“Time passed, and the king grew old and wizened as his sons became strong and wise. People waited without worry for the old king to die and his oldest son to take the crown.” Tier stilled his fingers for a moment, so that his silence waited like the people had waited for the old king to die.
Two beats of silence… three, then he began a run of minor chords, echoing the melody he’d used to begin the story. “One evening the king’s oldest son went to bed, complaining of a headache. By the next day he was blind and covered with boils; by that evening he was dead. Plague had struck the palace, and, before it left, the queen and every male of royal blood were dead.” The familiar melody twisted with a weight of sorrow. An occasional plucked harmonic rang like a widow’s wail.
Then, Lehr’s startled gasp made her look away from Tier, where she’d been caught by the magic of his words and music.
She saw Hinnum and the Memory, so different from the others who huddled at Tier’s feet. She saw the dead. She saw her children, Phoran, and his guardsmen. She saw Gura. She saw them all in glittering lights of spirit, Order, and the dark core that she had decided might be soul.
And before them all, untouched by Seraph’s magicked sense of sight, stood the Unnamed King’s daughter, Loriel. Seraph didn’t know how she knew who it was, just that the woman who discovered what her father had turned into stood before them all. Brought before them, real as life, by Tier’s power. Seraph watched in awe as Loriel fled the monsters who now filled her father’s castle.
The music became momentarily militant, sharp percussive taps of the lute’s face evoking drums and marching troops as Tier told of the army Loriel formed, one whose core would go on to fight to the end. Abrupt, discordant, wild strains starting and stopping suddenly followed by a cacophony of strident squeaks and slides, as Tier told of Loriel’s death. Always, throbbing steadily beneath the other sounds, was the rhythm of the Unnamed King’s heart.
It was hard to keep her attention on the reality of the Shadowed’s spell when Tier’s rich baritone called for her attention. Still, she watched him as the power of his music slowly forced the Shadowed’s spell to yield its prey. Seraph pulled the gem out of the belt pouch where she’d put it, and it was warm in her hand.
A man’s scream pulled her attention back to the battlefield the library had become. She couldn’t tell if the noise had been made by one of their boys, the dead, or by some quirk of Tier’s storytelling magic.
Seraph recognized the wide field they’d ridden across a few days ago, but this time there were bodies lying everywhere, and the stench of death made Seraph’s gorge rise.
The bass courses of the lute continued to measure the steady pulse of the Shadowed, but the melody faltered, quieted. She saw Red Ernave fighting the Shadowed King, who was even more frightening than she’d ever thought he could be. Tier’s fingers played a melody that stuttered and strained, falling a bit behind the beat, as if too exhausted to continue, the proud strains of military airs made aching and painful by their very slowness.
Under his red beard, Ernave looked like Tier a little, and Seraph thought that might have been why she cried when he died at the end of the battle. Or maybe it was because the garnet in her hand had shattered into minute shards, and Tier was covered head to toe in the grey-green fabric of his Order.
CHAPTER 18
“Well,” Tier said, his fingers picking out bits of melody that seemed to be keeping the dead away from them all while he caught his breath. “That went better than last time.”
He looked at Seraph. “Something’s different. What did you do?”
“I should be asking you that question,” Seraph said. “You told me you learned a few things while you were alone in the Path’s dungeons, but that was extraordinary. I know Bards are supposed to be able to make their stories feel real. I suppose I never realized what that meant.”
“I’ve seen a Bard or two who could build pictures, sights, or sounds with their power,” said Hennea. “But I’ve never seen any of them build truth from their stories.”
Tier grinned. “I don’t know about truth. But it’s pretty disconcerting, isn’t it. When I saw I’d gotten the details right on where Red Ernave died that first time I told the story this way—it fair made my heart stand still. I could have warned you, I suppose,” he said. “But I haven’t tried anything like that since the first time it happened. I wasn’t certain it would work as well.” He looked at the Memory. “What did you think?”
“Your control is better,” it said. “You didn’t leak power all over for anyone to feed upon.”
“And I didn’t get caught up and need rescuing.” Tier’s fingers found another song, something instrumental that was light and airy that seemed to clear the depressed atmosphere left by the death of Red Ernave. “Maybe it was adding music to the mix.”
“Kissel, where are you going?” asked Toarsen.
Sure enough, Kissel was up and walking slowly toward the rows of shelving. “She needs us,” he said. “Don’t you hear her crying?”
Jes darted forward and stood in Kissel’s way, growling at something in front of them.
Then Seraph heard it, too. A woman’s brokenhearted weeping.
Seraph climbed over Tier’s table since it was the shortest route, waving back the others, who all started to get up to help.
“Play, Bard,” suggested Hennea. “Sing something. Something cheerful.”
Tier started a common drinking song.
With Jes blocking his path, Kissel had stopped moving forward, but tears were flowing down his cheeks. “She’s so sad,” He told Jes. “Why can’t we help her?”
The thick ruff of hair down the black wolf’s back was standing straight up. Seraph moved slowly to Kissel’s side, not wanting to startle him into doing something. He was fighting the enchantment, or else he wouldn’t have stopped, Jes or no Jes.
With her spirit sight she could see one of the dead stood a few feet from Kissel, she thought Jes saw it, too, because his attention was focused on just the right place. Either Tier’s music was keeping it back, or something about the way it fed required its victim to come to it. Either was possible from the little Seraph knew about such things.
Seraph slipped her hand into the crook of Kissel’s arm. “It’s like a painting,” she said quietly. “It makes you sad or moves you, but you can do nothing to change it. The woman who weeps died a long time ago. There is nothing you can do for her.”
“She will weep forever unless someone helps,” he told Seraph, but he sounded more alert, more like his usual self.
“No one can help her, Kissel,” Seraph said, tugging a little on his arm. “Come sit down.”
He turned and shuffled back to his place, with Seraph guiding him and Jes guarding their backs.
“She was so beautiful,” whispered Kissel as he sat down. “So sad.”
“I know,” said Jes.
Toarsen put an arm around Kissel and gave him a quick hug before releasing. He nodded once at Seraph—either telling her thanks, reassuring her that he would watch out for Kissel from here on out, or both, she wasn’t certain.
Seraph released the sight magic with a sigh of relief; it was giving her a throbbing headache. She glanced down at Jes. “Did you see her?”
He nodded, curled up next to Hennea, and rested his snout on her knee. “She was beautiful.”
Seraph bent down and rubbed him behind the ears, taking the moment to look over the others. They looked a little shaken, but Tier’s drinking song—a silly, slightly risqué piece—was doing its job. Lehr and Phoran were singing along, and after a few verses Toarsen joined in as well.
Seraph worked her way back through the crowd to Tier’s table. She patted Ielian then Phoran on the shoulder as she passed because they looked as though they needed it. She sat down on her bench and leaned her cheek against Tier’s knee and let the melody his fingers coaxed out of the battered old lute sink through her like the knowledge of everyone’s safety. Tier was safe.