Chapter One
Sira listened in shy silence as the riders chatted and talked around the little softwood fire. So much talking aloud made her uncomfortable, but she supposed she would get used to it, in time. Her quiru shimmered warm and secure around them all. Stars glittered icily beyond it, and enormous ironwood trees loomed around the campsite like ghosts in the night.
“Cantrix, would you like more keftet?” Rollie hunkered next to Sira, holding out the pot and spoon. “Or maybe you’d like to go out of the quiru for a moment?”
Sira hesitated. She was not sure she understood the other woman’s question. “Go out?” she asked softly. “Rollie, do you mean–do I wish to relieve myself?”
The rider’s laugh creased her weathered face and made Sira blush. Rollie put out a hand as if to touch her, then, remembering who she was, pulled it back.
“I’m sorry, young Cantrix,” she said. “Those are just not the words I would have used.”
“I am not much used to conversation,” Sira said.
Rollie made a wry face. “I don’t know if riders’ talk can truly be called conversation.” She indicated the darkness beyond the quiru. “I’ll take you out now.”
The two women left the circle of riders in the glow of the quiru and stepped a few feet away to the privacy of the irontrees. “Remember, now, Cantrix,” Rollie said, “we never leave a quiru by ourselves when we’re traveling. Always in twos, at least. If I have to go out with one of the men, then I do it. Never alone.”
“Why is that, Rollie?”
“More than one reason, Cantrix,” Rollie replied. Her face was dim in the vast darkness. “The cold can get you quick. Or you could fall, and no one would know until it was too late.”
Sira nodded in the dark, then realized Rollie couldn’t see her. Sira was not used to darkness, either, having lived virtually all her life in the light of Houses. “I will remember, Rollie,” she said gravely. “Thank you.”
“And don’t forget the tkir, either, Cantrix,” Rollie added. Her voice was deeper, harder, when she gave this warning. “They won’t attack in a quiru, but they will in the dark. A person alone hardly has a chance.”
Rollie kept behind Sira as they made their way back to the quiru. It shone in the starry, snowy night, an envelope of light, the little cooking fire a spark within it. Sira breathed deeply in appreciation of its beauty, and in satisfaction at having created it.
Rollie heard her sigh. “Something wrong, Cantrix?”
Sira shook her head. Her bound hair caught on her fur hood, and she wished she could wear it cropped short as Rollie did. “Nothing, Rollie,” she answered. “There is so much beauty, out here in the mountains.”
The quiru light reflected on Rollie’s leathery cheeks. “I love being outside,” she said. “We need our Houses, but the best life is out here, in the trees, in the snow.”
Sira turned her eyes up to the brilliance of the night sky. “I have not seen the stars since I can remember.”
“Best get into the quiru now, young Cantrix,” Rollie said. “The deep cold season isn’t over yet.”
Sira obeyed, stepping back into the warmth of the quiru she had herself created a few short hours ago. It was like stepping into the warm water of the ubanyix. She shook herself with pleasure, and wondered how anyone who had never experienced the cold of outside could really appreciate a quiru’s warmth.
The riders were rolling themselves into their bedfurs, and Sira saw two of them returning from outside the quiru, together, as Rollie had said. She slipped into her own bedfurs, nestling down into their warmth, offering a little prayer of thanks to the caeru who had provided them. As she stretched her long legs under her furs, she felt the beginnings of the saddle soreness that would develop tomorrow, and she liked it. Today had been her first day as an adult, her first day riding hruss, her first day as a full Cantrix. The soreness was confirmation that it was all real, that what she had spent her short life preparing for was about to happen.
She was Cantrix Sira v’Conservatory, soon to be v’Bariken. These riders, this camp in the Marik Mountains, this very day, were all for her. She felt a rush of happiness as she closed her eyes to sleep. Her whole life lay before her in a rosy glow of hope.
Maestra Lu lay alone on her bed in her tiny room at Conservatory, but sleep would not come. She felt the absence of Sira in the House as a sharp wound, a feeling that some essential part of herself was missing.
Lu had said goodbye to many a young Singer in her years of teaching. With Sira it was different. No student had ever affected her in the way Sira had, and as she had watched the ceremony this morning, standing in the wintry sunshine on the broad Conservatory steps, Lu was overwhelmed with premonition.
