The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  Dorn was staring at his hands that lay flat on the table. “Our journey? Where are we going?”

  “To Lin Amaristoth, wherever she may be,” said Archmaster Hendin. “I don’t know if she can keep you safe. But she may know what to do.”

  * * *

  THAT night she and the Archmaster sat at the table alone. Dorn had gone up to bed. Lulled by firelight and ale, Julien raised what she had wanted to ask about all this time. “The man from my dreams,” she said to Archmaster Hendin. He was reclining with his feet on a stool, smoking his pipe. She almost felt guilty disturbing his evening ritual, but need drove her on. “The Seer, I mean,” she went on. “Do you know anything about him?”

  He went still. For a moment could have been a statue, but for the wisp of smoke that curled toward the ceiling. Then looked at her with an expression she could not read. All she knew was that she was accustomed to seeing Archmaster Hendin as kind, as if that were all of him, his defining trait. Now she saw other things. “Do you know, Julien Imara,” he began, and stopped. Then went on, his voice made rough by some emotion. “Do you have the least idea how lucky you are?”

  Her response was to stare.

  “You don’t, then.” He tilted his head toward the ceiling, as if to contemplate something in the dark of the rafters. When he returned his gaze to her she felt relief; here again was the man she knew, his first thought to soothe and assuage the feelings of others. Not someone she had to fear.

  “Of course you don’t,” he said, and laughed a little. “It’s like everything that comes to us when we are young. We don’t know the value of the gift until it’s gone. What you had … as far as I know, you are the first Seer to have done so since Darien Aldemoor returned the enchantments. I don’t think the Court Poet has had these dreams. There were things that went wrong for her, things we’ll never fully know. But you…”

  “Maybe you don’t understand,” said Julien, feeling defensive. “They were just dreams.”

  “Just dreams.” He shook his head. “You saw the first Seer. Don’t you understand? You went through what was meant to happen for all of us. I have read of it—the Seers who come in the dreams of new initiates. The first of these—his purpose is to restore you. The idea is that for art we need, more than anything, to see the world as we did when we were just beginning. With wonder and surprise.”

  “Until the wear and toll of our lives take from us that enchantment.” Julien recalled the words of the second Seer from her dreams.

  “Yes.” This spoken heavily, with a glance down at his knotted hands. “And then, after, come other guides. With lessons to offer. A chain from down the years, giving what they have learned. Making a new place for you.”

  A chain. It was true—in that time she had felt connected to something in a way she never had before. For a brief time she had not been alone. She’d been part of a tradition that went back to the earliest song, to the first poet. She looked at him with new eyes. “And you never had that.”

  “No. It was taken from us when Davyd Dreamweaver prayed away our powers.” He put aside his pipe and leaned forward. “I know you are dealing with loss,” he said. “It may be hard to understand what I’m trying to say. But someday—someday when you are reaching for a melody or the right word, that well of enchantment will be there for you to draw upon. And I believe when that happens, you will understand.”

  She struggled with it. But never again, she thought. Never again, that race down the mountain. On the other hand: Archmaster Hendin’s face. She said, “You think—you really believe—it is better to have had something like that, and to lose it, than to have never had it in the first place?”

  Now he smiled. “Every time.”

  * * *

  MOONLIGHT was spilling into Dorn Arrin’s room when he went upstairs. He noticed that first. He distinctly remembered leaving the shutters closed against the chill. Now wind swept into the room along with faint light. Enough light for Dorn to see, a moment later, that he was not alone.

  “Not a sound.” Etherell Lyr had come out from behind the door. Held up a hand in a warning. He closed the door and slid home the bolt.

  Dorn felt his knees buckling, but managed to stay upright. “So. Are you here to kill me?”

  “Not you, no. But if you call for help, I’ll kill the girl in a trice. And the old man, and anyone else you think to summon.”

  “You’d do that.”

  “You know I would.”

  Dorn took a step forward. “I saw you kill Maric,” he said. “But Julien and Archmaster Hendin are innocents.”

