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Chapter Two

Singer of Souls

The road curved away over the low hills, and the gray dust that marked its line blended with the autumn gray of dead grasses to make my way dreamlike and dim. Even the watery shining of the sun gave no color to the drab bushes and small trees that I passed from time to time. No longer was I a stranger to the road. My feet were shod in its dust, and no hint of the russet glow of my boots showed through its film. Yet the sight of their trim newness tore at my heart, for they had been given me by the household of Kalir.

Only the muted creaking of my leather jerkin and breeches marked my progress. I neither hummed nor sang, and more than one tear dropped to trace my path. Strange behavior for a Singer, I well knew. But seldom does a Singer remain long in one place and never as a part of one family, yet in the odd way I had followed since my leaving school, I had been long with Kalir and his people. Not, at first, by my own choice. Later, indeed, in disregard of my training and the warnings of my teachers and Elysias.

The summer had been full of joy. I remembered the warmth of the road dust on my sandaled feet on one special day, the summer bloom of the thorn bushes that now were only twiggy ghosts of themselves. I had been singing them, working my perceptions deeper and deeper into the layered, unvoiced beings as I passed, exercising my gifts as a Singer should.

The thunder of hooves behind did not interrupt my chant, though I moved to the verge of the road and turned to see who approached. A big man, a flash of orange beard, a wide-nostrilled chestnut, dripping with foam, loomed near. There was a laugh, and I was cast backward into the ditch and knew nothing for a black time.

Then Kalir and his merry-eyed dame and their boisterous brood found me and brought me to the few senses I had left after striking my head upon a stone. They took me home with them, as they would have done for a beggar or a dog or even a noble who found himself in such unlikely straits. And my life among them began, full of new sensations, strange tasks, and emotional ties such as I had never known.

Without the week of rest that my injury demanded, perhaps I would not have been seduced from my duty. For that length of time I allowed myself to sink into the family as if I had been born to them, and they accepted me as readily as I grew attached to them. If Elysias had said to me, “You are the Chosen. There is no doubt,” I would have hardened myself and gone forward, when I was recovered. But she had not. She had said, “Might be.” And that I was able to put from my mind.

Few of my sort have ever known the joy of a family. We are taken away from our own, as soon as the talent shows itself, to the schools provided for us. There is a life there, of a kind. Sustenance for the body, long hours of work for the mind and the voice. Yet there is none of the closeness that a tight-knit family knows. So it was that the house of Kalir held wonder for me, as those loving folk enfolded me into their lives and their hearts.

For one used to the roads and the fields, the Singing-places of great houses and the chimney corners of humble dwellings, my time with Kalir was magical. I would look with wonder after Doni, the mother, as she bustled about the house, supervising awkward young fingers in intricate stitches or un­practiced serving-maids in making new dishes.

Her patience made me marvel, as did her casual pats and sudden warm hugs as she passed me—or any of her loved-ones—about the house. And her husband was even more wonder­ful. I watched his broad figure move away to the fields in the morning with something like woe, and saw it return at eve­ning with the same squealing joy as did his own younglings. His laugh boomed among the smoke-dimmed rafters and made the smoked joints dance and the strings of onions sway in time with the loops of peppers.

The astringent life of the School seemed a dream. The thin, chill-voiced teachers, in retrospect, seemed to have no blood in their veins to work the metal pumps that were their hearts. I suspected that their passionless lectures upon the vital func­tions of Singers took root so deeply in our hearts only because no more exuberant seeds had been planted there.

So when Kalir and Doni and the seven children pleaded with me to forsake the road, my long training, and my sacred duty, I gave ear. My rebellious nature had always chafed at the duties laid upon me without my consent, and now I told myself that the lack of one Singer of so many thousands could make little difference in the safety and virtue of my country. The warning I had been given—“You may be tempted aside...but the gods will not have it so”—I tried to forget. The possibility of immediate joy, of belonging with these people who loved me, was temptation beyond re­sisting.

Perhaps that was why the gods permitted that evil should befall even those whom they had earlier favored. On the first chill evening of autumn, while we sat before the great fireplace talking and laughing, while nuts sizzled and popped in the red coals, the doors burst inward without warning. Armored men poured between the broken leaves, swords drawn. They spared neither Kalir nor his wife, children, and servants.

They ignored me, as they reddened their blades in the blood of those I loved. Though I had little skill in arms, I struggled with them and tried to skewer one with the meat spike from the fireplace. It almost seemed as if they could see me only dimly, for they flung me against the wall, half stunned, and then forgot me. I lay there and saw them at their bloody work, and the steel of the gods and the words of the Mother entered into me.

