intruders?”
The prince mouthed something-the name the man had given, Barad thought-but did not say it out loud. Turning to her, he said, “If-if this is them, they have changed.”
“Are they the Santoth?” Corinn pressed.
Aliver hesitated. Was what he wanted to say at odds with what Corinn wished him to say? Or was the hesitation something else? Barad could not tell. “They were not like this before. They were… wise men. Peaceful men.”
“We still are,” another Santoth said.
“Why did you kill?” Aliver asked. “Nobody here deserved death. The Santoth abhorred killing. They wouldn’t-”
“We defended ourselves,” Nualo said. “That is all. It is not our fault that the Giver’s tongue has curdled within us. We abhorred corruption in the song. We want it cleansed and sweet in us again.” As he spoke, he unfastened the clasp that secured his cloak. He shrugged it from his shoulders and let it drop in a heap on the stones. Beneath it, he wore a breastplate, snug trousers, and thick warrior’s boots. “We are just men, like you. But we have been in torment for so long. In exile. With corruption roiling in our heads. You cannot understand this.”
Another of them turned as he spoke, letting his words sweep across the crowd. “When the song is corrupt, there is no joy in it. Let us have it true again, and we will serve you.”
Shaking his head, Aliver said, “You are not the men I knew.”
“I don’t care what they were,” Corinn said. “Say it simply: Are these the Santoth?”
Though she looked focused on the exchange, Barad could sense something happening around her. He could partially see it-a blurring disturbance in the air around her. He could partially hear it-something like music almost too far in the distance for him to hear.
Staring at the one who had last spoken, Aliver said, “Yes. I see you, Dural. You are not the quiet one I met in Talay, but I can see you.” He glanced at another. “And you, Abernis. Tenith. All of you. I can see you all. Nualo, I see you most of all.”
“You have living eyes, then,” Nualo said. “It is good that we have come, if you see us true.”
Corinn gathered her answer around her like comfortable armor. She spoke impatiently, as if she would spare them only a few more words before returning to the interrupted ceremony. “No, it is not good. As Santoth you breathe by our leave. You should not be here without our permission. You were exiled. This is no place for you unless we ask for you. We do not. Go back to exile.”
At the same time as she said these Acacian words, something else came out with them, woven through them. The Giver’s tongue. That was what he could almost see and hear. A spell. Barad heard it writhing through the words. So, too, did the Santoth. For a moment the order seemed to have power over them. As a group, they were pushed back on their heels, off balance as if hit by a gust of wind that no one else felt. But they came back to flat on their feet fast enough.
Abernis smiled and said, “We are free from the curse. The girl released us. We will not go back.”
“What girl?”
“This one’s daughter.” He pointed at Aliver. “Shen. An Akaran. She released us.”
Barad heard Hanish make a sound low in his throat.
“Lies,” Corinn said. She might have been refuting either Abernis or Hanish. “He has no daughter. You wish to trick us into truly letting you free. I don’t acknowledge it. Go back to exile!”
This time, both the spoken words and the spell imbedded in them flew, propelled by anger. Barad watched it leap, not from Corinn’s mouth but from her shoulders, a coiled thing that struck like a snake secured around her neck.
The Santoth flicked it away, just as they had the arrows. The spell skimmed across the air above them, transformed from something nearly invisible into writhing, wormlike shadows that splattered across portions of the crowd. Where it touched, people died. The liquid shadow cut through them like molten steel thrown against bare flesh. Barad was not sure if the others saw it as he did, but they certainly saw the ghastly result.
Panic rose again. People near the shattered doors started pushing and shoving, rushing out even as they craned their heads back to see what other horrors might come. Some in the upper tiers climbed over the back wall, even though there was nothing there but cliffs and rocks and the sea below.
“Your song is pure, Corinn, but you are not powerful,” Nualo said, ignoring the confusion below him. “We are powerful, but our song is not pure. Where is The Song of Elenet? Tell us. Give it to us.”
“If you do, we will make the world beautiful for you. All of it, for you,” Tenith said.
Nualo nodded as if he had just been about to broach that topic. He hooked his thumbs through the cord at his waist. “That is so. We owe you much, Corinn. The girl released us, but you taught us much of the Giver’s tongue again.”
“I did not,” Corinn said. This time her words were tentative. A trace of doubt trailed them.
“You sang it, did you not?” Abernis asked.
“That is my right as Tinhadin’s heir.”
Nualo brushed that away. “By singing it, you released it into the world again. We had only to listen to hear. And we did listen. You are foolish, Queen Corinn. Foolish for reaching into death. Foolish for spinning trinkets for your child. Foolish for taking creatures already warped by unpure magic and making them all the greater. Foolish for taking from one place and giving to another, with no understanding of balance. You have no control over any of the things you’ve done. You see? Your world needs us to correct your errors. Give us The Song and we will help you.”
“No.”
“Give us The Song,” another Santoth said. Several others said the same. Then they all spoke at once. A bombardment of entreating voices, all asking for The Song, all promising to serve her. Swearing to do only her bidding, trying to explain the torment they lived in. It was too much all at once.
Corinn stopped it by asking, “What would you do with it if you had it?”
“Whatever you wish.”
Hanish said, “I don’t trust that answer. Make them be more specific. Will they destroy the world in flaming retribution? Enslave us as punishment for-”
“Shut up!” Corinn snapped, turning to spit in the man’s face. “Be gone you fool! Let me think.”
Hanish blinked his dreamy gray eyes closed. “As you wish, my love.” He bent his head and disappeared.
Those around Corinn looked at her with troubled eyes. The charlatan, Delivegu, wrinkled his face in a manner that made him look momentarily absurd. It was so hard for Barad to remember that only he saw and heard Hanish.
To the Santoth, Corinn said, “Would you destroy the Auldek in our name?”
“Of course,” the sorcerers answered. “In your name, we would.”
No, don’t believe them, Barad thought.
“Would you defend Tinhadin’s line and protect me and accept my heir?”
“Yes,” came back all twenty-two voices.
“I don’t have it,” Corinn said.
“You have it!” Nualo’s voice boomed. Nothing about his gestures or expression changed, but in the moments he spoke it was as if there were no other sound in the world. His voice was everything. Inside Barad’s ears. Inside his head. When Nualo spoke, it felt as if the beat of his heart hitched itself to the rhythm of his words. “We know it. We can feel it singing around you. We knew when you read it. We know!”
“It is not here,” Corinn said, “but if you return to the south I will retrieve it.”
“Do not anger me,” Nualo said.
“Aliver and I will consider your request. As king and queen we will. Not with you here in violation of exile. Not with you demanding what you have no right to demand. We will treat with you fairly, but not like this.”
“You lie.”
“I am the queen of Acacia. If I say a thing, it’s the truth. You see? I cannot lie. Now go back to exile!”
Again, the words flew tethered to magical commands.
This time, Nualo raked them out of the air with his hands, screaming as he did so. He took the stuff that was her spell and blew foulness into it and sent it ripping across the crowd. A swath of people went down, beginning not far from the queen herself. Jason, the scholar Barad had often seen tutoring Aaden, was among them. The curse
