Song Magick (44 page)

The rising column of blood-red fire suddenly
exploded without warning. Cormac and the bard were flung away from
the trees with its violence, and Telyn felt herself falling into a
deep darkness that was flecked with golden sparks as consciousness
faded.

* * * *

Mithrais blinked slowly, his eyes focusing on
the green canopy above him as he tried to remember why he was on
the ground. His body felt as if it were bruised from head to foot.
He turned his head to the right and saw Colm lying nearby, groaning
as he stirred, and the Westwarden remembered with sudden clarity
what had transpired.

Wincing, an involuntary gasp of pain escaping
his lips as he rolled and came to his hands and knees, Mithrais saw
that the enormous grey slab of stone in the center of the Circle
had cracked in half. His heart lurched as he located Telyn,
motionless on the grass inside the Circle. He tried to rise to his
feet and staggered weakly. Hands on his shoulders steadied him, and
Mithrais turned his head to see Jona, who appeared shaken, but no
worse for the wear, his eyes wide with wonder and fear.

“Let me help you,” he said simply, and
Mithrais leaned on him as they made their way toward the sundered
stone and the bodies lying too still within the clearing. Across
the Circle, Conlad had reached Cormac, who stirred sluggishly, and
Mithrais managed the last few steps to Telyn’s side, fear screaming
inside him as his shaking hand touched the side of her throat,
desperately seeking the flutter of life beneath his fingertips. No
movement of breath, no heartbeat sounded as he laid his ear against
her breast.

“No!” The cry of anguish left his throat raw
as he gathered Telyn’s lifeless body into his arms. The sound
brought other wardens to Mithrais’ side as quickly as their
battered bodies could carry them, to stare in disbelief. Colm
dropped to his knees with a groan of agony.

Cormac, struggling weakly to a sitting
position, was speaking to Mithrais. He could not comprehend what
the young warden was trying to say, his eyes and mind blurred with
grief as he numbly watched Cormac, supported by Conlad, stagger to
his side. He saw Cormac’s lips working, but there was no sound, no
awareness of anything except the limp body cradled in his arms, the
sweet scent of Telyn’s hair against his cheek, and the bitterness
of loss.

A voice seemed to come from everywhere and
nowhere at once, carrying tones of command and urgency, shocking
Mithrais’ mind back into focus.

“Mithrais, there is still time.” The voice
held a middle timbre, not male, not female, but unmistakably, it
was one of the old ones.

Cormac dropped beside him. “I can help her,”
he said hoarsely. “Please...”

Mithrais numbly allowed the young warden to
help him lay Telyn’s body upon the ground. Cormac closed his eyes,
breathing deeply, his hands cupped before him as if to hold
something precious. A white light gathered between his palms,
seemingly drawn from the air itself, and gloved his hands in pale
fire. He placed his strangely glowing hands over Telyn’s heart, and
pressed the light in. There was a charge in the air like lightning,
the stillness of a gathering storm, and suddenly the bard’s eyes
flew open, startled, as she gasped for breath.

Mithrais wept openly, unashamed in his relief
and joy.

* * * *

Telyn reached for Mithrais, offering
bewildered comfort, and took in the ring of exhausted, shocked
faces that surrounded her. The memory of the violent explosion came
back, and she whispered faintly,

“We failed, didn’t we?”

Colm started to laugh, and the others joined
in; hysterical, relieved laughter. A confused Telyn looked to
Cormac, who grinned tiredly, his blue eyes bright with triumph.

“We did it,” he told her. “All of us.”

“You did well.” The words came gently,
floating on the early morning breezes. “The fount is open, and we
are free of the burden.”

Telyn, startled, allowed Mithrais to support
her as she sat up shakily, her eyes searching the branches of the
easternmost tree. “You can speak aloud, now.”

“We can do more than that.” A shape stepped
forth from the trunk.

The wardens stared, awestruck, at the odd,
androgynous figure. Its slender body was the dun hue of the trunk,
its face and arms the white color of the upper branches, and its
head was capped closely with green leaves. Eyes the color of golden
honey scanned them all, and it smiled with an unearthly beauty.

