Mercedes Lackey - The Eagle And The Nightingales

The room grew grey and dim, and faded away at the edges as she moved her vision into that other world where shadows were solid and restless spirits dwelled. She could still see Theovere, but now_

Now there were two of him.

One was in the bed, the other standing at the foot of the bed, an expression of fear and frustration on his face. And hovering above the Theovere in the bed was_something.

It wasn't human, not precisely. There was a certain odd cast to the face, as if the structure of the skull was subtly different from a humans. The red eyes were slanted obliquely toward the temples. The fingers were too long and there were seven of them; the limbs looked oddly jointless. It had the pointed ears of an Elf, but It wasn't an Elf, either. At the moment, It was watching Theovere, and it was enjoying his plight.

"Can you See anything?" she whispered to T'fyrr, and she described what she Saw. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him shake his head.

"Only the shadow," he replied. "I will trust you to know what to do."

I only wish I did! she thought; but they were in it now, and there was no turning back. Whatever It was, It didn't seem to be paying any attention to her or her music. It also wasn't doing much_except to keep Theovere from reentering his own body. Which meant_what?

That It's probably not all that powerful. That I'm not reaching It. But I'm not really trying. Think, Nightingale! What do you do when you have to reach an audience and you don't know what they want?

You try something so beautiful they can't ignore it .

She heard It speaking now, faintly; It taunted Theovere with his plight and his helplessness, playing with the symbols of his power that It conjured up into Its own hands. It didn't have the real crown, rod, or sword, of course_but Theovere didn't know that.

Her hands moved of themselves on the strings, plucking out the first chords of "The Waterfall," one of the most transcendently beautiful songs she knew. She didn't do it often, because she didn't have the range to do it justice.

But T'fyrr did.

She poured her heart into the harping, and he his soul into the music_and It snapped Its narrow head around, affixing them with its poppy-red eyes, as the ephemeral Objects of State vanished into the nothingness from which they had been conjured.

It said nothing, though, until after they had finished the song.

"What are you doing here?" It asked in a voice like wet glue.

She started to answer_then stopped herself just in time. To answer It might put herself in Its power; Its primary ability must be to drive a spirit from the body, then keep that spirit from reentering. It might be able to do that to more than one person at a time. But the Laws of Magic were that It could not do so if It did not know her; It must have been fed what It needed to take Theovere, but she was a stranger to It. It needed a connection with her to find out what tormented her .

So instead, she started a new song hard on the heels of "The Waterfall," and followed that one with a third, and a fourth.

I have to make It go away, and I can't do that by driving It away. It's already here by coercion . The longer It stayed silent, listening to her, the more she sensed those shadow-bindings, deeper into the shadow-world than It was, that kept It blocking Theovere's return. But the bindings were light ones; It could break them if It chose.

So It was here because It liked being here. It enjoyed tormenting people.

Well, so had the Skull Hill Ghost, but Rune and then Robin had tamed the thing, showing it_what?

All the good things of the human spirit! All the things that give life joy instead of pain!

And her hands moved into the melody of "Theovere and the Forty-Four," one of the songs that she and T'fyrr had used to try and wake the High King up to his former self.

It was a moving tale of courage and selflessness, all the more moving this time because the Theovere-spirit listened, too, and wept with heartbreak for what he had been and no longer was. He was in a place and a position now where he could no longer lie to himself_and very likely, that was one of the things his captor had been tormenting him with. The truth, bare and unadorned, and equally inescapable.

He has looked into the mirror and seen a fool .

She sensed T'fyrr pouring his own high courage into the song, the courage that had sustained him while captive, the courage that made him go out and try to do something to remedy the ills he saw around him. And while she did not think that courage was particularly her strong suit, she added her own heart, twined around his.

She saw Its eyes widen; saw the maliciousness in them fade, just a little, and moved immediately to "Good Duke Arden." The Theovere-spirit continued to weep, bent over with its face in both its ephemeral hands, and the Shadow softened a little more.

But she sensed just a hint of impatience.

Change the mood. It's getting bored .

She moved through the entire gamut of human emotions: laughter, courage, self-sacrifice, simple kindness, sorrow and loss. Always she came back to two: love, and courage. And with each song they sang, she and T'fyrr, with their spirits so closely in harmony that they might have been a single person with two voices, It softened a little more, lost some of Its malicious evil, until finally there was nothing of evil in It anymore. Just a weariness, a lack of hope that was not quite despair, and a vast and empty loneliness.

That was when she thought she knew something of Its nature. It was a mirror that reflected whatever was before It_or a vessel, holding whatever was poured into It. It was as changeable as a chameleon, but deep inside It did have a mind and heart of Its own, and she seemed to be touching It.

Her hands were weary, and her voice had taken on that edge of hoarseness that warned her it was about to deteriorate. And under T'fyrr's brave front, she felt bone-tiredness.

If ever we can drive this thing away_no, lead it away! _ it must be now!

So she changed the tune, right in the middle of "Aerie," to one of the simplest songs she had ever learned:

"The Briars of Home."

It was the lullaby of an exile to her child, singing of all the small things she missed, all of them in her garden. The smell of certain flowers in the spring; the way that the grass looked after the rain. The taste of herbs that would not grow where she was now. The leaves falling in autumn; the snow covering the sleeping plants in winter. The songs of birds that would not fly in her new garden. The feel of the soil beneath her hands, and the joy of seeing the first sprouting plants. And the homesickness, the bittersweet knowledge that she would never experience any of those tiny pleasures again, for all that she was happy enough in the new land. And last of all_how she would give all of the wealth she possessed in the new place for one short walk in her own garden at home.

And as the last notes fell into silence, It spoke to her for the second and last time.

"I have a garden."

And with those four words, It snapped the coercions binding It, and vanished.

But Theovere did not return to his body; instead, he stood there staring at it, empty-eyed and hollow. He looked old, terribly old; he stood with hanging hands, stooped-over and defeated.

What's wrong? Why won't he wake?

She stretched out her already thin resources to him, trying to sense what was wrong. But she had nothing left; she could not touch him, and her own spirit cried out in frustration_

T'fyrr began to sing. Softly at first, a song she did not recognize initially, until she realized that he was singing it in a translation so that Theovere would understand it. It was not from any of the Twenty Kingdoms, and she doubted that anyone here had ever heard it but herself before this moment. It was a song T'fyrr had told her had been written by and for the Spirit-Brothers.