Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  When she opened her eyes and saw him, in that moment, she had smiled too widely. And then ceased her playing, straightened, addressed him in ordinary fashion. Not as if he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to have seen, or heard. And in time, Ned had come to wonder if it really had been that strange; if he’d imagined it. But some nights, the notes of the music returned to him; Ned would startle awake. He would leave his bed to look at the child, with her fine hair like his own, and stand over her bed awhile. With the sight of her small limbs and rounded face he would try to recall who he was, what was urgent in the present.

  He couldn’t tell Rianna any of that, though. Yet somehow she must have seen something, or guessed.

  “If she is mad, make her come home,” she had said. “Ned, she saved my father. Do this for me.”

  Now in the banquet tent Ned drank. He was loyal to his sworn lady, and to the lady of his heart. He hoped wine might clear any discord between the two, at least tonight.

  * * *

  IN her tent Lin Amaristoth lay wakeful, swathed in silk: coverlets and an embroidered robe that had been a gift from the Kahishians. Its caress on her skin like a breath, recalling nights in other beds like this one; soft skin, legs enfolding, cries of surrender. Edrien Letrell had been hosted in palaces of the east. Restless, Lin sat up, cursing under her breath. A singing, of insects or some amphibious thing, was all that marred the night’s quiet.

  “Do you require anything, my lady?” Garon Senn, outside the doorway of her tent. He had taken the night watch for himself. His voice like sandpaper, a steadying contrast to silk.

  Almost, she solicited his aid in calming her need. She’d seen how he looked at her when they were practicing. But knew the danger and the folly of that road. “Nothing,” she said, and the quiet crept back.

  She mulled the events of the evening. It was clear already that Valanir had been right—there was something odd at work in the Kahishian court, though she doubted it was complex. The hostility she had felt from the Second Magician was unmistakable … he had not troubled to hide it. She had seen King Eldakar take a blow to his honor without retribution or even reply. His wife, Rihab Bet-Sorr, was a political liability, without family or connections to avail the kingdom. The more popular brother was away, at war in the north. It was no wonder someone like Tarik Ibn-Mor saw an opportunity. Perhaps he schemed with the king of Ramadus, promised an alliance through marriage if raised to the throne … it fit together almost too perfectly, like a puzzle box.

  A bird cried out in the night. Lin didn’t recognize its call. She was far from home. The fragrance of poppies blew through the tent flap.

  Her thoughts went to Valanir Ocune, who would have returned to the Academy by now. They had spent hours in conversation, and he’d told her all he could of the Zahra. Of his friendship with Yusuf Evrayad, who had been fearsome in battle but harbored a deep respect for the poets of Eivar. The Tower of Glass, Valanir averred, was a wonder to behold. It was there that Zahir Alcavar had helped guide Valanir towards the enchantments of Eivar. Tarik Ibn-Mor he knew less well, though the two were contemporaries; the Second Magician held himself aloof.

  Valanir also gave her the name of a contact in Majdara; someone to seek out who might help her find out more about the Fire Dancers. More than that, he would not say. Nor would he say more about the politics of the Academy. The Seer’s manner of evading a direct question, Lin thought with some wryness, likely took as much skill as his songs.

  He was unquestionably hiding something, but Lin did not try to draw it from him. She was gentle with him those last days, almost solicitous, to compensate for the way she’d misjudged him. Had made use of what she knew from Edrien Letrell of the varied ways to give a man pleasure, their last nights together. That first night she had done no more than take what she wanted. Believing him immune to loss, or love.

  The night before she was to leave for Kahishi they had held each other a long time. “How can I persuade you not to go?” he’d said.

  She’d smiled into his shoulder. “Do you have any methods left?”

  “It’s dangerous,” he said again. It was a recurring argument.

  “I’m dangerous,” she said. “And already endangered. There’s no use arguing—my mind is set.”

  “We will most likely never meet again,” he said. His first time using this, his last arrow.

  “You want to make me weep.” She traced his chest with her fingers. “Sing to me instead.”

  He had, then, until the dawn.

