Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  Dorn grabbed a roll and began to tear into it. Regardless of who this pompous blowhard was, Dorn thought he could eat the table itself by now, splinters and all.

  Etherell leaned forward, murmured in Dorn’s ear, “Arrived this morning. He’s here to complete the ten.”

  “He is a Seer?” Dorn muttered back, and stared at the newcomer as he chewed. Then another thought, as he saw Valanir Ocune sitting across from them. Why hadn’t he been chosen? Unless Valanir had been offered the position of Archmaster, and refused. It would be like him.

  Etherell nodded. “He can’t be as young as he looks—rumor is he was in Valanir Ocune’s year,” he said. “His name is Elissan Diar.”

  As he turned to look again, Dorn noticed Maric Antrell across the table. Dorn’s companion in song the night before, Maric looked the worse for wear, haggard and of a sickly color. One hand restlessly juggled his cup. The same hand that had crunched Dorn’s finger like a biscuit, leaving him unable to play the harp for weeks.

  “I will say but one more thing, as I know all of you must be hungry,” said the new Archmaster. “Come forward, my love.” The hooded figure beside him rose. With a tentative movement the hood was lowered. The face revealed, that of a girl. Her hair like autumn, framing a delicate face. Her dress cut to her comely shape. Like a sunflower turning on its stem her head cast about, taking in the room. At last she lowered her lashes down to her clasped hands. To Dorn it seemed all around was a collective intake of breath. He glanced over his shoulder at Etherell Lyr, to see how he took this new development. His friend, whose every act was typically imbued with insouciance, had turned intent. His eyes heavy-lidded in a way Dorn had not seen. Perhaps there were girls on the mainland who had.

  “My daughter, Sendara, has studied the art with me for years,” said Archmaster Diar. “Now it’s time for her to take her rightful place. She will be a Seer.”

  The taut silence of the room stretched. As if the air itself was suspended. Etherell gazed at the girl on the dais. His face was drawn in unfamiliar lines; he reminded Dorn, in that instant, of a wolf.

  Needing to look elsewhere—anywhere else—Dorn found himself meeting the gaze of Valanir Ocune. The Seer was looking their way. As Dorn Arrin’s gaze locked with his, the Seer’s lip curled in a faint, private smile, as if there were but the three of them in the room.

  * * *

  THERE was a change to the Isle since last night. It was something to consider—to explore in the dark. It would be perilous, he knew, to seek such deep levels to the enchantments; but he had made a promise. How could he, Valanir Ocune, back down once he’d given his word? In the light of a new day and with the mourning rituals at an end, he felt renewed strength. More himself. The weight of grief that had marked his travels now seemed a fog, burned away with sunlight.

  He would need that strength and all his wit in days to come. Events were moving fast. Elissan’s arrival so soon after the death of Archmaster Myre was suspicious—there had hardly been time to summon him—but no one cared about that. That was how confident Archmaster Lian and the rest were, with the Court Poet away in Kahishi. And for other reasons, if he could discover them. If there was time. In a matter of days Marten Lian would be declared the new High Master. And Valanir had heard, through his own channels, that Vassilian would support his accession.

  Lian, whom Valanir was convinced was a tool of Elissan Diar. Who was now returned after years abroad mired in the gods knew what sort of magic. Valanir at least had some idea, if the gods did not.

  It was still daylight. He stood in an abandoned roof garden, overgrown with ferns and ivy. A toppled statue on the ground, seamed with cracks and by now so eroded as to be featureless. None could say what the unwieldy figure had once been—man or god.

  Sometimes Valanir Ocune came to this rooftop to think; as far as he knew, only he had the key. Of course, he was not supposed to have it. But if Valanir Ocune had kept to laws, Nickon Gerrard would still be ruling in Tamryllin—or what would have been left of it if he’d had his way. That summer when everything turned, Valanir had sensed in Darien Aldemoor a spirit that was a mirror to his own, though young. So painfully young, he thought now.