When their terrible task was done, they looted the house, taking hidden stores of coin from strange hiding places, as if they had known exactly where to look for them. Then they dragged the blazing logs from the hearth into the middle of the room. The ancient planking kindled, and evidence of the crime seemed likely to vanish in smoke. But I am a Singer, and I know the colors and emblems of every family above the fifth degree of nobility in the land.

I recognized the work of Razul, even before I identified his shield upon the breasts of his henchmen. Any who wander farther than their own byre and wash-place have heard whispers of his deviltries. Though I had never seen him, I knew him by his work, and I vowed to find him.

When I went forth from the burning house, my face was wet with tears and with blood. I had laid my cheek to the lips of every one of those who lay within, seeking the tiniest whisper of breath. There was not one who lived. I kissed Kalir upon the forehead and closed his eyes. I patted Doni, as she had so often patted me, and I touched each of the children on the brow and straightened their limbs, that they might go into the flame in good order.

Then, my hair singed and skin blistered, I made a vow, signed in blood and flame, that Razul would pay to the uttermost for this thing that he had caused to be done.

Singers are not trained with sword and bow. Far other are our functions and our duties. Our hearts are cleansed of the burning and the bitterness that make men kill, as much as can be done with humankind. Though in the sharpness of my wrath and the grief of my loss I would gladly have slain Razul with my two hands, my long training overbore that wild pain. By the time I had cleaned myself in the cattle trough, I knew that I must fight Razul with my own weapons, not with his.

So from that spot on the road where I had been taken up, I set out again. This time I knew my destination. We are taught to let the gods and the teachings of the Mother be our guides, using our inner perceptions to determine our ways and our means. I, more than most, had relied upon my own judgments, to the distress of my teachers. Now I used all pos­sible guidance, following into lanes and byroads and again into a principal thoroughfare, knowing that I must be led to Razul as a river is led to the sea.

The leagues rolled away beneath my boots, but I did not grow weary. Children came into the road to ask me into farm­steads along the way. Sometimes I rested for the night or for a meal, paying, as always, with a song that eased, perhaps, an old grief or a new grievance. Even, once, I healed a cow that was pining and going dry after the sale of her calf. Her soul was such a simple pleasure to work into, after the murk of human spirits: food, water, sleep, sun, hands milking, the spot where the calf had been.

But my russet boots moved on, and the miles curled up be­hind me like lengths of used-up ribbon. At last I came to Raz, the village that lay about the Great House of Razul. The house stood amid its stern turrets, protected by strong walls, but Raz was a scabrous place, filled with two- and four-­legged rats. The men who stood about the filthy wine shops scratched themselves and leered when I passed, though a Singer is protected by every law that men and the gods can devise.

Though my dress and bearing might well have been those of a young man, still I was followed by a verminous taggle of urchins and ill-looking men. I was glad to reach the wall gate, where an armed watchman was on guard. He seemed puzzled by me and my request for entry.

“Surely you know the Singers of Souls,” I said to him, astonished. “We are charged with the well-being of Tyrnos, and I am required by law to stop and to inquire if your Lord has need of my services. Not lightly does a Lord decline the services of a Singer.” I drew my brows together, and the man touched his helm and went to inquire.

I waited, but I felt the beginning of the Power pulse in my veins. I knew that I would be admitted. When the guard re­turned, he gestured for me to come in, and a woman was waiting inside the gate to show me the way. She led me to the women’s quarters of the house and showed me the bathing pool.

“You may borrow fine robes for your Singing, should you wish it,” she said.

I smiled at her. “None sees the Singer while he sings, my friend, else he has failed in his art. If you will but rub the dust from my leather garments, I will be grateful to you.”

The water in the pool was warm, but as I lay in it I felt a sudden chilly impotence. What could I, alone and unarmed, do against this powerful Lord, surrounded by his warriors and his women? The water swirled around me, comfortingly.

I heard the voice of a teacher of long ago saying, “We are armed, Singers, with such weapons as soldiers do not rec­ognize. We may come openly into any hall, any home, any chamber, and none will fear us. Yet we have in our hearts the Power. With it we may work the will of the gods.”

When I climbed from the pool, the woman was waiting with my jerkin and breeches, and she had rubbed them with sweet oil.

“We have never had a Singer of Souls here in all the time since I came,” she said wistfully. “Is there nothing I can do for you?”

