McKillip, Patricia A. - Song for the Basilisk

by Song For The Basilisk(Lit)

"And you write music for him."

  Even Hexel was silent a moment. "We keep the peace," he said simply. "He is an aging basilisk, but still astute and very dangerous. He keeps Berylon's mind out of its memories by providing distraction in the form of a feast, processions, music, a sweet and silly drama—"

  "What would happen if you made a drama out of what happened in Tormalyne Palace?"

  "It would not have a happy ending," Giulia said soberly. "He is as capable of destroying the Tormalyne School as he was of destroying the House."

  "I see." He shifted, looking at her without seeing. "At Luly, such violence becomes transformed into poetry. Time and the traditional order of words makes it unreal. Past. Until the end. When words made themselves real again." He stopped abruptly.

  "It must be very peaceful," Giulia said gently, puzzled.

  "Yes. It is. Very quiet." He got to his feet slowly, with an effort. Giulia, distressed by the vague, stunned expression in his eyes, rose with him. She rounded Hexel's writing table, stopped Hollis with a touch as he drifted toward the door.

  "Please stay," she said abruptly. "Hexel has been telling you nightmares. But that's all they are now. Ancient history. I'm sorry we disturbed you."

  "I asked," he said. His eyes cleared a little, as if he finally saw her again. "I don't understand opera at all," he added. "I would stay to learn more. But I promised I would find some old instruments that were brought down from the north. There is a storage room, someone said."

  "I'll take you there," Giulia said promptly, and ignored Hexel's exasperated protest. "I need to get a picochet for Damiet. Hexel, I won't be a moment."

  The bard was silent as she led him down the corridors, still noisy with the fitful evening tides of students and magisters. She said slowly, tossing pebbles into his silence, to see what might surface, "While Master Caladrius played my picochet that night, the basilisk's guards crowded into the tavern, looking for someone. He did not stop playing until they left. He kept his face hidden behind the picochet. I didn't see it clearly until he stopped. His playing seemed very powerful and very—sad. He reminded me of someone…"

  She saw his mouth tighten. But he did not speak until they stood at the storage room door. He said only, to the door, "I tried to explain the hinterlands to the students. I have never been there. I thought some of the instruments might explain it more clearly than I can."

  She reached for a lamp in the hall and opened the door. Light spilled across tables heaped with odd, dusty shapes. Hollis stepped into the room, his eyes wandering from shape to shape. Giulia watched him move among them, touching a carving, plucking a string, stroking a skin pulled taut across a split, painted gourd. He looked at her incredulously.

  "Most of these I've never seen. Some I recognize only from tales…" He continued roaming, playing them in his head, she guessed, as she watched curiously. He made a sudden sound, picked up a pipe. "This one," he breathed, inarticulate with wonder. "Look at this."

  She came to his side. The pipe was small, dark, the ovals of its finger holes painted a dull red. "What is it?" she asked. It did not seem extraordinary.

  "I've seen it… In a tale…"

  "Play it."

  He shook his head slowly, still gazing at it. "Not here," he said inexplicably. "May I stay a while?"

  She set the lamp on a table; shadow shifted across the pipe in his hand. The painted holes in it seemed to glow. She blinked; his hand closed around it.

  "Of course," she said. "Shut the door when you leave. And be prepared for complaints."

  "Thank you," he said again, smiling. The smile did not quite reach his eyes. She lifted a picochet in its dusty case, oddly reluctant to leave him there, among the silent music of the past. But he gave her no reason to stay.

  Returning to the study, she found Hexel seated at his desk, writing furiously. He threw the pen down as she entered, leaving grace-notes of ink between his lines. "I have it! Listen to this, Giulia. A stranger comes to Berylon, the prince's daughter falls in love with him, not knowing that his family and hers are bitter enemies, and that he has sworn to kill her father."

  "Hexel—" Giulia said doubtfully. He held up a hand.

  "Hush. Listen. Let me tell you what happens next…"

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  Chapter Nine

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  In the music room in Pellior Palace, Caladrius played the picochet to Lady Damiet. He did not hear what he played; neither did she. Her eyes, pale and moist, clung to his face with an expression of rapture unlikely in anyone actually listening. She spoke now and then. Her words wove themselves somehow into the fitful, eerie cadences of his music, so that he felt them, rather than heard them, and answered her absently without words. Behind him, Veris Legere sorted music discreetly in the cupboards; Magister Dulcet sat quietly on the harpsichord stool, both, by their presence, warding away any hint of impropriety. Caladrius finished an ancient ballad about a cornstalk turning into a woman in the fullness of summer, and withering into a dying stalk in autumn, to the amazement and consternation of the farmer who had found her in the field. It was not, he suspected, a song that had ever been heard by the rosy, smiling faces above them on the ceiling. He wondered, lifting his bow, if they were still smiling.

  "Now. You try it, my lady. Your fingers there. And there."

  "Master Caladrius, it will not fit among my skirts. Perhaps you could adjust them for me."

  "Perhaps you could rest it against your knees. For now. It is a peasant's instrument. It is more used to flax and wool than showers of lace."

