Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He was watching her mix certain powders and solutions which, in correct proportions, would clear to a pale amber that looked and smelled like wine.

  “It produces no immediate effect,” he explained as she stirred. “A day or two later the one who drank it will find a sudden and bewildering difficulty controlling the spoken word. Anything might come, with no resemblance whatsoever to coherent thought. Only one drop of that. So.”

  She measured carefully, and asked, when the drop had elongated, turned pale, and dissolved, “And then what happens?”

  “After a week, the exasperated family and friends find a dark, quiet place, far from civilized society, for the unfortunate sufferer. It’s crude, but effective.”

  The glass rod Luna stirred with slowed briefly. She remembered, suddenly, a great-aunt so afflicted, years earlier: her face purple gray with rage and fear; the nonsense that came out of her; her abrupt disappearance. Luna wondered what her great-aunt had done to offend her father. The swirling mixture turned, like dawn, as innocent as light. She said only, “It seems quite subtle to me.”

  “The results are uncontrollable and far too memorable. It should be used rarely, once or twice in a lifetime.”

  She raised her eyes, his own faint, opaque smile reflected in them. “I will give it to Taur,” she said. “And then I will rule instead.”

  “You will do no such thing. Taur will have his uses. Besides, he has three children. What do you propose to do with them?”

  She considered. “They could be drowned. They aren’t very interesting, anyway. But then, neither is Taur.”

  “Taur,” his father said, mildly annoyed, “has a lover outside of the palace. His wife complains to me.”

  Her gold brows flickered. “He should be more careful.”

  “He has no sense. Brio found her.”

  “What will you do with her?” He shrugged slightly, not answering, not caring, she guessed. “Then what will you do with Taur,” she asked, “if he finds out what you have done to her?”

  He smiled briefly. “You will see.” He glanced at a timepiece he had made, an intricate arrangement of cogs, wheels, bands, to mark the position of the sun in a place without light. “Very shortly. Join me for breakfast.”

  She began to fit stoppers on an assortment of jars and bottles. Dawn, they had found, was the easiest time to disappear within the palace. Arioso did not trust night; he wanted it within eyesight. Once he interrupted her, warned her what that lid might do, misplaced on that jar. She left his marble worktable immaculate; a crumb, he had taught her, from the wrong powder fallen into a careless splash, could have a disastrous effect on the occupants of the rooms that surrounded and hid them. “The air itself is dangerous,” he told her. “It carries words, it carries invisible poisons. Trust nothing. No one. Except me.”

  The chamber, built of massive blocks of white marble behind the walls of other rooms, had been the last refuge of rulers of Pellior House who had exhausted every other method of dealing with troublesome neighbors or relatives. According to family history, it had been last used two centuries before. Then it had passed into family lore until Arioso had discovered a need for it, and, in his methodical fashion, discovered it. Luna, bereft early of her mother for varying reasons to which she paid little attention until later, followed her father’s brightness like a small golden cloud drifting after the sun. There were times when he seemed to disappear even under her careful, eager watch. He invariably reappeared, she found. That resolved, she set her mind to the problem of where he actually went, and how. He always went into the same council chamber before he vanished, she learned. Though he let no one else see him step into that room at such times, he never seemed to conceive of a pattern in her presence. That he had gone through a wall in the room seemed obvious. How became less obvious after she bumped her head. So she used her wits and her eyes, and had seen an unfamiliar expression on his face when she joined him in his secret place. He looked, she realized later, as if he had seen her for the first time in their lives; he had finally recognized her as part of him.

  Passing back into the council chamber involved a block of marble turning noiselessly on a disk, and a tapestry with a peephole where an animal’s eye should have been. The room was empty, the door closed. The prince’s bedchamber adjoined the council chamber; it was known that he liked to work there at odd hours. He opened the hall door, spoke a syllable to the page standing there. Breakfast followed soon: figs, smoked fish, hot sweet cakes, butter, honey, spiced wine. Luna had chosen a fig, he had just poured wine, when the door opened again.

