The Voice Read online

  I hurried up the broad steps of the temple and rang the bell. Rang and rang and rang.

  “There is someone on duty,” a voice grumbled as the door opened. “You don’t have to wake up the whole tem—”

  The moment he saw me, the Shaman stopped his complaint.

  “Please,” I said, feeling the tears well up now that I didn’t have to be hard and cold. “Please help us. She’s in the cart. She can’t . . . I can’t . . . Please.”

  He touched my arm, giving the warmth of comfort. Then he went down the stairs. The sky had lightened enough that I could see his face go blank with shock when he looked inside the cart.

  He ran back up the stairs and disappeared inside the temple, leaving me standing there while something savage raked its claws inside me until I thought I would bleed to death without anyone seeing a drop spilled.

  Now that I wasn’t hard and cold, I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, didn’t know what to do.

  The Shaman returned, rushing past me with six others in his wake, two of them women. One woman, the last out the door, stopped and touched my face gently.

  “Do you know where to go?” she asked. “Which door leads to the room for sorrow?”

  I nodded.

  “Then go in. Find your place.”

  I felt sluggish, dull. I looked toward the cart. “Horse.”

  “We’ll take care of him. Go in now.”

  Even at that early hour, there were five other people in the room. I chose a place that spared me from sitting next to anyone else. I smelled of horse and sweat and exhaustion. The cushions were soft, and the minute I sat down, my legs and feet began to throb. The last time I had rested had been unintentional. I had leaned against the horse, too tired to stand on my own, and woke up sometime later to discover that the horse, too, had fallen asleep, his head resting on my shoulder.

  Voices rose and fell. Gongs sounded and faded. I drifted.

  Then the doors opened and the Shamans walked in leading The Voice. I thought they would take her to a room where she could be cleaned or at least change her out of the filth-encrusted clothes. They had done none of those things, just led her to a spot and helped her lower herself to the mound of cushions.

  The voices of the other people in the room sputtered into shocked silence. All through the journey, I had seen without seeing. The Voice wasn’t wearing her hood. The scars on her neck were clearly visible.

  The Shaman picked up the mallet, struck the gong in front of The Voice, then slipped the mallet into her hand. The gong’s deep sound filled the room. The Voice rocked back and forth, clearly in pain.

  Then another gong sounded, and a male voice, low but clear, sounded a note. Another gong and another voice rose to fill the room. Another. Another. Another.

  A sixth gong and a sixth voice, raw and keening.

  Mine.

  She had no voice, so we gave her ours, singing the sorrows until finally, in one of those moments when the sound was hushed and spent, the Shaman said, “That is enough for now.”

  Those five people stood up, looked at The Voice . . . and bowed. Then they left the room, and the Shamans came forward to help her stand.

  After they led her away, one Shaman remained.

  “You must be tired and hungry. If you want, I will show you to one of our guest rooms right now. But if you can wait a little while longer, I would like you to come with me.”

  I followed him to a room that, at first glance, contained little more than a small table and two chairs and yet felt so restful to heart and mind, there was no need for anything else.

  On the table was a pot and two cups. We sat, and the Shaman poured the tea. I stared out the window, watching bright-colored birds flit around a tiny courtyard where miniature trees were growing in stone pots.

  “Now,” the Shaman said after a silence during which we had done nothing but watch the birds and drink tea. “Can you tell me how this happened?”

  I told him about our village. I told him about the saying we learned in school. I told him about that awful day when I was ten and first began to understand the truth about The Voice. I told him everything, even the things I had done that shamed me. All through the telling, he kept his hands loosely wrapped around the teacup and his eyes on his hands.

  I finished my story at the moment when I rang the bell that morning, looking for help.

  Those beautiful eyes remained lowered for a moment longer. Then he looked at me.

  He wasn’t human. Not like me. He was the fury of storms and the laughter of a cool stream on a hot summer’s day. He was flood and drought and slow, soft rains that woke up the crops and gave us an abundant harvest.

  He was the voice of the world—and the world would do his bidding.

  In that moment, I understood why the Shamans walked the streets of the city and why they were respected—and, sometimes, feared. In that moment, I feared for the people in the village I had left behind, especially my family.

  “A strong will and loving heart,” he said quietly. He pushed back his chair and stood. “Come. It is time for you to rest.”

  The luxury of a tub full of hot, scented water, where I soaked and washed until I felt clean. The pleasure of a clean bed in a simply furnished room that made no demands on body or heart or mind. And if, in the moments before sleep, I found myself yearning for someone who wasn’t quite a Shaman, there was no harm in that.

  For the rest of that day, I floated among gentle dreams.

  For two more days, I remained in the Temple of Sorrow. Sometimes I sat in the sorrows room to purge myself. Other times I, and the others who happened to be in the room, would raise our voices on behalf of The Voice. Her pain was huge, and because I felt some responsibility for causing it, her pain was killing me.

