PART IV
CHAPTER
23
THE last night of the year Lin Amaristoth found herself in a village south of Tamryllin, down in a green valley, a day’s ride from the border. A tavern, crowded with patrons to welcome the New Year, doors barred against the night. Against what lurked outside.
Lin sat in a shadowed corner, her hood pulled up, and watched. Syme Oleir dozed in a chair beside her, peaceful for once. She needed to watch, and think. Her last conversation with Aleira Suzehn, conducted by means of enchantment, had given her much to think about. The smells of good and simple food filled the room. People tucked in to chicken pot pies and mutton stew with root vegetables and beans. Winter fare. This village lay accessible to the main road and various estates; as such, the clientele included some merchants and craftsmen, those who could pay. They were of a mind to eat and drink to turn away the night, since they knew—in their heart of hearts—that bolted doors and shutters did not suffice.
Lin had listened to enough talk, each place she went, to know people understood the danger. Even if they didn’t understand what it was. The drinks tonight would be spiked with brandy, and there was milk punch, a specialty for the New Year in these parts. Light, warmth, and drink, to ward off terror.
She had eaten, and so had Syme—the reason for his unaccustomed calm. He’d had two pies and what seemed a hogshead of stew, and she didn’t care, as long as he let her be for a time.
Earlier that day, she’d lain in bed, arms resting at her sides, and talked to Aleira. The Magician told her what she had seen: Two enemies colliding at an appointed time and place, within sight of Hariya Mountain. Ten days hence.
Though Lin could only see the reddened dark inside her eyelids as she listened, in her mind’s eye she saw the Magician. They had not seen each other since the day, long ago, when Lin and Zahir Alcavar had found the Fire Dancer’s lair. Lin could well recall the intensity of the Magician’s gaze. And she recalled the first time Aleira’s voice had intruded on her thoughts, reaching out, with the news of her appointment in service to Eldakar. That husky voice, with an undercurrent of wryness. With her eyes closed Lin could pretend they were in the same room.
“So,” Lin had said softly. “Ten days. And you think I can do something.”
“You passed through fire and are marked by it,” said Aleira. “To turn back a shadow. What else could it be?”
What else, indeed. As she sat in the dining room of the tavern that evening she turned over that question in her mind.
She always came back to it—this question of her purpose. In the Tower of the Winds she had grappled with it, when she tried to expel the verses trapped under her skin. It had been like descending a dark stair in search of light, only to encounter a deeper dark the farther she went. Losses all the way down.
A burst of noise. Lin stirred from her reverie. From one of the tables there was shouting. Two men had jumped up, young and hot-headed, and begun to circle each other. Their fists upraised. And then a third man emerged as if from nowhere, and charged them. Another yet jumped onto a table and flung himself into what had become, in seconds, a melee. She heard the crack of bones.
Before she could think—all thoughts chased from her head—she was standing on a chair herself. Her harp in her hands. Lifting her voice in song.
Onlookers tumbled back to stare: first at the fight, then at the poet.
Listen! She sang.
To a tale of dark forests
And the heroes who,
With glittering swords and spears
Turn back peril and the night.
The pandemonium went on. But some were turning to listen. There was a trick to a song like this. Something that before the enchantments returned had existed only as a phantom pull within the music. But now that the mark of the Seer meant something … now that there were powers to draw forth … a song like this worked in unseen ways. Words and notes together made a rhythm; the rhythm like a beating heart. An incantation.
As Lin sang on, she felt more than saw the growing wave of quiet that began its slow progression from where she stood; now at the fringes of the brawlers, now penetrating until their shouts had died. Now all that could be heard from the crowd was the low moaning of an injured man and even that began to fade, as another man shouldered him up from the floor and began—silently—to lead him away.
As Lin tossed, with the rhythm of inevitability, a tale of grandeur to the crowd, the quiet deepened. Music filled the silence. The tale of a hero facing down the demons of night resounded from the rafters, resounded in her listeners, who had settled in their seats as if struck down. She wove the tale to hold them, its rhythm accelerating as she drew them through tragedy, sacrifice, the deep losses suffered so that when the sun rose in the morning, people like those in this tavern could return to their days, safe to work and make love and forget the shadow that had loomed above them all.
And as she wove the rhythm to enspell the people in this room, she knew she could never be one of them; that although she could produce this melody, could be a light for them, her place was with the shadow.
Not all can gain the keys to death. Syme’s words.
She recalled standing over Marlen’s body, singing to avert the corruption of death. She had done that more than once on the battlefield in Kahishi.
The keys to death.
She had been bound to a stake and burned. She should have burned to death.
As she stepped down, the people, men and women, young and old, seemed to wake; they begged for another song, another.
Syme Oleir had awakened. He was looking up at her with burning eyes. She couldn’t tell if it was him, or the Ifreet, that looked at her.
He said, “Sing of Asterian in the realm of the dead.”
She looked around. Though a hush had descended, she didn’t think people could hear. He had leaned close to whisper.
“No one wants a tale of failure,” she said to him, softly as well. “Not tonight.”
