21: THE SOUL IN THE HARP

(Therin’s story)

The sunlight dazzled off soaring white alabaster spirals, arching overhead to highlight perfect blue sky.

Not teal. Not blue green. Blue.

Therin and Khaeriel stood in a meadow, surrounded by low flowering hedges next to a wide reflecting pool. The air smelled of sunlight and spring flowers and the sweet, pure tang of conifers. Opposite the reflecting pool, several man-size topiaries stood at attention, densely covered with flowers.

“The sky’s the wrong color,” Therin said. “So’s the sun.”

Khaeriel smiled at him and touched his cheek. “No, they are not.” Sunlight shimmered off her golden hair. “We simply have a longer memory than the Quuros.”

His eyes kept being drawn to their surroundings. Just where were they? This was no jungle; the temperature felt mild. Was this an illusion?

They were not alone. Figures in long yellow-green robes moved through the area, checking plants, looking at flowers, and being quite mysterious. No one carried weapons, but the vané were so proficient with magic as to render the idea redundant.

A priest with dark ruby skin serenely approached them. Therin didn’t truly know if he was a priest, but he acted like one. Therin liked to imagine he had some experience in that area.

Therin expected his presence to upset the priest. Therin was, after all, a human in a place where humans weren’t allowed.

The priest’s eyes landed on him and then moved on. He didn’t realize Therin wasn’t vané. That wasn’t to say the priest had no reaction. Just not to him.

“You dare impersonate our dead queen?” he demanded of Khaeriel.

“Impersonate?” Khaeriel laughed. “Oh, you have jumped to an incorrect conclusion. Now stop being so dramatic. I am here to request a tsali transfer.”

Therin furrowed his brow. He knew what tsali stones were. Indeed, the attendant wore just such a crystal. He knew vané used them to hold the souls of dead loved ones before sending them on to Thaena’s realm, but …

Khaeriel didn’t own a tsali stone.

“You are not Khaeriel.” The priest raised an imperious eyebrow.

Therin started to reassure the priest in some manner, but stopped himself. His lack of language skills would give him away.

“Shall I prove my identity?” Khaeriel gestured; the priest spun up into the air, choking.

“Uh, Khaeriel, my darling…,” Therin said softly, “I’m sure you know the local etiquette better than I, but don’t we need him? For whatever you’re trying to do?” Watching her push the man into the air was almost physically painful. Something about the act itself … every time he saw Khaeriel commit violence with magic, he flinched. As if expecting the blow to fall on him. His mind shied from shadows and half-remembered pains.

Khaeriel let the priest go. He fell to the ground gasping.

“Your Majesty?” A woman’s voice. Another priest stepped forward. She reassured the others, “Everything’s fine. No cause for alarm.” She bent down next to the priest. “Morasan, don’t play the fool. That is clearly Queen Khaeriel.”

The new priestess was a pastel creature, all soft blues with indigo shading, a bluebell reborn as a woman. “Please forgive him, Your Majesty.”

Khaeriel smiled. “Damaeris, how lovely.”

The man, Morasan, rose to his feet still holding his throat. He glanced over at Therin, started to say something, and then closed his mouth. He didn’t look happy. Which was fine. Therin didn’t feel happy.

He just didn’t understand why.

“How can we help Your Majesty today?” Damaeris asked.

“As I told Morasan, I wish to request a tsali transfer,” Khaeriel explained again.

“Of course,” the priestess agreed. “If you’ll give me the tsali?” She held out her hand.

Khaeriel set the harp down next to the priestess. “This particular tsali stone takes an unorthodox form. But I see no reason why that should prevent it from working.”

“Oh,” Damaeris said. “I … see.”

Therin stared. The harp was a tsali? He had always assumed tsali were gems, that they had to be gems. Theoretically, though, other vessels might hold a soul under the right circumstances. If this harp somehow contained a vané soul, then it technically qualified. He racked his brain for everything he could remember about that damn harp. His old friend Qoran Milligreest’s family had owned the antique for generations, but Qoran never made a big deal about it. Qoran’s cousin Nikali, on the other hand …

Qoran once joked about selling off his musical instrument collection to pay a gambling debt, and Nikali had threatened to duel him on the spot. He’d been serious too. Which Therin might have dismissed as pride in the family music collection, if Therin hadn’t long since concluded Nikali was in fact a vané just pretending to be human.

Behind them, a soft whirring noise rose, like someone twirling a weight on a string. Then a blue-haired vané woman with silver-brushed skin appeared a few feet away. Therin’s eyes widened. He could hardly fail to recognize her, considering how many years she’d served as his seneschal.

Miya.

“Lady Miya—” Therin’s grandson had said.

“That’s not my name,” Khaeriel had replied.

Therin flinched as the memory shredded into vapor before he identified it. The woman couldn’t be Miya, because Khaeriel was standing next to him. Khaeriel still wore Miya’s body, even if it looked different now. That left one candidate who not only knew what the original Miya looked like but could impersonate her.

Therin walked over to Talon. “What kept you?”

“Apologies, Your Majesty.” Talon gave a half curtsy to Khaeriel.

Khaeriel waved a hand in acknowledgment and returned to talking to Damaeris.

Therin fought to keep his breath under control. His heart was running for its life.

Talon studied him. “Uh-oh.”

Therin took a deep breath. “What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’? What happened back there?”

Talon shrugged. “Oh, I just wanted to find out if I could eat a demon. I guess that’s a curiosity that’s going to have to go unsatisfied.” She returned to studying Therin. “And ‘uh-oh’ means you are standing on the edge of a cliff, ducky. So. The question is: Do you step off?”

