Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  She was surprised that for all his capabilities, Archmaster Diar had been unable to prevent what happened—whatever it was that had happened—to Gared Dexane.

  That day, contemplative in the wake of Cyrilla’s departure, Julien raised the subject for the first time. They were walking in the woods, as they often did when it was fine. The night before it had rained, raising the smell of moldering leaves. It was afternoon, bright even under the cover of trees. Sendara was picking wildflowers, on her lips that small, contented smile Julien had first seen when they met. Her mind clearly elsewhere. She and her father had been honored guests in courts throughout the world, had seen the mountains and seas of lands south and east. Her interior life was not confined to a room with a cracked mirror amid olive groves; certainly not to this tiny, rainy Isle.

  When Julien mentioned Gared Dexane, however, Sendara’s gaze sharpened to the present. She looked almost spiteful. “He was weak,” she said, bending at the waist to pluck a snowdrop. The motion made a flurry of her skirts. “And a brute. My father was well rid of him.”

  “Then why was he chosen?” Julien was surprised by the response. Perhaps because Sendara was delicate, of gentle movements, yet spoke thus of someone who had suffered. Not that Julien doubted it was true—what she’d seen of Gared Dexane had been detestable, and she was glad he was gone.

  Rising, snowdrop in hand, Sendara raised a careless shoulder. “My father never acts without reason. Perhaps Dexane was meant to be—temporarily useful.”

  A forcibly adult formulation, that. Temporarily useful. As if the presence of Elissan Diar, his brilliant smile, was here with them and the wildflowers.

  “Do you know what the chosen do?” Julien said at last. In sunlight it seemed a harmless subject, of curiosity only.

  Sendara was rearranging the stems of her flowers, which she managed even as she gracefully made her way over roots and stones. Her dress was imported lace, but she did not seem to worry about dirtying it. “It is secret.”

  “But do you know?” For some reason this seemed important.

  Now Sendara looked irritated. “No. Like I said, it is secret. But”—and this with a flick of her head—“someday I will.”

  On their way back to the castle Sendara looked up suddenly from her work. “Look! Done.” In her hands a chain of the flowers she’d strung together, white and yellow and pink. “Hold still a moment.”

  Julien did as she was bid. Sendara tied the chain at both ends to make it a circlet. Then she set it on Julien’s head. “There, it’s just right,” said Sendara. Dappled in sunlight, her braided hair showed pinpoints of fire. Her gaze dispassionate, surveying her handiwork as if assessing an item for purchase. “You have pretty eyes,” she said. “The crown brings them out.” With a peremptory motion she reached for Julien’s hair, efficiently loosed the ribbon that bound it, combed through the curls until they were tumbled out on Julien’s shoulders. Sendara backed away with a satisfied nod. “Perfect.”

  Julien didn’t know where to look. Smiling to herself, Sendara seemed not to see. “I have enough flowers to make another,” she said. “We’ll wear these home. Why not? We will be Seers someday. Seeresses. We ought to be crowned.” It was hard to tell from her tone if she was serious. As she skipped lightly over roots and stones, her fingers were already at work on the next wreath.

  “Seeress,” Julien said, testing it out. She felt curiously light, herself. “No one says that.”

  “It’s about time they did,” said Sendara Diar. “Come. When we return everyone will be staring, but they won’t dare say a word. You’ll see.”

  So far that was the nearest she’d come to acknowledging her position among the other students. They won’t dare. Sendara lifted her hands to her head, set her own completed crown of flowers atop her braids. Her eyes darting to Julien had a sudden mischief. Like a wood spirit, Julien thought, and wondered if this was the look that had entranced a Ramadian prince. “I’ve had an idea,” said Sendara. “We should sing together. At Manaia.”

  Before Julien could ask what that meant, they had arrived back at the castle. They’d barely crossed the threshold of the entrance hall when one of the students ran up to them. Julien recognized him as one of the younger ones, a third-year, perhaps—near their own age. But also a lord’s son … and one of the chosen. “Lady Diar, I’ve been looking for you,” he panted. “Your father wants you.”

