Song of Time

20

"Hurry up, you little nameless commoner," Riolla prodded, her voice vexed at having to climb down into the bramble-ridden Chimes. "We have to be there on time."

"It would be so much easier, my queen, if you just let me divide her up among us, so that the burden of her portage would be lighter and quicker," Saelin added wickedly. Claria shot him a deadly look above her gag, but moved a little faster anyway.

Naruq led the group from far ahead, scouting for possible traps. At his signal, they stopped amid the towering spires and waited. He advanced alone to a rise above the valley and stepped out of sight behind an old hickory tree. Above the valley, the wind had picked up considerably. Drufalden's five hundred sabers, scattered plainly in sight around the mountainside, waited for Riolla's command.

They did not have long to wait. Cheyne, guided by one of the Treefather's attendants, came into view almost immediately, Ogwater at his side. Bound by his oath, Doulos had stayed with Javin. The attendant waved farewell, and Naruq stepped out from the tree's cover. The assassins began to advance to their positions.

"I see you are a man of your word, digger. Look for yourself. See if she is not there in the valley."

From his place on the hillside, Cheyne could see straight down to where Saelin stood impatiently over Claria, who was bound to a ganzite spire.

"Let her go. When she's up here, you'll get the totem," said Cheyne, his eyes stony and hard as he watched the assassins ring the valley. "Are you so afraid of a digger and a songmage that you need an army?"

"Saelin!" called Naruq, turning to leave.

"Wait. All right. Here. Now let her go." Cheyne held out the totem.

Naruq took it, smiled, and called down into the valley again, his words echoing off the spires like the sound of flat stones thrown in a shallow pool. "Saelin! Let her go."

Cheyne watched anxiously, but no one moved from the spire. When he looked back to Naruq, the elf had disappeared. But the sabers had not.

"Well, you didn't expect him to really do it, did you?" said Og.

"No. Of course not. He'll open the Clock. With this wind, it could be anytime. Are you ready?"

Og blanched, straightened his back, and nodded.

His mouth was so dry he couldn't even say yes.

Riolla snapped her spyglass shut and stood by the spire Naruq had indicated. Claria, still gagged and bound, had been lashed to the crystal with tough cords of bark rope Naruq had taken from the fortress. Saelin stood by, leering at the girl, waiting for the moment Riolla gave her over to him.

When the elf appeared beside him, the assassin startled and nearly lost his footing on the rock-littered valley floor as he fought the reflections all around him. Claria had enough courage left to laugh. At least until Naruq blew the debris out of an opening in the spire just over Claria's head, polished the four sides of the slot with his cloak, and inserted the totem. The spire reclaimed its missing piece with a sound click.

He turned to Riolla and smiled, his silver eyes dancing. "1*11 be going now," he said, and disappeared into the mirrored maze before the words registered on her ears.

"You can't leave us here!" Riolla cried, her voice echoing all around, following the reflection of her worried face from spire to spire. She grabbed Saelin's arm and popped open her spyglass. "You watch ahead. I'll direct our path up the mountain."

They began to stumble out of the valley as fast as they could, leaving Claria amid the resounding swell of the wind.

Above the valley, behind the crystal door, the Beast of the Hours awoke to the sound of a distant ringing, like the call of Ninnite prayer bells on the wind.

Up on the hillside, at first there was no sound at all. Then the force seemed to gather under their feet and the rocks hummed low and steady, shaking so gently that only by looking at the pebbles rolling around on the surface could they tell there was any motion at all.

"It's begun," said Cheyne. "They've put the totem in the correct spire. The first key is in place. And they've left Claria tied to the spire. Og, I don't know how long I have, but I've got to go down there, army or not. Claria will never survive what the Collector said will come next."

"Cheyne, the wind has already picked up. The storm gathers over the erg now. Look!" Og pointed to the darkening sky, the few clouds over their heads beginning to swirl into a spiral pattern. Toward the north, a low, pale cloud loomed.

"That's the sandstorm. The godscream. When it hits, we'd better have taken cover. That wind carries enough sand to grind down this entire valley," shouted Og. "You can't go down there-"

Claria's shriek rose from the valley floor, sounding like a thousand women. Cheyne grimaced and called over his shoulder, the wind taking his words to Og's ears instantly.

"Sing it shut again, Og. You're our only chance."

And then Og stood alone on the outcropping over the valley, his eyes on the crystal door above. He swallowed hard, his hands shaking and his knees about to buckle. All he could think of was how badly he needed a hard slug of raqa. Or even just a taste.

