Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “And what made you remember?”

  He shook his head, finding it difficult to answer. You are mine, her gaze reminded him. You have given everything to me.

  “I began to dream of fire. I made a journey into the hinterlands. Unknown places. I remembered, there.”

  “And there you found that pipe.”

  “I dreamed of it there. I recognized it here in Berylon and took it.”

  “From the music school.”

  “Yes.”

  She was silent a moment, as if hearing the overtones of the lie in his voice. But she did not challenge him. “And what else did you play in the hinterlands?”

  “Many things. Odd instruments.”

  “Do they all have such strange powers?”

  “Some more than others. All respond, like the fire-bone pipe, to the workings of the heart.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. She wound a path through some clutter of debris. He closed his eyes, feeling wood, ash, bone under every step.

  “And so you left the hinterlands and came to Berylon. To kill my father.”

  “Yes.”

  “And to reclaim Tormalyne House?”

  “I did not expect to live beyond your father’s death.”

  He felt her glance again. “But you brought your son with you. To claim his heritage.”

  “I would never have asked him to inherit such bitterness. He made his own way here without my knowledge. He refused to leave me.”

  “It was he who played the first pipe, that summoned the power in it.”

  He had to swallow again before he could speak. “He didn’t know—”

  “But you knew.”

  “That it was deadly? Yes. I killed Brio Hood with it.”

  She led him across a broad room to another set of stairs; they began to climb again. It seemed to him that she walked up night itself, step after step carved out of darkness, so that the stone beneath his steps was always unexpected. She said, “Tell me why you killed my cousin Brio.”

  He told her as they reached the crest of night and turned to cross another plane. She said, “And then you returned to Pellior Palace, Master Caladrius, to give my sister Damiet a picochet lesson. And to listen to her proclaim her love for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “My father killed your father’s children.”

  There was a question in the words, he realized; he tried to answer it, but found only confusion. She turned again to look at him, the faint smile in her eyes, as always, concealing what she saw.

  “We three are our father’s children,” she said lightly, like a riddle. “We are what he has made of us.”

  She opened a door; they began to climb again. He could see, in the room at the top of the stairs, a faint, silvery glow. He stared down, remembering the griffins carved into the marble on every step he climbed. He smelled the bitterness that still hung in the air after so many years. A question formed by fire and memory wrenched itself out of him.

  “What will you do with Hollis?”

  She did not answer.

  He recognized the room they entered. Light revealed the massive hearth, the charred ring on the floor, the ash and bone within it. He felt himself grow invisible again, a ghost of his own past, a nameless child made of ash.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered. She did not answer. The light came out of a crystal on one of the scorched, empty window ledges. Round and milky as the moon, it illumined the room and spilled silver into the night. He heard shouting from the gardens below, a muffled, repetitive thudding.

  “They can’t get in,” she explained. “I have locked the doors until my father comes.”

  He felt the hollow where his heart had been, the dry, papery taste of ash. “Where is Hollis?” His voice refused to come; he spoke only the shape of words, but she heard him. She looked at him, her eyes flashing white, reflecting light, and did not answer, even when he screamed the question at her.

  She was marking a circle with her footprints into the wind-strewn ash on the floor, when she stopped, mid-pace. She listened to some sound beneath the tumult at the door.

  “Who is coming up from the dark to join us?” she wondered, and finished her circle. He watched her steps link themselves through the ashes of his dead, enclose the fragments of their bones. He closed his eyes and heard the song they played, fire-bone pipes, wailing sorrow and fury. Steps, slow and tentative on the stairs, caught his attention. He drew breath to shout a warning; her voice stopped him.

  “Let them come. I want them.”

  He opened his eyes, stared helplessly at the open door, listening, with heart and bone, for Hollis. Hollis did not appear. Three faces came clear in the wash of pale light: all haggard, uneasy, oddly transfixed, as if they dreamed awake. He knew them. They saw him and their faces came alive, no longer spellbound but struggling with wonder now, saying his name without words, until Justin spoke.

