Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  I am Cresce Dami, Bard of Onon. Lords, hear me! I will tell you a tale of the hunt stranger than any hunt you have ever ridden to the cyrillaya of victory…

  Then she saw the court of the Lords of Daghian.

  It was a small city within vast double walls of black stone. She counted eight towers and the great Keep, old as any song out of Daghian. Within, a massive, soaring building, half castle, half fortress, sprawled on a rise of land. The flame of Daghian snapped above it in the wind: a blood-red pennant a dozen feet long, bordered with gold. The hunters were riding through the broad gates. They swung shut again ponderously, but Cresce knew that no door in the kingdom would refuse to admit a Bard of Onon.

  Twilight was falling when she reached the gates. The guards recognized her odd bundles of instruments, the cothone in its case about her neck. The gates had begun to open even before she spoke. She heard a sound that thrilled her to the marrow: notes of a trihorne splashing across the evening, raised in the ancient salute to a Bard of Onon. The passage between the walls was torchlit. When she rode out of it into the yard, men were waiting to take her horse.

  She slung her instrument cases about her and walked into the great hall of the Lords of Daghian.

  Firelight, the smell of hot meat, and the voices of close to a thousand people talking and laughing rolled at her as she crossed the threshold. She stopped, her heart thudding at the sheer immensity of the place. There were nine open fire beds scattered through the hall; on each the carcasses of deer and boar turned slowly on their spits. Long tables surrounded them in rough disorder; red light caught at the faces of richly dressed men, women, and children, plates of silver and gold, cups and ewers of dyed glass. Groups of musicians played near each fire bed. They used flutes and harps, pipes and small drums. They were sweating; pitchers of water and wine stood near them, and trays of sliced fruits. Their listeners, at first glance, seemed oblivious to them. But Cresce saw young boys running too close to one group called sharply to order. She watched the great gathering of the court of Daghian. Beneath their laughter and conversation, the men and women seemed sensitive to every change in rhythm and song, and sometimes broke off mid-sentence to applaud an intricate passage of music.

  Cresce smiled a little. Then a servant spoke to her, led her to a place at one of the outer tables. She put her instruments down and took off her coat. Relief musicians sat at the table; their own instruments were scattered along the benches. Their eyes flicked to her instruments, her face, in sudden comprehension. She saw the respect in their faces, but they did not speak to her. She would break her silence at the court of Daghian only one way. She sat down, her fingers trembling slightly. She ate the food brought to her without tasting it, her mind tuned to all the nuances of sound around her.

  Finally, the intensity of voices seemed to slacken. Charred bones were removed from the fire-beds; servants began to dispense towers of finger bowls, trays full of pitchers of scented water, pitchers of wine, and great platters of sweetmeats and nuts. Musicians around the fire-beds drew their playing to a close. The relief musicians, their eyes on Cresce, began reaching for their instruments. Her throat swelled suddenly, as if she had swallowed air from a cothone. She stood up, drew the cyrillaya from its case. The musicians dropped back into their seats, watching her with a combination of wonder and excitement, as if she had walked out of a legend in front of them.

  Their table was half in shadow, and she was hardly taller than the boys who had been scolded for running. So she climbed on top of the table, stood under the flare of torchlight. The cyrillaya flared silver as she lifted it. She plucked the taut strings softly, tuned a couple. Then she pulled the mute out of the silver throat that amplified the taut, pure notes until not even a trihorne’s brilliance could overwhelm it. She swept her hand across the strings; even the boys wrestling in the shadows and the servants with piles of dirty plates stopped moving.

  Standing on the table, she could see the three Lords of Daghian, their wives, and an assortment of relatives. The older men were smiling, but there was not a flicker of expression on the faces of the Lords. One, the youngest, turned to another suddenly, opened his mouth. She stopped him with a single phrase: the first notes of the battle cry of Daghian. Then his face blurred into all the others as she drew breath, and said, “I am Cresce Dami, Bard of Onon. Lords of Daghian, the winds of autumn batter your walls; the flame of Daghian burns bright against the cold. Let me tell you a tale…” Her fingers skimmed over rhythms of the chase. “A long time ago…” Then because somebody was coughing, and a pair of lovers in the far corner had begun to whisper, and because the cyrillaya held pride and beauty, but the cothone held all her soul, she let the bright instrument drop to her side and swung the cothone into her hands. A low, plaintive call, the wind soughing among bog-reeds where stags drank, filled the hall.

