The song was indeed beautiful. Passionate, powerful. And familiar.
Oh, joy. Under the four-chord harmonies lay the original melody of the Shadow Dance.
This had to be ancient Snow Folk music.
I had not finished the piece when Jardis got that distant look that meant some kind of contact. When the song ended, I pulled my fingers quickly away from the strings, then flexed them.
Jardis waited as the others signified approval, then said, “Truly, if anything your talent was understated. And I am surprised at your knowledge of Hrethan music, but we can discuss where you learned it later. At this moment I suspect your presence will the more quickly resolve a . . . puzzle.”
My first reaction was of course a fresh gout of fear.
The guards opened the doors and I followed Jardis to the perch balcony, of all unexpected places. We reached it as a plain float drawn by the imperial guard’s fast grays settled into place. Several Chosen—those not invited to Pelan’s concert—were also there, either having just disembarked from their floats or about to set out to enjoy the sunbloom. Both Darus’ and Raifas’s great gryphs stood harnessed and ready as the imperial guard stepped past them, drawing a shorter figure between them, then knocking him to his knees.
It was Hlanan.
TWENTY-NINE
Before I could think I burst out, “What are you doing here?”
I only realized I’d spoken in Djuran when Hlanan winced, then responded in the same language, heavily accented, “I be come, bring. . . .” He paused, drawing a sodden sleeve across his face. He was completely drenched.
He knelt there damply between the tall imperial guards as Jardis frowned then said, “You’re familiar.” And in flawless Elras, “Ah. It’s the failed scribe. Or was it a failed mage? You may answer Her Imperial Serenity in your own tongue: what are you doing here?”
Hlanan lifted a hand to wipe his straggling hair off his forehead. “I came to find Lhind. To see if she was safe. And I brought a message. But my boat capsized off the coast.”
“As you see, the person you were ignorant enough to call ‘Lhind’ has returned home to her proper rank in life.” And to me, “He is yours to dispose of as you will. We can throw him back into the ocean. Or set a servant’s fais to him and you can put him to work. Or keep him as a pet.”
He looked and sounded benign but I sensed him watching—not quite suspicious, but wary.
“Seems a little late to wonder about my safety,” I said to Hlanan, my shock having given way to the ready anger, after all this time of silence and abandonment. My hair flexed overhead, and my tail lashed. I did not even try to control them. “Seeing as it was the Empress of Charas al Kherval who made it clear I was trash well rid of.”
“But you and I were once friends,” he returned, his gaze steady. “Remember the bard Thianra? She counted you a friend too. Wrote you a letter. I brought it. Here it is.” He pulled a little scroll from his tunic, rather damp.
Jardis lifted a finger. A guard twitched the letter from Hlanan’s grip and took it to the emperor, who looked up. “It has magic on it.”
“Against a wetting by rain, I assume,” Hlanan said. “I agreed to carry it. I didn’t write it.”
Jardis broke the seal, ran his eyes down it, and shrugged. “It seems a great deal of effort to send a letter about harp music.”
Thianra was one of my true regrets. I never believed she would turn her back on me. “She taught me to play,” I said.
“Ah, truly admirable, if your recent performance is a result of her tutelage.”
“May I read it?”
Jardis handed the scroll to me, and I felt the weight of his gaze as I took it.
A sudden boom in the distance, like a single thunderclap, startled everyone to stillness.
The birds were the first to react, going wild. Firebird began clawing at his neck in a frenzy of desperation, rending terrible furrows in his flesh around the fais. Feathers whirled madly in the air around him.
Then the cold breeze vanished before a surge of hot wind that smelled of burnt rock, so strong it nearly blew us off the balcony. People cried out, civilization forgotten as clothing and hair snapped, and bodies staggered toward the walls and the thousand-pace drop below.
“Look!” Raifas shouted, pointing.
On the southern horizon a black cloud smeared the horizon, hiding Mount Dragon. Through the smoke appeared a crimson glow. Rapidly it swelled in size, and thunder in an impossibly regular cadence like the beating of a moon-sized drum struck the air, causing the ground and the stone of the palace to thrum and rattle.
