Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  He went to the cabinet, took out the bottle and uncorked it. The smell, sickly and bitter, made him grimace.

  How dare Tartarus imply his treatment was wrong? Safely sedated, she could do no harm to herself. And yet… he knew as well as Tartarus the risks of continuous sedation.

  His hand hovered over the cork.

  It was as much of a risk to stop the treatment.

  But suppose Tartarus was right and the sedative was slowly poisoning her? He had done all he could to end the insidious influence of Amaru Khassian. Once the musician had been removed from Sulien, the most immediate danger to Orial’s sanity was over.

  He stoppered the bottle tightly and replaced the sedative in the cabinet.

  The Commissaire of the Sulien Constabulary rapped loudly on Mistress Permay’s door with his staff.

  ‘Where is Amaru Khassian? I have a warrant for his arrest.’

  Constables burst into the Diva’s apartment, flinging open doors, peering under couches.

  ‘What are you all doing?‘The question, released at full opera-house volume, made the crystals of the chandeliers tremble. The constables paused mid-search, disconcerted.

  Cramoisy Jordelayne had appeared in the doorway of his room.

  The Commissaire took off his gold-tasselled tricorne and approached him, warrant in hand.

  ‘If you could tell us where he is –’

  ‘I have no idea where he is,’ Cramoisy said in a low voice, all the more menacing for the contrast with his earlier ear-splitting shriek.

  ‘If you are not prepared to co-operate with us, then –’

  ‘I told you. Are you deaf? I don’t know where he is.’

  One of the constables came up to the Commissaire, respectfully touching his forehead.

  ‘He’s right, Commissaire. There’s no one else here.’

  ‘I told you so!’ Cramoisy said.

  The Commissaire let out a little sigh.

  ‘And precisely what crime does this warrant accuse Khassian of?’ demanded Cramoisy.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to divulge the details.’

  ‘What will you do with him? Lock him up?’

  ‘Until he can be taken under escort to the border. I understand that there are serious charges to be answered in his own country.’

  ‘You’re deporting him?’ Cramoisy cried. ‘But you can’t!’

  ‘Good day to you.’ The Commissaire beckoned his men and hastily retreated towards the door.

  Khassian found himself caught up in the jostling crowd, drawn downwards through the echoing Temple, towards the Undercity. He could just see Dame Tradescar ahead of him, the old scholar still clutching her canvas bag closely to her chest.

  The vast vaulted hall of the Main Reservoir glimmered with a thousand lotos candles, lily-white, rose and gold. The people of Sulien thronged the rim of the glimmering waters: even little children waited, wide-eyed with excitement, clutching rainbow streamers.

  A holiday atmosphere pervaded the hall, a sense of contained anticipation.

  ‘This way!’ Jolaine Tradescar signalled to him over the heads of the crowd. She was slowly forging a passageway through to the back of the hall. Khassian followed, slipping after her into one of the narrow passageways that wound away from the reservoir.

  The Undercity was no longer pitch black; lotos candles burned in every niche and alcove in the wall. When they came to a pillared doorway, Khassian suddenly recognised where they were.

  ‘The Hall of Whispering Reeds,’ he said.

  ‘Tread carefully,’ Jolaine Tradescar said. Her voice trembled with excitement.

  In the centre of the dusty floor a circular shape had been revealed, decorated with fragments of tile stained with bright glazes: blue, turquoise and grass-green.

  ‘A mosaic pavement.’ Khassian knelt down to look more closely.

  ‘Isn’t it exquisite?’

  ‘A flight of dragonflies…’ Khassian’s hands hovered above the mosaic, slowly tracing the pattern Jolaine Tradescar had uncovered.

  ‘And you led me to them.’

  ‘I? It was as much Orial as myself.’

  ‘Orial has always had a particular affection for this chamber.’ Jolaine Tradescar gestured to the painted walls. Khassian could vaguely make out the figure of a woman, hands crossed on her breast. She stood knee-high in a meadow of white star-lilies on the borders of a stream. Dragonflies encircled her head, in a winged cloud.

  ‘Star-lilies. A symbol of death for the Lifhendil. These meadows represent the Other World, the afterlife.’