  “Not like me.” Etherell was smiling. “Or you, I suppose.” He leaned close to murmur silkily in his ear. “Are you innocent, Dorn Arrin?”

  Dorn’s fists clenched. “You enjoy your power over me, don’t you?” He kept his voice down. No one else should be harmed. “Well, go ahead. Is this some service to your master? He’s dead, you know.”

  Etherell’s smile bared to a snarl. “He was never my master. And yes, I know he’s dead. I saw him die. This Queen—you should see her, Dorn. She is going to turn the world upside down and sidewise in ways that will be fascinating to watch. And for some reason she wants you.”

  “I know,” said Dorn. “She’s wanted me since the fires of Manaia. And you’d feed me to her.”

  “I don’t think she means to kill you,” said Etherell. “Not right away. If she didn’t have a use for you, she’d have wanted me to kill you here. Save a lot of trouble.”

  “Yes. Trouble.” Dorn’s arms went limp at his sides. He could not have said, just then, what he was feeling. He was remembering a dream of Academy Isle at twilight. A stone skipping on the water. Blue-grey and green-grey and silver-grey. He said at last, “We’re a long way from home.”

  Etherell clapped his shoulder. “You are, perhaps,” he said cheerfully. “I’m spared all that. I have no home.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  THERE were warnings before the procession came. Each time. Word of them spread, mouth to mouth, in whispers. A fire snuffed out suddenly in a grate. A stove gone cold, its pipe sprouting dagger icicles in moments. A film of ice on a basin that had been warm enough before. Windowpane that for decades of winter had endured would, one day, freeze and crack.

  There were subtler warnings too, and these came earlier. A child who woke screaming from dark dreams night after night. A man and wife, once tranquil, taken to throwing crockery at each other’s heads. Cows dried up, horses restive, dogs slunk flat to the ground, whimpering. A raven that would perch on the windowsill, fix its blood-red stare and not be shooed away.

  Following the warnings—subtle or strange—came the procession. It was led by laughter. Mirth gone wrong, a chilling sound. When its leader appeared, an impossibly tall woman who shone, she was surrounded and trailed by followers. Some looked as if they had painted their faces with a substance like powdered diamonds, luminous to match their lady’s skin, scarlet-lipped like her, too. All carried weapons—some swords, but otherwise there were axes, picks, clubs, slingshots. Torches, intended both to light the way and to destroy.

  The impulse was to look at her and to look away, to run from her and draw near. Her hair was alternately like flame or blood, depending on the light. Her eyes shifted from ice-blue to cat’s green but were always cold.

  In one village there were warnings in the days since Tamryllin. Its people had prepared, armed themselves, organized. A group of brave men rushed the procession with torches and blades. They yelled with the old pride of the Eivarian hills, of tribes that had ruled here. For after all, their king was killed and they were abandoned now to this strange frost and fire. They had prepared for war.

  But the warnings had not told them all. The White Queen’s men—hardly more than boys—who met the charge did not look much like fighting men. They were not especially well-muscled, and there was a blankness in their eyes. At first they seemed to fall easily to attack—one took a hatchet square in the chest. Blood erupted and he
went down. The villagers felt a rush of hope. They renewed the attack, burying their blades in the bodies of these boys.

  The woman who led them laughed like music. That was when the boys were stirred awake. They reached to pluck the blades from deep in their chests or abdomens or skulls, and as the terrified villagers watched, the wounds closed and the boys rose to their feet.

  That was when the villagers began to run. Some escaped; others were brought down by the blades of the White Queen’s men, or, more horribly, torn limb from limb by those less skilled in weaponry. By people who had come lurching in pursuit of the White Queen from Tamryllin, from the towns and villages, and now had only one purpose in mind: to make others like themselves, or make them die.

