The Singers of Nevya (48 page)

“I do not know what it is.”

“Summer snow,” he chuckled. “The Visitor turns all the snow into water, even the falling snow. Especially here, so close to the sea.”

Shortly after they passed out of the rain, the light southerly breeze brought a salty fragrance. Sira’s acute hearing caught an odd, distant roaring, as of a great wind. The trees around her were still, and the
hruss
seemed unconcerned. “Singer Iban,” she said. “I hear something very strange.”

His eyebrows flew up into his ragged hair. “Can you hear the sea already? I can’t yet.”

Sira sniffed at the new odors and listened hard to the rushing noises at the fringes of her hearing. Indeed, the Southern Timberlands were as strange as Theo had said. Although she had been born at Arren, she had left it so young that she remembered nothing of the coast.

That night they camped on a great bluff, and Sira stared for a long time at the expanse of water and ice stretching away to the south. It was even more vast than the Great Glacier, a heaving mass of green and white roiling into the distance until it met the edge of the sky. Great chunks of ice floated in it. Iban told her that when the summer was several weeks past, a good bit of the sea itself would be frozen solid.

“I haven’t been to Manrus,” he said, “but I hear that below the ice cliffs, people walk on the Frozen Sea just as the hunters walk on the Glacier. Even a
quiru
can’t melt that ice.”

Sira drew her furs close around her, feeling the chill of the changing season. Far into the night, she woke to see a strange grayness beyond their
quiru
, and though it was not raining, her furs and all their equipment were slick with damp when they rose in the morning. She tasted salt on her lips, and could hardly tear her eyes from the vista of moving sea and ice.

“Does it cover the whole world?” she asked Iban.

He looked out over the sea to the distant horizon. “No one knows that,” he replied. “And I don’t want to find out! These coastal Houses fish in little
kikyu
no bigger than a
pukuru
. They go bobbing about between hills of ice as they were
carwal
themselves. Me, I like keeping my feet on solid ground.”

As they rode away, Sira stared over her right shoulder until her neck ached.

They went directly to the stables at Tarus when they arrived. A stableman greeted them, and opened the stable doors for their
hruss
. Sira looked around for Zakri, but she saw no one familiar. Iban knew hardly anyone at Tarus, having been there only once.

“You have business here, Singers?” the stableman asked in a friendly manner. “We don’t get many travelers this far south, even in the summer. And that’s about over, it looks like.” He helped Sira with her saddlepack, and she undid the cinches and lifted the saddle from her
hruss
’s steaming back.

“We’re looking for somebody,” Iban said. “We’ve heard there’s a boy called Zakri here.”

The stableman’s smile faded, and he eyed Iban with a sudden wariness. “What would you want with him?”

Sira said, “Only to talk. I have been trying to find him.”

“What’s he done?”

Sira and Iban glanced at each other. “Done?” Iban asked.

“He came here by order of Lamdon. Kicked out of two other Houses.” The stableman gave them a dark look. “But you know about that, don’t you?”

“Better not to spread rumors,” Iban said.

The stableman only grunted in response. He led their
hruss
to a loose box, and returned to hang the halters on a peg. “Come back after dark. He’ll be here. I wish you luck with him, but you’d better watch yourself.”

Sira said, “He is only a boy.”

“A dangerous boy! He practically killed someone at Amric.”

“I will be fine,” Sira said firmly.

The Houseman gave a snort. “This is the first time that one’s had anybody to visit him. He cares only for
hruss
. I never saw a man go so long without human company. Does his job, though, and you’ll see how well the
hruss
look.”

Iban shrugged, and the Houseman laughed, his cheery demeanor returning. “Come on,” he said. “Almost time for the evening meal. The Housekeeper will want to meet you.”

Iban offered to come with Sira as she sought out Zakri for the first time, but she preferred to be alone for this initial meeting. She came back into the stables just as the rest of the House was settling in for the night. Beyond the
quiru
the dark was coming earlier each evening. As Sira walked from the House to the stables she saw the first stars begin to glisten through the limeglass windows.

The stables smelled richly of
hruss
and tack and fodder. The patient animals roamed in loose boxes or stood hipshot in stalls, sometimes whickering with their deep-throated sound, shaking their drooping ears. Tarus’s stables were smaller than some, but clean-swept and tidy. Even the thick windows were clean, inside and out.

