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Chapter Four

The Winter Beast

I was a long time in the house of Rellas. Even after the folk had seen the soul of the unborn child sung upon the polished wall of their own Mother Chapel and had accepted its hu­manity, the Lady Felisa clung to me. Her mother, her hus­band, and her son added their pleas to hers, so I stayed well past my time, though I remembered too well the penalty of making my stay permanent.

Still I was not truly idle. Much was to be learned from Rellas, in those lengthening fall evenings, about his journey to the Citadel and the strange manner in which he had been detained there. His summoning had been unnecessary, by any reckoning. His taxes had been properly totaled and paid, and the services of a courier could easily have taken the necessary proofs to the capital city. So flimsy was the pretext upon which he had been taken from his home, so oddly disturbing was the collection of excuses that had been used to keep him in the Citadel, that I felt a frightening unease.

At the risk of seeming to overstep my place, I found an op­portunity to talk with him about my forebodings. It was the night before my departure, for I knew the time had come for me to set foot again in the road. Felisa, now heavy with child, had gone to her chambers with her mother to talk with her until she slept. Rolduth was in the stables, currying Cherry. Rellas and I sat alone before his broad hearth, both of us feeling a bit saddened that my task with his family was done.

As a log broke into glowing halves, sending up a thousand red sparks to cling in the soot of the chimney wall, I asked him, “My friend Rellas, were you released to return home or did you come unbidden, knowing that you must be needed?”

He looked at me strangely. “They would have kept me there until spring,” he said. “As it was, I felt much unease, and I resented my time’s wasting, there on the doorstep of the High King. He, having brought many forth from their places, would consent to see none of us. At last I visited Ernethos, the Scholar, who counseled my father before me. Though he is now withered and white-haired, his old head holds more knowledge of the usages of laws and the whims of men than any I know.

“He said to me, ‘Rellas, if you abstain from visiting any of the Ministers, if you send no messages to the High King, for two weeks, they will check to ascertain your presence. After that you may go where you will, for they will assume that you are waiting quietly upon their pleasure. It may be months before you are missed.’

“‘But what if I am missed...what if they seek to trouble me concerning my going home without leave?’ I asked him.

“‘You break no law now or ever upon the scrolls of the Citadel,’ he said. ‘Some mischievous quill-scribbler has taken it in mind to harry honest men. You are in no peril from the law.’

“So I did as he said, and after two weeks I set out for home...not an instant too soon.”

He sighed. “But I would have taken oath that our land was not conducted so.”

Hesitantly, I shook my head. “There are ill things afoot, I am afraid. Others along my road had been summoned to the Citadel. None being as highly placed as you, they were astonished at the summons. Being mostly those who live by their own toil, they sent word that they could not come, for their families would hunger in their absence. But I wonder, Rellas, how many of them would have found it difficult to come home again?”

We sat for a long moment before I again took courage and spoke. “I think you should take care. Watch those who go and come upon the road through your lands. Any who stop, noble or common, should be judged warily and trusted not at all.

“I stayed for a time in a house of some wealth, though not a noble one. My stay ended when the men of Razul broke in our door and slew them all before my eyes. They knew where the small store of gold was hidden, though none who knew Kalir and his family, servant or friend, would have betrayed that good man.

“I sang the soul of Razul, and he troubles the ways no more; but I wonder...I wonder. Tyrnos, even with its Singers to keep men and women virtuous, has ways of dealing with such people as that villain. There was no need to wait until a Singer happened along. Why did the King, even at a distance in the Citadel, not know what all knew for leagues in any direction? And knowing, why did he not send troops to bring Razul before him to answer for his crimes? The King’s Guard is large enough to spare some few for such a task.”

We looked eye into eye for a long moment, while the fire snapped and began to die away. Even with that warmth be­fore us, with the cheer of the lamps blazing on their brackets, I felt suddenly chilled.

Rellas shivered as he sat. “When a land grows corrupt, too often the rot begins in high places. Not only the lowly may practice treason.” He fell silent, fingering the braid on his sleeve and looking into the red coals.

