Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  “It is like you.” Etherell’s eyes, the color of water, were solemn. “A rare, graceful beauty in a place of darkness.”

  “Oh,” said Sendara. Blood rose in her cheeks.

  They strolled from the dining hall together, after. Sendara with her eyelashes cast down, still with a high color. She wore the white lace dress, cinched with the red belt. The neckline dipped to show white, tender skin and the hollow of her breasts. Etherell was not seen to look there, however; his gaze, gentlemanlike, was trained on her face. He spoke with an appearance of care, Julien thought, as if in his hands he held a delicate, untamed bird.

  Not that he held her then. Not yet.

  Julien Imara wandered that night. The last time she’d done so had been weeks earlier, the night she’d encountered Sendara Diar in the Hall of Harps. Since that time she hadn’t felt the need. All the nights she had slept soundly, soothed as if the calm breezes of her childhood were returned to her, instead of winds that wailed across the Isle from the mountains to the sea. Mornings she would spring from bed with anticipation of the day. Each conversation, each new walk in the woods was a moment of potential; a seed which any moment might flower into some new understanding, a revelation. The chamber of Elissan Diar, bathed in light and lined with books and art from distant places, seemed a beacon in the distance: an embodiment of all that someday might be. Someday she would walk beside Sendara Diar and they would be equal, or just about; they would share knowledge, power, a bond. Not a bond like she had with Alisse—something edged and intense, answering a deep-rooted need.

  Maybe it was better not to have hopes, she thought now, as the shadow of the corridor swallowed hers. Not to get above herself, as she clearly had. When she had seen them together she’d understood. His beauty and her beauty. Both with a light to draw the eye. She had been a fool—pitifully stupid, really—to think she could approach that, touch it in any way.

  On the ground level now. All was silent. Faces leered from the walls. Or rather the Mocker did, as if with a sneer intended for her. The Mourner’s tears too close to bear. And the others—the Poet, the King—more distant than ever. The idea that she would ever be a poet was ludicrous.

  Julien ducked into the Hall of Harps before she had a chance to think. Hardly noticing the outstretched knife of Kiara that jutted in her path. No one was about tonight, though she kept alert for sounds of the chosen. They were not usually in the Hall, so far as she knew. At times she would awaken from fitful dreams to hear a chorus of voices, faint, ghostly on the wind. And she would know it was Elissan Diar and his handpicked boys out in the forest, and from there pass into dreams stranger still.

  It had nagged at her since that night in the Hall, when she had first met Sendara—her certainty that the carving of the dancer had changed. Later in daylight Julien had visited it again, confirmed that it was indeed a sword the dancer now held in one hand, while in the other still a torch. A sword with a wicked curve. But by then Julien had begun to doubt her own memory. Who was to say it had not been thus all along?

  Silver light from the Branch guided Julien down the length of the Hall of Harps. Her eye searched for carvings she recognized. And there was one: the knight, riding to what seemed his certain demise in the teeth of a monster. Julien blinked. It was not a monster’s teeth she saw anymore, rising around about the knight. Nor was he riding. And the image shifted as if before her eyes; the horse was gone. A lone man on foot, a harp at his side—a poet. What arose around him were flames.

  Her breath caught in her mouth, Julien searched for another carving she knew. Instead she spotted one she had not seen before: Three men stood in a row, a sword lain across their necks. Their faces blank with sorrow. In the upper right corner of this tile a symbol—a circle threaded with a loop, as if to represent some charm. In the upper left corner, a harp.

  What means all this?

  “And yet.” A voice behind her. Julien spun around. Valanir Ocune was not looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the carvings past her head. “You haven’t noted the one that concerns me most.”

  “Valanir,” she whispered. Then hastened to correct herself. “Seer Ocune.”

  He lay a finger to his lips. Though his mouth turned upward, he looked sad. “Look here,” he said in his low, magnificent voice, and pointed. This was the carving of the woman who, Julien recalled, ran her sword through a harp. Her movements ferocious as if channeling a great anger, apparent even in the simple lines of the carving. But now it seemed even as Julien watched the picture changed, shifted in the play of pale light. The harp had lengthened, changed its shape. Become another woman, a sword through her heart.