  CHAPTER

  4

  HE arrived to singing. Voices that coiled in harmony, soared upward. They came from the chapel but rang clear in the entrance hall, lent an even greater sense of vastness to that space with its sculpted ceilings, pillars hewn of mountain rock. The sound nearly brought Valanir Ocune to his knees. Twin forces at work on him—memory and realization. He recognized the elegy for a High Master. And was flung back to another night many years prior when he himself had stood in the chapel to sing the mourning rites for a fallen Seer. Someone he’d loved.

  Tonight would not be like the last time. His actions and those of a few others had seen to that. There was enchantment in the music now offered upward to the heavens or gods. In truth, Valanir did not believe gods had much to do with it.

  He was shaking as he shut the doors behind him. He could not recall his last conversation with Myre, but doubted it was how he would have wanted to leave things between them. The old man had shown a distrust for Valanir Ocune since the latter’s student days. A sentiment not wholly unwarranted. Valanir had been a fractious student. He and Nickon Gerrard together. They showed remorseless, relentless disobedience, and talents too brilliant to be suppressed. A figure of iron even in those days, Seravan Myre had not been amused by the combination. Where the High Master of that time was inclined to indulge, Archmaster Myre had encouraged punishment. Valanir and Nick, the two of them, were cause for dissension in the highest ranks of the Academy.

  It made Valanir’s task of mediation between Academy and Crown more challenging now. Especially after he’d broken the Academy’s most fundamental laws by making Lin Amaristoth a Seer without the consent of the High Master. Such a crime as would have been held against him, had the Academy the right to punish him. But as an agent of the Crown, he was immune.

  While Lin had seen Valanir Ocune as a creature of the Academy with a cold view toward her use, Archmaster Myre had believed him motivated entirely by self-interest. In the end, Valanir thought, the old man probably had the truth of it. But there was not much one would accomplish in life if one spent it racked with introspection and second-guessing. The desire that had animated Valanir Ocune to become a Seer, and to delve beyond that, was not one for which he would repent. Desire and art were of a kind.

  Desire. He had been too long in that room of subdued light from the east, with its view of the ports of Tamryllin.

  I won’t let this happen, he had said. They were supposed to have power, a Seer’s words.

  Valanir Ocune knew he had become vulnerable to introspection as he stood in the foyer, travel-weary. The whole journey he’d been in a daze, even when entertained in the homes of friends. Some who took him in had certain expectations, such as the red-haired woman he’d often visited. He’d made the excuse of illness, and then felt undeserving of her anxious ministrations. He could have availed himself of her comfort, but had not the heart. As if the grey that encompassed Lin’s room at daybreak had entered into him.

  A shadow crossed towards his in the entrance hall. Archmaster Hendin, looking careworn. “So you’re back.”

  “Too late, it seems.”

  His friend’s eyes widened. “You think…”

  “A moment.” Valanir held up his hand. He crossed to one of the pillars. Felt a rush of relief. “What are you doing, Julien Imara?”

  The girl emerged from behind the pillar. She had been sitting, wrapped in grey, on a shelf beneath one of the windows. It had made her seem a part of the stones.
She lowered her eyes. “If you please, Erisen,” she said in her soft voice, “I wanted to hear the music.”

  “Young woman, you should be asleep,” said Archmaster Hendin, though he sounded more tired than angry.

  “It is a strange night,” said Valanir Ocune to his friend. “Perhaps a difficult one for sleeping.” He turned back to the girl, whose eyes were now raised to regard him. Solemn eyes. Chestnut curls pulled back with a ribbon. What are we doing to these children? “Am I right?” he asked the girl.

  Her gaze was steady. “I learn by listening.”

  “Do you.” He felt a pain, though that may have been occasioned by a rise in the voices nearby, in a melody so familiar it did more than give shape to a new grief; it recalled old ones to him as well. “You remind me of someone,” he said. “Archmaster, how does this student in her studies?”

  Hendin seemed surprised by the question. “She is capable,” he said after a moment. “But does not speak in the lessons.”

