Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(63)

UNAR SAT on the crate.

Frog sat on the other crate, opposite her, knee to knee. Unar stared at Frog, childlike and yet not-child, lost and found and yet still lost. Unar could make no sense of her words: This is anyone’s home who would fight for justice.

The river hissed as it sheeted past. Only Esse’s rope, stretching from a fixed shelf into the flow, wicking water along its length to plip-plop-plip on the floor, broke the glassy sheen of it in the light of the luminescent fungi. All evidence of Bernreb’s butchery was gone.

“Do you know the godsong?” Frog asked. “They do not allow music, but you should have learned the godsong before they locked you up behind those Gates.”

“Yes,” Unar said. Teacher Eann hadn’t been completely ineffective.

“Listen to my voice carefully as I sing the first verse.”

“I will.”

Frog’s singing voice was soft and high.

Airak the white with his forked swords of light

stole the gleam from the Old One’s eye

while the winged and the furred, the beast and the bird

come when summoned by Orin, or die.

Unar’s lips compressed. Those weren’t the words she’d been taught.

“Now you sing it,” Frog said.

Unar hesitated, unsure of whether Frog intended to steal the sound from her very throat, as Frog had stolen the sound of Marram’s flute, or if Unar would be permitted to hear the words that she sang in her deeper, raspier voice.

Airak the white with his forked swords of light

dances with those who will dare

while Oxor is love and her sunshine above

pierces mortals and mists with her care.

Frog had done nothing to alter her singing, Unar thought, unless it was something that she couldn’t sense.

“Well?” Frog said.

“Well, what?”

“Could you tell the difference? That you were an adept but not me? That you had the gift and a patron deity, and I did not?”

“No.” Unar kept her expression fixed but wanted to slap the incredulity off her sister’s face. Frog already knew she couldn’t tell. Was this just a reminder of her supposed place? Frog shook her head.

“I had heard power is purposely waked in Gardeners as surely as it is waked here in Understorey, but the effect does not carry across the barrier, it seems. I must do the work of wakin’ your bones in the Understorian way myself. Sing again, in the next highest octave.”

“Octave?”

Frog grimaced. Even seated, her small fists went to her narrow hips.

“Startin’ with this note. Like this. Airak.”

“Airak.”

“No, no.” Frog rolled her eyes. “Match it exactly. Airak.”

“Airak.”

“Huh. That is not your natural frequency, either. The bones stay quiet. Try again. Airak.”

“Airak,” Unar squeaked.

“To Floor with Airak,” Frog said, baring her teeth. “It is not workin’. Wait. Maybe you need to go one lower than where you started. Find it yourself. I cannot sing that low.”

Unar tried, but her voice croaked, dry and useless, and she couldn’t make it sound like song.

“Neither can I.”

“You must try again!” Frog’s fists firmed. “Or stay here, powerless, forever.”

Unar stood up. She went to the bucket for drinking water, dipped it into the river, wet her throat, and washed her face and hands. She stood with her shoulders back and her chin lifted, eyes closed. She could do it. She would do it! She had never failed at any magical task ever set for her.

Airak the white with his forked swords of light

dances with those who will dare

while Oxor is love, and her sunshine above

pierces mortals and mists with her care.

“Do not stop!” Frog leaped up from her crate. Unar heard the sound of it tipping carelessly onto the floor. Her body felt like it was dissolving in the now-familiar indication of Understorian magic—all weightlessness and no smells. Her eyes flew open. Frog was crossing the floor between them, hands extended, the tiny bones inside them glowing like the bones of a transparent fish. “Sing the whole song!” She laid her hands on Unar’s.

Atwith the king of the unliving thing

rules a restful, lightless land

while the winged and the furred, the beast and the bird

come to Orin if she lifts a hand.

Ukak, he calls the small creatures that crawl

to the lamps that are Airak’s bliss

while Odel sets their adored children in air

as soft as a mother’s kiss.

Esh grows the paths between family hearths

and knits up the limbs of the sleepers.

Irof brings blooms to the humblest of tombs

and wakes up the hearts of the weepers.

Ehkis brings rain to the forest again

and rests in the heart of the waters.

Audblayin guards birth and the things of the earth

and opens the eyes of their daughters.

Ulellin whose leaves and the stir of the breeze

bring delight to the high and the bidden

is no less than Akkad, whose greatfruit can be had

for sweetness or seed-metals hidden.

Unar looked down and saw the bones in her own hands beginning to glow. There was uneasiness in her midriff, too, a feeling like the cramps in a stomach empty for weeks suddenly finding itself full of food. At the same time, her stomach was breaking into floating fragments with the rest of her. She had no body. She needed no body. Only the pure vibration of sound. The glow of her bones strengthened as she sang the final verse.