  "Do you like my dress, Master Caladrius? I chose it to match the color of the picochet. Gold-brown. Do you think it matches well?"

  "Very well."

  "You have not looked," she said reproachfully. "Your eyes are on my fingers."

  "Take the bow. Curve your fingers, lift them away from it. The power is in the wrist, in the shoulders. Draw the bow across the string slowly. Feel the tension in the string. Press harder. Harder."

  "Master Caladrius—"

  "Listen to yourself,"

  "I am listening. Next time I will wear silk instead of lace. I have a pale gold which matches the color of my hair." She drew the bow with a flourish, produced a singing wail that brought his attention momentarily back to the room, to her. It reminded him, he realized, of her voice: energetic, untuned, and oblivious of art. "Master Caladrius." She played another with vigor. "Or I might wear the thinnest of linens… Which would you suggest?"

  His thoughts drifted again; he only answered, "Good. Spread your fingers like this on the strings. Now lift them one at a time as you bow. Good."

  "I shall wear the linen, then. The picochet will rest better among my skirts."

  "Again… Good."

  She progressed, in peculiar fashion, somehow transforming clothes into music, along with whatever else was on her mind. That something distracted her, he was made vaguely aware by her fixed gaze, by her long, slow sighs when his hand rested near hers on the bow or the string. His own thoughts were acrid with past, disturbed by the glimpse of Hollis in this basilisk's nest; he could not spare a guess at hers. She was Arioso Pellior's daughter, milky and bland as unlit tallow; she was, like the paintings and marble pillars, a background detail in the house of the Basilisk. Only her bowing, the unexpected, enthusiastic shrieks she got out of the peasant's instrument, made her incongruous, and therefore real.

  He was aware, after a time, that the astonishing sounds echoing off the cold white marble had conjured, like a spell, an improbable vision. Luna Pellior appeared out of nowhere, like sunlight falling into a windowless room. For a moment he simply looked at her smiling, secret eyes, the various warm and charming golds of hair and brows and skin. And then, belatedly, he remembered whose gaze held his.

  He rose quickly, interrupting Damiet in mid-screech. He bowed his head, startled at the ease with which she rendered him thoughtless, powerless.

  She said,
"Master Caladrius. What strange instrument are you teaching my sister? And what a rare assortment of noises."

  "It is a picochet," Damiet answered complacently. "They play it in the north. The color of my dress matches it exactly, have you noticed, Luna?"

  "Indeed it does. How clever of you, Damiet. I won't disturb you if I listen."

  Caladrius stepped away from his chair. "Please—" She sat next to Damiet, studied the instrument with interest.

  "It looks old."

  "Magister Dulcet brought it from the music school for me." She applied the bow, sent a note careening off the ceiling. "Magister Dulcet also plays the picochet. But I wanted Master Caladrius to teach me."

  "Did you?" Caladrius, his eyes still lowered, felt her brilliant gaze again, or the sudden touch of her thoughts. "And why is that?"

  But Damiet, her father's daughter, became unexpectedly evasive. "Because he once studied in the north, as a bard. That seems to be important."

  "Yes," Luna said softly; Caladrius felt her gaze burn into his mind. "It is important."

  "It was long ago," he said, chilled. "My lady."

  "Was it so long ago?" She did not let him reply. "My father has many odd instruments that, if coaxed, do unusual things. Perhaps you learned to play some of them?"

  "Not there, my lady."

  "But somewhere?"

  "No. My lady."

  "He has one, a very small harp, with a high, sweet voice, whose strings break if someone playing it has told the listener a lie. My father has found it useful. Have you ever played such a thing?"

  He was spared answer by Damiet, who became suddenly restless. "I think we should continue with the lesson, Master Caladrius. I do not want to learn about harps. They bore me. They all sound alike. Master Ca ladrius must sit beside me to teach me the position of my fingers."

  "It is not necessary—"

  "It is," Damiet said firmly. "Very necessary." She countered her sister's disarming warmth with blue frost. "Bring another chair, Master Caladrius, if my sister wishes to stay. Put it here beside me." She patted the air next to her. Luna showed no signs of rising, merely watched as Caladrius settled a gilt chair opposite Damiet.

  "It's easier," he said, answering Damiet's wide stare, "for me to see. What you're doing."

  "Master Caladrius—"

  "Your skirts distract me." She smiled faintly then, and straightened her bow. He paused, unsettled by the sight of both pairs of eyes, intense and unblinking, on his face. He cleared his throat. "Now. Where were we?"

  "Where, indeed, Master Caladrius?"

  "Here," Damiet said, and produced a sound that might have cracked marble, but did nothing at all to disturb her sister's smile.

  He walked home wearily that night, troubled by Luna. She was the Basilisk's heir, he guessed, in power if not in name. She was his mirror. If he played the fire-bone pipe for one, he must play for the other, or she would kill whatever harmed her father. He seemed to trouble her as well. She would bring him that small harp, if it existed, and watch, smiling, as he broke strings with his lies. What he had done to make her suspicious of him, and what she suspected him of, he could not imagine. And there was Hollis, not safe in the north with Sirina, but living in Berylon as a bard after the Basilisk had shown so clearly, at Luly, how far he could reach to destroy a name, and all who might have spoken it.

