Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  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 enough 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.

  At the moment it was all Caladrius had to give him. He left finally, to return to the Basilisk’s house.

  Ten

  Justin sat in the tavern across from the music school, eating supper with Nicol. They shared a bench beside the cold hearth, holding meat pies in one hand, ale in the other. All the tables were filled, which suited them; the noisy crowd gave them far more privacy than a few morose tipplers would have done. Nicol, his head lowered, picked at his food like a bird, talking all the while. He had to hurry to rehearse music, paint a tree, something; Giulia had appropriated half the school for the festival.

  “They are crossing the Marcasia Bridge,” he said, his voice almost too low to be heard. “Tomorrow. I want you there watching in the morning.”

  “All morning? What am I supposed to do there? Set out a cup and pipe for coins?”

  Nicol paused, a brow cocked. “Yes,” he said. “Why not? If you can think of nothing better to do.”

  Justin, who couldn’t, grumbled mildly, “I’m barely awake by noon.”

  “Gaudi will take your watch at noon. She couldn’t come earlier. She works.”

  “Thank you. You know they’ve been searching wagons since the trapper’s disaster.”

  “Not every wagon. Harvest is beginning. How do you search a wagon full of potatoes? Anyway—” He stopped to smile as a student greeted him. “Anyway, the wagon you will watch for is carrying stone.”

  “What—”

  “Marble. From the southern quarries. One of the stones will be hollow.”

  Justin grunted through a bite, impressed. “Who is paying for the marble?”

  “The sculptor who ordered it. Of course he doesn’t know.”

  “About—”

  “No.”

  “If they’re discovered—”

  “Nothing,” Nicol said firmly, “is going to happen to this one. We’ve spent all we have. The stone we want will be delivered to Evera’s uncle, who carves grave markers and monuments. His yard is full of odd pieces of marble. He won’t notice one more.”

  Justin drew a long breath. For a moment the mellow sunlight in the tavern grew dazzling; the amber of his ale seemed a rare and astonishing hue. “And then we fight.”

  Nicol’s voice grew thin as thread. “Once he is dead, the other houses will rebel with us. They won’t let us take power, but at least we’ll be free.”

  “What about—”

  “Taur?” He shook his head. “He’s not a fighter. And the daughters will be easily subdued.”

  “It sounds like a dream.”

  “It is,” Nicol said simply. “And we’ve been dreaming it for years. It’s time to act. Don’t be afraid.” He finished his ale, missing Justin’s glare. “Tomorrow. Early. Don’t do anything to make yourself suspicious.” He rose, brushed a crumb off his robe, and picked up his lute, which he wore everywhere like a disguise. Justin, annoyed, emptied his own tankard, wondering, not for the first time, what Nicol thought he carried around in his skull. A tall, gaunt man slipped onto the bench beside him, carrying a bowl of stew. Justin, rising with a friendly nod, got a vague impression of a hand composed of twigs and knobs, a thin, seamed neck stretched like a tortoise’s toward the bowl. The man did not look up. Justin picked up his pipe and headed for the Griffin’s Egg.

  The next morning, he sat with his back to a stone wall, watching the sun, climbin
g above the city, throw a glittering largesse of light ahead of itself that turned water into gold. He had settled himself on the street that ran along the water. The city wall was breached on both sides of the wide bridge by steps leading down to the docks. Piping without enthusiasm, he could watch the bridge and the fishing boats with their bright sails that had caught the breeze at an hour he didn’t know existed. The guards, already stopping wagons, ignored him. A fisherman, whistling that early, had dropped a copper into his battered cup out of pity, Justin suspected, for the demented young man with raw eyes and matted hair making lugubrious noises in the street.

