what he had been and no longer was. He was in a place and a position now where he could no longer lie to himself—and very likely, that was one of the things his captor had been tormenting him with. The truth, bare and unadorned, and equally inescapable.

  He has looked into the mirror and seen a fool.

  She sensed T’fyrr pouring his own high courage into the song, the courage that had sustained him while captive, the courage that made him go out and try to do something to remedy the ills he saw around him. And while she did not think that courage was particularly her strong suit, she added her own heart, twined around his.

  She saw Its eyes widen; saw the maliciousness in them fade, just a little, and moved immediately to “Good Duke Arden.” The Theovere-spirit continued
to weep, bent over with its face in both its ephemeral hands, and the Shadow softened a little more.

  But she sensed just a hint of impatience.

  Change the mood. It’s getting bored.

  She moved through the entire gamut of human emotions: laughter, courage, self-sacrifice, simple kindness, sorrow and loss. Always she came back to two: love and courage. And with each song they sang, she and T’fyrr, with their spirits so closely in harmony that they might have been a single person with two voices, It softened a little more, lost some of Its malicious evil, until finally there was nothing of evil in It anymore. Just a weariness, a lack of hope that was not quite despair, and a vast and empty loneliness.

  That was when she thought she knew something of Its nature. It was a mirror that reflected whatever was before It—or a vessel, holding whatever was poured into It. It was as changeable as a chameleon, but deep inside, It did have a mind and heart of Its own, and she seemed to be touching It.

  Her hands were weary, and her voice had taken on that edge of hoarseness that warned her it was about to deteriorate. And under T’fyrr’s brave front, she felt bone-tiredness.

  If ever we can drive this thing away—no, lead it away!—it must be now!

  So she changed the tune, right in the middle of “Aerie,” to one of the simplest songs she had ever learned: “The Briars of Home.”

  It was the lullaby of an exile to her child, singing of all the small things she missed, all of them in her garden. The smell of certain flowers in the spring; the way that the grass looked after the rain. The taste of herbs that would not grow where she was now. The leaves falling in autumn; the snow covering the sleeping plants in winter. The songs of birds that would not fly in her new garden. The feel of the soil beneath her hands, and the joy of seeing the first sprouting plants. And the homesickness, the bittersweet knowledge that she would never experience any of those tiny pleasures again, for all that she was happy enough in the new land. And last of all—how she would give all of the wealth she possessed in the new place for one short walk in her own garden at home.

  And as the last notes fell into silence, It spoke to her for the second and last time.

  “I have a garden.”

  And with those four words, It snapped the coercions binding It, and vanished.

  But Theovere did not return to his body; instead, he stood there staring at it, empty-eyed and hollow. He looked old, terribly old; he stood with hanging hands, stooped-over and defeated.

  What’s wrong? Why won’t he wake?

  She stretched out her already thin resources to him, trying to sense what was wrong. But she had nothing left; she could not touch him, and her own spirit cried out in frustration—

  T’fyrr began to sing. Softly at first, a song she did not recognize initially, until she realized that he was singing it in a translation so that Theovere would understand it. It was not from any of the Twenty Kingdoms, and she doubted that anyone here had ever heard it but herself before this moment. It was a song T’fyrr had told her had been written by and for the Spirit Brothers.

  “What is courage?” its chorus asked—and the song answered, “It is to give when hope is gone, when there is no chance that men may call you a hero, when you have tried and failed and rise to try again.” It asked the same of friendship, answering that “the friend stands beside you when you are right and all others despise you for it—and corrects you when you are wrong and all others praise you for it.” There was more, much more, and the more T’fyrr sang, the more the Theovere-spirit took heart. In a strange way, these definitions, intended to guide the Spirit Brothers of the Haspur as they endeavored to help their own kind and their adopted brothers, were equally applicable to—say—a High King.

  With the words, came the feelings. Not only the ones called up by the definitions, but the pain-filled emotions, the things that both of them had endured over the past several years at the hands of those who hated and feared anything that did not fit their own narrow definitions of “appropriate.” The Theovere-spirit took those in, too, wincing more than a little as he was forced to acknowledge that this was due to his own neglect, but accepting that as well.

  He is looking into the mirror again—but this time, he is seeing not only what is, but what was, and what may be again!

  She simply followed the music with her harpsong, as her heart, this time, followed his.

  When it was over, the Theovere-spirit stood up straight and tall, looking many years younger than his true age, his eyes bright again with light and life. A sword appeared from nowhere in his hand; he swept it, silvery and bright, and used it to salute both of them.

  And then he faded away into a bright mist.