“Surely, if you wish it. I am hungry with my journeying. To sing well, I must have good food to sustain me. Can you find meat and bread, perhaps? Or cheese, or chicken?”

She smiled. “Food will be here in a short time, for I guessed that you hungered. Then it will be the hour for lighting the torches. Your time to appear before the Lord Razul....” She hesitated, looking closely into my eyes as if to gauge my soul. “Is it as I have heard? Can the Singers, in truth, change the hearts of evil men?”

I took her hand. “The Singers call upon a Power beyond themselves. That Power judges the one whose soul is sung. It sets his reckoning. The Singer cannot know beforehand what will take place when he sings. Still, evil souls have been changed, good souls made better, the treacherous exposed, and the cruel punished in the Singing places of their own houses.”

She looked a bit frightened. But with it she looked glad­dened. “The House of Razul,” she whispered, barely per­ceptibly, “has suffered for want of a Singer.”

With torchlight came a messenger from the Lord. I went forth to my lonely battle. Little did the Singing place resem­ble a battlefield: it was a round platform of polished stone set against the curved end wall of the feasting chamber of the House. An ornate stair curled about the column that held it up, and when I had mounted to the top, I found myself two man-heights above the floor.

The chamber was full of people. Men-at-arms mingled with nobles, ladies, and women (I guessed) of easy virtue. A few servants scurried among them, bringing wine cups and carry­ing away the remnants of the meal they had just finished. Upon an elevated dais sat Razul in a throne-like chair. The torchlight was brilliant, and I looked closely at him, while the crowd settled into something like silence.

I knew him! That curling orange beard (somewhat stained, now, with wine), the mouth that must snick like steel when he closed it. Those no-colored steely-gray eyes had mocked me from the back of the horse that ran me down, and now they stared at me from deep in their sockets, like twin animals in their lairs. His attitude seemed relaxed, but I sensed a wariness about him as he looked across the wide chamber.

Deep within my heart, I said to the gods, “This is no vengeance of my own, for until this moment I did not know that the man I sought was the same who injured me.” I took a deep breath, feeling the Power building within me, tingling along my nerves, the veinings of my body, the chambers of my heart. I held the breath for a long moment. Then I sang.

As always, the world disappeared, the hall, the feasters with it. Only the truth of the being who called himself Razul existed in all the Cosmos. And I sang his soul.

As my voice rose and fell, crescendo, tremolo, diminuendo, the shape of Razul’s self formed upon the polished wall above and behind me. Though my back was toward it, I knew every line and tint of it, for the Power was shaping it, and I was the instrument of the Power.

Dimly, I was aware of a concerted gasp from the crowd, but I sang on. The bestial shape grew in foulness; the colors dripped with scarlet and purple. I heard a scream. The air about me was charged with fear and revulsion, but still I sang. The eyes of Razul hid in their twin lairs, but sparks of pain and rage escaped from that darkness. Had I not been trained, I might well have wilted in that glare, but I did not.

I sang the song to the end. Upon the wall in indelible hues was the thing that was the Lord Razul. Even his henchmen shrank from that image. Even the harlots at his side looked upon it with loathing.

When my voice fell silent, there was no sound in all the place except the sobbing breaths of Razul. He sat and looked upon the thing he had allowed himself to become, and it glowered from the wall, soul’s twin to him.

For long heartbeats the world stood frozen as if time had ceased to tick away. Then Razul rose from his chair. He raised his clenched hands as though to challenge the beast on the wall. An inarticulate roar of pain ripped his throat. An emerald flashed in his dagger hilt, as he drew it from his sash. The glow was quenched in his blood.

He stood, bleeding his life away, staring at the thing on the wall. No soul stirred to aid him or to comfort him until he fell, as does a tree, full-length on his face.

Then there was hubbub, indeed. Women shrieked. Men cried out. Guards rushed in from the outer keep, weapons ready for battle, and joined the moil below.

I waited quietly, and sorrow filled my heart. How direful to be unable to live with the thing you have made yourself become! Kalir and his folk had died in the fullness of love and kindness, sent to the gods before their times, perhaps, but whole and at peace with themselves. This unhappy soul went forth into what dark limbo of self-rejection? Sad. Sad.

When the confusion was at its height, I went down the steps to the chamber. None stayed me or, indeed, seemed to see me. I remembered something the teachers had said... something about the gods holding their hands over those who work their will.

Anna waited in the passage with a heavy cloak and a pack of food. “Go with our blessing, holy one,” she whispered. I touched her forehead with my lips, took the parcel, and set my feet again upon the twilit road.