by Jane Yolen
“Am I… presentable?” she asked. She did not ask if she looked well, if she were pretty, or some other coquetry. Simply presentable.
I would not lie to her.
“Presentable,” I said.
Mar-keshan grunted and she turned to him.
“If you stand tall, they will know your true beauty,” he said. “Beauty is in the bearing.”
She smiled at him. “You sound like my mother.”
“And her grandmother,” I added.
She looked at me and perhaps my tone had been ungentle, but she did not comment further. So once again in silence we went out through the winding halls.
Tell me about those halls. I never could map them.
The princes’ apartments in L’Lal’dome are in an ever-spiraling circle like the whorls of shells that sometimes wash up onto our shore. Why should you try to make a map of them?
So that I might find my way alone.
Only a prince may walk those halls. Only a prince and those who companion or serve him.
Call it—curiosity, then.
You sky-farers have a strange curiosity. It drives you ever outward. Does it drive you inward as well?
What we learn of the outward world we apply to the inward.
Then think of a shell. Like a true man of Waters, Mar-keshan collected such shells and he once gave me a prize one, whole and unmarked, sliced through and both halves mounted on a wooden stand. We have a musical term for such a pattern as well. We call it lara’lani, a circle-puzzle.
We have such things on our home world as well. They are called chambered nautilus.
Cham’bured naut’lus. A strange word.
The word chamber also means living space or apartment.
How fine. I love playing with words. But you see, we needed no maps. The apartments, the cham’burs, were not mazes to a prince. Of all the places in our world it is what I know the best. But for the uninitiated, the place is truly a circle-puzzle, a labyrinth. I expected therefore to see puzzlement writ large on Gray’s face.
But she followed me with that same silent grace, head high, not a word about the spiraled puzzle path we traced.
In the very center of the lara’lani lived the Queen, though there is more than one entrance to those apartments. Still, when coming for an audience, it is the main spiral that one always uses for approach. At each footfall, once past the Apartments of Princes, bells announce the way. I used those bells thematically in the second section of my song cycle, repeating them near the end of the songs, a refrain and a death knell at once.
I remember it well. I thought the bells beautifully punctuated the phrasing.
Punctuation? Yes. Exactly. How clever of you…. But of course. You are a musician, too.
Only the bells seemed to bring Gray out of her silence. She said, “I am called—” then stopped.
I shrugged. One can get used to any cacaphony, make music out of the strangest sounds.
She shook her head as if shaking the thoughts free. Just as she did, the great wooden doors opened.
Heads turned toward us. I saw T’arremos, smirking, hiding his map-face behind a ringed hand. And my brother princes, those who had already completed their missions, in the bright colors of the Queen’s Consort, turned on their cushions and looked up as we walked in.
On the first and second levels below the Queen’s dais, on twenty cushions each, lay C’arrademos and D’oremos, their faces showing no more emotion than the stone caryatids outside. On the highest level, surrounded by the thirty cushions of Queenship, lay the Queen herself. Long and slim, so slim the skin seemed neatly tailored over her bones, she made no move except a blink. So Royalty schools itself.
We waited for a signal from her. At last she moved her hand. I pulled Gray to my side, then with a little nudge started her down the aisle and followed close behind.
Without looking back at me to make sure she was doing the right thing—which any other girl from Lands might have done—Gray walked to the foot of the risers. C’arrademos tucked his feet under his buttocks to make room for her to walk up, but D’oremos did not move.
“Come, child,” said the Queen, leaning forward and holding out her hand, a singular honor indeed.
Gray walked up the stairs. By accident she stepped on a corner of C’arrademos’s outermost cushion, which caused great consternation in the Hall; but Gray did not falter. She stepped over D’oremos, which saved him from a like humiliation. And when she was on the level with the Queen, she knelt and took the Queen’s preferred hand.
I closed my eyes. I think I moaned aloud, waiting for some awful blow to fall. One simply does not touch the Queen in public unless she demands it with the proper words and signs. And then into the silence I heard Gray’s voice, though it could not have gone farther than where I stood. I do not think she meant her words to go even that far, for I had to strain to hear them. What she said was meant only for the Queen.
“Do not fear the dark, my lady, for I am sent to light your way.”
It was the simplest of speeches, the language straight out of the Middle Lands. Later on, of course, she was to learn the more ornate court speech, but she never used it in her poems. There were Royals who criticized her for it, but she was right to hold to her own.
The Queen patted one of the lesser cushions by her side and bade Gray sit. Without hesitation or a formal demur, she sat.
It made the greatest sensation the court had ever seen. C’arrademos bit his lip. D’oremos turned to wink at me and I knelt at the bottom of the stairs until the servants brought me my ten pillows. When I sank back against them I realized I was weak and shaking and, strange to say, there were tears in my eyes.
The Queen used her court voice, which seemed quiet but could carry to the very walls and beyond. It is a trick of Queens to speak so. Even as a King for almost a year I have yet to master that voice, and I was trained as a singer.
