The Singers of Nevya (93 page)

Cho’s blow struck her an instant later. He must have known, have sensed what she was doing, and how it would weaken her. Protecting the itinerant taxed her strength to the utmost. She struggled for breath through a surge of nausea, fighting to focus her mind under the pressure of his attack. She saw nothing, heard nothing, but grappled desperately with the reckless force that was Cho the carver. She threw her inhibitions aside and struck at him, trying to break his hold on her and on the itinerant.

She failed. Her knees bent, and she grew dizzy, the floor tilting beneath her feet. She flung out her arms to orient herself.

Cho was too strong, and she was stretched too thin. Her shielding wavered, and she sent frantically,
Oh, Theo! I cannot hold . . . I am sorry . . .

But before she broke, her groping hand found Zakri’s shoulder, and her mind melded with his. Their shields joined, firmed and thickened, twining like the irontree suckers to make a whole greater than their individual strengths. It was Zakri who fired a burst of energy at Cho, as strong a volley as he could muster. Cho’s attack collapsed under it. Sira’s head abruptly cleared.

The itinerants Klas and Shiro flanked Cho in the doorway to the Cantoris. Cho’s lean face was wet with sweat, but he was unhurt, and his eyes dazzled black with fury.

“You can’t do this to me!” he hissed through the murky darkness.

“We are doing it!” Zakri exclaimed. “Look around you! It is as dark as night in this House. Give it up, Carver!”

For answer, Cho paced to the staircase and reached up past the banister to seize the
filhata
from the itinerant. The man cowered, shrinking from Cho.

“Elnor will sing,” Cho snarled, “or she will die!”

Sira took two steps toward the Cantoris, keeping her wary eye on Cho.
Cantrix Elnor? Are you all right?
There was no answer. Cho moved behind her, and Sira hurried to reach the doorway before he did.

Elnor slumped on the dais where the itinerants had left her. She had fallen from the stool, and her hair spread in gray wisps on the floor about her head. She was not moving, and she sent nothing. Sira caught her breath.

The sound of
filla
came again in the upper corridor and in the hallway, threatening to undo their work. Theo still struggled from the west wing, but it was too much for any one Cantor to hold his own against the itinerants.

We must stop them!
Sira ran into the Cantoris and leaped onto the dais, leaving Zakri stationed in the hall. Sira knelt beside Elnor, and began again, drawing in the light, fighting back the efforts of the Singers to repair the
quiru
. Zakri did the same. They drew in their shields as well, keeping them close and strong. Cho flailed at Zakri, then at Sira, but it did him no good.

The House members had fled to their own apartments to wrap themselves and their children in layers of fur, to hide under rugs to stave off the deep cold. The various sounds of the itinerants’
filla
faltered and died, and they, too, ran for the slender shelter of furs in their rooms.

Cho swore foully, and raced up the staircase.

Sook felt the cold seep into her little room from the top down, as if someone had lifted the roof off the House. She had no furs, but she threw her bedfur around her shoulders and ran to the windowseat to look down into the courtyard.

Below on the steps she saw Sira spread her arms, and saw the faint glow of
quiru
light around the walls of the House dim and vanish. Sook’s lips stretched in a furious smile. “At last!”

She flew to her door and pounded on it. “Bree!” she cried. “Bree! Let me out! I want to see this, oh, please—Bree!”

The bolt rattled on the other side, and she pulled the door open to see Bree, her lips and nostrils white with fear, on the other side. “We’re all going to freeze to death!” she moaned, and ran out of the apartment before Sook could answer.

Sook was close at her heels, seeing the darkness closing in on the House, the corridors dim and treacherous, the stones of the floor already frigid with the loss of warmth. Sook laughed aloud, triumphantly. She ran to the staircase and looked down.

Bree passed Cho on his way up. She glanced back once, hesitating a moment, but her fear was too great, and she fled toward her own room. Cho’s lip curled when he saw Sook. The glitter in his eyes was the only light in the corridor.

“Well, little Sook,” Cho cried. “Now it’s just you and me!”

Her heart fluttered in her throat, but she stood as straight as she could. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” she cried. “Singer Zakri will see you get what’s coming to you!”