  “We have a lesson,” Julien reminded her, and Sendara waved at her with clear annoyance. “This is more important. I left my harp in the schoolroom. Would you watch over it for me?”

  Julien nodded dumbly, then realized a response might be called for. “Of course.”

  Sendara sped off. The boy who had brought the message trailing her like a neglected dog. For a moment Julien saw through his eyes, or imagined she did; saw how Sendara’s red belt neatly cinched and drew attention to a slim waist above generous hips. And then Julien was alone in the entrance hall.

  On her way to the schoolroom, she was forced to pass a group of older students in the hall. She scurried, secure in her perpetual invisibility; but this time in the corner of her eye saw one boy nudge another. Snickers arose from the group.

  The blood drained from Julien’s face as she remembered the flower crown. She snatched it off. That made them laugh harder. Behind her a voice she recognized said, “Laughing at a child? Try being a man.” Spoken witheringly. She saw the tall, awkward form of Dorn Arrin, face contorted in a glare as he loomed over the other students.

  I’m not a child. She felt on the verge of tears. He at least had meant to help. She hurried on to the schoolroom, head bowed so she would meet no one’s eyes. The day had gone grey of a sudden. Most likely it was her own fault. She wanted, hoped for too much; it led to disappointment. Alisse could have told her that.

  How she missed her sister in that moment, with her straightforward love and brown eyes like Julien’s own.

  She was first to arrive in the schoolroom. Sendara Diar’s harp was sheltered beneath their desk, beside her own. Julien’s instrument was tin. Sendara’s was fashioned of willow-wood and gold by a world-renowned Tamryllin craftsman. The same craftsman who had made harps for some of the greatest Seers, including Valanir Ocune and, of course, Sendara’s father.

  Julien claimed her own harp, set it on her desk. Beside it she placed the flower crown. The petals were already beginning to curl and darken at the edges.

  Jealousy is a snake.

  Julien felt despairing, of herself most of all. She would lose everything if she could not keep away such corrosive thoughts. Would fail at this, perhaps the most important thing to happen to her. Sendara Diar had opened a window to her life that allowed in light, ideas—learning. Perhaps for the first time.

  She could not fail at this.

  Julien glanced down again at Sendara’s harp and this time noticed something odd. A small folded parchment was wedged between the strings. It could have been accidental. Julien bent to touch the parchment and it fell to the floor. Fell open to words.

  All the world’s sun in your hair. All the moon’s light in your eyes.

  * * *

  HE had the answer to two questions; one of death, one of life. Or in the latter case, potentially. He didn’t know, but now that it was in his hands he had a responsibility. No, two.

  Now Valanir Ocune thought he knew the method of the High Master’s death.

  Such had been his thoughts on the night—shortly after the ugliness with the boy Dexane—when Hendin had brought his answer. His thinned mouth and tensed shoulders telling their own story even before Valanir’s door closed behind them. And after—after he’d confirmed what Valanir had suspected—Hendin had said, his face to the window, “I don’t know if I should ask what you’ll do with this. What it means to you.”

  As ever, Valanir Ocune was gentle with his friend. More and more he had begun to recall their times together as students. Now that they were coming to the end, the autumn of their years, he found himself look
ing back to the beginning. There had been a simplicity to Hendin even back then—in his loyalty, and kindness. Qualities that through all the years had lasted … were of inexpressible value to Valanir now. Trust was too rare, he thought, to be dismissed as simple. “It sounds to me as if you’ve guessed.”

  Hendin shook his head. “I don’t know.” But he sounded afraid.

  “Cai, have you thought…” Valanir began. He gave a moment’s thought to phrasing. It was important to consider a man’s pride. “Have you considered that spring will be blossoming in the lands of your youth, this time of year? Who is there still—your brother? Would he not welcome you back for … a visit?”

  Hendin stiffened, said coldly, “I will not be scared away.” In a different voice, and while turning to leave, Archmaster Hendin said, “I hope the information I bring serves your purpose, whatever that may be. I go now to mourn my friend, this twelfthday of his passing.”