  Khassian was only half-listening. He could see Orial, wandering through that lily meadow, her hair unbound about her thin shoulders.

  A symbol of death…

  At that moment he could not have identified the bright pain that lit his heart, the reason for the sudden quickening of his breath. The image melted away, as swiftly as it had come, spring snow in sunlight.

  ‘The circle. The spinning circle. The image recurs throughout the depictions of their mysteries.’

  ‘“The ceaseless round…” ‘Khassian murmured, recalling the words of the ancient psalm he had sung as a boy.

  ‘“The harmony of the spinning spheres”… yes, yes, I recall it too. But I don’t think the Lifhendil understood it merely in a metaphysical, cosmological sense. To them it was a reality. The Winged Ones, the Eä-Endil. Orial’s illness is the sign that she is ready to be translated, to become part of the circle.’

  ‘To die,’ Khassian said bluntly.

  ‘No.’ Jolaine Tradescar’s response was so vehement it took him by surprise. ‘We’re such sceptics. In Tourmalise, reason and enlightenment prevail. We cannot begin to imagine a world which moves to a different rhythm, a world where the numinous is made manifest. It contradicts everything we have been taught –’

  ‘Trespassers!’

  Khassian spun around to see a Priestess standing in the entrance to the hall. In the flickering lotos-light she looked, in her starry veils, as if she had stepped down from one of the wall-paintings. But when she came closer, shaking her finger at Jolaine Tradescar, the momentary illusion passed.

  ‘Dame Tradescar, you were expressly forbidden to enter the Undercity today. I am sent to escort you both back to the Main Hall.’

  Jolaine Tradescar sighed and reluctantly gathered up her belongings.

  ‘Why do you violate the sanctity of our ceremony?’ The Priestess asked. Khassian sensed that they had held this conversation before. ‘It only comes once a year. You know how important it is.’

  As they drew near to the Main Reservoir, the perfumed scent of the lotos-candles filled the vaults with the drowsy sweetness of a summer’s meadow.

  The dark air throbbed with sound: a chanted song surged from one corner of the hall to the other, like a translucent wave. Khassian, pressed so tightly up against Jolaine Tradescar he could hardly move, wanted to reach out and catch it as it passed – and instead found himself engulfed in it.

  At the same moment there began a grinding sound as if some great stone wheel had been set in motion.

  Khassian strained to see what was happening; Priests and Priestesses in an obscure corner seemed to be straining to work an elaborate system of cogs and pulleys.

  ‘Up! Look up!’ Jolaine Tradescar cried.

  A ray of sunlight pierced the vault.

  Khassian raised his head – to see a thin crescent of pale sky appear in the roof far overhead. The mechanism had opened a concealed window in the vaulted roof of the reservoir.

  A breath of clean air wafted into the drowse-fumed hall.

  ‘This is it,’ murmured Jolaine Tradescar. ‘Will they fly?’

  The crowd fell silent, as if waiting, collectively holding in a breath that could not be released until –

  Until –

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Jolaine Tradescar muttered.

  A murmur of apprehension passed through the onlookers. The Priests and Priestesses stood staring, dumbfounded. Amidst the murmuring,
Khassian began to distinguish words, hushed words.

  ‘A sign. A portent. An omen.’

  ‘Ill luck…’

  ‘Mammie,’ came a little child’s voice, clear as a glass bell, ‘why won’t they fly?’

  There was an uneasy ripple of laughter.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Khassian whispered to Jolaine Tradescar.

  The Antiquarian scratched her ear. ‘I’ve never known such a thing. Not in eighty years.’

  ‘Is the weather not warm enough?’

  ‘Perhaps their breeding grounds have been disturbed.’

  The elder Priestess came to the rim of the reservoir and passed her hands over the dark waters in a series of ritual gestures. As her hands moved, she began the chant again – and gradually, hesitantly, the onlookers joined their voices to hers.

  The Priestess had closed her eyes and was drawing in deep, shuddering breaths.

  The chant faded – as she fell backwards into the arms of her acolytes. A voice, hollow and inhuman, issued from her gaping mouth.

  ‘The souls of the Dead shall not be One with the Light…’

  The hairs at the back of Khassian’s neck rose. He had been sceptical about the ceremony. Now he felt a deep and visceral terror.