Another thundering WHOMP and the red swell resolved into a vast dragon, ruby scales fire-bright in the sun, throwing the island from Seaforth to Icecrest into shadow as it flew overhead. Stone rumbled underfoot.
We all stared, witless. He comes. “Flames of Rue,” I whispered. Mother had not meant Hlanan—she’d meant the dragon!
I turned to Hlanan, who had scrambled to his feet. He pointed insistently at the letter with one hand as with the other he gestured in sign language, Touch-fais! Touch-fais!
That was the magic I sensed, a single very powerful enchantment bound together by Hrethan magic. No wonder Jardis had not sensed the extent of it.
I brought the paper toward my neck, but in raising my eyes caught sight of Firebird bleeding as he fought to free himself or die. One moment of violent inner turmoil, and my meaningless, worthless life resolved into purpose.
I knew what I must do.
I leaped over the perch wall and slapped the paper to Firebird’s fais. Magic flashed. The great gryph stiffened, feathers ruffling up.
You are free, I said mind to mind.
He threw up his head to shriek a high, ear-rending cry, then snapped his head around. He leaped toward Raifas, claws extended.
Raifas clapped his hand to his fais, but there was no controlling the great gryph now. He stood his ground as Firebird screeched and dove down toward him.
Jardis muttered, fire glowing about his hands.
Flee, before he kills you, I thought at the bird as I threw my own fireball to meet Jardis’s. The two fireballs exploded, momentarily blinding the humans.
Firebird recoiled in a mad flapping of wings, then leaped to the next perch, where sat Stormwing, Darus’s great gryph. Firebird’s head darted at Stormwing’s neck and snap-snap! The powerful sword-edged beak broke the harness-fais, which fell to the ground.
The two great gryphs turned to their fellows, wings beating, claws scraping, beaks snapping as they broke fais after fais. Humans, Chosen, guards, and servants alike could only back away, completely unprepared for unfaised, infuriated birds. Jardis gave me one white-lipped look, then raised his hands, green glowing around his fingers. I clapped my hands, and sucked all the fire out of the air between us. A shower of ice shards tinkled musically to the ground. Then BOOM!
Another surge of hot wind, from the north this time. Tumultuous wing-beats thundered: the dragon had banked, glided in a circle, and flew directly toward us as if he intended to knock the towers into gravel.
Many ducked. Jardis stood alone, his furious gaze going from me to the dragon. Around us people crouched as the dragon glided so low that the topmost tower appeared to scrape his belly. Then THA-DUMP! Immense wings beat once, the towers swayed, and every lancet window in the palace shattered.
Chosen stumbled for the doors over the trembling, cracking ground as glass rained down from above.
Behind us the gryphs rose in a beating of wings. Not all of them took to the sky. Andisla cried out, then settled back. Half the hens vanished, several grays, and a flock of lizardrakes—freed from their fais by a hen whose human shadow stood out sharply for those who could see it—followed after her, their stubby wings humming in a blur. They rose over the wall and glided down to skim over the water far below.
“She did this.” Oblivious to glass cuts bleeding on his forehead and hands, Darus pointed at me, his voice thick with hatred. “I knew she was
talking somehow with the gryphs.”
Jardis’s head turned sharply, his hair flying in the wind. “Is this true, Elenderi?”
There was no use in lying, or masking. Though the fais still bound me, the birds’ freedom made everything worthwhile, even death. And in dying I would be free enough to speak true. “Yes,” I cried out. “Yes! I talk to the birds mind to mind, and yes I freed them because they should be able to choose! Everybody should have the freedom to choose!”
I looked away from Darus’s bleak triumph and Jardis’s white-lipped fury to Hlanan, who stared back aghast. “That fais spell worked only the once,” he said in the language of Alezand, his tone every bit as anguished as anything I had felt since I was taken prisoner.
I threw Thianra’s letter to the wind. “Go,” I said to Hlanan as Jardis motioned his guards to flank me—as yet he had no interest in Hlanan, and he would never harm the prestige of the Chosen by striking me through the fais in public. He wanted to get me in private where he could annihilate me at his pleasure.