  A man seemingly made of twigs, with cracked front teeth and a face entirely seamed with wrinkles, closed the door carefully behind him. He crossed the room soundlessly. His leanness, his slight stoop, drew the eye away from his height, the strength hidden in his bony frame. Lizardlike, he made no unnecessary movements. Even blinking seemed a rare and deliberate action. He was plainly dressed, seemingly unarmed, though Luna knew he could bristle like a porcupine with weapons, needed. He was a distant cousin, Brio Hood, devoid of charm, and fanatically loyal to the Prince of Berylon.

  He bowed sparingly, said nothing, nor would he speak unless required. Arioso picked a fig from the bowl, split it with his thumbnail. He asked without preamble, “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Jena Aubade.” Brio’s voice was at once sinewy and unexpectedly soft; he was habitually silent. “Her father is a wharfman with a clear connection, on his mother’s side, to Tormalyne House. Her grandmother was careless; someone of the House was indiscreet. Money changed hands. The bastard was reared among the docks at Pellior Bridge and never told his father’s name.”

  Arioso gazed at the glistening seeds in their dusky purple skin. “Tormalyne House.” His hand closed abruptly; he flung the crushed mess onto the silver tray, reached for linen. “For the second time in a month an ember has flared out of that charred name.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “That patched boy calling himself Griffin Tormalyne—”

  “He’s far away, my lord, among the bards in the north. They’ll keep him quiet for a few years.”

  “Will they.” He fell silent; Luna saw the expression he showed only to her and Brio: the mask of skin and muscle slackened, the skull showing through like thought. “They still cling to that rock like barnacles?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “They should have stayed as unobtrusive. Why does he call himself Tormalyne? To whom?”

  “I will find out.”

  “And this woman—I will not have my son embracing even a ghost of Tormalyne House. Where did he meet her? Serving ale in some tavern?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “He vanishes from dusk to dawn; he can’t keep a thought in his head. He is too old to be drowning himself in a head of hair. I suppose she is beautiful. Is she?”

  “I don’t know, my lord,” Brio said. Arioso glanced at him sharply; he added simply, “I have never understood beauty. I don’t recognize it. She doesn’t resemble her family. She seems to have inherited her face and bearing from Tormalyne House.”

  “Does she know who Taur is?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Luna watched her father’s eyes grow fixed and light-less; color seemed to recede in them. “Then you must take her a gift,” he said softly. “From Taur. A glass rose, perhaps. Luna will prepare one. Come to her here at noon. Be very careful of the thorns.”

  Brio Hood bowed his balding, wrinkled tortoise’s head and left noiselessly.

  Arioso summoned his heir.

  Taur Pellior appeared a quarter of an hour later, red-eyed and dazed, wincing at the sun breaking over the wall into the windows. He had not brushed his hair; he was still buckling the belt around his tunic when he entered. Luna smiled brightly at him; Taur only blinked at her, as if he could not quite see her in all the light. He had inherited their mother’s soft oval face and slightly protruding blue eyes that failed to see beyond the moment. His dark hair, Luna noted, had
begun to thin. He had their father’s height, his strong bones, but his strength was sagging. The worn notch on his belt had yielded to the next.

  He eyed his father a little warily, but Arioso spoke mildly. “Sit down.” He pushed smoked fish, pink and glistening, toward his son. Taur glanced at it and swallowed dryly. “Eat with us.”

  “Thank you.” He splayed a hand over his face. “I’m scarcely awake. It’s very bright in here.”

  “It’s called daylight.”

  Taur’s hand shifted to free his eyes; he looked at his father silently across the massive table. Then he sighed and poured himself some wine.

  “You didn’t wake me up to share your breakfast with me.” He reached for an oatcake, scattering crumbs as he broke it, and dipped a piece in the wine. His voice found a querulous note. “You haven’t wanted to see my face in the morning for years. You don’t trust me.”

  The charge was true, so Arioso ignored it. “I want your help.”

  “Really.”