“Let me see your poems, child, the ones I have been told about.”
If Gray had been one of us, a prince or other Royal, there would have followed an elaborate show of apology or regret, cozening and coyness, then final reluctant obedience. But Gray knew none of the games of court. She reached into her small reed basket immediately and drew out a handful of poems.
“Read them to me, child,” said the Queen in her inimitable voice. She lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes.
Gray began to read, starting with the original Gray Wanderer poem, whispering it to the Queen.
“Louder,” instructed the Queen, “that we may all hear them.”
For the first time Gray looked unsure. There were some thirty princes in the room, and though they had eager attentiveness written on their faces, there was a kind of predatory quality to the look. Gray whispered something to the Queen and she smiled.
“B’oremos,” said the Queen.
I sat up, still shaking.
“Go to your room at once and bring your plecta and sing me the song that you wrote to accompany this poem. We will wait.”
I hurried from the room, face flushed but triumphant. I did not even glance at T’arremos, though I could just imagine the blue veins running through the map on his cheek like pulsing, angry rivers to the sea.
Mar-keshan was standing at the doorway of my apartment with the plecta in hand. How he knew what I wanted was one of those many small mysteries of the servant class. I was just grateful that he served so well. I grabbed the instrument from him and, tuning as I went, hurried back along the whorls of the halls, past the bells, to the Queen’s Public Room.
It was as if no one had moved since I left. Along the aisle leading to the risers were the princes on their cushions, with T’arremos on his knees still aghast at my good fortune. The Queen was leaning back, eyes closed. Her two advisers on the second and third levels were wide-eyed and waiting. Hands folded, Gray sat as if the silence in the room had given her permission to think.
When I reached the bottom of the levels, I strummed a full c
hord on the plecta. Its voice was strong and echoed beautifully with the harmonics that bounded off the rounded walls.
I sang, slowly at first, then with gathering strength. And when I was done, Gray began to recite five other poems. They were good, solid accompaniments to the first, a strong beginning to the Gray Wanderer Cycle, though the third one, which begins “What isles are we…” is rarely heard anymore. It was hard to believe that a girl of Lands just out of the blush of childhood could have written them. The last was her very famous “Valediction.”
The Queen sighed and waved her hand in a complicated pattern that was the signal for the priestesses to come forth.
A door slid open to the left of the cushions and three members of Moons stepped out.
What vestments were they wearing?
The belted white kirtles for prophesying and the diadems, with the moon phases, on their shaven heads. The eldest priestess was the seer, though sometimes it is a younger one who has the gift of seeing time. She carried the rood of augury in one hand, the orb of prophecy in the other. Only when she had bowed to the Queen did she hand over the precious relicts to her acolytes.
The Queen nodded to them. “What do you know of a child of Lands?” asked the Queen.
The old priestess looked into the orb that one acolyte held cradled in her palms. For a moment the orb seemed to emit a blue light. I was awed at the time, but I have since been told by a sky-farer the secret of that inner flame. There is a cache of oil inside the globe and a pair of flints that strike when a certain mechanism is touched.
Whoever told you was wrong to do so. It is our vow to observe, to study, to learn.
As King it is my duty to know everything. Besides, the young man was drunk on royal wine at the time. It is better that I know the secret of the Moons’ magic. Believe me, I have told no one.
You have told me.
You will not let it go further. You dare not, if you have learned our customs well.
What did the priestess say?
“A child of Lands shall lead the way,” was what she said.
The aisle princes oohed at this revelation. I kept silent and looked at Gray. Her head was bowed but her face was composed.
“And is this the child?” asked the Queen. One may ask a single question more of prophesy.
The priestess turned and grasped the rood where the two sticks cross, two fingers on either side of the upright stand and her thumb across the middle.
“She shall be betrayed but she shall remain true.”
The Queen dismissed them. It is said that the prophesies of Moons are always accurate but that one never understands them until long afterward.
“So you shall remain true to me,” the Queen said to Gray, choosing to ignore the rest of the augury. “That is, if you are really the child of Lands of whom we have been told. Come, show me you are indeed that child.”
“And how may I do that, my lady?” Gray asked, looking directly at the Queen.
“By composing another threnody now, while I watch. How do I know you did not simply borrow your poems from the promptings of your elders?”
Gray looked down at D’oremos and he stirred uneasily as if sensing what was to come.
“But I have no one to grieve for, my Queen,” Gray said.
The Queen smiled. “Nor have I,” she said. “But time delivers us all to grief. Let us eat now and talk no more of dying.” Her hand signaled the servants and the Hall was turned at once into a feast place. I got to play dances instead of dirges and the resultant melodies made even Gray smile.
It was past the peak of night when we were dismissed at last from the Queen’s Public Room and Gray was beyond exhaustion. The flowers twined in her hair had long since wilted. Her gray gown was wrinkled and stained past—I would guess—even Mar-keshan’s abilities to reclaim it. There were faint red lines traveling like rivulets to the golden centers of her eyes. Of course I, used to court nights, was not as tired, but I faked weariness and sent her along to her bed.
