Echoes in the Dark

“If you have a question, ask. If not, just let your mind relax and see what comes.” The Singer’s voice lilted, hypnotic.

Creusse Crest

Blossom dropped the Distance Magic for the final time and Raine saw it was late afternoon. In the near distance was a crescent between two jutting promontories that was Faucon’s land. His castle was built of a golden-toned stone and both sprawled and rose like a small city in itself.

Raine said, We—I—don’t need to go to the castle. I want to look at Faucon’s yacht down on the dock, it shouldn’t take very long.

But Blossom was licking her lips. I have flown far and deserve good food.

Raine shifted uneasily, enough to have given Blossom wrong cues, if they hadn’t been ignored. Raine hadn’t asked Faucon’s permission to inspect his ship, to come here and demand food for a hungry volaran. She’d hoped to pop in, look at his yacht and pop back out, no harm done. She should have asked, even if he did avoid her.

Blossom said, You should go up to the castle to greet the people. You did not thank them for your care last month.

Because I was knocked out and taken away! But Blossom had said enough to prick an underlying guilt in Raine. The housekeeper of Faucon’s castle and a couple of maids had been the first people to treat her decently since her arrival on Lladrana. Raine would have written thank-you notes but she still didn’t know how to write.

Blossom alit on the dock near the yacht and Raine dismounted. She’d no sooner began to stretch her muscles before the flying horse took off to the castle above. Raine ground her teeth, then turned to the yacht. Beautiful lines, wood painted white, it was about two hundred feet long and one glance told her no money had been spared in her making. She walked to the stern and probed with her Power, her magic, for a rope ladder, then found and lowered a gangplank that had fancy carving on the sides. Raine just shook her head and gently settled the plank on the dock, then hurried up it.

The rocking of the ship under her feet made her catch her breath, and swallow hard. She hadn’t been on a boat in eight and a half months. She closed her eyes and a small moan of pleasure escaped her as her soles tingled and she got her sea balance. Somehow the water beneath her wasn’t like Earth oceans. Were the tides and the ocean swells that different? Lladrana had a moon that looked only a little larger than Earth’s. Maybe it was the difference of the planet Amee under the ocean, or with the ocean, or whatever. Raine sniffed and again shook her head at the fanciful notion.

Singer’s Abbey

Letting her mind wander, Jikata strummed, closed her eyes against dazzling brightness. How odd that such a conglomeration of crystals should form a hemisphere focusing Power and prophecy. Surely it couldn’t be natural.

I made it. Crafted it like you craft your melodies. A rippling laugh and Jikata angled her head to see a Lady dressed in a white toga, a Lladranan woman with long silver hair, dark eyes that showed a brilliant white starlike pupil. She held her hand against her lower abdomen. I wanted my peoples to listen to me. She smiled and it was the sweetest, most heartbreaking smile Jikata had ever seen. There are places like this in many lands, but only my Lladranans listened.

“Who are you?” Jikata breathed.

11

Iam the planet Amee thanking you for coming. But air is not your element and you know that. Try others before you settle on the one you love.

Jikata started from her daze, opened her eyes. Placed the lyre carefully in the stand. Then she went to the blue crystals and the dark wooden chair inlaid with a lighter wood in a complex pattern. On a wooden pedestal was a delicate stone bowl. In the bowl was swirling water.

“Go ahead,” the Singer said. “Look into the water. Feel the Power around us. See what the bowl shows you.”

Jikata had no sooner glanced into the bowl than Amee was back, her face troubled. I have called you and the others here for a purpose. You give me hope after ages of despair. Her star-pupil eyes flashed like a supernova, tears ran down her face, then she vanished.

With a shaky breath Jikata levered herself from the chair, moving within a dream. The air around her was thick with sound, tinkling crystalline whispers and vibrations she couldn’t hear, could only feel.

She went to the obsidian throne. The Singer had placed a fat red pillow on the seat. Jikata sank into it, looked at the top of the obsidian pillar for a few seconds before she saw the mirror. Reaching out, she found its edges and tensed, not wanting to cut herself. She raised it until she saw her own face, ghostlike, brown-black hair, brown eyes, more amber than chocolate. Behind her the opposite wall with the red streak glowed. Then it wasn’t her face but Amee’s. Her gaze reflected wariness, too. I am fighting and will fight. I ask you to do the same.

