Songs for the Sacred and the Soulless Read online

  Intrigued, and now a bit suspicious, Zar sat anyway. Could it be she was not at all affiliated with the army of Cynans that should have recently marched to the mainreach? Was it merely a curious coincidence? In any event, I don’t see how she’d pose a threat to me. But since I’m a wanted man all over the mainreach, I’ll play this carefully, just in case.

  “I’m Alban. What shall I call you?”

  “Lyla,” the girl answered. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Does she really not know? “I’m looking for a group of Cyanans. I daresay I jumped to conclusions.”

  The girl looked his way, teasing him with a quick smile before turning back to the spit and turning the roasting-stick.

  “You spoke of an army of Cyanans?”

  While the girl was clearly a Cyanan, she hadn’t come with Tuskin or Dandil, and since Zar didn’t know who she was or if her purposes were aligned with his, he didn’t explain.

  “It’s nothing. A mere trifle, really.”

  “I doubt it. King Dandil hasn’t left Cyana for decades. No, I don’t think he’s ever left at all.” Lyla’s eyes rolled up, her smooth, cinnamon skin crimpling between her eyebrows. Her face said despite having just stated it was an oddity for King Dandil to be in the mainreach, thinking about it was even more puzzling.

  “Well, in any event, an honest mistake.”

  “No matter.” Lyla waved her hand as Zar started to get up. “Share my rabbit.”

  Kindness from a stranger in the woods south of Sirith—it was a risky thing. With Tana, it had been different. She had reason to be generous; she had reason to help. This girl didn’t.

  “I don’t have much farther to go. I daresay it’s quite rude to come along and eat up the game you’ve patiently hunted. It’s farther south with me.” Zar was halfway up when the girl called him back down.

  “Stay. It’s no trouble. I sprung this from my first trap.” She offered a giggle so innocent it could probably put the world at ease. But not Zar.

  He relaxed back down all the same. He didn’t think she was dangerous, but a healthy suspicion of everyone and everything on the road was always a good thing in Zar’s eyes. In this case, though, it wasn’t his suspicion he was concerned with but the lack of her own. Why shouldn’t she be afraid, a pretty, foreign girl alone on the road? As much as it shouted alarm—being more comfortable and open with a stranger than any lone lass should—Zar simply couldn’t refuse another meal.

  When she told him her story, an orphan girl turned traveling musician with a dream to see the world while playing her music, Zar felt more at ease. It was long after they’d devoured the roast rabbit that Zar asked, “Would you play something?”

  Lyla’s face lit up like a lamp, like she’d been waiting for the honor.

  The harp looked ancient but sturdy, an old, well-made thing, with a broad leather strap that looked like a means to wear it across the back for transport. It was tall and constructed of thick mahogany, polished to a sheen, and as Zar watched Lyla’s small frame positioned in front of it, he wondered how it didn’t break her back to carry it.

  Lyla struck a cord and let the note trail, and then she struck another. Her fingers kept tugging strings, with equal time between pulls, summoning notes that started low, climbed high as a cloud, and then dipped low again. The sound was hypnotic, haunting, almost, but far too serene to be eerie. It was otherworldly, and every note and tone relaxed Zar’s bones and calmed his thoughts. In moments, he was lying on his side.

  A lullaby.

  His eyelids sunk down, and Zar laughed at the thought that the song was putting him to sleep. A few notes later, when his head nearly dropped because he could no longer hold it up, he didn’t think it was funny at all. Leviathan! That’s exactly what’s happening!

  His head was as heavy as a ship anchor, and although moments ago he hadn’t been tired, he couldn’t outwrestle the great weight of drowsiness, pulling on his mind like a magnet drawing steel. He was sinking in the void, a deep black pit funneling into nothingness.

  The last thing he heard was the song.

  5

  He woke up with his hands and feet bound and not remembering much at all. The only thing worse would be not having clothes on.

  But, thankfully, he was clothed, curled up in some small wooden space as he rolled along. A wagon. He was in a wagon.

