Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  CHAPTER

  3

  SMOKE made a blue mist in the pavilion and smelled of ambergris. Faces shifted from shadow to lamplight and back, as in a masquerade; but finery, embroidered and jeweled, made for a continuous whirl. The dishes that arrived from cookfires outside were richly spiced and inventive, their scents mingling with the incense. Beside Lin Amaristoth an exquisite woman with gold earrings was laughing, perhaps more loudly than was proper; Rihab Bet-Sorr, young queen of Kahishi. King Eldakar, his queen, and their retinue had honored the Court Poet of Eivar by riding out from Majdara to welcome her and hold this banquet. The pavilion, long and nearly as high-ceilinged as a dining hall, was erected in a poppy field just a week’s journey from the Zahra. Later, after there had been sweets and music, they would retire to beds of silk in small pavilions hung with velvet for warmth.

  Lin had never seen the like. She had slept roughly all through the journey from Eivar and not really minded. The mountain pass had offered brisk air and the colors of spring. Her only complaint of travel was the space it left for thoughts. In the absence of meetings and affairs of state her mind was free to wander; and as ever lately, the paths it took were misted, as if with fog or unshed tears. Nights by the fire, she could not bring herself to sing. She had brought paper and ink for the journey, filling sleepless nights in her tent with study and composition. Almost Lin could not admit to herself how much she desired just one more thing, nurtured one hope: that she might produce a song that would last.

  There was very little time.

  Her retinue was escorted by Magician Tarik Ibn-Mor and his men. It was a journey made tense by Tarik’s obvious opposition to his own assignment. For now, Lin could only guess at the reasons, guessed they had little to do with her personally. She avoided speaking with him, though they sat together at mealtimes. One time, when they sat at the fire, the Second Magician had said to her, “Valanir Ocune made you Seer?”

  There was contempt in his voice. Perhaps this was the source of his grievance—a dislike for Valanir Ocune? In as neutral a tone as possible, Lin had replied, “He did.” It was as public a fact as could be. A scandal, in some ways. It was not in the usual fashion that Seers were made. Archmaster Myre had never forgiven either of them.

  Though there was only firelight to illuminate that clouded night, still she could see the Second Magician’s glance downward, at her hands. “I see your mark, when the moon is out,” said Tarik. “But I also see something else. You have no ring. Even poets who never attain the rank of Seer have this, the sign that they have completed the studies of the Academy. Yet not you? Not the Court Poet? It seems … remarkable.”

  Lin reclined on cushions that had been placed for her beside the fire. “The Archmasters choose a gemstone according the poet,” she said with a shrug. “They have not yet chosen one for me.”

  Tarik’s sharp, clever face looked more interested now than malicious. “That seems to me odd,” he said. “A division between Academy and Crown that cannot bode well.”

  “We have our divisions, it’s true,” said Lin, looking him in the eye. “But King Harald supports me. If the Academy wishes to have their small demonstration of resistance, I may as well allow it. Ultimately it is the Crown that reigns.” She then found a reason to speak to a guardsman, on the other side of her, and afterward take her leave for bed. The lack of a ring—a thing even the meanest of poets received—was a reminder all her days that she was not like other poets. Lin thought she had succeeded in dismissing Tarik, diminishing his rudeness, but still … he had not missed the mark.

  In the course of the journey the Second Magician had sent word to the Zahra—no doubt through his particular methods—that they were close. She was surprised when King Eldakar sent word of his plan to ride out to meet the Court Poet at the border and host a banquet in her honor. It seemed a strange thing to do in time of war, but the hospitality of the Evrayad dynasty was famed. And Lin had been duly impressed as, reclining in the field of poppies with her attendants, she watched as the wave of silver and red that was the king’s guard advanced. Their ceremonial armor—compared in Kahishian poetry to mirrors—caught the sun, edged in the red brocade of their cloaks. Their crest a falcon, gold on red.

  It was armored thus that forces led by Yusuf Evrayad had conquered in Kahishi. It had not been so long ago. Eldakar’s father had come from Ramadus and united the squabbling Kahishian provinces, made them his. What was once a land ruled by a handful of petty kings had, over decades, grown strong beneath the dynasty of Evrayad. Now those kings were viziers, leaders in their provinces who owed allegiance to one king.

