While the guards made their camp on a platform that straddled three trees, Hanna listened to the canopy singers. There were two: a baritone and a soprano, one to the east and one to the west, singing back and forth to each other.
It was an old song, about the Great Mother, who died to save humans from spirits. Some stories referred to her as a baby or a young girl, but this ballad treated her as if she had been a grown woman. The soprano sang her verses. Hanna let the melody soak into her as it soared with the breeze in between the leaves and up toward the night sky.
“What’s she saying?” Serk asked.
“She’s singing her sadness, knowing she must sacrifice herself if humans are to survive,” Hanna answered. “In the beginning, all of Renthia was like the untamed lands, with wild spirits making and unmaking the earth we stand on and air we breathe. It took the death of the Great Mother to give us the power to defend ourselves. Before that, there were no queens. Listen—the next bit is the Great Mother singing to the first queen.”
The baritone chimed in, taking the part of the Great Mother:
You alone within the storm
of hunger and unfinished pain
must touch the minds unfettered
and be the spirits’ bane.
The soprano answered back, a cry of loneliness that pierced higher than the sounds of the crickets and evening birds:
I cannot breathe another breath,
without you.
I cannot see the sky
with evening stars and golden moon,
their beauty is a lie;
do not let me walk alone—
And the baritone harmonized with her, telling the first queen that while she must touch the spirits alone, she has not been forsaken. The Great Mother has sent a protector to stay by her side and guard her from harm while her mind tames the wildness all around.
Hanna wondered aloud at the word “protector.”
“The first champion,” Evenna responded.
That was the most likely interpretation, Hanna agreed. It made more sense than having a wolf as some kind of special protector. She wondered what Merecot had been thinking, though. She must have had a strong reason to go after Bayn. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
It was an appropriate song for the canopy singers to sing, while the forests were gripped in the queen’s sadness. It held sorrow but also hope. Hanna wished that Naelin were here to hear it, but since she wasn’t, Hanna was determined to wring as much meaning from it as she could.
Even when we feel the most alone, we are not. Even when things are the most bleak, they will get better. There is always hope. A lovely, if simplistic, sentiment. Listening to the glorious vocals, Hanna almost believed it.
Chapter 11
Ven claimed the practice area at the palace. It wasn’t that he forbade others from using it—it was merely that by using it, he dominated it, and that meant he got it to himself.
Squirreled behind the ornate palace trees, the training area held an obstacle course of vines, ropes, nets, ladders, and beams built to mimic the toughest of forest terrain.
Ven began with the vines, leaping off a branch and swinging one-handed to the next vine. Grabbing it, he swung to the next and then the next, and then up straight onto a wall with two-inch handholds six feet apart from one another. He climbed, swinging his body like a pendulum to reach up to the next handhold until he reached the waterfall.
Gallons of water were dumped continuously, using a waterwheel and pulley system to create a gushing waterfall down the side of the tree. The handholds were within the waterfall—you had to reach into the pouring water, let it hammer your face, and reach by blind feel up through the water to climb.
Ven climbed it in less than thirty seconds.
He then leapt off the top of the waterfall onto another vine and swung across to a platform. He was breathing hard but felt good. Champion Havtru, who was waiting on the platform, passed him a cup of water, and Ven chugged it in one gulp.
“No safety harness?” Havtru asked.
“Done this course hundreds of times.” He refilled the water from a pitcher and drank it again. “Besides, I stay sharper if there’s no harness.”
“You’re making the rest of us look bad.”
Ven reached for the pitcher to refill his glass, changed his mind, and drank directly from the pitcher instead. Water spilled down his cheeks, but his shirt was already soaked from the waterfall. “Just need to stay ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Anything, he thought. Everything. “Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Who knows.”
“You expect the worst.”
“Always. It’s how I’m still alive.”
Havtru nodded, but then shook his head. “Can’t do that. Gotta keep thinking it’ll be better, you know? But that’s not why I’m here—I wanted to ask you about the girl I’m thinking of picking to be my new candidate. I think she shows real potential, but she’s as meek as a baby bunny. Scared of every shadow.”
Grabbing a towel, Ven dried his neck and hair. “She’s right to be scared.”
“Yeah, that’s not helpful.”
Ven smiled ruefully and then shrugged.
“Anyway, I was hoping you could talk to her—”
“No.”
Havtru opened and shut his mouth like a fish. Finally, a “What?” escaped his lips.
“Does anyone know you’ve decided to choose her? I assume she’s at an academy—have you told her headmistress? Has she met the queen yet? Either queen?”
“Um, no. Only decided to choose her a few days ago.”
“It could be I’m being paranoid.” Eh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m being paranoid. Question was: Was it unwarranted? He didn’t think so. Aratay had two queens but no heirs—and if the attack by Merecot’s spirits proved anything, it was a reminder of how precarious their situation was. They needed heirs. Specifically ones not in danger of being murdered. “But my advice is don’t tell anyone about her,” he continued. “Don’t bring her to the palace. Don’t introduce her to the queen or talk about her to the other champions. Train her in secret. That way, if an assassin begins targeting candidates, he or she won’t know to target her.”
Havtru shook his head. “But the assassin was stopped. Killed. And Queen Merecot of Semo has asked for peace—I heard that Headmistress Hanna is traveling north to serve as ambassador.”
“You heard right,” Ven said. “And I’m saying it changes nothing.”
Havtru tugged on the royal champion insignia on his jacket. He obviously didn’t like Ven’s advice, and Ven felt bad about that—but he’d feel worse if he was right, hadn’t acted, and the candidates all died, again. “You think the queen of Semo—” Havtru began.
“Or the spirits themselves. Some of them are smart enough to target known candidates. And if the queens lose control . . .”
“Surely they won’t. We have two! And the death of Queen Naelin’s children—it was a shock, but it was also a one-time event. She’ll recover. She won’t be the same—you can’t be after something like that—but the shock of the moment has passed.”
Ven tried not to flinch at the mention of death. They had all agreed not to let it leak that Queen Merecot had kidnapped the children. Or that she was involved at all. “Just a precaution, Havtru. Humor a paranoid old man.”
The other man almost smiled. “If you’re old, I’m ancient. But yes, I’ll do it. She can tell her headmistress she’s going home to visit family, and I’ll take her to—”
“Don’t say it out loud. Not here. Not even to me.” He hadn’t noticed any spirits in the practice area, but the palace was crawling with them. Better not to take the risk. He didn’t need to know where Havtru would be training his candidate.
“Are you doing the same with your candidate?” Havtru asked.
Ven eyed the course and wondered if he should go again. He hated the way he felt helpless to support Naelin, and he kept thinking how he’d failed Bayn and the children—not only had he not been able to keep Erian and Llor from being kidnapped, but the air spirits who’d attacked them had escaped and Bayn had been lost. Everything about that day had been the stuff of his worst nightmares. He’d been late, like he’d been on the day Greytree, Daleina’s childhood home, was destroyed. I’ll never be too late again, he vowed. “Haven’t taken another candidate,” he said.