  “Griffin Tormalyne,” he whispered. “We’ve been looking for you.” His head turned suddenly, as if Luna had just formed herself out of light. His voice came more clearly then, trembling. “You. What are you doing here?”

  “Waking the dead,” she said, and tossed a finger-bone and a gold ring into her circle.

  Ash and bone and gold ignited; a figure formed within the flames. Caladrius took a step toward it, loosing the cry that the child in the hearth, being dead, could never make. But it was not the raven in the fire, he realized even as he took another step. It was the Basilisk.

  He saw a coil of night, with a flaming crest and mad, restless eyes of lizard green and gold that seemed to draw life from everything they touched, and leave a shadowy husk behind. Its crest stiffened, flared with fire as it saw Caladrius. It hissed a warning mist of black, and rolled toward him out of the circle, stunning him with its gaze: Arioso Pellior’s eyes, seeing at last the child hidden in the hearth.

  He could not move. The world vanished around him, turned to memory. He tasted ash again, smelled the charred bones of the dead. He saw nothing but the Basilisk’s mad, glittering eyes. You are nothing, they said. You are mine now. You are dead. He breathed ash, felt it whisper into his heart, drift into him, enclose his bones. I am nothing, the child made of ash thought, transfixed in the Basilisk’s stare. I am dead. There was only this left to do: wait for the last ember that was his heart to flare and die, and then there would be only ash. He waited, within the silence of the marble hearth, while the terrible eyes drained memory out of him, his life, his name. Finally, he felt the spark within the ember flame, and he opened his mouth in pain to give his last breath to the Basilisk.

  The raven flew out of the fire.

  Caladrius felt it strike his heart. The clawed, rustling darkness burrowed into him, looked out of his eyes. It spread its wings, reached down with its beak to break a bone from one of them, out of which song poured like blood. He stared back at the Basilisk out of ravens’ eyes, his father’s eyes, and saw the death within the looming gaze. He heard his own voice in some fierce, harsh word of recognition. And then he felt the music of the fire-bone pipe playing through his bones, reshaping him with its song until he was the pipe, and the music, and the magic that had made both. He opened wings then, flew out of the flaming ember in the ash. He swooped and seized the deadly eyes in his claws, wrenched them out of the Basilisk, and dropped them into the fire.

  The fires were gone; they had never been; there was only the charred circle on the floor enclosing ash and bone, the cold ash in the hearth. The raven flew out of him into the shadows, where Caladrius felt its black, secret gaze. He was trembling. Notes from the raven-bone pipe seemed to flow out of him still, as he moved, searching the room for the vanished basilisk. His fingers loosened from some stiff, unfamiliar position. In the silvery light, a few drops of blood on the marble gleamed black.

  He looked at Luna. “What did I do?”

  She did not answer, except with her smile, brilliant and weary, the mask she held to the world. He saw three faces beyond her,
familiar and unfamiliar, as if they be longed in another tale and had gotten lost in this one. They did not answer him, either. They had been turned to stone, it seemed; they stared at him and could not speak.

  He saw Hollis. The raven’s song faded, stopped within him, then; he felt his own heart return. Hollis, standing near Luna, did not seem hurt, only stunned by what he had seen. Caladrius went to him, said his name; he touched his father, but could not speak.

  The guards came then, furious and sweating, spilling into the room. They recognized Luna and hesitated. She said briefly, “Take them to Pellior Palace.”

  “Even the librarian, my lady?” one asked.

  “He is Griffin Tormalyne.”

  She walked with them through the streets of Berylon, as though, Caladrius thought, she could not move past music, or fade into night. His mind still grappled with a confusion of images. The Basilisk had come out of the circle; the Basilisk had never been there; Caladrius had become a raven-bone pipe and outstared a basilisk: there had been no raven, no basilisk. Something had happened; someone had left blood on the marble floor. A raven had stolen something—a heart?—and dropped it into a fire which was only a memory of fire.

