Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  How did you capture me, Lady?

  A line he’d written years ago. With irony. His heart had been lighter then, the world a banquet spread before him.

  His memory ranged across mountains and deserts. Evenings camped with a caravan, listening to lute music as beside the fire a woman danced. A garden inlaid with yellow and blue tile, a fountain centered with perfect symmetry. It spilled into a pool long and slender as a wood beam, green with water lilies. A place where he was received with honor, more than once; where among the roses, as evening fell, they disputed questions of philosophy. A plate of figs passed around, cups of jasmine tea and later, wine. These were simple pleasures; more complex were those to be found in palaces with their costly scents and beds of silk; where occluded desires gave way to more, as in a maze of doors. Valanir Ocune had traveled enough to know that such places, no matter how deep he fell into them, signified but a temporary escape.

  He had been much younger when he’d learned that. He recalled disentangling from a strange bed and going to the window to look at the moon. Knowing he was alone. These were lessons for the young.

  It was not the role of a poet to escape the demands of life. So Valanir Ocune had always believed. Yet for years he had lived sheltered, cosseted, studying secrets in the Tower of Glass. The prophecies that were forbidden knowledge. One could argue he had done this to prepare for engagement with an enemy. Only in Kahishi could Valanir have learned about the thing that possessed Nickon Gerrard, and how to banish it.

  Zahir Alcavar had shown Valanir their magic. Had taken him through portals, where he’d glimpsed dimensions beneath the earth, above the sky. Most of what he’d seen so strange his mind couldn’t encompass it; he remembered little. Seven earths and seven heavens the easterners believed in, inhabited by creatures beyond comprehension.

  A memory: he’d accidentally summoned one of these beings, one of those nights with Zahir. They’d been in the Tower of Glass, had drunk too much, and he could not recall how it had happened. The creature of green fire that towered over them was what Zahir had later named a djinn.

  Despite being half its size, Zahir had shown no fear, darting forward to confront the djinn. Like a lover, he had whispered in its ear. To Valanir’s surprise, the reaction of the creature was of sudden agony. It gave a shriek that rattled the glass walls of the tower. Then vanished in a plume of red smoke. Unruffled, Zahir had turned to Valanir and said, “If you call upon one of these, be ready to forfeit your soul.” Then laughed. They’d drunk far too much that night, Valanir now recalled. “My guess is you’re not ready for that. Not even close.”

  Valanir was discomfited by the memory—embarrassed; the younger man had saved him. But most of his time in the Zahra had been serene, not like that. Much of it spent in the company of Yusuf Evrayad, the king who had recently died. A complex man, Valanir had thought him; a warrior who tolerated nothing of softness, yet revered the art of poets. Their discussions had touched on questions of power and a fulfilling life—at times, far into the night.

  It was one such night in King Yusuf’s chambers, when the candles burned low, that Yusuf had confided what perhaps he kept most closely hidden from the public: his disappointment in Eldakar, his eldest son. “He is a poet,” he’d said to Valanir. “An excellent quality in a man, any man … Any except a king.”

  “You have not tested his mettle on the battlefield,” Valanir had pointed out. “You send Mansur on campaigns, give him the chance to prove his valor. Not Eldakar.”

  “For a simple reason,” said Yusuf. He had at that time begun to show his age; his face sagged. “If Eldakar goes out to fight, and fails … certain conclusions would be drawn. The viziers won’t respect him. All I have built—this court, a united Kahishi—will crumble. Better to keep him here. Mansur will keep the name Evrayad burnished bright.”

  “And win glory his brother might have shared,” said Valanir.

  Yusuf shook his head. “Eldakar would acquire no glory for our name. Mansur makes conquests, puts fear of our strength in the hearts of those abroad. But I fear for our future, Seer. Sing me a song, now. Help me forget my fears.” And so Valanir Ocune had done, that night and many more. That was the nature of their friendship, composed oddly of equality and servitude. They conversed as equals, and Yusuf applied to the Seer’s range of knowledge and lore; but it was Yusuf who was king, and conqueror.

  Valanir knew Eldakar, a little. Had spent his share of nights in the garden with Zahir Alcavar and the young prince. The three men had recited verses composed in the moment, a waterfall serving as counterpoint. Eldakar, though shy, seemed congenial enough company. Yet now the boy didn’t want him at court.