  The night watch saw Caladrius but did not stop him; they recognized him now as one who came and went in the Basilisk's house. He ate in the tavern, silent and alone, as always. It was late; the place was full of students, and one other solitary man at his supper. This one drew Caladrius's attention. He seemed, like the woman in the hinterlands, to be made of bird bones or twigs, someone not quite real, who might speak the language of crows. He ate slowly, never looking up from his meal; he was still there when Caladrius took the narrow shadowy stairs to his room.

  He lay awake for a long time, reading the books he had borrowed from the school, learning the history of Tormalyne House through its music. The night was so hot the air itself seemed to sweat. It was full of restless noises: broken words and objects, a cry perhaps human, perhaps not, drunken singing from the students below. He could even hear faint music from within the school, a frail butterfly of sound blown aside by ruder noises. The moon, shrinking now, peered with an old woman's hooded eye through the window, then passed on. Engrossed in Auber Tormalyne's account of his impulsive journey into the hinterlands, and his collection of divers strange instruments, he realized only slowly that the sound intruding on his attention was not from the street but at his door.

  He glanced up and, frozen, watched it open.

  He breathed again at the sight of Hollis. He rose without speaking, embraced his son tightly, feeling a moment's simple joy because he was no longer alone in a city of strangers.

  Hollis said softly, "I followed you back from Pellior House. I waited hours before I came up." His face looked patchy in the candlelight; he seemed close to tears. "I don't think anyone but the tavern keeper saw me."

  "What are you doing here? You told me you would to go to Sirina."

  "I did. Long enough to give you time to get here. I told her what happened to Luly."

  "You didn't tell her why."

  He sighed, his hands falling heavily onto Caladrius's shoulders. "How could I? I'm barely piecing things together now."

  "Do you realize what danger you're in?"

  "I'm beginning to." His hands tightened briefly; he loosed Caladrius then, and went to the bed, studied the books on it. "Tormalyne House. I've been learning some history, too. Where were you when your father was killed?"

  "I had crawled into a marble fireplace to escape the fire. I was covered with ash. Too terrified to breathe. Arioso Pellior never saw me."

  Hollis looked at him sharply. "You saw—"

  Caladrius started to answer, shook his head. "It's nothing to talk about now. It's what drives me. I don't want it driving you."

  "I can guess." He gazed at Caladrius, his face hard, white. "You saw what would make you run from the sight for nearly forty years. What are you going to do here? You're working under the prince's roof. If you kill him, they'll kill you."

  "It's not what I want," Caladrius said tersely. "But it's hard to see a way around it. That's why I wanted you to stay north. If Arioso Pellior names me before he dies, they will search for anyone remotely connected with the House. I may kill him, but he has a daughter with his face and his eyes. Above everything, I wanted you safe. Ignorant, in the north, and safe."

  "Well, I'm not," Hollis said simply. "Ignorant, in the north, or safe. I won't leave you. I suppose you would not consider coming back with me to the provinces?"

  "No."

  Hollis sat down on the bed. "Then you might as well tell me what lost dreams I will inherit."

  Caladrius moved after a moment, sat beside him. "A charred, empty palace, a name that's barely more than a memory, and four hundred years' worth of ancestral ghosts who ruled Berylon. If you live long enough. But I want your promise." He caught Hollis's eyes, held them. "My vengeance dies with me. If I'm killed, you forget you ever heard the name Tormalyne." He gripped Hollis's wrist as he stirred. "Promise me. Or you won't see me again after tonight. This is my burden. Not yours."

  "I promise," Hollis said, too easily. Caladrius's hold eased after a moment; he sighed.

  "I'm being unreasonable."

  "You can't ask me to do what you won't. You can't give me such a heritage and then ask me to go back and sing on a rock."

  "If there's no hope?"

  "Even if there's no hope." He paused, then smiled a little, tightly. "There's Berylon itself. City of stone circled by water. I'm not sure I would want to leave it, to go back to the provinces. It sings, like Luly. Not with wind and sea, but with the living. I want to stay."

  "I wish I could see it out of your eyes. Without bitterness."

  "Maybe—" Hollis said doubtfully.

  "Maybe," he said, with no hope whatsoever. "It's enou
gh now, just to see you. Tell me what you want to know."

  "I want to know what you ran from, all those years. Why you hid yourself from yourself. Why you woke us all with your dreaming at Luly. What you saw when you harped. Will you tell me?"

  Caladrius told him. Hollis stayed with him until dawn, when the tavern filled with students and laborers, and he could slip away among them without notice. From his window, Caladrius watched him cross the street, with his long, free stride, open doors between the rampant griffins, and enter. For a moment he wondered if leaving Arioso Pellior alive, unrepentant and unjudged, would be worth the freedom Hollis had, to move through the singing city beyond the Basilisk's regard. But it was only an illusion of freedom, he knew; the city was not ringed by stone, but by the Basilisk's eye. And ridding it of one monster would only crown the monster's daughter with power. She would, he suspected, deal with her father's heir as subtly and easily as her father would have done. And Hollis himself would inherit only Caladrius's city of bitterness and fear.