  Valanir had stolen the key to this garden years ago. He and Nickon Gerrard had planned it together. It was strange to recall clambering the hallways and staircases with his closest friend. With Nick. Even after their rites of blood in the wood, until the final severing between them. To walk these halls was, at times, to go arm in arm with ghosts. Or—in this case—to remonstrate with a ghost who leaned back against the wall with crossed arms, smirking, unrepentant. That was, had always been Nick. He was never sorry. But his wit kept Valanir entertained. Perhaps too entertained to see the truth, for too long.

  So many opportunities Valanir had missed to fling Nickon Gerrard from this tower top. He himself would be damned, but perhaps had earned it.

  Even the tangled wood was more navigable than the path Valanir Ocune had charted of his life—whether he’d chosen right or wrong.

  From atop this tower he could see the lake, molten steel in the sun. The wall of mountain that opened to the sea, the wisp of green and black that was the mainland. A view he had seen in every season and time of day, the one he loved best. Despite where he’d been.

  Archmaster Myre’s mark was blackened, as if with fire.

  Don’t be confident, Ocune, Valanir admonished himself. The idea forming in the back of his mind would terrify him, if he looked at it. The Seer’s mark.

  He knew Elissan Diar, had known him since they were students together. Even Nick had feared him. That was worth remembering. He needed to keep an eye open wherever he went. When he slept, his door was locked in more than the tangible ways. None of this was foolproof. The only strategy he had was the long game, with the one card he had left to play. No doubt as Manaia drew near, the shadows that lurked in the corner of his eye would leap to the forefront; come out to dance.

  * * *

  THAT night when she went out to wander Julien could not have said why, only that she couldn’t sleep and the day left her unsettled. The songs for Archmaster Myre had pierced her dreams the night before. She had awakened before daybreak with the sense of having grappled something: winded, blood in her wrists pounding. From the window she saw that the tops of the trees near the lake shimmered with smoke. She had rested her elbows on the sill and stared out, dry-eyed, knowing what this must be. The wind picked at her hair. She thought she heard singing far away, but might have imagined it.

  Farewell. Julien wished she had words for the cold that tightened in her chest. The verses of poets from across centuries crowded her mind, mellifluous and assured, if she wanted them; but just now, she longed for her own. Some way to give shape to what seemed a crucial moment. What would the Academy be without Archmaster Myre?

  That was the day’s beginning. Later, there was the introduction of the new Archmaster and his daughter. She saw the response when Sendara Diar had revealed herself to the dining hall, bright as new copper.

  This was not a girl who would be ignored. Beside her at table, Julien could feel rather than see the unhappiness of the other girls. They had fallen silent. Julien felt a tug of sadness on their behalf. For herself she expected little, but knew how it must be for Miri and Cyrilla to have this inescapable testimony to their insignificance.

  Later when they were on the stairs to their rooms—the other two girls shared one—Cyrilla had said, hanging her head, “I want to go home,” and Miri put an arm across her shoulders. “We should leave,” she’d said. “This place is hateful.”

  A place that did not value what they were, nor give credence to what they could become. Perhaps they were right. Julien had not seen it before in that light. It seemed natural that she, herself, was invisible. But not Cyrilla Pyllene, with her elegant plaits and voice like a nightingale. Not Miri Caern, with her talent for drawing and mischievous eyes. Julien was ashamed that she had seen them as songbirds, harmless and unharmed, no more than f
uture wives for someone. She had reduced them, too.

  In her room that night, Julien thought it was not the response of the dining hall that had been difficult for her. It was something else: the way Sendara Diar’s father—so handsome he seemed burnished, a second source of illumination beneath the rose window in the light of afternoon—looked at his daughter; said, She will be a Seer, with complacent pride.

  Jealousy was a snake that ate inside your heart. In tales the heroine was a beauty, and beloved; her chief enemies were lonely, jealous women. Julien Imara clearly was not made to be a heroine. Was she, then, fated to linger on the margins of someone else’s story? Surely it was too soon for that—for her whole life—to be decided.

  In little more than a handful of years she would be finished with the Academy, sent out into the world. Everything would be decided here.

