Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  They nearly always did.

  I follow no one, Dorn Arrin, Etherell had said. A violence Dorn had never seen in him. Brought out, perhaps, by whatever force was burning away his flesh.

  It was a strange thing to say if Etherell was to be an eager disciple of Archmaster Diar. As if his friend could not help but chafe at that authority despite himself. Despite the show he made of obedience.

  There is something here. Dorn found that he was strumming his harp, a song that arose from habit. It was an old lay about glory in battle, among the first students learned. Dorn held the instrument close in his arms. He felt more himself, this way.

  His own truth was bared to him. Regardless of what Etherell Lyr felt for him, Dorn could not let him die. He didn’t know what he could do to stop it, but nothing was of greater consequence—not for him, not in this life. And so as he played a song about bloodshed and victory he tried to summon his strength, though being himself, still, he could not help but undercut it with irony. He might lose his life if the danger was as he thought. That would be his song in the world. It was a grim world, anyway, now that his home was disintegrating, and along with it his art, and the man he loved.

  Dorn shut his eyes and hummed to himself the words, too low to be overheard.

  That crimson day, side by side they fell

  with hauberks blooded.

  Yet arose again, stronger still

  It was not then their time.

  * * *

  “IT will be different this year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  They were standing before the mirror in Sendara’s room. It was large enough to capture the two of them from the waist up. The frame was alabaster carved with woodland and garden scenes. Julien stared at the frame, at the shapes of fantastical flowers and birds, of fountains and trees, rather than at her own reflection. Balanced atop the mirror frame was the gift from Etherell, the lithe, bizarre creature called a seahorse.

  Sendara was combing out her hair before dinner. It fell in flame-threaded waves to her waist. She quirked the corners of her lips in a way that brought out her dimples without showing teeth. Observed its effect in the mirror. “The lottery,” she said at last. The smile became a smirk. “You may want to stay away that night.”

  “What lottery?” Julien hated to ask these questions, especially now that Sendara was smirking, but thought it was better to look ignorant than to remain so.

  Sendara Diar put down her hairbrush and sighed. “I keep forgetting how little you know. Each Manaia a sacrifice is chosen at random. A very old rite. For centuries it was without meaning. But now…”

  “The enchantments are back.”

  Sendara’s eyes veiled as if with surprise, or suspicion. “So you’ve been paying attention.”

  “I have,” said Julien. When next she spoke, it was more boldly. “I’ve noticed that your father’s chosen keep falling sick, for one thing.”

  But if she’d hoped for a reaction, it was denied her. Sendara only shrugged. Picking up her brush again, she resumed running it through her hair. Gripping its strands midway, she applied herself, with increasingly violent strokes, to the ends. Her brow creased from the effort. “Not all are man enough to handle the demands of power.”

  “What about us?” Julien said. “We’ll never be man enough for anything.”

  “It’s a figure of speech. Obviously.”

  It sounds like something your father would say. It would be unnecessarily provocative to say that. Still she could not resist asking, “Do you think Etherell is—man enough? You’re not worried about him?”

  “I could tell you the ways in which he is man enough, and more,” said Sendara. “But you don’t seem to like hearing about it.”

  “Why would you tell me stay away from Manaia?” It was important to stay focused on the topic at hand, Julien reminded herself. Her need for Sendara’s knowledge, to understand what was happening, was stronger than hurt. Though it seemed now, with Sendara warning her away from the festival, that the other girl had already decided they were not to sing together after all.

  “Did I say that?” Sendara turned from the mirror to face Julien. Her expression unreadable. “Perhaps you should come, after all. A long time ago, it used to be a fattened lamb they sacrificed. Or a calf.” Sendara looked pointedly at Julien’s midsection. “You’d be ideal for that.”

  Julien stood, transfixed. Whatever she had expected—despite the recent, subtle hostility the other girl had shown her—it was not this. It felt as unreal as the night under the stars had, albeit in an entirely different way. Julien ventured, “Is this because of what I said … about the chosen?”