“While you can,” I said to Hlanan as I leaped over the guards’ heads, somersaulting to land on the wall. “Go!”
Hlanan uttered a low cry, wiped his eyes, then transferred away. His guards looked around wildly. Jardis ignored them both as he addressed me, his voice controlled though I could feel his fury. “Why would you betray us, Elenderi? You have here all the benefits of civilization.”
“Yet no freedom,” I replied, giddy with the pleasure of speaking the truth. Though I knew what was to come. “Every creature should have its voice. Even cats.”
“A piece of irrational sentimentality that disappoints me to hear you utter,” he retorted.
I shook my head, my hair flaring around me. “Even when I was hungriest, chased by mage-burners in Thesreve, wearing stolen clothes a year at a time, I was free in body, mind, and spirit.” And because it felt so good to shed all the secrets, though my life was measured in heartbeats, I pin-holed my mind and reached for his. I choose freedom.
The shock of realization in his face began to change to the anger that I had inherited—that we both shared. But I did not wait for him to retaliate.
The fais ward would do it for him.
I flung my arms wide, and fell backward off the wall, hoping I would hit the sea before he could do the complicated magic to effect a transfer.
The wall ward hit me with all the force of the burning sun, and I fell end over end, locked in pain so fierce I could not even breathe.
Until the jolt of harsh claws cut into my arms.
My body sagged between those gripping claws. I knew I bled, but the pain was already so great my mind could not comprehend anything more than a massive purple feathered bird breast above my head. Then the cool, smooth hardness of a beak slid along my throat, and snap!
The pain vanished as the golden snake of the fais tumbled glittering down and down—then vanished in Jardis’s transfer spell, where it probably lay broken on the rug in the Garden Room.
Magic, Jardis had said repeatedly—echoing what the Mage Council teacher had drilled into us what seemed a thousand years ago—must be precise. The fais, with all its many complexities, had never been warded against the beak of a great gryph breaking it.
As the last of the burn wrung out of my nerves, red-hot pain throbbed from both my arms where the claws cut my flesh.
I can fly, I thought at Firebird.
He let me go. I fell through the air, drawing it deep into my lungs, then spread my arms and transformed. My Djuran silks floated away toward the sea as I flitted upward, suffused with so fierce a joy my heart expanded in my chest.
Firebird bugled a long, triumphant cry, banked, and flew upward into the sky then and away after the ruby dragon.
I tried pin-holing Hlanan, but either my bird shape interfered or he could not hear me in the mental realm.
However someone else saw me. “Lhind!”
I knew that bird squawk! I pin-holed the aidlar: Tir?
Came a mental image: a yacht, under full sail, as seen from above.
Looking inward for directions at the same time I flew made me dizzy, and I faltered in the air, then shut my mind to concentrate on my flying. I couldn’t do both.
But Tir could. The moment I found a lifting current to ride, a white shape sailed down from above, banked, and there was Tir, ruby eye cocked. I lifted my wings to follow.
The two of us soared upward and away from Icecrest, tall and beautiful on its mighty promontory. I spied a lone figure in black and gold standing on the Garden Chamber balcony, watching me break for freedom.
Then I turned my tail feathers to Sveran Djur, and flew out over the open sea.
THIRTY
From above, I recognized the clean lines of Ilyan Rajanas’s yacht. Tir drifted down toward its deck, where Hlanan stood with a blanket wrapped around him.
Tir creeled and Hlanan whirled around. Even from the heights I could see his distraught expression, which changed to wonder when he peered up against the sun at two birds.
If I’d had a mouth instead of a beak, I would have gaped when I recognized who stood with Hlanan. Geric Lendan?
Unfortunately, as soon as I had descended to a certain height my transformation threw me back into human form and I plunged into the sea with a mighty splash. At once the cuts in my arms stung from the brine.
I sort-of knew how to swim. Paddling my arms and pumping my legs, I rode the waves that had looked so small from above, but from water level appeared as high as a mountain. As I concentrated on keeping my head up—the weight of my sodden hair and tail pulling me downward—the yacht’s crew got a boat over, Hlanan and a couple of sailors dropped down into it, and they began rowing toward me.
