Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  Once at the fires they halted. There was a hush. For an instant it all stood still. It seemed no one breathed. And then he was hurtling into the flames. Dorn Arrin’s name, as they sang it one final time, the last thing he heard.

  * * *

  “WHY did you let him go?” She had turned onto her side. Etherell lay on his back in the next bed, hands beneath his head, looking thoughtful. When she spoke, he did not react at once, but rather with a deliberate motion raised himself on an elbow. He looked amused. “So you heard that, did you?”

  “I asked you first.” Julien felt shaky, but the room did not seem to be spinning around her anymore.

  He laughed. “True. Well. I think he needs to be away from me. Probably he’s gone to the library—his favorite spot. The old songs will give comfort to him.”

  “I … don’t think so.” With effort, she’d begun to raise herself up.

  He seemed to consider it. “Perhaps not. Unfortunately I must stay here. As far as anyone knows, I have a fever—that’s what kept me away from the ceremonies. Not much of an alibi for when they find the bodies down there … but I have a feeling Elissan Diar won’t ask a lot of questions.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s begun to see I can be useful, whereas Maric … he was volatile. Was likely becoming a problem.”

  The bodies down there. A nightmare returning. Valanir’s eyes pooling black. I’ve failed, he’d said.

  To distract herself, Julien looked about the room. Her thoughts were confused. Wherever she looked, she saw a double layer of meaning. There was all that she had known, what she took in as Julien Imara. But then, overlying that, was an added dimension that wasn’t hers. It was especially disorienting when she looked at Etherell Lyr. His beauty was bright, piercing, as an icicle; she felt that subterranean longing she always felt, seeing him. But another layer revealed things to her, images, playing about him like dust motes. A boy with gold curls and too-large blue eyes, practicing the sword with a determined expression. Another … but this she recoiled from. He was older, but not by much, and covered in blood. His lips stretched in a grin.

  “Valanir let you kill.” Her voice barely above a breath.

  “Once in a while it was needed,” said Etherell Lyr, stretching himself out on the bed. “Never anyone you would have liked, my dear. I take it you’ve obtained this along with … whatever Valanir Ocune has done to you.”

  She nodded. She was beginning to feel vertiginous again, as if all the double seeing she was doing would split her head in two. “You can’t help me, can you?”

  “Sorry. I know little of magic. I was trying to find out what Elissan Diar is up to, but I’ve only touched the edge of it. So far.”

  Julien drew her knees up to her chest. Her hair fell forward to conceal her face, her eye which ached. “What am I going to do?”

  “That’s a good question. I am not sure. If anyone sees you … especially given the mess below … there’ll be trouble.” He spoke as one would to a child, or to someone who was ill, reassuring and cheerful. “We might have to spirit you home. At least until all this dies down.”

  All this. Julien covered her face with her hands. It was becoming harder to forget how Valanir Ocune had looked, and sounded. The ruin of his eyes. The intensity of his grief, at having failed. He had left it to her to find some way. Had given her … what? The Archmasters might have known, but she couldn’t possibly ask. All she knew was that he’d made her a Seer, the youngest there had ever been. No one would like that. She would have expected to feel something, anything other than what she felt—excitement, or triumph. Not this fear, and a sense of being unmoored, alone, on dangerous waters.

  He would have wanted her to speak with the Court Poet, she thought. To tell her what had happened. That was surely what he’d have her do.

  Those were her thoughts. The next moment all thoughts were eliminated. Julien felt a jolt to her body, deep inside. In her eyes she saw nothing, then a burst of blinding light.

  When she came to she was on the floor. Etherell was bending over her.

  “The fire,” she murmured. “Let me up. Let me up.”

  They were sitting on the floor, staring across at each other. She’d never forget: Etherell Lyr, usually cool and debonair, looking in that moment as disconcerted as she. “What is it?” he demanded.

  “Dorn didn’t go to the library,” she heard herself say. Grasping with effort for words. “He is—”

  “What?”

  “The sacrifice.”