  It was Yusuf who had been a friend to Valanir Ocune, a patron of his work, granting him years of hospitality in the Zahra—the magnificent palace he’d built in Majdara, the capital.

  His son Eldakar was another matter. Valanir could tell Lin little about him, save that he’d been a boy when last he’d seen him, and seemed withdrawn, quiet. Unlike his father in all ways. Perhaps the most distinctive thing Eldakar had done so far, in his short reign, was marry the wrong woman.

  Now at the banquet table as she studied the queen’s profile, the long straight nose, black hair gathered at the nape in a jeweled net, Lin recalled Ned Alterra’s words to her the night before. “There is a story about her,” he had said.

  Lin had sent him into the Kahishian camp to find out what he could. With his innocuous appearance and a mind sharper than most, Ned made an indispensable spy. It was he who controlled Lin Amaristoth’s network of eyes and ears in Tamryllin. She had recognized early in her time at court that such practices were necessary; had done her part to discover the identities of those who had once reported to Nickon Gerrard. Ned was the only one in the court of Tamryllin she trusted.

  The rest were dubious, even Garon Senn, though she had still included the master-at-arms in her retinue. Garon had good reason to be loyal, for she compensated him generously. Lin valued his agile wits and field experience. She had appointed him her personal guard.

  From a night of drinking with guardsmen Ned returned to report to her. Ruddy and grinning, he threw himself on the floor of Lin’s tent. Drink brought out something in him that was usually concealed, a crudeness. She could see he struggled to hold it in check in her presence. One reason, among several, that she trusted him. No one would hold Ned Alterra to account for his actions more severely than he already did himself.

  Of the queen, he said, “It was a forbidden marriage. Eldakar was to have married a princess of Ramadus, to cement an alliance. Instead he jeopardized everything and married a slave girl.”

  “So this Eldakar Evrayad,” said Lin abruptly. “Is he an idiot?”

  Ned tried to hide a smile. “It’s hard to say. The common view is she bewitched him. He came upon her singing beside a stream in the palace gardens. They say he had her that same night, which is possible—she was a slave. But now, it seems, she holds the reins to him.”

  “What do you think, Ned?” She valued his thoughts over rumor.

  “I think we should observe a while,” he said, drawing his knees up to his chest like a thoughtful boy. “It does suggest there may be more to the coming war than bands of Fire Dancers.”

  “You think they may be backed by Ramadus.” A kingdom said to be magnitudes more complex, more splendid, than nearly anywhere else. Eldakar Evrayad’s father had come from Ramadus, an army at his back. Lin didn’t know the particulars of his claim to Kahishi; the spiderweb of bloodlines and dynasties in the east were a field of study in themselves.

  “The Ramadians have reason to hold a grudge,” Ned assented.

  Lin was silent. If true, this would have repercussions for Eivar; it would have to. All this imbalance, even havoc, because of a woman singing in a garden.

  She remembered the words of Valanir Ocune about a suspected traitor in the Zahra. Then Ned: She holds the reins to him. Was this the answer?

  “There’s more,” Ned said then. His voice barely louder than the hiss of Lin’s tent fi
re.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  What he told her next was imprinted in her mind the next day at the banquet, when her gaze narrowed on the king, Eldakar Ibn-Yusuf Evrayad, seated beside the queen. A sensitive face, slender hands adorned with rings. Dark eyes long-lashed as those of his wife. He made skillful conversation with Lin from the start, about poets and the works he favored. He was intelligent, unlike Lin’s own king. “But now the Academy is given over to new powers,” said King Eldakar with solemnity that made him look younger than he was. “Pardon me, lady, but I wonder. Will the art itself be forgotten?”

  Lin blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Queen Rihab Bet-Sorr was looking at her, too. She wore a crimson gown, embroidered with peacocks worked in azure and thread-of-gold. She leaned into Eldakar’s shoulder as if the two of them were alone. “The songs from your land have given us pleasure, through the years,” she said. “But if a man seeks power through poetry, is it yet an art—or a means to an end?”

