“Remarkable isn’t it?” Lyrna observed. “And yet Master Benril has formally petitioned me to have it destroyed.”
“No doubt it serves as a painful reminder of his enslavement.”
“But in years to come, perhaps we will all require something to remind us of what provoked our course. I think I’m minded to leave it as it is. If the master’s temper cools in time, he may be persuaded to finish it, to his own design of course.”
Lyrna raised a hand to call Davoka and the other Lonak woman forward. “This is Kiral of the Black River Clan. She has a message for you.”
• • •
“You speak my tongue very well.” He had taken her to his father’s house where he and his sister made a home of sorts amongst the less damaged rooms. Alornis was absent, gone to the docks on some errand, probably keen to paint the panorama of ships crowding the harbour. They sat together under the sheltering oak in the yard, its mighty branches bare of leaves as winter’s chill grew deeper by the day.
“
He had heard the story from Lyrna and could scarcely credit it: a soul possessed by one of the Ally’s creatures and now freed. And a singer with a message. Yet somehow he knew the truth of it, just by looking into her face he knew she heard a song and found himself shamed by the jealousy it stirred.
“She remembered you,” the Lonak girl went on. “You barred her from a kill. Her hatred was great.”
He remembered Sister Henna’s enraged, hissing face as he held her to the wall. “You possess her memories?”
“Some. She was very old, though not so old as her brother and sister, nor so deadly. She feared them and hated them in equal measure. I have the healing arts she learned in the Fifth Order, the rites performed by a priestess somewhere in the far south of the Alpiran Empire, the knife skills of a Volarian slave girl sent to die in their spectacles.”
“Do you know when she was first taken?”
“Her early memories are a mist of confusion and fear, chief among them the sight of mud huts burning under a broad night sky.” Kiral paused to give an involuntary shudder. “The vision fades and she hears
“What does he say?”
She shook her head. “She always shrank from the memory, preferring to dwell on her many lifetimes’ worth of murder and deceit.”
“I’m sorry for you. It must . . . hurt.”
Kiral shrugged her slender shoulders. “When I dream, mostly.” She looked up at the branches of the great oak above her head, a small smile coming to her lips. “There,” she said, pointing to a wide fork near the main trunk. “You would sit there, watching your father groom his horses.” Her smile faded. “He was afraid of you, though you never knew it.”
He stared up at the oak for a time. His memories of playing in its arms had always been happy, but now he wondered if his child’s eyes had seen more than he recalled. “Your song is strong,” he told her.
“Yours was stronger. I can hear its echo. To lose such strength must be hard.”
“As a younger man I feared it, but in time I knew it as a gift. And yes, I miss it greatly.”
“So now I will be your song, as the Mahlessa commands.”
“And what does she command?”
“I hear a voice calling to me from a great distance, far to the east. It’s a very old tune, and very lonely, sung by a man who cannot die, a man you have met.”
“His name?”
“I know not, but the music carries an image of a boy who once offered him shelter from a storm, and risked his life to save him and his charge.”
“A legend,” Kiral said. “My people have another story. They tell of a man who offended Mirshak, God of the Black Lands, and was cursed to craft a story without ending.”
“You know where to find him?”
She nodded. “And I know he is important. The song is bright with purpose when it touches him, and the Mahlessa believes he is key to defeating whatever commands the thing that stole my body.”
“Where?”
Her scar twisted as she gave an apologetic grimace. “Across the ice.”
CHAPTER THREE
