Lisa Shearin - Armed & Magical

“It was.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. Though there was a good chance that I’d scream later.

“What happened in there?” Mychael asked quietly.

I swallowed. “Nukpana tried to tell me that being bonded to the Saghred was a gift, not a curse. It wasn’t a very convincing argument. It’s also a discussion I’d rather not have with him again—in my body or out.” I looked from Mychael to Ronan. “Are you two ready to do what we came for and get the hell out of here?”

“More than ready,” Mychael said. He looked at Ronan. “Sir?”

In response, the maestro tossed aside his outer, merely flamboyant robe, exposing the inner, if at all possible, more outrageous robe. I guess it was the sort of thing a legendary spellsinger wore to a legendary stone of power figurative ass kicking. I didn’t know if Ronan Cayle was getting comfortable to sing, or getting unburdened by all that silk should running become necessary. Either one sounded like a good idea. But I didn’t want to be the one to tell the maestro that if the Saghred decided to fight back, his little brocade-booted feet weren’t going to do him any good.

“The melody is more effective in a lower range,” Ronan told Mychael. “You start. I’ll come in with the countermelody.”

“Is everyone able to shield themselves?” Mychael addressed the question to his Guardians and me.

I nodded. The Guardians responded by speaking their personal shields into place. I followed suit. We weren’t shielding ourselves against the Saghred; we were protecting ourselves against what Mychael and Ronan were about to do. I had no doubt that their sleepsong would be one of the most potent. We weren’t wayward souls, but it was still a sleepsong sung by a pair of masters. If we didn’t shield ourselves, we’d be on the floor snoring. With shields, we would still be able to hear the song, but the spell wouldn’t affect us.

Mychael began to hum, the softest, most soothing sound I’d ever heard. Even standing across from him, I could feel the sound resonating from deep in his chest. I could only imagine what it would feel like to be held there, listening to that sound, feeling that music. The humming resolved into whispered words, the syllables melding one into the next, the pitch low and constant and warm.

He had a deep, molten, luscious baritone that made me think of melted chocolate. Decadent and delicious, not to mention hypnotic. If that voice had been persuading me to go to sleep—or do anything else—I don’t think I’d have been able to resist. Hell, I don’t think I would have even tried.

I’d only heard Mychael’s singing in snippets. But I knew enough about spellsinging to know that his voice was doing some very intricate and impressive work. I couldn’t tell yet if the Saghred was impressed enough to be sleepy, but it made a fan for life out of me. The tune was simple and heartbreakingly beautiful, but it was the words of the spellsong that would have tripped up a lesser spellsinger.

Ronan’s tenor seamlessly merged with Mychael’s baritone, flowing underneath in a strong countermelody. Not surprisingly, I didn’t feel the same way about Ronan’s voice, but I knew enough about spellsinging to tell that his pipes more than matched his reputation.

Their spellduet was essentially a lullaby for one, soft and soothing. Volume wasn’t needed, just intensity.

I just wanted to stand there and bask in the rolling waves of scrumptious sound, but I had work to do. It was my job to see if Sarad Nukpana had stopped listening because he couldn’t keep his eyes open. I felt the Saghred begin to waver. The soft light illuminating the stone never changed, but what I sensed from it definitely did. It was working.

Then it wasn’t. Something or, more to the point, someone, was fighting back.

I’d give Mychael and Ronan three guesses and the first two didn’t count.

I saw Sarad Nukpana with others I had only seen through silver mist—his new friends, his allies. Only now they were just as solid as Nukpana himself. There were goblins and elves and humans, with a couple of creatures whose race or species I didn’t recognize. The evil inside the Saghred didn’t restrict itself to Sarad Nukpana. They were down, but they weren’t going out. I heard laughter, muffled but still mocking.

I didn’t want my voice to possibly disrupt what Mychael and Ronan were doing, but I made sure my expression spoke volumes. They knew as well as I did what was happening—and what was not happening. They were getting the message without my help. Professionals that they were, their spellduet never faltered.

Suddenly, a disembodied voice floated in the air around us, a voice of staggering strength and power, a baritone like Mychael. It was deep, vibrant, and impossible to ignore.

It was Piaras.

Maintaining one particularly glorious low note while Cayle’s tenor danced above it, Mychael indicated a small square opening, almost hidden in shadow near the ceiling. Of course, an air vent. I thought the containment rooms were sealed, but that was ridiculous. If they’d been sealed, we wouldn’t have been able to breathe. I assumed that like in most large buildings, the vent led to a network of tiny tunnels running throughout the citadel. Piaras was practicing on the citadel’s main floor in the music room. I recognized it as one of his sleepsongs. But unlike Mychael and Ronan, Piaras wasn’t singing a lullaby for one. The kid was trying to knock out a platoon. It was a sleepsong for use on a battlefield—and if we could hear it down here, so could the rest of the citadel.

Oh shit.

Magnified by the ducts, his voice was as hypnotic as Mychael’s—and as sleep inducing. I heard what sounded like a sigh of smug, sensual contentment from Sarad Nukpana. If the Saghred had been a cat, it would have been purring. I didn’t want the rock belligerent, but I didn’t want it happy, either. Piaras’s singing made it just a little too happy.

Then the Saghred simply drifted off to sleep. I felt like a lead weight had been lifted from the center of my chest. All sense of the Saghred was gone. I hadn’t felt this good in a long time.

Piaras’s voice went silent with the end of the spellsong. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but I couldn’t deny what he had done.

An untrained teenage spellsinger had just put the Saghred to sleep.

We ran up the stairs in what must have been record time. The wards on the containment levels had protected the Guardians there, but once the three of us reached the citadel’s main floor, Piaras’s handiwork was sprawled all around us.

Dammit.

Piaras knew to shield his voice when he practiced. More important, he knew how. I didn’t know what had happened here, but it couldn’t have been Piaras’s fault. I’d never seen Mychael that angry, and Ronan Cayle looked like he’d skipped angry and gone straight to enraged.

Dammit to hell.

We saw three kinds of Guardians on the way to the music room: asleep, stunned, and mostly awake. The asleep ones had been caught completely unawares. The stunned ones had probably heard a couple of notes before they could get their shields up. The mostly awake ones were the experienced Guardians who knew what they heard and immediately protected themselves.

There were way too few of those.

This morning I’d thought I was in trouble. I knew Piaras was in trouble.

The corridor in front of the music room looked like the aftermath of a bad bar fight or a good night out—some of the Guardians were snoring; some were happily curled on their sides; and one had slid down the closed music room doors. He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t quite with us, either.

Mychael stepped over the Guardians on the floor, pushed the dazed one aside, and flung open the doors. Piaras was there and, surprisingly, so was Phaelan.