Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He heard Hollis’s voice: “Where are you?”

  He tried to speak; a raven spoke. He heard Hollis again, an inarticulate sound, and then the fire found him.

  He held his son while Hollis wept, saying brokenly against his shoulder, “I saw the boat from the shore—I didn’t know—I hoped it was you. I saw your picochet when I moored—”

  “How many—”

  “Over half got out. Some died on the rocks—jumping from the windows, or thrown back onto them by the waves.” He lifted his head, watching them again; Rook saw the horror frozen in his eyes. “Some never woke.”

  “I saw. When did it happen?”

  “Four nights ago. The bards that were left took the students to the provinces. I waited for you. I couldn’t let you come back alone. Not to this.”

  “Who did it?”

  Hollis blinked. He pulled back a little to see Rook’s face. His hands closed on Rook’s arms. “It was an accident. What makes you think—” He stopped, his eyes locked on the raven’s eyes. His fingers dug into Rook, feeling for bone. “No one would—” He stopped again; Rook saw him shudder. “Someone,” he whispered, “said he dreamed fire moving across the water early in the morning. Before the moon set.”

  “He dreamed it?”

  “He—we said he must have dreamed it.”

  “No.”

  “How do you—who—” His voice rose. “What do you know? What did you find in the hinterlands?”

  “I know my name.”

  Hollis stared at him. Blood flushed into his face; he shouted incredulously, shaking Rook, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Caladrius.” He pulled Hollis to him again, quickly, tightly. “You are still alive,” he breathed, amazed. “And so am I.” He turned then, to pick up the blackened harp beneath the window. He gazed a moment at the dark, moon-laced swirl of tide below, trying to free the stranded dead. “We’ll bury them,” he said, “before we leave.”

  “Why?” Hollis whispered. “Why this? Why the bards? It’s like—setting fire to birds.”

  “They took in Griffin Tormalyne. And now he is dead again.”

  Hollis, quieter now, gazed at Rook silently. He opened his mouth, drew a breath, but did not ask the question that was dawning in his eyes. He said instead, “He never told us his true name.”

  “It was in his father’s letter. I remember it. I want you to go to the provinces. Your mother will hear of this; let her know we both survived. Stay there. You’ll be safer, there.”

  “I know.” His face, still struggling with grief and shock, was easing into more familiar lines as he began to think. “So will you.”

  “I’m going south.”

  “Yes. I know what Caladrius means. I want to hear you sing in Berylon.”

  He began to hear the song then, wordless yet, formless and powerful as the wind and waves that, grain by grain, had sculpted Luly. “You will,” he breathed, and held Hollis’s shoulders, held his eyes. “I’ll send for you when it’s safe.”

  “Safe! You can’t even whisper your name here, to me, among the dead—you can’t even tell me—”

  “I can’t,” he said tightly. “Not yet. Please. I need to go alone. The bards were right about the hinterlands; the tales are true. You do not take the same path back out of them, nor do you find the world you knew. I crossed the sea again to Luly, but I have not left the hinterlands. They have become the world.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hollis said. He was silent a moment. Rook saw his eyes widen suddenly, as if he had glimpsed his own heritage, his own name. He added reluctantly, “I’ll go to the provinces. For now. Be careful.”

  “I’ll be safe. No one knows my name.”

  They gave the dead to the waves and the gardens of Luly. As they rowed from rock to land the bard Caladrius heard the singing of the whales accompany them across the sea.

  PART TWO

  Griffin’s Aria

  One

  In the noisome tavern on Tanner’s Street, Giulia Dulcet lifted her picochet bow and began a ballad just as Caladrius walked out of the forest at the edge of the Tormalyne Bridge.

