The Singers of Nevya (10 page)

Alks chose a campsite in a hollow between stands of immense irontrees. Conscious of the Magister listening, Sira created her warmest and swiftest
quiru
that evening. As the melody in the second mode wafted from her
filla
, the envelope of warm, brilliant air sprang up around them, as tall and bright as she could make it. Shen gave no sign that he noticed.

Drifts of snowflakes tumbled past the
quiru
as Rollie and Mike built a cooking fire with softwood from their packs. Everyone’s furs sparkled with tiny, transitory jewels as the snowflakes, dropping through the light, quickly melted. Alks and the Magister were already seated on their bedrolls. Alks pulled a big leather flask from his saddlepack.

Sira saw Rollie roll her eyes at Mike, and she wondered why. But when the hot food and tea were ready, she soon learned that the Magister was more interested in the flask than the food. His face began to flush the dark red she had seen once before.

“Never mind, Cantrix,” Rollie muttered from her place next to Sira. “Alks knows how to handle him. They’ve traveled together many times.”

Mike leaned back against his bedroll, eating in silence. Alks and Shen handed the flask back and forth between them. Rollie finished her meal, and rose. “Magister, more
keftet
?”

She bent to take his half-empty bowl, and Shen grinned up at her, seizing her legging with his free hand. “You’ve got something I’d like better, Rollie!” He and the other men roared with laughter. Rollie frowned at them, pulling her leg free and nodding pointedly in Sira’s direction.

“Oh, I know,” Shen laughed. “Our very young Cantrix! Too young for my jokes, you think, Alks?” He took another pull on the flask, then held it out to Sira. “Want some? I’ll swear by the Six Stars you never had this at Conservatory!”

Sira had no idea how to respond. She hid her confusion behind a frozen countenance.

Shen bridled. “Too high and mighty? Well—you’re my Singer, aren’t you? Sing, then!”

Sira turned her head to look at Shen. She thought of refusing him. She thought of spilling his wine flask with a burst of careless psi, or tweaking an ember from the fire to land on his boot. Instead, she reached inside her tunic and drew out her
filla
. Her long fingers caressed its smooth surface even as she kept her gaze on Shen’s face, and she put it to her lips. She turned her eyes away from him only when she began to play.

It was not the way Sira had pictured her first performance for her Magister. In the haven of her
quiru
, with the snow drifting down around them, she played the merriest tune she could think of, a jaunty fifth-mode melody with a dance rhythm. After the first statement of the tune, she toyed with it. She embellished and modified it into something that fit the mountain campsite with its fluttery curtains of falling snow.

Then, in the middle of the music, Shen abruptly rose and went outside the
quiru
to relieve himself. He didn’t go far. Alks followed, and Sira, hearing the repulsive sounds they made, stopped playing.

Rollie swore under her breath. Mike kept his face averted, gazing down at the snow slowly melting under his bed of furs. Where Shen had been sitting, the flask lay flat and empty.

Shen reeled back into the
quiru
a few moments later, brushing roughly past the
hruss
, who huffed and stamped nervously. “Sing!” he cried loudly. Alks stood behind him, holding his arm as he collapsed, laughing, onto his furs. “You’re my Singer . . . Sing!” He laughed harder, belching, thrusting his booted feet toward the fire.

Sira bowed from her cross-legged position. The more revolting his behavior, the stronger was her sense that she must maintain absolute control of herself. There was a feeling of sympathy around her, and she wondered why. Surely no one could think the behavior of a boor like Shen could hurt her. But then, they could not know.

Sira let her
filla
rest on her knee, and she began to sing. She did not trouble to disguise the lullaby, one she had learned as a child at Conservatory, and had sung to the little ones as she tucked them into bed. It was a lullaby to soothe the hearts of children weeping for their mothers.

Her voice, so dark and even, rolled over her audience. Rollie’s weathered face relaxed, her frown smoothed away. Both Mike and Alks sat still and silent, watching, listening.

Sira wove a sleep
cantrip
into her song, delicately and accurately directing it at Shen.

L
ITTLE ONE, LOST ONE,

S
LEEPY ONE, SMALL ONE,

P
ILLOW YOUR HEAD,

D
REAM OF THE STARS,

A
ND THE
S
HIP THAT CARRIES YOU HOME.