  Zar squirmed and tried to think, and it wasn’t long before memories drifted in like waves before high tide. That Cyanan girl—Lyla—she shared her meal with me—she played that song—and it put me to sleep!

  He looked up at the canvas above him.

  The wagon cover was lit by the sun, the linen nearly glowing, with shadows of leaves and trees and birds passing over it like oddly shaped ghosts. Zar curled his feet in towards his bottom, leaned on his side, and sat himself up. The Cyanan girl was sitting on the wagon’s bench, her back towards him, draped in a white shawl.

  “What in the heavens are you doing?”

  Lyla turned around and looked at him, wavy hair, red like fire, brown-eyed gaze as deep as the sea. “Keep quiet, or I’ll gag you.”

  “Are you mad?” Zar kept on. “And what road are we on?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Zar couldn’t help but stare at his mysterious Cyanan captor. Who was she? What did she want? Her linen shawl was bordered with silk, pulled around her narrow shoulders. Her hair of flames hung just past her neck, a headband of braided leather around her crown to keep it out of her eyes.

  “Oh, it matters,” said Zar. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Say what you want.” She didn’t bother looking at Zar this time. “I’m bringing you to the king. I’m claiming the reward.”

  Zar tried to ask her what she meant but a river of laughter drowned out the words. “What?” he asked between the laughing. “The king? There is no king!”

  “Quiet! Or do you want to take another nap?”

  “Your song summoned the sweetest sleep I’ve had in years, I daresay, and as much as I enjoy a good nap, there are things you need to hear. You have no idea what’s going on in this land, do you?”

  The girl twisted and looked at him, eyes gleaming honey-brown in the sunlight, showing a cross of irritation and interest. “Your name’s not Alban. I saw a poster of your face nailed to an inn door. Zar. One thousand gold pieces. That’s all I need to know.”

  “You need to know more than that if you hope to claim a reward. King Tiomot is dead. Oh, and if you’ve a hope his son Prince Tharid will graciously grant your reward, guess what? He’s dead too. And, oh, if you think Queen Thae will shower you with gold even though her son and husband have perished, guess what? She’s dead too.”

  Lyla brought the wagon to stop. “I think you need to go back to sleep.”

  “Why?” Zar demanded. “You think I lie? Ask anyone. You could’ve asked the poor lad you stole that horse from, the fool you stole this wagon from, they would’ve told you. Ask anyone on the road, they’ll tell you. Snowstone has fallen!”

  “I don’t steal,” Lyla said, turning to the side, looking at Zar.

  Zar found it amusing that out of all the things he had just said, her only objection was him accusing her of thievery.

  “What then, did you talk them into it? Say a few sweet words and convince them to just give you what you want?”

  The girl looked shocked, disappointed, and pensive, with some measure of pride stirred in. “I can’t do it with words alone. Only music and song.”

  “Not yet, at least,” said Zar.

  Lyla’s eyes wobbled. Then, her face went blank.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Zar looked her dead in the eyes. “You don’t know what you are.”

  For a moment, so fast and fleeting that Zar wondered if it had happened at all, Lyla looked at him with the eyes of a curious child. She refocused and pulled her face back as straight as an arrow. But Zar already had his answer.

  “You’ve no idea. Lyla, there is
no reward. Not in gold, anyway. As for knowledge, I can tell you about yourself, your abilities. But we have to get off this road. Let us detour into the trees and I’ll tell you all I know—about your gifts, about this land that you obviously know nothing about.”

  Lyla’s eyes whirled in a dance that Zar couldn’t figure out the steps to. Then she spoke.

  “Fine, Zar. But if this is a trick, you’ll pay.”

  “He’s gone.” Yari spit out the words, and for the first time in a long while, Anza wore a face as sour as hers.

  She was sitting the throne on the dais in the great hall, a frame of polished orewood, jewels embedded in the arms, a silver badger-skin seat between them.

  “Find him,” Anza growled, “if it’s the last thing you do in this world. Bring him to me.”