Before disappearing, she turned in the doorway. “For all that you have done…” she began.
I turned away quickly. I did not want thanks or pity or whatever else I read in those tired eyes. In fact, I was no longer sure what I wanted of her.
She took the dismissal as her due. Lands girls are always so sentimental. I listened as her footsteps faded away.
Then I hung the plecta on the wall and the last resonances of its strings died away as well. That sigh of the instrument on the wall always moves me enormously. I blinked back a tear and turned.
There was a messenger bowed down on the rug by my outer door.
“Prince B’oremos,” he whispered.
I knew from his rainbow loincloth that he came from the Queen.
“Speak.”
“She summons you.”
I guess I was not entirely surprised, but still I could feel my stomach tighten, my organs engorge with a rush of blood. It was the first call I had had…. I looked quickly down the lean line of my body.
“I am ready,” I said and followed him out through the halls.
We did not go along the main public way but along the Pleasure Path to the Queen’s secret back door. The walls were muraled with scenes of tumbling, of naked male with naked male or female, though of course there was no picture of a naked Queen.
The servant did not enter the Pleasure Door, but I knew it at once. How often had we whispered about that famous portal, with the words of the Principle carved into the lintel: Burn the fierce light of pleasure before the dark cave. And I wondered, as generations of princes before me, how it would feel to sow the Queen, to have her long, slim legs around me and to run my fingers through the dark ropes of her hair. Surely it would be different from the sweaty couplings with plump Lands girls or with an occasional scale-skinned girl from Waters. Queens do not sweat.
The lamps were low, their small flames made gentler by the colored glass that framed them: oranges and blues and a filtered green that reminded me of the sea off the shore of L’Lal’dome. Shadows played across the ceiling where silken hangings blew and billowed in the pulsing air.
The Queen lay back against her cushions, a darker shadow than the ones dancing above her. She did not move, not even to wave a hand to call me in. I could not see her mouth but she spoke to me in that court whisper. I thought, flushing, pleased, that every room in L’Lal’dome must have echoed with her royal command.
“Come, B’oremos, plow me. Give me a girl child that my line may live.”
And I tried. Oh, how I tried. All the positions and words and gyrations I had practiced and had been taught in my foreshortened mission year I applied to the Queen’s unresponding body. All the while she breathed shallowly in my ear. I never raised her to a moment of passion.
And when I was done, having spent my coin three times in her purse, she lay as unmoving as at the first.
“Well plowed,” she said, speaking the ritual words to me. There was not even a change in her voice, not a bit of rushed breath or fading delight. Then she added in an undertone that I had to bend over her to hear. “Your enthusiasm and loyalty are to be commended.”
“My Queen,” I answered in exhaustion.
“And now,” she whispered, rising up slowly onto one elbow, “I have a task for you for which you have just received first payment.”
“My lady,” I said.
She told me. It was to be the first betrayal.
Tape 6: THE SEVEN GRIEVERS, PART III
Place: Queen’s Hall of Grief, Room of Instruction
Time: Queen’s Time 23, Thirteenth Matriarchy; labtime 2132.5+ A.D.
Speaker: Queen’s Own Griever to the apprentices, including Lina-Lania
Permission: No permission, preset, voice-activated
AND HERE ENDS THE SONG of the Seven Grievers as was told Master to Master down through the lines from the hour of the sisters’ joining to the moment of my tongue’s speaking. I have saved these woeful songs in my mouth and in my heart f
or the time when, as the Queen’s Own Griever, I may have to wail for the dying of the land once again.
Hear, then, and listen well. My word is firm, firmer than sleep or the Cup that carries it, firmer than the strength of heroes. My voice makes the telling true. To listen, to remember, is to know.
So the Night-Seers became the walkers in the day, six great families: Lands, Moons, Stars, Rocks, Waters, and Arcs and Bow. And they were dark and dark-seeing still; few indeed were their smiles.
But of the People of L’Lal’ladia, the Place of Blessing and Rejoicing, there remained but two who were not drowned. Two there were who had hidden themselves from the rising waters, a brother and a sister who had bound themselves in an empty cask and floated out upon the very face of the sea.
For the one hundred times one hundred days and nights, the two lay entwined in the wooden womb, rocked by the waters. And the only sound they heard was the lapping of the waves upon their boat.
But then they thought they heard another sound, the dolorous chants of their dark sisters weeping upon a new-made shore. So the brother and sister untwined themselves and pushed up the cover of their cask and revealed themselves to the watchers on the shore.
And when they were hauled in by the nets of Waters and set upon the land, the Night-Seers saw that these two were unlike themselves, being tall and slim and fair.
“Come,” said the two, “there is still song in the world other than dirges. There is still light that pierces the night. We who are taller than you, we can see farther. We who are slimmer than you, we can run faster. We who are fairer-skinned than you, we are closer to the Light.”