As always, it had been a mostly quiet ceremony. The riders, mounted and ready, provided a dark and restless backdrop as they waited to be on their way. Sira, tall and thin and so terribly young, sat high on the big, heavy-boned hruss Bariken had sent for her. She wore new furs, and had newly-made bedfurs tied to her saddle. Her filhata was carefully wrapped and slung on her back.
Everyone waited as the students of Conservatory wished Sira goodbye in their silent way.
Goodbye, Sira . . . Cantrix! This was sent by Isbel, Sira’s best friend, who was better at a mental giggle than any student Lu had known.
Good luck, Cantrix Sira!
The Spirit protect you!
Congratulations, Cantrix!
One or two students sent nothing, but Lu knew Sira was used to their resentment, and would be unaffected. At least there were no taunts on this day.
Magister Mkel stood smiling at the top of the stairs, listening. His mate, Cathrin, waited patiently for the part of the ceremony she could hear. She was fond of saying she was not burdened by the Gift, and preferred normal conversation. Maestra Lu, as the senior teacher, stood with Mkel and Cathrin, her face stiff and her eyes dry. Her own farewell she saved for last.
At length the mental chatter among the students ended, and Mkel cleared his throat and spoke aloud.
“Cantrix Sira,” he said. Sira’s grave eyes brightened at the sound of her newly-earned title. “Every Singer’s true home is Conservatory. We will always await your return. Good luck. Serve well.” He bowed, deeply and formally.
Sira’s eyes shone darkly within the yellow-white caeru fur that circled her face. She bowed from her high-cantled saddle. “Thank you, Magister.”
Lu treasured the sound of that deep young voice, knowing its power and the immense talent behind it. She felt her already-stiff features harden to ice as she controlled her emotion.
Sira turned her face to her teacher. Thank you, she sent. Her thought was warm with affection. Maestra Lu, thank you. I will miss you.
Lu bowed, delicately and deliberately. Farewell, Cantrix Sira. May the Spirit of Stars be with you always.
And even as she sent her goodbye to her protégée, the premonition struck her like a blow. She was quite sure, in that moment, that she would never see Sira again in this life.
As the traveling party made its way through the passes toward Bariken, Sira rode in silent awe of the majesty of her surroundings. How different from the sheltered life most of her people lived, protected behind the walls of their great Houses! Only those whose work it was to ride between the Houses saw the magnificence of the Continent. The scattered ironwood forests, the huge boulders that marked the landscape, the deep snowpack that never disappeared—all these were no less wondrous to Sira than the magic of her quiru was to the riders.
To the south was Clare, where she had been born, where the thick paper all the Houses used was manufactured. To the north, Perl, where the people wove cloth and rugs. Northeast, four more days’ ride, her new home of Bariken, known for its limeglass. For a moment, she envied the itinerant Singers who plied the mountains all their lives. They saw the glories of the Continent every day, every week, in all seasons.
But for her, each day brought her closer to Bariken. Soon, the life she had always sought would be hers.
“Cantrix?”
Sira started, realizing Rollie was speaking to her. So lost in thought was she, and so unused to her title, she had not noticed. “I am sorry, Rollie. What is it?”
“We’d like to camp here, if it suits you.”
If it suits me? Sira thought. She looked around at the riders, all considerably older than herself, and nodded. She knew nothing of campsites. She knew only her music.
Blane, the guide for the party, gave a respectful nod. “Rollie, thank the young Cantrix.” Like Rollie’s, his face was weathered to a rich brown. “Ask her if she would be so good as to raise the quiru, and we’ll make camp.”
Rollie jumped nimbly off her hruss and came to hold Sira’s stirrup, careful not to touch her inadvertently.
Sira had less than four summers to Rollie’s six, but she was stiff and sore. As she slid from the saddle, a small groan escaped her, though she meant to suppress it. She gave Rollie a small, rueful smile. “I am sorry. The Spirit did not pad me much.”
Rollie chuckled. “Wouldn’t matter, Cantrix. You’re just saddle-sore.” She untied Sira’s bedfurs and spread them on the snow.
Sira said, “I believe I will stand.” Rollie grinned.
Sira laid her filhata on her bedfurs. She carried her filla, the little flute that was perfect for a traveler’s quiru, inside her tunic. She brought it out now and put it to her lips.
She played a traditional melody in the first mode. Her psi, focused and amplified through the music from her filla, reached into the air around her, speeding and warming its elements to protect the people and hruss from the deep cold of the Nevyan night.
