The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  They had learned that soon upon arriving, once Owayn the groundskeeper and his wife, Larantha, the cook, had gotten over the shock of seeing them. Not that much could shock those two anymore, after all that had happened. Only one break in their composure—when Julien told them Valanir Ocune had made her Seer. At that point Larantha had begun to cry. She had known Valanir since he was a boy. The corpse dragged from the Hall of Harps had hardly resembled the man.

  This was a memory Dorn Arrin shuddered away from himself.

  He peeled off his blankets reluctantly—the room was cold. Luckily his clothes, including a cloak lined with vair and velvet that had been a gift from his parents one year, remained in the chest at the foot of his bed. He stoked the fire in the grate. Hardly a need to conserve firewood with a storehouse full and everyone gone.

  Most important, of course, was that his harp remained on the bedside table where he’d left it. Made of willow-wood and tin, it would not have presented as a temptation. Nothing he owned, other than the cloak, cost very much. But he wondered if his possessions had been left untouched from guilt, or superstition.

  As he did each morning, he went to the window. As if in that view of water and mainland trees he might see some sign. Some indication of the enchantments that had driven even the Archmasters away. Birds remained, gulls and hawks and ospreys, calling to one another and the sky.

  The Archmasters and students had fled to Vassilian, the stronghold given the poets by Lin Amaristoth. Though not the Chosen, nor Elissan Diar. Nor Etherell Lyr. Those last—that group—had done something rather different. The idea of which was a part of what Dorn Arrin strove to remember each morning. It was too vast and strange.

  A Poet King ruled in Tamryllin.

  As he splashed cold water on his face at the basin, Dorn’s mind went back to the night they had arrived, two days ago. Julien Imara had brought them back. The journey had passed like a dream and taken months, which they knew as soon as they came to in the forest and felt the chill. When they saw red berries on the hawthorn trees.

  Winter was around the corner, Owayn said dryly as they warmed themselves that night in the kitchen. Now one of the only rooms in use. The old man, who had served as groundskeeper of the Academy since before they were born, sat on a bench near the stove with his pipe and watched as Dorn and Julien dug ferociously into a loaf, meats, and fish. These were made more palatable with a vegetable paste flavored with herbs. Larantha still cooked, thank the gods.

  The groundskeeper told them much that night in laconic statements of fact. More boys had disappeared. One of the Seers had died suddenly. One boy had, subsequent to disappearing, washed up dead on the eastern shore.

  This was to say nothing of the strangeness that had the Isle in its grip, but of this, Owayn did not care to elaborate. He told them only that he and Larantha did not venture into the woods—no more than was needed to gather kindling. He went to the fishnets every so often to bring in cod and ling, and only in daylight.

  “Ling?” Julien had asked then.

  Finally, some levity. Dorn had said, with a straight countenance, “It goes well with sloe berry jam.”

  Of course that wasn’t true, but she had understood at once, and sighed. Cuisine was not among the benefits of the Academy. At least Larantha made good bread, and the stews were not half bad thanks to Archmaster Hendin, who had lovingly tended an herb garden.

  Where was Archmaster Hendin?

  “Gone,” Owayn had said around a mouthful of smoke.

  Not dead?

  Not as far as he knew, the groundskeeper averred. Apparently Archmaster Hendin had got the jump on the rest, and departed soon after Manaia. “He thought you were dead,” Owayn added then, looking thoughtful. “The two of you. We all did. I believe it broke him to think such things could happen here.”

  Later that night when the fire had become embers Dorn had asked the obvious: Why didn’t they leave?

  At first they had stayed because it was home. Then, because they could not think of anywhere else to go. They had no children nor other family on the mainland. Larantha’s only baby had died, stillborn, when she was nineteen.

  The cook was clearing plates as this was discussed. There was a studied calm to her movements; Dorn thought he could sense emotion thrumming at her core like a plucked string. She was worried for the two of them, whom she saw as children; but she was happy. Happy they were alive; happy to have fresh faces to see and feed.