  She had startled the Lords. She had also startled the musicians, whose mouths dropped with astonishment. The cothone was a herdsman’s instrument, an instrument for rough songs and long nights in the open, during battles or hunts. She wondered when it had been last played at an open feast in the hall. Some of the guests were glancing at the Lords, wondering whether or not they had been insulted. But the Lords had not made up their minds. Cresce, her voice clear, steady in spite of her sudden nervousness, built out of words and sounds the cold winter’s day, the crows’ crying in the frozen sky, the slow pace of the young Lord Sere as he tracked a great stag who was not a stag through the marshes of Daghian.

  Something was pulling at the hem of her skirt. The first faint tug had stopped her throat, but the cothone had droned on without her. The pulling persisted, but all her training forbade moving. She realized that one of the young children, attracted by her forbidden stance on the table, was mutely demanding to be lifted up. She tried to ignore it, hoping one of the musicians would see it. But the hall was shadowy behind her, and the musicians were caught up in her tale. She drew out of the second pipe the quick staccato flash of distant hunting horns, as the hunters that Sere had become separated from called to him. Her long, full skirt began flapping to the rhythm like a sail.

  One of the musicians gasped; she heard a ripple of laughter from the closer tables. She stepped forward on two beats, pulling her skirt out of the child’s grip. Her foot struck one of the musicians’ drums with a hollow thump, knocked it off the table. It thumped again on the bench, and once more on the ground. The musician grabbed at it, but the child pounced on it first and sat on it.

  A servant swept the child off the floor, and returned the drum to the musician, but Cresce’s throat had dried in the sudden laughter. Some of the women were talking. They quieted quickly as Cresce continued, but the words scratched in her throat. Then the thing too terrible to consider happened: the reed in the eighth pipe, dry with cold, split as she played a stag’s bellow. The deep bellow ran up into a strangled squeal, and dogs napping all over the hall started up howling at the sound.

  They were slapped into silence almost instantly. But all through the room, men and women were weeping with laughter. Even one of the Lords had turned his face away, shaking. The older Lord beside him stared carefully down at his hands. The third Lord did not move. His eyes were narrowed slightly and he was not smiling. The musicians seemed transfixed. Cresce dropped the cothone mechanically, shifted the cyrillaya back into her hands almost without losing a beat. But her heart was pounding raggedly, and the cyrillaya sounded too pure, almost colorless, after the rich, plaintive voices of the cothone. She swept the sound of Sere’s last arrow soaring above the marshes to strike at the heart of the stag.

  She heard a low murmuring from the men. Wine sloshed over the rims of their cups as they turned to one another. Cresce, her voice wavering a little, realized that muted arguments were flaring all over the room. She cast back desperately, wondering what she had done wrong. The cyrillaya was in tune; her voice was still strong and in key. She wondered if there was some ancient custom forbidding the playing of the cyrillaya to follow the cot
hone. But she would have remembered. Then she saw the agonized faces of the musicians, and the blood swept completely out of her face.

  In her nervousness, she had skipped an entire section of the tale. Men who knew it vaguely were trying to remember what was wrong. Old hunters who knew it well were telling them. Some were even singing it softly. Sere’s first glimpse of the legendary stag, and his arduous, exhausting chase that lasted for three days and three nights through the marshes—she had limped over it entirely when she switched instruments.

  A whole table of scarred hunters was beginning to take up the passage. Their cups were waving to the melody; as one forgot the lines, another took them up. Cresce, her fingers shaking, picked up their melody on the cyrillaya. She sang with them, trying to coax the song away from them. But their beat was ragged, their lines jumbled, and they were content with their wine and their voices.

  The children had begun to talk again. Some of the people were still listening, but Cresce knew it was out of pity, because they could hardly hear her. She had lost their attention. Her hands were trembling badly; she did not dare look at the musicians. Her voice was beginning to stick in her throat; her face was burning, and her lips were dry. A servant collecting wine pitchers let them clatter together on his tray. She knew, even without looking toward the Lords, that the sound was the judgment of Daghian.

