The Giant Singer: The Sibylline Saga: Book Two, page 3
Lachlan stood and drew his bag closer. He rummaged around inside for a moment before pulling out a much smaller leather case secured with a thong wound tightly around decorative iron pegs.
“But it’s not ‘we two,’ I’m afraid. It’s just me. Eoghan met me here, same as you did. I have a job for the two of you. A vital mission to end this war once and for all.”
I stared at him, one eyebrow raised, my mouth slightly ajar. “Okay?”
Lachlan’s smile was serene. “I am the High Reliquary, Nora. I assume you know what that means?”
I snorted again. “No, you’re not.”
The man called Eoghan shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
Lachlan narrowed his eyebrows in confusion. The leather case paused halfway out of the bag. “How do you mean?”
“What would the High Reliquary be doing in a tiny little town like this, asking to meet with a random mapmaker and a ranger? Alone, with no security or attendants? Who’s running the Reliquary if you’re here?”
Lachlan settled back on his heels and regarded me closely. “There are many ministers and docents at the Reliquary. I am not needed there every hour of the day. Or even every week of the year. And right now, my duties have called me here, to a tiny little town, to meet with a random mapmaker and a ranger. Alone.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious why?” he asked.
I flicked my eyes to Eoghan, who still leaned against the wall. I wanted to yank him forward into the light so I could get a good look at him. Not that I’d be able to yank him anywhere. By the Old Kind, he was huge. And not huge like everyone was huge. I was a small woman, so everyone was tall to me. But this Eoghan? This ranger? He was a wall of muscle.
I set my jaw and jerked my chin in the direction of the leather case Lachlan had pulled from his bag. “So, what’s that, then? One of your relics?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “Before we go any further, I need to impress upon you both how vital secrecy is in this matter. The future of our country is at stake. What I am asking you to do is a last resort, and I am not asking it lightly. I would not be here if it weren’t absolutely necessary. I need your word.”
“Sure,” I replied in a small voice. Shitting hell, what was I getting myself into?
“Eoghan?” Lachlan asked.
The other man nodded once in affirmation.
Lachlan took one more breath, then laid the leather case down and slid it across the table toward me.
I hesitated for another second, glancing at both men in turn. Was this some kind of trick? Surely, this Lachlan man wasn’t actually the High Reliquary. The Reliquary was the branch of government that curated and protected the cultural and magical history for the entirety of Lujor. The queen herself might as well have waltzed into this dusty town hall at the ass end of nowhere. Alone.
Well, no sense standing around staring at each other.
I pulled the leather case closer and ran my fingers over the decorative iron pegs. They were simple leaves. Pretty, but not ornate. I unwound the thong keeping it closed and lifted the flap.
Inside were four heavy folders, each containing several sheets of antique parchment. I pulled them out with another wary glance at Lachlan and placed the folders side by side on the table.
“Not relics, then,” I said.
“Archives,” Lachlan said. “Until this moment, I was the only person who knew they even existed.”
There was a movement on my right side, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Eoghan had finally left his post by the wall to stand next to me, and all I could think was arms, arms, arms. His shirt had no sleeves at all, which put his dizzying set of muscles on full display. Dirt and grime had settled into the dips and valleys of his skin, accentuating them. If I poked his bicep, I’d probably break a finger.
I supposed that depended on how hard I poked, though.
And of course, now I could finally see his face properly in the light of the single lamp. He stood peering over my shoulder at the blank folders lying out on the table, but I stared up at him. His short beard wasn’t particularly tidy, but it wasn’t messy either. He had a heavy brow and a crooked nose, all of it framed by high cheekbones.
But what caught my attention was his eyes. Larger than I expected, bright, keen. Brown as good soil and sharp. They were eyes that saw everything. Not just surface things, but deep-down things.
And when those eyes darted to my face, I blushed. What would a man like that see when he looked at me?
I turned away, annoyed—mostly with myself, but partly with him. Because hell, who gave him the right to look at me like that? Instead, I focused on the four folders laid out on the table. One by one, I pulled their contents free and spread them out likewise.
Each folder contained sheaves of antique parchment covered right over with handwritten text. The first was in Ambic. This was by far the least aged document, judging by both the language and the lesser browning of the parchment itself. The other three were written in Old Ambic, a dead language. These were much older, with faded ink and parchment so brown on the last one that I had to strain to read it.
I scanned over a few of the pages, my eyebrows drawn together. “They’re accounts of some kind of journey. Here”—I pointed to a specific passage on one of the Old Ambic parchments—“the writer talks about the distance to a specific landmark. A stone outcropping that resembles a horse. They sketched it here on the next page.” I flipped it up to show Eoghan, who leaned in with some interest.
Did the man even know how to speak at all? What was wrong with him?
“Yes,” Lachlan confirmed. “Four accounts of the same journey taken by four different travelers at four different times. A journey that I am asking the pair of you to take again now. The purpose of these archives is to guide you.”
The hell was going on here? I lifted page after page, scanning the text. But when one specific word caught my eye, I dropped the pages as if they’d burned me and backed away from the table in alarm.
