The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  Aleira Suzehn—this bookshop owner turned Magician—claimed the ability to aid communication between the king and his brother, Mansur, who was stationed some leagues away by the Iberra. Her capabilities were limited without the resources of the Tower of Glass, but—if she was to be believed—there were ways she could assist them in this war.

  Eldakar had settled himself in his chair. “I don’t know why Rihab would choose to send a message now. She knows I’d wonder about it, though, which means I ought not think about it at all.” He drank. “I can’t shake the feeling that we are wasting time,” he said. “Nothing has changed. We are still fighting each other instead of unifying against the larger threat.”

  He had returned to what had long been his preoccupation, since the Magicians of Ramadus had come with their warnings. The power that had destroyed the Zahra came from the west; and there was worse, they said, to come. They spoke of a wave of armies that would wash across the world.

  There was no doubt they believed their own words. Nameir had seen fear too often not to recognize it in the faces of those Magicians. And in the way they scurried home.

  “Lin moves against the Poet King,” she said.

  “Alone.” He drank again. “I hated sending her.”

  “She would not have it any other way.” Nameir didn’t like to recall that time. After the Magicians had come with their prophecy, and Lin Amaristoth had gotten the idea to leave. Saying she was needed in the west, if it was from there the danger came. Until then she had been a participant in the war, and one who kept Eldakar’s spirits up. Once she’d gone it was as if she’d taken something with her. Some element of luck.

  That arrow had found Eldakar soon after.

  The city awaits its king.

  Nameir Hazan thought—with resentment rare for her—that, as usual, the queen maneuvered people to her advantage.

  * * *

  THERE was more to discuss before she left him. Food was about to become scarce unless they could secure another means of supply. This was further complicated with the onset of winter. Especially this far north. While the foothills rarely saw snow, heavy rains would muddy the roads. Disease would strike.

  And more: Word had reached Nameir through one of their spies that the traitor Muiwiyah had sent a delegation to the king of Meroz, requesting an infusion of troops. No doubt he had made promises of what he’d do for Meroz, once he became king of Kahishi.

  At this Eldakar laughed. “He treats with Mad King Krendak,” he said. “Does Muiwiyah not know why my father all the years avoided dealings with him? The last general to think he’d achieved a truce with the Mad King ended up face-first in a bathhouse latrine. I’m afraid the Akaber dynasty will be short-lived.”

  Nameir could not respond in kind. In his eyes, beneath the laughter, she read defeat. The odds were piling up. If Eldakar had believed victory was likely he, himself, would have deserved the epithet of Mad King.

  When she left his tent he was scowling over maps by light of a lamp, his upper body wrapped in furs. He had switched from wine to a porcelain cup with an infusion to soothe his pain.

  Eldakar’s brother, Mansur Evrayad, had rarely spent time looking at maps. He had left that sort of work to her. The prince trusted his instincts, which thus far had never failed.

  She saw Mansur rarely now. A change in her life, after eight years in his service. It had been the wish of the prince himself—he’d asked her to serve as Eldakar’s second-in-command. Her first time serving apart from the prince in years. “I can’t bear for anything to happen to my brother,” he had said to her. It had been soon after the destruction of the Zahra, when the grief was fresh. When each morning they’d awaken to the incalculable loss.

  “If I could, I’d split myself in two,” Mansur had said that day. “Half of me would be my brother’s shadow. Never to leave his side. The other half would command his armies on the border. Nameir, you are the one who is nearest to being my other half. Will you do this?”

  There was no way to refuse. Even when she knew—knowing him as she did—that he’d fashioned the request deliberately, with the aid of his poetic gifts, so as to make refusal impossible.

  She was not really that cynical. In truth, she thought Mansur believed every word of his poetic phrases. Even when they contradicted each other.

  She knew him better than most; in some ways, felt lost without him.

  At night she had time for remembering. When it was quiet in the camp. She’d remember the years with Mansur, years that had shaped her. That had taught her not only of war, but of command.

  As she did each night, Nameir checked on the sentries posted to the king’s tent. Unlike other nights, she did not head to her own tent afterward.

  Aleira Suzehn was not prepared for visitors. Nameir found the king’s new Magician clad in a shift, though she wrapped herself in a red silk robe. Details that struck Nameir as incongruous in their surroundings.

  “I see thoughts spinning in your head, Commander Hazan,” said Aleira Suzehn. “You seem already to be somewhere else. What did you wish of me?”

  “I was thinking I had better post a guard on you,” said Nameir. “People I trust. This place … our fighters … they’re not used to women in the camp.”

  “Even with you in charge?” Aleira smiled. She had strange eyes, yellow like those of a crow or cat. As she smiled, her hair fell forward around her shoulders. “Or is that a secret?”

  “I am never sure who knows about me, and who doesn’t,” said Nameir. Eldakar most likely knew. But no need to tell this woman that.

  “There are no guards posted on you,” said Aleira.

  Nameir shrugged. “I’m not like you.” Even as she said it, noticed a scent like flowers. Though as sharp as it was sweet.