“Can you leave the groves?” Telyn asked.

“No, seed-voice. We are still root bound, sky
reaching. We are content.”

“The resonance?” someone murmured.

“It still exists. But our relationship with
you, faithful ones, will change. Magic will replace what you have
lost in fulfilling the covenant.”

“Do you still need our protection, old one?”
Jona asked plaintively.

“We can still be destroyed by axe and by
fire. We will not take life to save ourselves, nor will we suffer
the presence of others who take life for greed or sport. We are not
without defenses, but we are vulnerable. Our seedlings will be
vulnerable. There is still need for the Tauron.” The figure smiled
again, fey and strange. “Each of you was chosen to embody a
particular skill of magic, and it will rise with full knowledge of
your craft. It is our gift to you. You will be teachers and
guides.”

“When will we know our individual gifts?”
Colm asked.

“They rise even now. The seed-speaker
received the gift of healing in full, for it was imperative to the
fulfillment of the covenant.” The figure turned its eyes to Telyn.
“The seed-voice is the life-giver. She gave us her life force, and
we returned it.”

Mithrais tightened his embrace, and Telyn
realized with a queer sense of vertigo what had happened to cause
his distress. “I never interpreted your words in quite that way,”
she said weakly, with heavy irony, “but you are welcome.”

“We thank you, Telyn.” The bard was startled
by the sound of her name on the being’s lips. “Your task was well
performed.”

Telyn’s fingertips strayed to her chest,
which was sore and tender to the touch. There was emptiness there;
she was not certain that she could cast even the lightest of charms
with song magic if she tried.

“Your gifts will recover,” the sylvan
creature said, reading her thoughts. “You gave us all, but it will
return.”

“That was much more power than we needed to
fulfill the covenant,” Telyn stated suspiciously. “What else has
happened?”

The ancient one smiled. “The whole of the
isle can now benefit from the fount, and so we benefit.”

“Magic has returned outside the Wood?”
Eirion’s jaw dropped.

“Yes. It is one land, although this place
will always be most powerful. There are those who are not our
descendants who possess the gifts necessary to use the magic. It is
only right that they do so. Teach them all.”

With another nod at Telyn, it stepped
backwards and melted into the trunk of the tree. It was as if it
had never been; an apparition born of their imaginations...then a
sound echoed through the grove. The mighty chord of resonance,
changed, but full of the purest harmonies that Telyn had ever
heard, pulsed through the Circle and beyond, carrying magic in its
wake.

Telyn sighed, a great, heavy sound of relief,
turning in Mithrais’ arms. The tears were still wet on his cheeks,
salty against her lips as she returned his fierce embrace.

Epilogue

Telyn clucked to Bessa as the mare navigated
a particularly rocky patch in the road, her small wagon bouncing
over the rough terrain. The hard-packed earth had not seen the
benefit of rain in over a week. The sky was just beginning to show
the first signs of twilight, the sun sending the last glorious
beams of golden light slanting through the trees before it settled
behind the hills.

She had been traveling the Wood for nearly
two weeks since the solstice, stopping at each small village. In
the remote settlements, the tenants were already well aware of the
fact that magic was once more rising in the Wood. Telyn spun the
tale of how it had come about almost nightly to groups of rapt
listeners, carefully keeping the identity of the seed-voice to
herself and focusing instead on the men of the Tauron who had been
entrusted with this tremendous responsibility.

Her ultimate destination was Ilparien, where
she would keep her promise to a certain young warden and give them
a rousing tale of Cormac’s bravery in battle and in magic.

Telyn had been unable to keep from teasing
her friend, and had slightly embellished the version she shared
with the wardens after his formal induction into the Tauron
Order.

“But that isn’t really how it happened!”
Cormac had protested, his face red.

“Oh, it isn’t?” Telyn mused, her eyebrows
raised. “Get used to being a hero, my friend. Once I tell your
village, it will be compounded tenfold. They will have it that you
performed the feat all by yourself, and the rest of us will be
forgotten!”

