“Well done, Singer,” she said. “So it was a human child, Felisa. You felt its warping by the dark forces of the wood and feared it a demon...and who is to say that the fears of the folk might not have been justified, had it come to birth unhealed?”
Felisa bent over me, her eyes filled with worry. “Have you come to harm, Singer?” she asked.
“No harm,” I breathed. “But I fear I will have no strength for another singing for a time. Will the people wait?” The sound of booted feet moved in the antechamber, and the door was quietly opened. Felisa gasped beside me; then she was up and moving into the arms of a stocky man who gladly received her there.
With admirably few words, Meltha told him what was needful. I asked again, as he digested that strange mixture of tragedy and hope, “Will the people wait?” He looked down at me and made a strange little salute, as from one warrior to another. “The people will wait,” he said.
Chapter Four
The Winter Beast
I was a long time in the house of Rellas. Even after the folk had seen the soul of the unborn child sung upon the polished wall of their own Mother Chapel and had accepted its humanity, the Lady Felisa clung to me. Her mother, her husband, and her son added their pleas to hers, so I stayed well past my time, though I remembered too well the penalty of making my stay permanent.
Still I was not truly idle. Much was to be learned from Rellas, in those lengthening fall evenings, about his journey to the Citadel and the strange manner in which he had been detained there. His summoning had been unnecessary, by any reckoning. His taxes had been properly totaled and paid, and the services of a courier could easily have taken the necessary proofs to the capital city. So flimsy was the pretext upon which he had been taken from his home, so oddly disturbing was the collection of excuses that had been used to keep him in the Citadel, that I felt a frightening unease.
At the risk of seeming to overstep my place, I found an opportunity to talk with him about my forebodings. It was the night before my departure, for I knew the time had come for me to set foot again in the road. Felisa, now heavy with child, had gone to her chambers with her mother to talk with her until she slept. Rolduth was in the stables, currying Cherry. Rellas and I sat alone before his broad hearth, both of us feeling a bit saddened that my task with his family was done.
As a log broke into glowing halves, sending up a thousand red sparks to cling in the soot of the chimney wall, I asked him, “My friend Rellas, were you released to return home or did you come unbidden, knowing that you must be needed?”
He looked at me strangely. “They would have kept me there until spring,” he said. “As it was, I felt much unease, and I resented my time’s wasting, there on the doorstep of the High King. He, having brought many forth from their places, would consent to see none of us. At last I visited Ernethos, the Scholar, who counseled my father before me. Though he is now withered and white-haired, his old head holds more knowledge of the usages of laws and the whims of men than any I know.
“He said to me, ‘Rellas, if you abstain from visiting any of the Ministers, if you send no messages to the High King, for two weeks, they will check to ascertain your presence. After that you may go where you will, for they will assume that you are waiting quietly upon their pleasure. It may be months before you are missed.’
“‘But what if I am missed...what if they seek to trouble me concerning my going home without leave?’ I asked him.
“‘You break no law now or ever upon the scrolls of the Citadel,’ he said. ‘Some mischievous quill-scribbler has taken it in mind to harry honest men. You are in no peril from the law.’
“So I did as he said, and after two weeks I set out for home...not an instant too soon.”
He sighed. “But I would have taken oath that our land was not conducted so.”
Hesitantly, I shook my head. “There are ill things afoot, I am afraid. Others along my road had been summoned to the Citadel. None being as highly placed as you, they were astonished at the summons. Being mostly those who live by their own toil, they sent word that they could not come, for their families would hunger in their absence. But I wonder, Rellas, how many of them would have found it difficult to come home again?”
We sat for a long moment before I again took courage and spoke. “I think you should take care. Watch those who go and come upon the road through your lands. Any who stop, noble or common, should be judged warily and trusted not at all.
“I stayed for a time in a house of some wealth, though not a noble one. My stay ended when the men of Razul broke in our door and slew them all before my eyes. They knew where the small store of gold was hidden, though none who knew Kalir and his family, servant or friend, would have betrayed that good man.
“I sang the soul of Razul, and he troubles the ways no more; but I wonder...I wonder. Tyrnos, even with its Singers to keep men and women virtuous, has ways of dealing with such people as that villain. There was no need to wait until a Singer happened along. Why did the King, even at a distance in the Citadel, not know what all knew for leagues in any direction? And knowing, why did he not send troops to bring Razul before him to answer for his crimes? The King’s Guard is large enough to spare some few for such a task.”
We looked eye into eye for a long moment, while the fire snapped and began to die away. Even with that warmth before us, with the cheer of the lamps blazing on their brackets, I felt suddenly chilled.
Rellas shivered as he sat. “When a land grows corrupt, too often the rot begins in high places. Not only the lowly may practice treason.” He fell silent, fingering the braid on his sleeve and looking into the red coals.
“It may be that I have made a specter of a mere shadow,” I said. “Still, caution is never harmful, if practiced wisely. Take care, my friend. You have more to lose than most...and your folk in the village are used to fair dealing and honest words. How would they prosper with... another sort?”
His square face flushed, where before it had been dyed red by the firelight. “It would go ill with them,” he whispered. “They are only now losing the ignorance that has clung about them for generations. They are apt to trust the untrustworthy and to be suspicious of the true. An unloving lord would set them back into the old wretched mold.”
“Then take care,” I said. He was nodding as we both rose, and I went to rest with an easier mind than I had known in days.
It was a sad parting. Still, plead as they would, I knew that I could never forsake the road again. Perhaps the fate of Kalir’s folk had been a quirk of the fates. Perhaps not. I was not going to chance a repetition of that, through my own fault.
In the few weeks I had spent housed and cosseted, the year had turned. Though the mang trees still held their heavy mats of leafage, to sigh and whisper until the buds of spring pushed them from the branches, the leaves had lost the autumn gold and were now gray-tan and sodden with cold rain. The road was wet beneath my russet boots, and I was glad that the gravelly soil of this region made it less a sea of mud than others I had walked.
The wind was fitful. When its gusts caught me, the chill cut through even the fur cloak that Felisa had made for me in place of the woolen one I owned. Though I had rested from the road, I had not sat idle; with Rolduth and Meltha I had exercised every day. Thus, the doldrums had not crept into my muscles. I stepped along at my usual good pace, and that helped to warm me, once my blood began to sing along my veins. Still, the day was cold, and the approaching evening looked to be colder still.
I was moving, now, through wooded lands, uncut since the beginning. The huge boles of the mangs colonnaded the way, and their reaching arms overarched the road. So thick was the wood that no undergrowth cluttered the forest on either hand. Darkness began to gather in those quiet aisles, and even the fitful jeering of grimbirds that had accompanied my progress died away into stillness.
It was old, old, and deep with ancient secrets—and perhaps