  Yari mistrusted and generally didn’t like most people, but it was a rare thing to see Anza bothered. She rarely became emotionally charged or upset. If someone was an enemy, she killed them. But she didn’t hate them. If someone was in her way, she removed them, but she didn’t resent them. Everything was just a job to her, something she had to do, but not something she had to become personally invested in.

  She was always rational, smart, levelheaded, and that’s why it was so unusual to see her like this. She wanted Zar caught more than anything, and Yari knew it was because of the things he’d said about Stroan.

  “I’ll take Ivy out straightaway.”

  Anza shook her head and sighed. “You won’t ride a ram.” The words hissed out like a serpent’s tongue. “We are not of the cliffs anymore. You will ride a horse.”

  A horse? Yari didn’t much like horses, and besides, Ivy would be quieter and easier for her to control. But alas, Anza was determined to be more than ram-riding cliff folk, and they were now, weren’t they? They had taken Snowstone Castle, so what did it matter what she rode? “What of the rams the hunters rode in from the cliffs? If they aren’t to be ridden—”

  “Butcher the things for meat,” said Anza, and Yari’s mouth nearly fell to the floor.

  Things? Every Condor shared a special bond with their ram. How could Anza pretend she no longer understood that? Was she speaking in anger, upset about Stroan’s betrayal, upset that Zar had escaped? Or did she truly mean it?

  Yari knew Anza far better than any person there. She said what she meant, whether upset or not. She had toiled for years to bring them a new kingdom and a different way of life, and now that she had it, their former ways were of no concern to her. She was making that clear, one word or deed after the other. The Condor were gone, and Anza’s kingdom of Snowstone was at hand.

  The first thing Yari did when she left the queen was look for Ivy. The mountain rams were packed in a sheep corral, downhill from the keep in the outer courtyard, crowded in with a flock of their white, wooly counterparts.

  There was someone she recognized in the pen. She didn’t know the man’s name, wouldn’t have said it even if she did. He was nothing more than a grunt worker back in the City in the Clouds, a hunter, a breeder, disposable like most of his kind were. He was too big to fly the cliffs, too heavy to climb and soar through the Clouds like herself, Anza, or Minkus and Maza. He wasn’t suited to be a flyer and he had been born a male. In Condor society, there wasn’t much else he was good for.

  Yari wondered if that would change, too, now that Snowstone was theirs. She wondered if men like him could better their position.

  “Hunter!” she called to him. “Bring me that ram, there near the fence.” Yari pointed until the man waved his hand and headed right over to Ivy.

  “I know which one is yours, Yari.” Muscles bulged through his uncovered arms, moving under his skin like things alive. “I rode him myself from the Clouds.”

  The man led Ivy out of the corral by his bridle. “We’ll need a bigger pen. I can get to it with some of the others.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Yari, disgusted with what she was about to say next. “Anza wants them butchered for meat.”

  The words were so foul Yari spit them out like rotten food, and the man beside her seemed just as offended hearing them.

  “Butchered?” He stood there, gaping, eyes confused and wandering, darting back and forth under a furrowed brow.

  “Your queen commands it. See it done.”

  Yari led Ivy away. She couldn’t bear to look at the man’s face anymore, a testament that Anza’s order seemed just as harsh to him as it did to her. She headed straight to the stable, rushed inside, then stopped and drew her knife at the patter of footsteps. A stall door creaked open up ahead, and a boy stepped out, freezing at the sight of Yari.

  “I’m the stable hand,” he said. He was dirty from ears to ankles, with a worn woolen tunic that was far too large for him. “The queen said I could keep working here—said she needed a stable hand to look after the horses—said no one would harm me.”

  Yari returned her knife to the sheath on her belt. “I won’t harm you, boy.”

  She turned to her ram and Ivy stood there as beautiful as ever, fur like sun baked straw, masses of hard, ridged horn curling on each side of his snout.

  “I need a stall for this one, secluded, all the way in the back.” Yari motioned her head over the boy’s shoulder, down the long hall that ran back, stalls lining each side. Horses hung their heads over the gates, but there looked to be a few empty stalls at the end, no pintos or bays hanging over them, just empty, quiet air. “Are those empty stalls down there?”

