Voice of Crow by Jeri Smith-Ready
She took a cautious sniff of the bundle. The heady scent made her dizzy. She remembered the baby, and wondered how the thanapras would affect him or her. It might not be safe.
She sighed and closed the box, then set it back on the overhead shelf, a bit too loudly.
Coranna’s snores stopped. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” Rhia said. “I can’t sleep, so I came for chamomile.”
Coranna shifted in her bed. “How can you not sleep? You should be exhausted.”
“Don’t you hear them?”
“Who?”
“The dead. The ones we just buried.”
Coranna sat up, or at least it sounded like she had. “You hear distinct voices? Voices you recognize?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know who it is?”
“Who else would it be? They died violently, and they must want justice, like Etar did.”
“You’re probably right.” Coranna’s voice was muted, and Rhia remembered how stricken the older Crow had been when her friend Etar had died, then lingered instead of continuing to his peaceful rest. He had crossed to the Other Side only after Coranna had convinced him they would investigate what he knew to be his murder. “But their killers are far away. They might never find justice.”
Rhia fumbled her way to the bed, banging her ankle on a chair leg. “Can we at least bring them peace? Convince them to cross over?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Coranna shifted over to give Rhia room to sit. “On rare occasions, when people die, they take a piece of a living person’s soul with them.”
Rhia took a moment to rehear what Coranna had just said. “They take soul pieces to the Other Side?” The skin on her nape felt like it wanted to crawl down her back.
“Not exactly,” Coranna said. “Crow won’t let soul thieves cross over all the way. Such malevolence would pollute His peaceful realm.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Out of spite, often from a grudge or a heartbreak. It’s a way to gain power over someone or take vengeance on them.”
“Do the living know that they’re missing a piece?”
“Sometimes they hear the voice of the dead person, but usually they just feel different, incomplete. The symptoms vary depending on which part of them has been stolen.”
“They have to live that way forever?”
“Until the dead soul thief lets go. Sometimes they do it on their own, or a Crow person convinces them to give it back.”
Growing up in Asermos, Rhia had known no Crows, and it seemed as if every day brought a new awareness of their duties and powers. “Whose souls do the Kalindon elders hold?”
“Probably the soldiers who slaughtered them. Each man is no doubt lying awake now, hearing the voices of those he killed.”
“Good.” Rhia bit her lip, trying to quench an ember of bitterness. “Not good for the Kalindons, of course. Can the soldiers talk back?”
“No. Only second-and third-phase Crows can speak to the dead, and even then only with the help of thanapras.”
“But I spoke with Nilo after he died, without thanapras.”
“He was your brother. Sometimes loved ones can connect to us in a way others can’t.” She took Rhia’s hand—an effusive gesture for the reserved old woman. “I’ll speak to the elders, urge them to let go and cross over. But not tonight. Between the battle and the journey and the funerals, I’ve nothing left.”
“I know you’re tired.” Rhia squeezed Coranna’s fingers, which felt too cold for the warm weather. “That’s why I want to help.”
“Retrieving soul parts is exhausting, even dangerous. Besides, the thanapras isn’t safe for the baby. You can help me after your child is weaned if, Spirits forbid, the elders haven’t all passed on by then.”
Rhia’s shoulders sagged. “I hate feeling useless.”
“You have many years to learn your second-phase powers.” Coranna released a sigh that was half groan. “I wish you hadn’t progressed at a time like this. It’s such bad wisdom for one so young.”
“Too late. What do I do with it?”
“Keep it to yourself.”
Rhia thought she’d misheard. “We can’t tell the survivors that their loved ones aren’t at rest?”
“It would only trouble them,” Coranna said. “Remember, your highest value is compassion.”
“What about truth?”
“Truth brings pain. It’s our duty to bring peace.”
“Yes, to the dead.”
“And the living.”
Rhia wanted to protest, but she couldn’t deny that the last thing the surviving Kalindons needed was more heartbreak.
“Get some sleep.” Coranna squeezed Rhia’s knee. “Tomorrow I’ll show you some meditations to help quiet the voices.”
A few minutes later, Rhia sank back into bed. Marek shifted and wrapped himself around her. She nestled into his embrace, hoping his presence would calm her thoughts.
As her breath slowed and deepened, the chorus of dead Kalindons faded at last. Sleep drifted over her like fog.
“Comfortable?” a deep voice said.
Rhia’s eyes flew open. She must have dreamed it.
“Look at the cozy little Crow, lying in the embrace of my murderer.”
Her muscles seized, waking Marek with their jolt.
He came alert at once. “What’s wrong?”
Skaris the Bear, the man Marek had killed to avenge her own attempted murder, was in her head.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “My foot cramped.”
“Want me to rub it?”
“It’s better now. Sorry I woke you.”
Marek kissed her temple, then stroked her hair until he fell asleep again, his hand going limp against her head.
She waited for her old enemy to speak again. His voice hadn’t stretched and distorted itself like the Kalindon elders; it had been as clear as a nightingale’s call.