  With sadness and a measure of worry Valanir shut the door after his friend. He knew Hendin would descend to the chapel to perform rites of mourning, alone, for the High Master. Ever the best of us. Certainly the best that is here.

  He had asked Hendin to seek in the archives that were locked and forbidden to all but the Archmasters. Specifically, those scrolls that recorded Seers newly made, alongside those who had given them their mark. Valanir Ocune was named in that register for making Lin Amaristoth a Seer. The one time he had performed the rite.

  It was much to request of Hendin, a risk; he would have had to extend his search over several nights, late, to escape notice. The scrolls were thrown together haphazardly, which made the task arduous. When at last Hendin found the scroll detailing the Seers made by Archmaster Myre, the list was long. But he had known what to look for and returned to Valanir with the name that mattered: Elissan Diar.

  Valanir found himself needing to walk—even at this hour; even if it was a risk. He left his room with a candle in hand, took a turn down the hall. Up one flight of stairs, then another. The castle was silent, not even a whisper of a meeting of the chosen, nor of poets writing through the night in the Tower of the Winds. As if the episode of Gared Dexane had suspended everything, at least for now.

  A Seer’s mark burned black.

  Erisen, we are linked, Lin Amaristoth had said in his last visit to Tamryllin. The bond between Seer and maker, long unexplored, along with so much else that was lost.

  Archmaster Myre’s bond with a particular Seer had likely cost him his life.

  Elissan had been made Seer at the accustomed time—what was usual was the age of thirty-five or upward. There was a series of tests, and the poet in question had to have produced work of distinction. Ultimately it was left to the Archmasters to decide. It made sense that Archmaster Myre, who had been High Master during Elissan’s making, had been the one to perform the rite.

  Valanir Ocune’s thoughts circled to Elissan’s chosen, to the boy with the broken mind who was sent away. Valanir’s source had been unable to discover more than what everyone else knew—Elissan Diar safeguarded his secrets well, even as he flaunted them in the open. The clandestine meetings, the tensions developing in the past year, were one with a larger pattern. Elissan had schemed from a distance. Had used people like Marten Lian and Maric Antrell to achieve his ends … undoubtedly used them still. Especially now that Marten Lian was High Master, and Elissan entrenched within the Academy in proximity to his little coterie. His “chosen.”

  That was one piece of what Valanir Ocune had learned tonight. But there was yet another. The link between Seer and maker flowed both ways. If it could be used to kill … what else could it do?

  I may yet repay you, he told the eyes of his memory, dark and weary in the pale morning. Death with life. If it could be done.

  At the top of the last staircase Valanir unlocked the door to the tower roof. For safety he locked it behind him. The tangle of weeds, wet from rain, seeped through clothing to skin as he navigated the stone paths. The candle shivered at his movements and the breeze.

  He remembered something else: the autumn day he had received an invitation from the Academy to return and be made a Seer. He’d been guesting in a castle in the south, enjoying the grape harvest. Awakened after sound sleep to see the note on the chest at the foot of his bed. No one knew how such invitations came. The timing was unusual: Valanir was not yet thirty. A very young age to be made Seer. He’d taken this in stride, though—as his due. He’d known no humility at that age, Valanir recognized with a wince. He’d arrived at Academy Isle, pleased with himself—to discover that Nickon Gerrard had been invited at that same time. Archmaster Sarne had decreed it was time for them both, young as they were.

  It was a decision nearly unprecedented. And Valanir often thought about it since, and wondered. Rumors had perhaps reached the Isle—or even signals beyond rumor—that Nick was engaged in dark magic. Valanir had since wondered if this gesture was an attempt to bring Nick back to the fold. Before he was lost. In another time, another age, the Academy might have exerted its powers to punish him. Even have him executed. But in the age of an emasculated Academy, the best they could do was extend an offer of reconciliation. And they’d included Valanir because, in the end, the two were acknowledged equals.

