Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

Nevchaned looked away from his friend with helpless anger written on his face.

“Poor bastard,” muttered Singe. A memory-one of Tetkashtai’s memories-came to Dandra of a service the scribe had once done for her creator, an illuminated page decorated with beautiful jewel-toned inks. Rage at Dah’mir or whoever had inflicted the killing song on Nevchaned and the other kalashtar of Sharn filled her.

“Is he still violent?” she asked.

“When he notices us, he probably will be,” said Hanamelk. “The chains are short, though.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” Dandra raised her chin and stepped into the room.

There was no change in Erimelk’s expression or in the tone of his song. Dandra knelt cautiously at the foot of the pallet and spoke his name. “Erimelk?” He didn’t respond. She probably would have been more surprised if he had. Dandra drew a breath, reached into herself, and pushed her mind toward his in the link of kesh .

It was like sinking into thick cream. There was no resistance, and the world vanished around her-leaving her utterly surrounded by the killing song. The cascading sounds were all that she could hear and somehow, all that she could see. It was so sudden, she almost screamed.

She bit back her fear. She could escape this if she needed to. These weren’t her thoughts. The killing song wasn’t in her, it was in Erimelk. She pushed deeper. Just as it had been in the memories Shelsatori had shared with her, the song was inhumanly pure and maddeningly intricate, building toward dark urges of violence. Dandra tried calling Erimelk’s name again, this time within the confines of his mind. Erimelk?

She might has well have shouted in the middle of a thunder storm. There was no response-at least not from Erimelk.

Like lightning splitting a storm, images burst out of the song along with a wave of violent hatred. Visions of her and of Singe, the targets toward which Erimelk had been directed. To Dandra’s surprise, though, there were also fragments of recent memories, something she hadn’t seen in what Shelsatori had shown her. Erimelk’s joy at spotting his targets. Blissful release as he attacked. A terrible anger at his failure-

Buffeted by the song, Dandra snatched at the last fragment and examined it more closely. There was something odd about it. Anger-but not the disappointment or anguish she would have expected from Erimelk’s tormented mind.

The shattered memory was his and yet not his, much as the memories she had inherited from Tetkashtai were hers and yet not hers. If Dandra hadn’t known that Erimelk had not possessed a psicrystal, she would have guessed that to be the source of the memory.

But he hadn’t possessed a psicrystal. Someone or something else had ridden with him.

Was it Dah’mir? Dandra braced herself and reached out into the roaring, cascade of the song. She let it wash over her and listened-listened hard-for a voice that had become too horribly familiar to her. There was a particular sensation that accompanied Dah’mir’s dominating presence, a lingering cold that suffocated thought. She’d felt it each time she’d confronted the dragon. She’d felt in Tzaryan Keep, moments before Tzaryan Rrac had led them into Dah’mir’s ambush. She’d felt it in the minds of the sailors on Lighting on Water , when Dah’mir’s power-weaker in humans, but still strong enough to command immediate obedience-had kept them trapped aboard the ship in Zarash’ak’s harbor.

She didn’t feel it in the killing song. There was something there, something elusively familiar, but it wasn’t Dah’mir.

The realization pierced her with a numbing fear. She pulled herself back from the song and slid along the link of kesh to her own body like someone following a rope in darkness. As if it had finally realized an intruder had entered its domain, the song rose and ripped at her, crystal tones tearing into her mental self. Something turned sluggishly within the storm, and Dandra felt a fleeting moment of terrible exaltation brush her mind. You!

She burst out of the kesh and fell back into herself, but the scream followed her. Something snapped across her jaw, and she tumbled backward, stunned. She caught a quick glimpse of Erimelk stretched out on his sleeping pallet, chains and arms stretched tight as he kicked at her and screamed around his gag, then hands seized her and pulled her clear. Voices came back to her, cutting through Erimelk’s shrieks in her ears and the echoes of the killing song in her mind. “I thought you said the chains were short!”

“They are short!”

“Dandra? Dandra!”

Ashi, Nevchaned, and Singe. She blinked and glanced up at them. Ashi had her sword out and looked ready to kill. Nevchaned and Hanamelk looked startled. Singe just looked concerned, though relief passed over his face when he saw her eyes focus on him. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She sat up. Her jaw ached where Erimelk had kicked her. The mad kalashtar was still screaming and spitting, though at least he was howling curses instead of the killing song. One of his arms bent at a strange angle. He’d dislocated his shoulder in his struggles. There was no sign of the lassitude that had held him before. She was glad he was still chained. “How long was I in kesh?”

“Long enough that we were starting to worry,” Singe said. “What happened? One moment Erimelk was quiet, the next he was doing everything he could to reach you.”

“I was inside him too long, or maybe I pushed too deep.” She looked to Hanamelk and Nevchaned. “It’s not Dah’mir. I know his touch and this isn’t it. Your guess was right-something else is causing the song.”

Hanamelk’s lips pressed together. “I’d rather I’d been wrong.”

“Well, you’re not.” With Singe’s help, Dandra climbed to her feet. “What do we do now?”

Somewhere above, the chime of Nevchaned’s shop door rang. Nevchaned ignored it. “We’re going to have to go back to the council of elders,” he said. “This is going to frighten some of them-they hoped we’d found all of our answers.”

“I hoped we’d found all our answers,” Dandra said. “Which do you think the elders will feel more threatened by, the killing song or Dah’mir?”

Nevchaned and Hanamelk glanced at each other. “The killing song,” Hanamelk answered. “They know it’s a threat. They see it in front of them. It may be infecting another kalashtar right now. But Dah’mir …” He shook his head. “You’ve put a compelling case before us, Dandra, but we don’t know anything yet. Maybe Havakhad and the seers will find something. For now, there’s no immediate danger. Dah’mir hasn’t moved against us yet. He may not move against us for weeks or months.”

“You can’t wait until he strikes!” said Singe. The wizard’s angry words were partly drowned out by Erimelk’s screams and by a new series of rapid, insistent chimes from above. Nevchaned’s face flushed dark. He reached out and jerked the door of the storeroom shut, dampening one source of noise.

“We know!” he said. “But if we have to choose between something that threatens our community now and something that may threaten us weeks from now, we have to deal with the urgent threat.”

“You’ve warned us. We’ll be ready,” Hanamelk added. “But what is there we can do until we know more? We may seem like a large community, but we’re not. We don’t have the resources to fight two dangers we only barely understand.”

“You have us,” Ashi said. “Help us to find Dah’mir and-”

She didn’t finish. The chimes from the shop ended and replaced by a loud impact and the sound of splintering. Nevchaned’s eyes went wide. “My shop!”