  And as the White Queen laughed and went on through the roads, people from all around began to find themselves drawn to her. Some painted their lips with the blood of the slain, and soon their faces glittered white as well, and there was no mistaking them, then, for anything but members of this procession, that went dancing and laughing through the villages and shattered windows, broke down doors, dragged people screaming from their homes.

  There was the choice: To join these tormenting hordes, or be torn apart by them.

  For most, the choice was clear.

  * * *

  A NIGHT of spinning snowflakes, melding with the white that clung everywhere—rooftops, sills, and streets. The tavern fire was built up against the cold, lamps lit against the dark. And other things. The snow offered a temporary solace; for as long as it fell thick and silent over all, the village was safe from attack. Or so they hoped. The White Queen’s procession was seen moving east and away from here, towards the border mountains that led on to the desert; but even so. No one would feel safe until the madness of this winter reached an end. Night watches had been appointed in every village, at sundown everyone retreated behind bolted doors.

  In the corner, a poet cloaked in black, a dark stone on his hand. He strummed a gold harp near the fire. The tavern patrons had cleared a space; despite the castastrophe brought upon them all by the Poet King, poets would always be revered in Eivar. Especially here, in the west, where the art of poets had been born in ages past. Their origin an isle out to sea, now lost in mists. If any tales were true.

  All the tales were true. The events of the winter were proof of that.

  Anyone who could leave their homes had gathered here to hear the poet’s songs. There was naught else to do on a winter evening, but more than that, it offered comfort. Ballads old and new spilling forth, and to the old ones—the ones most familiar—people sang along, hopeful, mournful, as snowflakes fell beyond the panes of glass.

  The poet’s strange companion, a thin boy who didn’t speak, stood with his nose pressed against a windowpane. As if he had never seen snow before. He was simple, the villagers thought, probably a servant, though they’d never heard of poets having servants before. Sometimes he’d turn from the window, arrested by a particular song, and begin to warble it himself, or do a dance. Once in a while, the poet held out his hand to the simple boy, or lay it on his thin shoulder. And kept on singing. His voice clear and strong. He could not have been more than a boy himself, with that voice.

  So Lin Amaristoth imagined were the thoughts that passed through the minds of these folk that evening at the fire. These people wouldn’t know that as she sang, she was doing several things. One was to weave a barrier that might conceal this village for a time, at least while she was here. The snow was a lucky chance, but no way to know if that alone would halt the White Queen’s march.

  Another thing she did was reach out with her mind to see beyond the boundaries of this village. To discover what moved in the night, and where enchantments might be awakening in answer to the White Queen’s call. The answer to this last was hard to read, but was disquieting: it seemed to be, simply, everywhere.

  The third thing she did, in lulls between the songs, was listen. With a drink in hand, or a bowl of mutton stew, she listened more than she spoke. For one thing, she did not want to be discovered as a woman—there would be questions, or worse. For another, she had much to learn. And so she did. She learned that the White Queen—for so everyone was calling her—appeared to be moving east. Leaving a trail of murder and destruction in her wake, accumulating followers. But heading toward the border mountains.

  That was the prophecy the Ramadian Magicians had seen. Rather than be content to rule in Eivar, this White Queen would circumnavigate the world.

  But there was more. And this was stranger yet, for being unexpected. Some counted it a nonsense story, not to be believed; but those who told it guaranteed they’d seen its truth with their own eyes.

  It was this: A castle had sprung up, from nowhere, on shores not far from here. Where once had been nothing but ragged cliff now hung a pile of twisted spires against the sky. Stranger still, no one had found an entrance. A light might show in upper windows, late some nights; and yet, no door. Some intrepid children, and later, a band of duty-driven men, had gone looking. They had circled the walls and seen nary an opening, nor even a foothold to climb to the upper stories.

  Some nights there could be heard the sound of revels from the upper windows, as of feasting and song, but surely this was some wives’ tale. Not a true one.

  Lin had hid a smile at this; for of course, a story told by women must be fabulation. Women who sat by the window and spun or carded, for hours on end, seeing all that passed in the street; women who, on market day, purchased tales of far-flung events from merchants along with their spices, cloth, and cheese.