  I suppose that was why the Shaman was waiting for me when I came out of the sorrows room that last evening.

  “You did a good thing bringing her here,” he said. “Now you must take the next step in the journey.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She needs to stay. You need to go. Tomorrow.”

  I hadn’t thought beyond reaching here, hadn’t considered what it would mean if I couldn’t stay at the temple.

  The Shaman smiled. “There is a community in the northern part of the city. It is a full day’s journey from here, nestled in the foothills. Beautiful land. Good people. Artistic in many different ways. I have family up there. You will be welcomed.”

  “I could find work there?”

  “I think that someone with your heart could find a great many things.”

  For a moment, I thought a blush stained his cheeks, but the sun was setting, so it must have been a trick of the light.

  Which is how I ended up driving the cart, which had been scrubbed and freshly painted, to the northern part of Vision and the community of people who were not Shamans but understood more about the world than I had ever imagined.

  7.

  For the first six months, news about the village trickled in to me. After that, I never heard about the village or its people again.

  The night we ran away, the Elders’ Hall was set on fire, and while the caretaker managed to get out unharmed, the building itself burned to the ground. The other building that burned that night was Chayne’s house.

  As for Chayne, he screamed himself awake for a week. Then he stood in front of the ruins of the Elders’ Hall and confessed his offenses against all living things. He disappeared shortly after that, but Dariden claimed to have seen him behind the orphan’s house, looking bloated and hobbling around as if crippled while the caretakers watched him. Dariden also claimed Chayne must have been in a horrific accident that no one wanted to talk about, because in that moment before the caretakers noticed him and hurried to block his view, Dariden saw terrible scars on Chayne’s neck.

  Tahnee and her lover reached Vision. While his parents were not pleased to have a son make a hasty marriage to a girl who feared being found by her own family, they stood
witness at the marriage and helped the young couple set up housekeeping.

  I haven’t seen Tahnee since the night we ran away. Despite having mutual friends, our paths never cross. Maybe we aren’t meant to meet. At least, not yet.

  I don’t know what became of Kobrah. I don’t know if she reached Vision or even tried. The horse, however, was returned to the merchant’s booth in the bazaar by a grateful young man who had needed a ride in order to reach the city. By all accounts, the horse had been handed over to several riders during those months, each person needing a mount for a little while—and each one promising to assist in getting the horse back to its owner in Vision.

  I sent one letter to my parents, assuring them that I was safe and well but not telling them enough that they would be able to find me. I cannot change the customs of our village because our village does not want to change. Until the magic dies that allows one person to become the well of sorrow for so many, the village will look away while the Elders maim someone in order to make that person’s flesh a vessel.

  I cannot change the village. But I saved the people I could.

  8.

  Two years to the day, I stood on the bottom step of the Temple of Sorrow. I had a letter to deliver—and a teasing scold to deliver as well, if I had the courage. I now knew why the Shaman had blushed the day he told me about the community in the north. My lover’s eyes are not quite as beautiful as his uncle’s, and while he has a fine sense of the world, Kanzi is not a Shaman. Despite those “flaws,” he is a talented artist and a good man.

  Our marriage was arranged to take place at the end of harvest, and the letter I was delivering was a nephew’s enthusiastic invitation and plea for his uncle to attend the wedding and stand as a witness.

  So I stood on the steps, wondering if it was a Shaman or an uncle who had been playing matchmaker the day he sent me north, when the sound of finger cymbals caught my attention and I wandered over to a temple that was a little farther down the street.

  A woman, dressed in the wheat-colored robes of a Shaman’s apprentice, was playing the finger cymbals in a happy little rhythm while a dozen children stood on the steps below, swaying to the rhythm and then freezing when the cymbals stopped.

  A game, I decided, smiling as I moved closer, because there was something about the woman . . . She turned and looked at me. I didn’t recognize her face, but I knew her eyes. She wore a hood that covered the hideous scars on her neck, but the robes covered a slimmer body that no longer carried sorrow.

  She looked at me and smiled. And in her eyes I saw warmth, compassion, gratitude. Love.

  Raising my hand in a small salute, I walked back to the Temple of Sorrow. A moment later, the finger cymbals picked up their rhythm.

  I rang the bell, and he answered. His look of delight faded when he saw my face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping back to let me enter. “What’s happened?”

  “I need . . .” What did I need? I hurt so much, but I didn’t know why. “She’s . . .”

  Understanding. “She’s not here anymore,” he said gently.

  “I know. I s-saw . . .”

  “I see.” His warm hand cupped my elbow as he led me toward the sorrows room.

  “No,” I said, pulling back. “Wrong . . . sound.” I knew that much.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were shiny from tears. “Of course. I understand now.”

  He led me to a room on the other side of the building. It was set up the same way as the room of sorrows, but instead of gongs set before each placement of cushions, there was a wind chime hanging from a stand.