  His face didn’t change. In a single motion he bounded upright, sprang to the door, and was gone.

  Julien shook her head. In the time it would take, even running, to reach the courtyard from here … She felt another shuddering jolt to her frame. Tried not to let it undo her. She tried to focus her attention on it instead—an idea that came to her suddenly, as if someone behind her had placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. It was the night of Manaia, when portals were thinned. And she had done this before. Or rather Valanir Ocune, whose lived experience nested somewhere within her, had done something like this. Years ago, he had brought Lin Amaristoth from the palace of Tamryllin to the Tower of the Winds and back again, all in one night.

  She thought of fires and the face of Dorn Arrin. She remembered how he had interceded for her, shielded her from the jeering of the other students. Someone good, that this place with its new-awakened powers and rivalries had consumed.

  She heard, this time more loudly, the lift of voices. Chanting the one name.

  A breeze tugged at her hair. Julien opened her eyes. She was in the courtyard. Before the fires, a crowd of boys had gathered. The man they carried a black outline against the glare, featureless. She began to run. Past benches where the Archmasters were, where they stood in a solemn row. She glimpsed Sendara Diar beside her father, stately in her red gown.

  Everything happened too fast from there. Julien was running toward the boys who held Dorn aloft. When she was close, she cried out, screamed with all the force of her voice: Stop! Stop! Heat made a molten mask of her face; the roar of flames swallowed her shouts. No one glanced her way. Up close, their eyes were glazed, empty. Neither thought there, nor feeling. Horror stopped up her throat.

  She elbowed savagely at the students in her path, flung herself at the part of Dorn nearest to her, his lower leg. Closed her hands tight around it, pulled as hard as she could, digging her heels into the ground. And then was flung, when he was, into the tunnel between the pillars of flame. Julien tumbled with him, clawed for purchase at his leg. And afterward saw nothing, felt nothing, as if they plummeted—both of them—through a gap in the world without end.

  PART III

  CHAPTER

  18

  PIPES and flutes sounded, along with a continuous roar like the sea. That roar was of people, thousands that had erupted from their homes, the streets, into the Plaza of Falcons. The crowds packed so tight it was a wonder people had space to walk, let alone dance. But dance they did, for earlier that day Tarik Ibn-Mor had unveiled his contribution to the Festival of Nitzan: the fountain he had designed now flowed, rather than with water, a succulent red. Wine spewed from the jets, made rivulets down the sculptures. From the height of a balcony above the plaza, at the peak of noon, the crimson was like an erupting wound. Lin was disturbed by it.

  Guards were stationed at the fountain to prevent a riot, but people were free to bring cups and goblets. No jars—the only sign that the supply might have some limit. Wine streamed from the summit of the sculpted, forested mountain, down the back and wings of the gryphon, pooled in the basin beneath before spilling downward again, onto the backs of the creatures assembled in their circle. The Tower of Glass, provinces—all Kahishi thus consecrated.

  So despite cramped conditions, the people of Majdara—enlivened by wine—found the means to rejoice. The market tents were up, selling sweet pastries of honey, almond paste, and poppy seed for the festival. A selection of these, and wines, were served to the nob
ility who watched from the balcony. The king and his queen were fasting since the morning, in observance of the laws of Nitzan.

  Though Lin watched the proceedings below, it was not with her full attention. Aleira Suzehn, at their last meeting, had said enough to occupy her mind.

  “Are you certain of this?” Aleira had demanded after Lin had recounted to her of the figure of green fire on the bed: its fluctuating shape, the chains. The stench of sulphur. “How do you know it is a creature of hell?”

  “I … don’t know for certain,” said Lin, recalling that she’d had that from Edrien. No reason for Aleira to know about that. “It begged to be freed.”

  “Someone is keeping one of these in the Zahra—like a pet?” Aleira shook her head. She placed her teacup, barely touched, on the table beside. As if to herself she added, in a lowered voice, “Perhaps the rumors of that place are true after all.”

  “Why? What was it?”