The small quiru needed for a campsite took only half her concentration. She was aware, as she played, of the riders listening. She embellished the melody here and there, making it as much a musical as a functional performance. Heat and light billowed from where she stood, reaching up into the dusk of the evening and out to the shaggy hruss at their feed. Sira had been warned beforehand that if the hruss were not included in the quiru, they would crowd into the light, putting the riders at risk of being stepped on by their broad hooves. She made sure the animals were well inside her quiru before she stopped playing.
When she put down her filla there was a brief silence. At Conservatory there would have been silent comments, criticism or praise. Sira became suddenly aware of her loneliness. There was nothing to hear but her own thoughts. There was no Gift here but hers.
After dinner, the riders talked of the seasons.
“Softwood’s almost impossible to find now,” Blane said, to murmured agreement from the other riders.
“My mate said they ate cold food from Bariken to Lamdon last trip,” said one burly man.
Sira listened with curiosity, then turned to Rollie. “Why would they eat cold food?”
“The softwood trees are almost gone,” Rollie said. “If summer doesn’t come soon, there’ll be nothing to burn.”
Sira looked around their campsite, and saw that it was true. There were none of the thin, fragile softwood trees that sprouted only in summer. Ironwood would not burn.
Blane spoke from where he sat on his bedfurs on the other side of the fire. “I have a son born in the last summer, and he’s almost five years old. The Visitor better show up soon! Kel’s driving us crazy wanting to know when he’ll have one summer.”
Everyone laughed. The common practice of counting summers instead of years was cumbersome, but popular. Sira thought of her own brothers and sisters, and wondered how many summers they had counted up now. She had not seen them since she was seven, with only one summer. It seemed a lifetime ago. She could not remember what her mother looked like, or the sound of her father’s voice. She barely knew her siblings’ names.
She murmured to Rollie, “I can hardly remember what the Visitor looks like.”
“I feel the same,” said the rider. “But it shows up in the sky every five years anyway, thank the Spirit. Otherwise we’d all be under a hundred feet of ice by now.”
“Is summer almost here, then?”
“So it is, Cantrix. This makes the fifth deep cold since last summer. The days are getting longer. It’s time, sure enough.”
A little silence fell around the fire as the riders contemplated their constant and unrelenting enemy, the cold. One or two of them looked up at the quiru above them, appreciating its protection, perhaps thinking of their homes. Sira felt a wave of nostalgia for Conservatory, and she thought of the ironwood plaque that hung over its great double doors:
SING THE LIGHT,
SING THE WARMTH,
RECEIVE AND BECOME THE GIFT, O SINGERS,
THE LIGHT AND THE WARMTH ARE IN YOU.
She remembered stumbling past that carved creed on her first day at Conservatory, in the company of all the other Gifted ones newly arrived. She had not wept, though many of the others had. It was a day of parting from everything and everyone they knew. No Singer ever forgot it.
Lost in memory, Sira reached inside her tunic for her filla. She looked above her quiru, where the mysterious stars wheeled in their mighty dance, and a melody came to her mind. She put the filla to her lips. She played in the fourth mode, Lidya, raising the third degree. After a few bars she shifted into the fifth mode, Mu-Lidya, dropping the third degree down in a subtle cadence. The stars seemed to shine brighter as she played, as if her Gift could reach into the very heavens, and the darkness beyond the quiru receded a bit more.
Sira lost herself in the music, assuaging her loneliness, recalling her true home. When she finished, and lowered her filla, she realized with a rush of self-consciousness that the riders had ceased speaking and were watching her.
Her cheeks flamed. “I am sorry if I disturbed you—I—I forgot where I was.” She looked down at her filla, cradled in her long, thin fingers.
“It was beautiful, Cantrix,” Rollie said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “Does it have a name?”
“I was improvising,” Sira said shyly. “I am glad if you liked it.”
“It should have a name so we can hear it again.”
“I will name it, then,” Sira said. A new melody was an important thing, something tangible, with its own meaning. “It is ‘Rollie’s Tune.’”
Rollie grinned around the circle. “Now, isn’t that a nice thing to happen to an old mountain rider?” Her chuckle was comfortable, and one or two of the others ventured to nod to Sira. It was a moment like those Sira had dreamed of during the long years of her training. She tucked her filla back into her tunic, enjoying the sudden sense of belonging. If this was being a Cantrix, she thought, she would like it. She would like it very much.