He caught hold of her shoulder. Lin, startled by the urgency of the gesture, was drawn to look at him. In his eyes was a strange light, and again she wondered whether it meant her good or ill. “The myth of Asterian takes many shapes,” he said. “In some, he fails. In others, he retrieves his love from the land of death. And in others, still, their journey goes on, after. In adventures through the many worlds.”
The many worlds. She had been in that corridor, more than once, with its doors that went on.
She leaned to him. “Which of you is speaking?” she said. “Syme Oleir, or the other?”
He smiled. As ever, it looked wrong on his face; foolish and menacing together. “He wants to kill me,” he said. “The other. He’d rather I die—that he die—than help you. That is how much he hates.” He put a hand to his mouth. “He won’t let me speak, except in riddles.”
“Asterian,” she said, and he nodded.
She was about to speak again, to dig to the heart of that riddle, when she felt a hand on her arm. A woman, very pretty, with chestnut curls and imploring blue eyes. She wore an attractive blue dress, lace-edged. With all her wiles the woman said, “Will you please sing again?” She leaned forward. “We’d be ever so grateful.” She dropped her eyes. “I would be.”
Lin recalled that to this crowd she was a young man. How they could still be fooled she didn’t know, but earlier, to reinforce the disguise, she had hacked off her hair.
This woman, it seemed, desired a song and a poet in equal measure.
So this is what it’s like.
A wry thought. Though of course she knew, thanks to the memories of Edrien Letrell that for a time had flowed together with her own. The pleasures of being a famed, sought-after man were no stranger to her.
How Darien would have laughed if he were here.
Lin tried not to smile. She bowed. Then leapt up on a bench at the center of the room, cloak flowing around her. A theatrical gesture. All the faces upturned to her now. She had them.
&nb
sp; Thoughts of Darien beguiled her yet. She imagined he stood in the corner, watching, smiling to himself. He would have given this song all his energy; and with equal alacrity, later that night, would have made love to the woman who with a deliberate, swaying walk had approached the bench.
Lin drew a breath to refocus her thoughts. Darien Aldemoor wasn’t here. She spoke. “This night we turn to a New Year,” she said. “A night for dancing. Clear a space.”
Nothing she did tonight could dispel what was coming. But with this power she could make them forget it for a time. For a night.
Rhythm was again her tool. This time her aim was not to calm her listeners, or put them into a reflective frame of mind. This time it was to make music that would go to their arms and legs, set them to dancing. Instead of a hero, she sang of a trickster; one who set a town buzzing with his schemes, jokes, and—of course—his seductions. A song with roots that went as far back as the most ancient, though most here wouldn’t know that. For Tam Rinnell, the renowned scapegrace, was what remained of Tamrir, one of the eldest of the forgotten gods of the Thracians. A god of luck, thieves, and journeys. Of boundaries, too. Now reduced to a man in tales that made people laugh.
Tapping her foot on the bench, Lin sang. The words came fast. Her nails danced on the strings. Some in the crowd, recognizing the tune, joined in; others grabbed a partner, or formed a circle, began to dance. And the rhythm she’d begun was picked up by shoes and boots, amplified until the floor shook.
She thought if Darien Aldemoor had been here, he’d have approved. There was an element of Tamrir in him.
The two of them had crossed boundaries together. Of course. For a time she had been a crossroads between life and death, this world and the Other. Darien’s enchantment had done that to her. And the effects of that night reverberated, much as music now thundered from the rafters of the dining room. From Tamryllin to the Zahra, from the lair of the Fire Dancers to the Dance itself.
She could sing even as she recalled Zahir’s eyes, as he told her all—or so she had thought, at the time—in his chamber overlooking the courtyard of jacaranda trees. Some part of him had been urging her, even then, to defeat him. He was tired, she thought, of what his commitment to love had led him to do. Tired, sick at heart. Some part of him wanted her to find him out. She thought that, anyhow, though she would never know.
The dead were always with her—that much, she did know.
Asterian. The keys to death.
As she recalled the words of Syme Oleir, she became aware of him watching her. When he looked up at her that way, she felt a terrible responsibility to him. He was only a boy, for all that he looked world-weary now, watching her sing.
The song was over. She ended it with a flourish and a bow. The room filled with cheers, followed inexorably by new demands. “Another!” was the cry. She smiled and accepted a cup of water for her parched throat. Her eyes scanned the crowd, but it all ran together; she didn’t see the girl. She was looking for someone she knew, even though that was impossible. She was always looking for the people who mattered to her, long after they were gone.
Syme’s voice in her head again, as he watched her. Asterian.
Zahir Alcavar had done all he had for love. Love of family, of a city destroyed. He’d planned to journey with her to the Underworld, for her connection to it was strong. It had been strong ever since Darien Aldemoor had done what he’d done, and now—
She handed the drained cup to someone in the crowd. Without preamble began another song. Another for them to dance to, as the night wore near to midnight. Cheers and thundering boots shook the floorboards. She would send them rejoicing into the New Year if she did nothing else in life.
