Darksong Rising (80 page)

“Forward!” Hanfor’s command conveyed urgency despite the low voice in which he had issued

it.

The Regent couldn’t even tell exactly when they passed where the picket posts or the sentries

had been beyond that except that she could sense... something. . . looming ahead. The feel of so

many armsmen? The presence of Darksong sorcery?

“See... there are the low cookfires—the red glow,” said Kinor from beside Anna.

She almost started in her saddle; in the darkness and her self-absorption, she’d forgotten that the

young man had been riding beside her. She thought she saw figures moving before the

campfires, although they were still a good quarter dek away.

“We need to hurry,” Anna told Liende and Hanfor as she swung out of the saddle. She still had

to hold on to the saddle rim for a moment to steady herself in the gloom. Handing Farinelli’s

reins to Kinor and stepping forward, she cleared her throat once, and then again.

Behind her, as each player dismounted, a lancer eased up and took the reins of that player’s

mount.

“Players into position,” whispered Liende. "One note...tune... now!”

The single note wavered into the darkness, then strengthened. "The long flame song, as soon as

you can,” ordered Anna.

"The long flame song, on my mark.” Liende’s dim figure moved closer to Anna. “When you are

ready, Regent”

Anna cleared her throat, facing toward the dull mound that was the hill where Rabyn’s camp lay.

“Now."

“On my mark... mark!”

Anna concentrated on the music and called up the words.

Turn to fire, turn to flame

all Nesereans who revere Rabyn’s name,

turn to ashes, turn to dust...

 
...bring down the Prophet with that flame,

 
So none will e’er recall his name.

The sorceress found herself breathing heavily after the last notes died away. For a long moment,

the night was hushed, totally silent.

The faintest shimmer of redness flowed from the star-speckled skies. Then the unseen chords of

harmony vibrated through the cool air, chords felt only by a handful of people, Anna knew—

mostly the players and those sensitive to sorcery.

Another timeless instant of silence followed. Abruptly, a single set of drumbeats echoed into the

night, just as arrows of white-hot flame cascaded from high overhead, down across the Neserean

campsite, but near Rabyn’s tent the arrows veered into a pyramid—leaving the tent and the

drums untouched.

“Bowmen, stand ready with shafts?” ordered Hanfor.

“He’s got his own sorcery,” Kinor said.

Great! Anna tried to think. What could counter that Darksong sorcery?

The arrows of flame continued to fall across the upper part of the Neserean camp’ and the

invisible pyramid was illuminated in flame, but those flames fell away from the tent, whose blue

and cream panels were revealed by the flow of flames.

The thunder of a single drum continued to boom into the darkness. A second, deeper tone, joined

the first, then a third, and the darkness flashed with sparks of light, as glowing black shieldlike

globules rose from the Prophet’s tent. Each shield smothered an arrow of flame, and both dark

and light points of sorcery vanished, casting an eerie flickering of dark and light across the open

space and the trees, erratically illuminating the hill behind the camp.

Yells and screams rose from the camps, and some of those screams were not from men, but from

their mounts. Anna winced.

From the south, farther from the sorceress, Anna could hear orders being shouted. Before long,

the Mansuurans would be ready to counterattack.

Waves of pressure, like sounds that had taken on the force of a slow-moving wind, began to

press at her. Her ears felt as though she were far, far underwater, slowly being crushed. She

could feel something like static electricity crawling along her arms.

You’ve got to come up with another spell—quickly. But what? Rabyn’s triple-toned Darksong

was blocking her flame arrows, and the darkness was creeping away from the tent toward her,

with the increasingly stronger rhythm and volume of the Darksong drums.

Think! You’ve got to do something.

Anna shook her head against the pressure that enfolded her, that slowed her thoughts. She had a

plan. She had spells. What are they? Where are they?

Her head throbbed, and her eyes blurred.

88

NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK

A single unheard note wakes Rabyn, and he stumbles from his silk coverlet onto the smooth

wool of the carpet that covers the ground. It is not dawn, and the cookfires should still be low

coals for glasses yet, but he can sense an unseen chord nearing the tent, like a slow arrow frozen

within the scope of a fraction of a glass.

He stiffens, then yanks on trousers alone and hastens to the front of the tent. Outside, the night

remains dark. Rabyn shakes his head and steps out and around a lone Prophet’s Guard.