  ‘Until the Rose and the Lotos are One…’

  The Priestess’s hand lifted and – as though moved by a power more potent than her own – slowly pointed. Directly at himself and Jolaine Tradescar.

  ‘Violator of the sacred places…’

  The people beside him began to edge away.

  Her eyes, whites showing, stared sightlessly towards them.

  ‘Put back what you have taken.’

  ‘I? What have I taken?’ Jolaine Tradescar began to splutter. ‘I’ve been digging down here for over half a century. No one has ever made such an accusation before!’

  ‘The dragonflies have never refused to fly before!’ cried one of the Priests.

  ‘Pshaw! You miscalculated! Look to your calendars and check before you start blaming me. What taboos have I broken? Surely the Goddess would have struck me down if I had violated her shrine, hm?’

  ‘I came to see my mother’s soul fly free,’ a woman said, and burst into tears. Others turned around, staring.

  ‘Dame Tradescar,’ Khassian said, ‘I think we should leave.’

  He hooked his arm through Jolaine’s and began to draw her backwards towards the stairs as the murmurs of the crowd grew louder and more fingers began to point in their direction.

  ‘Violators!’

  Orial walks through a darkling meadow. Flowers, waist-high, brush her skirts, star-lilies whose petals seem to gleam with the burnished glow of sunset.

  As she passes, her footfall sets the petals trembling. She leans closer. Vibrations emanate from the fire-flushed flowers, audible vibrations, tickling her ears.

  ‘Orial!’ Someone is calling her name. She glances up and sees a shadowed figure on the edge of the fiery meadow, arms outstretched towards her.

  Suddenly the petals go swooping up into the air. A trail of notes falls from the wings on to her upturned face like pollen.

  They swirl around her, dazzling her with their rainbow pollen. Dizzied, delighted, she feels herself slowly lifting, rising with them in their circling flight into the air.

  ‘Orial!’ The calling voice seems very faint and faraway now.

  She gazes down – and sees a body sprawled on the grass in the darkened meadow. The flowers have withered, the stalks are brown and dry. Whose is the body lying there so still, so lifeless, crumpled like a discarded dress?

  *

  A carriage was stationed outside Mistress Permay’s house. As Khassian approached, one of the blinkered horses snorted and struck the cobbles with an iron-shod hoof. It must be waiting to take the dowager Lady Bartel to the Assembly Rooms; the old lady always kept her carriages waiting whilst she fretted over her toilette…

  He heard the carriage door open and footsteps hastening towards him. A hand clamped on to his shoulder, firmly turning him around.

  ‘Let go of…’ he began to protest – and found himself confronted by two constables of the Sulien Constabulary.

  ‘Amaru Khassian?’

  He nodded. His mouth had suddenly gone dry.

  A third man stood in the half-light, holding open the carriage door.

  ‘I am the Commissaire. Please be so good, Illustre, as to get into the carriage with me.’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’ Khassian began to shout. ‘And if so, on what charge? I demand to know why I am arrested!’

  The grip on his shoulder tightened; the two constables tried to manoeuvre him towards the carriage.

  ‘At least tell me what I am charged with!’ Khassian cried.

  ‘Now, sieur, let’s not make a scene. We don’t want to distress the neighbours, do we?’

  Glancing back over his shoulder, Khassian saw shadows appear at the lighted window on the first floor.

  Cramoisy. Let it be Cramoisy.

  They bundled him into the carriage and, clambering in after him, pulled the door to. The Commissaire rapped on the roof with his staff and the carriage lurched away over the cobbles.

  Orial started up, wildly staring around her.

  She had been in a sunset garden. There had been flowers, colours, sounds… oh, such ravishing sounds…

  But then she had heard the voice calling to her from beyond the garden. And there was such anguish in the voice that she had felt compelled to go to the gate to see who was calling. Looking all around, she ventured outside –

  The garden gate slammed shut behind her. Outside, all was darkness, beneath a confusion of windblown clouds – and when she strove to find her way back into the garden –

  ‘She’s awake.’

  Orial blinked Cook’s face into focus, haloed in soft lamplight.

  ‘Cook? Have I overslept? It must be late…’

  ‘Praise the Goddess, she’s awake!’