  “Why don’t you sit down, then, and tell me why you’re here?” There was one chair in the tent. Aleira gestured to it before she sat cross-legged on her pallet. She was not so young, but slid nimbly into the pose. The Magician had painted toenails, dark red. These had been hidden before in battered boots. Nameir could not decide if she liked the effect, or if it was too much like claws.

  She refocused her gaze on the woman’s face. Had a moment to wonder if it was deliberate on Aleira’s part to distract with such details—and then considered that men had similar thoughts of women’s deviousness all the time.

  Now that she was in this tent, her reasons for being here were no longer as clear as they had been. A combination of scent and allure, or something more? This woman was, after all, supposedly skilled in magic.

  “I came to warn you,” Nameir said slowly. As she spoke, gathered strength. “If you betray my king, the penalty will be swift.”

  “You care for him.”

  “This family is mine,” Nameir said. “Beyond that, I’ve sworn an oath.”

  “What of your real family?” Aleira leaned forward, pulling the robe closer around herself.

  “Dead.”

  The yellow eyes were fixed on her. “There is more to it.”

  “They were killed. A raid.” Nameir shook her head. Whether because of the befuddling scent or the late hour she felt compelled to go on. “No, killed is the wrong word. It sounds accidental. They were murdered.” She shook her head again. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “And your family name is Hazan,” said Aleira to herself. “A name nearly extinguished in this part of the world. Nameir … that would not be the name you were given. You took the name of a mountain cat when you became a warrior. Is that right?”

  Nameir saw no reason to deny it. “You can see that?”

  Aleira’s face had softened. “I can see that you and I … we might have been neighbors. In a different life. Maybe our brothers would have played together. Our parents prayed at the same temple. Who knows?”

  Several moments passed that Nameir felt she could see dance slowly before her eyes. She grasped for the woman’s meaning. “You are Galician, then?”

  A flicker in Aleira’s eyes. The sof
tness gone. “You can’t trust anyone of the Evrayad line,” she said. “Do you know nothing of our story, dear one? Don’t you know what they did?”

  “The father.” Nameir shook herself as if out of a trance. “Yusuf led those massacres. Not his sons. And times are different. Mansur knows what I am. I believe so does Eldakar. They don’t care.”

  “Not now. Not yet. Until one of us becomes too powerful. Or perhaps it won’t be them, but their descendants. And then mark my words, dear one, there will be another massacre in Kahishi. As there has been time and again, everywhere Galicians live since our land was drowned. Perhaps until we are all gone, nothing but a word to scare children. Our books burned, shrines melted down.” Aleira changed position, to lie on her side. She looked past Nameir toward the opposite wall. “I have done what I can in this uncertain world,” she said. “I’ve cast my lot with the people who sheltered me. King Sicaro took me in when I would have died. He protected me. None molested me in his fortress even though I was a young girl, and considered beautiful. I won’t forget. Where Myrine asks me to go, I will. Whatever I might think of her husband.”

  Nameir supposed this was as near an admission of loyalty as she would ever obtain. It seemed tenuous but there was little to be done but watch and wait. They could use a Magician.

  She wondered, too, if the friendship with King Sicaro might be of use. Eldakar had met with the Fire Dancers’ king. Sicaro had been resigned, rather than delighted, to meet his son-in-law. Eldakar was cordial and correct with the man who had sent his daughter to spy on him. In the end they’d agreed to a truce, which mainly benefited Eldakar—it spared him a war on multiple fronts. But if Aleira Suzehn could, perhaps, convince Sicaro to help Eldakar in this war . .

  She betrayed us both, Sicaro had told Eldakar in the course of a long summer night of drinking by the Fire Dancers’ tents. The only sign of emotion he showed. My candleflame, my bright one. She was to spy on the prince of Kahishi. Not marry him!

  At this, Eldakar had looked stricken a moment. And then the two of them, both kings, had laughed and laughed.

  “Your thoughts are spinning again,” said Aleira, sounding amused more than irritated. “You must have many responsibilities, Commander Hazan.”

  “You can call me Nameir,” she said wearily. “And—you are still beautiful.” She rose.

  The Magician watched her. “You are all alone, aren’t you?”

  Nameir spread her arms, relinquishing any attempt to hide. “I love the lords I serve more than my own life,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know which I love the more. But to them, I am no more than a soldier. They have their own lives.”

  Aleira’s expression didn’t change as she stretched full length on her side. “I might be able to offer solace. For a time.” Then she grinned, eyes turning up at the corners. “A temporary respite from all the spinning.”

  Nameir inclined her head. She felt as if in a dream. “You are kind to offer,” she said. “I have—I have no experience with that. And my lady, I am afraid it would complicate things.”

  Aleira laughed. “You’re right … more than you know. Such things do, even when one thinks they shouldn’t.” She rose too, now, and went to the tent flap. She pushed it open. As clear a signal as any. But her eyes showed no rancor—possibly even a tenderness. “You, Nameir Hazan, are a good soldier.”

  Nameir ducked out of the tent. Outside, the air was clear and cold. The moonlit grass pillowy soft beneath her boots; she noticed for the first time. She wasn’t sure what she felt, but thought it was mostly relief.