  The boy looked down the hall then spun back around to Yari. “Aye, my lady. The last two on the left are empty—and the last one on the right.”

  “Good. Put him in one of those. Don’t let anyone else touch him. I’m the queen’s right hand; if anyone gives you trouble, you come to me.”

  “Aye, my lady.” The boy walked up and, with a bit of hesitation, took Ivy by the bridle and walked him down the long hall to a stall at the end. As Yari watched him, she thought of their stable hand in the Clouds. Gargo. She wondered when the old man would be joining them in Snowstone, and she was saddened when the answer crystallized. The man was a Condor ram keeper, and he knew nothing about horses. He’d have no place in Anza’s new world. If he did join them at the castle, with no profession he’d be nothing more than a shadow of the man he used to be. Yari had a feeling he’d never leave the cliffs.

  Moments later, the stable boy was back in front of her. “Will there be anything else, my lady?”

  “Aye. I’ll need a horse.”

  “You’re a charmer,” said Zar, a pointed smirk showing and eyebrows to match. “That’s what your kind is called.”

  Lyla said nothing. Who was this Zar? Why was he wanted by the king? Could she trust anything the man said? More importantly, was it true what she thought about him, that feeling she had when she first met him—that she still had that very moment. Aye. I can feel it. I wonder how much he knows.

  “My friend was a witch. I daresay I learned all manner of strange and interesting things from her. I never thought your likes existed anymore. I thought you were nothing more than a myth now, an entertaining tale about times of old from my dear friend, Ramla.”

  Lyla had done like Zar said and had gotten off the road, pulling the wagon into the woods until its movement was hindered by the trees. The man was still bound, sitting up in the wagon. Lyla sat sideways on Storm, her legs draped over one side of the mare’s back. She stared at the man.

  “When I told you I couldn’t . . . charm a person with only words, you said not yet. Why did you say that?”

  Zar gazed at her from the shadows of the covered wagon, knowing eyes clothed in something of a squint. He smiled.

  “Ah, you’ve tried it, haven’t you? How close did you get, I wonder?” He lifted his tied hands in front of his face. “Do you really need to keep me bound in this wagon? Or can we talk like civilized folk? Over a meal, perhaps?”

  Lyla kept looking at him, not bothering to hide her intrigue. “Are you . . . are you also a—”


  “I’m no charmer,” said Zar. “As I said, it was my friend, Ramla, who told me about people who possess your abilities. She was quite the connoisseur of rare secrets, old magic, and all manner of forbidden things, I daresay. Leviathan, I miss her.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  Zar laughed and shook his head until his locks went dancing. “That you’ll only get better. Why waste your time capturing outlaws? There’s real gold to be had.”

  Lyla slid a leg over Storm’s back, turning all the way around to face Zar, backwards in her saddle. “You’ll say anything to be free.”

  “Truly, Lyla, it’s beneath you. Especially a girl with your gifts.”

  “What else would I do?” Lyla questioned. “I know no one in the mainreach.”

  “I know many in the mainreach,” Zar replied. “Important people, I daresay.”

  Lyla bit back a smile. The man was getting more and more interesting. “And?”

  “And have you ever tried your songs on beasts?” Zar was smiling and holding eyes with her. “Say, like that horse of yours?”

  “Never.”

  The man kept talking. “Ramla swore charmers affect man and beast alike. I’d never known her to be wrong about such things.”

  Lyla didn’t understand where the man was going with this. “When you started, I thought you might actually make a point.”

  Zar laughed. “Patience, Lyla. If you rush the plot, you spoil the twist.”

  “Whatever.”

  Zar’s smile dissolved, and his face went flat. “I don’t believe you’re a rotten person. I believe, like so many of us, you’re just trying to make your way. I also believe I’m in a position to help you. But you have to cut me free.”

  Lyla wasn’t shocked at his words, but there was something else that gripped her: that look in his eyes, that face that said he was speaking from the sincerest of places, deep, dark, and personal.