The Bird and the Sword (The Bird and the Sword Chronicles, #1)

by Amy Harmon

She was so small. The only thing large about her were her eyes, and they filled her face, grey and solemn like the fog on the moors. At five summers, she was the size of children two summers younger, and she was slight in a way that caused me concern. Not unhealthy, exactly. In truth, she’d never been ill. Not even once. But she was delicate, almost fragile, like a tiny bird. Little bones and small features, a pointy chin and elfin ears. Her pale brown hair, heavy and soft, felt like feathers brushing my face when I held her close, furthering the comparison. She was my little lark. The name had entered my mind the moment I laid eyes on her, and I accepted it, acknowledging it from the Father of all Words, trusting the name was meant to be.

“Yes. The Prince of Poppets. And he can fly.” “Without wings?” “Yes. You don’t need wings to fly,” she chirped, repeating something I’d told her.

“What do you need, Daughter?” I asked, quizzing her. “Words,” she answered, her big, grey eyes alight with knowledge. “Tell me,” I whispered.

For one so disdainful of the king, my lord was quick to kiss the king’s boots. Fear made weaklings of us all.

I nodded once, but didn’t offer her name. Names had power and I didn’t want him to have hers.

Corvyn was weak, but he wasn’t evil, though I wondered if weakness wasn’t just as dangerous. The weak allowed evil to flourish.

“The Prince of Poppets followed us, Mother,” Lark whispered timidly, and she stretched her hand toward the doll she’d imbued with a single word. Fly. So harmless. So innocent. So deadly.

There was no pain. Just pressure. Pressure and sorrow. Incredible sorrow. My daughter would be alone with her enormous gift. I would not be able to protect her. I felt my blood flowing from my body over hers, and I pressed my lips to her ear and called on the words that limned every living thing. “Swallow Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heav’n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.”

“Hide her words, Corvyn. Because if she dies . . . if she is even harmed, you will share the very same fate.”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

I can’t make words. I can’t make a sound. I have thoughts and feelings. I have pictures and colors. They are all bottled up inside of me because I can’t make words. But I can hear them. The world is alive with words. The animals, the trees, the grass, and the birds hum with their own words. “Life,” they say. “Air,” they breathe. “Heat,” they hum. The birds call “Fly, fly!” and the leaves wave them onward, uncurling as they whisper “grow, grow.”

Often-times, grass was more useful than gold. Man was more desirable than a beast. Chance was more seductive than knowledge, and eternal life was completely meaningless without love.

But the voices of fear and discontent are always loudest, and one by one, the Tellers, the Healers, the Changers, and the Spinners were destroyed.

My mother made words. She was a Teller, and her words were magic. She spoke and the words became life. Reality. Truth. My father knew it, and he was afraid. Words can be terrible when the truth is unwelcome.

I relished the sense of belonging among other silent creatures. We were the same. We lived, but no one really noticed us.

“Please, please, for the love of trolls and other blessed creatures, stop wandering around in the forest like yer a bat instead of a wee lady!” Boojohni was building up to some serious grumbling. He spoke harshly, but the word that rose from him was love. I didn’t hear people’s thoughts the way they came out of their mouths. I heard single words, the dominant word. The way I heard the governing words of every living thing. The dominant word from Boojohni was always love, and I could endure his chastisement knowing that.

When my father looked at me, I almost always heard the same word. I heard my mother’s name. Meshara. He looked at me, and he was reminded of her warning. I would hear my mother’s name in his voice, then he would turn away. Always.

I had spent time with the old women of our keep, women who’d never been to school but who were educated in hundreds of other ways. From them I learned to heal with herbs and soothe with my touch. I learned wisdom and wariness, and I learned to patiently accept and quietly wait. For what, I wasn’t sure, but in my heart I was always waiting, as if the hour my mother spoke of would someday arrive.

I raised my eyes to my father, willing him to look back at me, but he looked at Boojohni instead. I could see myself in the grey of his eyes and the fine bones of his face. He was elegant without being feminine, tall without being gangly, thin without being gaunt. But he was also shrewd instead of wise, mannerly instead of kind, and ambitious instead of strong.

I had that effect on people. Silence was a close cousin to invisibility.

I’d had compassion for a bird, surely I could show a shred of compassion for a man, even one I wanted to despise.