L
ITTLE ONE, SWEET ONE,

D
ROWSY ONE, LOST ONE,

T
HE NIGHT IS LONG,

T
HE SNOW IS COLD,

B
UT THE
S
HIP WILL CARRY YOU HOME.

Shen’s eyes grew heavy and his face slack. He nodded quickly into snoring sleep, still sitting fully dressed on his bedfurs.

Sira concluded her song. Alks rolled himself into his furs and turned away from the fire. But Mike watched Sira, his face set as if to resist her, as if it were he she had tried to sing into sleep. It seemed an odd reaction.

Rollie smiled and shook her head, eyes wet with emotion. “Beautiful, Cantrix,” she whispered. “We’ll have peace now. And he’ll never figure out what hit him. Tomorrow I’ll ask you for ‘Rollie’s Tune’.”

“Thank you, Rollie,” Sira said. “I will be glad to play it for you.”

In the quiet, Rollie murmured, “I knew you would do well at Bariken, Cantrix.”

Sira laughed a little. “I am not so sure I have, Rollie. Rhia is not fond of me.”

Rollie glanced at Mike, but he, like Alks, had rolled into his bedfurs and turned his face away. “Rhia’s a disappointed woman,” Rollie said softly. “I came with her when she was mated to the Magister. She grew up thinking she would be Magistrix at Tarus, but a younger brother was born when she already had three summers.”

“Were you born at Tarus, then, Rollie?”

The rider nodded. “It’s very different on the coast. Sometimes whole islands of ice appear overnight. Once one crashed against the cliffs when we were sleeping, and we thought the House was coming down around us.” She shrugged. “Bariken’s been a big change, but after three summers, I’m used to it.”

Their talk dwindled, and Rollie began to yawn. She said good night, and went to bank the fire. Sira crept into her bedfurs. Rollie covered the Magister, then she, too, lay down. As Sira closed her eyes the irontrees creaked, groaning in the deepening cold.

Just before dawn, Sira woke from a vivid dream of being trapped under an icy cliff, with icicles sharp as knives crashing around her. It left her with an overwhelming sense of dread. A warning, she thought. I have had a warning, but of what?

She sat up quickly to assure herself the
quiru
was holding. It shimmered securely about all of them, undisturbed by any wind. It would stand for hours after they had moved on in the morning. The silent snow continued to fall.

Uneasily, Sira lay down again. She knew the dreams of a Singer were never to be ignored. There was danger somewhere, of some kind. She pondered it, but without success. Eventually the fatigue of her long ride in the fresh air stole over her, and she slept again as the night faded slowly into an icy dawn.

Maestra Lu, six days’ ride to the southwest, could not capture sleep again at all that night. Awakened by the same alarm as Sira, she lay on her cot at Conservatory, trying to fathom what danger hung over her protégée.

Chapter Nine

Shen woke the next morning complaining of a headache. The party could not break camp until Sira had treated him.

“Do whatever it is Grigr used to do,” the Magister growled. His breath was sour with wine, his beard and hair uncombed. Sira pressed her lips together, but she brought out her
filla
despite her revulsion. He was her magister, but she wondered what Maestro Nikei would think about this use of her Gift. Mike and Alks and Rollie squatted around the camp, while Shen lay on his furs and Sira knelt beside him with her
filla
.

It was a simple enough thing Sira played, a straightforward melody in the third mode. She directed her psi to relieve the constriction of the tiny channels that carried blood around the body and into the head. For once she added no refinements to her music. Her playing and her healing were unsubtle.

The Magister grunted as the pain eased and the blood flow grew easier. Sira heard him, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. As she put down her
filla
, she felt the disdainful curl of her lip, but Shen did not notice.

“You’re a handy one, Cantrix,” he said jovially, sitting up and running his fingers through his unkempt hair. “That’s a useful skill!”

Sitting close to him, Sira saw the broken red lines in his cheeks and nose, and knew why his face grew so dark when he was excited. “You should not indulge so much in wine, Magister. Your health will suffer.”

“Hear that, Mike? We should not indulge so much! Ha! We should be like those fancy Cantors, no mating, no wine, no hunting!” Mike joined in his laughter as Sira rose from her kneeling position.