  “No, Julien.” Sendara pursed her lips. She held herself upright as a queen passing judgment. “Perhaps I’m starting to realize that I require … more educated company. Your ignorance, and neediness … it’s begun to grate. I’m at a critical time in my education. I can’t afford to be held back. You make me feel like I have to hold back, because you can’t stand my success. You watch it all … like some kind of shadow.”

  Julien stumbled back a step, then another. She had been wrong about Sendara Diar—but also about herself. She’d imagined she could approach the question of Manaia, the darkness surrounding the chosen, as if it were a puzzle. With detachment. But as it turned out, she was not detached. Had put herself in the way, instead, of what felt like a cold, thin knife in the ribs.

  Your neediness. All her efforts to be composed, not to show feeling. Somehow it had bled out anyway. It had been folly to try to hide what was blindingly clear: she was, in herself, not enough.

  Some kind of shadow.

  As Julien reached for the door handle, she wished she could think of something to say. Something that would lend her at least the appearance of pride, or worthiness. Nothing came. Her heart was a broken-winged bird that staggered in circles. Outside, the windowless hallway seemed to beckon to her, its bleak recesses the only place she belonged.

  She turned one last time at the door. Sendara was watching with a wary expression, as if Julien might bite. Yet still retained an upright posture, a haughty tilt to her chin, as if she did not care either way.

  At last Julien said, with a tremor she despised, “I won’t come back.” And shut the door.

  * * *

  “I WANT to go home,” she said that night in Valanir Ocune’s drafty tower room. She had brought a blanket for her shoulders but still shivered in all her limbs. “When this is over. I can’t stay here.”

  “Julien, sit.” He sounded tender in a way that almost made her cry. No, wait, she was crying, Julien realized to her horror; a tear had slid down her cheek. The chair was hard beneath her. She huddled within the blanket for a warmth she couldn’t find.

  “This place has been cruel to you,” said Valanir Ocune. The compassion in his words, so unexpected, was like a twist of the knife still lodged in her ribs. More tears sprang into her eyes. She covered her face, deeply embarrassed. The emotion is too raw. Here she was, being raw all over the place. Her unsuitability to be a great, rather than a merely passable poet, in evidence even here.

  “I wish I had words of comfort,” the Seer said. “I know you want what this place offers. I don’t know how to give it to you.”

  “Couldn’t you teach me?” She looked up from her hands. Temporarily forgetting her streaming eyes.

  “Julien, I—” Uncertainty blurred his features, unless it was her tears. “There’s something I haven’t told you. I … You must promise not to be frightened.”

  “No one can promise that.”

  He laughed. “True. But please try.” His eyes were merry as flames of green. But beneath that Julien thought she glimpsed a heaviness. “The enchantment I try tomorrow … I don’t know if it’s been done. It’s been used to kill … this I know. An exploitation of the link between a Seer and the one who made him. I intend, tomorrow night, to use that same link … but differently.” He paused. The small fire in the hearth popped, shot up a spray like
lit rubies. It should have been a cheerful sound, yet Julien felt a chill that went deeper than before.

  “Differently,” she murmured. “You mean…” And this with a wild leap, “To give life instead?”

  He laughed a little. “To think you could have been my student.”

  “But … to give life…”

  “Yes,” he said. “A more complex undertaking than killing. I’m not sure what I may need to … give. Please understand, I go to it willingly. Our lady has paid enough. Largely because of me.” He smiled faintly. “I haven’t told my associate … I can’t predict how he’ll react. I’ve made sure he knows to keep you safe. But it means … if things go that way, I won’t be here to teach you, Julien. It would be wisest, then, to go home. When the Court Poet returns from abroad, seek an audience with her in Tamryllin. She is … though she may not always seem so, she is kind.”

  “How can this be?” said Julien, finally. She felt a fist clenched in her chest. I’m not sure what I may need to … give. “How is it that you are so … calm?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a chance it won’t happen,” he said. “Perhaps such a cost won’t be asked of me. Or perhaps … I will fail, and fail her. But I hope not. You must understand, Julien … I am taking responsibility for my own actions. That’s all.”