“Singer Zakri? Singer?” Cho laughed and seized her arm. “You fool! That’s no Singer at all! Your Singer Zakri is a full-fledged Cantor!”

Sook felt suspended in the darkness, with nothing to hold on to. She staggered under his hand. “What?” she whispered. “You lie! You’re a liar!”

Cho tittered, peering down at her face through the gloom. “I have no problem with lying,” he said softly, squeezing her thin wrist, wrenching it upward. “But there’s no need. You think he’s for you, don’t you, my girl? For you, a cook?”

“Zakri—Zakri’s not—” she faltered.

“Oh, yes!” he crowed. “Zakri is! Zakri is Cantor Zakri, and no mate for you or for anybody!” His braid swung across his chest, and he threw it back, out of his way. He dragged her back down the corridor to the apartment, opening the door with his free hand. “So we’ll just see how he likes this!” he exclaimed. He forced her across the room, flinging her into his own bedroom, slamming the door and shooting the bolt from the inside.

Sook stumbled over a stool and fell her length on the stone floor. Her head snapped back, striking the edge of the bedframe. A rushing filled her ears and she sank into a gray fog.

When she came to, Cho’s body pressed hers into the soft furs of his bed, and he breathed sour gusts into her nostrils. His head lifted slightly, and his eyes narrowed. They were directed at her, but not seeing her. She knew that look—the itinerant Singers had suffered when he had that look. But she had no Gift to feel it! What was he doing? Who was he trying to hurt?

His hand gripped the collar of her tunic and he ripped it from neck to hem.

“O Spirit!” Zakri cried. He was still in the hallway, leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, his shields strong. Cho was sending him an image, a powerful scene that no shielding could shut out. Sook was on his bed, Sook with her head lolling, her face pale. Zakri tried to evade it, to disbelieve it, but Cho was in his mind, fastened to it with a tenacious strength worthy of a
tkir
. He was the
tkir
, Cho was, just as in Zakri’s dreams. And he had Sook in his claws, tearing her tunic away from her body. This was no imagined deed, no empty threat. The sharp edge of reality made it vivid. Zakri gritted his teeth and his breath came fast.

He sent
Theo! I need your help! It is Sook—in Cho’s apartment! We must hurry!

Zakri ran, ignoring the cries and shouts from all over the House. He leapt up the stairs as fast as he could go, skidding at the top on the cooling stone. He raced down the hall toward Cho’s apartment, bursting into it with a crash of the outer door.

The inner door was closed and barred. Zakri pounded on it with his fist, then pulled back his booted foot to kick it in. He heard Sook cry out in fear and pain, and he struck out with a blow of psi, hoping Cho was too occupied to block it. It was a broad swipe, fully intended to do as much injury as possible.

His strike met a parry of shocking strength. Cho had learned fast. Instinctively, Zakri shielded his own mind. He would be no good to Sook if his mind were ruined before he could get to her. He kicked at the door instead, using all his strength. It cracked under his heel, but it did not give.

Cho shouted, “Cantor Zakri! I’m going to do it right now while you beat on my door, and I’m going to let you see and remember every moment—to entertain you in your lonely Cantoris!”

Zakri tried to close his mind to the image, but he could not escape it. Cho tore at Sook’s tunic until only the drape of her hair fell over her bare skin. He made Zakri watch, and feel the sinister pleasure he took in it. Zakri battered at the door again as Cho reached for Sook. He took a fistful of the fabric of her trousers and ripped it.

Zakri could bear it no more. With a convulsive thrust of energy, he broke the psi contact. He was kneeling by the door with his head in his hands when Theo dashed in, out of breath.

“What is it? What has happened?”

Zakri found that there were tears on his face as he looked up at the older Singer. “It is Sook—my friend—” He pointed to the cracked and splintered door. “She is there! You must help me, please!”

The bedroom lay in deep shadow. Sook blinked, thinking the blow on her head was still affecting her sight, and then, feeling the chill air strike her bare skin, she knew it was the failing
quiru
that made it hard to see. Cho leaned above her, and ripped her trousers from waist to knee with one hard jerk. She bared her teeth at him and he grabbed her hair, forcing her head up.

“Make plenty of noise, now, you little bitch,” he panted. “We want your Zakri to hear everything!” He pushed her down with his weight.

