CHAPTER FIFTY
The Voice you hear inside
is mine
is ours.
It belongs to all and none at all.
It whispers louder than a scream and if
ignored it still continues
speaking.
—THE HARMONY OF BEING
Taking care not to touch it, Zeli unwrapped the king stone with her free hand. While all her old fears were excised when her Song had been restored, it was still possible for new ones to intrude. But after having felt the amazing freedom of fearlessness, she wasn’t eager to take on more anytime soon.
It had been difficult as the doubts intruded. Then the bitter sense of abandonment when Varten had fled. She’d struggled not to let the panic into its former place. She was still struggling as she placed her hand around the caldera, holding the Songs of her people.
Nothing happened when she touched it—it had not been created to respond to touch the way the one Yllis had made was. It was just a heavy, warm presence in her grip.
“I need to touch the obelisk,” she told Varten. “Hold onto my shoulder.” He complied, his fingertips grazing her collarbone. She shivered at the touch. He squeezed her lightly and she took a deep breath before placing her other hand on the obelisk.
Oola and Darvyn, the most powerful Singers alive, had reawakened this ancient caldera, though she could sense it only held a tiny fraction of its potential. Still, this was ancient magic and should be enough to do what she needed.
She concentrated on the Song within her, eager and thirsty and ready to be used. Connecting to Earthsong was second nature, even after mere days since her Song’s restoration. And as it turned out, using the obelisk was not all that difficult. Normally, she would pour Earthsong into her own Song the way you’d pour water from a pitcher into a glass. The obelisk vastly expanded the size of her glass. She felt as though she was linking with both Oola and Darvyn, wrangling their massive power under her control. The obelisk filtered and refined the power until she could wield it with pinpoint accuracy.
Words and spells recalled from Yllis’s journal came to mind. They hadn’t made much sense before, but now she understood. So much knowledge had been lost to time, so much had been impossible with so few able to retain their Songs and pass on the knowing. All she had to do to bring her voice to the ears of the people all around the city was to open her mouth and speak.
Her voice was carried on streams of invisible energy pulsing through across the distance. She spoke as Oola did to other Singers, not as sound on the eardrum, but as words in their mind. But not just those with Songs could hear her, everyone stopped to listen when the solitude of their inner thoughts was pierced with a foreign voice.
Even the wraiths paused their destruction, the human part of them thrown into shock at this mental intrusion. In basements and closets and rooms fortified with cement and iron, they all heard. And what’s more, due to the unusual way that she spoke to them, they did more than hear, they listened.
And this is what she said:
People of Elsira. People of Lagrimar. The True Father started a war five hundred years ago that divided us. It tore us apart and turned brother against sister, father against mother. Singer against Silent. He separated families and friends with the Mantle so that he could steal our magic for himself and subdue us. Right now, his army of the dead is tearing apart the land that we all originated from. He’s trying, once again, to take our home.
But we don’t have to let him. We can get our Songs back.
It may sound impossible, but a few moments ago, wouldn’t you have found my voice in your head impossible? You don’t know me, you have no reason to trust me, but please listen.
The True Father wants us divided. Now maybe the days of Singer and Silent living together side by side are over, and maybe they’re not, but today each of us has a choice. We can be transformed into armies for him, armies for hate and destruction and death, or we can form a new army. One working against him.
If you want to survive today and into the future, you have to sacrifice. We all do.
Magic requires a sacrifice. Earthsong, blood magic, all of it. Only this time, the sacrifice will have to come not from the magic users, but from you. From all of you.
What can you give up to save us?
All of you holding hands, seeking protection from the wraiths, look to the person next to you. Are they someone who you wouldn’t bother to speak to on the street? Someone who’s treated you badly, called you names, shut doors in your face? Someone you fear, who speaks a different language and has different customs and abilities?
Can you admit that the person you’re holding hands with right now might not be like you, but their presence in the chain is helping to keep you safe and alive? If you’re in a chain then you have an Earthsinger to thank. If you’re in a chain and the spirits are passing you by and not invading you, then don’t you owe it to yourself and those you care about to let go of your resentment, hatred, and bitterness?