  Oh—NO!

  Nightingale dropped back into the outer world with a violent shock.

  She stared at the bed, certain that the figure in it was no longer alive. Her eyes blurred with exhaustion, as what seemed to be a hundred people suddenly poured into the room.

  She shrank away, waiting for them to seize her, seize T’fyrr, haul them both off into the gaols never to be seen again.

  And Theovere slowly sat up with a firm, determined smile set on his face.

  The Bodyguards shoved the interlopers rudely away from the bed, and she realized that there weren’t a hundred people; there weren’t even twenty. Only the Advisors, and who had told them what was going on? Most of them seemed to be shouting at the Captain and the Seneschal, both of whom were shouting back.

  Her eyes blurred again, and she slid a little sideways, into the comforting embrace of T’fyrr. “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” He held her closely, his own arms trembling with fatigue. “You did something, and made the shadow go away, then we sang Theovere back, like the Elves said to do—he woke up and spoke, and then all the Advisors began pouring in. I’m not sure how they found out that we were doing anything here.”

  “It’s a good thing they didn’t get in until we were done,” she said, a bit grimly, as Theovere gained enough strength from somewhere to outshout all of them.

  “Silence!” he bellowed. “Enough!”

  The babble ceased, and he glared at all of them. “We have,” he said, clearly and succinctly, his eyes shining with dangerous anger, “a traitor among us. The note that held the—call it a curse—that felled me was sealed with the Council Seal.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nightingale saw the Captain of the Bodyguards go momentarily limp with relief.

  But she saw something else as well.

  Heading up a contingent of his own private guards and standing at the back of the room was someone who looked oddly familiar to her.

  “Who is that?” she whispered to T’fyrr, under the sound of the King’s furious but controlled questioning of his guards and his Advisors. “He looks familiar somehow.”

  He glanced in the direction she was looking. “That’s Lord Atrovel,” he said. “But you can’t have seen him before; he never leaves the Palace, and you never encountered any of the other Advisors except the Lord Seneschal.”

  Just at that moment, the odd little man moved into a wash of shadow that darkened his hair. She saved herself from gaping at him only by a strong effort of will.

  She had seen this “Lord Atrovel” before—but not here.

  In Freehold. And “he” had been—

  Violetta. That’s Violetta—one of the Great Lords of State—and the biggest gossip in Freehold. Someone who was in a position to know everything that was going on in the King’s Chambers, in his private correspondence and in Freehold—

  And who had the knowledge and the means to sabotage all of it.

  And I’ll bet he wasn’t leading those guards here to protect us if we failed to bring back the King!

  “T’fyrr—” she whispered, clutching his hand and turning her head into his feathers to make certain her voice didn’t go any further. “Put long black hair on Lord Atrovel and tell me what you get.”

  She knew by the tensi
on in his muscles that he had seen the same thing that she had. “Violetta—” he whispered.

  Then he stood up abruptly, and she scrambled out of his way. She had never seen him like this before—but she had seen a hawk about to attack an enemy.

  “Violetta!” he roared.

  Lord Atrovel started—and so did all the other Great Lords. But none of the others had that look of panic in their eyes—and none of the others had been making his leisurely way toward the door as the King continued to question his Advisors.

  T’fyrr launched himself at Lord Atrovel in a fury, and Nightingale was only a second or so behind him. Lord Atrovel’s guards scattered, but the King’s Bodyguards came pouring in from the room beyond, alerted by T’fyrr’s scream of anger.

  T’fyrr reached the traitor first.

  He seized the little man in his talons and picked him up bodily. His beak was parted in fury, his eyes dilated, and all Nightingale felt from him was a flood of red rage—

  Oh, Lady, no—if he kills the man—

  He’ll never forgive himself.

  No one moved; no one could.

  T’fyrr held the man for a moment longer, then flexed the muscles of his arms—

  And gently set Lord Atrovel down, right into the “welcoming” arms of the Elite Bodyguards.

  “I believe that this is the man you have been looking for,” T’fyrr said, so gently that he might have been soothing a child. “He frequented Freehold under the name and disguise of ‘Violetta,’ and likely other places as well. I believe he owns a house in the Firemare quarter, where you will find two or three mages in his employ who held me captive and maimed me—one of them probably set the spell that nearly slew His Majesty. Hunt through his private papers, his suite, and question his servants, and you will probably find a trail of sabotage and evil as vile as the man himself. And you will likely find lace handkerchiefs that match those left by the mysterious gaol-raider. As well as a—” he coughed “—remarkable selection of female garments made in his size, which should explain the missing ‘maid’ who freed that first captive.”