Everran's Bane

by Kelso, Sylvia

  An Everran fort, a range, a direction, a country, and four phantoms were only riddles, cryptic, maddening. Another Quarred bard claimed Havos had been in Bryve Elond. “Its ruins are that hump just at the saddle-top.” The others he did not know. Ragnor’s hearthbard said aedryx were “connected with Lossian,” but having only two couplets of the song, he had discarded it. He did know they were wizards, and he added an odd phrase. “Wizards,” he said, “of the mind.”

  I had greater hopes of Tirs, if only from Sellithar’s talisman. Many new riddles were itching in my own mind. Beyond Stavan’s connection of aedryx and Lossian and “green eyes” and Beryx’s own reaction to Thassal’s gift, there was the way he had looked in the dragon’s eyes unharmed. The way they seemed to read each other’s thoughts. Moreover, if I understood aright, he had not only met Hawge’s eyes but told it an outright lie. And been believed. Recalling how Hawge had seen through me on the battlefield, I grew itchier still.

  Tenevel’s bard laughed at the talisman, “an old upland tale.” He had heard of aedryx, but never bothered with the lore. “Dead wizards, surely, are hardly memorable?” He preferred sugary compliments on my battle-song and eager interest in what I was making next. I returned an Estarian no-reply, and went back to the streets.

  Then, walking up a squalid hillside alley jammed with rickety shops and refugees, I heard a song.

  When the bitter water

  Catches ahltar’s daughter

  Who will save her eyes?

  The voice was thin, unaccompanied, but true. The tune was strange to me. It had a fey, elusive quality alien to the songs of men.

  When the Flametree’s tower

  Falls to apple-flower

  Who can swear it lies?

  I tracked it through the trash and piled goods and people’s beds and howling urchins to an even smaller alley that was torch-lit before mid-afternoon.

  When fengsoth and fenghend

  Run with Ilien’s finghend

  Women will be wise—

  In the gutter a man was sitting, face uplifted to the patchy yellow flare as he sang. The white eyes in the gaunt, nobly-boned old head told me he was blind, as so many great harpers are. He was also hairless, thin as a wraith, wrapped in the rags of what had been a hearthbard’s robe. He sat in the gutter with an empty, dirty cap beside him and sang without so much as hope of an audience, because singing was all he had.

  As wise as havos’ brother

  Who has the Air for mother—

  Sees the light and dies.

  Feeling as if I had seen my own death, I waited till the end. Then I sat on my heels and asked, “Father, where did you learn that?”

  He turned his vacant stare. I said, “I am Everran’s hearthbard. And I never heard it before.”

  His features showed a flash of eroded contempt, but he lacked the spirit even to scorn ignorant youth. He said in that husk of a superb voice, “I had it from my father. It is very old.”

  “Who made it?” I asked. “And for whom?”

  He was seeking some context to make it intelligible. My heart bled for a lifetime spent besieging apathy and ignorance. But he was a harper: if we have lore, we will try to pass it on.

  “It was made by Delostar,” he said. “A wizard. He made it for his sister. She was kin to Lossian.”

  He was too old to move to the keep: the honor he deserved would only have wearied or filled him with emptiness. I took him into his great-niece’s shop behind us, got him a place by the kitchen fire, a bowl of bacon and beans—they were ready enough to serve the royal bard. When he had eaten, and might believe I was in earnest, I said, “What do you know about aedryx?” Already knowing that this time there would be a reply.

  * * * * *

  When I left it was far on in the autumn evening, and it astonished me to find Maer Selloth festooned in leaping yellow fire. Then I remembered it was Iahn’s day, which Tirianns celebrate at home. Doubtless a risky proceeding, among the wooden houses of Maer Selloth, but one which has bestowed its name: with its constellation of yellow cockades perched there in the black of the hidden mountains, it did indeed resemble the Shadow of the Stars.

  Bracing myself, I climbed toward the keep, trying to hurry lest Beryx should want to honor the day, with my new lore leaden on my feet. But just beyond the gatehouse I was startled to meet Morran, and Morran in a hurry. Startled, because he had the knack of making speed without haste, and more startled because he snatched my arm and whisked me straight out onto the battlements.

