The Sartious Mage (The Rhythm of Rivalry)

by B. T. Narro

  The thought of Exo killing my cat Rubble abruptly bubbled up from wherever it was buried and squelched my excitement. I could feel myself moving to a dark place with other dreadful thoughts emerging. They were tied to Exo like links in a chain. I could feel myself starting to drift out of reality, going deeper into my worries.

  Sannil was in The Nest, and he shouldn’t be there alone. Soon, he would be delivering my note to a guard. Surely, they wouldn’t let him leave so easily. The worry of it sat atop my heart, heavy.

  Thoughts of Kory came next. The ache of my heart became heavier, and soon guilt started twisting its way into my stomach as well. Even though I knew it couldn’t all be my fault, it was impossible not to wonder if everything would’ve been better if I’d just left the Takary Palace in peace.

  “You’re terribly quiet.” Curiosity dangled on Lisanda’s words. It made her sound wistful, but in a restrained way, as if she didn’t want to reveal that she cared whether or not I continued.

  I’d lost all interest in hearing her sing, at least right then. I didn’t know what to tell her. She finally was smiling again. There was no reason to bring her down to my level of heartache by expressing my woes to her.

  I knew this dark feeling would pass soon; I just didn’t know how to make it happen quicker. But she still was waiting for me to say something. I couldn’t let the silence become so heavy again.

  Finally I just blurted, “I’m sorry,” completely unsure how she would take it.

  Lisanda looked up at me from the corner of her eye. I didn’t return her look but kept my eyes where they wanted to stay—at the green grass far ahead.

  She looked at me for a long while. It felt like she was burning a hole in my face. She didn’t ask why I was apologizing. She didn’t even ask why I’d given up trying to get her to sing. Instead, she turned back to glance at the grass ahead of us and surprised me by clearing her throat and starting to sing.

  Her deep, womanly voice really came out as she started the first line of Golden Girl. Her tone was rich in flavor, like a strong cup of coffee, and her accent added a touch of spice to it. Altogether, it gave her a seductive sound that sent a chill through my body.

  Lisanda glided through each line of the song effortlessly, as if she’d sung it a hundred times. There was nothing ordinary about her tone. It wavered beautifully between pitches. It was so original I clung to each word just to hear how she would sing it.

  Though her voice was otherworldly to me, her face showed none of the confidence I expected to see when I turned to her. She seemed consumed by worry, like the wrong note was approaching any moment.

  I didn’t understand it. The way she sang was unreal, the way I’d imagined fairies singing in stories. But then she used the wrong word—“on” instead of “in.” And then she skipped a verse, making it so the last rhyme was never resolved.

  Nonetheless, her voice carried on with the same strength, and relief replaced the budding tension in my head. She’d definitely had a lot of training to be able to continue as she did. Fighting through a mistake to make it look planned is one of the harder things to learn.

  Golden Girl was about a little girl who was the youngest of four sisters. Each had a special trait, except her.

  One could dance smoother than the rays of a low sun glimmering along a lake. Another could sing with more ethereal beauty than the bright moon in the starry black sky. And the third could play the strings with more grace than the wind soaring over the ground.

  The three of them together were welcomed in the highest courts of the noblest men. But this left nothing for the youngest—the “golden girl,” as she was nicknamed when she was born, for she was the only one with blond hair and was expected to outshine the rest.

  Golden Girl was skilled at dancing, but not as exceptionally as her eldest sister. She was a great singer, but nothing near her second eldest sister. She could play any stringed instrument with ease, but that role already was taken, and she didn’t get a chance to practice, for it only made her last sister jealous.

  She tried more academic routes, studying under the best tutors, but quickly found everything in books to be more difficult to learn than the most complicated dance routines. She tried her luck with magic, only to fail in miserable frustration. Years passed and her family’s expectations of her lessened, causing her determination to grow even more.

  By the time Lisanda got near the end of the song, her voice still hadn’t quieted in the least. But I felt the need to encourage her, especially from the way her eyes were squinted as if she was disgusted with herself.

  Yet, I refrained. I didn’t want to interrupt her with a compliment that could wait until the song was finished. Listening to her sing while the sun pierced through the trees of the forest gave me a luxurious feeling for which I’d longed for a year but didn’t know I wanted until now. This is what the city never had for me, this feeling of belonging, of deep comfort. I was lost in the beauty of our surroundings, of her voice, and especially of her.

  That’s when I knew what to do. I felt stupid I hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  I joined her in song, harmonizing my voice to give an even richer flavor to the sound. It was like the perfect sauce on a fine cut of meat. She stuttered just for a moment when I began but quickly found her voice and flashed her white teeth at me in a smile as she sang.

  We finished the song together. The melody was simple, not very catchy, but moving. The only reason the song wasn’t one of my favorites was because of the ending. It wasn’t sad, that I wouldn’t have minded. It was somewhat strange and in such a specific way it made me wonder if it was supposed to be based on a true story.

  Golden Girl traveled to Meritar, home of the Elves, in her quest to become the best at something. The Elves were impressed with her ability to dance, sing, and play a variety of instruments, and they soon welcomed her into their culture.

