The Singers of Nevya (66 page)

“I don’t know,” Clive muttered. “We were hurrying, traveling as fast as we could in the deep cold . . . and then last night, just after the
quiru
was up, he cried out, like he’d seen something or heard something . . . and then no more.” He shivered in evident horror. “I couldn’t wake him up, not then nor since. As soon as morning came, I just followed the road here. I was so afraid—”

Clive v’Trevi hung his head, and Zakri and those around him were silent. They were Nevyans, and they understood perfectly. Of course he had been afraid. He was no Singer, who could call up a
quiru
whenever he needed it. Had Clive not reached Amric before dark, his own death would have been as certain as Iban’s.

“Where were you riding from?”

This was a new voice, a deep and commanding one. Clive’s eyes darted up in search of the speaker. He hesitated a long time, and the hard spot of cold under Zakri’s heart spread wider, filling the space between his ribs.

“Soren,” Clive finally whispered. Zakri looked up at Berk, who had asked the question. The Gifted Cantor and the unGifted courier stared at each other until Berk made a gesture with his big hand.

Zakri turned back to Iban’s body, directing the Housemen to transport it to his own rooms. In the background he heard Berk speaking to the Magister as he and Cantor Gavn came into the great room. Cael led Clive away, and Zakri heard Berk telling him to be in the Magister’s apartment within the hour. There would be little rest for Clive v’Trevi, at least not until all the truth of the disastrous journey were known.

Gavn came to Zakri and stood before him, biting his full lower lip.
Are you all right, Cantor?

Zakri shook his head.
Something terrible has happened.

What is it? Who was that man?

That was my master.

Gavn sucked in a noisy breath, and his blue eyes were wide and shocked.
Not the Singer Iban! From your itinerant days?

My itinerant days, thought Zakri. They had not lasted long, but they had changed him forever, changed everything. For a moment he missed them with a longing so fierce that he saw Gavn step back suddenly, and knew he had not shielded himself enough.
I am sorry
, he sent.
It is just that, without Iban, I would certainly not be here today. Or perhaps anywhere!

The two Cantors walked slowly out of the great room, and started up the wide staircase to the upper level of the House.

Can I do anything to help?
Gavn asked.

I do not know yet.

Too many Singers had died in recent years. No Nevyan Singer’s death would ever be lightly dismissed, but in this case, Zakri swore to himself, he would have answers . . . or else. What else, he could not have said at that moment. But the coldness under his heart wound itself into a frigid knot of fury. He felt it when he breathed, when he moved. It demanded release. It demanded revenge.

“The rumors from Soren have been around for a long time,” Berk said heavily. His body dwarfed the carved ironwood chair he sat in, and his long legs barely fit beneath the table in the Magister’s apartment. Berk’s grizzled hair and beard were always neatly combed, but despite his years of service to the upper levels of the House, he retained the weather-beaten, travel-hardened look of a rider, as he had been in his youth.

“For too long,” Zakri said. “It is time something was done.”

Magister Edrus leaned forward. “But what will you do, Cantor Zakri?” he asked. “If you and Berk go riding into Soren, you risk your own safety.”

Zakri shrugged. He was spending a good deal of his energy simply controlling his psi, so as not to darken and disturb the
quiru
light in the room. He felt Gavn staring at him.

Edrus pressed him. “What injury did you find in Singer Iban?”

Zakri took a shaky breath. “I found no injury at all, Magister,” he said slowly. “No injury to his body, that is.”

Berk turned in Clive’s direction. The smaller man cowered in misery at one end of the table. “Houseman! Are you sure you heard nothing last night, no
hruss
or men behind you?”

Clive’s eyes flickered nervously from side to side. He shook his head. Zakri saw that his hands trembled, and that he grasped his elbows to stop them.

Berk looked at Zakri, his eyebrows up and his lips pursed beneath his beard. Zakri knew what that look meant.

Carefully, as Berk and the Magister discussed possible actions to take, Zakri extended his psi, reaching ever so cautiously into Clive’s mind. He had to be very subtle. If Cantor Gavn, so painstakingly trained in discretion at Conservatory, were to catch him trespassing, he would never understand. And Cantrix Sira would have objected. Or perhaps she would not, if she had seen Singer Iban lying dead in the great room, his mobile features stilled forever. The thought made Zakri set his jaw. Trying to keep his face impassive, he strengthened his touch, delving more boldly into Clive’s thoughts.