  “Have you seen the king?” He was breathing hard. “I thought not. I looked for you everywhere, I was coming to find you—” A spurting bonfire caught his face: the cheekbones were bosses, the jaw clenched in a rigor of rage. “You don’t know what’s happened? Hawge has moved, crossed the road south of Veth Tirien, hit the Tirilien Vale. No, listen. It’s worse than that. Tenevel came to the king. You know how they—Yes. And it’s been getting worse. Beryx said, ‘Evacuate.’ Tenevel looked at him. Then he said, ‘To Estar?’ No, I didn’t hit him. I’m a guard. The king—”

  He swallowed. “Tenevel stuck his chin out and looked hard as rocks. Then he said, ‘Everran has fed the dragon. I will not gorge it in Tirs.’ Beryx said, ‘How will you stop it?’ Tenevel stuck. Then he said, ‘If there is no other way, I will remove the curse.’

  “No, don’t. Stand still. There’s more. Beryx said nothing. That made Tenevel push it. He said, ‘I have never shamed my hearth. But now I must think of my Resh.’ No! Be quiet. Beryx was... how he’s been. That woke him up. ‘Explain yourself,’ he said. ‘Tirs must have addled my wits.’ That stirred Tenevel up too. ‘Very well,’ he said. “Go out of my city, before you are its bane.’ Beryx said, ‘This is still Everran.’ Tenevel said, ‘Not any more. I am going to secede—’ No, wait! Beryx said, ‘You will find Hawge harder to dethrone.’ Tenevel said, ‘I think not. I know the lore. King-summoned, if not king-slain. Leave Tirs, and it will follow you.’”

  Morran took a deep breath. I could see his jaw muscles trembling.

  “He—Beryx—the king said, ‘Will you cast out Everran, or only me?’ Tenevel said, ‘Go or stay, the people may choose. But whoever leaves, there is one you will not take. You left my daughter to go junketing abroad: it did not save Saphar and you nearly murdered her. You have made her unhappy, in that northern tomb. And in five years you have not given her a child.’”

  The fires roared below us, glinting on his tears, the rage and grief of a man whose loyalty, his life’s deepest piety, has been outraged. I was beyond tears. As I made for the gate he hurried behind me, talking faster still. “I said, ‘Let me take the Guard and see to this.’ He said, ‘Shall I murder a host and vassal? Get out!’ I don’t know what to do. Harper—”

  “Do nothing,” I said. “He would not want it. To him, Tenevel has the right. He could not save his own kingdom. He cannot kill someone trying to defend theirs.”

  Morran said furiously, “Tenevel has no right—”

  I said, “You are a soldier, take orders. You can do no more.”

  Sellithar had her maiden rooms. Beryx, refusing to evict Tenevel’s family, had lodged in the turret above. Hurrying upstairs, I sought something to play. Music speaks, if not so plainly as words. Sympathy he would deny, counsel he would not tolerate, pity he would spurn like burning brands. He had maimed himself, humbled himself to the Confederacy, lost his friend and his capital. Now his kingdom was crumbling and his queen would go as well.

  I dared not think of Sellithar. If ever I had hoped to win her, it was not like this. But then I remembered Tenevel, turning his king out like a mendicant weaver, casting Sellithar’s barrenness in his face, talking of “my” Resh to the man who gave it him, and I did not tiptoe in as I had intended, I almost kicked down the door.

  Beryx had drawn a chair to the window-slit. He was leaning forward, chin on palm, elbow on the sill. The fires lit his profile: incisive, unyielding, unreadable. But his pride would see to that. I jerked up a stool and began t
o play.

  If music can speak scorn, that should have scalded Tenevel’s ears. When I finished, the last thing I expected was for Beryx to remark in quiet amusement, “Harran, I can still fight my own wars.”

  Not wishing to be as pitiless as Tenevel, as Morran, I did not respond, How?

  “I’ve been thinking,” he mused, “about that... What do you know of aedryx, Harran?”

  My breath stopped. I think my neck bristled. After the afternoon it was too pat, too apposite, too like Hawge—with a sinking in my stomach, I answered, “Nothing good.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “They were wizards,” I began. “A long time ago: even before Berrian. They ruled this country—all of it, the whole Confederacy. They had magic powers.” Wizards of the mind. “Not like the children’s tales, staffs and spells and potions. They could... see through walls. Talk to each other fifty miles apart.” Read men’s thoughts. “Something like... mesmerize anyone who looked at them.” Like Hawge. “They could blind, stun, kill—with nothing but their eyes. And... the worst was, they were evil. Cruel. Selfish. They tore the country apart. In the end, they destroyed each other. For a whim. For,” I could hear Asc’s deep voice saying it, “sheer wantonness.”