  The sky was smoky blue with twilight. The moon hung in it like a misshapen pearl. Beneath the moon, two griffins of jade and yellow marble crouched and glared across the massive lintel of the gate that opened, at the end of the bridge, into Berylon. As Caladrius caught sight of them other memories took wing: the griffin on a seal ring, on a gold banner, white griffins guarding a fireplace. His eyes filled with wings; his steps slowed. Between him and the griffin gate, a fat, overladen trapper’s wagon lumbered, pulled by oxen. The creak of wheel and idle crack of the trapper’s whip were muted by the boom and echo of water raging far beneath them. Caladrius, on the threshold of Berylon, heard the word of warning in the water. Something moved between the griffins; fire swarmed suddenly across the gate. He saw the basilisks then, coiling black, with flat, smoldering eyes, on the tunics of the guards on the balustrade between the griffins. The wagon, at a snail’s pace, swayed toward one wall of the bridge, then the other. Caladrius, following patiently, watched a gold-haired boy wearing the basilisk run down the bridge to light other torches along the low walls. He slid like a minnow between wall and wagon to reach torches on both sides, making for Caladrius, unnoticed behind the wagon, a bridge of fire into Berylon.

  He had brought nothing with him from Luly. He had walked alone out of the north, down the long road through the forest, where the birds sang of gentler seasons, warmer light. Dressed in rough homespun and cracked boots, carrying a leather pack, he might have come from the provinces to look for work, having failed, with the picochet he had left behind, to inspire life in his fields.

  He took another slow step on the span of marble stained and runneled by centuries. Stone flowers twined in and out of the graceful pattern of arches along the bridge walls. Some had been crushed or snapped off, as if under the weight of hurtled objects. What he remembered of the city’s history was passionate and tumultuous. Roses and lilies bloomed, he guessed, green with moss among bones at the bottom of the river.

  The wagon shuddered oddly. The trapper cursed, snapping his whip. A back wheel had begun to wobble. Behind Caladrius, the forest spoke. A raven called his name, disturbed. The guards on the balustrade turned their backs abruptly, alerted by something happening within the walls. Caladrius glanced behind him. The great, dark trees were motionless. An owl swiveled its head to look at him from a high branch. Silent as moonlight and as white, it spread its wings and floated into shadow.

  He heard then, what the forest heard above the lion roar of water: voices among the trees, a slow but steady march of hooves following night to the Tormalyne Bridge.

  In the Griffin’s Egg, Giulia, sweating in stagnant summer heat, her hair collecting smells of stew and smoke from the tavern kitchen, scarcely heard the picochet wailing and yearning under her hands. Her thoughts veered erratically back through the day, lighting in a room full of students baffled by her desire for them to invent a musical instrument. Anything, she had assured them. Teacups. Plumbing pipes. Paper. Then she saw the messenger from Pellior House coming toward her down the hall. Tomorrow, the note had said. Pellior Palace. To speak of the autumn festival. Veris Legere’s signature, in dove-gray ink, above the basilisk’s seal. She saw the sun-gold face of the Prince of Berylon, his lizard’s eyes smiling down at her.

  He wants my music, she thought, amazed. She wondered how those eyes would look if they saw her with her frilly skirts hiked above her knees, her fingers stiff with heat, laboring up and down the picochet string like a handful of sausages.

  She ended the ballad with a tooth-stabbing shriek; a burly docker inhaled beer and choked. A few northerners pounded on tables with their mugs. Everyone else ignored them.

  “Thank you,” Iona said sweetly into the din. “My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. Without your support they would have to pay astonishing fees to the Tormalyne School of Music, which you are all helping me to escape. This bra
ss bowl accepts gold, silver, copper, jeweled buttons, anything you can spare in gratitude for our efforts. Look closely at our picochet player. She is a genuine magister, freed from captivity for the evening. But not dangerous, unless you trifle with her picochet. If you drop a coin into the bowl, she will smile for you. Next I will sing—when Justin gets the spit out of his pipe—my own rendering of the old, sweet ballad ‘The Brawl on the Tormalyne Bridge.’”

  Yacinthe patted a roll of hoofbeats out of her drums. Giulia raised her bow.

  A horseman rode out of the trees, the basilisk on the banner he carried crying its cock’s crow challenge to the night.

  Caladrius, his face taut, looked away from it quickly. He felt its baleful stare boring into his back as he followed the plodding oxen. Their pace had grown suddenly exasperating. More riders came out of the forest; he heard hooves strike marble, horses snorting at the scents of oxen and furs, their harness jangling as they jostled one another, crowding onto the bridge, and were sharply reined. A guard shouted at the trapper; he shouted back. Water roared over their words, swept them away. The voices behind Caladrius came more clearly.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Skins, by the smell.”