  “Is she encouraged to speak?” Valanir shook his head. “Never mind. I know you do the best you can, Hendin. Mistress Imara, we will speak of this later. Go to bed.”

  When he had ascertained she was out of earshot, he turned back to his friend. “Tell me how he was found.”

  “Peaceful,” offered Archmaster Hendin. “In his room. But there was one strange thing.” He recounted that the Seer’s mark had blackened around Myre’s eye. “And the others—they are already beginning to talk of who will be next in line. And who will complete the ten. Both they speak of as a given. I dare not protest.”

  “Go on,” said Valanir Ocune.

  What Archmaster Hendin proceeded to tell was only somewhat surprising. Valanir had expected Archmaster Lian would be elected by the Masters’ council to take Myre’s place. Lian was one of the eldest, considered able, but more than that: he was pliable. A contrast to Archmaster Myre, known for his steel resolve.

  The tree that does not bend will break.

  The other news, about the Seer due to arrive and complete the ten, was less expected. A name Valanir Ocune had not heard in some years. It recalled to him things he had long thought forgotten: memories of his time as a student. Archmaster Lian had been only a year ahead of Valanir—they had disliked one another on sight. The supercilious son of nobility believed he was owed deference. Yet there was one student at the Academy to whom Marten Lian himself deferred. Serving him as one would a king.

  And now that student—now a Seer—was coming back to be an Archmaster here.

  It was a great deal to think about. But before he went up to his room, Valanir looked closely at his friend. “Cai.” A short sound, Hendin’s given name. A weight of memory attached. They’d been friends for so long. “Are you all right?”

  Hendin hunched his shoulders. “I will miss him,” he said, and turned away. It was unlike him to be so abrupt. They were friends but he still didn’t want Valanir to see his grief. When he was gone there was only that song, resounding from pillar to pillar in the entrance hall.

  Valanir was lost in thought as he mounted the stairs to his room, the song fading behind him. Whatever happened tonight, thought Valanir Ocune—even if nothing happened—it was unlikely he would sleep. When he arrived at the door to his chamber he stopped. He reached out with his mind in the way Magician Zahir Alcavar had guided him years ago. Nothing. But he checked again after he had unlocked the door, set down his candle on the bedside table and his bags on the floor. The room appeared undisturbed.

  He began to change out of his clothing, which was stained and damp. Almost immediately there was a knock.

  But as he rose, the Seer relaxed. That particular knock—three raps, a long pause, two more—was familiar. He had devised it himself. “I thought you’d come,” he said as he opened the door. “As it happens, I have a new task for you.”

  * * *

  THE greatest danger to Dorn Arrin on a night such as this turned out to be neither fatigue nor hunger. Both had dropped away when he found himself tangled in a glory of voices. These were amplified by the acoustics of the chapel. Extended deprivation—hours of fasting and prayer to Kiara—had opened a well of vulnerability in him. From this the music came. As the men stood facing the plinth where their High Master lay, voices merged as one, Dorn felt as if a knife slit him open. None but he saw what it exposed. But standing in the chapel for hour upon hour, pouring himself out in song, he could not look away.

  His had been a life too confined, he knew. Years on this rock, far from where real things happened. He had never even visited the mainland against the rules, as the others did some nights. It was forbidden, yet may as well have been tradition. Students would steal a boat and go into Dynmar—for girls, mostly. Etherell sometimes joined them. Most expeditions were led by Maric Antrell, who in many ways led the students of their year. A reason Dorn had few friends.

  Yet he felt joined with these men as they sang together; even with Maric, who stood nearby—another of the students chosen. Tomorrow they would be enemies again, with Maric and his cronies finding some way to trap Dorn in a corner. Etherell Lyr would come to his defense, all lordly swagger and skill, and Dorn would seethe with the humiliation. These boys had been trained for combat practically since birth. Dorn knew how to sew a binding.

