shrank from that image. Even the harlots at his side looked upon it with loathing.
When my voice fell silent, there was no sound in all the place except the sobbing breaths of Razul. He sat and looked upon the thing he had allowed himself to become, and it glowered from the wall, soul’s twin to him.
For long heartbeats the world stood frozen as if time had ceased to tick away. Then Razul rose from his chair. He raised his clenched hands as though to challenge the beast on the wall. An inarticulate roar of pain ripped his throat. An emerald flashed in his dagger hilt, as he drew it from his sash. The glow was quenched in his blood.
He stood, bleeding his life away, staring at the thing on the wall. No soul stirred to aid him or to comfort him until he fell, as does a tree, full-length on his face.
Then there was hubbub, indeed. Women shrieked. Men cried out. Guards rushed in from the outer keep, weapons ready for battle, and joined the moil below.
I waited quietly, and sorrow filled my heart. How direful to be unable to live with the thing you have made yourself become! Kalir and his folk had died in the fullness of love and kindness, sent to the gods before their times, perhaps, but whole and at peace with themselves. This unhappy soul went forth into what dark limbo of self-rejection? Sad. Sad.
When the confusion was at its height, I went down the steps to the chamber. None stayed me or, indeed, seemed to see me. I remembered something the teachers had said... something about the gods holding their hands over those who work their will.
Anna waited in the passage with a heavy cloak and a pack of food. “Go with our blessing, holy one,” she whispered. I touched her forehead with my lips, took the parcel, and set my feet again upon the twilit road.
Chapter Three
Daymare
I walked away from chaos into the lonely quiet of the road. Behind me rose the hubbub of men left suddenly leaderless, and I knew with certainty that future granny tales would tell of some fearsome warrior who came, armed and mighty, to unseat the terrible Razul.
I laughed. None would ever believe that it was only I, small and young and a woman, too, who had been the instrument of that Lord’s doom. Still, that was my task, the fate of those who must be Singers.
Though I had come to the city of Raz in the grip of grim purpose, now I went away from it in the twilight with no destination in my mind. All ways are alike to a Singer, and we must trust to the gods to lead us toward the work they hold ready for our hands.
The dust puffed away from each russet boot as I walked. I looked up toward the darkening horizon and saw that it might well turn into mud, for purple-gray cloud hung there. It raced the night down-country toward me.
To my right, a few rods from the verge of the road, was the hem of a considerable wood that seemed to stretch in ever-thicker reaches until it filled the whole prospect to the south. Deciding that its shelter would be preferable to the exposed road, I turned aside and made my way among the slim young saplings of its outer edge until I reached the greater boles that marked the beginning of the real forest.
The strange stillness that precedes a storm held the wood in a fragile trance. My steps did nothing to break the waiting mood, as I made my way into the dimness of the ways beneath the heavy-leaved spread of branches that roofed out the sky. Finding, by touch, a hollow in a giant trunk, I rattled a dead branch inside to frighten away any resting serpent. Then I climbed into the gap, glad to find so secure a haven from the rain and the night that was now upon me.
I did not touch the wheel of my lightglass. There was some mood of darkness and quiet in that place that I felt would not take kindly to the intrusion of my kind. Instead I settled my bones among the twiggy debris that lay on the floor of my nook and closed my eyes, glad enough for the chance of rest, though I still felt the Power tingling along my nerves in faint echoes.
A crash of thunder and the chill mist of rain blown into my hiding place woke me. As I peered out, I could see the area about my tree kindled to wet-silver brightness by a flash of lightning. And more than trees and vines and fallen trunks were thereby revealed.
I looked closely, not to miss the next lightning bolt. All through the wood, as far as I could see, there were dark forms, shapeless as though hooded and cloaked in black, moving through the sheeting rain, standing as though looking upward toward the shouting sky, or drifting into an eddy that seemed to center upon the tree in which I lay.
I closed my eyes and drew upon the residue of Power that still thrummed within me. I traced glowing bars of force across the opening behind which I lay, crosshatched them with others, and set at the webbed center the Huym. Without further worry, I slept again, lulled by the drumming of the rain and the swishing of branches.
When I woke, a shaft of pale sunlight was striking into my refuge. I stretched and climbed down onto the soaked mold of the forest floor, examining it closely for any trace of those dark watchers of the night before. The rain had been heavy and long, and if there had been any mark of foot or paw, it was obliterated now.
Drawing from my pack a chunk of cheese and a heel of good bread, I stood and ate, surveying my surroundings carefully. Though there seemed nothing amiss, still there was a feel to that wood that made my neck hairs rise. Though I made no stir or movement more than was necessary, I could hear no bird, see no motion anywhere about me. Such an old forest should have been astir with small creatures: rabbits scuttling through the undergrowth, beetles chomping noisily at the fallen and lichenous logs, birds feeding in the upper reaches. There was nothing.
A clatter of hooves over a stony patch in the nearby road distracted me, and I moved to the edge of the trees to see who was corning so swiftly. Away toward the towers of Raz, now out of sight behind the fold of low hills, the road was awash with morning sun. Drawing near upon it was a pony bearing a youth who flogged it without mercy, urging it to more speed.
Suspecting that I was the object of his pursuit, I stepped into view and raised my arms high, that he might see me. He reined in the pony and walked it through the young growth to the spot where I stood. As he drew near, I saw that he was, indeed, very young...more than twelve, perhaps, but less than fourteen. His milk-pale skin was blotched with cinnamon-colored freckles, and his hair was red-gold in the light.
As he approached, I saw his eyes widen and a look something like awe overspread his features. He sprang from the pony’s back and knelt at my feet, making obeisance as though I were one of the High Adept, rather than a very young Singer clad in leather.
“You slept the night in the accursed wood?” he asked, as I lifted him to his feet and looked into his face. “None but the very wise and the terribly wicked can sleep safely there. My mother....” He choked as if to quell a sob, then continued, “...My mother is like to die, because her mare carried her into that forest and dashed her head against a limb, knocking her senseless.”
“Surely no wood can be blamed for a frightened horse,” I murmured. “Such accidents happen everywhere, to all kinds of folk who never saw this wood.”
“Not of the injury is she like to die,” he said. “When they told me in the town that a Singer had come and gone, I came after you as fast as Cherry could gallop. I knew that you, if anyone alive, may be able to save her. May I sit and tell you of our trouble?”
So we sat at the edge of the road, as he feared to go into the trees, and he told me this tale:
“My father is from home, having been called by the High King to come down to the Citadel in the south. My mother, with his