  Owayn was either not aware of his wife’s mood, or impervious to it. He went on. They had thought of leaving, he said. Seeking their fortune in the town of Eirne, or asking refuge in Vassilian. For now, the choice was deferred, because they could not leave.

  This time of year, the waters around the Isle were choppy. It was unsafe to take a boat out. Only the ferryman had known the invisible paths to avoid riptides, shoals, and other dangers. Only he had possessed the skills to navigate these waters in poor conditions.

  Dorn said, “Why do you speak of the ferryman in the past tense?”

  “He’s gone,” said Owayn. “Got in his boat and never heard from again.” He leaned back, wreathed in smoke like a dragon. His craggy features, crinkled around his blue eyes, were distant. “But people claim to have seen him,” he said. “Larantha has had her dreams. Perhaps he isn’t truly gone.”

  Dorn saw Julien shiver. He ventured, “What have they seen?”

  The blue eyes fixed on him. “I can tell you what they believe … what is whispered in the taverns,” said the groundskeeper. “That he is a ferryman, still, on waters more vast than these.”

  * * *

  DORN knew he would find Julien in the Hall of Harps. At times she’d be examining the carvings in the walls; other times, gazing at the Silver Branch. It had changed. Clustered among the leaves, instead of flowers, three red-gold spheres in the shape of apples.

  He and Julien had, the first day, risked picking up the changed Branch. When waved back and forth, the apples swayed, made a sound like chimes. A song of sweet melancholy that brought to mind long-gone summer days. But otherwise nothing happened.

  Now as Dorn passed between the two statues of the goddess Kiara in the entryway, Julien looked up. The Seer’s mark, often invisible, had gathered light from the Branch to her eye. Its glow, once pure silver, had warmed to the hue of a winter sun.

  Shortly after the conversation with Owayn, he had asked Julien point-blank, “Are we trapped here?”

  She had brought them to the Isle. She had said nothing of a way out.

  Her answer was not reassuring. “The enchantments of this place and Valanir’s ties to it brought us here,” she said. “I don’t know how to transport us out again. I can think about it.”

  “Or we wait for spring.”

  “Yes.”

  Where they would go remained unspecified. Julien seemed detached, wrapped in her own thoughts. Perhaps it was that she no longer knew her purpose—if she had one, still. She had completed the mission Valanir Ocune had left to her—she had carried a message of importance to the Court Poet, in Kahishi far away. What remained? She could go to Vassilian, Dorn supposed, and try to learn from the Archmasters there. An idea with scant appeal. They had never shown an inclination to teach her.

  He wasn’t sure where he fit in this new order of things. According to Owayn and Larantha, the Archmasters were horrified when they awoke to what they’d done—when they thought they’d killed him. It was amusing to picture himself turning up at Vassilian, shocking them all … but farcical, too. He didn’t belong at Vassilian, with the people who had cast him to the fires. He had studied all he needed, had been about to graduate. He could perhaps go to them, demand his Academy ring, and be on his way. That was a goal of sorts, he supposed; for spring.

  That left months of winter on this island. Alone with the enchantments that had scared everyone else away.

  When Julien Imara spotted him in the entryway, she called him over. “Look what I found,” she said. The enchanted light that suffuse
d her, from brow and Branch, gave her an air of command. She didn’t know it, he decided. She was not the commanding kind.

  Dorn went to her. She pointed to a carving in the wall. “This wasn’t here,” she said. “I’d have seen it. We all would have.”

  The rectangular tile she indicated was large, dominating the rest in size. Yes; there was no doubt Julien, and others, would have seen if it had been there before. Especially given its detail, more extensive than the rest.

  The center of the carving showed a king on his throne. To one side of him, a bird with a long tail, embellished with shapes like eyes.

