The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  She could imagine Dorn Arrin telling her, witheringly, how silly she was being. That didn’t help at all.

  Julien kept thinking back to the morning she had knocked at the door to Dorn’s room in the seaside inn. The dread that formed in her chest even before it made sense, as if she already knew. They’d ended up breaking down the door. There was no mistaking what had happened. Dorn Arrin would never have gone anywhere without his harp. Not voluntarily. And then they had seen the open shutters and, looking outside, the rope.

  The whole way to Vassilian she’d battled tears and shame. Shame that she was weeping like a child; and that in doing so she was making matters worse for the Archmaster, who was just as grieved.

  The plan Archmaster Hendin outlined to the six other Seers was to include Julien Imara. She had a means of weakening the Queen temporarily—whatever that meant. When the time seemed right on the battlefield, Julien would release the secret name. And if that created an opening, the Seers would act. Joining together they would launch an attack on the Queen when she was weakest.

  This didn’t take into account the Queen’s opponent, but it was the best they had. Hendin reasoned that if the danger was in the battle between the two, perhaps there was an advantage to be had in ending it with one side the victor. Though of course who knew?

  Ten days from the New Year they would take a position overlooking the foretold battlefield, and await their moment. It seemed a slim chance to Julien, but she could think of nothing better.

  At nights she slept in Lin Amaristoth’s old room, which Hendin had opened to her with a key. “It hasn’t been slept in since she lived here,” he said, and Julien knew it was his way of giving her something. To stay in the Court Poet’s childhood room, to see where the figure Julien admired had begun.

  But the room made her sad, for it was comfortless. In that way it was like the rest of the castle, for it seemed the Amaristoths, who believed above all in wealth, did not believe in its indulgences. Everywhere weapons hung on the walls, far outnumbering paintings or tapestries. Lin’s bed was narrow, the bedclothes warm but of a rough fabric. Her closet was filled with dresses, most of them dark. But some were fine, of whispering silk and smelling of scent, and if Julien shut her eyes she could picture the Court Poet in one of these, revolving in lugubrious tandem with a suitor in the hall of portraits.

  The room possessed a single luxury, a silver-backed, full-length mirror on the wall. Julien avoided looking at it.

  None of these objects spoke to the kind of person Lin Amaristoth was—the first woman to be Seer and Court Poet. But there was a shelf of books, and these Julien handled with reverence. It was like finding friends in a place of strangers.

  Some nights she sat at the window, which looked out on the massing dark of pinewoods, and wept silent tears. She felt a fool, but at least no one could see. She tried to remember the last words she’d exchanged with Dorn Arrin, but couldn’t. Probably, she thought, they had been good night.

  Little changed in the course of their stay in Vassilian until they drew nearer the time they were to leave. The mountain roads were impassable in the snow—it was with magic that the Seers would cross to Kahishi. Near the appointed battlefield was a ring of standing stones, a site of ancient magic they could draw upon to aid the crossing. Julien didn’t understand these details and didn’t care. She was too preoccupied with thinking about where Dorn might be, and trying not to think about it.

  At nights she and the Archmaster sat in the hall of portraits and talked of their lives. Now was their first time seeing each other, she felt; as if an equality had sprung between them. The distance of teacher and student had evaporated in recent days.

  He told her about being the third son of a minor aristocrat, how he had grown up reading as much as he could and studying the harp. He’d had a tutor until it was time to send him to the Academy. A straight path it had been, without hesitation or regret.

  Julien, for her part, spoke of her family. Only a little at first: It was the first time she’d tried talking about herself to anyone since Sendara Diar. With the other girl there had always been a sense of forced patience, of politeness; whenever Julien had spoken of herself, she had felt as if Sendara was trying to appear interested. The Archmaster was different, though this time she spoke with more reserve. She wanted to be understood, but had begun to realize that perhaps that wasn’t possible. She didn’t think anyone could know why she had felt trapped, when her life was to all appearances a good one. Nor did she think anyone could know what it had been like at the Academy, to be an outsider in the halls at night.