  “No.” She reached for his hand before she could think, surprising herself. He was warm, though the band of the moon opal ring was cool. “It’s more than that. And all Eivar shall have cause to grieve.”

  “You’re too young for that,” he said. It was unclear what he meant. He withdrew his hand gently and brought it to rest on his knee. The moon opal caught the firelight, its depths aflame with every imaginable color. “Don’t be old before your time, Julien Imara. There’s so much yet for you. Go home when this is over, and live. It is the right thing—I promise.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  FLOWERING rowan branches were strewn everywhere in drifts like snow. They lay across mantelpieces, wreathed the statues of Kiara in the Hall of Harps, were twined fancifully around pillars. The first-year students, whose task it was to decorate, had been thorough. The dining hall at breakfast brimmed with flowers and filled the room with scent; several times Julien thought she would sneeze. At the morning meal were special oat cakes with honey, a custom of Manaia.

  She sat beside Sendara Diar at their assigned end of the table. The girls ignored one another. She wondered if Sendara meant to sing in the competition that night, alone. It was Sendara’s song anyway, Julien had to admit. Julien’s contributions had been pared away until there was almost nothing left.

  Some of Elissan Diar’s chosen wore garlands of rowan flowers on their heads as a joke; Etherell was naturally one of these. He and Maric Antrell, garlanded and roaring like drunken princes, had their arms around each other’s shoulders. They hoisted pewter cups of well water as if it were wine, making toasts to one another’s health with raucous gaiety. Once they’d exhausted this line of mockery, they went on to toast other students, with attention paid to the foibles of each. After various of these, Etherell declared, raising his cup, “To Dorn Arrin, whose scowl could freeze a crow midair.” And he drank.

  Dorn was watching with a detached air as if the spectacle was what he’d come to expect, his long legs stretched out before him. Julien thought he had an air of waiting.

  “Oh, indeed,” said Maric. “To Lord Bookmaker, whose love is not, methinks, for the ladies.”

  Dorn roused himself as if from dreaming. His eyebrow raised. “Are you ready to admit your desire for me, Lord Antrell?” he said. His voice, though soft, carried over the table. Caused many of the boys to look up. “Or do you feel … inadequate?”

  The boys appeared to shudder where they sat, with delight and fear, for no one could predict what Maric might do. Maric, in turn, broke from Etherell’s arm to sway forward until he was inches away from Dorn. The fire-haired lordling, a hand to his belt knife, loomed over the bookmaker’s son. “Tonight it happens,” he hissed. “I’ll make you beg. Don’t doubt it. You’ll beg for love before we’re through with you.”

  “Tonight,” said Dorn, eyebrow still raised. “Do tell.”

  “He’s an idiot,” said Etherell, appearing now behind Maric and grabbing at the lordling’s shoulder. “Come away, idiot.”

  Maric Antrell laughed. “You’re a soft touch, aren’t you, Lyr,” he said. “You don’t want that getting back to our lord.”

  “No, indeed,” said Etherell, grinning widely. “And it will not.” His eyes glittered beneath the wreath of flowers, that suddenly did not look ridiculous at all. He all but pushed the other man back into his seat. Maric was still laughing. Etherell’s expression flattened, became genial. “Another toast now,” he said with a bow, “to our illustrious Archmasters.” He flourished his cup in the direction of the high table where the Archmasters, clad for the festival in silver-belted black instead of their grey cloaks, sat conferring among themselves. All but High Master Lian, who was dressed for the occasion in white.

  Julien wondered if Etherell saw any but one of these men: a man who, though of the same age as Valanir Ocune, appeared young; who wore the black and silver as would a lord. Elissan Diar appeared touched by sunlight, even on a day the Isle was swallowed in mist. He would be there tonight, Julien thought. Though it was not he with a mantle of white like the rowan branch, not he who would lead the ceremonies of Manaia, still Archmaster Diar was the one to watch.

