Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

“We won’t be disturbed,” he said. “Come with me. Erimelk is”-his face wrinkled in distaste-“restrained in a storeroom below.”

“You don’t like restraining him?” Singe asked as Nevchaned led them to a staircase that descended through the floor to the living levels below. Nevchaned gave him a sideways glance.

“I know what is necessary,” he said. “Even if I don’t like it. Dandra said you were a veteran of the Last War?” Singe nodded and the old man sighed. “Then you’ve seen war torn-men and women who saw and did such things that although their bodies might have been whole, their minds and souls were wounded.”

Singe’s face wrinkled. “I’ve known war torn.”

“As have I. I learned my trade with Breland’s armies, sharpening their swords. A smith seldom sees battle directly, but I saw the aftermath of too many.” Nevchaned paused before a door at the bottom of the stairs. “Tell me, would you lock up someone who was war torn?”

“If they were violent,” Singe said. “House Deneith had some experience in dealing with mercenaries who’d become war torn. It’s better to try and bring them back into the unit-or the community. Often that’s the healing they need.”

“I think that’s what the victims of the killing song need as well. They’ve seen something in the killing song that breaks them.” He looked meaningfully at Hanamelk.

“The other elders don’t share this opinion?” Dandra asked.

“No,” Hanamelk answered.

Nevchaned shook his head. “Erimelk was my friend,” he said. “I’ve seen the war torn recover given time and care. I’ve never seen them recover when they’re shut in prisons.”

He pushed the door open. The apartment beyond, striped by the afternoon light that fell through the windows, was simple but clean. The air, however, was tainted by the sound of a muffled voice. At first, Dandra thought it was someone screaming, but then she realized it was someone singing hoarsely. It was wordless and largely tuneless, but definitely singing.

“We gag him,” Nevchaned said, “but he sings anyway.”

“Light of il-Yannah.” Dandra wanted to stick her fingers in her ears, not that it would have helped. The song seemed to penetrate right through her skull, bypassing her ears to take up residency in her head. Careful concentration dispersed the feeling. “How can you live with it? How can the other elders who hide the fallen kalashtar live with it?”

“Each new victim seems to act a bit differently, though there have been patterns,” said Hanamelk. “Recent victims fell quickly, but seemed to retain a certain cunning. Erimelk hid himself from us for days until you appeared. Earlier victims fell slowly, as if the song took time to have an effect, but when they became violent, they were mindless. The first to fall to the song that we knew of, Makvakri, was moody and sang quietly for a few days before she turned violent. Ultimately, she killed herself before we could intervene.”

“The first that you knew of?” Singe asked.

“We know of seven victims, but three kalashtar have been missing since nearly the same time that the song began.” Hanamelk folded his hands. “We think that they suffered a fate similar to Makvakri and took their own lives, although there was no sign of her slower degradation.”

Singe pressed his lips together. “If there is someone or something behind the killing song, it almost seems like they’ve been tuning the song like an instrument, trying to find the right pitch.”

“That’s an unpleasant way of putting it.”

“Veterans have a way of facing the unpleasant, Hanamelk,” Nevchaned said. “This way.”

The song grew louder as Nevchaned ushered them along a short corridor toward another set of stairs. Before they reached the stairs, however, another door opened along the corridor, and Moon stuck his head out. The young kalashtar was still dressed in the clothes he had worn the previous night, including the Brelish blue vest. His eyes looked red, as if he had just woken up. Maybe he had-Dandra caught a glimpse of displeasure in Nevchaned’s face. Moon’s gaze darted between them all, then settled on her. For a moment, she thought she saw something flash in his eyes. Heat spread across her cheeks, and she looked away.

The young man’s red eyes had been soft with adoration. Il-Yannah, Dandra thought incredulously, he’s in love with me? She tried to remember saying or doing anything at the Gathering Light that might have encouraged him. Maybe he’d liked the way she handled the elders or the un-kalashtar manner of her behavior. Either way, there was something distinctly odd in the way he’d stared. She almost felt a chill-not a bad chill, but a shiver of familiarity.

Moon looked like he was on the edge of speaking, but Nevchaned’s displeasure reached his tongue first. “When did you come in? I thought you were still out.”

“I got in late.” Moon’s voice was thick and slightly slurred. In spite of herself, Dandra glanced up. The softness had gone out of Moon’s eyes, replaced by a hardness as he looked back at his father. It was unusual for a kalashtar-even one so rebellious as Moon-to indulge in drink. Moon seemed so hostile that he reminded Dandra more of a young human, or even of Diad, Natrac’s half-orc son by Bava in Zarash’ak.

Nevchaned’s face tightened. “Wash and take yourself out again. You shouldn’t be here now.”

“Why?”

Dandra decided to interrupt the argument before it grew. Erimelk was close, and she wanted to examine him before his coarse chant of the killing song got on her nerves. “Because we’re going to try something that could be dangerous,” she said. She smiled at Moon. If he had somehow developed feelings for her, she wouldn’t hesitate to use them. “Go. There’s nothing for you to see here. Maybe we can talk later?”

Somewhat to her astonishment, the appeal worked. Moon looked at her, then dropped his eyes, folded his hands together and bent his head over them in a surprisingly traditional gesture. “Patan yannah.”

He stepped back into his room. Nevchaned shook his head and continued down the stairs. “You’d think that he was the first kalashtar to wear the blue of Breland,” he said.

“There aren’t many of you,” said Hanamelk. “And he’s both of the lineage of Chaned and your son. Ranhana thayava, Nevchaned.”

As the two kalashtar spoke, Ashi nudged Dandra. “I think Moon likes you.”

Dandra wrinkled her nose. “You noticed?”

“She wasn’t the only one,” Singe said, glancing back from ahead of her. “I saw-and I think Moon saw that I saw. Did you see the look that he gave me?” Dandra shook her head and Singe chuckled. “Like he was trying to burn stone. He’s jealous.”

Dandra muttered a curse under her breath. Ashi laughed.

Thoughts of Moon vanished as they stepped into the lower passage, an undecorated corridor with a few doors leading off of it. One of them had been barred with an iron rod. Erimelk’s muffled song came from behind it. Nevchaned slid the bar aside, then looked to Hanamelk and to Dandra. Hanamelk nodded. Dandra’s gut felt tight but she said, “Let me see him.”

Nevchaned opened the door. Dandra looked inside. The assortment of domestic goods that had once crowded the storeroom had been pushed to one side, making way for a thin sleeping pallet. Erimelk crouched on the pallet with his arms twisted behind his back and shackled to a ring driven into the wall. Bright metal still showed on the ring and Erimelk’s chains where Nevchaned’s hammer had scarred them.

Although Erimelk had been washed and his clothes changed since she’d seen him the day before, he somehow looked even worse than he had then. He was trembling, more from exhaustion, Dandra guessed, than fear or manic energy. He’d soiled himself, and the stench in the room was thick. Eyes that had been wild were dull, focused on something only he could see. The gag of twisted cloth that circled his jaw pulled his lips back in a hideous smile. It was soaked with saliva and where it had rubbed the corners of his mouth raw with blood. He still sang, the nonsense words of the killing song falling from his tongue in a broken cascade. “Aahyi-ksiksiksi-kladakla-yahaahyi-”