Peter Brett - The Skull Throne

The young priestess kept her dignity as she rose. Her quick strides to the door were not quite a scurry.

As the latch clicked shut, Leesha put her head back in her hands.

Amanvah had a queer look about her as she climbed into the motley coach. Rojer had become accustomed to her moods, reading them in her eyes and bearing as easily as he did with the corelings.

But no empathy could tell him what Amanvah was thinking now. Her manner was unprecedented, showing nothing of her usual haughtiness. She seemed almost shaken.

Rojer reached for her hand. “Are you all right, my love?”

Amanvah returned the squeeze. “All is well, husband. I am simply frustrated.”

Rojer nodded, though he knew how frustration looked on Amanvah, and this wasn’t it.

“Mum still won’t see reason?” Kendall asked.

“Surely Mistress Leesha has convinced her,” Sikvah said.

“Wouldn’t count on that,” Rojer said. “She may not openly oppose it, but Leesha ent thrilled about the idea, either.”

“It remains to be seen,” Amanvah said. “Mistress Leesha appears willing to mediate the contract, but I am not convinced she is impartial. She may drive the dower beyond our ability to pay.”

“Don’t care about any dower,” Kendall said. “Let me talk to her …”

Amanvah shook her head. “Absolutely not. It is not proper for you to involve yourself in these proceedings, little sister.”

“Ay, so everyone gets a say in my marriage but me?” Kendall said.

Rojer had to laugh at that. “Had more say than me. Wasn’t even asked if I wanted it.” When Kendall stared at him, he quickly added, “Though of course I do. Sooner, the better.”

“This is exactly why both of you must be kept above the debate,” Amanvah said. “You will both see the contract before you are asked to sign, but hearing your flaws laid bare as the haggling continues can only do harm. As it is written in the Evejah, The cold of negotiating a marriage can douse the fires in which it must burn. ”

Kendall sighed. “Just tired of having to sleep at my mum’s. Don’t care about some piece of paper.”

Rojer walked in the naked night, his warded cloak thrown back despite the chill air. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with winter’s bite. He had suffocated in that cloak for too long.

Rojer and Kendall played an easy melody on their fiddles, subtly nudging corelings in the area away, while Amanvah and Sikvah sang a harmony to make them invisible to demon senses.

There were five of them in all. Kendall and Sikvah at the rear, joined in their music like lovers. He and Amanvah were similarly linked. He could feel her voice resonating inside him, more intimate than the touch of their sexes. All four played the same piece, but Amanvah’s voice was led by Rojer’s fiddle, while Sikvah followed Kendall’s. This allowed them to break in two as needed, the blend of strings and voice enhancing each other’s power. Ahead strode Coliv, vigilant, shield and spear at the ready.

They carried no light—the world lit by magic. Rojer and Kendall wore motley warded masks Amanvah and Sikvah had made, allowing them to see its glow. The princesses wore delicate gold nets in their hair, dangling warded coins that offered the same power. Amanvah had sewn the sight wards into Coliv’s turban and veil that he might accompany them.

They walked until they found their favorite practice spot, a wide knoll that let them see far in every direction. Coliv was atop it in an instant, surveying the land. He gave sign all was clear, and the others followed.

When they were in position, Rojer lifted bow from string, his fiddle and Amanvah’s voice falling silent as one.

Kendall nodded, changing the easy melody that kept the demons at bay to a call that reached far into the night, drawing corelings to them with promise of easy prey. Sikvah kept singing, her voice still masking their presence.

Wind demons were the first to reach them, two of the creatures circling down from above. Kendall drew them close, and then her music suddenly shifted. Sikvah smoothly dropped her masking spell, joining her voice to Kendall’s music, and the demons shifted in midflight, colliding with one another and falling from the sky in a jumble of snapping beaks and slashing talons. They struck the ground so heavily Rojer almost could hear their hollow bones shattering.

He and Amanvah applauded, and Kendall and Sikvah bowed as he had taught them.

“Field demons to the west,” Coliv called. The reap was small, only five of the beasts, but five field demons could rend them to pieces in seconds.

Both women were calm as they turned to regard the approaching threat. Already Sikvah had resumed her song of unsight, masking the five humans atop the hill from the demons’ senses as surely as a warded cloak.

As the reap came in, pulled by Kendall’s insistent call, she knit her brow and layered another melody over the first, wracking them with pain. Sikvah layered a harmony to match, keeping them hidden even as she added power to Kendall’s attack.

Rojer’s hand clenched on the neck of his fiddle as the demons closed, remembering the night she had been cored because of his failing.

But Kendall had been out in the naked night without him many times since, and it was time to stop coddling her.

“Too easy,” he called, as Kendall set the corelings fighting. “Any two-klat Jongleur with one of my music sheets can make demons fight each other.” It wasn’t entirely true, but Kendall was still being timid in her harmony with Sikvah. She needed to push herself.

Kendall smiled at him. “Ay? How about if they fight themselves?”

She twisted the music like a knife in a wound, and the field demons turned their teeth and talons upon themselves. First Kendall made them claw their own eyes, leaving them stumbling blind in agony and rage. Soon after she had them lying on their backs, biting and clawing at themselves in a frenzy until the sheer number of wounds overwhelmed them. Hot, stinking ichor, glowing bright with magic, pooled like syrup around them.

After a few moments, only one of the demons was still kicking. It was a thickly armored creature, the leader of the reap. Kendall eased her melody away, and it leapt to its feet, wounds already beginning to close. In minutes it would be fully healed, and those milky blind eyes would see once more.

Kendall gave it no time. She reached out tendrils of music, catching the demon fast and leading it in a blind charge right into an exposed rock face on the hilltop. It stumbled back, shrieking, but Kendall might as well have had it on a string, using the demon’s own legs to smash its head back into the stone. Again and again, until there was only a wet slapping sound and the creature collapsed, its skull smashed.

Rojer gave a shrill whistle to accompany their applause. Even Coliv banged his spear on his shield. But then he pointed. “Flame demons coming from the south. Wood from the east.”

Rojer looked and saw the approaching corelings, still a few moments away. “Fiddle down, Kendall. Amanvah and Sikvah’s turn.”

Amanvah glided over to join Sikvah, her voice lifting and falling naturally into Sikvah’s song of unsight, weaving in a song of summoning.

Kendall was smiling proudly as she came to Rojer, pressing right up against him. He felt his heart quicken and his face flush. It took little, these days, for his apprentice to excite him. She was a whole new person to him now.

“You’ll soon be as good as me,” Rojer said, meaning it.

Kendall kissed his cheek. “Better.”

“From your lips to the Creator’s ears,” Rojer said. “I’d have it no other way.”

The flame demons came racing up the hill, but before they could reach the top, his wives seduced them. Rojer tried other words to describe it, but none was so apt. The corelings circled Amanvah and Sikvah, giving off a soft, rhythmic noise that sounded disturbingly like purring.