The mirror fell from Jikata’s fingers, thumping onto a soft black pad she hadn’t seen. Once again she rose and with measured steps went to the red-orange fiery wall that had drawn her from the first. As she came near, flames ignited and danced in a brass brazier.

She sat and was enveloped in warmth. Amee stepped from the fire, wearing a red gown, hand again at her side. She nodded to Jikata. Jikata, you are here, at last. The sweet, terrible smile. You must know that should you wish, you can become the thousandth Singer. All you have seen here could be yours. The comforts and the Power and the joys of living a life full of music, of listening to your gift of prophecy and thereby helping others. Composing. That can be yours.

One corner of her beautiful lips twisted. Along with the temptation of Power, the burden of foreseen knowledge, the duties and responsibilities of the Singer.

“I’m just becoming accustomed to here,” Jikata said.

Amee’s smile saddened, her star-spark pupils shone behind tears. I brought you to help me, to fight with me and for me. But you are not alone in this endeavor. Finally she removed her hand from her side. A black, hideous swollen sluglike leech gnawed on the woman, and the red of her dress was nothing compared to the red of her blood. Help save me.

Jikata stared in horror at the evil thing, then skin on its head rolled back and she saw shiny, depthless, black eyes that sucked the light from the room as it sucked the energy from Amee. It smiled. First her, then you. It cackled in her mind.

Everything went dark.

Creusse Crest

Faucon’s yacht was two-masted with red and orange sails furled and tied down. A gorgeous Tall Ship. Soon Raine would make her own ship. Joy blossomed in her. Who knew after all those bitter wars with her family that she’d wanted to build a Tall Ship…? There must be more of her family in her than she expected.

The future of ships on Lladrana was what she, Raine Lindley, would make it. That sent a shiver down her spine. It would be more like a galleon than a schooner or pleasure yacht. Good thing she’d designed hundreds of hulls and sails, and now if she remembered her doodlings in middle school, a Tall Ship or two….

Her ship would be as beautiful as this yacht, grander than anything her family had made. As for yachts…she could build something for Faucon, or other rich Lladranans, faster, sleeker than this pretty lady.

But her Tall Ship was one thing only—a troop transport. She set her mouth. No reason it couldn’t be lovely, and they’d want fast.

She just didn’t know how fast the thing would go without real power or Power—magic. She walked along the upper deck, all tidy. No doubt Faucon had a top-notch crew. No indication here of any other propellant source than the sails ready for the kiss of the wind. There was a polished stick where a wheel would be on Earth and she was sure it connected to a rudder, but nothing more.

She went down a level, found the crew’s quarters, hammocks hanging, and grimaced. That was the most efficient way for people to sleep on a ship. She wondered about the fighters. She thought of their tired and grim faces and realized that they wouldn’t care much as long as they had a chance to destroy the Dark and its Nest and the monsters it kept sending to Lladrana.

Raine only hoped that her last task was building the ship, not fighting the Dark itself.

The galley, sitting area and cabins were all gleaming wood. The crew quarters had been in the stern of the ship, and Raine’s eye had told her that there was no “engine” compartment between that room and the ocean.

Now she stood in Faucon’s large and luxurious cabin and studied the wall behind the big bed. There was something beyond that wall, snugged in the forecastle, the front of the bow.

“Your reason for being here is?” Faucon asked.

Singer’s Abbey

Jikata awoke on a fainting couch and jolted upward, but as her mind spun she realized she wasn’t in Ghost Hill Theater but in Lladrana.

“The first true vision can be intense,” the Singer said. “Especially if you touch the Song, or if you see your future.”

Without saying a word, Jikata took a few deep breaths, looked around. “How did I get here?”

The Singer smiled. “I used Power.”

Which could have meant she dragged Jikata through the caverns or teleported her or something altogether different. Jikata decided she didn’t need to know. “We’re in your suite above the crystal room?”

“Ayes. Only Singers are allowed in that room. It is where the Singer experiences the Song. Others—Chevaliers testing to become Marshalls, those who wish a Song Quest—are given drugs to open their minds to our innate Power and we link with them here. Now go to your own rooms and rest and eat, perhaps meditate.” The autocrat was back in full force. “I have had a blank journal placed on the desk in your suite. You should record today’s vision.” The Singer grimaced. “In English since you have not begun to learn written Lladranan.”