  “What is it?” another voice demanded, sharp, querulous. “What’s that on the bridge?”

  “A trapper’s wagon, my lord.”

  “Why is it going so slowly? Have it make way!”

  “The only way it can make, my lord, is down.”

  “Then we’ll ride to the Pellior Bridge.”

  “Patience, my lord. The wagon will be across before we get ourselves turned around.”

  “Patience! Where exactly do you think I have any left to spare? I’ve just spent six weeks smelling barns and eating sheep and listening to something that makes my teeth ache, and the last days blinding myself with dust and interminable trees. Either get that wagon out of my way, or I will ride alone to the Pellior Bridge!”

  Caladrius slipped to one side of the bridge, found a shadow between two torches. He paused a step to look back. Riders still spilled out of the trees, adding more basilisks, more brightly colored silks, more weary, annoyed faces to the backwash at the bridge. They were pressing closer to him, easing around the balking rider, who seemed willing to toss the trapper’s wagon into the gorge with his hands. He had a fretful, imperious face, dark, thinning hair, eyes that saw little beyond his own desire. They did not see the man in the shadows, only the wagon. One of the guards had better eyesight.

  “You!” he called to Caladrius. “Are you traveling with this wagon?”

  “No,” Caladrius said, and added, “your lordship. I just walked down myself. From the north.”

  “Another mutton eater,” the fuming rider muttered. He pulled abruptly at his reins, trying to turn his horse in the crush. “I’m crossing the Pellior Bridge. Make way!”

  “Go with him,” the standard-bearer ordered swiftly, to the guards nearest them.

  “Might as well all go,” one grunted. “That wheel is about to cross without the wagon.”

  It fell off as he spoke, wandered away, and crashed into the wall beside Caladrius. The dark-haired lord paused, blinking at the wagon. One corner sagged, as if under the weight of their stares, slumping lower and lower. The trapper, bewildered, shouted at the oxen. The end lurched suddenly, boards parted, and an entire hillock of furs, not entirely cleaned, reeled onto the bridge. The wagon lurched again as the oxen, goaded by the whip, pulled forward.

  Swords spilled in a silver cascade onto the furs.

  “You’re inspired tonight,” Justin said to Giulia, wandering over at the end of the ballad to help her tune. He blew a note. “You sound like all the wildlife in Berylon in spring.”

  She twisted the peg on the picochet, plucked the string. “I wasn’t paying attention,” she confessed. “My hands feel like wood in this heat.” She paused, pulling up the loose neck of her blouse, which had slid halfway to one elbow. “Justin—”

  “What?”

  She looked at him, drew breath. “Justin,” she said again.

  A brow quirked. “Well, what?” he asked, amused and mystified.

  “I may have to—I may not be able to play here for a while.”

  Both brows went up; a line formed between them. She put her hand on his arm. “Why not?” He was no longer almost smiling. “Are you tired of us?”

  “No—that’s not—Justin, of course not. It’s just that—”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I received a message from Veris Legere, the Master of Music for Pellior House. I am to see him in the morning.”

  “For what?” he asked bewilderedly. “To teach Her Pruneface the picochet?”

  “To discuss the autumn festival, he said. I’m not sure what he will want me to do. There is always an opera—”

  “Opera.” He said the word cautiously, as if it could crack a tooth. “You mean he wants—”

  “I don’t know yet, but he might, and this might be my last night here.”

  His face flushed suddenly. “You’d leave us?” he demanded incredulously. “To play opera for that malignant warlock’s birthday?”

  The loathing in his voice startled her; it ran far deeper, she realized, than Hexel’s, who could set aside his aversion long enough to play the prince’s music. She said, distressed, “I’m sorry. I would miss playing here. With you. But I am responsible to the school—I can’t always choose the music I play.”

  “Any begger in the street can choose the song he sings.” His face was suddenly grim, the face of the stranger who lived life in a different Berylon, who heard music she did not know. “Say no.”

