The Singers of Nevya (39 page)

Chapter Seven

The season of deep cold came and went, but Isbel hardly noticed. Her days within Amric’s walls had not even the changing seasons to distinguish them, one from the other. The only variety in her life was that provided by the problems presented during Cantoris hours.

Isbel had learned something essential from Singer Iban, and she drew upon it whenever her senior allowed her to heal someone. She let herself be more and more open as the months passed. She risked Ovan’s rebuke, but he seemed not to notice. She was especially grateful to be allowed to help with the children. She doubted Conservatory would have approved her methods, but in her isolation she had only trial and error for teacher.

There were three very sick children one day, all with the same illness. Their faces were hot and red, and the junior Cantrix could hear the rasp of their breathing from the dais. She felt their fever, felt the effort it took to draw breath, the weakness that made their little heads droop. As she closed her eyes, not even picking up her
filla
yet, an intuition flashed in her mind. She opened her eyes and turned to her senior. “I would like to take them to the
ubanyix
.”

The Cantor was sitting slumped beside her, his head on his hand and his eyelids drooping. He gave her a halfhearted glance, then waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. There was no one else waiting, and Ovan stepped down from the dais and was gone from the Cantoris even before Isbel and the mothers, carrying their sick children, made their slow way to the door.

Isbel used her
filla
to warm the water in the
ubanyix,
prolonging her
Doryu
melody until steam curled from the surface. It was too hot to step into, but Isbel had the mothers sit at the edge of the tub, close to the water, with their little ones in their arms. The hot moistness roiled around them, and everyone’s faces grew wet. Isbel played in
Doryu
again, then in
Iridu
, extending her psi in careful and precise touches, gently coaxing the children’s tiny clogged airways to open. She worked with first one, then another, returning to each until she had done all she thought she could. It took a long time. Her lips on the
filla
trembled with fatigue, and her hands shook. The mothers were exhausted, too, but when Isbel put down her
filla
at last, the children were breathing freely, every one of them. The mothers looked at Isbel with tears of gratitude before they carried their babes away.

The stairs seemed impossibly steep and long as Isbel climbed to her rooms that day. Her feet felt heavy as stones. Yula came trotting after her to ask if she wanted food, but Isbel yearned only to collapse upon her cot and sleep until her strength returned.

She had just put her hand on the door of her apartment when an older child of perhaps two summers came running down the corridor. He stopped in front of Isbel, remembering at the last moment to bow, then held something out to her. “My father said to give you this,” he blurted in a rush.

Isbel held out her hand, and the youngster, careful not to touch her fingers, dropped a little roll of split leather into it. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s to say thanks. For saving my little sister!” The child was already backing away down the corridor as if afraid Isbel might come after him. “We all thought she was going to die,” he added matter-of-factly. He grinned once, and ducked his head again before turning to run down the stairs.

Inside her apartment, Isbel unrolled the thin leather. She took a delighted breath when she saw the beautiful tooled patterns that must have taken the craftsman months to complete. Wrapped inside the decorated panel of leather were small, slender pieces of ironwood that fit together to make a frame. It had been lovingly made. She ran her fingers over the curving design, sensing the care and patience that had gone into its creation. Tired though she was, she put the pieces together and stretched the little panel across them. The object was pure art, without utility. Isbel found it enchanting. When she went to her bed, she placed the gift on a table where she could see it as she drifted into sleep.

Shall I not bother to attend Cantoris hours anymore?
Ovan’s thought was as dark as his sullen face.

Isbel was at a loss. There was no mistaking the way the House members glanced in her direction, even forming their little line to her side of the dais, pointedly ignoring Ovan’s. If she had imagined that when her healing improved her relationship with her senior would, also, she knew now it was not true.

Well, begin, then
, he sent, in the nastiest way.
Heal them! It is what you want, is it not?

She felt the beginning of tears, and dropped her head to hide them. What was she to do? All eyes were on her while Ovan taunted her, railed at her–in her mind, where no one else in the entire House could hear him.