“You should have known my father, Cantrix!” Shen called as she turned her back on him and went to tie on her saddlepack. “He drank twice as much as I do, and never suffered for it!”

Rollie came to help Sira, and whispered across the
hruss
’s back, “His father never saw twelve summers.” Alks and Mike and Shen were laughing together as they mounted up.

They rode out of camp with the rumps of the
hruss
draped with bedding furs, wet from melted snow, to allow them to dry in the cold air. Mike and Alks rode ahead, large and stolid as
hruss
themselves. The Magister followed. Sira and Rollie brought up the rear, their hoods pulled well forward to hold in warmth. Snow fell intermittently all day, frosting their furs with white, freezing on the open bedfurs in lacy patterns. Ogre Pass was cruelly cold, even in daylight. The
hruss
’s big hooves made little sound as they plodded through the soft powder.

They stopped just before dark to make their second camp. The season was one of long days and short nights, and they had ridden far. They were so close to Lamdon they could see the glow of its
quiru
on the mountain slope ahead, a distance of about four hours’ ride. The snow-bleached sky and the pale peaks melded into one indistinguishable landscape at this hour, and the circle of Lamdon’s warm light seemed to float in the air, as if suspended above the ground. As their own
quiru
grew around them, the larger one sparkled vividly beyond and through it like the first star of evening.

Alks’s wine flask had been emptied the night before, and the camp was quiet this night. Sira lay on her furs wondering what Lamdon would be like, and listening to the Magister reminisce with Alks and Mike about their boyhood years. Several stories included Shen’s father, usually with Shen on the receiving end of some rough joke.

Sira thought of her own father, the familiar smell of him when she was tiny, the odors of softwood smoke and snow that clung to his furs. She fell asleep trying to remember his face, and woke in the morning grateful there had been no more night terrors.

It was the following midday when the travelers rode into the great courtyard of the capital House. The
hruss’
s hooves clattered on clean-swept paving stones, a startling sound after three days of snow-muffled hoofbeats. Sira sat straight in her saddle, trying to see everything at once. Lamdon was even larger than Conservatory, perhaps twice again as big. Its great doors looked as if four people would be required to open them. Its lavish
quiru
sparkled and gleamed, coruscating in the snowy setting.

Their approach had been noted, and a formal welcoming party was assembled on the broad front steps.
Hruss
and saddlepacks neatly disappeared into the hands of several Housemen, and a bewildering variety of people were introduced. Sira was grateful when a small man with a merry expression bowed, and seemed ready to take charge of her.

“Greetings, Cantrix,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep for a person of small stature. “I am Cantor Rico. Welcome to Lamdon.”

Sira bowed in return, a deeper bow to honor a senior Cantor. Rico gestured to the enormous doors. “Please come in and meet the other Singers who have gathered. They are all in our senior Cantrix’s apartment at the moment, talking Conservatory, I should think.”

“Thank you, Cantor Rico,” Sira said. The riders were going off toward the back of the House. Magister Shen had been formally received by some Committee official. Sira followed Rico, stumbling once on the steps as she gazed up in wonder at this largest House on the Continent. Its
quiru
was so warm that people were wearing sleeveless tunics, and no fur at all indoors, not even on their feet. Sira had never seen a sleeveless tunic before. The unaccustomed heat made her feel breathless.

As Rico led her down a long hall, she caught a glimpse of the great room to her left, and the Cantoris to her right. It was much, much larger than any she had ever seen, and she had to tear her eyes away from it in order not to lose sight of Cantor Rico. He led her to the north wing, and down another long corridor to a large apartment.

There were eight Singers for Lamdon’s Cantoris, Sira knew. The senior Cantrix was a person of significant influence, second only on the Continent to the Magister of Conservatory, or so Sira had been taught. The senior Cantrix at Lamdon served as advisor to the Magistral Committee and was also liaison between Conservatory and Lamdon. If a Cantor or Cantrix was recalled, it would be by her order. If one was reassigned, the decision was made jointly by her and Magister Mkel. Such issues were grave responsibilities, matters of life and death, and the shortage of the Gift was their most vital concern.

Cantrix Sharn’s apartment was crowded with at least twenty Singers, of all ages and sizes, and it was absolutely silent.