It was little use. Clive had no Gift at all. Zakri read only a confusion of fear, clouded by fatigue from his sleepless night and frantic ride from last night’s campsite. Zakri withdrew his psi, and gave Berk a small shake of his head. Gavn’s eyes were on him again, and he shielded himself carefully.

“I want to go home, to Trevi,” Clive whined. “I’ve told you all I know! How can I know what’s wrong at Soren? I’m no itinerant!”

Berk turned an unsympathetic face to the man. “It’s too bad you’re not,” he growled. “We’ve not seen an itinerant here for weeks. There’s no one to escort you.”

Clive averted his eyes again. Zakri watched him with narrowed eyes. He sensed something, some slight deception, some hidden fear.

“Clive,” Zakri said slowly. “You said Singer Iban went to Soren with goods from Trevi.” Clive nodded. “What were the goods, what was he carrying?”

Clive looked out the window, at the floor, anywhere but at the three other men. “It was just food and cloth. We make felted cloth at Trevi, you know, and we grow the oaten grain no one else does, so they wanted . . . they sent . . .” His voice trailed off, and Zakri clenched a fist in irritation.

“What?” Berk pressed. “They sent what?”

“They sent us an itinerant.”

The three Amric men stared at the traveler in amazement.

“They had nothing else?” Magister Edrus blurted.

Clive blinked. “Nothing else we wanted, I guess.”

“Has this happened before?” Magister Edrus wanted to know.

“Once or twice. They’ve sent an itinerant for our Magister to use for a trip or two, and we sent him back loaded up with supplies. Only this time . . .”

“Yes?”

“They said they needed the grain quickly, and since Singer Iban was at home, and the Magister wanted the itinerant for something else, Iban and I took the shipment to Soren.” He blinked again, looking either innocent or stupid.

“Something happened at Soren. That’s what we need to know,” Berk said firmly.

A silence stretched around the room. The Amric men waited while Clive shifted and squirmed in his seat. The scent of fear grew sharp around him, but Zakri and the others did not relent.

Clive perspired freely now, though he had shed his heavy
caeru
furs. “I don’t know what you want!”

Zakri stared at him. “I think you do.”

“But if I—”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what they’re doing to people there?” Clive burst out in a panic. “I have a family, children . . . .”

“Singer Iban had a family!” Zakri rapped, and the air around him glimmered angrily. “And friends!”

Clive sagged in his chair, his chin on his chest. More moments of silence passed. Zakri gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. At length Clive looked up.

“There was a man . . . he used to be a Singer, an itinerant. Karl v’Perl.” Clive struggled for courage. “He sits at meals in the great room at Soren, like—like a warning. A threat. His mind is gone. He—” Clive shuddered. “He drools. And he shakes. He—he soils himself. His mate has to do everything for him.”

Cantor Gavn sucked in a shocked breath.

Clive cast him a look, then stammered on. “”When they took Iban up the stairs, up to Cho’s rooms . . .”

“Cho?” asked Magister Edrus.

“Cho is an
obis
-carver, or he was. But something has happened to the Magister at Soren, and Cho seems to be in charge. He sits at the center table.”

“What about their Cantors?”

Clive shook his head, pale and beaten looking. “I never saw them,” he whispered. “The place is full of Singers, but they’re all itinerants. They took Iban up to Cho, and when he came back, he wouldn’t tell me anything. He said it was better I didn’t know. We left in a hurry, sneaked away, really, just before dawn.”

“We must report to Lamdon,” Magister Edrus said to Berk and to Zakri. “They need to know what’s happening, take some sort of action.” He turned back to Clive. “It’s true there are no itinerants in the House. We can’t send you home at the moment.”

Clive nodded. “It was the same at Trevi. No itinerants.”

Berk thumped the table with one big fist. “That’s their weapon. Control the itinerant Singers and you control the Continent.”

Edrus nodded. “The people are trapped. Prisoners in their own Houses.”

Zakri’s voice shook when he spoke. “Iban refused to join them,” he said bitterly, “and so they killed him. By the Six Stars! They will pay for this.”

Clive held up a shaking hand. “Cantor Zakri, be careful! You don’t know . . . you didn’t see that man, that awful man, slobbering and mindless. She has to feed him, has to hold his head and . . . put the spoon in his mouth . . . . it’s awful!”