“Sire?”

“Shut up!” His eyes traverse the darkness. A torch? Something? “Nubara! Get the drummers!”

Rabyn runs barefooted toward the drums behind the tent. “Fools! You’re all fools." He reaches

the first of the man-high massive drums and pulls off the oiled cloth protecting it. “‘She won’t

attack so soon, honored Prophet’... fools!”

Nubara appears with his cloak wrapped over his bare chest as Rabyn yanks the oiled cloths off

the second drum, and then the third. “Rabyn! What are you doing? Why—” A racking cough

chokes off the remainder of his hoarse-shouted question.

“The bitch sorceress! You fools! You’re all fools!” The young Prophet turns to the bare-chested

and black-haired youth barely older than the Prophet himself and thrusts the carved wooden

mallets into the drummer’s hands. “The first rhythm! Now!”

Rabyn takes the second set of mallets in his own hand and climbs onto the high stool by the

second drum. “Follow me!”

The first uneven rumbling rhythm rolls slowly into the darkness, creating an initial cacophony

that quickly smooths into a more even flow, just as a pattering or hissing that calls up rain rains

down from above the tent, but the air is cool and dry, not damp.

Rabyn does not look up from where he mans the second drum as flashes of fire flicker against

the alternating blue and cream silk panels of the tent.

Nubara is frozen in place beside the tent and looks skyward, incredulous at what he sees in what

should have been darkness overhead. Hissing lines of fire drop out of the sky, all across the camp

of the Prophet. Like a sleepwalker moving to the beat of the drums, Nubara edges along the side

of the tent.

The area around the drums seems like dawn or dusk, lit by fires falling from the sky, but veering

away from the tent area. Beyond the tent, screams have begun to fill the camp area, its expanse a

mixture of light and shadow created by the arrowlike flames that descend from the dark heavens.

Amid the flashes of light, darkness has begun to flare as well as fire, dark bolts of sound, not

quite dissonance nor yet harmony, rising from the drums with each blow of the mallets. For

several moments, the drumbeats merely create a low thunder, but that mounts to a rumbling

greater than the volume of the drums themselves and continues to build into a deafening roar.

Overhead, the flame arrows flicker, seem to dim, and there are fewer that flare across the night

sky.

“How... did... she get so close?" gasps Nubara.

Rabyn ignores the question, handing the mallets he has wielded to the last drummer to appear.

“Keep it up! Rhythm the first!”

Then the slender Prophet stands before the drums, facing eastward, and begins to hum, trying to

find a note or pitch suited to employing the triple-toned drums whose rumbling beat has begun to

shake the ground and vibrate the skulls of all within hearing distance. His clear if thin tenor rises

over the shivering beats of the massive drums.

Find, find, find where her sorceries abound.

Break, break, break the harmony of sound....

Blue fire creeps from the ground, from everywhere, and clothes the Prophet of Music as he

melds his voice into the driving rhythm of the triple drums. Slender as he is, Rabyn appears

taller, more solid, than the massive drum behind him, and darkness wells out from his chanting

singing figure.

Clutching one of the exterior poles supporting the tent, Nubara looks at the shining figure of the

young Prophet, cloaked m a shimmering nimbus of flickering blue, then at the three drummers,

also shimmering in blue, if less intensely. Slowly, the Mansuuran officer draws the unadorned

iron blade from his belt He takes one step toward Rabyn, then pauses, trying to catch his breath.

He takes a second step, then a third.

Nubara stands less than a yard from the Prophet, gasping, slowly raising the cold iron knife. He

lurches forward, like a bent old man, but his grip on the knife is firm, even as his steps are not,

and he thrusts the blade toward the darksinger.

Half-turning, as if warned, the shorter Rabyn lashes out with an arm cloaked in blue flame, flame

that wraps around Nubara’s arm. Nubara falls, toppling forward in those blue flames, a self-

consuming pillar of blue fire that flares skyward, then subsides into glittering dust that flames for

a time.

That intrusion is enough for Rabyn to momentarily lose his concentration, for his voice to falter

over a mere handful of notes. And though his voice falters and for but an instant falls behind the

rhythm of the triple drums, in that instant, the web of darkness that has protected the tent and