With the lull, the woman began to play. The sweetness of the music spread across the room, speaking of happier times, brighter times than the cloudy day that had just ended. The juggler watched her fingers dance across the wood and strings. Then she did the most remarkable thing: She began to sing. Her voice started low, barely detectable from the honeyed chords, but as she played, her voice raised as a harmony to the other. Though he did not understand the tongue she sang, he sensed the meaning. She sang of years, of the turning of seasons, of the cycle that all life followed.
The crowd sat stunned in their chairs. One man coughed, and his neighbors glared at him as if he had spat the foulest offense. But the rest ignored him and stared slack jawed toward the stage.
She continued, oblivious to their reaction. Subtly her voice changed, and the chords began to moan more than sing. She now warned of danger, of the time when the cycles of life are threatened. She sang of beauty destroyed and innocence shattered. Drums could be heard behind her voice and the strike of her chords.
The juggler found himself wanting to console her, to tell her all was not lost. He watched her fingers slow on her lute as her song again shifted to a new rhythm, the beat of a fading heart. Slower and slower the chords stretched across the aching room. Patrons leaned toward the stage, trying to keep her from stopping. But stop she did, a final brush of nail on string, then nothing. Only a single note of her voice hung in the air. Then this, too, faded with her breath.
The room was deathly still, no one wanting to be the first to move. The juggler inexplicably felt a tear roll down his cheek. His hand did not move to wipe at it. He let it fall. Many other eyes in the room were wet and cheeks damp.
He expected this to be the end, but he was mistaken. A whisper of a chord began to drift again from her lute. Her fingers did not seem to be even moving. It was as if the lute itself were singing. The music wafted through the room, brushing the many moist cheeks. Then her throat sang the final passage—of one alone, the last of the brightness standing among the ruin. Her music drew further tears from the juggler, as if her song were specially for him. But he was also aware of the many others in the room touched by her music, other souls attuned to her rhythm. Then with her final chord, firm and clear like a bell, and with the last whisper of her song, she offered them all one consolation, one word: hope.
Then it ended. He watched her shift from her stool and stand.
The crowd took the breath it had been holding and released it in a single gasp. A murmur of surprise followed by clapping ensued. There was a rush to the stage to rain coins into her pan. Before he knew what he was doing, the juggler found himself standing before her pouring the coins from his own pan into hers.
He glanced up to the stage and found her violet eyes staring back at him. She was cowering at the back of the stage, apparently intimidated by the frenzy around her and the calls of praise. She held the lute clutched to her chest.
Suddenly there was a commotion from the door to the inn. A man burst into the common room. “There’s a fire burning at Bruxton’s place!” he yelled to the crowd. “The orchard’s afire!” The audience erupted in response.
But the juggler ignored this all, his eyes still fixed on the lute player. The fire was of no concern to him.
She darted to the front of the stage, to him. The bardswoman knelt until she stared directly into his gray eyes. “I need you, Er’ril of Standi.”
7
THE FIRES LIT the horizon behind Elena. Smoke blacker than the night rolled toward them between the rows of trees, and a crackling roar growled down the ridgeline. She tried to urge Mist to a faster pace, but the horse began to founder, sweating fiercely from its panicked run.
“We need to rest her, El!” Joach yelled from behind her. “Mist can’t keep up this pace.”
“But the fire!”
“We’ve a good lead! The winds here will slow the flame.” He reached from behind her and pulled on the reins. Mist slowed to a walk.
Joach rolled off the mare and swung the reins forward to guide the horse. Mist huffed thickly into the night, her nostrils flaring, eyes wide and frightened. The smoke and the roar of the fire kept her skittish, hooves dancing, wanting to run again.
Elena patted her neck and climbed off the horse, too. Joach was right. Mist would run until her heart burst if given her head. She took the reins from her brother and kept Mist walking.
Joach laid a palm on the horse’s wet flank. “She’s overheated. We can’t ride her again tonight. But I think we made enough of a head start.”