Sira looked into the tack room. Zakri was not there, but some task was in progress, with odd pieces of leather equipment and well-used rags piled on a bench next to a lidded ironwood jar of tallow. Sira sat on the bench, and stretched out her legs. She idly sifted through the little pile of tack, wondering if she could guess what needed doing.

She was turning a stiff braided leather nosepiece in her hands when the tallow jar leaped from the bench and cracked into two jagged pieces on the stone floor. Its thick yellow contents spilled in a pool around her boots. She gasped and jerked her feet away from it. When she looked up, she saw a furious face in the doorway.

“What do you think you’re doing?” its owner demanded. He was of medium height, slender, with brown eyes that flashed in his pale face. “Put that down!”

Sira had no need to put the nosepiece down. She had no more than opened her hand when it flew from her, rising into the air and splashing into the muck of tallow at her feet.

“Now look!” the boy exclaimed. He whirled and disappeared as she stared after him, struck dumb.

It took several moments for Sira to recover herself. She had never seen such uncontrolled psi in her life, not even when her class was the newest and least-trained at Conservatory. There was no doubt in her mind that she had found Zakri.

She stepped over the puddle of tallow and hurried to the door of the tack room. “Zakri, wait, please,” she called after him. He did not return. Frustrated, Sira turned back to the mess on the floor. The braided nosepiece had sunk into the pool of tallow along with the pieces of the ironwood jar. As she walked toward it, she felt a sticky pull. The fur of her boots was mired with the stuff, and she had left footprints across the floor from the bench to the door. She sighed, and shook her head. Not a good beginning.

She used a rag to clean up the tallow, trying to scoop it into a half-empty jar she found on a shelf. As she cleaned off her boots and the nosepiece, she sent gently,
Zakri. I am Sira. We have met before, at Bariken. Will you not come back and talk to me?

There was no response. She reached out with her mind, and found him just outside the stables. She tried again.
Zakri, I am Singer Sira who was Cantrix at Bariken. I have come here to find you.

Nothing. Sira put things back where she had found them. She waited a little longer, and then, with a sigh, gave up. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would try again. Or perhaps she could find Zakri in the great room, when he would not be startled. Once more she sent to him, just his name, but there was no answer. It was possible he could not hear her. But it seemed just as likely he would not listen.

Sira was becoming accustomed to the reactions of people when they heard her name. Even at Tarus, so far to the south, it was evident that the House members had heard exaggerated stories about her. She sensed no resentment that she had left the Cantoris, at least not among the Housemen and women. Housekeeper Aleen v’Tarus was another story.

Aleen started and her eyes widened when the stableman said Sira’s and Iban’s names. She called a Housewoman to show them to the baths and to sleeping rooms, but she backed away from them as quickly as she could, and hurried away. At the morning meal the next day, as they sat at one of the long tables, Sira felt eyes upon her from the center of the room. She sensed some strange emotion that she could not at first identify.

She looked past Iban to the Magister’s table. The Magister was there, with his mate beside him, and Housekeeper Aleen and several others in the dark tunics of the upper levels. They were all talking, laughing, enjoying their meal in normal fashion, except for Magister Kenth. He glanced quickly away when Sira’s gaze found him, and she understood then the emotion being broadcast so strongly. Magister Kenth v’Tarus was afraid of her.

“Singer Iban,” Sira murmured. “What could there be between the Magister of Tarus and myself? Do you know?”

Iban’s features came alive with curiosity. “Why? What’s happening?”

“I am not intruding on anyone’s thoughts,” Sira hastened to assure him. “But the Magister is afraid of me. I am sure of it.”

Iban pursed his lips as he thought it over. “You were Cantrix at Bariken. Who was it that . . .?” He paused, evidently not wishing to offend her.

Her lips twisted. “It was the Magister’s mate, Rhia, and the Housekeeper Wil. Also the former Cantrix Trude. They tried to kill me, not for myself, but because I was with Magister Shen’s traveling party.”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t know a connection. I’ll ask around.”

Sira felt uncomfortable throughout the meal. She shielded herself carefully, but still felt the Magister’s eyes on her. There was no sign of Zakri at the meal.

Sira and Iban idled away the day, Iban making friends with any who were willing, Sira fretting and pacing, eager to get on with her plans. When darkness fell, she went again to the stables. This time she waited until she was sure Zakri would already be there.

