The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  Aside from rain, all was quiet in a way that was unfamiliar. Rianna was accustomed to noise. The sounds of the city, the bustle of the palace, the bells … these together made a continuous hum that had barely registered.

  Their absence did. Silence pressed in on the windowpanes.

  * * *

  DINNER that evening was at a small oval table in a wood-paneled room. Instead of a vast dining hall filled with courtiers and attendants, it was the six of them. All tired from the day’s ride. But they were also scented, their hair wet, in the wake of baths that had soothed their muscles from the journey. As they ate the soup and bread that served as prelude to courses of goose and venison, they heard thunder. The rain had become a storm.

  “Let us hope for good weather tomorrow,” said Elissan Diar. “Else we’ll grow fat and lazy with good food and wine, and no exertion to balance them.”

  “Surely that is the luxury due a king,” said Etherell, ending with a contented yawn. The wet, darkened strands of hair on his forehead made him look boyish. He sat beside Sendara, whose hair Rianna had braided in two plaits after her bath.

  Elissan Diar looked stern. “Not this king.”

  After dinner they took to the sitting room. There were various cushioned chairs, couches, and rugs. Rianna took a large chair near the fire, curled up in it, and rested her head on its cushioned back. She felt so lethargic she could nearly forget that she was on enemy ground. She stared into the fire. Her husband and child seeming farther away than ever. A dream she’d had, if not for the purple stretch marks on her belly.

  “I’m tired,” she murmured.

  “So are we all, it seems,” said Elissan Diar with a note of amusement.

  Rianna sat upright. She saw where Elissan indicated: Sendara, her cup of tea not touched, asleep in her chair. With her head flung back and lips parted, she looked even younger than her years, and helpless.

  Etherell lay on a rug at her feet, his hands behind his head. “I might carry my lady to bed.” But he made no move, one bent leg flung over the other.

  “I think not,” said Rianna, and with an effort drew herself to a standing position. Much as Sendara might have preferred it, she would not allow that impropriety on her watch. Not from him. She went to Sendara and shook her arm. The girl stirred and mumbled in protest. Rianna stood firm. “Come on,” she said, and maneuvered the girl’s arm over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she urged Sendara, who continued to protest. She wasn’t tired, she said. She wanted to stay.

  At Rianna’s prodding, the girl set one foot in front of the other until they reached the stairs, then made their painstaking way up. Once in the dark of Sendara’s bedroom, Rianna helped her undress, then covered her up to the chin in her bed.

  When Rianna returned downstairs, Elissan Diar stood at the fireplace with a glass of wine in his hand. He raised it in her direction. “Thank you,” he said, with what seemed genuine gratitude.

  She gave a little bow, half-mocking, and took her place by the fire again. But in the time since she’d gone, the mood of the room had changed. Etherell still sprawled on his back on the carpet. Marlen had taken a chair near Rianna’s by the fire. All was outwardly the same; but the lassitude, the sense of unreality Rianna felt earlier had lifted. What she felt now was an air of expectation.

  A peal of thunder sounded. Dark windows seared white by lightning.

  Into the ensuing silence, which seemed deeper than before, Marlen’s voice insinuated itself like a spool of velvet. “It’s too early for sleep,” he said. “What if we were to play a game?”

  Elissan Diar’s eyes showed a spark of interest. “What do you propose, Humbreleigh?”

  From beneath her eyelashes Rianna watched them.

  “I weary of games of chance,” said Marlen. “And those of skill are one-to-one. What if we played something that could include all of us—even this lout.” He nudged Etherell Lyr’s side with his toe. The younger man grunted in protest.

  Marlen’s eyes were merry, features a fine study by firelight. “It is something we used to play in the Academy—my friends and I. There is no winning or losing. Just this: We each relate an anecdote of our lives … some small thing. And then it is up to the others to guess if it’s true.”

  “Surely not,” Etherell groaned from the floor. “I’d thought by one’s third year that game was given up.”