  Aleira seemed to hesitate. At last she said, “When armies of Alfin conquered here, now a century ago, they brought their god. But that isn’t all. At that time, Kahishi was not a place known for magic. Eivar to the west had its enchantments and poets—what was left of the enchantments, at any rate. The lands to the east had their own magic, centered on the stars. And alongside this there were … beings … from other parts of reality.”

  “The seven heavens,” Lin supplied. “The seven earths.”

  “Yes, these,” said Aleira, looking surprised. “So you know some of it. Boundaries between this reality and others were made porous by magic. This has long been true of Ramadus—the place teems with these … well, they are everywhere. People wear charms and amulets to avert the creatures, though I’m not convinced of their efficacy. They leave offerings in doorways, of barley meal and wine. Paint their doors and window shutters the color of heaven in a bid to protect their homes. And so on. When the armies of the east came, they brought that here. Now we have djinn here, too. Haunting bathhouses and underground wells, homes that haven’t been consecrated—that sort of thing.”

  “Or imprisoned in the palace?” Lin felt as if she were missing something.

  “No! That—what you saw is an abomination. To enslave a djinn is forbidden by laws most binding. The cost—most would not consider it worth their while.” She shook her head, with bewilderment or repulsion. “The more powerful the creature, the greater its toll on the Magician,” said Aleira. “I suspect what you saw, from the description, was an Ifreet. These are not only powerful. They are utterly amoral, evil. They seek to bring harm to humanity any way they can. To hold one in thrall … that takes a degree of magic only a rare few might wield.”

  “Such as … a Magician of the Tower of Glass,” Lin said grimly. “But—you say there’s a cost to keeping it prisoner. What is it?”

  Aleira had taken up her cup again, was gazing thoughtfully through the steam somewhere beyond the furnishings of the room. “Life,” she said. “No one who did such a thing would live to grow old. The effects are like a wasting disease. Each day, each year spent with the Ifreet in one’s grasp will wear years away.” She set down her cup, avoiding Lin’s eyes. “There are terrible stories, of what happens to Magicians who try to bind an Ifreet. Worse than death … torments everlasting. That anyone would choose that fate … they’d have to be mad.”

  The words returned to Lin here, on the balcony. Seemed at odds with the clangor below.

  Aleira had promised to continue investigating the prophecy, though Lin had not asked her to do so. It seemed an innocuous concern, beside the facts Aleira had told her today. The idea that someone in the Zahra was willing to give their life to achieve a goal. Risking not only death but an eternity of torment.

  It wasn’t how she saw Tarik, Lin thought. He did not seem like the sacrificing kind. He had his ambitions, clearly, but these were much of the material world. That left one of the other Magicians.

  How many could be so powerful as to hold an Ifreet prisoner?

  What have you done in your tower above the world? Lin had said to Zahir Alcavar, mocking.

  Yet he did not seem mad to her. She was missing something, something important. As Zahir himself had intimated, subtly. It occurred to her: he’d given her the key to the Tower. As if he knew what she’d find. As if he wanted her to.

  * * *

  A HANDFUL of days after her talk with Aleira, Nitzan was upon them. In that time, Lin had avoided the Tower of the Winds. The key sat in the pouch she wore at her belt. A presence like a burning coal. She allowed herself to be caught up in the intricacies of Kahishian council meetings, the serenity of nights in the imperial garden. Throughout that time, preparations for Nitzan were underway. The kitchens were in a clamor to concoct the festive meals that would be served in the Zahra for seven days. There were ceremonial dishes required at each of these, made from recipes handed down for generations.

  Throughout the palace had been placed candles in great sconces, striped with many colors, their size like saplings. These would burn, unstinting, for the full seven days of the feast, filling the corridors with scents of ambergris, musk, lavender. There would be dance troupes from around the world, singing girls, poets. Delicacies, wine, and unending entertainments would mark the feast as they had every year of Yusuf Evrayad’s long reign. Here was Eldakar’s opportunity to demonstrate, in extravagant terms, that the reign of his father continued, unbroken, through him.