You are now the great healer, are you not? Show us, then! This man here, with blacktoe, and that woman with the foulness on her skin!

At least I know their names, she thought. But she pressed that down. Ovan would only get angrier, torment her further. Nothing she did was enough. He would never be satisfied.

She lifted her
filla
, and tried to shut her senior’s voice out of her mind. She must concentrate, do her best. Perhaps if she truly did heal these people, Ovan would be placated, would leave her alone. She saw no other way. But how long could she stand his hostility?

There were only a few weeks left now before the summer. Everyone spoke of it, looked forward to it. The children clamored to know when it would come, when they could add a summer to their age. Their parents laughed and counseled patience, but in truth, everyone was eager, anticipating the warm season of freedom.

Cantoris hours seemed endless. Isbel struggled to work while Ovan harassed her, and when she had healed the case of blacktoe, and soothed the Housewoman’s blotchy skin, her senior was no happier. When the work was finished, she fairly ran from the Cantoris and into the great room, hoping that the mid-day meal might distract Ovan from her failings. Magister Edrus found her there, coming directly to the central table and bowing briefly before her.

Quietly, he said, “Cantrix Sharn has died.”

Isbel’s hands flew to her mouth. “O Spirit,” she murmured, behind her fingers. Ovan was standing beside her, about to sit down.

Edrus included Ovan in his glance. “I’m sorry to have to bring such sad news. I will make a formal announcement after the
quirunha
tomorrow, but I thought you should know immediately.” Isbel nodded. “Do you need your Housewoman?” Edrus asked sympathetically.

Isbel swallowed hard, and lowered her hands to lock them tightly together. Oh, Cantrix Sharn, she thought. I will miss you.

She looked at the bowl of
caeru
stew just set before her, and knew she could not eat. Abruptly she rose. “Please excuse me,” she whispered to Edrus and to Ovan.

So you are not the great healer after all!

Ovan might as well have struck her with his hand. His sending was sharp-edged and violent. She had never felt such a blow in her life. The room spun around her, and she gripped the table edge for support.

We did help her
, she protested.
Truly we did!

Oh, yes? You allowed an itinerant into the mind of the senior Cantrix! What did you think would happen?

Isbel turned to him, stricken, her hand to her throat. The others at the table looked up, seeing their Cantor and Cantrix staring at each other, the Cantrix white and trembling, Cantor Ovan’s sour features twisted with anger.

She was better, Cantor!
Isbel sent desperately.
She said so! If you had only
—

He interrupted.
If
I
had? But you did not ask me, did you? You simply went ahead, took matters into your own hands, without caring about the risk!
Ovan’s eyes glittered, and his lips pinched into colorless lines.
You are fortunate
, he pressed on,
that Lamdon does not know what you did. I have no doubt that you and that half-trained Singer hastened Sharn’s death!

Isbel gave a wordless cry. Every head in the great room turned to see what was happening at the center table. Isbel looked around at their shocked faces, then ran from the great room to stumble up the stairs, sobbing behind her hands.

At the door of the great room, Kai the hunter stood, eyes blazing at Cantor Ovan. Kai’s fists clenched until they hurt. He could have struck the Cantor down without a thought if he had him alone, cornered him in the
ubanyor
or in the stables. But the senior Cantor sat down to his meal as if nothing had happened.

Kai gritted his teeth, and ran up the stairs after Isbel, fury lending wings to his feet. He at least could offer the poor girl some comfort. She had no one else.

Chapter Eight

The rocky peaks that loomed above the Pass still wore jagged caps of snow, but the narrow descending path the
hruss
followed was clear and dry. Morys, the guide from Observatory, rode ahead at a pace so deliberate that Sira, following behind, smiled through her pain. Certainly the Watchers had not been so solicitous of her comfort and safety when they forced her to ride up this difficult road. But that had been almost four years before, and they had not known what she was.