  “Not at all,” said Marlen. “It grows better with age.”

  “How is that?”

  Marlen was winding a bit of string between his fingers. His hands rarely still. “Because with the years, we gather secrets.”

  “We’ll need wine for this,” said Elissan. He looked intrigued. Rianna realized with a start that he was looking at her. “Let us all fill our glasses, and begin. Marlen, first turn is yours. Show how it’s done.”

  Elissan was handing a glass to her. Rianna took it and swiftly drank. Then knew it for a mistake. The effect, after the exertions of the day, was near immediate. She rested her head again on the back of the chair. It was good wine, reminiscent of summers in her childhood home. A time that seemed more real than anything or anyone in this room.

  Marlen stood, letting the firelight fall on him as if he were about to perform a song. But instead said only one line. “My childhood was a happy one.”

  Elissan Diar laughed, dispelling whatever pathos the line might have otherwise evoked. “I knew your father. False.”

  Marlen smiled. “Very good.” He raised his glass in acknowledgment and drank. “Ah,” he said, as if the wine had a new, accompanying flavor. He flung his arms wide. “That’s how it’s done.”

  Etherell sat up. His hair was tousled from its friction with the rug, his eyes dreamy as if he were half asleep. “What’s to stop us from lying?”

  “Nothing.” Marlen’s look was of private amusement. “Let’s see how you do. You’re next.”

  Etherell pouted. He’d had a good deal of wine with dinner, in addition to the glass he had drained just now. “All right, here’s mine,” he said. “I earned top marks on my Academy exams.”

  “Boring!” Marlen pronounced.

  “That matters not,” said Etherell Lyr with a heavy-lidded grin. “True, or false?”

  “True,” said Marlen. “You are the sort to want to please the Masters.”

  “False,” said Rianna. “You haven’t touched a harp since I’ve known you. You care nothing for music.”

  Etherell shot her a sharp glance. “The lady has it. Though it could have been more kindly phrased!”

  She curved her shoulders delicately. “I’ve had wine.”

  “Then next must be you,” said Elissan Diar, settling himself on the rug at her feet. His eyes so intent she felt them like a caress. She shifted uncomfortably. There was a haze in her mind, which worried her. Inwardly she cursed Marlen. She didn’t know what he was driving at. She didn’t like this game.

  “I worked once in a kitchen,” she said at last. For a moment thinking herself very clever, to come up with something to stymie them. And then regretted it. Only Ned knew the particulars of that time in her life. And even he did not know everything.

  “False,” said Elissan Diar immediately. Rising, he took one of her hands and turned it in his own. “These hands have never known such work.”

  Marlen was silent. He was watching her. She wasn’t sure what she read in his face, whether it was compassion or remorse.

  Etherell Lyr’s voice intruded, laughing. “True is my guess,” he said. “And it is a tale I would give much to hear. Go on, dear,” he added in tones reminscent of seduction. Then laughed again.

  Rianna closed her eyes, feeling found out. Thunder pealed again, the rain pounded at the windows.

  “It’s true?” Elissan was incredulous. “Rianna. Is it?” He had let go of her hand.

  She met his eyes. “Lord Lyr is correct.”

  His face became stone. She wondered why. Whether it was disgust that she had done such work, or worse—that now he suspected she was not what
she appeared. That she had experienced drudgery—perhaps even degradation, which was said to enter one’s soul. And that, in turn, might get him to think about what else she was hiding.

  Damn you, Marlen, she thought. And cursed herself, too, for indulgence in the wine that had loosened her tongue.

  “Let’s go on,” Marlen said. “My king. It is your turn.”

  Elissan looked away from Rianna. Drew a breath as if to regain himself. “Very well.” A small smile played on his lips. “I am certain Sendara is my only child.”

  Etherell Lyr gave a shout of mirth. “False,” he cried, and the king bowed his head in mock submission.

  “I know of no others,” Elissan Diar said. “But there have been … shall we say, opportunities.”

