LITMIR.BIZ

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at your well? I have slept under a hedge, and water was not at hand.”

      She blushed crimson with shame. “I be out in my manners, Singer. Should be that I offered you food and drink before you made to sing. Now forgive me. I’ll warm water enough for a bath, while you eat your morning meal.”

      So I found myself sitting in the shade before the door with a tray of griddle cakes on my lap, watching the morning progress over the farmlands that now lay across my way. As I nibbled, listening to my hostess splash pails of water into the great iron tub over the fire, I suddenly realized that I was now, in very truth, a Singer of Souls.

      Chapter Two

      Singer of Souls

      The road curved away over the low hills, and the gray dust that marked its line blended with the autumn gray of dead grasses to make my way dreamlike and dim. Even the watery shining of the sun gave no color to the drab bushes and small trees that I passed from time to time. No longer was I a stranger to the road. My feet were shod in its dust, and no hint of the russet glow of my boots showed through its film. Yet the sight of their trim newness tore at my heart, for they had been given me by the household of Kalir.

      Only the muted creaking of my leather jerkin and breeches marked my progress. I neither hummed nor sang, and more than one tear dropped to trace my path. Strange behavior for a Singer, I well knew. But seldom does a Singer remain long in one place and never as a part of one family, yet in the odd way I had followed since my leaving school, I had been long with Kalir and his people. Not, at first, by my own choice. Later, indeed, in disregard of my training and the warnings of my teachers and Elysias.

      The summer had been full of joy. I remembered the warmth of the road dust on my sandaled feet on one special day, the summer bloom of the thorn bushes that now were only twiggy ghosts of themselves. I had been singing them, working my perceptions deeper and deeper into the layered, unvoiced beings as I passed, exercising my gifts as a Singer should.

      The thunder of hooves behind did not interrupt my chant, though I moved to the verge of the road and turned to see who approached. A big man, a flash of orange beard, a wide-nostrilled chestnut, dripping with foam, loomed near. There was a laugh, and I was cast backward into the ditch and knew nothing for a black time.

      Then Kalir and his merry-eyed dame and their boisterous brood found me and brought me to the few senses I had left after striking my head upon a stone. They took me home with them, as they would have done for a beggar or a dog or even a noble who found himself in such unlikely straits. And my life among them began, full of new sensations, strange tasks, and emotional ties such as I had never known.

      Without the week of rest that my injury demanded, perhaps I would not have been seduced from my duty. For that length of time I allowed myself to sink into the family as if I had been born to them, and they accepted me as readily as I grew attached to them. If Elysias had said to me, “You are the Chosen. There is no doubt,” I would have hardened myself and gone forward, when I was recovered. But she had not. She had said, “Might be.” And that I was able to put from my mind.

      Few of my sort have ever known the joy of a family. We are taken away from our own, as soon as the talent shows itself, to the schools provided for us. There is a life there, of a kind. Sustenance for the body, long hours of work for the mind and the voice. Yet there is none of the closeness that a tight-knit family knows. So it was that the house of Kalir held wonder for me, as those loving folk enfolded me into their lives and their hearts.

      For one used to the roads and the fields, the Singing-places of great houses and the chimney corners of humble dwellings, my time with Kalir was magical. I would look with wonder after Doni, the mother, as she bustled about the house, supervising awkward young fingers in intricate stitches or un­practiced serving-maids in making new dishes.

      Her patience made me marvel, as did her casual pats and sudden warm hugs as she passed me—or any of her loved-ones—about the house. And her husband was even more wonder­ful. I watched his broad figure move away to the fields in the morning with something like woe, and saw it return at eve­ning with the same squealing joy as did his own younglings. His laugh boomed among the smoke-dimmed rafters and made the smoked joints dance and the strings of onions sway in time with the loops of peppers.

      The astringent life of the School seemed a dream. The thin, chill-voiced teachers, in retrospect, seemed to have no blood in their veins to work the metal pumps that were their hearts. I suspected that their passionless lectures upon the vital func­tions of Singers took root so deeply in our hearts only because no more exuberant seeds had been planted there.

      So when Kalir and Doni and the seven children pleaded with me to forsake the road, my long training, and my sacred duty, I gave ear. My rebellious nature had always chafed at the duties laid upon me without my consent, and now I told myself that the lack of one Singer of so many thousands could make little difference in the safety and virtue of my country. The warning I had been given—“You may be tempted aside...but the gods will not have it so”—I tried to forget. The possibility of immediate joy, of belonging with these people who loved me, was temptation beyond re­sisting.

      Perhaps that was why the gods permitted that evil should befall even those whom they had earlier favored. On the first chill evening of autumn, while we sat before the great fireplace talking and laughing, while nuts sizzled and popped in the red coals, the doors burst inward without warning. Armored men poured between the broken leaves, swords drawn. They spared neither Kalir nor his wife, children, and servants.

      They ignored me, as they reddened their blades in the blood of those I loved. Though I had little skill in arms, I struggled with them and tried to skewer one with the meat spike from the fireplace. It almost seemed as if they could see me only dimly, for they flung me against the wall, half stunned, and then forgot me. I lay there and saw them at their bloody work, and the steel of the gods and the words of the Mother entered into me.

      When their terrible task was done, they looted the house, taking hidden stores of coin from strange hiding places, as if they had known exactly where to look for them. Then they dragged the blazing logs from the hearth into the middle of the room. The ancient planking kindled, and evidence of the crime seemed likely to vanish in smoke. But I am a Singer, and I know the colors and emblems of every family above the fifth degree of nobility in the land.

      I recognized the work of Razul, even before I identified his shield upon the breasts of his henchmen. Any who wander farther than their own byre and wash-place have heard whispers of his deviltries. Though I had never seen him, I knew him by his work, and I vowed to find him.

      When 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

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