Elena stared back at the fiery heights. She remembered the flames consuming her home, then leaping to the horse barn, and a heartbeat later, burning embers blew from the barn’s roof into the trees, igniting the dry orchard. After the drought of summer, the undergrowth was ripe tinder for the torch, and the fire spread with an unnatural speed.
She had watched her world burn to ash, set to flame by her own hand. Unconsciously, she rubbed at the scant remainder of the stain on her right palm.
Joach noticed the tears that had begun to flow across her cheeks, but he misunderstood. “El, we’ll get out of here. I promise.”
She shook her head and waved to the growing fire. “I killed them.” She again pictured the wall of flame rushing toward her parents.
“No.” Joach laid a hand atop hers on the reins. “You didn’t, Elena. You saved them from horrible pain.”
“Maybe they could’ve survived.”
Joach shuddered. “Mother and Father had no chance. I saw how quickly those snake monsters devoured Tracker. Even if they did somehow survive, I don’t think . . . I don’t think it would’ve been a blessing.”
Elena hung her head, silent.
Joach raised her chin with a finger. “You’re not to blame, El.”
She twisted away from her brother’s touch and turned her back to him. “You don’t understand . . . I . . . I . . .” Her tongue resisted admitting the guilt in her heart. “I wanted to leave . . . I wished it.” She swung back to him; tears ran hot across her cheeks. She pointed to the flaming orchard. “I hated this place . . . and now it burns by my hand!”
Joach took her in his arms and held her tight as she shook with sobs. “El, I wanted to leave, too. You know that. All this is not your fault.”
She spoke to his chest. “Then who is to blame, Joach? Who caused all this?” She stepped from his embrace and held up her right fist. “Why did this happen to me?”
“Those are questions for another time. Right now, we need to reach Millbend Creek.” He stared back at the flames cresting the ridge behind them, flames licking up toward the moon. “If we can cross the creek, we should be safe from the fire. Then maybe we can think.”
Elena bit at her lower lip, suddenly afraid of the answers she might yet discover, knowing that Joach’s words of consolation might prove hollow and that what occurred this black night might yet be laid at her feet. She sniffed and rubbed her nose.
As Mist nickered in fear beside her, Elena ran a hand over the mare’s quivering nostrils. “Shh, sweet one, you’ll be fine,” she whispered to the horse.
Suddenly, Mist jerked back, almost ripping the leather reins from Elena’s fist. The startled girl was lifted off her feet as the horse reared, neighing in terror. Mist bolted down the slope, dragging Elena with her.
“Whoa, Mist! Whoa!” Elena scrabbled to get her feet under her. Bushes, twigs, and stone tore at her coat and knees.
“Let her go, Elena!” Joach called in pursuit.
But Elena was not about to let this one piece of her home disappear into the night. She clenched the reins tight in both fists. As she bounced and ran along, she managed to plant a foot on a boulder, then yanked savagely on the leather reins. Mist’s head flew backward, and the horse’s rump flipped forward down the slope. Elena threw the reins around the trunk of an orchard tree and secured them, praying the bridle would not snap. Thankfully, it held. Mist floundered, then fought back to her feet.
Joach slid to a stop next to her. “What was that all about?”
“Shh!” Elena said.
Through the roar of the fire, a new noise grew. At first just a whisper, then more clear. The beating of heavy wings, like someone waving a thick rug, approached.
Mist nickered and pulled against the reins, eyes rolling to white. Elena found herself ducking lower, and Joach crept under the branches of an apple tree.
Both scanned the sky. Smoke obscured the stars, but the cloak of soot swirled as the winged creature beat past. It was something large, with a wingspan longer than two men. Just the tip of one wing—a bony structure spanned by membranous red folds—poked through the smoky shield for a heartbeat, then disappeared again.
The sight iced Elena’s blood. What flew this night was not a denizen of the valley, but something that roosted far from here, far from the view of good men. It flew toward the fire.
After it passed, Joach spoke first, his voice a whisper. “What was that?”
Elena shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think we’d better hurry.”