  She almost stopped. The men singing, holding out their cups for more wine, would scarcely have noticed. The Lords of Daghian would send her back to Onon anyway in the morning. She thought of Ruld, the wine cup shattering between them, signaling the end of her life at Onon, and knew suddenly that she could never go back. Nor would she stay at Daghian, even for a night. She would finish her song and then leave. In the darkness of the autumn night, she would decide what to do.

  So she lifted her trihorne, blew a great, discordant blast on it. Singers and servants stopped short; one of the Lords choked on his wine. She said gravely into the sudden silence blasting back at her,

  “And so, Lords, in the frail, ice-colored twilight melting across the marshes of Daghian, the Lord Sere first glimpsed the great animal he tracked.”

  They were outraged. She saw it in their faces. But she gave them no time to tell her what they thought. Pitching the cyrillaya to vibrate the stone walls, she sent the enormous stag running through the hall to vanish again into the winter dusk. Then she used every instrument she possessed as Sere followed it. Her drum beat his horse’s hooves; the haunting sixth pipe of the cothone, the pipe of warning, tracked his passage through the dangerous, moonlit marshes. Her small pipes brought the sun up, as marsh birds called to one another across the wastes. Her twelve-stringed harp, unexpectedly gentle after the cyrillaya, played again and again the brief, wondrous glimpses of the stag that lured Sere deeper and deeper into the marshlands. The death of his exhausted horse as it struggled vainly in the deep mud it had stumbled into, she played on the cothone; the drum beat its dirge. The red sun flared to the trihorne’s salute across the morning of the third day. The hoarfrost on every tree limb, on every blade of grass, burned in Sere’s eyes; the winds ringing in the ice-world she struck on tiny tubular bells. The cothone played Sere’s exhaustion, his hunger, his obsession as he broke a path on foot through the lonely, fiery world. Finally, he saw the great stag clearly. The trihorne rang its turning as it stopped and faced him.

  His last arrow soared with the cyrillaya, burned into nothingness before it reached the stag. In Sere’s world of ice and silence, only the drum beat the slow steps of the white stag as it came toward him. Sere, weaponless, strengthless, lay where he had fallen, watching it come. He looked into its eyes. For two beats, there was no sound in the great hall of Daghian. Then the brass stag’s bell of the trihorne faded into the slow, pure voice of the flute as the stag faded into a woman whose eyes were the color of winter nights. She turned again, moved slowly away from Sere into the glittering winds. Flute notes ascended, shaped a great, dark bird, whirled to its flight as it vanished into the light. The cothone brought twilight once again over the world. Horses’ hooves snapped over the bog-ice. The hunters found Sere, half-dead of cold and hunger. The spare, comfortless voices of the fourth pipe, the pipe of longing, wept with his weeping as he rode with them back to Daghian.

  The cothone stilled in Cresce’s hands. She let it fall, stood looking out over the motionless hall. The faces were shadowed by the dying fires. She bowed her head to the Lords of Daghian. But before she could turn to leave, a musician beside one of the fire-beds leaped to his feet. He threw back his head, raised the trihorne to his mouth. The single high, piercing note set wineglasses ringing like ice all over the hall before they shattered.

  The youngest Lord of Daghian rose. There was a sudden clamor from the men at the tables. Cresce, her heart thudding in her throat, realized suddenly that they were shouting requests to her for other ballads. Her hands, so steady as she played, began to shake badly. The Lord of Daghian overtook a servant bringing a wine cup to her. He brought it himself, held it up to her as she stood frozen on the tabletop.

  “Welcome. I am Sere of Daghian.” He had wild, dark hair burnished with red and a lean, proud face like a bird of prey. out his eyes were smiling. He added, “The hunter was my grandfather. Drink.”

  She took the cup of chilled, spiced wine and drained it. He signaled to the relief musicians; they rose, took their places, while logs thrown on the fire-beds illumined the hall once more. Servants were dispensing cups, sweeping up glass. They were smiling, Cresce noticed, in spite of the extra work. She found herself able to move again, and she sat down abruptly on the edge of the table.