  “There is a rumor slipping through the provinces that Raven Tormalyne’s heir was not killed in the fire,” Arioso improvised glibly. Luna, listening, restrained a blink. “That the child was spirited away somewhere north.”

  “To the provinces?” Taur’s brow wrinkled. “What’s he been doing for thirty-seven years? Raising sheep?”

  “I am sending a delegation, as a courtesy, to the provincial barons, to extend gestures of goodwill, and my hope that their dealings with us in matters of trade and shipping will continue to be peaceful and so forth. I want you to go with them.”

  Taur coughed painfully on a crumb. “To the provinces?”

  “Today.”

  “Me?”

  “The delegation will leave at noon. It only occurred to me this morning that you should go.”

  Taur was still coughing. “Why?” He stared at his father, his eyes watering. “Why me?”

  “A gesture. They are very important to us, the provincial barons; they could strangle Berylon if they stopped trading.”

  “But—”

  “They have never met my heir. I am no longer young and you must deal with them when I die. Even if this rumor is absurd, that Griffin Tormalyne has lived among them since—”

  “It’s preposterous!”

  “I want no attention drawn to that name instead of to Pellior House and you. It’s time you took your duties seriously.”

  “You never wanted me to before,” Taur complained. “You thought you would live forever.” He paused briefly, blinking. “At noon.”

  “I’ve given you very little time to prepare. But you must see that this is vital to Berylon, to me, to you, that Pellior House maintains strong ties to the provinces. While you are there you could ask a question or two, find out how the rumor began. Subtly, of course. It’s time you learned some subtlety.”

  Taur was silent, all his attention focused, it seemed, on the crumbs floating in his wine. As if, Luna thought, he saw a face among them. She read her brother’s expressions as he tried to think of an objection, failed, wondered if he had time, in the scant hours left to him, for a visit to the taverns in the shadow of the Pellior Bridge. Or a message—he could send word to her…He met his father’s eyes abruptly.

  “How long will I be gone?”

  “Perhaps a month. Perhaps longer.” He indulged in a thin smile. “Don’t worry; you’ll be home for my birthday.”

  Taur rose heavily, nearly overturning his wine. He held Arioso’s eyes a moment longer. Luna wondered curiously, in that moment, if Taur would fight him, refuse to leave, reveal the truth, or find a lie that would ease him out of the web of Arioso’s lies. But there was only a question in Taur’s eyes, half-formed and stillborn, as if he had caught a fleeting glimpse of the true object of the Basilisk’s deadly stare.

  He only said, “I must tell my family.”

  “Go, then,” Arioso said, choosing another fig. “My apologies to your wife.”

  At noon, from a high window, Luna watched the delegation, laden with gifts and provisions, leave the yard of Pellior Palace. Taur Pellior, speechless and glum, was flanked by the House guards, as if he had been caught in some mischief. The gates closed. Her thoughts strayed down to the docks at the Pellior Bridge, where a woman expecting Taur Pellior would find a gaunt, silent man made of twigs instead.

  She turned, slipped as noiselessly as Brio into the council room, and disappeared once again into stone.

  Five

  Rook dreamed of fire and woke screaming.

  He glimpsed something black flying out of the flames just before he opened his eyes. The night itself ignited as he looked at it. Bewildered, he cried out again. Then he pieced himself back out of the winds and sough of the sea, the trembling dark; he fell back into time. He found Hollis’s stunned face, his hand controlling the flame at the doorway. Faces beyond him crowded into shadow, mute, startled. He was in bed, Rook realized; he had dreamed; he had tried to waken stone with his voice.

  He said to the motionless crowd, “It was a dream.”

  Hollis stepped into the room. He dropped the torch in a sconce beside the hearth and Rook sat up, drew his hands down his face. Someone closed the door. Hollis closed the window, through which rain was weeping onto the floor. Rook felt rain on his face. He drew breath, leaned back against the stones. Hollis sat down on the bed beside him. His face patchy, uncertain, his hair awry, he looked suddenly very young.