“It may be that I have made a specter of a mere shadow,” I said. “Still, caution is never harmful, if practiced wisely. Take care, my friend. You have more to lose than most...and your folk in the village are used to fair dealing and honest words. How would they prosper with... another sort?”

His square face flushed, where before it had been dyed red by the firelight. “It would go ill with them,” he whispered. “They are only now losing the ignorance that has clung about them for generations. They are apt to trust the untrustworthy and to be suspicious of the true. An unloving lord would set them back into the old wretched mold.”

“Then take care,” I said. He was nodding as we both rose, and I went to rest with an easier mind than I had known in days.

It was a sad parting. Still, plead as they would, I knew that I could never forsake the road again. Perhaps the fate of Kalir’s folk had been a quirk of the fates. Perhaps not. I was not going to chance a repetition of that, through my own fault.

In the few weeks I had spent housed and cosseted, the year had turned. Though the mang trees still held their heavy mats of leafage, to sigh and whisper until the buds of spring pushed them from the branches, the leaves had lost the autumn gold and were now gray-tan and sodden with cold rain. The road was wet beneath my russet boots, and I was glad that the gravelly soil of this region made it less a sea of mud than others I had walked.

The wind was fitful. When its gusts caught me, the chill cut through even the fur cloak that Felisa had made for me in place of the woolen one I owned. Though I had rested from the road, I had not sat idle; with Rolduth and Meltha I had exercised every day. Thus, the doldrums had not crept into my muscles. I stepped along at my usual good pace, and that helped to warm me, once my blood began to sing along my veins. Still, the day was cold, and the approaching evening looked to be colder still.

I was moving, now, through wooded lands, uncut since the beginning. The huge boles of the mangs colonnaded the way, and their reaching arms overarched the road. So thick was the wood that no undergrowth cluttered the forest on either hand. Darkness began to gather in those quiet aisles, and even the fitful jeering of grimbirds that had accompanied my prog­ress died away into stillness.

It was old, old, and deep with ancient secrets—and perhaps some secrets not so ancient, for I felt a strange pulse beneath the level of conscious perceptions. Still, its heart was sound, though cloaked in mystery. I felt little wariness as I began to search its deeps with my eyes, seeking a spot in which to sleep warmly, sheltered from the cold night.

I had no taste for spending the blustery hours of darkness in a treetop. Though I knew that most of the forest’s beasts had gone into their winter sleep, it would not be wise to tempt any late-waking carnivore. The drifts of last spring’s discarded leaves were damp and musty, uninviting in the extreme. I wanted a hollow tree, much like that which I had used before. For so old a forest, it was remarkably healthy. No trace of rot appeared on any trunk within eyeshot. Sighing, I forsook the road and made my way beneath the roof-like limbs, looking sharply at every tree. I walked for some time, winding about but keeping my sense of direction firmly in hand.

As the last light faded, I found a hollow, higher than was convenient, but deep and floored with the dust of rotted wood and fallen bark. Weary after my day’s walk and my strenuous climb to my sleeping place, I spread my cloak, ate a bit from the generous store Meltha had supplied, and rolled that furry garment about me, head to heel. The wind rose with the coming of night, and I lay in that hospitable nook listening to its mutter­ing among the leaves. When rain began to patter, I fell snugly into sleep.

No dream disturbed my rest. I woke to a magical morning: the rain had frozen in falling, and the forest was sheathed in ice. Its lanes were enchanted avenues from some mythical tale for children. I considered staying where I was, warm and sheltered, with enough food for many days. The footing, I knew, would be insecure and the ways treacherous with ice. Something compelled me on my way, however, and it was not solely the plan that I had begun to formulate after hearing the tale of Rellas’s journey to the Citadel. I had determined to direct my steps in that direction, for no one sets the path of a Singer. Not one of my teachers or even the administrators of my order knew where upon the lands I now stood. My way was my own, subject only to the calls of duty and to the in­stinct that Singers are taught to recognize.