ROCKINGHAM PRESSED A handkerchief over his nose and mouth while holding a burning torch as far from his body as possible. His throat ached with soot and smoke. He flipped the torch into a dry hawthorn bush at the edge of the orchard. The bush blew into flame as he danced back to the hard dirt yard of the homestead.
He stumbled to where Dismarum leaned on his staff. The seer held one hand up in the air, testing the wind. “One more.” Dismarum pointed to a pile of dead leaves raked near the edge of the field.
“I’ve lit enough fires,” Rockingham said, wiping ash from his hands onto his pant leg. Sweat and smoke marred his face. “The whole hillside is ablaze.”
“One more,” the seer said again, pointing to the pile. His dark robe, singed black at the edges, swirled in the night breeze.
Damn this one’s cursed eyes, Rockingham thought. He stayed rooted where he stood. “The fire already burns fierce enough to flush the children out of the orchard hills and into the valley floor. We don’t need to scorch the whole mountain.”
“Let the valley go to ash. All that matters is the girl.”
Rockingham wiped his face with his handkerchief. “The orchards are this valley’s livelihood. If these farm folk even get a hint that we spread this fire—”
Dismarum spoke to the fire. “We blame the girl.”
“But the townsfolk, they’ll—”
“They’ll be our net. The fire will force her to Winterfell.”
“And you expect the townspeople to capture her if she shows her face? If these bumpkins think she burned the orchards, you’ll be lucky to get her back in one piece.”
Dismarum pointed his staff to the stack of dead leaves. “She must not escape us a second time.”
Rockingham grumbled and grabbed another torch. He lit it from a small fire still sputtering in the husk of the burned barn and crossed to the pile of raked leaves. He shoved the flaming torch deep into the mound. As he backed away, rubbing his hands together to remove the grime, the parchment-dry leaves instantly bloomed with flame, snapping and growling hungrily.
He coughed at the thick smoke billowing from the pile. Suddenly, a fierce gust of wind blew toward him, and a tumble of flaming leaves swirled around him like a swarm of biting flies. He swatted at the burning embers, his expensive riding cloak singed in several places. “That’s it!” he yelled, stomping a flaming twig under his heel. “I’m heading back to town!”
Smoke stung his watering eyes. His nose, clogged with soot, itched and burned. He sneezed a black foulness into his handkerchief. Waving an arm through the smoke, he tried to spot Dismarum through the smudged curtain. “Dismarum!” he called.
No answer.
The old man had probably hobbled to the road. Rockingham fought his way across the smoky yard, using the smoldering skeleton of the homestead as a guide through the haze. He coughed and spat into the dirt. Then his foot hit something soft. Startled, he jumped back a step, then realized it was Dismarum. The old man was kneeling in the yard, his staff dug deep into the dirt. Rockingham noted a flash of pure hatred in the seer’s milky eyes, but the venom was not directed at Rockingham but at something behind him.
Rockingham froze, suddenly awash with the overwhelming sensation of cold eyes drilling into his back.
He swung around. What he saw through the smoke forced him to fall screaming to his knees beside Dismarum.
The beast towered just beyond the flaming pile of leaves, scabrous wings spread wide, eyes stung red in the firelight. Standing twice as tall as Rockingham but thin as a wraith, its translucent skin was stretched taut over bone and gristle. The spasms of four black hearts could be seen in its chest, pumping black rivers through its body. The fires illuminated other internal details, a churning and roiling foulness. Rockingham’s stomach seized in nausea, and even with the fire’s heat, a cold sweat pebbled his forehead. The creature’s wings beat a final time, again sending a flurry of burning embers toward him. Then the wings pulled back and folded behind the creature’s thin shoulders.
The beast stalked into the yard, its clawed feet gouging the packed dirt. Its bald head and muzzle swung between the two men, yellow fangs protruding from its black lips. Tall, pointed ears twitched in Rockingham’s direction. A hand reached toward him. Daggered claws slid free of fleshy sheaths, a green oil dripping from their razor tips.
