I went forth from the burning house, my face was wet with tears and with blood. I had laid my cheek to the lips of every one of those who lay within, seeking the tiniest whisper of breath. There was not one who lived. I kissed Kalir upon the forehead and closed his eyes. I patted Doni, as she had so often patted me, and I touched each of the children on the brow and straightened their limbs, that they might go into the flame in good order.
Then, my hair singed and skin blistered, I made a vow, signed in blood and flame, that Razul would pay to the uttermost for this thing that he had caused to be done.
Singers are not trained with sword and bow. Far other are our functions and our duties. Our hearts are cleansed of the burning and the bitterness that make men kill, as much as can be done with humankind. Though in the sharpness of my wrath and the grief of my loss I would gladly have slain Razul with my two hands, my long training overbore that wild pain. By the time I had cleaned myself in the cattle trough, I knew that I must fight Razul with my own weapons, not with his.
So from that spot on the road where I had been taken up, I set out again. This time I knew my destination. We are taught to let the gods and the teachings of the Mother be our guides, using our inner perceptions to determine our ways and our means. I, more than most, had relied upon my own judgments, to the distress of my teachers. Now I used all possible guidance, following into lanes and byroads and again into a principal thoroughfare, knowing that I must be led to Razul as a river is led to the sea.
The leagues rolled away beneath my boots, but I did not grow weary. Children came into the road to ask me into farmsteads along the way. Sometimes I rested for the night or for a meal, paying, as always, with a song that eased, perhaps, an old grief or a new grievance. Even, once, I healed a cow that was pining and going dry after the sale of her calf. Her soul was such a simple pleasure to work into, after the murk of human spirits: food, water, sleep, sun, hands milking, the spot where the calf had been.
But my russet boots moved on, and the miles curled up behind me like lengths of used-up ribbon. At last I came to Raz, the village that lay about the Great House of Razul. The house stood amid its stern turrets, protected by strong walls, but Raz was a scabrous place, filled with two- and four-legged rats. The men who stood about the filthy wine shops scratched themselves and leered when I passed, though a Singer is protected by every law that men and the gods can devise.
Though my dress and bearing might well have been those of a young man, still I was followed by a verminous taggle of urchins and ill-looking men. I was glad to reach the wall gate, where an armed watchman was on guard. He seemed puzzled by me and my request for entry.
“Surely you know the Singers of Souls,” I said to him, astonished. “We are charged with the well-being of Tyrnos, and I am required by law to stop and to inquire if your Lord has need of my services. Not lightly does a Lord decline the services of a Singer.” I drew my brows together, and the man touched his helm and went to inquire.
I waited, but I felt the beginning of the Power pulse in my veins. I knew that I would be admitted. When the guard returned, he gestured for me to come in, and a woman was waiting inside the gate to show me the way. She led me to the women’s quarters of the house and showed me the bathing pool.
“You may borrow fine robes for your Singing, should you wish it,” she said.
I smiled at her. “None sees the Singer while he sings, my friend, else he has failed in his art. If you will but rub the dust from my leather garments, I will be grateful to you.”
The water in the pool was warm, but as I lay in it I felt a sudden chilly impotence. What could I, alone and unarmed, do against this powerful Lord, surrounded by his warriors and his women? The water swirled around me, comfortingly.
I heard the voice of a teacher of long ago saying, “We are armed, Singers, with such weapons as soldiers do not recognize. We may come openly into any hall, any home, any chamber, and none will fear us. Yet we have in our hearts the Power. With it we may work the will of the gods.”
When I climbed from the pool, the woman was waiting with my jerkin and breeches, and she had rubbed them with sweet oil.
“We have never had a Singer of Souls here in all the time since I came,” she said wistfully. “Is there nothing I can do for you?”
“Surely, if you wish it. I am hungry with my journeying. To sing well, I must have good food to sustain me. Can you find meat and bread, perhaps? Or cheese, or chicken?”
She smiled. “Food will be here in a short time, for I guessed that you hungered. Then it will be the hour for lighting the torches. Your time to appear before the Lord Razul....” She hesitated, looking closely into my eyes as if to gauge my soul. “Is it as I have heard? Can the Singers, in truth, change the hearts of evil men?”
I took her hand. “The Singers call upon a Power beyond themselves. That Power judges the one whose soul is sung. It sets his reckoning. The Singer cannot know beforehand what will take place when he sings. Still, evil souls have been changed, good souls made better, the treacherous exposed, and the cruel punished in the Singing places of their own houses.”
She looked a bit frightened. But with it she looked gladdened. “The House of Razul,” she whispered, barely perceptibly, “has suffered for want of a Singer.”
With torchlight came a messenger from the Lord. I went forth to my lonely battle. Little did the Singing place resemble a battlefield: it was a round platform of polished stone set against the curved end wall of the feasting chamber of the House. An ornate stair curled about the column that held it up, and when I had mounted to the top, I found myself two man-heights above the floor.
The chamber was full of people. Men-at-arms mingled with nobles, ladies, and women (I guessed) of easy virtue. A few servants scurried among them, bringing wine cups and carrying away the remnants of the meal they had just finished. Upon an elevated dais sat Razul in a throne-like chair. The torchlight was brilliant, and I looked closely at him, while the crowd settled into something like silence.
I knew him! That curling orange beard (somewhat stained, now, with wine), the mouth that must snick like steel when he closed it. Those no-colored steely-gray eyes had mocked me from the back of the horse that ran me down, and now they stared at me from deep in their sockets, like twin animals in their lairs. His attitude seemed relaxed, but I sensed a wariness about him as he looked across the wide chamber.
Deep within my heart, I said to the gods, “This is no vengeance of my own, for until this moment I did not know that the man I sought was the same who injured me.” I took a deep breath, feeling the Power building within me, tingling along my nerves, the veinings of my body, the chambers of my heart. I held the breath for a long moment. Then I sang.
As always, the world disappeared, the hall, the feasters with it. Only the truth of the being who called himself Razul existed in all the Cosmos. And I sang his soul.
As my voice rose and fell, crescendo, tremolo, diminuendo, the shape of Razul’s self formed upon the polished wall above and behind me. Though my back was toward it, I knew every line and tint of it, for the Power was shaping it, and I was the instrument of the Power.
Dimly, I was aware of a concerted gasp from the crowd, but I sang on. The bestial shape grew in foulness; the colors dripped with scarlet and purple. I heard a scream. The air about me was charged with fear and revulsion, but still I sang. The eyes of Razul hid in their twin lairs, but sparks of pain and rage escaped from that darkness. Had I not been trained, I might well have wilted in that glare, but I did not.
I sang the song to the end. Upon the wall in indelible hues was the