Are you willing to release it in order to save your life? To save all of our lives?
In shelters in the city, Lagrimari refugees hold hands with Elsiran citizens. It is something neither of them would have chosen, had the world not been ending. But as it stands, with the deadly forms of enemy spirits filling the small, dark space, they dare not let go.
The girl’s voice begins speaking inside their heads, for a moment jarring those within the chain of protection enough that they almost let go. But one hand tightens on another, and the links in the chain remain intact.
The words spoken directly to their consciousnesses are accompanied by feelings, as if each of them are privy to all this mysterious girl’s hope and earnestness. A sense of freedom rushes through them that they haven’t felt since childhood. It’s exhilarating and a little frightening, if only because it will certainly go away, and they will long for it again.
An impression of peace—the kind of peace that seems unattainable once one is weaned off a mother’s teat—brushes over their senses and takes root in their hearts. This sensation is so different than anything they can recall feeling, that it has never occurred to them it could exist.
It draws a stark contrast to the bitterness and disappointment, the blame and jealousy which usually fill them. Which usually are directed against the person they’re holding hands with. They’ve grown up with hate, hearing all the usual complaints against the other person: they’re lazy or spoiled, untrustworthy or cruel, boorish or snobbish—the words have left stains that have seeped deep inside them. So deep they can never be cleaned … or can they?
For the words in their heads and the sensations brushing their souls reveal another way. Reveal that these long-held feelings and ideas are warped, that they are something separate from reality. A belief about a person is not that person. It is not the belief-holder, either.
These beliefs and these warped feelings can be let go.
Like a heavy burden set down.
Tears form in their eyes as this realization arises. They wonder how they can do what the voice asks of them, how can they let go of this weight they’ve carried since their memories began?
Their cheeks become wet with tears as this desire intensifies. Yes, they will give it up. Yes, they want this peace that is hinted at, even for a short time. Even if it will doubtless retreat back into the place where it hides.
They do not know that blood spells require intent, but it does not matter. Their tears leave their cheeks and lift into the air. The droplets hover over them, impervious to the hungry, diving spirits, careless of gravity and natural forces. The tears rise and hover, their clear translucence deepening and tinting to red.
They have never heard the word “caldera” before, they would not know what it means, and this, too, does not matter. Because they have chosen to listen, they have chosen to feel, and they have chosen to give up something that has been deeply embedded within them. Something they held precious, even if they didn’t know it.
And so, this sacrifice hovers before them, coalescing. Tears from all who gave them up, regardless of race or magical propensity, draw together, reddening and brightening into something that the spirits shy away from.
As more and more give in to the message and the desire to be free from the cancer that has marred their souls, they release the hate and mistrust, and with their release, their tears join together. The floating red masses grow, fed by the tears of the penitent.
Half a kilometer away, in a palace built at the base of a dormant volcano, the king stone accepts the sacrifice and shatters.
Zeli stood just as Gilmer taught her, with one hand on the obelisk, the other holding the dagger that was once the king stone.
No spirits penetrated the obelisk room, even with the doorway smashed open in invitation. All the same, Varten never once let go. His hands kept a firm but gentle grip on her waist. He’d moved to brace her this way when she began shaking. She hadn’t thought it would take great effort to whisper the words of the blood spell over and over, pouring her heart and soul and Song into its execution, but it had. Varten’s touch might be all that was keeping her upright.
Her Song was full—and while blood spells didn’t require Songs, the magical workings necessary to undo what had been done by the True Father was something more than blood magic. Not quite the amalgam magic Gilmer had spoken of, but similar in its way.
“My sister Dahlia first discovered how to combine the magics in this way,” Gilmer had told her back in his Archives, as he stood just like this while Zeli watched and listened and learned.