  “I was about to leave,” she whispered.

  “I know.” He sat on the table beside her. “I would have followed you. This is Daghian, not Hekar, where you would have been tossed into the autumn winds for playing the cothone at an open feast. I handle matters of music at Daghian, and I have never in my life heard the cothone played like that.” He paused a moment, studying her. “You are Jazi.”

  “My mother was a hill-woman. My father met her when he went to Jazi for a year to learn the Songs of Changing Fortune.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “To Jazi? No. I was born at Onon. My father taught there. I’ve never been anywhere except Onon.”

  “Taught? Is he dead?”

  She nodded. “They’re both dead.” She added after a moment, “I burned all his instruments except his cothone when he died.”

  “I have a cothone,” he said, almost abruptly. He was silent a little, frowning at some memory. Then the smile slid back into his eyes. “That was my son, pulling on your skirt. He’s three. I’ll teach him to show more respect for a Bard of Daghian. But you won’t be standing on tabletops after this.”

  Her hands slid to the table edge, gripped it. “Lord. Do you want me to stay?”

  “Do I want you to stay?” He ran both his hands through his hair, and the shadow in his eyes lifted, giving her a glimpse of his wonder. “Look at the high table. The big, dark-haired Lord with the face carved by a blunt knife is my brother Breaugh. The fair-haired, hot-tempered man beside him is my brother Hulme. They have heard that tale of Sere and the stag hunt a hundred times. And yet from the time you blew that sour note on the trihorne, until the musician spilled all our wine with his trihorne, I could have sworn neither one of them breathed. You will honor Daghian. Besides,” he added, standing up again, “I want you to teach me to play the cothone.”

  She played again before the feast was ended. Men sang hunting ballads with her; musicians added their own rich, soft accompaniment. Finally, past midnight, the hall began to empty, and the musicians put away their instruments. They introduced themselves to her, left her head spinning with half a hundred names. Then she met the two older Lords of Daghian.

  “Breaugh handles matters of estate,” Sere explained, “and Hulme matters of peace and war. I handle matters of music, which is the pride of Daghian.” He introduced their wives to her. But of his ow
n wife, he said nothing, and she wondered. As he was leaving the hall with her, to show her where she would live in the great house, he stopped suddenly, as if to tell her something. But he changed his mind. Later, before she tell asleep, she found herself wondering again. Then the appalling memory of her near-disaster washed over her. She flung the bedcovers over her head and curled up in the darkness, listening to her heart pound until she fell asleep.

  She sang and played nearly every evening then, either in the great hall or in the Lords’ chambers if they dined privately. She played for the hunt, if there were guests from the king’s court. She taught new musicians the ritual music for such occasions as weddings, namings, funerals, and welcoming salutes to various officials and guests. She taught Lord Sere the cothone; she taught Hulme’s wife the harp, and Breaugh’s oldest daughter the flute. Some nights she was so tired that she played through her dreams and woke exhausted. But there was a happiness in her that flashed out in her music, even on the most sullen autumn evenings.

  Sere learned the cothone very quickly. He already played the trihorne and the cyrillaya, but Cresce sensed something in him that woke to the haunting voices of the cothone. He used a very old instrument. Its pipes were pitched differently from Cresce’s instrument; they were scrolled all over with delicate carving and bound to the kidskin with gold. The deep pipe, the pipe of mourning, was so low it seemed to breathe through Cresce’s bones whenever she played it. She wondered often where he had gotten it. One day he told her.

  “It was my wife’s.”

  They were in a room in one of the oldest wings of the house. It was full of instruments: ancient pipes, flutes, drums of painted tree bark that were from Jazi, harps of varying sizes, from a five-stringed harp fashioned to a rough triangle of oak, to a thirty-stringed harp of pure gold that had been played only once, on someone’s wedding day. There were trihornes of a hundred battles; there was the cyrillaya that the first Bard had carried into Daghian. There were instruments so old that Cresce had only seen drawings of them. She had been given keys to the various cases, and she loved the room. Sere practiced there because the old walls were three feet thick and his brothers could not hear the squeals and nasal drones he startled out of the cothone before he began to master it.