The wind bore down on him, and he braced himself against a big hickory tree, clutching the three gemstones in one hand and waiting for Cheyne to emerge from the valley with Claria. Little by little, the rising din from the spires' vibration filled his ears until he could not hear anything else. One by one, he saw the spires begin to shatter, their music passing from the range of his hearing into pure destruction. Holding fast to the tree, he didn't see how anyone could survive the onslaught in the valley.

Anyone except Womba.

Og could not believe his eyes. There she was, making her way across the tormented valley, pushing spire after broken spire away from her, with only one arm protecting her eyes. Two of the assassins lay crumpled in her wake. Og took a deep breath and steeled himself. There was no time for him to get away and no place to go. He turned away, gathered his concentration, and thought of the song.

Above, the crystal wall shook and trembled with every new assault from the powerful desert-borne winds. Og held his voice, hoping for a moment of respite from the wind, a moment when he could hear himself sing the song, truing the notes as he went.

In the Chimes, Cheyne wrapped his face in his kaf-fiyeh, put his head down, and pulled himself from spire to spire blindly, some shattering over his head, unable to see any sign of Claria. With his thoughts on Claria alone, he had forgotten the assassins, but they had not forgotten him. Two of the closest had placed themselves between him and Claria, their sabers sheathed, but their intentions plain. They would not let him pass. He had simply charged through them, run into the thick of the ganzite crystals and disappeared into a thousand reflected images of himself. None of which he could see, he thought ruefully. Several of the assassins had followed him in. Three of them lay dead from falling crystal, and two more still wandered blindly in the fury as Cheyne pressed on toward Claria.

Og looked through his thin kaffiyeh toward the crystal door and knew he could wait no longer. He began to put voice to the memory of the little tune as the windstorm finished its work in the Chimes.

All Cheyne could see was dark, swirling sand. But when the lightning struck the Chimes, it charged the spire in front of Cheyne with brilliant power, arcing from peak to crystalline peak in jagged, haphazard paths, giving him an instant of light to steer by. He saw Claria huddled next to the only spire still standing, beside it, a pool of molten glass sizzled around a shortened spire, the ganzite slowly dripping down itself to the dry valley floor in glowing, burning red lumps. The churning wind tore at Claria's robes and the airborne sand had all but flayed the skin from her hands. But he had seen her, and she had seen him. Coughing, Cheyne collapsed against another spire, oblivious to its danger, and thought he would die there, amid the smell of molten ganzite and sulfur, and the pandemonium of the godscream.

Then the worst sound of all reached his ears: absolute silence. The wind ceased as quickly as it had begun, and for a moment, Cheyne thought he had gone deaf. But then he heard the spilling of sand from his robes as he shifted, and the tinkle of the crystal chimes as the lightning's last charge scattered to exhaustion.

And Claria's raw shouts, so near that when his ears seized upon the sound, he was at her side in a heartbeat. His hands stiff with sand-covered blood, he fumbled at Riolla's ropes like a man with no touch at all, but at last he cut through the thick cords, brought Claria to her feet, and began to run with her to the edge of the valley, to the deep, sheltering caves.

"I'm here, Claria, hold on. We'll be out of here in just a minute, I swear to you, I will not fail you," he muttered through painful, cracked lips. Cheyne knew they had only seconds before the crystal door gave way and the Beast of the Hours, so long entombed, so long at bay, would spring back into its unconquered realm with the fury of three thousand unanswered years.

Above the Chimes, Og stood helplessly watching the storm progress. The song had not worked. No matter what he did, the ring-stones would not respond. And he knew why. He needed Riolla's pearl to ground them. With the increased energy the three of them could now produce, Og could not govern and direct their magic without the pearl of Nadrum.

/ have failed again. Riolla was right all along. I am just an"-old fool. Having trouble here?" A shrill laugh cut through the wind and Og turned to meet it. The Schreefa and her assassin stood behind him.

"Riolla! Oh, Riolla, what have you done?" he cried.

She set her jaw in contempt. "I'll bet those are the very same words you said when I left you," she shouted. "You haven't changed one bit, you raqa-spoiled howler. But I have. You are looking at the next queen of Sumifa. Get used to addressing me as Your Majesty. As soon as that door opens, I will be sole owner of all that has lain untouched and unclaimed for centuries!"

"What do you mean? Don't you know?" Og stared at her miserably. "Riolla, if I cannot unsing what you have put into motion, the Beast of the Hours will come crashing through that wall and destroy everything in its path. There will be no kingdom for you to rule! Riolla, you have unleashed a cockatrice! There is no treasure!" Og screamed at her.

