LITMIR.BIZ

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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 thing that was the Lord Razul. Even his henchmen 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

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