  Julien noticed something else. The strokes that made each of the women were identical. The same woman, twice. One running the other through with a sword.

  “What do you think it means?” Julien dared ask. There was far more she wanted to ask, but it seemed trivial. Valanir Ocune was here. He had not vanished. But wanted the Academy to believe he had.

  He wasn’t looking at her now. He said, “I sent her into danger, and didn’t tell her everything. And now I begin to wonder … if I even knew what I should have. What there was to tell.”

  “Lady Amaristoth.”

  He didn’t answer. Julien waited. Valanir Ocune continued to study the carving.

  “Is it for her you’ve made yourself vanish?” she said. “Or…” She thought of Elissan Diar at his desk as he calmly recounted Valanir’s absence. “Are you in danger?”

  “I’m waiting,” he said. “Readying things, and waiting. I will have only one opportunity, you see. And yes, some here would have had—other plans for me.”

  The quiet unnerved her. If someone should come … yet he seemed unworried. “What do you wait for, Valanir Ocune?” And then stifled a gasp, for something wholly unlikely was happening: the Seer Valanir Ocune had got down on one knee before her. His eyes, now nearer her own, were like green glass.

  “I have a favor to ask, Julien Imara,” he said. “But I fear putting you in harm’s way.”

  “Is it—is it for the Court Poet?”

  He nodded. “I will have only one chance. You’ve seen here tonight—and in other ways—gates on this Isle are opening. Since Darien Aldemoor restored the enchantments it began, and now with each thing we do … it is a wondrous but terrible thing, and I don’t know … I don’t know what the ends will be. If we can survive it. The barriers between this world, and others, are melting away. And so much of the knowledge we had is gone. I don’t know how Seers dealt with it in the past. We are all in danger here, Julien Imara—more so each day. If I were the man I’d like to be, I’d send you home.”

  “I’d rather die than go home.”

  He laughed softly. “That can’t be true. There is so little here for you. No one teaches you as they should. And your friend … well, that is another story.”

  She looked down at his hands: the callused fingers, long clean nails. His ring, the moon opal ring, had a glow all its own. She didn’t know what to say to him. I have no home. It seemed more true than ever. Then it sank in that he had spoken, if obliquely, of Sendara Diar. “Another story—how?”

  He shook his head. For the first time he seemed aware they might be discovered, his glance darting towards the door. His brow dark with anger. “They return from their vigil. It was outside this time … near the lake. They prepared for this one, this night, for a long time. And…” His voice changed. “Another. They’ve lost another. Syme Oleir this time.” Valanir covered his eyes with both hands. “He would have been a good man. He was one.”

  “Lost.” Julien stared at him. “But I thought…” She stopped. Gared Dexane had been sent home, it was said. It was said. Julien planted her feet, as if in advance of combat. Spoke the words with which her life’s course, already diverted by her arrival to the Isle, would be changed yet again. “Tell me how I might help.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  HE left her alone in the Tower of the Winds that first night.
The door to the Tower of Glass closed behind him and then, as Lin watched, the planks of the door wavered strangely, as if masked by water. Moments later there was no door, only the stones of the wall. The only way out now was through the second door, the one that led to her rooms.

  Before Zahir Alcavar left her in the Tower to herself, he had some departing words for her. “Do not be grateful to me, Lady Amaristoth,” he’d said. “We still are who we are. You are the Court Poet of Eivar, and I, First Magician of Majdara. I give this to you with a purpose. You never had a chance to discover your enchantments. Now you will.”

  “And then perhaps I may help you,” she said. They were standing close, perhaps more than necessary. She remained very still.

  He bent his head. “There is a chance. Valanir Ocune believes you possess the potential for great skill—he told me as much. I see no reason to doubt it.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  “I know. I’ll help however I can. But for now—just allow yourself to be here. You are taking what should have been yours. Through this, discoveries will come. And something tells me—you may find something I’ve missed, here in the Zahra. The missing piece to our shadow.”

