The Purist

Chapter 1

In the distance, a series of chords eased into a lively tune: the Witch-Queen's daughter playing with growing confidence on her new girwood harp.

On the other side of the night-shrouded garden, Eridan Sydall, Master-Singer of all Lonhra, reeled homeward dizzy from wine and compliments. He'd only made the tall harp. By the time the princess grew into it, she'd be a Master in her own right.

Seeking his and Sfassa's guest apartment, Eridan followed tiled paths and stairs between lush teal grass plumes, tall blue trees, and golden-glowing suncrystals on bronze pillars. The garden screened most of the Witch-Queen's low palace on three sides. To the east, where the garden sloped down, Eridan glimpsed the lights of Throng, a sprawling tropical city where no building rose more than three stories from the rich soil.

Just when he thought himself completely lost, Eridan spotted two half-familiar palm trees on the north end of a terrace. A bronze bracket on one tree supported the Master-Singer's banner, its black and dark red fabric rippling languidly in the night breeze. A suncrystal lamp hung from a bracket on the other tree. From the banner, lamplight picked out flashes of the silver emblems of his rank-harp, waves, and seven stars.

He navigated another short path through a dimmer courtyard, then pushed open a carved wooden door. Inside, the dark suite smelled of exotic flowers, clean-scrubbed tile still faintly damp, and a whisper of Sfassa's musky-sweet scent.

Of course she wasn't back from the queen's library yet. Eridan grinned, recalling the flustered archivists when they discovered the Master-Singer's excessively tall, brawny barbarian wife was an avid scholar in her own right. Once convinced of Eridan's safety in the palace, Sfassa spent her free time scribbling notes and comparing old folklore texts.

Eridan's smile faltered as he noted the darkness in the suite. There should have been two ceramic lamps caging suncrystals, one in the salon where he stood, one over the arch leading to the kitchen and the bedchamber.

Cold, sharp touched the right side of his neck. The front door closed quietly behind him.

Eridan tensed. He had a knife at his belt and enough skill to use it in tight quarters. Instead, he breathed acrid chemical fumes, and his scream died in his throat. His muscles stiffened, locked in taut tremors. Something was horribly wrong in his brain, even his internal voice broken by pulses of static.

"Master-Singer, the silence-drug won't kill you." His assailant plucked the knife from his pocket and hauled his body back against her chest. "Go too long without the antidote and you'll never write or babble more than nonsense again. Much less sing to the wrong ears. Don't fight it. The faster your heart beats, the faster the drug will settle in your throat and brain. My sisters and I won't kill you, you ugly little man. You're to watch while we butcher your mongrel whore in front of you."

Eridan slowed his breath, but he couldn't calm his brain. If this was the infamous silence-drug he had half an hour at most. Who directed the attack? Who would know the two things he feared most to lose? Half the world, he thought next, cravenly regretting the last several centuries of being professionally obstinate.

The assassin didn't speak again. Through the fog settling over his thoughts, Eridan tried to place the others by the sounds of their soft breaths and minute shifts of posture. They ranged around the door. Past the single window looking out on the garden, a soft rustle told him more people waited under the arch to the bedroom.

The fog lifted a little. Eridan used the moment to aim his memory back a scant handful of hours. Had Sfassa been wearing her spears this evening? When she wasn't in full armor, she wore a spearharness with the long leaf-shaped steel blades of her kori-spears jutting up like deadly feathers. Sfassa lived within arm's reach of her weapons and felt naked without them.