  Julien was at that time pacing the length of her cell of a room, up and down. Past the harp beside her bed. It had come cheap, fashioned of wood and tin. Its tones innately flawed, because the instrument was.

  Fair music cannot come from tin.

  At that thought she stopped pacing. It was so clear. Now that it came to her. A truth to define her life. If the instrument was flawed, so too was its music. Irrevocably. If the instrument is flawed …

  If she stayed in this tight room with this new, awful understanding she would choke. There was no breaking free of it. But she could at least be free of this room.

  Julien stepped into the hall. It seemed absurd to worry about Maric Antrell; he had never noticed her before. She had certainly been watching him, noted the way he led the students of his year. In the dining hall today he had seemed unlike himself, appearing pale, drained of vitality. That was, until Sendara Diar was unveiled. Then he had revived like the rest, as if that hair were a beacon.

  She had no candle to see by and the moon through the parting of the stones was faint, but Julien had grown accustomed to feeling her way. With light there was too great a risk she would be seen. She had a sudden image of herself lying at the bottom of the spiral stairs with a broken neck, and was more fascinated than afraid. But was still careful, careful, in her silent tread on the stair.

  In the entrance hall was more light than in the stairwell, from three long apertures above the main doors. Pillars threw diagonal shadows across the floor. The intricate scrollwork of the ceiling was different, almost threatening, at night; a spiderweb fretted, here and there, with pools of black where light could not reach. Keeping to the shadows cast by the pillars, Julien crept past the arched entryway to the chapel and on to the next arch, this one graced by figures of the goddess to either side. She stopped a moment at these sculptures, each a representation of Kiara. One portrayed the aspect of the goddess called upon by poets—the patron of music. Between her hands she held a reed pipe to her lips, on her head a crown of lilies.

  The sculpture opposite was opposed to it in all ways: the Kiara of judgment. Her face barely visible beneath a raised cowl, long hair streaming as if in wind. One long-fingered hand raised in the warding sign against evil—a sign she had invoked during creation. Against the advent of humanity. The other hand clasped a long, evil-looking knife.

  That was for sinners. Julien thought of the sins of her heart, and hoped these were not counted.

  With a slight shiver she passed through the archway, past the knife. She took care to step quietly, slippers soundless on stone. And here, at last, was light. She stood in the Hall of Harps. Like a piece of the moon set on a platform at the end of the hall, the Silver Branch. Its light eternal. Lining the room were pedestals which displayed the harps of Seers gone. Some of these bore engraved verses beneath the names.

  Julien was not here for the harps tonight. She was not sure, in truth, why she had come; but she was continuously drawn to look at the carvings in the walls. She did think there was something forlorn about these harps, most of them golden, now all that remained of the men who had once teased music from them.

  Though that was not true, she reminded herself. Seers left songs that would last. In his younger days Archmaster Myre had given the Academy work extraordinarily fine. Now his harp stood on a pedestal, the newest addition. There had not yet been time to engrave his name.

  Near the pedestal for Archmaster Myre, which was nearest the entrance, were some of the wall carvings most familiar to Julien: the knight, the woman, the dancer. She stared, watched the shifting of light from the Silver Branch on the images, so that they nearly seemed alive.

  Something moved in the corner of her eye.

  Julien sprang behind one of the pedestals to crouch in its shadow.

  “There’s no reason to hide,” said a voice. “You may as well come out.” Not Maric Antrell—a girl. Since she was caught either way, Julien stood. Beside the Silver Branch, hair frosted in its glow, stood Sendara Diar.

  Julien swallowed hard. “Will you tell your father?”

  The other girl looked interested. “Why would I tell?”

  They were speaking too loudly across the long hall; Julien moved closer. It was too dangerous, what they were doing. Dangerous for Julien, at any rate. She supposed the daughter of an Archmaster had little to fear of Academy discipline.

  She couldn’t think of a satisfactory answer. I don’t know you, for a start, but that would not be courteous. With a helpless shrug she said, “Why does anyone do anything?” There was only the distance of a few feet between them now, and the cold light of the Branch.