  Power balances in the Zahra shifted constantly as light in the depths of a gem. It meant Lin Amaristoth went instead of him, risked herself. Seemed to want to, and that was another worry.

  He could hear Archmaster Myre, in one of the last talks they’d had. Frigid as winter’s oak. “You have opened the door.”

  It was true. Before Valanir Ocune had found a way to defeat Nickon Gerrard, he’d first engaged in blood magic with him. They’d opened that door together. For Valanir it had been an adventure. But for Nick … the abyss. That deep well of need that could never be filled.

  The mark of the Seer blackened around a lifeless eye. More added to Valanir’s tally. How would he pay?

  At the end she had met his eyes. Captured me.

  Verses Valanir Ocune had composed on the trek home—composed the old way, the oldest way, by heart as he rode through rain—he recited now. In candlelight and with night sounds around him, he reached out.

  He was in woods. Scent of wet leaves and pine, salt air of the sea. The Isle, then; his woods. A night bird called, then another. As his eyes adjusted, Valanir saw a pavilion of pale and intricately carved wood, lit with torches against the night. Two figures stood in it, a man and a young girl. The man was tall and broad, slim at the waist; the body of a warrior, but he wore a harp. A magnificent face, godlike, blue eyes keen in the firelight. The girl at his side less sure, no less beautiful with a curtain of shining hair.

  Around them rose the requiem for Archmaster Myre, that until daybreak would go on. And Valanir Ocune knew that he saw what was to come because the music gave it to him. Those boys and young men with their voices uplifted did not know the changes they wrought, the doors opened. Valanir scarcely knew, himself.

  The man and girl did not see him, it seemed; just stood intent on something in the distance, long-lashed eyes a match.

  Come on, then, Elissan Diar, Valanir thought. I’m ready for you.

  CHAPTER

  5

  HE was crying in her dream, as he did most nights. This time on the floor in the corner of her tent, beside the legs of the brazier. His face hidden in his hands. Lin Amaristoth sat up, buried her own head in her hands. “I think of it, too,” she said. “It doesn’t help. What is to be, will be.” She turned and saw herself in the bed, adrift in sleep. So pale, as if dead already. Yet she was also standing, looking down at his hunched shoulders and golden head. A bright heart brought low.

  “We all made mistakes, my love,” she said. Then paused, brought up short by the words. A dream, she reminded herself. Moonlight through the tent flap, slender as a rapier, split the wall between them. Lin was still. She felt to cross that line would signify the end of something.

  Instead she reached out a hand, towards the shaking shoulders of the man who had died for her. Said, “I know you never meant to hurt me.”

  * * *

  WHEN she awoke it was still night. As ever when Lin first awoke, she was unsure in her own body and where she was, as if she saw double. There was the tent and its slat of moonlight through the flap, and overlying that, another place and time where the stars were different. Where not as many years had worn on the earth and stones. But to be in two places at once, she found, meant you were not fully present in either. Sometimes she expected even the most vibrant sunlight to pass through her as if she were
glass.

  Lin supposed this feeling, of not being entirely present in her body, had to do with the way she was fading. That was how she’d come to think of it, like a star gradually winking out of existence—or, if the astronomers of the east were right, into an expanse of rock. Though that took thousands of years. As many mortal lives swallowed within that time as scattered sand.

  Viewed that way, a life was nothing. Not even the men who became legends could count for much, when their memory lived only in fragile creatures like themselves.

  Lin sat up in bed. She had begun to notice a sound, quieter even than the crickets and the wind. At first wondered if it was another dream. Or Edrien. But as she listened, as the sound merged with the night, it became ordinary. A man’s voice, singing. A sound like a chant, melodious repetition.

  She draped her blanket around her shoulders, rose from the bed. The blanket was crimson velvet and of surpassing softness, lined with gold silk. Gathered about her it was like a cape, finer than any she’d owned, and less practical. She drew aside the tent flap and stepped out.

  Garon Senn had gone. In his stead a pair of guards kept watch—young men, likely terrified of their new responsibilities and of her. They started like hares when she emerged behind them. She permitted herself a smile at this test of their reflexes. Heard them stir uneasily as she passed. But neither dared yet to speak.