  It was the first time Valanir and Nick had seen each other in years, that dreary autumn they were called to the Isle. They kept to their own rooms, did not speak much. They were by then openly rivals, if not outright enemies.

  When knowledge of the event reached Elissan Diar, it made him angry. Bruised his pride. That Valanir Ocune and Nickon Gerrard were to be made Seers before the age of thirty, and he was not. He sent messages to the Isle, letting his displeasure be known.

  It was Archmaster Myre who put an end to that discussion. He had even sent a message back, cutting, to the effect that perhaps if Master Diar had cared to become a Seer, he should have spent more time in Eivar where Seers are made, engaged in the work of poets. Myre was unimpressed with Diar’s extensive roaming in other lands, where he was better known for seducing foreign princesses than writing songs. They had stretched precedent far enough, to his view. When Elissan at last received the invitation, it was years later. But Valanir would have wagered that he never forgot the slight. That it rankled. Elissan Diar had kept a grudge against Archmaster Myre that he’d nursed, awaiting his chance.

  It was windy that night on the tower top. The sky was clouded. Valanir thought of Lin Amaristoth in the Tower of Glass, engulfed in the night sky, its adornment of constellations. He imagined her perched on a broken crenel here—being small, she liked to perch on things—the old cloak from Leander Keyen wrapped around her, telling him her observations of the Kahishians. Their magic, their ways. He would have liked to hear.

  Valanir could imagine other things, too—despite the hour and all he’d learned tonight—and shook his head in the dark. He pressed ahead through the weeds until he reached the hunched shape, a clot of blackness, that was the toppled statue at the heart of the garden. It loomed taller than he remembered.

  That, he noticed right away.

  The moon broke free of the clouds. It was on the wane, but he could still see the statue no longer lay on its side. For the first time in centuries it stood upright. The key … His first thought. Had someone else been here? Raising his candle to the statue’s chest he saw more. With the aid of moon and flame Valanir saw detail etched in the stonework: a cloak draped across broad shoulders and pinned with a jeweled brooch; a sword buckled to one hip, the scabbard worked with interconnected leaves and lions rampant. No longer a weathered lump of rock was the face, carved in the proud visage of a prince.

  The night was quiet. As the moon passed behind clouds again he combed through the weeds, a hand to his knife. Took every path that wound through what had once been a garden. Soon enough he was satisfied: he was alone on this tower top. Nonetheless Valanir Ocune thought there must be music here, and everywhere in the Academy, even if it did not reach the ear. Barriers were opened,
in recent days, that would not be closed again.

  CHAPTER

  9

  ELISSAN Diar’s chamber was bright in the hour they came to him, as if in welcome. The windows seemed larger here than in other rooms of the castle and admitted a fresh breeze. Sendara crossed to her father, who had risen from his desk, smiling at her in greeting; his powerful body, lean and muscular as a mountain lion, was out of place in this room. The space seemed too small to contain him, as did the rickety desk.

  Father and daughter stood together, their eyes turned to Julien Imara with unnerving synchronicity. Eyes that reinforced the feline comparison. He looked amused, detached, as if observing a small animal. “Who is your friend?”

  “This is Julien Imara,” said Sendara with a slight smile of her own, her gaze joined to his; as if a jest, privately shared, underlay this exchange.

  “She likes to hover in doorways, I see,” said Elissan Diar, and his daughter sighed as if he had pointed out the most exasperating thing. “You may enter, Mistress Imara,” he went on. “Shut the door.”

  Julien did, but did not venture further inside. From here she could observe the tall bookshelf flanked by arched windows and lined with books, scrolls, and curiosities. Some volumes were bound in leather. On a higher shelf, a figurine of an impossibly slender, nude woman with long hair, done in white jade or ivory; a stoppered bottle that appeared to have been carved from a single block of amber; a gold penknife.

  On the wall across from the desk hung a tapestry like nothing Julien had seen: she was accustomed to hunting scenes, depictions from myth or of the gods. This showed a pattern of colors and shapes that though inanimate, seemed to writhe, evaded her attempt to make sense of it. The art of lands far away, here at the edge of the world.