  “I can’t. I can’t offend Pellior House. The Tormalyne School exists because Arioso Pellior permits it to exist.”

  He was silent, studying her, still unfamiliar. “You want this,” he said. “This festival.”

  “I want—” She paused, then simply nodded. “I want its music.” She met his eyes. “And I want you. And I want the music I play here, in the smoke and heat and noise. Is that wrong? If I can only play this music here, is it wrong to love it? Or if I can only play the lavandre under the Basilisk’s eyes—is that wrong? Should I not play at all? Should you not love me because I play it?”

  “No,” he said, startled. “Don’t go that far.”

  “But it can go that far. If we let it.”

  He was silent again, his head bowed, his eyes hidden. Behind them, Yacinthe and Iona waited, impatient and curious, for them to finish their lovers’ squabble. He said finally, carefully, “I do understand. More than you think. Be careful in the Basilisk’s house.”

  “I’ll do what I’m told. In matters of music. I don’t see what trouble I could get into.”

  “That’s how the basilisk kills. You don’t see it until it looks at you.”

  She gazed at him, puzzled, troubled by what he did not say. He sighed, his face loosening, and touched her cheek. “We’ll miss playing with you.”

  She kissed him quickly. “I’ll see you when I can. No matter what. Give me that note again.”

  Justin lifted his pipe. Yacinthe’s hands danced over her drums. “‘The Ballad,’” she announced, “‘of the Trapper Who Trapped Himself.’”

  On the bridge, the trapper abandoned his wagon and began to run. Caladrius, cornered by torch fire and the broken edge of the wagon, with a pile of reeking furs at his feet, saw the trapper’s choices: the guards at the gate, or a quick leap into the gorge. The guards might show more mercy; they had not yet seen why the trapper was running, only that he had left a mess in the middle of the bridge. He was a soft, heavy man; the three guards caught him easily, dragged him through the wagon and out the back. Faced with a firelit pool of weapons and the basilisk rampant everywhere he looked, his quivering face drained the color of suet.

  The guards silently questioned the lord of the House, who said with extreme irritation, “Kill him.”

  The standard-bearer ventured a protest. “My lord, it mi
ght be better—”

  “Kill him! Get him out of my sight! Now!”

  They dragged him, struggling and incoherent, to the bridge wall; a couple of riders dismounted to catch his legs. Caladrius, breathless, his heart hammering, saw the trapper’s face just before they rolled him over the wall and into the gorge: his eyes, protruding in terror and astonishment, pleaded senselessly with the moon beyond the fire. Then he dropped, transfixing them all with his scream echoing up from the sides of the gorge before rock and water swallowed him.

  Caladrius seized the torch at his back. The movement broke the gorge’s spell; guards, turning, remembered him. He leaped into the wagon as they began shouting. He left the torch on the wagon floor. Fire swarmed over the remaining furs, found fat, and blazed a bright gate across the back of the wagon. It began to pick at the wagon’s bones as Caladrius slid out the front. The oxen, shifting uneasily at the smoke, began to drag the burning wagon. They caught his eyes with their protruding, senseless gazes. He heard himself make a sound, an inarticulate protest at their demand for life. But he paused to fumble with their harness; freed, they managed a quicker pace. Water swallowed all but the most furious voice behind the wagon. He would, he thought, remember that voice: it followed him as he walked, trailed by fire and oxen, through the Tormalyne Gate into Berylon.

  The narrow, winding streets were quiet for the moment, except for the tavern beside the bridge, its thick windows smoldering with smoky light. Amid the muted, chaotic noise that seeped out of it, came the last sound he expected to hear.

  It reached into his heart, stunned once more by death and memory, and pulled him like a hand into the Griffin’s Egg.

  Giulia, stroking long, husky notes of lament for the trapper, was remembering her grandfather on the farm. Taciturn even for a northerner through an entire winter after her grandmother died, he mourned through his picochet. So he had taught Giulia the inarticulate phrases of the heart. Engrossed in memory, hearing him speak in her playing, she thought at first that his fingers loosened the bow in her hands, his fingers coaxed the instrument from her. Then she heard the stranger’s voice.