He took the charcoal from my hands and drew a straight line with another line laid above it. “This is a T. For Tiras.” He wrote more letters and tapped them. “Tiras.” He wrote an L and an A followed by shapes I didn’t recognize. “Lark. This is the word Lark.” I couldn’t pull my eyes away from my name. My name! I traced it reverently. “Practice your name. Practice my name. I will be back tomorrow to teach you more.”

I glared at him and tapped the paper insistently. It wasn’t funny—I wasn’t funny. He’d been given every word he needed, and every word had been stripped from me. I wanted them back. All of them.

He seemed almost stunned by my joy and rose slowly. He tipped his head to the side as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. Without further comment, he turned and left the room.

Four days after Tiras had shown me how to write my name, Kjell returned to drag me from my room in the middle of the night, just like before. I went with him willingly, eagerly, though his promise to help me had been a lie. I didn’t do it for him. I didn’t do it for the king, who’d lied to me too. I did it for the words he’d said he would teach me.

I wondered why I was the only one who could hear it. It had always been that way. I had always been that way, hearing the words nobody said.

“I’ll be right outside, Tiras.” His warning glance told me he would be nearby should I attempt assassination. I would have laughed if the king weren’t so sick.

“You are afraid,” he murmured. I nodded, not opening my eyes. “Are you afraid of me?” I nodded again. Yes, I was afraid of him. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to help him, or worse, that I would, and I would mark myself a Healer. I would mark myself for death.

He spent the day with me, and when he left, I wandered from one word to the next, touching them, saying them in my mind. As I did, I was unable to stop the moisture that rose in my eyes and slipped down my cheeks. It was the happiest day of my life.

“Are you trying to kill yourself? Or are you trying to create a diversion for escape? It’s a long way down, even for a lark.”

I had been alone for so long with thousands of words I couldn’t express. Now this man, this infuriating, beautiful, man—son of a murderous king—could suddenly hear me as if I spoke. A woman instead of a caged bird. A human being instead of a silent presence in the shadows.

I realized the harm I could do, and I was afraid. But my fear didn’t stop the words from forming, the letters from assembling, my mind from spelling, and my thoughts from spinning.

I was only limited by my ignorance, by my fear, and by my own sense of right and wrong.

I felt no joy at my emerging power. I felt only dismay and disgust. And doubt. What was my purpose? What would be the price of this newfound power?

“You have a low voice. It’s warm. Feminine. But not overtly so. And it’s slow, like you are searching for the words to say.”

“I’ll ask the little lark a question then,” he hissed. “How about this? If I toss you over a cliff, will you fly or will you fall, because that is where you’re going.” I clenched my teeth so hard, I felt something pop in my jaw. My words were as sharp as glass, and they could have cut through the hedge they were so loud in my head. I am neither a bird nor a beast, so I would fall. But judging from the way you smell and the way you act, if I throw you in among the pigs you will be right at home.

Swallow, Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power. Curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell. You won’t call on heav’n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.

I hadn’t hidden the words well enough. I hadn’t stayed silent. Now I would die.

I wanted to run away from all the men who sought dominion over me, who thought they could own me, imprison me, use me, cut me.

“I have always been able to hear ye, Lark. But before it was a feeling. An instinct. Now I hear a voice . . . your voice. And it’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Ye sound like a nightingale, Bird. Yer voice is beautiful. Sweet. I could listen all day.”

I do not want to be queen. He turned his head, giving me a scant sweep of his black eyes as his lips barely moved over hushed words. “You lie.” I want to go home. “Another lie.” You can’t hold me prisoner forever. He looked me full in the face, and his eyes held mine as he murmured, “Your father’s prison holds no books. No words. No conversation.”

“You could have gone . . . any time. Yet you have stayed in my castle behind locked doors, playing the prisoner. Why?” I shook my head in denial. Not any time. I had to learn the words. You gave them to me. “I gave them to you?” he repeated, dumbfounded. You taught me to read. You taught me to write. “This power is new?” His voice lifted in surprise. The power is not new. The words are new. My mother took the words away when she died. She took my voice away so I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

He is afraid you are going to hurt me. He is afraid I’m going to die. And if I die, he dies. Another gift from my mother. She made sure that his own survival depended upon ensuring mine.

“None of us were ever the same after that day. My father lost me, just like your mother foretold. And he died knowing it.”

Not knowing is so much easier. So much safer.

“Why ask for something you don’t want?” he whispered, the words tickling my lips. I didn’t ask. I would never, ever ask for something like that.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” he murmured finally. “Unless you tell me no.”

“Kjell is right. You are a dangerous little bird. But I think I will keep you.”