“In the north, they were also putting together this knowledge, so I suppose we’ll never know who was really first, but Dahlia had followers, acolytes of her own whom she taught. We, her sisters and brothers, warned her against it but she did it anyway. She was the healer and wanted her followers to be safe and healthy.”
As he spoke, the red of the obelisk appeared to deepen, and the caldera itself—the solid, gem-like substance—shifted like liquid beneath the surface. Gilmer repeated the words of the spell slowly, over and over, for what seemed like hours until she could repeat them, too. Until her tone and intonation were perfect though she didn’t understand the language she spoke. The demonstration, the transfer of knowledge had gone on for a long time, during which, she’d focused on her fear. Imagined it leaving her body, freeing her.
Gilmer told her that the sacrifice would take on an avatar or embodiment. Something to represent the loss in the material world, for that was the way of this type of magic. For Zeli, the form of that avatar was breath.
As her lungs worked, mouthing the words of the spell and pulling in the needed oxygen, the air expelled from her lips hardened before her. It solidified into a small, round object, colorless but still visible hovering before her. She longed to reach out and touch it, but didn’t dare.
Gilmer’s words grew stronger and louder. They vibrated her bones, making her shake and shake, and as he spoke, the colorless, floating ball turned as red as the obelisk.
Zeli’s heart was beating so fast, it made her chest hurt. She gulped for air as her skeleton rattled inside her. Then the embodiment of her sacrifice shattered into a million pieces, which all dissolved back into air.
She wobbled on her feet. Then fell to her knees. And just like that, it was back.
Her Song.
It snapped back into her body like a magnet drawn to iron, and filled up all the empty spaces in her soul. She reached for it tentatively, not quite believing that she was whole again. Earthsong was there, its infinite sea swelling and rocking, waiting for her, it seemed. So she sucked the energy into her Song, filling herself to the brim, testing her limits the way she used to do as a child.
The air against her skin felt different. Its moisture invisible but tangible. Heartbeats thundered in her ear: Gilmer’s, Varten’s, and Yllis’s—or at least the body he wore.
Pushing out further, she sensed the acolytes still hovering outside the Archives’ door. In the streets beyond, the Rumpus’s revelers’ joy and merriment and frustration and doubt and hope and fear swirled in an endless dance.
It was like she could touch the birds overhead, the nocturnal ones hunting for their evening’s meal. The prey scuttling across the earth. Creatures she hadn’t thought of for so long were now imprinting themselves on her senses. The world was so loud.
The life and vitality of every living thing that existed was energy that mingled to form Earthsong. Zeli had risen then, eyes closed, once again connected to life itself. And it had felt glorious.
In the obelisk room, in Varten’s arms, she began to weep as Song after Song snapped back into place in Lagrimari people all across the city. All across the country, reaching into Lagrimar and all of the citizens still residing there. Connected as she was to Earthsong via the obelisk, using its enormous, magnifying power, the indescribable joy of every man and woman and child who received their Song back was palpable for her.
She became one with their wonder. She sank into their delight as the broken were healed. Her people were whole once more.
In her hand, the dagger became too heavy to hold and she dropped it to the ground, where it clattered. It was a simple thing, not ornate or gilded. Something innocuous that a soldier might carry.
Not a single Song was left inside.
She thought of Yalisa and Eskar so far away, even now receiving their magic again. Gilmer had said that proximity was needed, but as Song after Song was returned, the obelisk grew in strength and reach, now able to send Songs back to Lagrimari wherever they might be. They would not know how or why, but what had been stolen was now returned to all.
Zeli released her hold on the obelisk next. She tore herself away from the power, and fought to stay on her feet. Varten’s hands tightened around her waist, a band of safety keeping her up, and then easing her down to sit resting against him.
Now, her own Song was spent. Varten was vulnerable to the spirits without her protection. She opened her mouth to say as much, but couldn’t get a word out. Exhaustion overcame her.
“It’s okay,” he said, whispering. “Just rest. I’ve got you. I won’t ever let go.”
She couldn’t physically move her body to protest or pull away. And so she decided to believe him.