Tir, who had been circling overhead, gave another cry. I felt a bump mentally, and pin-holed as I blinked up at the aidlar. I go. With the words came an image of snowy peaks and gray, silver, and white birds.
Tir flapped off, then the boat came alongside me and a hand appeared over the side. After some tugging I flopped onto the bottom of the boat. I shook myself, a quick hard snap of hair and tail that shed seawater in all directions. The others looked away to avoid getting a face full of brine, and when they turned back, my hair cloaked me.
“Lhind,” Hlanan said tentatively, his face shocked as he took in the blood mixed with brine trickling down my arms.
“You’re here.” I lunged at him and locked my arms around him, blanket and all. The urge to scream and howl was so strong I thought I would shatter into smoking pieces. I gulped, clenched my fists, and said tightly, “I thought you. . . .” My throat closed. I clawed at it, though no fais was there.
“Abandoned you without a thought?” He hugged me back, but when I made those convulsive scrabbles at my neck, he let me go. “Lhind, you’re bleeding. And thin as a twig. Didn’t they feed you?”
“Sumptuously. But I couldn’t eat,” I said, my throat closing again. I pawed at it, breathing out once I’d reassured myself that yes, the fais was still gone. But it felt like an iron ring encircled my throat. “And these are from the great gryph who saved me.” I touched my arms gingerly, the claw gouges stinging fiercely.
“Here,” he said, a tremor of laughter in his voice. “Though you look very fetching wearing nothing but that silver hair, I think you need this blanket more than I do.”
I accepted the blanket because it contained his warmth, and his scent, and I discovered that I had been violently shuddering. We sat side by side in silence, me with my eyes shut as I fought to control my breathing. The sailors pulled the last few strokes to close with the yacht.
We bumped up on the side of the yacht, and I roused when Prince Geric peered over, ruddy hair streaming.
My anger flashed. “What is he doing here? I won’t get in that yacht with him there!”
Hlanan winced at the shrill fury in my voice. “He helped us,” he said. “Guided us to Sveran Djur. And this island.”
“Jardis Dhes-Andis can’t scry me anymore,
thief,” Prince Geric called down. “We’re both safe enough right now from his magical reach, but I wouldn’t trust how long we’ll go unnoticed out here if we don’t sail soon.”
I remembered looking out my window at what I’d taken to be a fishing boat almost hidden beyond one of the islands on the west side. “Right,” I said, the fury fading and exhaustion closing around me.
We were soon on deck and sailing in the lee of the island directly away from the peninsula crowned by Icecrest at its northern peak. I stayed on deck until I saw the dragon spine sink safely below the horizon, and when I turned away, found that my knees had gone watery.
Hlanan took me below and hunted up bandages and clothes for me. A cleaning frame got rid of the salt, and I was soon bandaged, dressed, and dry. We sat in one of the little guest cabins, where once I had spied on him talking me over with Rajanas. “I don’t knew where to start, except with an apology,” he said at last.
Anger surged up. I clenched my jaw, then tipped my head backward toward Icecrest. “How did you get caught by the imperial guards?”
“I didn’t.” He gazed down at his hands, then up at me. “Ever since you vanished I’ve been reading and listening to anything I can find about Sveran Djur. The most often repeated information was that anyone who went to the main islands never returned. Diplomats and traders all thought they were captured and killed. So you can imagine how adamantly everyone in Erev-li-Erval tried to talk me out of going after you.”
“They probably weren’t killed. Why waste a perfectly good slave when you can slap a fais on them and force them to work?” I said bitterly.
“Yes. So Geric said. Though he couldn’t tell me much more about fais than that servants wore one kind and their masters another. He finally told me something of his years here, but he’d had no fais. The previous emperor and the present one had wards on him.”
I nodded. No surprise there.
Hlanan said, “He brought us here in the lee of that island. Though there is a very wide-ranging patrol out on the seas looking for enemy fleets, the weather until today has been so bad we were able to slip by them.”