  The wagon hadn’t come by noon; neither had Gaudi. Justin, cursing Nicol, took his handful of coppers down to the docks and bought bread and smoked fish in a tavern. Through its tiny, grimy windows he could see the tops of wagons pass above him along the marble balustrade. It was, as Nicol said, harvest. Corn passed. Onions. Squash. He yawned. Then he turned abruptly, before he fell asleep, to go back up to the street and look for Gaudi. He nearly bumped into someone behind him: a thin, spidery man carrying a bowl of fish soup. He apologized hastily; the man muttered something to his soup. Walking out, he found the sun blazing like a phoenix overhead, consuming shadow until the streets shimmered with light, and on the bright water the barges seemed to float into fire.

  He saw no sign of Gaudi. He sank down against burning stone, sweated there a few moments until his still, limp body caught the guards’ attention. He moved down the street, found shallow shade within a doorway, and fell asleep for a moment.

  When he opened his eyes he saw a wagon full of blocks of marble lumbering up to the guards at the end of the bridge. He watched, not moving. The wagon stopped. In the heat, the horses’ dark flanks glowed like satin with sweat. The white marble stood ranked like tombstones behind them, unmarked against the glaring sky. Justin, stunned with the heat, half dreaming, watched a talon of light reach down from the sun, write names on a slab he could not read, yet knew he recognized. The stones lurched forward; the wagon passed the guards, whose attention already had turned to whatever followed it. The wagon rattled down the street away from Justin. He closed his eyes.

  When he woke again, shadow spilled over him, stretched halfway across the street. He moved stiffly, carving himself, bone by bone, out of the stone around him. He was so thirsty he could have drunk stone. He picked up his pipe, found a coin left in his pocket, and stumbled back to the tavern for ale.

  Midway through the tankard, he remembered the wagon, the white stones against the blazing sky, the letters waiting to be carved on them. He put the tankard down with a thump and a splash of ale, thinking coldly: We are armed. He left the tavern, began the long walk back to the heart of the city to find Nicol.

  Passing Pellior Palace in the early dusk, he saw a fair man in black come out of the gate, walk quickly down the street. He blinked, puzzling a moment, then remembered him with longer hair, untidy clothes, looking up from his meal in a tavern. He quickened his own pace, caught up with the librarian.

  “Master Caladrius?”

  He turned, startled, and studied Justin out of eyes darker than Justin remembered, so still they seemed almost inhuman. Then his face eased a little. “Justin? Isn’t it?”

  “Justin Tabor. I sent you here.”

  “You sent me here.” He added as Justin measured his lagging steps to the librarian’s brisker pace, “As you see, the work suited me. You don’t look well.”

  “I got up too early and walked across most of Berylon to the Marcasia Bridge. To meet a friend. I fell asleep on the stones, waiting.”

  “Did the friend find you?”

  “I saw him, yes.” He felt the librarian’s eyes on him again, and added, “I had to come back to play tonight. On the other side of the city.”

  “The place near the Tormalyne Bridge.”

  “The Griffin’s Egg. You never came back to play there.”

  “The only picochet I play belongs to the music school. Giulia found it for the Lady Damiet. I’m teaching her.”

  Justin lost a step. “Damiet? The goose girl?”

  “She has a certain artless feel for it. It’s an artless instrument.”

  “Why you and not Giulia?”

  He shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. She asked for me. I do what I’m told.”

  “Do you prefer that? Doing what you’re told?”

  “For now,” Master Caladrius said briefly, and left it there. They walked awhile in silence, Justin in his stupor, the librarian apparently lost in his thoughts. Reminded, perhaps, by the massive, silent structure they approached, he spoke again. “I’m learning the history of Tormalyne House. By all accounts, the House was creative, vigorous, and very powerful for centuries. There’s nothing left of it now. It vanished quite suddenly.”

  Justin opened his mouth, closed it. He pushed his hands against his eyes, wondering if the sun had melted his brain like butter, so that he would announce to a man who worked in Pellior Palace that the death of the House was an illusion. Its heart still beat in the silent, charred husk ahead of them. Its eyes would open soon. It would arm itself and rise.

  Tormalyne Palace, colorless as a skull in the dusk, loomed above its vine-tangled trees. The librarian’s steps had slowed; his face had turned away from Justin, as if he tried to find, within the shadowed gardens, the blind, blackened windows, some reason for its downfall. Swallows flickered through the trees; birds, invisible in the dense cascades of ivy, sang to the evening star.

