Soul-Singer of Tyrnos. Ardath Mayhar
had no taste for spending the blustery hours of darkness in a treetop. Though I knew that most of the forest’s beasts had gone into their winter sleep, it would not be wise to tempt any late-waking carnivore. The drifts of last spring’s discarded leaves were damp and musty, uninviting in the extreme. I wanted a hollow tree, much like that which I had used before. For so old a forest, it was remarkably healthy. No trace of rot appeared on any trunk within eyeshot. Sighing, I forsook the road and made my way beneath the roof-like limbs, looking sharply at every tree. I walked for some time, winding about but keeping my sense of direction firmly in hand.
As the last light faded, I found a hollow, higher than was convenient, but deep and floored with the dust of rotted wood and fallen bark. Weary after my day’s walk and my strenuous climb to my sleeping place, I spread my cloak, ate a bit from the generous store Meltha had supplied, and rolled that furry garment about me, head to heel. The wind rose with the coming of night, and I lay in that hospitable nook listening to its muttering among the leaves. When rain began to patter, I fell snugly into sleep.
No dream disturbed my rest. I woke to a magical morning: the rain had frozen in falling, and the forest was sheathed in ice. Its lanes were enchanted avenues from some mythical tale for children. I considered staying where I was, warm and sheltered, with enough food for many days. The footing, I knew, would be insecure and the ways treacherous with ice. Something compelled me on my way, however, and it was not solely the plan that I had begun to formulate after hearing the tale of Rellas’s journey to the Citadel. I had determined to direct my steps in that direction, for no one sets the path of a Singer. Not one of my teachers or even the administrators of my order knew where upon the lands I now stood. My way was my own, subject only to the calls of duty and to the instinct that Singers are taught to recognize.
I would go southward. Though I had had my training at a lesser School for Singers in the west of Tyrnos, I knew that I might claim a place for rest in that great mother of Schools in the country’s capital city. There I might obtain answers to the many questions that had risen into my heart since the beginning of my wanderings. If not, I might observe simply if any canker might be eating its way into the very institution that had made Tyrnos the most lawful and kindly of nations.
I must not linger, be the weather what it would.
It was no easy matter to descend the ice-coated tree trunk. As it was, I slithered a few feet, then dropped unceremoniously onto my backside, gaining no few bruises in the fall. Setting my pack and my cloak to rights, I looked about to find the landmarks that would set me back on the way to the road. Though the icy sheathing made everything appear different, there was no disguising the lightning-stricken snag that was my first marker. Confidently I moved toward it, caught my bearings, and veered away to the left, sighting on a mossy boulder. From landmark to landmark I went, never doubting that the memorized route would return me to the road I had left the night before.
My confidence was ill-placed. When I reached the double-trunked mang tree that had been my first checking place after leaving the way, I looked expectantly past it. There was no break in the wood. The wheel-and-hoof-worn track that I had followed had disappeared from my sight. Unmarked forest rose all about me, and I knew that if this was some mischief set upon my vision, I could never discover, so blinded, the winding way that I had never traveled before. Roads do not evanesce in a night. Years may blur and obliterate their traces, but one night’s rest cannot encompass such a thing.
I frowned. Some thought had been laid over my path... some compelling spell had either deceived me into believing that there had been a road or was now deceiving me into believing that there was not. There was no evidence that I could lay tongue to, but the well-honed instincts that my teachers had spent ten years of my life in sharpening cried out to me, “This is witchery...or worse!”
I looked about. Icy-bright trees bent their heavy branches low on all hands, and the sharp cracks of overburdened limbs breaking sounded all around me. A snapping warned me, and I looked upward. The double-trunked tree under which I stood gave a ripping groan, and one of the great halves swayed. I leaped for my life, turning in time to see the crystal-enclosed giant crash down upon the spot where I had stood.
Now my breath came hard, with shock and anger. More than a thought had been laid against me. A curse was moving in the wood, and I had no doubt that I was its specific target. I must win clear of the threatening branches or risk an end to my quest and my life. Not for this had I taken the hard lessons of the Singers’ School to heart. I would bow my neck to no ill spirit that cast its spell across Tyrnos.
I stood still in the cleared spot left by the falling tree. Closing my eyes, I called upon the Power that I had never before been forced to use in my own behalf. A half-chant rose in my throat, and the strange sensations that were the tracks of the Power flowed through me. As if doubly frozen, the forest quieted until the faint chiming of ice against ice as the slight breeze moved through laden twigs was all that could be heard.
Into that quiet came the sound of steps. Not the two-footed steps of humankind, but a complex four-pawed gait that would have been padding, but for the crisp layer of ice upon the fallen leaves. The sound neared, and I wondered behind my closed eyelids what beast still wandered the wood in the teeth of such weather. As the paws drew to a halt beside me, I opened my eyes and looked.
The darkest, saddest eyes I have ever seen gazed back into mine from their own level. They were set in a face of white fur that edged into a neat trimming of dark gray about the cat-like lower jaw, the neatly pointed ears, and the flattish muzzle. White fur covered the rest of the shape, which consisted of a compact and short-tailed body set high upon slender, oddly-jointed legs. A strange beast altogether, unlike any in the books that I had studied so painstakingly at School.
There was no feeling of ill about it. It stood patiently while I studied it. When I began to sing it, it made a strange sound, a thrumming that just missed being a purr. And the shape I limned on the inside of my mind was no beast at all. Still, it was not of my kind, either. And it was misted over, as if the gods wished its true shape concealed. But it was clear that a thinking being stood at my side in that ensorcelled wood.
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