REDBIRD
A shock of crimson darted through the bleakness of
Blackveil, the wings of the redbird beating a steady rhythm. The
redbird did not pause in its flight, was unwavering in its route,
for as a creature of etherea, it required no rest or sustenance.
Predators did not perceive it as prey, but as the impulse of magic,
and therefore they did not hinder it. It sped bright and fleeting
through the trees and murk of the forest, a spell venturing on its
way to fulfillment.
Only when the
redbird reached the break in the great wall did it pause, perching
on a tree limb on the other side in the unfamiliar world of
sunshine. It gazed upon the humans busy at work in their
encampment, but the one it sought was not in this
place.
And yet not far
away. The redbird launched from its branch and flew eastward, the
wall flowing along its wingtip. It would not be long now before the
redbird’s reason for existing came to fruition.
Despite the welcome spring sunshine, a gloom settled
on Alton’s shoulders as he left the pickets and headed across the
encampment. It wasn’t Estral that darkened his morning, for she
brought lightness and joy to his life. He now saw the world as more
lovely than he’d ever perceived it before, and the music . . . How
had he gone through life without music filling his hours? Estral
woke him in the mornings with song, carried him through the days
with lute music, and soothed him to sleep with
lullabies.
It was not just
Alton who was uplifted by her presence, but it seemed the entire
encampment was as well. She inspired countless campfire sing-alongs
and performances by normally taciturn soldiers and laborers
discovering hidden talents.
The wall continued
to mend in nearly imperceptible increments, tiny cracks filling in,
retreating toward the breach. The hole in the roof of Tower of the
Heavens continued to shrink, all thanks to Estral and her
music.
No, Alton’s gloom
had nothing to do with Estral, but with the horses. The anxiety of
Karigan’s Condor, Yates’ Phoebe, and Lynx’s Owl had increased
steadily. The three had become restive enough that they’d had to be
picketed separately from the encampment’s other equines, for their
mood was contagious and a worried horse or mule was prone to injure
itself.
So Alton and Dale
had made a concerted effort to keep a close watch on the messenger
horses, and he’d gotten Leese to spare some calming herbs that he
incorporated into a daily mash for the three. If Night Hawk was
jealous of the attention he lavished on the others, the gelding
showed no sign. Messenger horses were perceptive, seeming to
understand more about the world and what was happening to their
people than ordinary horses did. He would not have been surprised
if the messenger horses conferred with one another in some unknown
way; therefore, he kept Night Hawk and Dale’s Plover picketed close
to them, but out of harm’s way.
Alton sought out
Estral at her tent, the dining tent, by the wall, and in the tower,
and could not find her. Could she have gone to the main encampment
for any reason? He scratched his head, then remembered her horse
had still been picketed, and she hadn’t mentioned any intention to
travel. On a hunch he went to his tent
and found her sitting on a stool in front of it, her lute case open
beside her. She was flexing her fingers in preparation for
playing.
“There you are,” he
said. “Why are you over here?”
“For some reason,”
she replied, “people are less likely to interrupt me at your tent,
Lord Alton.”
“Oh, I see.” And he
did, for Estral tended to collect an audience when she played, even
when she was obviously trying to concentrate on working out the
mysterious measure from the book of Theanduris Silverwood. He could
see how distracting that would be. Because of his own status,
people tended to keep a respectful distance from his tent. “Am I
interrupting?”
“Not yet,” Estral
replied. “I haven’t started yet.”
A redbird fluttered
its wings in a nearby tree, its feathers bright against
evergreen.
“How are the
horses?” she asked.
He’d explained to
her the nature of messenger horses and so she knew what it meant
when they were upset.
“Still agitated,” he
said. “Condor the most. I can only imagine what trouble Karigan has
gotten herself into.”
Estral gazed at her
fingernails. The nails on her chording hand were shorter than those
on her picking hand, which he’d learned from direct experience when
she held onto him when they were alone together. The thought made
him smile, and just as quickly he replaced it with a neutral
expression, recalling what they were discussing. Karigan was still
a difficult topic between them.
“I often wonder what
she and the others are encountering in the forest,” Estral
said.
“Me, too.” Even
though Alton had spent time in Blackveil himself, he remembered few
details, and those had been awful enough. He did not share his
memories with Estral, not wishing to worry her further. Such
thoughts only made him gloomier so he changed the subject. “How
goes work on that measure of music? Any inspirations?”