  So she sat within a cubicle of stone—one of many in this Tower. The candle at her elbow lit the paper before her, nothing else. Waves crashed outside. Spring on the Isle, at night. She had been there only once before, in autumn.

  That was, unless she counted the time Valanir had brought her here and made her Seer. But like the gift of Zahir Alcavar, that memory seemed to exist outside any time or place.

  The blank paper mocked her like an insurmountable mountain. This itself was a subject of poems, of course—the taunting of the virgin page. A fear well-founded in fact: so little differentiated between songs great, good, or mediocre, yet that minute element—that which accounted for greatness—was impossible to produce on command. As with a mountain, she could attempt it, and most likely fail in the attempt. But to turn back would be to wonder for the rest of her days what she might have done.

  It was late now, it had to be. On the Isle, too. How was it that the moon had risen, if the place was fixed in a moment in time? Something to ask Zahir. But if she did, he would pull out his charts and pictograms to explain it to her, and she realized she preferred not to know how it worked. It didn’t matter. Here she was, with the music of wind and sea; the reality of ink and paper. Where she might, at least for the space of this night, find words.

  * * *

  ALEIRA Suzehn frowned as she studied the prophecy Zahir had drawn in his elegant hand. She sat at her desk in the back room of the shop, her hair today pinned up, exposing long earrings of red and blue beads that clinked when she turned her head. Lin could not bring herself to sit, so anxious did she feel now that the moment had come; she shifted her feet, paced the room, as the merchant bent to her task. She had taken care to check this copy of the prophecy against the original in the observatory. It all seemed in order.

  It was morning and Lin had hardly slept. She had stumbled down the dark passage from the Tower of the Winds when it was nearly dawn, to be awakened soon after by the temple gong. She’d retained a burning awareness, even in sleep, of the pages she had left on her desk in the Tower. As if she had left behind a piece of herself. Nothing had happened in the course of her night there, no signs of an arising enchantment; only a fever of words as if she had been waiting all this time for them to come.

  She had written some nights in Tamryllin, to avoid her dreaming. That had been different, though. Always she’d been weighted with the awareness of what her true duties were—in the council chamber at the side of the king, or in meetings with political figures to settle disputes. There was that sense, too, of having been denied something important that even the lowest of the poets got: the chance to compose in the Tower of the Winds itself. If enchantments would ever come to her through art, it would be here.

  He wants me to help him, she reminded herself. She could not allow herself to feel indebted to Zahir. Such an imbalance between them would be inappropriate. He himself had understood as much.

  Aleira made a sound of irritation.

  “What is it?”

  The merchant shook her head. She looked unhappy. “It is as you said,” she said. “As the Magicians are saying. The threat comes from the north.” She slumped, balanced her jaw on both hands. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Lin felt a flood of relief, but knew Aleira would not want to see that. She ironed the expression from her face. “I am sure there is an explanation. Perhaps the Jitana have discovered a new power.”

  The other woman looked up, eyes like amber chips. “There is an explanation … yes. What it is remains to be seen. The north is vast, Lady Amaristoth. The Jitana are surely not the only people there who might pose a threat.” She was again perusing the prophecy. “I want to study this more carefully. Will you leave it with me?”

  “Of course.” Lin knew she said it too quickly, glad to be done with that worry. With a sigh she settled into one of the cushions. “Tell me,” she said, “why do you call them Jitana? I haven’t heard anyone else use that name.”

  Aleira sat upright, set down the prophecy on her crowded desk. She inhaled a breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Who is it,” she said, finally, “that gives people their names? The Jitana have always been called thus. But those who banished them to the land’s edge call them Fire Dancers, based on tales brought back by travelers. It is the same way, you know, with Galicians.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Few do,” said Aleira Suzehn. “Once there was a city in the east—long ago, before Ramadus was the power it is. That was the great city Galicia, and most of my people took refuge there. You know how we came to be there, don’t you?”