"Oh, take your act back to the ores, Og. Any moment, I will be the richest woman in the world," she crowed.

Og could not remove his eyes from her for the time it took for his heart to beat three rimes. "I love you, Riolla. I always have. Give me back the pearl."

"Oh, please. You-" She stopped in midsentence, staring behind and above Og's shoulder, a smile forming on her face.

He turned to look as the first crack spread across the smooth surface of the crystal door. "Give me the pearl, Riolla, it's our only hope!"

Then he turned and began the song again, tears welling in his eyes. Riolla touched her disheveled curls with a graceful gesture, spun on her left foot to make a regal exit, and nearly fell into a bottomless abyss that opened up directly in front of her. Saelin was nowhere to be seen. All around them, the earth began to break apart, thundering into pieces and falling away in massive chunks from the mountainside. She realized that she and Og were trapped on a pinnacle of rock, and she fell to the ground as it began to shake violently under their feet, his song unable to reach the needed volume to stop the godscream. Still, Og stood bravely singing Claria's name over and over as the mountainside crumbled around him, bits of rock and huge pieces of sod bursting from its sides.

Through the sandstorm, through the wind-whipped forest, and now caught in the shifting, rock-strewn gorge, Womba struggled to climb up toward the light, clinging to the sheer walls of a newly opened ravine for all she was worth. Convinced that Og would never make it down from the rocks without her help, she set her massive jaw and dug into the earth in fierce determination to rescue him. Inch by painful inch, never sure which handhold would give from the slightest pressure, she pulled her considerable weight upward, panting and grunting, tears of pain streaming down her face. Her bone necklaces snagged on exposed rocks, dirt and debris showered onto her head and shoulders, and her wonderful ghomaskin dress hung in shreds. Still, she made her way ever upward toward Og.

The wrenching of the strata filled her ears with its roar until, ten feet before she would clear the edge of the ravine, light broke through, carrying with it the sound of Claria's name echoing all around her, in a hundred voices, all of them Og" s. Womba burst into fresh tears, felt herself falling back into the pit, her strength broken by the sound of her rival's name. But Og was still trapped. Womba beat down her rage and tears, promised herself the pleasure of carving the Sumifan woman's bones into ten thousand beads, and kept climbing.

With a bellow of triumph, she scrambled over the top of the pinnacle just at the exact moment the final crack shot across the gleaming face of the crystal door. Og didn't have time to move. He only saw Womba stand up and throw herself in front of him as a brilliant burst of light flashed when the full voice of the god-scream hit the crazed crystal, shattering it completely. As the beast opened his faceted ruby eyes, Womba caught the full force of his furious stare.

"Don't look at his eyes!" Og shrieked.

But Womba stood for a brief moment, a look of rapturous love on her face, and then dropped to the ground, her features seemingly carved in basalt, her body turned to stone. Stepping slowly out of the Collector's ancient prison, the beast lifted his iridescent wings, raised his head, and began to hiss and screech. The sound raked across Og's heart; it was a sound he knew he would never forget.

"By the cracked face of Caelus Nin!" shouted Riolla. "What is that?"

His eyes on Womba, Og quickly whipped his cloak over their heads and turned his back to the emerging beast.

"Don't look at his eyes! Whatever you do, don't look at his eyes!" he shouted in her ears. "Now do you believe me? Give me the pearl before I can't do anything about this."

Riolla whimpered, thinking of the lost treasure, her unpaid dues and the Raptor's wrath, of the horror that they could hear awakening behind them. She angrily ripped the pearl from her neck and handed it to Og, who clasped it firmly together with the other stones, the firebane positioned in the middle of the group. He began to sing, summoning the magic as he had done when his voice was perfect, when his heart was filled with love instead of pain.

And the magic came.

Above their heads, the rainbow light rose and wove itself into ribbons of gold, purple, blue, green, and bloodred, their streaming banners widening and widening until they blanketed the doorway, covering it in light, while the beast tore and clawed at them to no avail. The cockatrice raged and flapped its wings, but the more it struggled, the more the light entwined it, until at last it lay hissing and subdued behind the broken crystal. Og continued to sing, the beast fading with every note.

Below, sheltered in the first cave they had found, Cheyne and CI aria looked at one another in amazement. The wind had stopped. The only sound they heard was Og singing Claria's name, over and over, his voice pure and true.