animal. Make something I've never seen before. No! Make something that nobody has ever seen before.'
Glancing around, Corinn said, 'Aaden, you know I don't like to do such things here with so many eyes around.'
'But there's nobody here,' Aaden said, incongruously leaning in and whispering.
'Wait until we're back at Calfa Ven.'
'Mother! Just one thing and then I'll go. It's been ages since you've shown me something. We're alone. Look.'
Corinn took a moment to verify that the room was empty, that no eyes watched, and no one was within hearing. She rarely indulged any living person anything not completely to her liking, but Aaden was difficult to refuse. Or, in truth, with him she did not want to refuse. Seeing pleasure on his face was a joy like none she'd known before.
She said, 'Go make sure the door is pulled tight, then.'
Stepping from around her desk, she withdrew into the small alcove in the corner of the room, out of sight lest somebody barge in unannounced. Such an act was strictly forbidden, of course, but she still chose caution. Certain that they would not be disturbed-and with a portion of her senses able to detect the movement of persons in the hallways nearby-Corinn began to sing. She did so softly, as if she wished to push the words out and into a shallow bowl on the floor before her, directing them carefully and so as not to spill over some imagined rim. She sang words that were not words, sounds that carried in them the ingredients of existence, the threads that wove together life. She felt Aaden return and knew him to be standing wide-eyed just beside her. She did not shift her gaze from the area above the floor that she sang to.
If she had been asked to explain just how the Giver's tongue worked she could not truly have done so. It was not a practice that led logically from one point to another. It was a language that never held still, that changed before her eyes and in her ears. There was an order to it, yes, a manner in which one moved toward greater and greater mastery. Yes, there was learning involved. She had labored for years over The Song of Elenet, especially when sheltered away with Aaden and a small staff at the hunting lodge of Calfa Ven. Countless times the text on those ancient pages had risen to speak to her, like spirits trapped on the parchment and unleashed by the touch of her eyes. They spoke to her of the Giver's true language. They put her through exercises, twisted her tongue around words made of sounds she had never heard uttered.
Despite all this, the act of singing remained something of an improvisation that leaped from all those hours of study and took on a life of its own. Though this frightened her-sometimes waking her from dreams in which her song had suddenly turned to nightmare-the act itself was a thing of such enraptured beauty that she could no longer be away from it long. Aaden wanted her to sing; truth be known, she hungered for it even more than he.
And sing she did. Her words-unintelligible, beautiful, and infused with an almost physical power-filled the alcove. Sound danced in the air as if the small chamber were laced with invisible ribbons, like snakes airborne and slithering, circling. As Corinn continued, the circle grew ever smaller. She pulled the spell in, drew it tighter, filled that invisible bowl with sounds that shrank into greater substance. Soon the words of her song swam like hundreds of sparkling minnows, a seething globe of them getting denser and denser. Within this, a form began to take shape.
Something that nobody has ever seen before: that's what Aaden asked for. And that was what she was singing into being. She would let it live there before them for a few moments, and then she would sing its unmaking.
CHAPTER THREE
The guards at the lower steps of the palace grounds made the mistake of barring the young man's passage. One of them asked him what he was about; the other hit the stranger's chest with the flat of his palm, his knife hand ready to pull his dagger from his waist sheath; a third sounded a whistle of alarm. They all expressed indignation that a laborer, a peasant-whatever the new arrival was in his tattered clothing, with unkempt hair, calloused hands, and bare feet-would dare try to gain entry to the royal residence. He could be executed on the spot for it. They held this fate off, the first guard said, only because they wished to know the nature of his insanity before doing the deed.
In answer, the intruder took a step back. He set his hands on his hips and stood smiling. He knew his garments were worn thin, grimed by what looked like years of wearing, patched in places and shredded in others. His toenails were black crescents; and the creases of his elbows, neck, and forehead were drawn with thin lines of dirt. He stood with easy confidence, however. His white-toothed smile asked them to see the person behind these outward trappings. See the mirth in his eyes and wonder at it. See the etched musculature beneath the rags. See his face for what it was, not what it appeared to be. It was a tense moment, although everyone but the young man seemed aware of this.
Responding to a blown whistle, several other Marah approached, menacing, sword hands ready. Among them was a face the man knew well but did not much care for. Rialus Neptos hung at the back of the new arrivals-no fighter he, but as usual eager to observe anything he could report to the queen. He was not her chancellor, as he was rumored to think himself, but everyone knew that he shared a closeness with Corinn Akaran that none could fathom. He was a councillor she seemed to grant as much access to as she offered her siblings.
Rialus was quicker than the rest to recognize the young man. For a moment he looked just as perplexed as the guards. 'Draw no swords!' he shouted, pushing forward. 'Draw no swords, you fools! Do you not see this is Prince Dariel?'
The second guard-the one who had touched him but not yet spoken-sputtered, 'Prince-Prince Dariel?' He glanced at the others, his face twisted in puzzlement. He moved his hand away from his dagger as if shocked that he had ever gripped it. 'Your Highness, I don't understand.'
'Ah, you've pegged me,' the young man said, holding his mirthful expression a moment longer before breaking into laughter. 'And your lack of comprehension is clear, friend! Your partners here are the more confused. Have I really been away for so long? I thought it just a few months!' He paused, but nobody had a ready response. 'None of you has ever seen a prince in pauper's clothing, I take it. It's the man who makes the clothes, you know, not the other way around.' He danced in, suddenly light on his feet as if fencing. Nodding toward the councillor, he added, 'Rialus Neptos, it seems, understands this better than most.'
The second guard continued to sputter, while his two companions begged forgiveness. Several of the newly arrived Marah bowed low to the ground. Rialus tried to form a question about his garb; seemed to sense the question was fraught with insult; and instead posed a series of queries, after none of which he kept quiet long enough to hear the answers to. Dariel mentioned casually that he was here to see the queen on matters of state. He should probably be on his way, but should Rialus prefer to interrogate him first… He sketched his indifference in the air with his hand. For that matter, he did not mind being delayed by each Marah who wished to question him. Of course, the queen might not like to be kept waiting…
A moment later Dariel was striding along. Rialus shuffled a half step behind him, signaling furiously with his hands and arms and face at any soldier or guard that might possibly think to intercept them. By the confused looks the men and women sent him, it was clear few understood his antics. Not, at least, until they recognized Dariel's face and bearing. Despite his garb the prince walked with assurance and obvious military fitness. All who might have questioned him instead stepped to the side.
'Is it true what I hear said about you, Rialus?' Dariel asked.
'What's that, sir?'
Dariel did not slacken his pace, but looked at the councillor askance, one corner of his mouth lifted. 'That you've found love, Rialus. That you found marital harmony in the arms of a woman who was once your servant. I'd no idea you were so liberally minded, though I had heard you were on something of a diligent search for a… well, for a wife to complete you.'
This had been a running joke for the last few years. Rialus, once he had his quarters set up in what had been a Meinish compound during Hanish's rule, had set about staffing it almost entirely with attractive young women. It