  Lin dropped her eyes, feeling for the first time complicit in something. “I heard … it was … a curse.”

  “Our home was an island. One day in the middle of autumn the oceans took it away. Most of the people were killed. Those few who escaped on ships … well, Ellenicans and Alfinians alike had long despised worshipers of the Unnamed God. And now here, at last, was proof that they were cursed—the ocean itself had opened to swallow them.

  “So it was declared, then, and for always. That we were to be called Galicians after a city not our own—though soon exiled from Galicia for some imagined offense. And that our doom was to wander forever without a home—a reminder that the Three are just, or that the Thousand-Named God rules all. There is no place we are not outcast and our home is gone.”

  “It is a great wrong,” said Lin. “I would make it right if I could. What, then, is the name of your people?”

  Aleira shook her head. “It was lost. The waters swallowed everything, all the writings. And it was very long ago.”

  Lin noted the anger that animated the other woman through this conversation. It seemed of note that she had never mentioned a family. No one who would have grieved if the Jitana had slit her throat. Lin knew that there were massacres of Galicians, going on all the time and especially during the wars between provinces. She was ashamed not to know more. “I am glad to know what you have told me,” she said. “Even though it does no good. Still I would know.”

  “You are a woman highly placed,” said Aleira. Her face had softened. “It matters that you know what happens in the world. Someday a life may depend on it.”

  Lin felt embarrassed by this, though could not have said why. It seemed repellent, that someone should ever be at the mercy of either her ignorance or knowledge.

  “I have one more question for you,” she said. “I recently spoke with someone who claims … well, this is strange. He claims the troops who helped Yusuf Evrayad in his conquest of Kahishi were…” She stopped, thought about how it sounded. But Aleira waited patiently, so Lin went on. “His words were, ‘They were not men.’ He could not tell me more … but you know something of magic. More than I do, I am sure.”

  “They were not
men.” Aleira tilted her head as if something called to her. It made her seem birdlike. “Those were his words? But they must have seemed like men, correct?… Otherwise the accounts would have mentioned something. So he is saying these soldiers had the appearance of men, and yet were not.” Color rose in Aleira’s face. “A drastic revision of history, were it true. I know scholars who would give their eyes for proof.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what do you think?” The merchant’s cheeks glowed. “It could mean Yusuf Evrayad, the great conqueror, unifier of the Kahishian provinces, was a black Magician—or employed one.”

  * * *

  AS she strolled the Way of Booksellers back towards the river, Lin let herself linger at a display of books on shelves outside. Most were not in her language or even in Kahishian, but the sight still stirred excitement. And regret—there was so much to learn, even for the most abundant lifetime. In a way it made no sense for her to keep returning to books as she did, to new knowledge. But she could not imagine stopping.

  On the way she noticed workers stringing up colored lanterns. When she reached the harbor she saw more of these—a massive undertaking was underway to line the riverfront in festive lights. It recalled to her a night of the Midsummer Masque in Tamryllin—one of the great turnings of her life.

  Once she saw men putting together latticed boards, intricately crafted and worked with gold. So far what they had built was nearly the size of a small barge, but could not be meant for water. That was when she remembered something Zahir Alcavar had mentioned in passing. The Feast of Nitzan.

  Lin turned up the Way of Water in the direction of the plaza at the Gate of Falcons. It was a long walk and it might have been wise to bring a sedan chair or other conveyance, but she took pleasure in her independence. Besides, she wanted to make sure Aleira’s identity remained secret. The politics of court were a danger that must not touch the merchant, who was innocent.

  Innocent might not have been the right word, perhaps; the flush in Aleira Suzehn’s face as she contemplated exposing a royal scandal had bordered on lust. She hated Yusuf Evrayad on behalf of the Jitana. Perhaps on her own behalf as well? Lin didn’t know what precisely had happened to make Aleira end up an orphan in the Renegade king’s fortress. She didn’t plan to ever ask.