  A slave girl? Already the rumors were showing seams of incredulity. Lin said, “Men have often become poets to obtain power and all that it brings—fame, gold, women of beauty. Little has changed.” As she spoke, she felt the words were a knife—towards the king and his queen, she offered the handle; towards the listening presence of Edrien Letrell, the blade. Sometimes she felt at war with him, as she sought to preserve her self. And because he was killing her.

  “But it is different now, is it not?” said Eldakar Evrayad. “Surely the balance of power in Tamryllin will change. Perhaps not right away. Here in Kahishi, the Tower of Glass can shape the fate of the king—though it has been our tendency to deny it.” He was smiling faintly.

  “It is early yet,” Lin acknowledged. “But most of our songs remain entertainment—or art. We access the enchantments rarely, at great cost.”

  “You bested a laylan,” said Rihab Bet-Sorr. The Kahishian word natural, sweet on her tongue.

  Lin nodded. “Yes. But not alone. The Seer Valanir Ocune was with me.”

  “Did it cost you?” Rihab’s gaze seemed open, her question straightforward. Lin recalled that elegant as the queen was, she was also young.

  But around the table, others were listening. Lin said, carefully, “We all have paid, in our own ways.”

  Now Tarik Ibn-Mor interceded. He had sat shrouded in shadow and a cloak, but Lin had all along been aware of his presence, an abiding disdain. His cloak was threaded with silver, so it resembled a fall of water from his shoulders. Water was his element, it was said; he was versed in the mysteries of hydraulics, an art kin to magic, and had worked his spells in the king’s gardens. Fountains, Lin was given to understand, were of more than symbolic importance in lands that ran dry. “The powers of Eivar are new, untested,” he said. “Our Tower of Glass has stood nearly two-score years. The first school of Magicians, in Ramadus, more than a thousand.”

  “Yes,” said Eldakar, mildly. “And our First Magician, Zahir Alcavar, comes from the school in Ramadus.”

  Without troubling to disguise his resentment, Tarik said, “A Ramadian leads us. Yes.”

  Lin sat back, watching. The king’s face had gone remote as stone. A man of almost feminine beauty, he resembled a sculpture of the god. It was hard to tell whether he was fearful or angry. Beside him, Rihab Bet-Sorr bit her lip.

  Ned’s words of the previous night came back to Lin. “There is a widespread belief that Eldakar is weak,” he’d said. “That a war in the north would overthrow him. His younger brother Mansur, a battalion leader, is more popular. There is even a tale that King Eldakar is caught between dueling lovers—the queen and Zahir Alcavar, who dominate him for their purposes.”

  “Zahir Alcavar, really?” Lin had asked, surprised.

  Ned shrugged. “For years Zahir and Eldakar were the closest of friends, against King Yusuf’s wishes. Some say, more than friends.”

  There was nothing Lin could say. For all that Valanir Ocune had lived in the Zahra and been guided by the First Magician to a mastering of enchantments, he had told her little of Zahir Alcavar.

  There was tension after Tarik’s remark, in which he had all but accused the king of weakness. At last it was Rihab Bet-Sorr who spoke. “We have wandered far, it seems to me, from a discussion of poetry. Lady Amaristoth, greatly have we desired to hear a poet of your stature recite. Will you honor us here?”

  Before Lin could answer, King Eldakar said, “You must have your harp, of course. As tradition dictates.”

  Lin waved her hand. “No need,” she said. “I thank you.” Of late she had no desire to sing. There was the chance if she did, her heart would show. Not only to others, but to herself.

  She waited as servants were sent around the table to call for silence. Burning into her she could feel Tarik Ibn-Mor’s glare—you have no ring. The expectant gaze of the king and his queen. And all those present—courtiers, soldiers—who may have wondered at the small woman who had been sent to meet the demand for a Court Poet. Lin cast her gaze around the pavilion, meeting each assessing pair of eyes in turn. Some shrank, others looked away; no one held her stare.

  Who are you, Lady Amaristoth?