Estral sighed. “You
know, I’ve been thinking about this even when I’m not actively
working on it. I’ve tried so many variations, and none have been
quite right. Sometimes I think I’m overthinking it, and at other
times I remember what a genius Gerlrand Fiori was with music and I
feel so very inadequate.”
The redbird chirped
as if to underscore her statement, and hopped to another
branch.
“Inadequate? I
hardly think so.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Then more
seriously he added, “If you want inadequate, think of how I feel
about the wall. My ancestors built it,
but I can’t fix it.”
“You can’t fix it
because I can’t figure out the music,” Estral said. “However, I’ve
been trying to think like Gerlrand, musically speaking, and he did
not always follow logical patterns. The existing notes from the
book ascend as if asking a question.” She demonstrated for him, her
voice rising in clear, ringing notes. “The assumption is that there
is an answer. But what if there isn’t an answer at all, but only
another question? And what if that other question does not mirror
the notes we know of, but consists of still more
measures?”
Alton smiled feebly
and patted her shoulder. “That’s why we’ve an expert on the
job.”
“The true expert
would be Gerlrand. There are just so many possible
variations.”
She sang the notes
again, this time carrying on with a continued ascension, then
drifting into minor notes, the tone eerie, before soaring once
again. Alton assumed she was making it up as she went and decided
Gerlrand held nothing over his Estral.
As she sang, the
redbird launched from its perch and circled overhead. Alton thought
nothing of it until it folded its wings into a dive; it dove
directly at Estral like a crimson dart, dove and slammed into her
throat. It all happened so quickly, and Estral’s song ended
abruptly. No crumpled bird lay dazed on the ground after the
collision. It had turned into a bloated serpent of red light that
wrapped around her neck and slithered into her open mouth and down
her throat. She gagged, gasping for breath.
“Estral!” Alton
tried to grab the serpent, but it was the substance of air. Estral
scratched at her throat, tried to scream, but nothing emerged.
Alton did not know what to do, but then the snake faded away.
Estral remained on her stool, eyes wide and tearing, hands still at
her throat.
Alton knelt before
her. He saw no marks on her throat except those she’d made herself.
“Estral, are you all right?”
She gazed at him,
forehead furrowed. She shook her head.
“What is it? What .
. . what did that thing do to you?”
She started to
speak, but no sound came out.
“Estral?”
She crumpled into
his arms, heaving with silent sobs.
Alton carried Estral
into his tent and sent for Leese. The wait was agonizing. Estral
would not respond to his questions or his touch. She lay curled in
a fetal position on his cot, buried her face into his pillow, and
would not move.
Leese finally
arrived and while she examined Estral, Alton paced outside,
awaiting some sign. He heard the mender’s murmured questions
within, but no answers from Estral. Not a word.
Dale came and sat on
a tree stump. “What happened?” she asked.
Alton explained what
he’d seen. “Some sort of magical attack.”
“From
Blackveil?”
“Where else? She
seemed all right after,” Alton continued. “Frightened, but
unharmed—at least outwardly. But unable to speak.” He felt strains
of concern from the wall guardians. They’d responded to Estral’s
music like nothing else, and now there was only silence and their
dismay.
Leese slipped
through the flaps of her tent, blinking in the
sunlight.
“Well?” Alton
demanded.
“I’ve given her a
little something to help her rest,” the mender replied. “She was
very upset, which is not surprising.”
“What’s wrong with
her?”
“It’s beyond my
experience,” Leese said, “especially if what you say about magic is
correct. I can identify no injury or sickness. The only thing I can
find is that her voice is gone. Totally and
absolutely.”
Alton clenched and
unclenched his hands, feeling the urge to pound on the wall—or
anything hard—as he had not in quite a while.
Dale bunched her
eyebrows together. “Seems like that spell was intended directly for
Estral.”
“She must have been
getting too close to finding the right notes,” Alton said. “It was
cast by someone who does not want the wall fixed.”
The three fell into
a heavy silence, the gloom penetrating into a deep dark within him.
He would make whoever had done this pay, not just because it
prevented Estral’s music from fixing the wall, but because of what
it had done to her, taking away an intrinsic part of her—her
ability to sing.
Yes, he’d make
whoever was responsible pay, even if it meant confronting Mornhavon
the Black himself.