Did he hold a piece of her soul? Why did he haunt her and not Marek? She didn’t dare ask Coranna, for fear of revealing Marek’s guilt.
“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Skaris said.
Rhia jerked again. Marek grunted and sat up.
“What is it?” he said. “And don’t tell me it’s another foot cramp.”
She reached out in the darkness. “I hear him.”
Marek took her hand and kissed it. “Who?”
“Skaris.”
His grip tightened. “Where?” he growled.
“In my mind. You don’t hear him?”
“No. I thought you couldn’t identify the voices.”
“I can now. Just him. Do you know what that means?”
Marek put his other hand over hers. “Why would he hold a piece of you? Why not me?”
Skaris said, “He’s not the cause of my death. You are.”
Rhia slammed her palms against her ears. “Quiet!”
The Bear’s voice was as clear as if he were sitting beside her. “Marek was just the instrument. You took a month of life from me, from all of us, when Coranna resurrected you. You caused all this death.”
“No, I didn’t!” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Crow doesn’t work that way.”
Marek took her hands. “We have to get Coranna. She’ll help you.”
“She can’t, not now. If we tell her, she’ll try, and she might hurt herself.”
“Then what can we do?”
“Let her get her strength back. And pray to Crow that it works.”
They lay down again, and Rhia welcomed Marek’s arms tight around her despite the heat of the summer night.
“I wish I could kill him again for you,” Marek murmured.
Skaris snorted. “That’s not helping your cause.”
“Shh,” she whispered to both men.
Skaris didn’t speak to Rhia again that night. Though his voice had silenced, in its place was the nagging siren of her own conscience.
06
He hated th
Half a dozen had babbled throughout the night near Filip’s hospital window. With the first light of day, another set of nerve-jangling chirps and tweets penetrated his ears.
Soon the twittering was joined by another bird’s rapid rata-tat. It felt like an awl against Filip’s skull.
He drew the pillow over his head and squeezed. How could such a quiet place be so loud?
“You can’t kill yourself that way,” Zelia said at the door. Her feet scuffed the floor’s wooden planks on the way to the bed. “As soon as you faint from lack of air, you’ll let go of the pillow, and wake up alive, with a nasty headache. Ready for breakfast?”
He grunted and forced himself up onto his elbows. The healer watched with a dispassionate gaze as he raised himself to sit against the wall.
“Talkative today, I see.” She set a basin of steaming water on the nightstand. “I thought you might like to have breakfast outdoors with your fellows, get out of this stuffy room. But you need a bath first.”
“I’ll stay inside.”
“No, you won’t. It’s a lovely cool morning, and your room needs cleaning. The other Descen—I mean, the other men have been asking after you.”
“I don’t want to see them.”
“Well, it’s all about what you want, isn’t it?” She turned the covers down, exposing his bare torso. “Are you this contrary with your own mother?”
“Don’t say are, as if I’ll see her again.”
“Excuse me. Were you such a little wasp with her, too?”
“Yes.”
A smile tugged the corners of Zelia’s mouth as she handed him a soaking hot cloth. “And did it work?”
“No.” He cleansed his chest and arms, feeling only a shadow of pain in his shoulder from the two-week-old arrow wound. Either it had been shallower than he’d thought, or there really was something to this Otter healing power.
“It’s too loud outside to think,” he said, “much less eat.”
“Loud? Whatever are you talking about?”
“Those stupid birds.”
She drew in a breath, and he congratulated himself on finding a way to shock her.
“All night,” he continued, “at least five or six outside my window. Chirping and calling to each other, even though it sounded like they were sitting on the same branch.”
Zelia took the cloth and motioned for him to turn on his side. “That wasn’t five or six birds. It was one bird with five or six songs. A mockingbird.”
“Oh.” Now he was the stupid one. “We don’t have those in the city.” He shifted so she could wash his back.
Pain drove through the sole of his left foot, as if he had stepped on a spike. He grunted and clenched his hands against the blankets, imagining them grasping the neck of the man whose sword had ruined his life.
The healer reached over to touch his knee, then closed her eyes and murmured a soft chant. Filip wanted to punch her, as if he could relieve his pain by delivering it to someone else.
Within several moments, the agony dulled to an insistent ache under her touch. She did have magic, he had to admit, though not enough.
“Thank you,” he told Zelia with a full exhale. “It’s better.” Filip hoped the others hadn’t heard him cry out. He grabbed a clean shirt from the bedside table and slipped it over his head. “How can it hurt so much when it’s not even there?”
“It’s up here.” She touched her temple. “One day your mind will accept what’s lost.”
“I can feel it.” He closed his eyes. “I can wiggle my toes.”
“No, my boy, I’m afraid you can’t.” The healer’s voice was soft but strong as she touched his arm. “Come outside now.”
He jerked away from her. “I won’t.”
“You will, or you don’t eat. Breakfast is in the yard today and nowhere else.” She stepped briskly to the door. “I’ll fetch my apprentice to carry you.”
“No!” He threw back the blanket, knowing he was playing into her mind games. “I’ll crawl before I let them see me cradled like a baby.”