  “In that you are surely not alone,” said Marlen, and the men clinked glasses, all smiles, toasting their mutual virility and fond memories. Recalling the hot nightmare of her child’s birth, Rianna stirred in her chair. Her life had hung in the balance in that time and for days after, days of fever and delirium. For a time, to escape the pain, she had wanted to die.

  The rush of blood to her head was, more than wine, from a sudden disgust with all of them.

  “I’ll go next,” she said.

  “It’s not your turn,” Marlen began, but Elissan Diar interjected. “It is the lady’s prerogative.”

  She rose, a bit unsteadily. The memory of childbirth had been followed upon by others. Ghosts of her life rapping at her door. She stood tall and with a sweeping glance took in the room. The men gazed back at her. Marlen looked disinterested, but wound the string tight around his fingers until they were white. Etherell Lyr reclined now on his side, aglow with beauty and at ease. And then there was the king. All she knew—this she knew for certain—was that he both hungered for and dreaded what she would say.

  When she did speak, it was lightly. “I had a chance to kill a man. I showed him mercy.”

  There was a silence. The rain fell more gently now. Tomorrow, perhaps, would be good weather for hunting.

  The silence stretched. Rianna laughed a little. “Will no one guess?”

  “I shall,” said Etherell Lyr. “False, is my guess. You showed no mercy.” He flashed his teeth. He looked wolfish and delighted. “We are kin, you and me. I ought to have seen it all along.”

  She looked away.

  “I have one,” said Marlen Humbreleigh. He sounded subdued. Whatever he had sought to unleash tonight, it was probably not this. “I have in my past many sins. I made atonement.”

  “No,” said Rianna, before anyone else could speak. “For such things we can never atone.” There was an ache behind her eyes, a weight heavier than tears. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  As she made her way up the stairs, a candle in hand, she heard the storm tear at the trees with renewed force. The winds a great sighing gale. Her room was dark. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her hands. Thought of the things she had said. It had not just been the wine. For such things we can never atone.

  She did not really believe it; but also, she did.

  Something had entered her heart that day in the woods years ago; something cold like the blade she’d used. Not even Ned could melt it. Not even a daughter. All along she concealed it; flourished, for a time, in love. She probably could have lived the rest of her life that way, with the coldness no more than an occasional flash in the dark, brought on by a certain song, a turn of the wind. But with those she loved stripped from her life it had surfaced; was all she could see.

  When the knock came, she was not surprised. Still it felt dreamlike in that moment to stand, to go to the door. In this quiet house wrapped in woods far from everything, the most ordinary acts felt strange.

  “So?” she said when Elissan Diar had shut himself in the room. “What is it?” She had never spoken so to him. Never sounded so harsh to herself.

  “I had no idea,” he said. She looked up. There was a vertical crease between his eyes that was unfamiliar. He put a hand to her breastbone. “There. That is your heart. You can’t convince me you don’t have one. The more you try, the more I see what I had not seen. Not until tonight.”

  She backed away a step. “And what is that?”

  “Your sadness.”

  She shook her head.

  “That is the missing piece to you,” he said. “Or else the key. And I have not been touched so deeply by anything in all my life.”

  “Please,” she said, pointlessly. She needed to go on hating him. To hate everything about him, with all her soul, or else she would fail at the end.

  He understood her differently. He led her to the bed, with his fingers snuffed the candle. “I would know you in darkness now,” he said. “My dear, my love.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  GREYNESS touched her eyes when she awoke; it was barely dawn. It was quiet in the room. No rain, no winds. A perfect stillness.

  Stillness within, too; she felt nothing. Even when she turned onto her side and saw that Elissan was gone.

  This has happened before. Quick malignance of a thought. She shrugged to cast it aside. She was committed to a lack of thought, a lack of feeling. She walked naked to the washstand and soaking the cloth, began to apply it to her skin. Later, when Alle came to attend her she would bathe, so that the course he’d taken down the length of her would be washed away. Perhaps it was that easy.