The Tauron guild house was rapidly becoming a
school of magic as the nine
magians
—a word that meant both
‘sorcerer’ and ‘teacher’ in the old language—tested their
burgeoning talents. Telyn wondered how they would each come to
terms with their newfound power. She had cautioned them mightily,
knowing better than most that magic was full of consequences, and
that a shadowed side existed beyond the bright potential of these
newly restored gifts.

Telyn found her training in heartspeaking and
shielding had rewarded her with a level of control that she had
never known, but the Gwaith’orn had also given her a gift. The full
knowledge of what she could accomplish with her own unique powers
had been bestowed upon her, and it was a humbling and sometimes
frightening prospect. She knew that someday, it would lead her from
the Wood and back into the Three Realms.

Perhaps the most comforting knowledge of all
was that it could protect her from Vuldur and his paid assassins.
When the delegation came to Cerisild for their state visit in a few
weeks, Telyn planned on being there. The secret that she had
learned from King Amorion’s private letter to Gwidion would soon
become known, and she wouldn’t miss that intrigue for the
world.

* * * *

There was a keening sound from somewhere
ahead that seemed to be heard more in her mind than in her ears.
With a grin, Telyn recognized the noise as the initial attempts of
a seedling Gwaith’orn to join the resonance.

She pulled Bessa to a halt when the sound
drew level, and climbed carefully out of the wagon, watching where
she stepped. Telyn found the seedling perhaps twenty feet from the
road, at the farthest root span from what had once been a silent
Gwaith’orn. It was now simply a tree, its life essence transferred
into the keening sapling that stood knee-high to the bard. She
looked up at the old tree respectfully, noting that the white
branches were darkening with a scale of brown bark.

The new, sentient trees were growing more
rapidly than any other seedlings in the Wood. Even in their
fledgling state they were unmistakable; the upper half of the shoot
was bone-white, with tiny, star-shaped leaves unfurling.

Telyn no longer needed to touch the
Gwaith’orn to make contact with them, but seedlings were a
different matter. They were not yet powerful enough to speak aloud,
although aware enough to listen and to participate in the chorus of
the Wood. She knelt and stroked the delicate sapling with one
finger, smiling at the rudimentary images it sent in welcome.

It tried again to join the resonance, its
keening slightly out of tune with the rest of the Gwaith’orn. Telyn
let a soft note swell in her throat, singing to the sapling, and
heard it shift its tone to match hers and blend into the mighty
chord that filled the forest.

She acknowledged its gratitude and rose. It
would have eventually been able to discover its voice for itself,
but Telyn felt obligated to guide them whenever she stumbled across
a seedling, standing young and alone in the Wood.

She patted Bessa’s rump as she climbed back
into the wagon. She still had an hour’s daylight to find a suitable
campsite. Mithrais would come to her tonight, riding the crest of
magic as he had once ridden the resonance.

“Let’s go, my girl.” Telyn encouraged Bessa
with a gentle slap of the reins. “We want to be camped before
sunset.”

The thought of her lifemate’s company caused
her heart to soar, and demanded music. Telyn gave Bessa her head as
the mare began to walk forward, and opened the weatherproof box
beneath the seat, drawing out her new harp: a lovely, sinuous thing
darkly polished and delicately inlaid with a mosaic of leaves on
the soundboard.

She propped the harp against her breast and
touched fingers to the strings, sending a ripple of music into the
air and hearing it answered in the resonance as her song magic
blossomed. Telyn began to play a song of joy, raising her voice in
celebration, and this time, the Wood sang with her.

The End

List
of Characters

The Bards

Telyn Songmaker: a young bard of the Three
Realms

Emrys Harpmaster: Telyn’s cousin, to whom she
was apprenticed

Taliesin, Royal Bard: Telyn’s father

The Wood-Born Silde

Mithrais of Cerisild: Westwarden of the
Tauron Order, second son of

Gwidion, Lord of the Wood

Gwidion, Lord Cerisild: Mithrais’ father,
ruler of the Wood and its people

Gilmarion: Mithrais’ elder brother, and heir
to Cerisild

Diarmid: Gwidion’s loyal steward and
friend