  “If I were to see this castle,” she asked one of the men who told the tale, “how would I get there?” And so he told her of the path she’d take, were she to be so foolish as to seek out this enchantment—for so it surely was. Two days hence, westward, through pine forest to the sea. North, from that point, to where the cliffs were most sheer and treacherous. There it was.

  She chose a more traditional ballad to sing, after asking that. To divert from the strangeness of what she’d asked. A song of a northern tarn, flat as a mirror, and how it got its name. A king’s daughter so beautiful her reflection in the water had stayed a thousand days, and so the place was named for her—Lake Sinon. The song was old as the name, but this version, grown popular in recent decades, was from Valanir Ocune. Most wouldn’t know that; they’d think there was only one version of the song—the one they’d known all their lives.

  But Lin Amaristoth knew. As the wind howled in the eaves and thundered against the windowpanes she reached out, with this tribute to her companion of what seemed long ago. Once in a while she averted her eyes from those in the room to look instead into the flames, but it was all right. She didn’t cry.

  Ned had said she was hard, but she didn’t think so. She thought that to appear so, and to be it, were two different things. He couldn’t know she felt ground inside to powder. That she didn’t know from day to day how she went on.

  The difference now—between now and earlier, the time before the Fire Dance—was that the evidence that she must go on was etched into her skin. The gold that made a tracery on every part of her was, in its way, a command. She had something left to do. Even if she didn’t know yet what it was.

  A child was at her knee. A little girl with dark curls—old enough to speak, but not much more. Lin smiled down at her as the song was done.

  The child was staring at the gem on Lin’s right hand. “What is that?”

  “A black opal,” said Lin. “I think.”

  Another sort of command, the gem was; though she liked to think of it as a gift. One poet to another.

  One Seer to another.

  Syme had wandered over. He noticed the little girl and knelt beside her. “It’s filled with fire,” he said. “That stone. It’s full of wonders.”

  He might have sounded lucid. She couldn’t tell for sure.

  “It has secrets,” said Lin, looking from the awed child to Syme Oleir. “Like some people.” The
n to the child, who had narrowly missed a spark that hissed onto the hearth, “Don’t sit too near the fire.”

  Syme’s face went slack. She knew that look. In the time they’d been on the road together, she had learned his faces. He said, “Not all who enter flame can rise again. Not all come out unharmed and with gifts.”

  “That’s right,” Lin said, in a tone to end it. “I think it’s time for another song.”

  “Not all can gain the keys to death.” He looked past her as he spoke. But she thought he was speaking to her still. He touched the gem on her ring with a fingertip. She saw green light in his eyes where before there had been none; felt a shiver all through the veined gold markings on her skin. She didn’t know what it could mean.

  “Be careful,” she said. Spoke lightly. “Or I may take you hunting with me for a castle without a door.”

  * * *

  THAT night she tucked him into bed as if he were her child, as she had done all their nights on the road—five in all, so far. It seemed a comforting ritual for him. Lin wondered about his parents sometimes, where they were. Maybe they thought their son was dead. Telling them he’d died was the sort of thing Elissan Diar would have done.

  She had tried asking him questions about his time with the king, about himself. It had not gone well. In one instance they had been in the forest and he had sat down suddenly on the ground and begun to scream. Which obviously would not do at all. It was sheer luck that she’d had pastries, purloined from the castle, to quiet him. She had stopped asking Syme anything about himself, or his past, after that. She observed him, as Elissan Diar apparently had done; though she didn’t relish the comparison.

  There were times he made himself useful. On a few occasions he danced when she played to entertain the crowds, or sang a song himself. In those instances Lin could close her eyes and imagine she was living the traditional life of a poet on the road, traveling with a companion as many young ones did. As she had done, once, with Leander Keyen. As she’d dreamed of doing with Valanir Ocune—among her various dreams involving him.