be given every possible opportunity to set matters right.
In most cases, my arrival would have ensured compliance; usually the mere sight of me made rebellious lords crumble. Yet my men and I had doubts about Charlton. Hot-tempered and arrogant, he was reputed to have scoffed at my magic, saying the stories about me were exaggerated. He’d threatened to shoot the next royal messenger on sight.
“Let’s approach the castle and see what kind of reception we get,” Knollys said. “If you’re ready, Chantress?”
I nodded, and we moved off.
Soon we reached the half-abandoned village of Upper Charlton, which lay within sight of the new wall. Nervous faces appeared at the windows as we marched, and a subdued cheer went up when they saw the royal colors, and again when they saw me at the center of a score of soldiers in tight formation. The cheers grew louder as we passed through the village and started up the hill that led to Charlton Castle.
I’d seen the maps and read the reports. Charlton was a redoubtable castle, well-positioned and well-fortified, with a particularly massive gatehouse. The walls of the enclosure led right up to this gatehouse, so that the gate controlled access not only to the castle but to all the land that Charlton had claimed. The front of the gatehouse was further guarded by a half-moat, fed by the local river. Inside, the castle was blessed again by water. A deep well in its keep had allowed it to withstand many a siege. Listening hard as we approached, I could hear both the moat’s vigilant melody and the faint, sulky song of the well water.
“Halt!” Knollys cried out. We were only halfway up the hill, still out of musket range, but the gray walls of the gatehouse seemed to tower over us. The gates remained shut, the drawbridge up. There was no sign of welcome.
Knollys picked one of the men to serve as emissary—young Barrington, eager for action—and sent him toward the castle on foot, bearing a white flag to show he was there to parley, not attack.
As soon as Barrington came into range, Lord Charlton’s men fired from the gatehouse. A bullet caught the boy just below his helmet; he fell to the ground. Even back where we were, we could see the blood.
“Chantress?” Knollys said, but there was no need. Still in the saddle, I was already singing, honing my anger to a fine edge that worked for me and not against me.
Unrestrained emotion could make a song-spell veer in dangerous ways, yet I needed to maintain a certain flexibility. I didn’t command the elements so much as charm and persuade them, and I had to work with the melodies I could hear in the world around me. These changed with the day and the season and the weather and a hundred other factors, so my magic was always a matter of improvisation. I never sang the same song twice.
What suited my purposes now was the sulky tune I’d heard coming from the bottom of the castle well. There was restlessness there, and resentment. I had only to play on these for a few moments before the water shot up, splintering the well cover and spouting into the sky. As it jetted upward, I felt a fierce pleasure—partly an echo of the water’s own relief at being set free, and partly the intoxication of the singing itself, and the power in it.
Yet pleasure too could be a distraction. I needed to focus on the job at hand. Working quickly, I sang some of the fine spray into the castle weaponry and gunpowder, wetting them so they could not fire.
If Charlton’s men had put up a flag of truce, that would have been the end of it. But when I finished my song, arrows flew from the windows, landing within a foot of Barrington and the men who had gone to his rescue.
“Get back,” I shouted to them. “All of you, get as far back as you can!”
Clamping down on my anger, I turned my attention to the water in the moat. Vigilant it might be, but it was frustrated as well—always on the edge of things, forever locked out. I harped on those notes in my own music, until the moat water rose up as vapor, drenching the walls of the gatehouse. Feeling again a fierce thrill in the singing, I worked the vapor deep into the mortar. Within moments, the mortar softened, and the gatehouse suddenly took on the appearance