She twisted in her saddle to look behind her, but Observatory had already disappeared in the precipitous landscape. She could no longer hear Theo’s farewells. The tenuous thread of their contact had broken some moments before. Still, she had not yet gone so far that it was impossible to turn back. She could call to Morys, change her mind, relieve the wrenching ache of separation.

She turned again in her saddle, facing forward. The two
hruss,
steady and unaware, pressed on. Sira would not change her mind. “Morys,” she said. Her deep voice resounded from the rock walls around them.

The man turned in his own saddle. “Yes, Cantrix?”

Sira sighed a little. She had been unable to get them to drop the title. When she reached Lamdon, she vowed, she would see to it she was addressed only as Singer. She had relinquished any right to the title of Cantrix. But for now, she let it pass. “I am capable of a better pace than this,” she said.

“Yes, Cantrix,” he said again, and urged his
hruss
to a slightly faster walk.

The path seemed to end in an impenetrable wall of rock. Sira remembered the look of it from the other side, when she and Theo had ridden up this path as prisoners of Pol and his band of riders. The narrow passageway her
hruss
now pressed through, scraping her furred boots against solid rock, was no less daunting from this direction. The cliff path that waited on the other side of the passage was worse, narrow and uneven, with rock walls to the north, and a deep canyon yawning on the south side.

The drop was to Sira’s left, and she tried to keep her gaze from it. She looked straight ahead, past the
hruss
’s flickering ears, concentrating on Morys and his mount as they led the way. At least now, in the summer, there was no rime of ice to make the
hruss
slip, though a bitter wind blew from the peaks, tossing the
hruss
’s manes and tails. For an hour the great shaggy beasts worked their way around the face of the cliff to the next narrow opening. When they had squeezed their way through that, Sira breathed a sigh of relief.

She could never have found her way alone from Observatory to Ogre Pass. The boulders she and Morys rode between were huge, some as high as three tall men standing on each other’s shoulders. Morys knew exactly where to turn and circle and turn again, with the knowledge handed down to him by generations of Watchers. Sira would have starved if she had tried it on her own. The knowledge that this was so had been Pol’s weapon, the threat that had kept her at Observatory, and Theo with her. Now she followed her guide with Pol’s blessing, and Theo remained behind. His was a willing sacrifice, but that made it no easier to bear his absence.

They had not been the first kidnapped Singers at Observatory. But, thanks to the work she and Theo had done there, they should be the last. Theo would serve the people of Observatory magnificently. He would be lonely, perhaps as much as she was already. But he had become a fine Cantor, and Observatory could count itself fortunate to have him.

Sira and Morys stopped for a quick mid-day meal on a promontory of treeless rock that looked out over Ogre Pass. Here was a spectacle Sira also remembered well. The great Pass swept from the southwest to the northeast, cleaving the Continent in two. It was broad and deep, its floor as smooth as if it had been deliberately cleared. The trip from Observatory to the Pass and back again could just be managed in one long day, as she and Theo had discovered when Pol had seized them. Their first impression of the Watchers had been their willingness to risk their own lives for their cause.

Summer meant that travelers on the Continent would have a brief period of freedom. Only during these short weeks could a rider in the Nevyan mountains survive the hours of darkness unprotected. The Visitor trailed now above the skyline, adding its warmth to that of the sun. Here and there patches of unmelted snow dotted the ground, but the air was soft and clear, fragrant with the scent of the softwood shoots growing quickly under the light of the suns.

Sira looked far down into the Pass and spotted the traveling party she had sensed was searching for her. They were moving slowly to the southwest. She closed her eyes and extended her psi over the distance between them. Her reach was long, although it would never be as long as Maestra Lu’s had been. She could only just touch each mind in the party. There seemed to be no one she knew. Cantrix Isbel of Amric might have urged Lamdon to send out the search party, or perhaps it had been Cantrix Sharn herself. By rights they should both have given up hope long ago, but Sira had faith in Isbel’s friendship. Possibly Pol was right, as well; perhaps the Magistral Committee of Lamdon knew more about the Watchers than they admitted, and had reason to suspect her imprisonment by them.