  He was still looking beyond Maer Selloth’s luminance, into the empty north. He sounded curiously distant.

  “Were they born—or made?”

  “Eh?” I said.

  “Were they born with magic—or was it taught to them?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt stupid. “Asvith only told me what they did.”

  Slowly, Beryx straightened up.

  “We have tried soldiers,” he said. His voice was very soft, quite impersonal. With shock I saw my restoration had been superfluous: under that shell was not surrender but a fire that burnt steadily, unquenched. “We have tried champions. Bribes. Treaties. We can’t find a hero. But we might find a wizard—if we tried.”

  Suddenly I was filled with unreasoning, instinctive fear. “Lord,” I said. “Lord... the old harper who told me, said, ‘I am singing songs of the aedryx to remind me that there are—worse things than Hawge.’”

  His voice was very low. “There is nothing else.”

  “Surely there must be something?” The fear was still on me, the inexplicable, irrational warning that the remedy would be worse than the bane. “Or someone? Must you...”

  “I must,” he said it softly, cold as steel. “I will.”

  Something else was in the room with us: an awareness, a willful, incalculable power, answerable to nothing, wayward, mocking, capable of destroying the world for a jest. I had a terrifying sense that with those few words the king I knew had already transformed himself.

  “Lord,” I said desperately, “they’re dead!”

  He looked round at me. The fires’ glow masked the scar. All I saw was the puck of a mouth-corner and the glint of a half-veiled eye.

  “I think,” he said, almost casually, “that I have aedric blood.”

  “Berrian,” he went on in that light, unstressed voice. “A long time ago. But I heard my nurse once, talking. She said, ‘Oh, he’s Berrheage sure enough. He’s got the aedric eyes.’ My father wouldn’t explain. The one time I saw him afraid. But you say aedryx magic was in their eyes. And I could look at the dragon. You shouldn’t be able to. But did you ever think about Berrian’s crest? An eye. Berrian. Lossian. Lossian had... green eyes.”

  I must have choked. He nodded. “You’ve heard that one?”

  “It’s impossible!” I burst out. “The aedryx are gone! You don’t have the magic! All you have is the blood!”

  He smiled at me: a fey, gentle, blood-chilling smile. “A weapon,” he repeated, softly, “that has not been forged.”

  I dropped my harp. His arm, his pride, his friend, his capital, I had seen what prices he would pay to save Everran. Never, in my wildest nightmares, had I imagined such a price as this.

  He was still smiling, with that perverse gaiety that chilled my spine. “So if we don’t have a wizard,” he murmured, “and a wizard is the weapon—one will have to be made.”

  My voice came out a croak. “It... you... How?”

  He stood up, lightly, but with a smooth, leisured movement quite unlike his usual swift decisiveness. “I think,” he said, “that since I am no longer welcome in Tirs... I shall go to Coed Wrock.”

  The Four know what drove me to it: shame, loyalty, insanity, the thing in harpers’ blood that cannot be gainsaid. “Then I am coming with you,” I announced.

  He laughed. “Yes,” he said, still chuckling, “if ever there was a time to ‘appraise the men of valor,’ it will be now.”

  Chapter VII

  We rode up to Coed Wrock at the heels of a storm on a windy autumn afternoon. The black and ochre valley was sodden, the sky full of turbulent gray thunder-wrack, with a yellow window flaring in the west. The house had a smoking chimney, gables, half a roof. Workmen had emerged from the scaffolding to look up with Stavan at the rest of the naked king-beam, and Thassal had been to the well. When she saw us she paused, bucket in hand: but not from surprise.

  “So?” said Beryx across the makeshift kitchen table.

  Thassal rested her hands on the planks either side the pot of fresh mint-tea. Again I felt a struggle, the breaking of ancient secrets, deeply sealed.

  She took a long breath. Then she lifted her head and plunged.

  “This family,” she said, “has aedric blood.”

  “So,” retorted Beryx promptly, “has mine.”