I would go southward. Though I had had my training at a lesser School for Singers in the west of Tyrnos, I knew that I might claim a place for rest in that great mother of Schools in the country’s capital city. There I might obtain answers to the many questions that had risen into my heart since the begin­ning of my wanderings. If not, I might observe simply if any canker might be eating its way into the very institution that had made Tyrnos the most lawful and kindly of nations.

I must not linger, be the weather what it would.

It was no easy matter to descend the ice-coated tree trunk. As it was, I slithered a few feet, then dropped unceremoni­ously onto my backside, gaining no few bruises in the fall. Setting my pack and my cloak to rights, I looked about to find the landmarks that would set me back on the way to the road. Though the icy sheathing made everything appear differ­ent, there was no disguising the lightning-stricken snag that was my first marker. Confidently I moved toward it, caught my bearings, and veered away to the left, sighting on a mossy boulder. From landmark to landmark I went, never doubting that the memorized route would return me to the road I had left the night before.

My confidence was ill-placed. When I reached the double-trunked mang tree that had been my first checking place after leaving the way, I looked expectantly past it. There was no break in the wood. The wheel-and-hoof-worn track that I had followed had disappeared from my sight. Un­marked forest rose all about me, and I knew that if this was some mischief set upon my vision, I could never discover, so blinded, the winding way that I had never traveled before. Roads do not evanesce in a night. Years may blur and obliterate their traces, but one night’s rest cannot encompass such a thing.

I frowned. Some thought had been laid over my path... some compelling spell had either deceived me into believing that there had been a road or was now deceiving me into believing that there was not. There was no evidence that I could lay tongue to, but the well-honed instincts that my teachers had spent ten years of my life in sharpening cried out to me, “This is witchery...or worse!”

I looked about. Icy-bright trees bent their heavy branches low on all hands, and the sharp cracks of overburdened limbs breaking sounded all around me. A snapping warned me, and I looked upward. The double-trunked tree under which I stood gave a rip­ping groan, and one of the great halves swayed. I leaped for my life, turning in time to see the crystal-enclosed giant crash down upon the spot where I had stood.

Now my breath came hard, with shock and anger. More than a thought had been laid against me. A curse was moving in the wood, and I had no doubt that I was its specific target. I must win clear of the threatening branches or risk an end to my quest and my life. Not for this had I taken the hard les­sons of the Singers’ School to heart. I would bow my neck to no ill spirit that cast its spell across Tyrnos.

I stood still in the cleared spot left by the falling tree. Clos­ing my eyes, I called upon the Power that I had never before been forced to use in my own behalf. A half-chant rose in my throat, and the strange sensations that were the tracks of the Power flowed through me. As if doubly frozen, the forest quieted until the faint chiming of ice against ice as the slight breeze moved through laden twigs was all that could be heard.

Into that quiet came the sound of steps. Not the two-footed steps of humankind, but a complex four-pawed gait that would have been padding, but for the crisp layer of ice upon the fallen leaves. The sound neared, and I wondered behind my closed eye­lids what beast still wandered the wood in the teeth of such weather. As the paws drew to a halt beside me, I opened my eyes and looked.

The darkest, saddest eyes I have ever seen gazed back into mine from their own level. They were set in a face of white fur that edged into a neat trimming of dark gray about the cat­-like lower jaw, the neatly pointed ears, and the flattish muz­zle. White fur covered the rest of the shape, which consisted of a compact and short-tailed body set high upon slender, oddly-jointed legs. A strange beast altogether, unlike any in the books that I had studied so painstakingly at School.

There was no feeling of ill about it. It stood patiently while I studied it. When I began to sing it, it made a strange sound, a thrumming that just missed being a purr. And the shape I limned on the inside of my mind was no beast at all. Still, it was not of my kind, either. And it was misted over, as if the gods wished its true shape concealed. But it was clear that a thinking being stood at my side in that ensorcelled wood.