  The Shaman stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  I stepped over to the nearest wind chime and jostled it. Bright notes filled the room. Bright notes . . . like the radiant face that had been hidden for so many years.

  Stepping into the center of the room, I brushed a finger against each wind chime, moving from place to place, faster and faster, until the room was awash in sparkling sound that squeezed my heart until the tears flowed, faster and faster. Until I collapsed on the floor in the center of that room and shed tears that were a bright, sharp, cleansing pain.

  They were the last tears I ever shed for The Voice, and they were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of joy.

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  * * *

  Read on for an exciting excerpt from

  Anne Bishop’s new Ephemera novel,

  BRIDGE OF DREAMS

  Coming in March 2012 from Roc Books.

  * * *

  Belladonna stripped away our human masks, revealing the Dark Guides for what we are—the whispering voices that encourage hearts to turn away from the Light and feed the Dark currents of the world with selfishness and greed and, best of all, violence.

  While I wore that mask, I walked among the people of Ephemera as a wizard, as one who was feared and revered because I was a Justice Maker for the most prominent citizens in my assigned landscapes—the kind of citizens who, with whispered persuasion, could do the most harm, snuff out the most Light in other hearts.

  But Wizard City, the Dark Guides’ stronghold, is gone, taken out of the world and locked away with the landscapes that belong to the Eater of the World. Because the city is no longer within reach, the pureblood females we kept as breeders are also gone. Only a few of us were in other landscapes when Belladonna did that reshaping of the world. Only a few of us escaped that cage. So few of us, hiding now in the pieces of the world.

  Of course, we still have some wizards—those descendants of Dark Guides who polluted the bloodlines by mating with humans. Despite that pollution, wizards have the powers that were the gifts from the Dark aspects of the world and, more important for my purpose now, they still look human.

  When my true face was revealed, it was the wizards, eager to prove their loyalty to me, who found and booked passage on the various ships that eventually brought us to this city. It was the wizards who found us lodgings that allowed me to study the particular nature of this city and understand how to use it to our advantage.

  I can create another stronghold here, another place like Wizard City. Quietly, carefully, I can take part of this city away from its present guardians and turn that piece into a dark landscape where we can rule again.

  In the pieces of the world we knew, Landscapers were Ephemera’s bedrock—the hearts through which the currents of Dark and Light flow, the sieves that keep Ephemera from manifesting the turmoil in all the other hearts. Here the Landscapers are called Shamans. They guard and guide all they can see with the complacency of those who believe they have no rivals.

  They don’t know about Dark Guides or wizards. They don’t know what to look for. Blinded by that ignorance, the Shamans will be able to do nothing but wonder why pieces of their city are slipping beyond their sight and control.

  We have a foothold in two sections of this city. Soon entire streets will be under the control of my wizards. The Shamans will not find us.

  And neither will Belladonna.

  —an entry in the Book of Dark Secrets

  1.

  Following his cousin Sebastian, Lee stepped off the stationary bridge that connected the Island in the Mist to the rest of Sanctuary. A few months ago, the island had been almost impossible to reach. It still wasn’t easy—Ephemera made sure of that—but now family and a few special friends could reach the place Glorianna Belladonna called home.

  “We could have used my island to get here,” Lee grumbled. His little island was always with him, a piece of land he could impose over any other landscape, Dark or Light. As a Bridge, he created connections between the broken pieces of the world, and his work sometimes took him to faraway—and dangerous—places. But his island, anchored in Sanctuary, was the assurance that he was never more than a few steps away from home.

  “We could have used your island,” Sebastian agreed. “And we would have if I had been accompanying you on this
visit. But since you’re accompanying me, I chose to use the bridge.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.” Lee took a couple of steps toward the two-story stone house that Glorianna and Michael now shared. Then he stopped and rubbed his left forearm.

  Michael had broken that bone during the fight to keep the family away from the terrible landscape Glorianna had made to cage the Eater of the World. The rest of the family had forgiven the Magician for the part he’d played in making that cage—especially after he found a way to bring Glorianna back—but Lee’s arm always hurt when he visited the Island in the Mist. He couldn’t say for sure whether it was the bone that bothered him or if it was being around the man who broke it.

  “Can’t tell from here if they’re at home,” Sebastian said.

  “Where else would they be?” Lee asked bitterly. “Glorianna hasn’t left this island since she . . . came back.”

  “It’s been only a few weeks,” Sebastian said softly. “We don’t know what happened to her while she was in that place.”

  And if the Magician was right and she became the monster that Evil feared, we don’t know what she did while she was in that place, Lee thought.

  “She needs time to mend, Lee. Time to heal.”

  “Do you really think she’s going to heal?” Lee spat out the words. “It’s all hugs and kisses for you, isn’t it? Some part of Glorianna came back. Aren’t we the heroes?”