Her blood coursed warm as it hadn’t on any night since she could remember. Warm to every fingertip, her face and neck. She imagined elbowing her way through the crowd when the song was done and finding Valanir Ocune waiting at the back of the room. Finding that he’d been there, alive, watching her all that time. Watching her sing. Later he’d tell her what he’d have done differently, would critique her performance. But not tonight. Tonight she’d take him upstairs and they’d forget everything that had ever happened.
Her eyes met Syme’s again, the only one who stood silent and still amid the dancing.
I think I understand, she thought, and meant it for him; as if it were a message.
As midnight struck, and her song was done, someone handed her a cup. She drank, and found it sweet and strong.
This was life. This room, these people, this dance. The winds that whistled against the windowpanes. Life was a place, a moment. Amid other places and moments. One crossed a boundary to get there, and to leave.
When she bowed for the last time and jumped from the bench, she was engulfed in admirers. There were those who wanted to kiss her hand, others who shook it. She detached herself with a small smile; enjoying it but also aware that she was apart, drifting from them even now.
The girl who had sought her out was there too, looking hopeful. It was like a dart in Lin, that look. Lin Amaristoth had never been a girl like that, so lovely; but she’d had similar hopes. To be as near the music as one could get; to share intimacy with a poet. That was before she’d known it didn’t work that way; that such intimacy was the same as with anyone; that music existed beyond such moments. Beyond any person.
She murmured in the girl’s ear. “You are lovely. I’m afraid I must be off. But I’ll think of you.”
The disappointment mingled with a sudden light in her blue eyes were almost more than Lin could bear. Life was there too, in those eyes. Not just in the dancing and song. Of course Darien had known that, too.
Lin had come to a new understanding as she sang in the New Year to these people on a winter night. Life was here, and she didn’t belong. She had passed through and would leave a mark, as the fire had left markings on her skin. She was on her way to somewhere else.
This she thought even as she felt the warm, sweet drink all through her. She was ablaze with it, with the rhythms she’d poured forth all night.
The crowds didn’t follow her to the stairs. As she left the people for the staircase she crossed a minor boundary, from celebration to silence. The sounds of revelry gently faded out. She began to ascend. The stairs were lit by candles, each sheltered in its small alcove in the wall. And as she ascended to greater silence, she saw them—the three of them—lined up on the staircase. Darien Aldemoor first, blond hair tousled, grinning to have watched her let a girl down easy. It would have amused him to no end.
Valanir Ocune was several steps up from Darien, with a smile more muted; only in his eyes. Whatever he would have said, she saw in his face; so much had passed between them on their last days together. She was grateful for that. That they hadn’t held back.
At last at the top step, just before the door to her room, there was Zahir Alcavar. Eyes that blazed in any light, as she remembered.
“I’m on my way,” she said. “I understand now what to do.”
And she could not tell if he heard or understood; he looked pensive, and turned away. And in any case it was not him, only an imagining born of her desire to see the ones she had loved and lost.
But Syme Oleir was beside her, his shoulder under her hand as she ascended the stairs. He had been there all along. Once in their room, she closed the door. It was dark, but for a single candle on the dressing table.
“I think I know what to do, Syme,” she said. “What we must do, together.” It was so dark in here, after the light. “The last things.”
He looked pale and drained, and nothing like she’d come to know. The man he should have become—that he’d been cheated of becoming—was in his face, in this dim light. “I’ve already lost everything,” he said. “I’m ready.”
CHAPTER
24
JULIEN Imara didn’t want to be in a gloomy castle when somewhere out in the world her friend was captive. But Archmaster Hendin had urged her to think strategically. To have any
chance of defeating the White Queen they would need the joined power of the Seers. So here they were in Vassilian, last stronghold of poets ever since the Isle had come undone. Hendin had gathered six men, some of the last Seers alive, who had agreed to stand with them. It was not much—it was so little—but the Archmaster had a plan.
So as the old year gave way to new they hunkered in this unlovely fortress where Lin Amaristoth had been born. That had belonged to her ancestors. She had given it to the Academy for the training of poets. Reminders of her family were everywhere: In the hall of portraits, where proud, dark-eyed men and women posed in dark clothes. Their wealth evinced in certain touches: A sumptuous cloak, a jeweled pendant or ring.
Lin Amaristoth wasn’t to be found on these walls, but her parents were, and her brother. Each painting had an engraved plaque to identify them by name. Her mother had been a true beauty, voluptuous, her eyes challenging the artist. In appearance the brother took after her, though he stood more haughtily for the portrait, remote, as if the artist had caught him unawares. He wore a sword at his side, his posture regal. It was said he’d been killed in a duel for a woman’s honor.
The hall of portraits was where the Seers and poets of Vassilian took their meals at a long table, one of the only articles of furniture not draped in cobwebs. Housekeeping was lax, assigned as chores to young poets who skimped where they could. Many spoke often, wistfully, of the groundskeeper and cook at the Academy, whom they’d failed to appreciate.
Since fuel was scarce and they could not heat many rooms, they used the hall of portraits for councils, too. It was a while before Archmaster Hendin could convince his colleagues that the information he had about the upcoming battle was reliable, much as a star-written prophecy could be. It took more time, after that, to convince the Seers to join him. Julien sat through it all and yawned. And was then ashamed, because at least she wasn’t at the mercy of the White Queen.
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