“It's done,” she said. “We can begin next week.”

  Amanda had already seen her teachers and arranged for a week off school so she could take part in the dig. She was to do another project to make up for her time away—a report on the dig and its findings.

  Soon, she promised herself in the corner of her mind she thought was free, soon she would be free of the snatches of tune, and the irritable pounding her skull received whenever she worked toward the demise of the song and its source.

  The music watched the thoughts pass through the place its host thought private, and jangled its notes in a malicious sneer of joy. Freedom was hardly the outcome the girl could expect, but the song wouldn't tell her that. Let her think her corner of mind was free. It would keep her from noticing other things.

  * * *

  Willis was waiting at the gate when Marie and her team of archaeologists arrived at the farm. Eileen waited at his side.

  Marie was the first to break the awkwardness that lay between them.

  “Your niece has told us so much about you,” she began.

  This greeting brought a stiff smile to Willis's face. He took the hand the professor offered, surprised to feel an echo of recognition in his soul. The part of him that remembered being a guardian recognized a champion, and welcomed it. The part that was not demanded to know more of the situation it found him in.

  Willis, James, Eileen and Marie spent the first evening in quiet discussion. It was talk that made the song scratch cruelly behind Amanda's eyes, but not as cruelly as it scratched when she pled tiredness and fled to her room.

  Sensing her fatigue, the song subsided. It was home and close to its source. Let the girl sleep. It had to commune with its maker.

  Amanda only half-heartedly fought the rising tide of tiredness that came with the song's subsidence. With the remembered image of the blue whorl sparking in her mind, she slept.

  The song fragment left her mind, and found a crack between the barrier of stones, then it wormed its way through the channeled earth to the sword. The sword had managed to draw itself closer to the surface; the bones of the long-dead hand barely able to maintain their grip.

  Soon, the song promised, soon, then it warned the blade of the waiting guardians and their champion.

  It offered the chance of capturing Jamie's mind. The blade's laughter rattled the gripping bones. No, it answered, the champion is too close to that one.

  No, the blade insisted, there was only one, small chance for victory or, if not victory, then escape. As Amanda slept, the song and its maker schemed.

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  * * *

  The champion and her team started digging the next day. Marie sang her protection over her fellows; they had worked with her before and did not find it strange. She did not sing anything over Amanda, and nor did she see the soft bulge in the girl's anorak pocket.

  The song took care not to draw the champion's attention to the brass cup in the girl's coat. It knew, with the extended consciousness of the sword, that the cup was the song master’s sole chance of survival, the cup, and then the girl.

  * * *

  Amanda was not thinking clearly. She had not slept well. Her sleep had been plagued by dreams of a dark closeness that had nothing to do with the night. She allowed the seductive tones of the song to lead her, and stopped at the place she had found the brass cup now tucked safely in her pocket.

  Ignoring, or unaware of, the rest of the team, Amanda began to scrape at the soil. The song intensified, careful not to let her notice its music.

  Fogged by tiredness, Amanda's mind did not register its melody. Lost in thought, but glad the irritation inside her skull had stopped, she dug, carefully expanding her excavation. She didn’t know what she was looking for. More pottery fragments or patterns, or perhaps another cup, or a piece of cutlery. Her hand scraped across the rising hilt of the sword and closed around it.

  The song subsided; it was not needed now. The pure unrefined sense of its maker's victory swallowed its own joy. Amanda drew the blade from the earth only to drop it, screaming, when she saw the finger-bones clamped about its hilt.

  Marie came running, words of power already forming on her lips. Her co-workers felt her draw on them for strength and gave willingly. This too, did not seem strange; it, too, had happened before.

  The sword rose from the ground of its own volition, trying to fit itself to Amanda's hand. Shrieking with fearful denial, the girl leapt back.

  Blue lightning leapt between her and the sword hilt, but still she resisted it, just as she had resisted its song. Before Marie could reach her, Amanda tripped and fell. Her head struck stone and she lost consciousness. The sword hung above her, its maker waiting for its opponents to make their move.

  Willis raced after the champion, but Marie did not notice him. More words of power exploded from her lips. The sword pivoted in mid-air and flung itself at her, a flickering pattern of red strengthening around its hilt and attracting the champion’s attention, No one noticed the faint, answering glow burning briefly scarlet in Amanda's anorak pocket.

  * * *

  The song maker nestled on the rim of the cup. It had made the transfer far more quickly than it thought possible, and the guardian had not appeared to see. The song had done its work well; it was a pity it would be destroyed with the blade.

  The battle ended quickly as Marie met the sword. With the power given by her companions and the guardians, she took the song from the sword and quenched it in the center of her power's fire.

  The blade fell, lifeless, to the ground. The bones about its hilt crumbled to dust, and the once-fine blade began to crack. Soon only powder remained.

  When the battle was over, Marie knelt beside Amanda, using her power to search for remnants of the song or its maker in the girl's mind. She found none and frowned in puzzlement. She had been certain of finding at least a trace. The power she opposed did not give up easily.

  Before she could search once more, Amanda stirred. She opened her eyes, and looked for the blade.

  “It's gone,” Marie said, seeing the alarm on her face, and pulling the girl into her arms, “powdered to dust.”

  Behind her, the others returned to their work. The ruins needed to be uncovered and explored. If they were lucky, they would discover something more to assist them in the next battle. The guardian and his seer helped Amanda to her room.

  The girl went with them, barely feeling her feet touch the ground. The cup remained within her pocket, the song maker lurking in silence. It would not be safe until the girl had returned to school for another term. Until then, it had to keep its actions small, wearing gently at the girl's mind until it could settle there.

  Once the guardians had left the room to join the others, the song maker began to hum, creating a new tune to play around the vessel's rim, causing thin engraved runes to glow with new-found fire—yellow and red and blue.

  It had found a champion and a mind young enough to mold to its will. Free of its enemies, the song maker nestled in the cup and began to shape its plans.