  When Archmaster Hendin spoke of his youth, of his tutors and how he’d been encouraged to learn, she couldn’t conceal her envy. It had been natural for him to have those things. One didn’t spend time thinking of the air one breathed.

  But he tried to understand. “There are myriad paths to learning,” he said once. Julien knew this was the man who had tended his students as attentively as he did his garden, and she was grateful, if not entirely convinced.

  She tried not to think of herself in that black and silver-belted gown, the image of confidence that had gazed back at her from the reflective door. Calm, sure of her powers. That was all gone. She was back to scurrying in hallways like a child.

  As the grey days in Vassilian slipped by, their plans weren’t real to her; she knew these days would end soon; that the topic neither of them touched was the danger ahead. But it was difficult to believe.

  Until the day before their departure when she saw Archmaster Hendin in the corridor. He looked the way he had when they’d realized Dorn was captured. Worse.

  She ran to him. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” He avoided her eyes.

  “Tell me. Is it—is it—”

  “No.”

  Julien would never have wanted to admit how relieved she was at this, when he looked so upset. She pressed, “I know there’s something.”

  “Well.” He leaned back against the wall, suddenly. “I’ll have to reveal it in council anyway. I’ve been trying for some days to reach Lin Amaristoth to tell her our plans. And to see if she had news.”

  “All right,” said Julien. “What did she tell you?”

  He looked past her, as if there were something of interest on the bare wall. “Nothing,” he said. “When I reached for her, I felt what I have in the past with others. There’s no mistaking it.”

  “I don’t understand.” Though maybe some part of her did; her hands were trembling. “What others?”

  He stared straight ahead. “The ones who died.”

  * * *

  AS the White Queen’s weapon, Dorn Arrin was closely guarded. Nights, he could hear her followers dancing and coupling loudly outside; but he was kept apart from all that. He went nowhere without at least two of her guard, the so-called deathless ones, as escort.

  Each day Etherell Lyr tried to get him to come out of the tent—for a drink, for a meal by the fire—and each time Dorn refused. If he was going to be used in this way, he’d keep as much dignity as he could, despite the indignity of recent events. He was only glad that no one but the Shadow King’s lady had seen how near he’d come to betraying himself.

  He certainly wouldn’t stoop to the indignity of asking the Queen what would become of him after the battle. He suspected that once hers, always hers, and that this would be his life, unless he found some way to escape.

  There was one thing he held over her: Julien Imara had possession of the Queen’s name. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was something. As long as the White Queen didn’t know that, there was still a chance.

  So his thoughts were astir with a peculiar combination of listlessness and hope.

  Their last night before the battle the White Queen came to him. He saw the light of her first, the night paling to frost-white, and then she was in the tent with him. She looked satisfied as a well-fed cat. “Tomorrow it begins,” she said. “You will be of key importance. Now listen carefully.”


  As she instructed him for the following day Dorn found he couldn’t speak, nor tear his eyes from her. She seemed to have grown taller since he saw her last; and he couldn’t shake the image of her devouring raw meat at the feast of the Shadow King. The blood of the world nourished her, he was convinced, and she intended to drain it all.

  He had no choice when she set this new charge upon him. It was like times before; she kissed his forehead, and he felt it go into his bones. The King’s name made him a weapon, and tonight—even before the battle—her use of him had begun.

  CHAPTER

  25

  THOUGH the remains of night cloaked the field, Julien Imara could see the armies massing. The hilltop offered a view of the field to her and Archmaster Hendin where they crouched among the standing stones. From the west, from Eivar, came what had to be the armies of the White Queen. Even from a height Julien could hear them howling, see them cavorting below. Taken together, they made a wave that continuously rose and fell without rest. The Queen’s side was chaos. The only sign of order was the armed men who guarded her pavilion; these, Julien guessed, must be the Chosen.