  He had sounded as if even then, he somehow knew what was lost.

  Where there had been a clatter of dining and conversation, there was now a low sputter from the braziers. But she was not in this tent at all when she redirected her mind. This place was but one link in the necklace-chain of her life. Its forging nearly done.

  She had written some lines by candlelight on the journey here. Rough, not very skilled. She cared not what they thought of her, these strange eyes and faces. Lin spoke.

  A tale was told me of a golden stair

  lit with captured stars

  that leads to marvels too immense

  for a poet’s skein of verse.

  ‘Ascend the stair,’ comes the fierce

  command of poets gone.

  Yet those who live, hold back—

  desiring that summit, yet knowing, too

  it is the end.

  * * *

  “WATCH her, Ned,” Rianna had bidden him a week before. It had been the morning he was to present himself at the palace as a part of the Court Poet’s retinue, and depart. She was standing on tiptoe to fix his cloak. Ned knew it was an excuse to lean close and would certainly not resist. He breathed in the scent of her hair, unchanged since he could remember. The fact of his leaving heavy between them.

  “You worry for her,” he said.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, and stopped. There was a bruised quality to her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept. “Her mother was mad, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Just watch her,” she said.

  And that night Ned Alterra did, along with everyone in the banqueting pavilion, as Lin stood at the head of the table. Even in the soft light she was ghostly, but for a spot of color in each cheek—an irregularity like a fever that also burned in her eyes. The night before he hadn’t seen it, his wits clouded by drink. He had seen a woman whose slender waist was like an invitation. Had flung himself to the floor, at a distance, and kept his eyes on the tent fire or his knees.

  The high color in her face and intensity in her eyes did nothing to diminish Lin Amaristoth’s desirability. An odd thought—Ned had seldom thought of her as desirable. Perhaps the words she recited held power, whether or not she knew it. She had confided to him that the enchantments of Seers evaded her skill. A weakness to be kept secret, and the Court Poet trusted Ned Alterra with her secrets. Some of them. He was not fool enough to think he knew them all.

  Mindful of his task that night, Ned scanned the faces in the pavilion that were turned to Lady Amaristoth. Noted the interested expression of the king, the rapt attention of his queen. And naked disdain from the Second Magician of the Tower of Glass, Tarik Ibn-Mor. He didn’t even try to hide it, Ned mused. As if his position were so assured he need not dissemble. But that was almost never true—anyone could fall. It w
as a part of what made the game exhilarating for some. In his time in the court of Tamryllin Ned had learned much, from watching.

  Standing behind Lin, Garon Senn. He was a broad man, and though going grey, seemed hewn of a tougher substance than flesh. His attire the red and black of the Tamryllin palace guard, but the red as accents only; Garon preferred mostly black. Ned could seldom read his expression—a dark beard and shadows cast by the angular planes of his face concealed it. It made sense that Lin would want such a man at her side, but Ned wished he could discover more about Garon Senn. He had been able to confirm little of the man’s account of himself, which ranged in distant lands and likely included deeds best left buried. Men who fought for coin were the worst kind. But so far Garon Senn had demonstrated perfect loyalty, as was in his interest.

  Ned Alterra had different ideas about loyalty. When genuine, it might come at a price—not be sold for one.

  When Lin was done reciting, there was a round of cheers, wine in goblets upraised. The color in her face settled, or drained, as she took a delicate sip from her cup. Her eyes met Ned’s for an instant; in a glance conveyed to him amusement, or irony. He wondered why.

  He hadn’t told Rianna about the time he had come upon Lin in her chambers, playing her harp. She hadn’t seen him at first. It had been near dawn and Ned wasn’t expected—there was some emergency for which the Court Poet was needed. And so he had gone up, and found her.

  And there was something wrong with the scene, though Ned Alterra could not have said, later, what it was that made it feel wrong. Her eyes were closed, her lips curved upward slightly, but her face tensed as if with pain. The music that poured forth made him think of awakening spring, buds trembling on the bough. But it also closed a dark well around his heart. He’d thought if he listened much longer he would fall down that well, never to be seen again.