  As if she heard his confusion, Luna turned her hooded head to look at him. He could understand nothing in her eyes; he could see neither death nor mercy. She was not finished, he guessed; she wanted something, but did not have it yet, and what she wanted was not him, not Hollis, not anything he could see.

  She spoke softly, beyond the circle of the guards, her voice pitched for him to hear. “My father taught me many things when I was a child, Master Caladrius. I learned best how to see.”

  “I don’t know,” he breathed, “what I am looking at.”

  A guard, rough and edgy, ordered him silent. He walked quietly, watching the lights of Pellior Palace grow near, aware of little now but his steps, and Hollis walking with him. Then they crossed the threshold into light, and time stopped. He could hear Hollis breathing shallowly beside him.

  “My lady?” a guard said.

  “Send the captain of the guard to my father’s chamber.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  It was late, but the door to the prince’s chamber was open wide, and candles burned along the walls, beside the bed. Damiet, looking cross, sat at one side of the sleeping prince; Taur yawned at the other. The physician, alarmed at the onslaught against peace, met Luna at the door.

  “The prince has been taken with nightmares, restlessness,” he said softly to her. “He complains of the basilisk in the canopy, but will not let us take it down. He must rest.”

  She smiled. “He will rest now. I have brought him Griffin Tormalyne.”

  The prince stirred at the name. The book closed abruptly in Damiet’s hands. She blinked at Caladrius, then her lips thinned and her head turned sharply toward her father. Taur rose quickly, leaned over the prince.

  “Father? They have captured Griffin Tormalyne. Wake—”

  The Basilisk opened his eyes.

  It seemed to Caladrius that their eyes met for a long time before the prince turned his head away irritably and spoke. “Who is there? Taur? Why are you sitting in the dark? Did you say—or did I dream—bring me light!”

  “There are candles everywhere,” Taur said obtusely. “Look. Here is Griffin Tormalyne. Your librarian.”

  “Let me examine him,” the physician said quickly, returning to the bedside as the prince called, with increasing frustration, for light. Caladrius, suddenly unable to find breath, saw the shadow of a raven spilling down from a candle sconce. He remembered the odd stiffness in his hands, the raven’s sudden swoop and wrench, the death that it dropped into the fire. It, he thought, wide-eyed, motionless. I.

  “I can’t see!” the Basilisk cried. The physician, suddenly pale, looked across the bed at Luna.

  “There is no reason—” he said incoherently. “I cannot explain it—”

  Taur, his brows raised, passed a hand in front of his father’s eyes. “A blind old basilisk,” he grunted, surprised, and drew the Basilisk’s venomous gaze.

  “You think I cannot still rule?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “This will pass, Taur. I will live to see again, and what I do not see is Berylon passing into your hands.”

  Taur’s voice rose. “You have no choice! I am your heir! And you are no longer fit to rule. I declare myself—”

  “I declare you nothing. You will inherit only the life you have led, and your sister’s permission to continue it. Luna sees for me. Luna will rule, now, while I live, and after I die. You are all my witnesses. This is my will.”

  “You can’t!” Taur protested. “Father, you are ill, get some sleep. You’ll change your mind when you can see again.”

  “Luna!”

  She came to his side, took his hand. “Yes, Father.”

  He turned his head restlessly back and forth, searching for light. “You found Griffin Tormalyne?”

  “Yes.”

  “He is here in this room?”

  “He is here.”

  “And I cannot see…But I can hear. You know my wishes. Question him and then have him killed. I want it done here, now; I want to listen to him—”

  “No!” Rising, Damiet threw her book across the room, knocking candles into the hangings. Servants batted hastily at flames. She stood over her father, stamped her foot. “Not Master Caladrius! He was kind to me. You killed his family—all this is your fault!”

  “Then leave the room,” her father said impatiently, “if you don’t want to watch. Luna, you are my eyes, you are my mouth, your will is my will. Speak.”

  She looked at the guards. Silver flashed as one drew his sword before she spoke. Her eyes, reflecting firelight, suddenly transfixed them.