Zakri shoved back his chair and stood. “They will pay for that, too.” He nodded to Gavn. “Magister, Gavn and Ovan can manage for a time without me. I must go to to Soren. I must see what is happening for myself, and find out what happened to Iban.”

Magister Edrus regarded him for several moments. “I suppose, Cantor Gavn, that you and Cantor Ovan can handle the Cantoris?”

Gavn’s round, smooth chin stuck out. “Of course, Magister.”

Good for you!
Zakri sent to him.

Gavn sent back,
I hope.

Berk stood up, and looked down at Zakri from his great height. “I’m coming with you.”

“It may not be safe,” Zakri warned.

Berk chuckled. “Less for you than for me, Cantor,” he said. “And you and I are old road comrades, in any case.”

“So we are,” Zakri said. He rose, keeping his expression blank. His face felt as stiff as a piece of
caeru
leather left in the cold. He wanted to weep, or storm about in a tantrum as he would have before Cantrix Sira and Singer Iban had taught him to harness his wild Gift. He took a deep, slow breath, and bowed deeply to Magister Edrus, and to his junior.

“By your leave, then, Magister.” He nodded to Berk. “And thank you, Berk. We will ride in the morning.”

He strode from the room. In his mind, he heard,
Good luck, Cantor Zakri. Take care.

And you, Cantor Gavn.

All will be well until you return.

Zakri felt a sudden homesickness that he would not have credited earlier in the day. But there was no time for doubts now. The task at hand was too important.

Chapter Two

Sira watched from the dais as Observatory’s House members took their seats. Anyone who could be spared from their duties was present today in the Cantoris. Theo sat on the nearest bench with the students clustered around him. He had cut his blond hair for the coming journey, and it curled vigorously around his ears. It made him look younger than his eight summers. Mreen knelt beside him on the bench to have a good view. Her small round face was solemn in its nimbus of light. The other student Singers, Yve and Jule and Arry, fidgeted on Theo’s left, their short legs dangling, their fingers in their mouths or their noses. They were even younger than Mreen, and had hardly begun their studies. At Theo’s insistence, they spent most of their time with their families still. Sira made no argument; Theo’s instincts were unerring. And they were being proved right once again; another Gifted babe had been born at Observatory, assisted into the world with Theo’s help. There had not been such an abundance of the Gift on the Continent in a hundred summers.

Magister Pol leaned against the back wall of the Cantoris, his powerful arms folded across his chest. His blunt features were impassive, but Sira sensed his mood clearly. Indeed, this was a great day, and Pol was right to feel pride in his House, and his Cantoris; next to Sira on the dais, now tuning the precious and ancient
filhata
, was Sira’s and Theo’s very first student, Trisa. Today she would perform her first
quirunha
, with Sira as her senior. Her mother and stepfather, seated with the assembly, watched her every movement as she adjusted the central C and tuned the other strings to it.

Only the Spirit, Sira thought, could have wrought such change as Observatory had seen in the past two summers. The House glowed with light and warmth; its nursery gardens thrived, as did its people. Their clothes were simple and their tools either well-worn or make-do, but the people were healthy, and safe from the cold.

It was time. The Singers on the dais stood, and the assembly stood with them. They bowed formally. Trisa sat on her stool, the
filhata
across her lap. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to pluck the strings of the
filhata
. She played a melody in
Iridu
that she had practiced over and over in the past months, so often that at one time she cried out that she never wanted to hear it again! But Sira had been taught by her own teachers to begin with the familiar and expand upon it, and so she taught Trisa and Mreen. She knew that today, with her nerves charged and everyone watching, Trisa would be grateful for the hours she had spent on this particular piece.

Trisa’s work was not the changeable, virtuosic music Mreen would one day play. She was consistent and steady, very like Theo himself. Her fingers were nimble, and her voice, when she began to sing, floated nicely on the breath, without tension or pressure. Her transition to
Aiodu
was perhaps a little rushed, but that was to be expected. Sira joined in when the new mode was established, enriching the texture of the music with a counterpoint on her own instrument, supporting the melodic line with her dark, even voice. After today, it would be Sira leading, or Theo, and Trisa following. But this, by tradition, was Trisa’s
quirunha
, and she must demonstrate her ability to direct it.