  This part didn’t strike me as being disconnected from the rest of the song so much, not yet. It was the final verse that never sat right in my diaphragm after I sang it, feeling like I’d eaten something still alive.

  Golden Girl learned not only the secrets of psyche, but also that she was exceptionally skilled at using it. She stayed in Meritar with the Elves for years, becoming a powerful psychic.

  Eventually, she returned home to find that everyone who loved her was now in fear of her ability with psyche. She was cast out, leaving her hometown, never to return.

  I’d never met a psychic, so I had my doubts about whether psyche really existed. The Elves and the desmarls were part of history. Everyone knew they were real, even though most never had seen one.

  But psyche was different. Psyche had no part of history. It was so disconnected, not only to the song, but also to the world I knew.

  The tales that helped demonstrate and explain the present world were always the easiest to believe: the desmarls pushing civilization to the center of the continent, the Elves’ lack of help in the Bastial Steel War causing resentment.

  It was the ideas that didn’t fit right in the world that curdled my stomach at the thought of believing them. And psyche didn’t fit, not at all. It was too strange—too unexplained. The thought of being able to manipulate others’ emotions made my skepticism lash out furiously. At least one psychic would be in a position of power if they really existed.

  Lisanda met my eyes with a restrained smile when we came to the end of the song. Earnestly, I told her, “You have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.”

  Her mouth tightened. Some of her smile remained in her eyes, but it was quickly fading, like the sun before a storm. “I told you I’m not as good as you.”

  Then I could hear what she must’ve taken for sarcasm in my voice. The words “most” “beautiful” and “ever” in the same sentence are hard to say without sounding facetious.

  “I’m being serious. Your voice is amazing.”

  That didn’t feel like the right word, and it didn’t seem to work, either. She still h
ad a tight glare as if waiting for me to tell her I was joking.

  I realized the problem was that I was having trouble describing how unique she sounded.

  “Your voice is like…” I tried to come up with something but could only think of stupid things that already had been said a thousand times and weren’t unique at all anymore—a rainbow after a storm, the sun bursting through the clouds, a beautiful flower, a rose, a sunset, a sunrise…none did it justice.

  Then I thought of something. “Your voice makes me feel like I’m finally in the right place at the right time. It’s the first time I’ve felt this way in a year, and I’ve missed the feeling more than I even knew. It’s a robust beauty that can’t be matched by anything made by the hands of men.”

  That seemed to do it. Lisanda smiled so wide she seemed to know there was no hope of hiding it, so she didn’t try.

  “I’m surprised you really think that. My father says my voice isn’t as elegant as it should be. It’s too low and raspy.”

  “It’s perfect.” I playfully nudged her as we continued to walk. “And you should tell him that the next time he says it isn’t.”

  She let out a rhythmic giggle. “You don’t know my father if you think that’s a good idea.” She nudged me back. “I’ve never heard the song sung with two people using different pitches. It sounded good with your harmony, though there were a few places of dissonance where we didn’t connect.”

  I’d noticed the same thing. It reminded me of something Sannil had said, which I then repeated:

  “Harmony is one of the most wonderful things in the world. But without dissonance, it’s meaningless.”

  Quickly it hit me how inappropriate my comment had been. Blurting it out without any preamble made it seem like I was referring to us, not music in general. We’d been in harmony recently—and after so much discord between us as well. It was inadvertently romantic, and I cursed myself for not thinking it through before I let it out.

  Lisanda’s smile flattened. “You’re not going to try to kiss me again, are you?” the Princess asked with a familiar haughty tone, like I was her enemy again.

  All the harmony between us was gone in an instant.

  “Try? You make it sound like it didn’t happen, and that it was my fault.”

  “It was your fault! And you should pretend it didn’t happen!” With wavering inflection, her tone was hard and bumpy, like the small rocks digging into our feet as we walked. “If someone found out, I would make sure they knew you were trying to seduce me.” She folded her arms defiantly.

  “So you’d lie?”

  Lisanda gasped at that. “It’s no lie.” Her voice became low and rough in a poor attempt to imitate mine: “Lisanda, sit on my lap and wrap your body around mine. Let me whisper in your ear and breathe all over your neck. Now, I’m going to kiss your cheek.”

  Her voice rose back to normal. “Admit it! Seduction!”

  “I might’ve given the first kiss on your cheek, but I made no motion to lock my lips with yours.”

  Her mouth dropped open in disgusted disbelief.

  “It’s true!” I claimed before she could give her rebuttal.

  “Is that so?” Her hands flew to her hips. “Then how did it happen, because I sure didn’t move my lips toward yours.”

  “I didn’t, either!” Not that I was aware of, at least. Truthfully, it was so dark and our faces were so close, I couldn’t recall how it had happened, but there was no way I would admit that. She simply would claim she did remember, and then I couldn’t argue back.

  I didn’t think she really knew what happened, either. Our lips had locked too suddenly.

  “You know…” The exasperation faded from her voice. “Trying to seduce a princess is a serious offense, especially if you lie about it.”

  I grinned contemptuously, knowing I was about to make her threat useless. “More serious than kidnapping?”