  Out here, she could hear the singing more clearly, though it was faint. The royal pavilions were camped at the crest of a hill; the sound seemed to be coming from partly down the slope. The tune not one she recognized. It was a song released in circles, without finding resolution. She remembered: the scales of music used here were different.

  It did not occur to her to be afraid—the camp was well-guarded. She trod carefully to avoid the poppies, as she understood they were considered sacred—the red ones. Painted with the blood of some martyr of long ago, as their faith would have it. She picked her way around them in the soft earth. Moonlight made dimpled shadows on the grass.

  Lin was some paces away when one of the guards timidly called out to her. She straightened as if the blanket were in fact a cloak. As if she was outfitted for a hunt. “Yes?” she said over her shoulder. “I am going to walk a bit. If I have need of you I will call you.” She could not have said what compelled her. She was weary, saddened from the dream, and tired of being alone with the image of stars guttering to rock and the grief of a man who had died for her.

  In a way she did hunt that night, for she didn’t want to alert the singer to her presence. Her footfalls were light on the grass. It brought to mind times past, the excitement of setting out on a night’s expedition. She and her brother, clad in leather and fur, armed with bows and knives. Setting the bait—salt poured on the bole of a tree—for the stag that would come. They two comprising a silence more profound than night. All the things each of them thought, and did not say. The hatred and love that could not be disentangled. And now would never be, since Rayen Amaristoth was gone.

  But this was an altogether different place, where the air was rich, seductive with poppy scents. Where beneath her feet there was, instead of dirt and twigs, a carpet of grass. And she was not on the hunt to bring down a proud, antlered creature in its home. Not in years had she done so now.

  The singing grew near. She spotted movement in the dappled shadow of cypress trees. Later she would recall how she found him, seated on a stone outcropping. His song, as she approached, seemed sad to her, though perhaps she would have heard any music just then as sad. It was in a language she didn’t know. Not Kahishian, not her own.

  He ceased when a clump of pebbles crunched under her foot. His head turned towards her. She could only see an angular face, framed with shoulder-length black hair. Lin became aware of how she might look—slight, childlike under a blanket. A disadvantage. But it was too late. In Kahishian she said, “That is a sad song. It drew me.”

  He smiled. She could see that, the gleam of teeth, but it was hard to see more. When he replied it was in her language, and perfectly. “Is it sad?” he said. “It is from my childhood. It goes around in my head sometimes, until I find I must let it go.”

  “Valanir Ocune mentioned something about music, and you,” she said. “He said before you studied magic, you were a musician.” The Seer had spoken admiringly of his friend, who had risen from humble origins to make his name in Ramadus, and subsequently the Zahra.

  The dark curtained his expression. “You are Lady Amaristoth.”

  “Gvir Alcavar,” she said, inclining her head in mock formality. “You are late for supper.”

  This time he did not smile. “It is a failing,” he said. “One for which, thankfully, Eldakar forgives me. The fighting in the north … requires my focus. This past week especially.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  He shook his head. “No real news yet—what I have, I must save for the council. You will be there. Mansur—the king’s brother—has been encountering fierce battles. There are—terrible things happening.” She saw now that he looked exhausted. “I try to warn the forces where the attacks will come. Still, it is bad. Mansur doesn’t have enough men. But all this … it can wait until morning. I am here to welcome you, as are we all.”

  “Valanir intimated that you and I have much to discuss,” she said. She chose her words with caution, though she didn’t think they were overheard. “As to who you think is … responsible.”

  She felt his eyes on her sharpen. Light-colored, they brought to mind a mountain cat. Something new in his voice when he spoke again. Four words, but they chilled her. “Lady,” he said. “You are alone?”

  Lin glanced around, behind her. There was a sinking in her stomach. But she raised her chin, met his eyes as if unconcerned. “I am here with my guards and attendants—of course.”

  He continued to stare. Under his gaze Lin felt fear at first, then the beginnings of anger. It was in response to his summons that she had come, after all. Come all this way. She could have stayed in the palace of Tamryllin, with her rooms that overlooked the sea, the daily rituals that gave her comfort. Small comfort, but nonetheless. She could have stayed there, in the time that was left.