He was too heavy, and too big, for her to resist. She felt as small and weak as a
caeru
pup, pinned by his body, with no purchase for her hands, nothing to push against or pull on. His long body covered hers, one hand in her hair, the other reaching for the tatters of her trousers.

Her left hand battered uselessly on his shoulder. Her right grasped at the bedfurs, searching for something to hold on to, something to fight with. She moved it desperately, seeking, searching . . . at last, finding.

The hilt was in her hand, the haft smooth and worn under her fingers. The scabbard, slim and black and hard, was pressing into the flesh of her hip, and would leave its mark in a long bruise when this was over. It was almost over. She was all but naked, and Cho was fumbling with his own clothes now.

Sook pulled the blade free of the scabbard and gripped the hilt in her right hand. With her left she found the long braid that lay on Cho’s shoulder, and she pulled on it with all her might. His head twisted to her left, and he cursed with the pain of his pulled hair. When he lifted his arm, stretching to reach his plait and jerk it from her fingers, Sook did not hesitate. Just so had she spread the ribs of a
caeru
carcass, to carve the meat from the bones. When she thrust hard with the knife, it glanced upward, to his heart.

Cho gasped, and his body went rigid. His face above hers paled to the texture of glacial ice. When he released the breath, red, hot heart’s blood gushed out over her hand. She screamed, not in fear but in rage and triumph.

At that moment, with Theo helping to guard his mind, Zakri used his special talent, his kinetic psi, to shove back the bolt that held the door, and he and Theo burst into the room.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Mreen? Mreen? Child, where are you?”

She heard the call, and her soft little heart gave a twinge, but she could not stop now. She had waited for just this moment, when Berk was occupied with tack and
hruss
, to make her dash for the House. The boy’s misery was an ache in her mind, an insistent pull she could not ignore. Terrible things were happening in that House. She feared the boy might not survive them.

The thoughts and emotions of all the Gifted poured from the House, washed over the snow in a roiling deluge. She had to shield herself as strongly as she knew how, or find her own mind submerged in the flood. Much of what penetrated her shields was incomprehensible to her five-year-old mind. There was violence, that much she knew, and fear. And then there was the boy, whose own Gift was so undeveloped she could not even discover his name. He huddled in his room, weeping, shouting, anything to block out the chaos around him.

Boy! Boy!
she sent, trying to attract his attention.
Hold on. I am coming. Boy, listen!
But he could not sort her small voice from the cacophony, the sea of uncontrolled psi.

There was no path where she cut through the irontree groves, and in places the snowdrifts were too deep for her short legs. She had to wade through them, sometimes having to get on all fours and crawl over the top of the snow. She grew hot and damp under her furs.

Slowly she made her way up the hill, reaching the crest just as Soren’s
quiru
began to collapse. Twilight blanketed the surrounding hills in a violet haze, and Mreen shivered in her furs, watching it, though she was not really cold. She cast a glance behind her, hearing Berk call her name again and again.

I am sorry,
she sent to him, though she knew he could not hear her.
I will be back soon.

She hurried on. By the time she forded the crusted snow to reach the beaten snowpack of the courtyard she was breathless. She ran as fast as her aching short legs could carry her.

Soren lay in a muddy darkness. Mreen shuddered to see one of Nevya’s great Houses without any gleam of
quiru
light shining from its windows, no comforting glow crowning its peaked roofs. It was an apocalyptic vision, the realization of the deepest fear of any child of Nevya. Mreen lowered her eyes, avoiding it. She clenched her small fists and raced over the unswept cobblestones and up the broad steps to the front doors.

One of the doors was ajar, left open by someone in a hurry. Mreen hesitated on the step, hating to put her foot into the dark hall. The swirl of psi around her, around the entire House, had not abated, but intensified. Somewhere, on the upper level, she sensed that the final confrontation was taking place. Her mind shied away from that conflict as her hand might pull back from a hot flame. She sought the boy instead, closing her eyes and concentrating, calling out for him, although she supposed he still would not understand.

Boy! Boy! Where are you? I am trying to find you!

“What in the name of the Spirit—”

Mreen opened her eyes and looked up to see a large man with black hair looming above her. She took an involuntary step backward.