  She struggled to sit up but sank back, her head swimming.

  ‘Why… do I feel… so muzzy?’

  ‘You’ve been ill, my lamb. Now you just lie there quietly and let Cook bring you a nice drink of barley water.’

  ‘Ill? How long… have I been… ill? And where’s… Papa?’

  Cook hesitated.

  ‘He’s been called out to – on business. Oh, but he’ll be so happy when he hears the news.’

  The oil-light cast a striped pattern through the barred grille of Khassian’s cell door. He sat hunched on the wooden bed, staring fixedly at the barred shadow. It could be an empty segment of stave, waiting for notes to be inscribed upon it.

  Or a bar of silence.

  The Sulien Constabulary had treated him with firm but detached courtesy. They had locked him in a single cell, away from the drunks and petty thieves. He had demanded to see a lawyer, he had demanded that they send for Cramoisy, he had demanded to know the charges on which they were holding him. But no further explanation had been given.

  Now he sat here on the bare-boarded bed in the darkness, starting at the slightest sound, tense and anxious.

  Why? Why had he been arrested? Who had accused him of a crime? What crime had he unwittingly committed? The Mayor had assured Cramoisy that they could stay in Sulien as long as they wished…

  ‘On your feet!’

  The two constables unlocked the door and beckoned him out.

  The first thing Khassian noticed was the Sulien coat of arms on the wall, dominating the courtroom, blue and flaking gilt.

  The Commissaire sat at a table beneath the coat of arms, his hat and staff of office before him. He yawned behind his hand, evidently weary of the affair, looking to bring it to a swift conclusion. A clerk sat at his right, pen in hand, ready to record the session.

  ‘Your name is Amaru Khassian, native of Allegonde?’

  ‘It is,’ Khassian said, ‘but –’

  The Commissaire raised his hand to silence him.

  ‘Amaru Khassian, y
ou are charged with a serious crime: the moral seduction of the young woman, Orial Magelonne.’

  ‘Moral seduction! What manner of crime is that?’ Khassian stared at the Commissaire incredulously. ‘And who brings this charge against me?’

  ‘Let the plaintiff come forward,’ said the Commissaire in disinterested tones.

  Jerame Magelonne stepped out of the shadows. He moved like a sleepwalker, his eyes staring staright ahead at the Sulien coat of arms.

  ‘Magelonne?’ Khassian whispered. Magelonne still stared fixedly at the coat of arms.

  ‘Jerame Magelonne, do you bring this charge on your daughter Orial’s behalf against Amaru Khassian?’

  ‘I do,’ Magelonne said in a low voice. ‘I took this man in when he came to Sulien, a fugitive from Allegondan justice, I healed his wounds. And how has he repaid me? By ruining my daughter’s life.’ Magelonne’s eyes, glazed with tiredness, focussed on Khassian. ‘By driving her to the point of distraction.’

  ‘No!’ cried Khassian. ‘It’s not true! I never wished her harm, I –’

  ‘The accused will remain silent until spoken to,’ said the Commissaire coldly. ‘Dr Magelonne, you say this man is a fugitive from Allegondan justice. Is there any other here with evidence to support those claims?’

  ‘Yes,’ said a voice. A woman’s voice.

  Khassian gazed wildly around, seeking out the speaker. She had been standing behind Jerame Magelonne and now she came forward. She was dressed for travel in dark riding garments.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Fiammis, Contesse of Tal’Mont and Reial. I speak as the official representative of the government of His August Highness Prince Ilsevir of Allegonde.’

  Fiammis. Now Khassian understood. Acir Korentan had returned to Bel’Esstar – but in his place this clever agent had contrived Khassian’s arrest. He should have heeded Korentan’s warning. And now, now it was too late.

  ‘This man, Khassian, is wanted by the courts in Bel’Esstar. I have a warrant for his extradition.’ She drew a paper from the breast of her jacket and laid it on the table before the Commissaire.

  ‘I do not recognise the courts of Bel’Esstar!’ said Khassian, starting forward. The constables caught hold of him by the arms and pulled him back. ‘I am a musician, persecuted for my beliefs. I have committed no crime – neither here, nor in Bel’Esstar. I request asylum in Tourmalise.’