  Lin realized she had hoped she could rely on this friend of Valanir Ocune with the truth. This man the Seer held in such high regard, who was a Magician of renown. But hearing that cold mistrust in his voice, she doubted that now.

  Despite feeling increasingly desolate, she held his gaze. “The fighting in the north concerns me, too, Zahir Alcavar. It is the reason I am here.”

  No question about his coldness now. “There is a shadow that moves with you, Seer. I see it even in the dark.”

  Lin’s fists closed. But she kept her tone even. “A shadow?” she murmured. “Why don’t you explain?”

  His tone remained level as well. He had a deep, sonorous voice, such as had been evidenced in his singing. “There are several possible names for what I see accompanying you,” he said. “None of them good.”

  Lin looked down at the man sprawled at her feet. Assessing him not just through her own eyes. “You will need to decide if you are willing to take me as you summoned me, Magician.” The last word pronounced like an epithet. That she had come this far, bearing under her burdens, and this was the end of it. Rage filled her like a tide. “I have turned back a laylan from my land’s destruction. Watched people I loved die. What have you done in your palace, Ramadian? In your tower above the world?” He was silent. He was a court fop, she thought, soft from palace life. Valanir’s stories of singing with Zahir Alcavar in the palace gardens began to take on a new light. Of Magicians trammeled in luxury and concentric circles of flattery, safe in their tower. Lin knew these were not entirely her thoughts—what Magicians had she known?—but resolve like iron backed her words. “I will leave if you wish it,” she said. Her tone turned soft. “Leave your people to whatever fate Kiara has decreed for them. I shall return to the court of Tamryllin, perhaps write a song about the Kahishian m
ountains in spring. And then forget them, and if we meet again it will be on the battlefield, or else never. Those are my terms.”

  Still he didn’t speak, his face masked in night. She had not wanted to imperil this alliance but neither could she compromise her honor, which did not belong wholly to her. It was done. Since he was silent, it seemed there was no more to be said. She turned, began to make her way back up the hill. Zahir Alcavar did not call out to her. Nor did he take up the strands of his song again. Silence was all that accompanied Lin in the march to her tent—that, and her ghosts. Perhaps he will have me killed, she thought, and almost it made her laugh.

  * * *

  AS a child Lin Amaristoth had been taught contempt for the upstart, as her family named Yusuf Evrayad; he who had united the splintered provinces of Kahishi and built a mountain palace above Majdara of such splendor it shamed any in the land that had come before. But this was vanity by the reckoning of an Amaristoth, in their fastness of centuries. To their view, the decades-long reign of Yusuf Evrayad was an eyeblink, a hothouse orchid beside an oak. As ever her family concealed their true attitudes—even their nature—from outsiders. Often Kahishian dignitaries were guests of House Amaristoth, especially in summer. Decked in ostentatious scents and finery they came, like tropical birds amid the sparrows of the north. From them, over years, Lin had learned the tongue of Kahishi. She never knew what these visitors with their clattering gold earrings and neck chains thought of the ghostly daughter of Amaristoth, who tended to linger in corners or else near the fire, as if she never could get warm. Doubtless they—strangers to Vassilian who drank chilled gold wine with Lord and Lady Amaristoth and their son Rayen until agreements about ships and caravans and bolts of wool were reached—gave the daughter little thought. Seldom she spoke while these negotiations took place. She listened. Most of her life she had spent listening.

  Lin Amaristoth’s family hid their poison behind smooth smiles, made use of Kahishian connections by necessity. Majdara is our gate to the world, Rayen had once said. It held the keys to trade with the south and east; to the west the seas were uncharted, and no ships sent on exploratory voyages that way returned. Standing at the mountain passes, guarding the coastline, Kahishi also held the keys to Eivar’s defense. Or our defeat, Lin had thought at the time, and thought it again now, hands tightening on the guardrail as she looked out on the River Gadlan, waters murky green in the shadow of the royal barge. Along the bank ran the walls of Majdara, spiked with battlements and hung with the banners of Evrayad. The sun was high and picked light from the gold-threaded banners, made them gleam with each stir of the wind.