  Justin’s thoughts wandered back to the wagon, with its incongruous load of arms and artist’s marble. The librarian touched his arm, speaking, his voice oddly low.

  “Walk ahead of me. Cross the street.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone is following.”

  Justin, about to protest that when the streets were filled with people someone inevitably followed, swallowed his words suddenly. The librarian had shifted shape once again, and he had let Justin see. What he had become, Justin had no idea. He quickened his pace promptly, curious, while the librarian lingered beside the iron fence, studying the ruined palace, the monument to the dead, that those born in Berylon scarcely noticed when they passed.

  Justin did not look back until he had crossed the street. He eased into a doorway on the crowded corner, and turned. There was no one behind Master Caladrius, except for a tall, bony man who looked frail enough to be toppled by a vicious picochet note. He passed the librarian without a glance, continued his solitary way along the fence.

  There was a movement above his head. A shadow, a crumpled black cloth, dropped out of a tree. The man ducked suddenly, hunching; another shadow fell, danced above his head. The man beat at the air with one hand, tried to cover his sparse hair with the other, tried to look up. A shadow clung briefly to his eyes. Justin saw him cry out, but could not hear him, nor could he hear any sound from the ravens darting and tearing at him like a pair of street urchins guarding treasure with splinters of broken crockery.

  The librarian was approaching to help him, but not swiftly. Justin, still idling, felt his sudden dark gaze across the street. He froze then, glimpsing pieces of the gaunt man in memory: in the tavern when he had spoken with Nicol, in the tavern beside the Marcasia Bridge, where he waited for arms. Go, the raven’s eyes said, and Justin pulled himself out of the doorway, fled into the evening crowds, pursued by a noisy flock of questions.

  He sent a message to Nicol at the music school, then waited for him in the tavern, sitting in a corner, drinking ale and watching, tense and edgy, for a glimpse of the bony man sitting alone with his bowl of soup and a bandage on his head. Nicol came finally, looking vaguely irritated.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, making Justin shift across the bench. Justin studied him narrowly, noted the subtle complacency that smoothed his brow and made his tone suspect. He drew a breath, easing back against the bench. “I can’t stay,” he heard Nicol say to the tavern keeper, and then, to Justin: “Where were you? I got a message fro
m Evera that the wagon stopped at her uncle’s yard hours ago.”

  “I fell asleep,” Justin said. Nicol made a sharp, exasperated noise. “Nicol—”

  “So you never even saw the wagon cross?”

  “I saw it, yes. It wasn’t searched. The street was burning, and Gaudi never came. Nicol, I was followed.”

  Nicol stared at him, wordless for once. Then he took Justin’s ale out of his hand, dropped a coin onto the table, and pulled him out of the tavern, across the street into the music school.

  They settled again in a tiny room with nothing in it but a rosewood music stand. Someone sang scales incessantly to one side of their room; on the other side, he could hear a group of instruments doggedly trying to drag a piece of music in several directions at once.

  “Followed by whom?” Nicol asked tersely. “When? Where?”

  “He was in the tavern last night—”

  “In the Griffin’s Egg?”

  Justin blinked. “I don’t—if he was, I didn’t see him there. He was across the street. He sat down beside me when you left. A bony, quiet man without much hair. I hardly noticed him. He was in a tavern at the Marcasia Bridge when I went there at noon. I didn’t recognize him there. He followed me back—”

  “What did you do when you saw the wagon? Think back. Carefully.”

  “I had fallen asleep in a doorway. I opened my eyes and saw the wagon just as the guards stopped it. They looked at the stone, and under the wagon, then waved it on. I watched it turn down the street.”

  “And then?”

  “I went back to sleep.”

  Nicol’s face smoothed. “Good,” he said after a moment, unexpectedly. Justin sighed, wishing for his ale.

  “When I woke again and walked back, I saw the librarian leaving Pellior Palace.”