  The army of the other side was the opposite: It was how Julien had always pictured an army to look. Battalions in sombre grey formed tight formations as far as could be seen to the east. For each battalion a banner, plain black. From this side, the King’s side, there was a silence, despite that his army numbered so many; they stood motionless as chess pieces on a board.

  Julien did not know which was more unnerving: the silence of the King’s side, or the howls from the Queen’s.

  As the shadows lifted, daybreak a gauze veil on the battlefield, Julien could see that between the two armies lay a space they did not cross; not even the unruly followers of the Queen. The strange formality of this battle, with its assigned time and place, perhaps extended to how it would play out.

  Julien turned to Archmaster Hendin, whose grey eyes surveyed it all without changing. He looked calm. This was their only move, a desperate one; but perhaps, knowing that, he had moved beyond fear.

  “How will you give the signal?” she asked. She had expected the other Seers to accompany them through the portal. They had sung through the night in the hall of portraits, Archmaster Hendin and the other six, for hours after the sun set. They’d stood in a circle. The light of each Seer’s mark had grown brighter with each hour that passed, until the beams from each had met to join at the center. Julien had watched as this central point of light hung in the air, lengthened and widened, until there was no mistaking what it was. A tear in the fabric of the world.

  There had been a time when with those same powers, she had created one of these. Now she could only watch.

  She had felt hunger and awe, seeing this spectacle of enchantment from which she was barred. And she had thought that surely these Seers, with their immeasurable gift, would want to pass through the doorway they had themselves created. But no. At the last moment they had drawn back, leaving Archmaster Hendin and Julien Imara to go through alone. They kept their eyes averted, as if ashamed, and promised to be of help when called.

  “When the time comes, we seven will act together,” said Hendin to her now. “After you’ve made use of the name, I’ll signal them. We are connected, always, even across distances.” He looked tired. Perhaps such talk recalled to him other Seers to whom he’d once been connected.

  In response to his look, Julien said, “I don’t believe the Court Poet is dead. It’s too stupid. She can’t be.”

  He gritted his teeth, an unusually hostile-seeming gesture for him, though she read it as pained. “Stupid things happen, Julien Imara,” he said. “Surely you know that. And I know what I know. When I reached for her I felt as I would if I reached for Valanir Ocune, or Seravan Myre.”

  “What did you feel, then?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “That’s the point.”

  Meantime, the sun was rising. A band of palest rose stretched behind the mountains, layered with the pallor of the sky. And slowly brightened. As it did, the slate and grey of the mountains changed, to green with hints of gold. The tallest mountain, Hariya, flung back the sun from pale stones. Peaks of gold, she thought, and was struck with the desire to expand it into something. Some song.

  Above the battlefield, dark, great-winged birds were circling.

  Daylight illuminated the splendor of the White Queen’s pavilion, green and gold. Julien’s breath was sped by a sudden thought. She tugged Archmaster Hendin’s sleeve. “What if Dorn is in there?”

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  “There must be a way to get him out.”

  From the fields below, the sounds that reached them were sharpening, as if they had earlier been muffled in the dark. The screams and laughter from the Queen’s encampment were piercing even up here in the hills.

  Jackals in a graveyard. As soon as Julien had that thought, she wished she could forget it.

  No sound from the King’s side, save one: a thin whine, like a blade at a whetstone.

  “I’d give my life to get him out,” said Hendin. “But we must await our chance.”

  She knew what he meant. There was this battle to get through first. She hated it, but couldn’t think what else to do. Guards made an impenetrable thicket of spears around the pavilion. And she knew what the Chosen were like. She remembered their dead eyes when they had thrown Dorn Arrin—and her—to the flames.

  There was one thing the Chosen didn’t have. They didn’t think for themselves. That was a weakness, Julien thought.