  As Nameir climbed the hill, she passed the king’s tent. His guards were positioned as she liked. Moving on, she saw a seam of light beneath his tent. The king’s lamp burning as he reviewed the maps. The borders, rivers, and bridges that might hold an answer. Some way of turning the tide.

  CHAPTER

  10

  A HUNDRED times Julien Imara had envisioned coming back. A hundred variations depending on her mood. Sometimes she imagined striding through the Academy doors, head high, moonlight strategically slanting through the apertures to display her Seer’s mark for all to see. In those moods, she could allow herself to forget that she hadn’t earned the mark with years of study and preparation. She would tell herself it was merited for the work she had done in aiding the Court Poet of Eivar. And everyone who had ignored her, dismissed her, thought her no more than a flyspeck beside Sendara Diar … well.

  Even this version of events, the most triumphant, had a discomfiting underside. She knew when Sendara saw her, saw the mark … there would be contempt. You are nothing, she could hear the other girl saying—or sending the message as clearly with her eyes.

  Julien tried to glide past this, to the idea that even if Sendara sent that message, she would have to know that she had done nothing to stop an evil; that it was Julien, not Sendara, who had stood up to it.

  Naturally when Julien Imara was feeling keenly that she knew nothing of the enchantments that had been forced upon her—she had accepted them, true, but that had been practically a reflex—her envisioning of events would dwell on the contempt radiating from Sendara. In those moods, Julien urged herself to prepare for that inevitability; to get into the habit, before she and Dorn arrived at Academy Isle, of making herself impervious to contempt.

  She did not think too hard about how Dorn could return to the place that had nearly killed him. She knew it was important but thought they would sort it all out when they reached the Isle. Dorn Arrin was older, after all, and knew how to handle things. A world of knowledge lay between sixteen and twenty. Through the eyes of Valanir Ocune she had learned some things, but even so.

  All these thoughts she’d had in the cave on the north side of the Isle, where she had transported them. Later, when they reached the Academy and discovered what had happened, she felt shame. Of course events much larger than her were at work. She’d been worrying about herself, her pride, as the kingdom was falling.

  Her role was clear. Especially after Dorn Arrin told her of his dream of the Court Poet. She possessed the mark of Valanir Ocune and they had the Academy library at their disposal. And there was no one to bother them. No hostile Archmasters like Lian or Kerwin. No students. No Sendara Diar, now a princess (but of course!). Julien would use her newfound powers as she was meant. With the aid of the library she would discover what she was meant to do.

  * * *

  IT was their first night on the Isle when the dreams began. She was on a horse racing down a mountain. Both things that would have been inconceivable in the waking world—Julien did not like to ride. But in the world of the dream it was natural. When she reached the base of the slope she looked behind her and saw another rider. A man, his white hair luminous in the sun. His horse just as white.

  Involuntarily Julien laughed; it bubbled in her, joy at the race and the green mountain.

  The man pulled up beside her. His eyes were blue as the sky, and he carried a harp. Gold, of course, with golden strings. His cloak sky-blue as well. “We will be there by sunset if we go fast,” he said. “Can you do that, little one?”

  “I can do more than that,” Julien Imara heard herself say. “Right now I can fly.”

  He laughed. “One task at a time.”

  Julien had a moment to take in that she carried a harp as well. It matched the horse she rode upon: a bronze-like gold. She could have wept.

  “We ride,” said the man, and urged his horse to a gallop. She rode alongside but felt no jostle. The horse was hued like the sun. The sensation of flying beside this man, that they shared a mission.

  In one dream, when they had ceased their ride they built a fire. When the moon rose, its light revealed the mark of the Seer on his brow. And then in the dark he told her tales. Heroes, kings, and queens lit Julien’s imagination with colors bright as the fire, leaping and changeable as flames. She saw a pattern in these tales; felt their rhythms like familiar music. It made her wonder. She thought perhaps she had been shaped by these patterns
all her life; that what she felt was not new, but a remembering.

  * * *

  SHE brought the glow of the dream with her to the breakfast table. Last night she and her companion had ridden on a slender escarpment. On one side, a wall of rock; on the other, a view down the mountain of waterfalls, and green, and mist tendrils drifting. No speech between them; but she felt as if they were in some deeper way communicating.

  Each time she awoke she would hear a rise of music from that world, falling, and then gone.

  That morning it was just she and Dorn in the kitchen, sharing a loaf between them. Both so hungry they’d torn it apart with their hands. But used knives, at least, to spread the jam. “What are you so happy about?” Dorn said between mouthfuls. At her answering grin, rolled his eyes to the skies. He thought she was a silly girl, probably.

  It was their fourth day back. They’d found the strange tile in the Hall of Harps and decided on their course. They had spent hours in the library sifting through manuscripts and scrolls. Down there, where it had always been quiet and near-deserted—most students had no interest in books—felt most like the Academy of old. One could easily imagine, in the dense quiet, Archmaster Hendin appearing from behind the stacks to check on them.

  As a student Julien had spent a great deal of time there. It was her only escape. As it turned out, Dorn Arrin had as well. As an advanced student he was allowed there at night. That, he said, had been a good time for such things. Quiet.

  Julien did not say what she was thinking. You were alone. Like me.