  “You don’t trust me,” said Sendara Diar. She sounded as if she didn’t mind; her interest still piqued. Up close, Julien saw her cheeks were dimpled, that she wore earrings set with stones like beads of dried blood. Garnets. Her eyes deep set and blue like those of her father.

  Julien stepped nearer. She felt fear, and hopelessness since she was caught, and something else. Later she would understand what she had felt most of all was yearning. She forced herself to meet Sendara Diar’s eyes. Not knowing the source of her own impulse, Julien said, “The hearts of men are dark, their secrets beyond count.”

  The other girl’s eyes flickered, perhaps with surprise. She said, “But I shall rest my weary head where my heart leads, and then go on.”

  The melody of the lay hung between them.

  “You like Lacarne,” Sendara Diar said after a moment.

  “Yes,” said Julien, though like was the wrong word. That poet of centuries past had, throughout his life, written keenly of isolation. The life of a poet, ever wandering, had been the only one Caill Lacarne was suited for; yet it had brought him grief. That, as much as anything, had gone to the shaping of his art.

  “I like him, too,” said Sendara, casually as if she spoke of an acquaintance. “Though he falls short of perfection. The emotion is too raw.”

  “I suppose you must know everything.” It came out sounding dull. “With a father who is a Seer.”

  “Not everything,” said Sendara with a shrug. Looking around she said, “I didn’t expect anyone else to be about. I wanted to see the Branch. I wanted … some time alone with it. I suppose that sounds silly.”

  “No,” said Julien. Now was her turn to be surprised. “No, it doesn’t. Sometimes when I am alone here I think—that I hear music.”

  “Is that why you came tonight?”

  Julien was silent. She scarcely knew herself how to answer that question. And she had no reason to trust this girl.

  Gliding past the silence, Sendara said, “Will you show me around the castle tomorrow? I don’t know anyone else here.”

  You don’t know me, Julien wanted to point out, but once again courtesy overrode instinct. “I will,” she said. “If you truly want that—from me. Your father knows much more.”

  “No doubt, but he will be busy tomorrow, readying for his initiation as Archmaster,” said Sendara Diar. A closed smile plumped her lips, a look epitomizing satisfaction. She reached out a hand. “Let’s go back together. What is your name?”

  Wordlessly Julien Imara took the oth
er girl’s hand. It was cool to the touch. Later she would scarcely remember what was said; what she would recall, mostly, was what she felt. A beginning, like the spring.

  A feeling overlaid with surprise as they neared the archway when she turned one final time to look at the carvings and saw the dancer no longer held a torch in each hand.

  Now in one hand, instead of a torch, was a long, curved sword.

  * * *

  “FIND this out for me.”

  Archmaster Hendin looked askance at Valanir Ocune from his chair at the hearth, his face ruddy in its glow. He was warming his hands. They were in Valanir’s chamber, a simple room of scrolls and books, a harp that caught the firelight. It was past midnight. A light drizzle had begun outside. “It is closely guarded,” said Hendin.

  “I know. That’s why I need you.”

  “You believe … he was murdered?”

  Valanir shook his head. “The less you know, the safest,” he said. “Just bring me what I ask.”

  Archmaster Hendin stared at him. “I’ve never known you to speak this way.”

  Valanir was silent. Outside, rain was gentle in the wood. “These are different times,” he said. He laid a hand on Hendin’s shoulder. His gawky friend, worn by years. His ring was lapis: A loyal heart, life-giving as water. Cai Hendin had given all he had to this place. It was true the Academy compensated with gifts of knowledge and power, but mostly it took … and took.

  Hendin turned to watch the fire. “This place has been my home … because of Seravan Myre,” he said. “I know he was hard on you. To me, he was different. I’d never have become Archmaster without his kindness. Never imagined myself worthy.” His head bowed. “Now that he’s gone, I have no place. I should have known something was coming. Stell Kerwin has been inserting little jibes into every exchange that he can. He is so proud of himself, to be allied with Marten Lian and Elissan Diar. The stature he imagines it gives him. It reminds me of how we used to leave him out of things, Valanir. You know we did.”