The Singer's Crown Read Online Free Page A

blade as Kattanan was hurried out. He turned to the emir. “Am I not to stay with my student?”
    The emir ignored him as he addressed the wizard. “My most trusted men have readied your reward if you will go with them.” A small group of guards stood aside from a dark door. Jordan moved into the emir’s line of sight and repeated his question, with more than a little concern. The emir laughed soundlessly as the guards moved forward. Before the monk could respond, they snapped a chain about his wrists and propelled him toward the smaller door. “How dare you? I am a servant of the Goddess—and Kattanan needs me!”
    â€œI will not have men around me of such great stature and such little humility.”
    The wizard grinned widely and bowed to the emir.
    When Jordan struggled, the little men cast him off-balance, and dragged him bodily through the door. The wizard followed, shutting the door behind him. “May the Goddess wreak her justice on both of you!” the monk howled, forced to his knees.
    â€œOh, the Goddess—that paltry wench.” The wizard looked around in the dark hall, turning his back to the guards even as one of them readied his sword. “You would have come to this without my help. I’m just sorry I cannot stay to witness your fate or that of your little student. You never told him about yourself, and now you’ve lost the chance. I wonder what you have been teaching him.” The wizard laughed again, and made an obscene gesture as he turned to go. Jordan tore free from the guards and sprang at his back, swinging the chain around the wizard’s neck. The man clawed at him, mouthing hoarse words of power in a vain attempt to defend himself. He was already off-balance, and fell to the floor with Jordan on top. The chain tore at Jordan’s own wrists even as it bit into the wizard’s throat. The guards stood back and whispered even as the wizard ceased to struggle and slumped against the floor.
    Jordan straightened over the body, panting with the exertion. He untwined the chain from his enemy’s throat and stared limply at the mingling blood and the wizard’s bulging eyes. One hand leapt to his mouth as he choked back a cry, his own eyes wide. “Oh, Great Lady, what have I done?” Dark hands roughly pulled him away, accompanied by incongruous laughter when they looked upon the wizard’s body. His face as pale as his victim’s, Jordan no longer fought them as they hauled him along to what fate he neither knew nor cared.
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    KATTANAN WAS rushed out the great door, along a different hall. The flush of pride for a song well made and well accepted still filled him, so it was not until they finally stopped before a door that it occurred to him to look for Jordan, the only link he had to his home. The corridor was empty save himself and the servants. “Where is Jordan?” They blinked and mumbled to each other, still gesturing for him to enter the door. “Where is my friend?” Kattanan thrust his arms in the air to indicate the monk’s height, and held his hair off his face, as if bald. “Where?”
    One of the servants nodded rapidly. “He go…” The man stumbled over a foreign word. “How say?” He made as if to surround himself with a long garment, and drew himself up.
    â€œThe wizard?” The man grinned, and Kattanan floundered. “He went with the wizard?”
    â€œYes, wizard. Is go in now?” He offered the open door.
    Kattanan looked back down the hall. “When is he coming here?”
    â€œIs not here. Is go with wizard.” He added a flurry of his own speech and some inexplicable gestures at which the others nodded firmly.
    When the singer took a few steps into the room, the servants bobbed their heads from the hall, then hurried off. There was only one low bed in the room, and one chair at the table. A scented basin and towel had been laid out there.