A shudder passed through him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, you don’t. But you’re so close, Bright-Eyes.” She looked around the clearing. “Now this place brings back memories. It’s been a few millennia.”

The shudder passing through Therin that time was easier to understand. Because Bright-Eyes had been Ola’s nickname for him, decades ago, when Pedron had decided that the thing Therin needed to polish the sanctimonious edge off his halo was his own slave …¹

He remembered Kihrin’s warning that Talon had been impersonating Ola. He knew enough about mimics to understand they could copy anyone, but to copy someone perfectly …

“I didn’t kill Ola,” Talon whispered softly, answering the question even as it formed in Therin’s mind. “I loved her.”

“Would that have stopped you?” Therin asked.

Talon flinched then. She didn’t answer but gestured toward the glade. “This is Well of Spirals,” she said. “The holiest of holies. People think the Mother of Trees is the vané’s spiritual heart, but no, it’s this right here.” Talon paused. “I was born here, you know.”

Therin glanced at her. “Were you really?”

“Okay. I was created here. Oh, heady days back at the founding. People did all sorts of things we shouldn’t have. Played with concepts we didn’t understand.” She gave him a peculiarly solemn look. “Do you realize we’re in Quur?”

“What?” Therin forgot to keep his voice down that time.

Khaeriel looked back. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. Sorry.” He waved a hand at her, and Khaeriel returned her attention to the two priests. They were rigging a cradle in which to rest the harp next to a flower column.

Therin turned back to Talon. “Quur? Are you serious?”

“Oh yes,” Talon said. “This is the great Kirpis forest.” She grinned at the look on Therin’s face. “Oh, come on. You honestly think you Quuros ferreted out all the vané’s dirty little secrets? Invasion or not, human eyes have never seen some parts of the Kirpis.” She paused. “Well, until now.” Talon gave Therin’s arm a whack. “Lucky dog.”

“Don’t ever touch me again,” Therin said. He examined the impossibly beautiful meadow, frowning. “I don’t understand, though. Don’t the Manol vané have their own—whatever this is?”

“Oh no. There’s only one Well of Spirals,” Talon said. “And no matter how bad tensions grew between the two countries, no one ever restricted access to this. No one would dare.” She leaned toward him. “You know, all you have to do to escape is just … run. The Academy isn’t far from here. You’d make it in less than a day.”

“Why would I want to run? I’m not a prisoner.” But the open meadow suddenly felt claustrophobic, stifling. The priests giving him suspicious glances took on the aura of guards.

“I am loyal to Khaeriel,” Talon said, apropos of nothing. “But I have limits.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Letting Ola work independently as a courtesan—most royals wouldn’t have done that. Most wouldn’t have let her buy her freedom. Easy enough to just take the star tears from her and be done with it. No one would have thought less of you.” She snorted. “No one ‘important’ would have thought less of you.”

“And as a thank-you, Ola betrayed me.” Therin didn’t quite understand why Talon was saying this to him. Even if she possessed Ola’s memories, for him, those memories held only pain.

“No,” Talon said. “She didn’t betray you. But you were betrayed. By people quite a bit closer to you than Ola Nathera.” She watched Khaeriel talk. “So much closer.”

“Nothing you say isn’t a lie. Why would Miya—”

That’s not my name, she said.

Therin didn’t finish the sentence.

Talon leaned in close. “You’re almost there, Bright-Eyes. Remember the old days? You, Qoran, Nikali, and that wide-eyed farm boy from Marakor … remember when your father Pedron decided to do something about you…?”

Therin inhaled sharply. Because he indeed remembered what it had been like. Pedron hadn’t wanted to gaesh him, so he’d used something else. He remembered the way his mind shied away from the wrong subjects, the way he forgot conversations and people important to him. The way the whole world had seemed to distort—

The sharp final sound of bones breaking, echoing through the Great Hall. Screams.

A neck, snapping.

“Thaena help me,” he whispered. The trouble with enchantments wasn’t in breaking them. That was easy. The difficulty was only in identifying they existed.

“Ah yes,” Talon whispered. “There we go. Think of this as my way of saying thank you on Ola’s behalf. You gave Ola her freedom. Now I’m giving you yours.”

Therin stood still and tense, fists clenched at his sides as the memories scraped his mind with hurricane winds. The disbelief as the killing had started. The pain of Khaeriel’s words, even more hurtful than her magic. The horror of listening to her kill everyone, being unable to stop her. The knowledge he’d earned that outcome. That her anger was … justified.

Therin closed his eyes as tears slid down his cheeks.

“And now that you’ve stepped over the edge,” Talon whispered, “do you fall or do you fly?”

Therin knew better than to run. No sharp, sudden movement that might draw Khaeriel’s attention. While the priests would object to Khaeriel throwing around magic, her earlier demonstration stood as testimony to the fact they wouldn’t object much. He glanced around. The glade had to be surrounded by illusions. Khaeriel couldn’t see past them any more than he could. Once he walked to the other side, he’d be invisible.

He slowly stepped backward. Each step mired in a nightmare of worry Khaeriel might turn and spot him, recognize his intentions. One priest noticed, but other than a frown in his direction, the man hadn’t drawn attention to Therin’s movement.

Talon—

Therin choked back bitter laughter. Talon had turned into him. If Khaeriel looked back, she’d see Therin standing there. She might not look past the mimic to see the real Therin slowly retreating into the tree line.

After the trees closed around him, Therin turned and ran.