  Or, not quite. Secreted in her trunk was a glass bottle. She’d had it for a long time. One drop on her tongue, if it was only the next morning, and whatever seed he may have planted would be expelled. Would die.

  Thinking of such practicalities—washing herself, averting a pregnancy—kept her focus. But as she sat on the bed, wrapped in her robe, the perfect stillness of her mind began to fray. Fragments of memory prodded at her defenses.

  She’d had no defenses last night. That was the terrible thing. Immobilized in her sadness, she had been pliant, entirely passive. Even the inevitable responses to him had seemed to come from elsewhere, from someone else.

  And now he was gone. Perhaps her passiveness had been a disappointment. With word and glance, in the past few days, she had promised more. No doubt she’d descend the stairs to find him distant, or taking an interest in one of the prettier maids. He’d put that sort of behavior on hold for her; after last night, would know his mistake.

  Last night she had revealed she was broken, and a king could have what he chose. He would want someone whole.

  The herbs were bitter on her tongue. A taste so awful she thought it must be a punishment, for the crime of being an unnatural woman who did not want a child. For the act of love a woman must pay. One way or another.

  Soon she vomited in the chamber pot, loud and long until she felt the last ounce of strength wrung from her. That seemed right. She hoped it meant the herb was working. Afterward she washed her mouth with a peppermint rinse. There were ways, despite everything, to make herself clean again.

  She was collecting herself, readying for a bath, when the door opened. She turned to hiss at whoever disturbed her privacy and saw it was Elissan Diar, standing in the doorway with a high color and shining eyes. Knowing she was in every way the opposite—drained and colorless—Rianna could only stare.

  His exhilaration flagged when he saw her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have knocked. I just … I ran all the way back here. I couldn’t contain myself.”

  He was fully dressed and had clearly been outside, his clothes dew-dampened.

  “We must get you dry clothes,” she said automatically, and he started to laugh. He ran to her and lifted her in his arms, spun her around. When he set her down again she was dizzy. “What,” she began, feeling at sea more than ever with him.

  “My dear, did you sleep well? I should have asked,” he said. “You look so pale. Come, sit with me. Soon I will have to tell the others, but for now, I want to share it only with you.” He drew her to sit on the bed beside him, his arm around her waist and her hand
enveloped in his. “It’s my fault you’re tired. But listen to what I have to tell.”

  He was right about one thing—she was tired. She found herself leaning against him for support. “Tell me.”

  His arm around her waist tightened, as if the excitement coursing through him needed an outlet. “I woke before first light,” he said. “To the morning star. It was as if a voice called to me. A musical voice, sweet and far away. And it seemed—to command me.”

  Rianna straightened, no longer tired. Now with every sense alert. “What was the command?”

  “I knew … I needed to go to the woods. So I did. I got myself dressed and went out. The rain had ceased by then. In the wake of the storm was a deep silence. I did not see a bird or animal stir. I walked on, knowing only that the voice drew me on. And then—I saw it.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, looked direct into her face. “As the music reached its peak I saw a flash of white in the trees. I followed after it. And when I came to a glen it stood still, awaiting me. A white hart with mane like silver frost. With deep, black eyes you could never see the bottom of. And its crown, Rianna…”

  Elissan shook his head in wonderment. “It was a hart of twelve tines. Not ten, as make a quarry worthy of a king. Twelve, to surpass even that.”

  Despite herself, she was stirred by the tale. “So what happened?”

  He sighed. “I was a fool—I had not brought my crossbow. But clearly it is my destiny—to fell this hart. Something from the other world was calling me. You know what I mean, surely.” His gaze, though intent on her, was gentle. “I’m not the first poet you have loved.”

  She looked down. “Yes,” she said. “I know of the Otherworld.”

  “I believe it was a test,” he said. “Today, when we hunt, it will be for the hart.”

  * * *

  THAT day she kept to her room. From the window watched the men ride out, looking splendid on coursers in their hunting gear.