“You won’t need to crawl if you can use these.” She reached past the doorway into the examination room and brought out a pair of wooden crutches. The handrests were padded with brown fur. Zelia placed one on either side of him.
With more effort than he thought it would take, they got him standing for the first time since the battle. Though the crutches provided stable support, he found himself wanting to put his other foot down. He tried not to think where that foot might be. Perhaps it shared a mass grave with his brother and hundreds of other dead “Descendants.” Knowing the Asermons, they’d probably fed it to their dogs, or prepared a feast of body parts for the hideous crows they worshiped.
Filip crossed the floor, his shoulder wound flaring from the effort. He welcomed that pain, since it came from a place that actually existed.
He passed through the exam room, then the waiting room at the front of the building. Filtered sunlight patched the floor with shifting yellow spots. He quickened his pace at the sight, longing to feel that sunlight on his own skin. He stumbled across the front threshold, then looked up at his surroundings.
Asermos. The village he had come to conquer for his country. For his gods.
Such a small, innocuous-looking place. From the hospital doorway he could see to the southern end of the village as it curved around the banks of the Velekon River. Modest buildings of stone and stucco sat adjacent to the sandy main road. Narrow streets branched off this road, leading three or four blocks up the riverbank. The entire village could have held no more than a few thousand people, including those on outlying farms.
They should have been easy to trample.
With Zelia’s arm to steady him, he crutched himself off the porch, careful not to slip on the dew-slick grass. She led him around the building to the right.
A wooden fence extended from the side of the house at about the height of Filip’s chest. On the other side lay a garden bulging with herbs and flowers. A flagstone path led through the garden and curved toward the back of the building.
Mother would have liked this, he thought as Zelia opened the gate. Her own garden had crammed their apartment’s balcony, the flowers and ornamental plants leaving little room for people to sit and enjoy the view of the city below. Filip’s mind veered from the memory of this view and the emptiness it carved in his gut.
Voices and laughter came from the back of the garden. He stopped in midstride, wavering. “How many?”
“Seven,” Zelia replied. “All your people. The Asermons are at another healer’s. We thought it best to separate the two sets of soldiers, seeing as you were trying to kill each other not so long ago.”
He considered asking for a transfer to the other hospital. Better to be surrounded by enemies who scorn than friends who pity.
Zelia laid her hand against his back. “They’ll be glad to see you.”
“You don’t understand.”
She sighed. “And I’m a busy woman, with no time for your explanation.”
Filip forced his leg and arms to move. He and Zelia came around the corner of the house, and the yard went silent.
He lifted his chin and looked straight ahead as he approached his fellow soldiers. With each step, the cuff of his half-empty trouser leg scraped the stone paving.
One of the figures stood. “Sir!”
Filip scanned the faces of the men around the long wooden table. Most were older than he was, in their mid-to late twenties. Rough-looking, brawny, with short hair. None would meet his eye; they studied the ground or the treetops or some fascinating object they had just picked out of their teeth. Only one didn’t share their aggressive indifference.
Kiril Vidaso was saluting him. The earnest young second lieutenant, right arm in a sling, held his left fist to his breastbone in a backward image of the customary gesture.
Filip almost stumbled from the shock of being spoken to, much less honored, in his wretched state. Th
He cleared his throat. “At your ease.”
Kiril pulled out the chair he’d been sitting in at the far end of the table and offered it to Filip. He seemed to be trying to keep his glance away from his approaching superior’s obvious injury.
“Thank you.” Filip focused on keeping his balance while he turned to lower himself into the chair. His shoulder throbbed, but his stump bore only a dull ache. He wondered when Zelia’s magic would wear off and the shooting pains would return.
Kiril took the crutches and sat beside him. “It’s good to see you, sir.”
Filip gritted his teeth. He had been promoted from second to first lieutenant only a month ago, and barely outranked his comrade, who was less than a year younger. “You don’t have to call me sir anymore.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do,” Filip said, then regretted his harsh tone. He gave his friend a curt nod. “Thank you, though.”
Kiril’s posture relaxed a little, but he rapped his fingertips on the table in an unsteady rhythm. “I see you cut your hair short,” he said after several uncomfortable moments.
“I’m not an officer anymore. No sense in looking like one.”
“Right.” Kiril touched the ends of his own dark brown, shoulder-length hair. “Can I get you anything, s—Uh, Lieutenant?”
Filip slid a wary gaze over the soldiers at the other end of the long table. They had begun conversing again, ignoring the two lieutenants. “Who are these men? Some look familiar.”
“Infantry, second battalion.” Kiril’s lip curled a bit, and he lowered his voice. “All enlisted ranks, so they should have saluted you. Southerners, mostly. But they’re all we’ve got.”
“Got for what?”
“For escaping.”
Filip looked around the garden, empty except for the patients. “I don’t see any guards.”
“Trust me, they’re there. Corporal Addano, the one with the bandaged head, he tried to run two nights ago and came this close to getting an arrow in the foot.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart to illustrate. “You should’ve seen his face.” Kiril smirked. “Needed a clean pair of trousers after that, too.”