  “I have not given you orders,” she said. “You heard my father. I rule.” She gave them her charming smile, and then, lifting one hand lightly, she extinguished the unruly random fires in the hangings with a gesture. “You will obey me.” She looked at Taur; he sat down slowly under her bone-white gaze. “You may speak. Speak.”

  “You can’t—” he began furiously.

  “Be silent.”

  He was, abruptly, swallowing words, trying to push them out; a jewel dropped out of his mouth; a moth, with death’s-heads on its wings, flew out. Nobody spoke. A guard swallowed, touching his throat. Damiet watched in fascination, smiling faintly.

  “At least,” Luna finished, “until dawn.” She turned her baleful eyes back at the guards. “I can do many things,” she said softly. “My father taught me all he knew. I learned more than he taught me. I learned from him many, many faces of death. I can kill with a rose. With a written word. With the tip of the hand of a clock. You taught me these things, Father. Did you not?”

  “I did,” he said, still searching restlessly for light. “Remember that, if you are tempted to the least betrayal of her rule. She will be my eyes past death.”

  “I will help you see now,” she told him, and smiled again, her eyes turning their lucent green in the candlelight. She moved among the guards; they watched her, uneasy yet entranced. “Go now,” she told them. “Open the bridges. Unlock the music school. Let the dead of Tormalyne House be buried, and leave the living to me.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And Griffin Tormalyne?” the captain of the guard asked.

  She looked at Caladrius. He saw, like one last glimpse of life, the garden in her eyes, the fragrant light, the cool shadows and resting places. “I think,” she said softly, “that Pellior House has tormented Tormalyne House enough.” She turned back to the captain of the guard. “Let Lord Tormalyne and his son go free.”

  Taur, coughing, his hands at his throat, loosed a line of dragonflies. Stranger noises came from the Basilisk, who, struggling to rise, stared blindly at his daughter, his face purple, a vein throbbing furiously above his brow. He tried to speak, produced only a long, inarticulate word that ended in a moan. He stiffened in amaze
ment, one hand groping at his heart. The blood receded in his face; it grew paler and paler as he struggled for one last word until, falling back, he met the gaze of the basilisk above his head. He said nothing more. Only his eyes, growing fixed and lightless, told them what he saw.

  The physician, with a sudden exclamation, felt for his heartbeat. Damiet, her hands at her mouth, looked down at him in horror and curiosity; she shivered suddenly and moved closer to her sister.

  “He’s dead, my lady,” the physician said incredulously.

  “What killed him?” Damiet whispered. Luna lifted a finger, touched her father’s motionless hand; she could not seem to speak.

  “Kindness,” the physician guessed blankly.

  Luna looked silently at Caladrius, the mask of her smile fraying at last to reveal the strength behind it, the bitter love and weariness.

  He bowed his head, blind himself now with unshed tears.

  “Thank you,” he said. “My lady.”

  Seven

  The Basilisk was buried without fanfare. Luna, considering the dead of the Tormalyne School, was crowned with a single flourish from the trumpets of Pellior House. Both ceremonies, Caladrius thought, were remarkable for their silence. He attended them at Luna’s request, as Duke of Tormalyne House, though he still had to remind himself of his own name. The House, free at last to bury its dead, revealed itself to Caladrius little by little at various funerals. Students and magisters at the school were remembered with music from their cherished instruments. Standing under a cloudy autumn sky, with Hollis at his side, he listened to Nicol harp for one of the magisters and remembered the dead harper at Luly, who had called himself Griffin Tormalyne.

  A sudden chill in the wind stung his eyes. He looked north across the burial field, as if he could see the vast, white, unfurling wing from which the wind had sprung. Ravens in the trees lining the field called to the dead in their raucous, ungainly voices. Caladrius, listening to the mingling of harp and raven, felt again the strange shift of his body into wings, claws, singing bones.

  You turned into a raven, Hollis had said. You tore the Basilisk’s eyes out. Don’t ask me to explain. That’s all I know.