  * * *

  ALL their names went into the basket. At the end of the morning meal the High Master called the name of each student in turn, dictating to a second-year student whose task it was to write it on a scrap of paper. The student would then give the paper to the High Master, who dropped it into the basket that sat upon the high table. A ceremony Dorn had witnessed often, every year in the spring. After the students’ names were called, Archmaster Lian went on to call the Archmasters. Elissan Diar grinned when his own name rang in the dining hall.

  It was a custom. Later that night, after the song competition of Manaia, the High Master would draw a name. The one called, if a student, was subjected to predictable raillery, though it always ended the same way: he was made to stand almost between the fires, just near enough to singe his hair. In elder days, it was said, the “winner” had been run between the fires, perhaps even burned to death. An animal sacrifice, was one theory—perhaps an optimistic one; an attempt to keep at bay a deeper darkness that might attach to the rite.

  Now it was a drunken game, a gesture made towards Eivar’s past, when there had been no cities nor even walled towns; when instead, tribes and their kings roamed the hills with cattle.

  Tonight, Maric Antrell had said. And Dorn had soon recalled Etherell’s earlier words. I can’t protect you.

  Dorn eyed the pair of them: Maric whispered in his companion’s ear as the latter gazed straight ahead. Dorn thought Maric had the appearance of a courtier playing advisor to his lord; certainly the way Etherell Lyr appeared in his crown of rowan flowers was regal, his only reaction to the whispering an occasional brusque tilt of his chin.

  Dorn wanted to warn him. A man like Maric Antrell would not consent to a servile position, not for long. If Etherell did not make some concession to Maric’s status, the man and his posse would turn on him. And that was if the enchantments that were decimating the chosen did not reach him first. Dorn saw his friend walking heedlessly between twin dangers that loomed to either side like the need-fires of Manaia.

  Now rippling through the dining hall there came applause; Archmaster Lian bowed before them—his name, the last one, had gone into the basket on the table. His first time conducting this ceremony, which for so many years had been the task of Myre.

  Tonight. Dorn studied the floor. He had only one possible plan.

  * * *

  THEY stood before the Silver Branch. Rowan flowers were piled around it on its dais. It was evening and outside the songs of Manaia were beginning. The singing reached th
e Hall of Harps as if blown on the wind, lonely against the night. More voices called in answer, their timbre falling, falling until they and the winds combined. It was all one, thought Julien Imara. The song, the winds, the Isle. Dark would be enclosing around towers of flame that licked the sky.

  She tried to stand relaxed with her arms at her sides, found she was trembling all the same. Ever since he had told her what he meant to do, she felt complicit in something terrible. He had donned formal attire, the silver-belted black of a Seer. Julien thought of Archmaster Myre, arrayed in robes for his final rest.

  It is to save the Court Poet, she reminded herself for the hundredth time since he’d told her. His choice.

  At dusk they had glided through dark corridors to the Hall of Harps; all fires in the castle were doused, and even a candle would have raised outrage. Knowing the way in darkness as well as she did, Julien had not had trouble with this, and Valanir Ocune, too, seemed familiar with the corridors at night. They had slid between the twin stone gaze of the statues of Kiara, crowned in their white flowers. And lastly they had heaved shut the great doors to the Hall of Harps.

  His familiarity with the hallways even in darkness reminded Julien that Valanir undoubtedly had stories of his time at the Academy. Now it was too late to ask.

  Across from her Valanir was waiting, listening for something. At last they heard a bird call, resounding too loudly in the Hall to be outside. It seemed to come from beside the door.

  Valanir appeared to relax. “My guard is here. Now, with luck, no one will disturb us.”

  He stepped nearer to Julien and reached out his hands. She took them. Earlier at another meeting he had linked with her through enchantments. So he’d told her, though she had felt nothing; and now he could draw upon her strength to conceal what he intended to work tonight. Otherwise the enchantments would be detected by one such as Elissan Diar and they’d be discovered, stopped before he could complete what he meant to do. But he did not call upon Julien to work enchantments herself. He would not put her at risk.