I jostled Eoghan’s arm as I went, registering somewhere in the back of my mind that his arms weren’t made of rock at all. Just arms. Couldn’t break my fingers on him if I tried.
But I couldn’t think about anything at all except that one word I had seen on the parchment. It flashed across my mind’s eye over and over again.
Clarion.
“What the hell?” I said breathlessly.
Clarion.
“You see now why this must remain a secret.” Lachlan seemed entirely unfazed.
Clarion.
“What is it?” Yes, of course, now was when Eoghan decided he had a tongue after all. His voice was deep and smooth, and it dislodged whatever stutter my brain had gotten stuck in.
“He wants us to climb the Giant’s Mountain,” I said.
I had lived in Tutree all my life. And aside from a couple of trips to the capital with Edith to visit her father’s family, I had never left. And there was one thing every person in Tutree knew in their bones: No one set foot on the Giant’s Mountain. Not if they wanted to use their feet ever again.
It was just a mountain, really. It loomed over us—a comforting constant in our lives. If I stepped outside Main Hall right now, there it would be, creating the dramatic backdrop of our western horizon. Right there, yet just out of reach.
But it was more than a mountain. It was the final resting place of the Giants. It was a sacred place, untouched by mankind for over a thousand years.
Except…there were accounts of four people who had dared to cross the border.
My fingers traced over the parchments once more, almost afraid to handle them too roughly. “What happened to these people?” I asked.
“Executed.” Lachlan’s tone was unreadable. “Three of them were before my time. This last one, I was a docent back then. It was done in secret. I didn’t learn about it until much later, but I was there in the Reliquary when it happened.”
“And now you want us to go? Will we be executed as well? Are you damning us just by showing these to us?”
“Of course not.”
I threw out both hands to encompass the dark, empty room, the secret documents, the clandestine nature of the entire meeting. “What do you mean by of course? Because nothing about this makes any sense. And it certainly isn’t making me feel particularly safe.”
And then, as if he knew exactly how and when to speak to have the most impact on me, Eoghan opened his mouth for the second time. “He wants us to wake them up.”
I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and clammed the hell up. I couldn’t process this.
Lachlan leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “You and Eoghan will set out as soon as possible. As soon as you have prepared yourselves. You will tell no one where you are going. You will take these archives, Nora. You will read them, interpret them, and get yourselves to the Archways. Eoghan is an experienced Ranger. He will keep you safe, keep you alive in the wilderness.
“Once you find the Archways, you will locate the Clarion. None of the four travelers even attempted to find it, out of respect, but you must do so. You will find the Clarion, then take it to the peak of the mountain, where you will sound it in the Cavern of the Giants. And Old Kind willing, the Giants will hear your call and rise up.”
I clenched my fists, tucked them deep into the folds of my arms, and willed them to stop shaking. But it wasn’t just my fists. It was my entire body. Even my breath shook in my lungs, which could only manage short, gasping pants. Tears welled up in my eyes, but none spilled over. I blinked hard.
This couldn’t be happening. I was dreaming. Yes, that was it.
Or maybe I had passed out while dipping paper and had drowned in the pulp vat. That made the most sense. I died making paper that morning, and whatever this was…it was just a drawn-out hallucination in the last seconds before my brain shut down forever.
“What if we refuse?” I asked in a tiny voice. And I absolutely did not dwell on the fact that I’d used the word “we” instead of “I.”
Lachlan’s expression sagged the tiniest bit. “Every day, new fires are set. Every day, more people die. We are losing this war. Amau will overtake us, and the Dragon will invade New Haven. It is only a matter of time. You don’t see it much this far south and west, but it is happening.”
He chewed on his lip for a moment, looking unsure for the first time since he’d entered the Council Room.
“The legends say the Giants will rise up when we need them most. They left behind the Clarion for the express purpose of waking them up when we needed them. Now is the time, Nora.”
“Why me? Why us? We’re nobody.”
Why was I still lumping Eoghan in with myself? I didn’t know him at all. He had said exactly two sentences in my hearing, and that was it.
“It’s precisely because you are nobodies,” Lachlan said. “You’d be surprised how much gets done by nobodies in this country. No one will ever look twice at the pair of you.”
The pair of us. That was it. Settled. Eoghan and I were a set. Neatly done. Just the fact that we were the only two people who knew about these archives, who knew the High Reliquary wanted this done, it separated us from the rest of the country. From the rest of the world.
I glared up at Eoghan, at this stranger I had somehow attached myself to without noticing. My next words came out with a bit of a bite, but they always did when I was upset.
“Say something.” The last syllable was laced with a wobble. A plea. Please.
He regarded me with those wide eyes. For a moment, I thought there might be a bit of a connection. His right eyebrow twitched, and his lower eyelids rose for half a second. I could practically see the thoughts running through his mind. And if I could just get a little closer, maybe climb right into his skin, I might even be able to hear what those thoughts were.
But instead of saying something profound, comforting, or encouraging, his actual words landed in my gut like a lead weight.
“I’ll be ready to leave at dawn.”