  Thassal’s mouth curved in a tiny smile. “You know that, ah? Then you know why we keep it quiet.” He waited. “There were—aedryx—in Everran in Berheage times. The last of them. Did you never hear of the Sorcerers?” His eyes narrowed. “Ah. Your forefather... hunted them down. Had them killed. Burnt. Drowned. Harpers made a demon of... Lossian. Ah. He was bad, but he was flesh and blood. There were other lines...”

  “Stiriand,” I murmured, “Histhira, Tirien.” And she looked round sharply: then nodded, accepting that the rest must be revealed. “Ah. My family springs from—a branch of the Stiriands.”

  That, I thought, explained their aloofness, their unconscious air of being more than farmers. The blood, and the need to hide. I too had heard of the Sorcerer hunts, the whole country crazy with fear, sisters accusing brothers, sons their fathers, innocents massacred by a lunatic mob driven by a fanatic king. I understood his fanaticism now.

  “My husband never knew,” Thassal was saying. “Stirianns have long memories. Even now, stories would start. Broomsticks at midnight. Wildfire round the house.” A tiny smile. “Resurrecting the king.” He laughed. “So this must still be—be—”

  “Under the seal?”

  “Ah.” She paused. I could feel his impatience. At last he prompted, “You know the magic?” Thassal flatly shook her head. “You know someone who does?” Another shake. “Could you teach it, then?”

  She looked thoroughly disconcerted for the first time since I had known her. Her gray eyes widened. “You?”

  “I do have the blood.”

  Her eyes held disbelief, wonder, consternation. She shook her head violently. “No. Not you. It would be—would be—”

  “It might be,” his tone was quiet iron, “the only thing I can do.”

  “No,” she said again. “No.” And the iron became steel.

  “Hawge has wasted Everran. Destroyed Saphar. There’s no help in the Confederacy.” Still she shook her head. “Tirs is going to secede.”

  That broke her. “Si’sta,” she said in a rush. “I don’t know the magic. Or anyone who does. But—” again the breaking of generations-old seals. “When they were failing, the aedryx, they made a—a fellowship. Families with aedric blood. Not the magic, just the blood. They helped each other. Hid each other. The children remembered. We... still do.” She looked at him again. “There may be someone to—who knows the magic.” A forlorn hope, staving off the worst. “I do know the password. And another
family...”

  Beryx stood up and smiled at her. “Accepted, general. Just give me the word and tell me the direction. Whatever I do with it, your hands are clean.”

  The password was quite simple: Tingrith. Eight. I wondered what the link was with Quarred and what other cupboards might hold aedric skeletons, as it led us from family to family, through disbelief, wild denial, timid concession. Then consternation at his purpose, then the reluctant yielding of another name, another family. But always the road was the same.

  When we came down from the uplands east of Saeverran and Gebria’s arid dusty red stretched before us, Beryx slitted his eyes as if to see over the horizon and said slowly, “I wonder where this will end.”

  It ended in one of the tiny Gebros garrisons, a collection of shanties and disused barracks about a brackish well that tunneled eighty feet to the waterline. The Gebros dwarfed it all, thirty feet of cut stone facing a rubble core, dusty, abraded by countless sandstorms, and cut sword-straight across the wilderness as far as we could see, an outmoded defense that remained an awesome monument. Beryx pondered it with admiration. “A determined old tyrant,” he said. “One day I’ll dam the Kemreswash, and build him a garden to match his wall.”

  Round the cracked table, beating off flies, feeling sand grate under our boots, our elbows, in our very tea, we renewed the search. The house Ruand was a desiccated black-burnt bull-necked Gebrian, who sent his family to bed at the start, and at the end scratched his ear.

  “Lord,” he said, “the only family I know is the one who sent you here.”

  Beryx said nothing. Watching the line of his jaw, I thought, If you did not build the Gebros, you kept the builder’s will.

  The Gebrian must have agreed, for he scratched his ear again. Then he said slowly, “All I can give you is a tale, and even harpers don’t heed it, even out here. But they say there’s a... big red rock. In the desert. With a spring. And green grass all year round. It’s femaere work. That’s what they call devils out here. If you try to drink at the spring, the femaere sends you mad, you run out in the desert and die.” He shrugged. “Hardly worth the breath, but—it’s the best I can do.”