Rockingham knew poison when he saw it and knew what stood before him. He had never seen such a creature, but rumors of them were whispered in the halls of the Gul’gothal stronghold: the skal’tum, lieutenants to the Dark Lord himself.
It opened its mouth to speak, baring teeth filed to points. A black tongue lashed out, as long as a man’s arm. Its voice was high and sibilant, with a hissing quality to its words. “Where isss the child? Where isss the child the overlord seeksss?”
Dismarum raised his face, but he still refused to meet its gaze. “She is ripe with power—” He waved a hand to encompass the fire. “—and burned her way past us. She flees through the trees.”
The skal’tum lowered its head and lunged closer to Dismarum. It used a talon to raise the old man’s face farther into the light. Rockingham watched the seer strain back his neck to keep the sharp tip from piercing his tender skin. “She esscaped? Why was the massster not told?”
Dismarum’s voice was as thin and whispery as a reed in a wind. “We have laid a trap for her. We will have her before the sun rises.”
“The Gloriouss One wantss her—quickly!” The skal’tum spat in anger, his spittle hissing like a living thing on the packed dirt. “Do not dissplease the masster!”
“She is ensnared in the walls of this valley. We will succeed.”
The beast leaned closer to Dismarum, its tongue lapping at the seer’s nose. “Or you will sssuffer for your failure.” The skal’tum retracted the talon at Dismarum’s throat and pulled its hand away.
The seer bowed his head to his chest. “The Dark Lord was wise to send you. With your help, we cannot fail.” But Rockingham recognized the true hatred in Dismarum’s words.
The creature cocked its head back and forth, studying the old man like a bird examining a worm. “I know you, old one, don’t I?”
Rockingham saw Dismarum shudder, whether with fear or rage he could not tell.
The skal’tum then turned to Rockingham, its red eyes bright with mischief. “And you, fresh one. I remember you.”
Rockingham didn’t know what it was talking about. He could not have forgotten meeting such a creature, not in a thousand years.
The skal’tum rested a finger on Rockingham’s chest; he trembled at the touch, fearing the daggered claw. The creature leaned nearer and cupped the base of Rockingham’s skull. Suddenly it whipped forward, pressing its black lips tight to his. No! Its tongue snaked between his lips as he tried to scream. Rockingham fought the intrusion, but the skal’tum held him firm as it probed deeper. He spasmed in its grip; his throat constricted, and h
is heart thundered blood past his ears.
Just before Rockingham’s mind snapped, it ended. The skal’tum pulled back and stepped away. Rockingham fell to his hands and knees, spitting and gagging.
The skal’tum spoke above him. “I can taste her spoor in you.”
Rockingham vomited into the weeds.
8
THE JUGGLER PUSHED into the room behind the bardswoman. Sixteen coppers did not buy much, he noted. The sleeping quarters were dark, but the chambermaid crossed to the lantern and flamed the wick. Light did not benefit the small space. The walls were in need of fresh paint, and the sole bed appeared to be the main source of sustenance for the handful of moths flitting toward the lamplight. The only other piece of furniture was a stained cedar wardrobe off to the side. He stepped over and creaked open one of its crooked doors. Dust and moths escaped. It was empty.
The room was also in need of an airing out, as it smelled of old candle wax and unwashed bodies. But its single narrow window, looking out on the inn’s courtyard, had its wooden frame painted shut. Raised voices and the clopping of many hooves rose from the yard three stories below. The orchard’s blaze still raised a stir among the townsfolk.
But the fire was of no concern to him.
The juggler waited for the chambermaid to slip out of the room after he graced her palm with a coin. He swung the locking bar in place and stood by the door until her footsteps faded. No other steps approached. Satisfied that no one eavesdropped, the juggler turned to the bardswoman, who had settled her bag at the foot of the bed. She kept the covered lute in her hand and sat softly on the bed’s rumpled coverlet. She kept her face slightly tilted away, her straight hair a blond drape between them.
“The name you used—Er’ril,” he said, anxious to get to the core of the mystery, “why did you call me by that name?”