  The nights in the garden had changed to a degree: sometimes Rihab Bet-Sorr joined them at the water’s edge. She would recline beside Eldakar as he played his pipe, a soft smile on her lips; and between them there seemed to have fallen, for the first time, a kind of peace. Sometimes she would lay her head in his lap as he played. In those moments, Zahir would meet Lin’s eyes in the dark, his smile indulgent, as if the king and his wife were children in his care. Then he would lift his voice in song, and Lin thought there were times his singing took him away from them, from the place where they were. It was not a song of this place.

  Once Zahir came to the gardens very late. He was wild-eyed. “Sorry,” he’d said as he collapsed to the ground. “I was detained.” Then he laughed.

  Eldakar had been instantly alert. “What happened?”

  “I went to pay Vizier Miuwiyah a visit,” said Zahir. “There is … there is a site near his castle that allows me to travel there. The grave of a powerful Magician. No matter. I went to see if he could be persuaded to send more aid to Mansur. The number of troops he has sent so far is pitiful—a disgrace. I went to make him see that.” His face darkened. “We must see to justice, when this is over,” said Zahir. “Miuwiyah must be made to show respect for House Evrayad.”

  Eldakar leaned forward. “Did he try to kill you?”

  “He wouldn’t dare. But I was accosted outside the walls by masked men. I can’t say if it was Miuwiyah who sent them, or if they were brigands. Or who knows—Fire Dancers! Nonetheless. It was near the gravesite; its magic aided me. I escaped with barely a bruise.”

  “Your arm—”

  “It’s nothing,” said Zahir. He shifted so his sleeve fell to cover his forearm, which showed several welts. Lin guessed he’d used his arm to shield against a blow. “When this is over, we must make him pay,” he said. “Miuwiyah fancies himself quite the lord these days.”

  Lin had listened silently, absorbing this. The unity of Kahishi, the loyalty of the provinces, were things she’d once taken for granted.

  Another night, Lin found herself alone with Eldakar. By then troubles in the north were especially pressing, or so she’d heard; Zahir and the other six Magicians were at work in the Tower.

  “I feel useless here,” Eldakar had said to Lin, with disarming frankness. She still was not used to a ruler who spoke as he did. “I see how this conflict wears away at my friend and can do nothing to help. I sent more men north, to be sure—but what else? I could march there myself, but…” He stopped, and Lin thought she knew what stopped him. If there was a traitor at court, Eldakar couldn�
��t risk leaving the place unattended. Kings throughout history had fallen that way—when they marched to battle with a naked blade trained at their backs. But it was a shameful admission—of weakness.

  She looked around. There seemed to be no one else about. It was dark, the trees pooling shadows on the grass. No way to be sure they were not overheard.

  Lin lowered her voice. “Eldakar—may I ask you something?” She leaned nearer to him. He seemed interested, if a bit dreamy, as though half his thoughts were elsewhere. Perhaps in the north with his brother, or with Rihab, who it seemed was always in his thoughts. Lin tried to catch his eye. “Have you ever noticed Zahir … the First Magician…” she stammered, trying to figure out what formulation would be appropriate here. The king watched her compassionately, waiting.

  She gave up trying to be appropriate. “Have you ever noticed him behaving strangely? Forgive me,” she added quickly. It already seemed like a bad idea, knowing how close the two men were. But there was no one else she could ask.

  She could not read his eyes. “You’ve been engaging in your enchantments, haven’t you?” he said. He sounded calm. “You go where I cannot.”

  Lin was silent.

  Eldakar went on, “And perhaps you’re learning more about my friend, that way, than I ever could. Despite the years. I had a feeling it would be so. The first time I saw you. I saw that the two of you might end up sharing something he and I cannot.” He smiled. “I was a little jealous.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  His smile faded. “I’m sorry. You asked a question … it deserves an answer.” A pause. The song of the crickets made a chorus tonight. He said, “There were times when it seemed to me that two people could not be closer, more like to a single man, than Zahir and me. Other times…”