The Eagle And The Nightingales

was the King's Personal Musician, the one who came and went from the Palace, who presumably had the King's ear at least part of the time. On his own, he had no more power or wealth than any of the denizens of the neighborhoods around Freehold, but they didn't know that. The folk of the streets saw only that here was a powerful courtier, a Sire, no less, who was urging them to stand up for their freedom and their rights against the nobles, the fearful or uneducated, and this unknown enemy.

And Ruthvere had been absolutely right. Their enemy had tried every other way to eliminate T'fyrr's influence, and that had been before he went on his campaign to organize the nonhumans and their human supporters and friends. Now he was not only an influence, he was a danger. He reminded them all that the Twenty Kings, the Court, and the High King himself ruled only as long as the people permitted it.

Those were frightening words to someone whose ultimate goal was surely more power.

If there was one thing that the powerful feared, it was that those they sought to rule discovered that ultimately the real power lay only in their own acquiescence to be ruled.

Lions can only be convinced that they are sheep as long as no one holds up a mirror to show them their true faces.

All attempts to silence T'fyrr, open and covert had failed. But their foe had not yet tried magic. If ever there was a time when he_

Or she, Nightingale reminded herself, yet again.

_or she, would use magic, it was now.

They had a little time before the Freehold meeting, and Nightingale used it.

T'fyrr was in the bathroom, and he was a most enthusiastic bather. He would be in there for some time, giving her a space all to herself.

She settled herself cross-legged on her bed as T'fyrr splashed water all over her bathroom, and laid her right wrist in her lap. The thin band of Elven silver gleamed beneath the lights of her room, a circlet of starlight or moonlight made solid.

She had been given a gift, she had thought; could it be that it was not a gift after all, but a promise? The Elves had a flexible view of time; sometimes their vision slipped ahead of human vision_seeing not what would be, but all of the possibilities of what might be. And sometimes, when one was markedly better than the rest, they would move to see that it came to pass.

No one with ambition for ruling all the Twenty Kingdoms could afford to let the Elves live in peace, she thought soberly. They are too random an element: unpredictable and unreliable, and most of all, ungovernable. Whoever this person is, he cannot allow the Elves to remain within human borders. So perhaps that is why the second bracelet came to me.

She laid her left hand over the warm circle of silver and closed her eyes. As she held her mind in stillness, listening, she caught the distant melody of Elven Magic, so utterly unlike any other music except that of the Gypsies.

She added her own to it, brought it in, and strengthened it. It must carry her message for her, and it had a long, long way to travel.

She sang to it, deep within her mind, weaving her words into the melody, to be read by every Elf that encountered it. The more that knew, the better.

First, her Name, which was more than just a name; it was the signature of her own power, her history, and her place among her Elven allies. Bird of song, and bird of night, she sang, Healing Hands and Eyeless Sight. Bird of passage, Elven friend, walks the road without an end. Pass the wall that has no door, sail the sea that has no shore_

No one but the Elves would know what three-fourths of that meant; it was all in riddles and allusions, and if there was anything that the Elves loved, it was the indirect. There was more of it, and she sang it all. One did not scant on ceremony with the Elves, especially not with their High King. He might have been her lover, once_but that had been a long time ago, before he became their High King. It had been nothing more than a moment's recreation for him, and scarcely more for her. He had been the ease after Raven_a physical release. She had been_amusement. Later she became more than that, once he learned of her power and heard her play; that was what had made her an Elven friend, not the idyll amid the pillows of his most private bower.

But that was part of her history with them, and she could not leave it out without insulting him.

When she came to the end of her Name, she began the message; first, a condensation of everything she had learned here, beginning with the fact that it was the Elves who had asked her to come here in the first place.

And lastly, her request, a simple one. It was couched in complicated rhyme, but the essence was not at all complicated. I may need you and your magic, and if I do, my need will be a desperate one. You know me, you know that I would not ask this frivolously; if I call, will you come?