  The most recent incident had been just that week, the night before Archmaster Myre died. Dorn had been late that evening in the library. There was a curfew, but he tended to ignore it, and he pursued an interest of his own. There was an entire genre of songs written after the fall of the Academy and the disappearance of the enchantments. A time known as the Age of Laments. The songs that emerged in those years were ragged with loss. Their powers gone, the poets of Eivar had not ceased to sing. But the wound was fresh, their words like blood.

  Dorn leafed through manuscripts of these sometimes. Voices called to him in the pages. Notations preserved the melodies. He would read and in his mind the notes sounded. They produced the feeling in him similar to when he watched the descent of dusk on the Isle from the window of his room, another day slipped irretrievably away.

  It was late, then, when Maric Antrell had materialized at Dorn’s elbow, like a malevolent spirit summoned. He did not look well, Dorn had thought spitefully; but most of note was his smile: wide and crazed. Light from Dorn’s candle was flung up Maric’s chin and cheekbones, giving him the appearance of a skull.

  “Just where I thought you’d be, book-boy,” said Maric. “I like knowing where I can find you. It might be useful.”

  “I had no idea I so interested you,” Dorn said, pointedly turning back to his pages, though every nerve was tensed. “Isn’t there a cure for unrequited love? Enchantments, of some sort?”

  Maric bared his teeth as if to snarl a reply, but just then Archmaster Hendin emerged to light. “I believe, boys, it is long past time for sleep. Especially, young lord, for you.” Maric had stalked away, muttering. Dorn had found his hands were shaking as he gathered up his notes. The library had never seemed a place of danger. People like Maric seldom went there for the books. But it seemed they might go there for him, if so inclined.

  Etherell was becoming concerned for his safety. He had tried to convince Dorn to carry a dagger, offered to teach him to use it. He’d said, “I can’t be around all the time.”

  “It would be tedious if you were,” Dorn retorted. Ending that conversation.

  Six years they had shared a cramped cell of a room. Dorn was aloof the first year, expecting the golden lordling would disdain a bookmaker’s son. But Etherell Lyr allowed Dorn’s acerbity to break over him, or it made him laugh. It was his friend’s equanimity that convinced Dorn to curb his rages. He tried. Perhaps not hard enough. Rage lingered on the edges of his songs, unspooled in reams by candlelight. It was never enough.

  Now was a night for inward wrestling, though so elliptical an act would only return him where he’d begun—to himself.

  The Archmasters saw promise in him. There had been offers to tutor him private
ly, to begin to work towards the enchantments. He’d turned them down. Maric Antrell showed similar promise. Dorn had seen him in hushed conversation with Archmaster Lian in the hallways. The Archmaster had taken the lordling under his tutelage. And of course everywhere Maric went, an entourage of students trailed, finding a natural leader in the broad-shouldered heir to Antrell.

  It used to be that few poets even aspired to becoming a Seer. It was an honorific for the most learned, a path to becoming an Archmaster at the Academy if one so desired. But the return of the enchantments had changed all that. Now the Seer’s mark symbolized a heightened access to powers of the Otherworld. Thus in just a short span the atmosphere of the Academy had changed, charged with a new aura of ambition. What once had been a study of art, of music, had become something else. The mists on the Isle had not changed, nor the wistful cry of birds at night, but at its heart Dorn thought the place would never again be what he remembered.

  A fact reinforced by the sight of Archmaster Myre, dead on the plinth. Their voices entwined in farewell. An ending to something larger than they who had seen far fewer winters than Myre could comprehend.

  It didn’t matter, Dorn told himself as he sang. In autumn he would have his ring and be free. He loved the Academy and it tortured him, in equal measure. He imagined taking to the road alone. There was no joy in the idea, but a kind of release.

  Here was the crux of where music brought Dorn Arrin that night. As if he gazed into a pool of pure solitude and need, and saw his future there. He had always known, in truth; but through song he faced it. Autumn, he thought. Alone, and free.

  * * *

  LATE that night Valanir Ocune was alone again with only a candle to pierce the darkness.

  He thought of his last conversation and knew it added to his tally of transgressions. But was necessary. He would pay one day.

  Or would he? So far, it seemed it was others who paid.