I didn’t know this man, and the little I did know wasn’t particularly endearing. But for some reason, I felt betrayed by this cold statement. We were supposed to be a team, but it looked like we would be climbing this mountain alone, together.
Three
I floated through the rest of the meeting like a dream. Eoghan made me write out a list of supplies I would need to gather and pack. Lachlan gave us a few more instructions and impressed on us again and again the need for secrecy. Because if Amau found out where we were going, what we were trying to do, there was no telling what they would do. Kill us before we could succeed? Try and take the Clarion and, therefore, the Giants’ loyalty for themselves?
Lachlan packed up the archives and stowed them carefully away, first into their individual folders and then into the leather case. It had been a shock when I realized Lachlan meant for me to keep it, but he insisted. “We won’t be seeing each other again. I’m leaving for New Haven immediately. They belong to you now.”
Lachlan disappeared through an inner door into Main Hall, and Eoghan followed me outside. I found myself in the busy sunshine of the market square, dazed, with the case clutched to my chest.
The market was in full swing by then. The people went about their business, buying, selling, trading, meeting, and parting. They had no idea the entire world had just turned upside down. I supposed it hadn’t for them. Just for us.
“Where are you staying tonight?” I asked. “At the inn, I suppose?”
“Just outside of town,” Eoghan said from my left side and up. Damn, he was tall. “There’s a quiet place on the west bank of the Lesser Apgatt. I’ve camped there before. Years ago.”
It was the most words he’d spoken at once since I’d met him, and they were ridiculous.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, because clearly every word that popped into my brain still came shooting straight out of my mouth. “You’ll come home with me. Eat a real meal.”
“That’s not necessary.”
The hell was wrong with him? It was enough to drag my attention away from the monumental task we’d been given. I finally looked up at him.
No, not looked. Glared. Because for hell’s sake, he was being stupid.
“You’re being stupid,” I said.
This earned me an honest scowl back from him. “Excuse me?”
Oh, good. He did have some emotion in there after all.
“You’ll come home with me and eat a real damned meal. And you’ll meet my mother. Because she deserves to know who I’ll be traveling with. And then you’ll help me pack.” I waved his list in his face for emphasis. “Were you seriously going to leave me on my own to deal with all this, alone?”
I clutched the archives closer to my aching chest and stalked off across the noisy square. I didn’t need to glance back to know Eoghan followed close behind. His seething was almost audible.
Tutree was a small town. It didn’t take long for us to leave the bustling market square behind. The narrow streets and densely packed buildings at the center of town muffled the noise quickly. I had the urge to veer off to the right on Apple Avenue, which led a winding path down to Nikita’s house, and wave the archives in her face, ask her if she knew what in the hell I’d been asked to do. She had known I’d need Old Ambic. Had she known why?
But Eoghan was a steady shadow on my left, and I didn’t want to drag him into that conversation. I didn’t want him to witness me interrogating my mistress about this, like a loon. So my feet cut a straight path through town, no hesitation.
Mother, Edith, and I lived near the edge of town, where the houses had a little space about them. We weren’t career farmers, but we were plenty comfortable. We had our own garden, three dairy goats, and a healthy smattering of chickens and rabbits. There was a reason we had been able to afford apprenticeships for two daughters when we were young, and it wasn’t my charming personality.
I shooed the goats away from the front gate and held it wide for Eoghan to pass through. The sweet ram butted his head against my hip, begging for attention.
Anyone else might have commented on the cozy little house, with its fresh thatching and bright blue shutters, or the riot of greens in the front garden. They might have petted the goats and asked their names. Our house was a beacon of Mother’s love and devotion. Edith and I helped, of course, but this property and these animals were her passion.
Eoghan, however, said nothing at all. He followed me silently to the front porch and made no comment when I shoved the ram with a hip so I could climb the steps and open the door.
In fact, the first indication he was a real human being—and not just a big, silent shadow—came when I went inside and held the door open for him to follow. He hesitated on the porch, brows gathered slightly in the middle, eyes on my knees.
“Come inside, Eoghan.”
Mother appeared behind me and looked up at him over my shoulder. “Nora? Who’s this?”
“Come inside, Eoghan,” I said again. I stepped back further and opened the door a little wider.
And then he did just that. Without any change to his expression or bearing, he simply walked inside, like there had been no hesitation at all. Just like at the Council Room, he planted himself against the wall near the door.
Fine. That was just fine. At least he’d come into the damn house.
“Eoghan, this is my mother, Zoya. And that is Edith, my sister.” I gestured at Edith, who stood at the washbasin, with water dripping down her elbows.
I probably didn’t need to specify our relationship, because she and I were obviously sisters. We had the same small stature, the same dark curls tumbling down our backs. She did have wider-set eyes and fairer skin than me, though, and she stood a couple of inches taller—a hint of her father showing through. My own father had been nearly as short as the rest of us, according to Mother.
Edith wiped her wet hands on her apron and stood next to Mother, eyes narrowed.
“Edith, Mother. This is Eoghan. He and I have been asked to go on a surveying job.”