  “What was it?” he asked. His expression changed. “It wasn’t—it isn’t—”

  “No. It was nothing to do with your mother.” He stirred, trying to remember; as always, he saw only fire, except for the black that flew. Bird, he thought. Raven. Rook.

  “Is it what you came too close to when you played the harp that time?”

  Rook gazed at him. He felt the harp strings again beneath his fingers, taut, sweet, warning; he felt the fire threaded into the strings. He sighed. “Maybe.”

  “But why now?”

  “I don’t know.” His hand found Hollis’s wrist, closed around it. “Go back to bed. I’m all right.”

  But Hollis frowned at him, not moving, wanting more than that to be reassured. “What did you dream?”

  “Nothing. Fire. That’s all I remember. A childhood memory.”

  “You sounded as if you were burning in it.”

  Rook was silent. Black flew out of fire, escaped, left what burned behind. He shuddered suddenly, his fingers tightening on Hollis. “I tried to find out before you were born. That’s why I wasn’t here to see you born. I was out searching for my past.”

  “Where?”

  “The provinces.”

  “You didn’t find it.”

  “No.”

  Hollis opened his mouth, hesitated. “Maybe—”

  “Say it.”

  “I don’t want to say it. You might not come back. “But—” He waved at the thought, perplexed, confused. “Anyway, it’s only tales. Isn’t it?”

  “The hinterlands?” Rook guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “No. I don’t believe it’s only tales. But I can’t imagine finding past there. Future, perhaps. But past is past.” He stared back to where it should have been, his eyes gritty, weary, and felt the warning again, the fire threaded into his bones. He forced his fingers open, his voice calm. “Go to bed,” he said again, evading Hollis’s eyes. “You’re shivering.”

  “You’re afraid.”

  Rook looked at him, astonished in some deep part of himself, as if Hollis had spoken a word he had been looking for all his life. “Is that it?” he breathed. “But of what? It’s done.” He paused, wondering. “Maybe I burned them,” he suggested. “It was my fault.”

  Hollis pushed his hands against his eyes, sat blinking at his father.

  “Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “You should—”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t know. Not yet. Not with your heart. You can still live without knowing. Or you think you can live that way.” He stood
up, stifling a yawn; Rook watched him cross the room, take the torch. Sirina, he thought suddenly, bleakly, seeing her grace in Hollis, her long fingers lighting the candle beside his bed. “You sounded,” Hollis commented before he left, “like the first bard crying his last word to escape all the power of the hinterlands. He played the picochet, too.”

  “And I taught you that tale,” Rook said dryly, to the closing door. The candle had burned nearly to a frozen pool before he slept again.

  “What lies behind the word?” he asked a handful of young faces, the next day. Griffin Tormalyne’s was among them. “Say a word.”

  “Fire,” Griffin said.

  “Is the word fire?”

  “Yes. No. Fire itself is fire.”

  “The word is fire,” a lanky farmer’s daughter said reasonably.

  “The word is the memory of fire,” Griffin argued. “The image. The word is what you see and say when you mean fire.”

  “Think of fire,” Rook said. “Without the word. Is it fire?”

  “It doesn’t burn.”

  “It is fire in your mind.”

  It burns, Rook thought.

  “It burns in your mind,” Griffin said. “Why? What are you trying to tell us?”

  “What you say, when you say a word. What you think when you say it. What I see and hear when you speak. Words are ancient; visions and echoes cling to them like barnacles on the whale’s back. You speak words used in poetry and song since the beginning of the world we know. Here, you will learn to hear and to speak as if you had never listened, never spoken before. Then you will learn the thousand meanings within the word. What you say when you say fire.” He heard himself then, as for the first time, and stopped abruptly. The students gazed at him, waiting, expectant; he wondered suddenly what clutter of images their minds held, and if words they used ever came close to speaking the burning image.

  “What do you say when you say fire?” Griffin asked, breaking Rook’s odd silence.

  “Here,” he answered, “you say all the poetry that makes you see fire. Hear it. Smell it. Feel it. Become it.”