Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

A murmur blew through the room. Dandra saw Selkatari’s face turned dark. Nevchaned stiffened and looked around. His face took on the slightly vague look of someone reaching out with kesh . Other elders seemed to respond to the silent communication. Hanamelk gave a slow, deep nod. Nevchaned turned back to Dandra.

“We want to know why Erimelk might want to attack you and your friends,” he said.

Dandra fought down her suspicions of Dah’mir’s hold over the kalashtar. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose,” she said. “Erimelk looked like he could have attacked anyone. What happened to him?”

Nevchaned hesitated-and when he spoke again, he didn’t answer her question. “Tetkashtai, did he do or say anything unusual in the attack?”

She looked at him sharply. “Aside from the attack itself, the only unusual thing was the way you whisked him away afterward. What are you hiding? What do you know about Erimelk’s madness?”

Nevchaned’s expression didn’t change-but Selkatari’s did. Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a strange thing to say. It almost sounds like you know something about it.”

Dandra could have bitten her tongue, but she pushed her argument, attacking before she could be forced to defend. “And you sound even more like you have something to hide!”

“Enough, Selkatari!” Nevchaned said

But the wiry woman was already rising from her seat. “You don’t know what we face-”

“And neither do we.” Hanamelk reached out and put a hand on Selkatari’s arm, drawing her back down into her seat. He calmed the elders with a hard glance then looked at Dandra. “So you know,” he said. “The council of elders does hide something. What about you, Tetkashtai? Do you know more than you say?”

Dandra’s heart beat fast. She kept her mouth closed, trying to think what to do or say. She didn’t want to lie to the elders any more than she had to, but she didn’t want to give away too much either. “You have an advantage over me,” she said. “I’ve been away, and I’ve come back to fear in Fan Adar and a kalashtar mad in the street. Tell me what you know. Maybe I can add something to it.”

Hanamelk considered her as Selkatari fumed, then looked to Nevchaned again. “Tell her,” he said.

Nevchaned’s worn face drew tight, but he nodded and turned to meet Dandra’s gaze directly. “Erimelk,” he said, “isn’t the first kalashtar in Fan Adar to go mad. Over the last month, there have been seven others, all of them violent. We’ve had to restrain them to keep them harming themselves-or others.”

Dandra’s heart felt cold. “There have been other attacks?”

“Your Aundairian friend was lucky,” said Selkatari. “He’s still alive. Ten kalashtar and Adarans are dead. One of the mad kalashtar took her own life before we could stop her. Three others may have done the same.”

“What?” Dandra asked. She looked from Selkatari, to Nevchaned, to Hanamelk. “How could this be happening? How could you hide that from the people of Fan Adar?” She blinked. “What about the authorities? Does the Sharn Watch know?”

“No,” said Nevchaned. “Kalashtar deal with kalashtar problems.” He looked vaguely guilty. “But the people of Fan Adar know about the murders and the madness. We couldn’t have hidden that.”

Dandra’s brows drew together. “What are you hiding then?” she asked.

Nevchaned turned pale. “The song,” he said. “We’re trying to hide the song.”

“The … song?” Dandra repeated. The strange tune that Erimelk had sung as he regained consciousness-the song that Nevchaned had moved quickly to silence-came back to her. She tried to recall the melody. “Aahyi-ksiksiksi-?”

The elders drew back from her like a flock of birds parting before the attack of a hawk. “Don’t!” said Nevchaned.

Dandra fell silent and stared at him and all around.

The old kalashtar shook his head. “Two things connect all of those who have fallen mad. One of them is the song. What you heard Erimelk sing is only a pale reflection of what remained of his mind. The song consumed him.”

“Madness that’s caused by a song?” Shock knotted Dandra’s gut. “Does the song spread the madness?”

“We don’t know,” said Nevchaned. “We don’t think so. Many among the elders have heard the song, and we’re not mad yet. But the song and the madness are linked. That’s why we try to suppress it.”

“You said two things connected the kalashtar who fell mad,” Dandra said. “What’s the other?”

Hanamelk interrupted Nevchaned’s answer. “Maybe that’s something you should see for yourself,” he said.

He gestured and, from the back of the room, an old woman rose and came forward. Dandra recognized her with a slight shiver of dread. Her name was Shelsatori. Tetkashtai hadn’t known her well, but Medala had-Shelsatori had taught her some of her most potent psionic powers. Dandra stood and bowed respectfully to the old woman. Shelsatori barely seemed to notice, but just looked at her wearily.

There was no warning, no tentative touch of kesh . All at once, Shelsatori was inside Dandra’s head-not probing or tearing as Medala had once done to Dandra, but simply present much as Tetkashtai had been present. Shelsatori paused as someone who stands at the threshold of a door, then stepped aside.

Sound filled Dandra’s head, a kind of crystalline ringing that rose and fell in a song without words. The notes were inhumanly clear and pure, like glass and gems and drops of silver tumbling together in an unending cascade. No physical voice or instrument could have produced those tones. If she’d tried to sing them, they probably would have come out from her throat just as they had from Erimelk’s. Aahyi-ksiksiksi-kladakla-yahaahyi-

The longer she listened, though, the more it seemed that her mind became lost in the intricacies of the song. It turned her back on herself, dragging her down and lifting her up, and it became wilder, darker. Emotions stirred in her. Violent emotions. A need to hurt. A need to kill. And just when she thought she would die herself if she couldn’t kill, the song seemed to condense, offering her a target for her violence-or rather, targets. Three familiar faces swam in the song.

Her, Singe, and Geth.

She almost fell over as the song vanished from her mind along with Shelsatori’s presence. She had to grab for her chair to keep her balance, and it took a moment before she remembered where and who she was. Sweat was cool on her face and arms, and she was trembling. The song lingered like a bad memory, and it was all Dandra could do to offer thanks to il-Yannah that it was someone else’s memory.

“She has seen,” said Shelsatori calmly and turned to return to her seat. Dandra looked up at Nevchaned.

“We don’t know where it comes from, and no one has been able to break its hold. The seers among us-” He nodded at Hanamelk. “-have meditated on the source of the song and found nothing. We thought that it might be the work of our enemies in Riedra, but not even Havakhad was able to sense any hint of new plots among the Inspired. Your face was our only clue until today when you appeared with the Aundairian. Who is the shifter?”

“A friend, but a long way from here.” Dandra sank down into her chair. She could feel the eyes of every elder in the room on her. “Light of il-Yannah. The song was meant to drive its victims to kill us, but without us here, they could only turn on others.”

“We’d assumed as much as well,” said Hanamelk. He hesitated, then added. “The danger hasn’t ended with Erimelk’s capture. The victims appear in sequence. One is subdued and restrained, but a few days later the song comes to someone new.”