The Dark Queen by Michael Williams Read Free Book Online

importance, and Northstar, whose confusion he had calmed. He felt a strange emptiness as
     he stood above the rebel watchfiresthe barbarian blazes interspersed amid the muted,
     efficient glow from the Plainsman camps like diffracted light on the face of a polished
     gemstone. They would follow him, bandit and Plainsman both. But where would he lead, if
     the sands told him nothing?
    *****
    Throughout her childhood, Larken had scavenged at the edge of the camps, companion to the
     dogs and birds of the Que-Nara hunters, able to imitate any sound she heard, outcast
     because of her freakish coloration and her constant vocal disturbances. Again and again
     the Namers awoke to the sounds of dogs outside the tent, the dry hiss of the spring- jaw
     and the underground rumblings of the spirit naga. Arming themselves hastily and blearily
     with warding spells and the hook-bladed kala, they would emerge from the tents . . .
    And find the little girl, singing all of these sounds uncannily into the night air, her
     matted, tangled hair an eerie white in the glow of the campfires. Sending her away seemed
     the best thing to do, so that she could be among her own kind. As her unusual looks marked
     her as threateningly gifted, normal life in the tribe was an impossibility. Her parents
     could hardly contain their relief at her departure. It was, of course, for her own good.
    Her gifts blossomed in a foreign country. She had come to Silvanesti natively superior to
     most of her instructors, intent and tireless at her songcraft. She rose through the great
     Bardic College of Silvanost too fast for everyone, until she was above them all. Larken
     readily learned the first eight bardic modes, the traditional arrangements of note and
     rhythm that carried the bardic songs. She studied diligently and alone, as was her way,
     far from the flarings of temper and temperament displayed by her fellow students. As the
     bardic initiates, the high Silvanesti and the noble Solamnics, the Istarians and the
     western elves from Qualinesti, bickered and plotted in the tall towers of Silvanost, the
     girl sat by the waters of the Thon-Thalas, her knobby, callused feet submerged in the dark
     current, practicing the songs in her harsh, flexible soprano. They had laughed at her, elf
     and highborn human alike. Called her “churl” and “guttersnipe.” She ignored them serenely,
     mimicking the sound of floodwaters in the quarters of discomfited masters, the chitter of
     black squirrels in the vaults of the tower, which sent apprentice and novice alike up
     ladders with brooms. All the while, despite her echoes and pranks, Larken's thoughts
     remained serious, intent on the intricate bardic music.
    By her second winter she had mastered all eight of the modes, mastered the drum and the
     nillean pipes, and most of all developed and strengthened a soprano voice that, though
     never melodious, never beautiful, left her teachers breathless, admiring its power and
     range. Admiring, and fiercely resentful.
    In the groves along the Thon-Thalas, where elf and human still mingled in green and quiet,
     the sub- ject of her voice produced a jarring note of controversy. No student, the masters
     maintained from their green solitudes, especially no gritty slip of a girl from the
     plains, had ever learned the modes in only six seasons. There was foul play, no doubt some
     hidden magic. It was not right.
    Yet Larken learned all the modes, swiftly and readily and gracefully. Soon she tired of
     the tradi- tional modes and began on the veiled ones, the intricate magical music that
     dwelt in the gap between audible notes. She learned the first fourthe Kijon-ian for
     happiness, the Branchalan for growth, the Matherian for serenity, and then, alarmingly,
     the Solinian mode of visions and changes. At a recital, when her mighty voice changed
     table water into snow, her teachers took the threat in hand.
    In a ceremony usually saved