  She knelt in the grass. It was ribbed with stone and beaded with dew. The circle of standing stones had begun to catch the sun, their shadows darkening. At Julien’s feet was a cloth bundle, water-stained and ragged. The wrappings were neat, as Dorn Arrin had been the one to do it, and he was meticulous in all things. It took Julien some moments to undo the wrappings, to see the first gleam of the Silver Branch until the rags had fallen away to reveal it all.

  “This was his, at least for a while,” she murmured, turning it over in her hands. Each of the red-gold apples caught the light, a gentle glimmering. “And he must be out there.”

  * * *

  YOU know what to do.

  Her metallic whisper in his ear when he awoke. Dorn Arrin was alone in his pavilion, and yet. It was as if she’d whispered him awake. He had gone to sleep the night before somewhere in Eivar—he knew not where. He never had known where the Queen’s encampment was. The hillside from which she wandered, at will, with her gaggle of followers in tow. Throughout the countryside she’d traveled, gathering more to her as she went, but always returned at night to the same place.

  The morning was different. When he awoke he knew they had traveled in the night. He’d been warned of it, but he thought he could feel it, too.

  Etherell Lyr put his head inside. “It’s about to begin,” he said. “Get dressed.” He sounded unhurried and calm, which likely meant he felt the opposite. “You should see this,” he added, and a note of excitement came through. His head vanished from the tent flap.

  That got Dorn’s attention. He quickly dressed in the new, clean clothes laid out for him. A ritual he had nearly ceased to notice. These were different than in the past, however. He had grown used to colors. The clothes laid out for him today were black, trimmed and belted with silver. The formal dress of Academy poets.

  After he’d fastened the belt about his waist he went to the tent flap and, very carefully, glanced out. He was nearly afraid to look. The ululating screams of the Queen’s followers were an indication of what he’d see, and he knew what to expect today: the battlefield.

  When he peered out, he was looking over the shoulders of the Chosen. He corrected himself: her deathless ones. Elissan Diar had named them his Chosen, but the self-styled Poet King was more irrelevant than a memory. What the White Queen had made of them was what mattered. Etherell had told him of it, how they pulled axes and swords from their bodies and healed in moments. How they could n
ot be killed.

  It had been an evening when Dorn Arrin allowed himself to be dragged out from his tent, as it took more energy than to resist. But had kept himself aloof. Nonetheless, after offering Dorn wine, Etherell had insisted on talking about this and that. Two nights past, it had been.

  “So those boys will live forever,” said Dorn, musing. Despite himself, the wine loosened his tongue. “Pity Elissan Diar didn’t choose the kind or the witty ones. It is the arrogant and the irritating who are to be immortal, to blight the world for all eternity. That figures.”

  He said that even as the immortal ones clustered around him, guarding him and preventing his escape. Perhaps he wanted to get in a dig. Whether they understood or not. They never made a sound, nor changed expression. If what they had was eternal life, it was like death.

  At this, Etherell lifted his cup. “It could be worse,” he said, eyes alight. “She could have made me immortal. To annoy you for eternity.”

  To this, what seemed a goad, Dorn had not replied. He didn’t want to give the other man his attention; he’d given more than enough. When Dorn considered the years he’d endured, when all along the person he pined for was not even someone he knew … he couldn’t imagine a greater fool than he’d made of himself.

  The morning of the battle he saw, beyond the Queen’s half-naked followers with their swords and spears, a sombre, organized massing of grey-clad figures to the east. The armies of the Shadow King. They obliterated the green of the meadow like ants, were still and silent. Dorn thought of the fog that hung on the seas around Academy Isle.

  To the north he saw the foothills and looming above these, the mountains, and he wondered. There were places to hide in those hills. And Julien Imara would do everything she could to use her weapon on the day, if he knew the girl at all.

  And then the Queen was before him, shining white, but for the points of red above each cheekbone. Her hair more gold this day than red, falling to her knees and partly braided. Her eyes had a violet light. She said, “When the time comes you must be ready, Dorn Arrin. Not that you have any choice.”