Before going into the tack room, she sent to him.
Zakri? It is Sira. May I come in?

She sensed some response, some emotion felt dimly, as though filtered through the fog she had experienced on the bluff the morning before. The boy’s psi was incredibly strong. It was unthinkable he could not hear her at all.

Sira took a hesitant step toward the door.
Zakri? Are you there? Can you hear me?

Another moment passed. A third time she tried, sending her thoughts as strongly as when she was teaching Theo to hear.
Zakri! Can you hear
—

Her thought was cut off in midstream by his angry cry. “Stop that! Stop screaming at me!” he shouted. “Can’t you leave me alone?”

She heard something fall from the wall inside the tack room. Zakri’s anger burst over her, blinding her senses. She put her hand over her eyes instinctively, as if she could ward off the blow, and her strongest shielding sprang up, so that for several seconds she could neither hear nor send. The uncontrolled psi broke over her like a wave of the Frozen Sea, and until it subsided she felt she could hardly breathe. Minutes passed as she leaned against the wall, waiting for Zakri to calm down, and for her own heart to stop pounding.

When she could, she spoke aloud. “I want to help you. I have come a long way.”

She sensed, from the other side of the wall, his effort to control his psi. At least nothing else fell or broke in the silence that followed. More time passed, while she waited as patiently as she could. Finally, the door to the tack room flew open to bang against the opposite wall. Zakri stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his eyes wide and blazing. Sira stared at him.

He could not, she thought, be more than seventeen. He looked as if he were still growing, with arms and legs too long for his body. His brown hair was fine, tied back in a thin tail like that of a
hruss
, and he wore the bright red-and-blue tunic of a working Houseman. He hissed, “Leave me alone!”

Before she could think of another plea, he rushed past her and out into the stables. She saw him hurry into one of the loose boxes and disappear behind the bulk of a
hruss
.

Sira had no intention of giving up, but she was trembling from the strain of resisting his angry psi. Such uncontrolled energy was especially dangerous to any Gifted ones who came within its range. She turned away to walk slowly back into the House. She needed to think of a way to deal with Zakri that would be safe for both of them.

Wearily, she made her way to her own room, and lay down on the cot. As she tried to sleep, she remembered the eager, vulnerable youngster she had met at Bariken so long ago. His problems were just beginning then. His father had promised Zakri would get the training he needed, but clearly it had not happened. Perhaps no itinerant could deal with the strength and wildness of his Gift. She wished she knew what had happened to him in the last five years.

She tossed on her cot for a long time that night, listening to the distant rush of the sea, punctuated occasionally by the crash of an ice floe against the rocky cliffs. After a long time, those same sounds lulled her into an uneasy sleep, in which she dreamed unexpectedly of Isbel and Kai. She woke several times to find her bedfurs tangled and her neck stiff. In the morning she rose, feeling as if she had not slept at all.

Chapter Seventeen

Zakri curried and brushed the Cantrix’s
hruss
until it groaned with pleasure. Even its tail was silky soft when he was through. It was the only way he could think of to apologize. Tears wet his face, and more than once he leaned his forehead against the docile animal, sobbing out his grief and his anger.

How long had it been since he had been able to talk to anyone? His father had given up on him, and so had his brother. No itinerant Singer who valued his livelihood dared take him as apprentice. He had grown even worse in his isolation. It was harder and harder to control the lashings of his psi, those surges that leapt out from him like lightning in a summer sky. He shuddered, remembering the final humiliation that had sent him into this lonely life.

It had been at his home, at Perl. His father, Devid, was already furious with him, because the itinerant Singer who had been his master, the third to try him as apprentice, had made a hurried and unprofitable trip, with much muttering and shaking of his head, to return him to his father’s hands. Devid made a public comment in the great room about this latest failure, and a flood of hurt and resentment and confusion burst from Zakri, right there in front of the House members. An entire table overturned, littering the floor with broken ironwood.
Keftet
and tea flew everywhere, splattering Housemen and women. Shocked faces had turned on Zakri and Devid both. A woman with a bleeding cheek went off for a bandage while her mate shouted at Devid to do something about his devil of a son. Devid had stamped away, leaving Zakri trying to apologize, trying to help clean the mess, eventually slinking away in misery. He had just over three summers then. He had been not quite fourteen years old.