  She stopped for a breath, and then a defeated smile came about her lips. “I suppose not.”

  Chapter 27: Wager

  By the time the river came into view, a fresh breeze was rustling through our hair, and our argument had cooled with it. We were back to pretending the kiss had never happened, speaking instead of frivolous matters.

  It was the kind of conversation that was likely to skitter between two people who’d recently been acquainted, in which every question and every answer held subtle exposures.

  Though the words themselves told little, the tone behind them could fill pages.

  I was careful to keep my inflection calm, restrained. But when she would make me laugh, all my restraint would shatter apart momentarily, making me blurt out things I didn’t give myself a chance to consider.

  I seemed in even less control of my body, which couldn’t stop bumping up against her arm as we walked close. Every so often, she’d return the playful bump with a tight smile and a sarcastic comment, and it felt like sparks were shooting up the arm she’d collided into.

  Soon, the sounds of the river could be heard between fleeting moments of silence.

  Lisanda turned her attention toward it, curving her hand over her eyes for a better view.

  “It’s wider than I imagined.”

  She was right. It had been years since I’d visited the river, and now that I thought about it, trying to fill our water pouches in the wrong spot could be dangerous. Though the river was still too far ahead to see how quickly the water was flowing, I knew this general area from memory.

  “It’s even wider in other places,” I said. “We should find a place less treacherous. The water runs too fast here.” I pointed east. “Let’s go this way.”

  “Nonsense.” She gently placed her hand on mine to lower my pointing finger. “It’s not like we’re jumping in. All we’re doing is filling these water pouches.”

  I couldn’t help but show her a knowing smile. “You’re going to change your mind once we get closer.”

  She taunted me with her own proud grin. “A princess doesn’t change her mind easily.”

  “She will this time.”

  Lisanda’s eyes opened wider as they studied my face. “Would you like to make a wager?”

  Immediately interested, I felt a tickle of excitement. But it was gone the moment I realized I had little to gain and a lot to lose, especially when Lisanda was in the opposite position.

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked hesitantly.

  She curled her lips under her teeth. My stomach was starting to feel sour as I noticed the seriousness in her eyes. I had an unnerving feeling this wasn’t going to be a friendly wager.

  Did she still want to leave as badly as she used to? It would hurt to hear, but now I felt that I wanted to know. No, I had to know. Did she want to go back to the palace and Varth Farro as soon as possible?

  It’s eerie how a question can be produced and then suddenly become more important than anything else. I let her think as long as she wanted, waiting, hoping she wouldn’t ask to be let go.

  “You tell me what you want first,” she answered finally. “Depending on what it is, I’ll make you offer something just as important.”

  The answer came quickly, but it seemed like too much of a request. I wracked my mind for something more appropriate, but I kept returning to the original idea, liking it more and more each time. It was the best way to find out if she wanted me to let her go.

  “When we get to the river, you have to fill the first water pouch. If you get scared and decide to travel farther down to a safer place, then I win, agreed?”

  “Agreed, and what do you win?”

  I kept my tone serious. It was easy as there wasn’t a hint of excitement or fun in my body at that moment. This was a business arrangement. This was a way to get an answer I now needed to know. It was even more than that—to get something I’d wanted for the last few days.

  “If I win, you agree to stay with me until I have the cure.” The words seemed to echo in my mind. I could hear them again and again in the thick
silence that followed.

  When she folded her arms and leaned back, I knew she felt the same tension that I did. I felt breathless as I waited.

  “I can see you’re not joking,” Lisanda said with a bitter tone. “And that’s quite a difficult thing for me to promise.”

  “You don’t have to make the wager.”

  She pushed her palms out at me. “Wait a moment. I didn’t mean I was scared. I just want to make sure you’re taking this seriously.” She gestured around us. “We have no witnesses here to verify the agreement. Following the consequences of the wager is purely based on trust between Jek Trayden and Lisanda Takary.”

  By using our full names, I could tell she was going to invoke some strange royal oath or something I’d never heard before. I didn’t mind. I was serious, and whatever it took for her to be the same way would be fine with me.

  “I’ll follow the agreement,” I said. “Tell me what it is you need me to offer.”

  “Jek Trayden…” In a showy manner, she presented her palm to me. “Has requested that Lisanda Takary.” Her other palm came to her side. “Stay with him until he has a cure to his darkness.” She took a moment to brush the hair from her face and then glanced into my eyes in such a serious manner it seemed to take hold of my heart.

  “Lisanda Takary is requesting that Jek Trayden never marry her sister, Jessend Takary, no matter what is offered to, or threatened of, Jek Trayden. Does Jek Trayden agree?”

  Was this some kind of joke? Why would that matter to Lisanda? Better yet, how could I possibly come to another situation where Jessend’s hand in marriage would be offered to me? But I knew there was too much formality for it to be a simple quip. Lisanda was serious. I would’ve been relieved that she hadn’t asked for me to let her go, but I was too overwhelmed with curiosity about this request.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, feeling some of the tension lifted now that I knew she wanted something more than to be let go. “How would I ever marry your sister? Your father will never want to see me again after this incident. He won’t even want me in the same city as his family, and that’s if I’m lucky.”