  Encircling the throne was some design. Dorn looked more closely and felt a chill. What constituted the design, a series of spirals, were skulls.

  Each corner of the tile had its engraved image. A castle on a clifftop. A woman with a harp, hand outstretched to what appeared a gate. A man with a harp in a boat, the wavy line beneath indicating water. And in the bottom left corner, a jester with cap and bells. He wore a mask that wept.

  Julien traced the king’s head with a finger. “Look at his crown,” she said. “Does it look to you like the antlers of a stag?”

  “It does. And see what he holds.” A harp.

  “It must be Elissan Diar—the Poet King,” she said. “His reign will bring death. Don’t you think it must mean something like that? When he is crowned, perhaps?”

  “Surely that’s happened already?”

  Julien shook her head. “There is to be a ceremony at solstice time. Larantha told me. Dignitaries were invited. Word came of it shortly before … before people started leaving.”

  “I wonder why he’d brook such delay.” Dorn thought a moment. “This carving,” he said at last. The symbols, each one, tugged at him with an emotion he could not define. Neither dread nor fear, but with elements of each. “It is … a lot to decipher.”

  Julien did not seem to share what he was feeling. If anything, she looked revived. “Dorn, I don’t think it’s a coincidence we are here. Valanir would have wanted us to work this out.”

  “If the enchantments don’t do for us first.”

  She looked up at him worriedly but did not reply.

  * * *

  HE didn’t tell her of his dreams. Of twin fires opening to black. The certainty that this place of nothingness was intended for him. Strains of music, strange and wrong as on that night, would pursue him from the dream into wakefulness and daylight in his eyes. He would try to remind himself that it was over. The danger past.

  Three nights, the dream repeated. On the fourth night it changed. Dorn found himself in the Tower of the Winds. It was the middle of the night, the time of song-making he knew well.

  A figure at the window, wrapped in a dark cloak, turned toward him. Even before, he knew who it was. Though could not have said how. The Court Poet’s face was tired. Her mark of the Seer a web of silver strands. She said, “I hope you don’t mind that I called you here. We haven’t met. I’ve heard good word of you, Dorn Arrin.”

  He inclined his head. “Thank you.” Then looked around. “I hadn’t been back here yet—in the flesh. It is the same.”

  “It is.” She smiled. “It would have been easier to send for Julien Imara because of our shared connection, but … last I saw her, her mark emitted a powerful sense of its former owner. I wished to spare myself that pain. Perhaps you understand.” She reached out a hand, and he saw how the back of it was veined with gold, and the dark stone in her ring. “I wanted to get a message to the two of you. Get where you can conceal yourselves.”

  “Why?”

  Her lips thinned. “Within the fortnight Elissan Diar will gain for himself a new power. Unless we can stop him. If we fail … he will come for the two of you. Perhaps not right away. But you’ll be targets—especially Julien, with her gift from Valanir Ocune. Do what Archmaster Hendin has wisely done. Find a place of safety.”

  He had a moment to take that in—her dark hair and cloak; the white, tired face with a glimmer at her eye. Behind her, a window that faced onto water and a night sky.

  And then he was awakening to a new day. The persistent cries of seabirds confirmed what he had suspected last night, from the scent and speed of the wind. A storm was coming.

  CHAPTER

  9

  THE city awaits its king.

  Nameir stared at the parchment in her hand. One line, written slant and firm across the page. No signature.

  Since the summer, in the course of the border wars, it had been Nameir’s job to stand at King Eldakar’s side, to protect and advise. The king had escaped the destruction of his home, of the Zahra—a destruction that some saw as an opportunity to wrest the kingdom from him. Since that time he’d been at war. He and Nameir had faced assembled bands, armed and mounted; archers from the palisades that lined the river.

  Yet this slip of parchment, with its one line, seemed to her a greater threat than all of these.

  The king glanced at it with no change of expression. “The city,” he said. He stood in a casual pose, hands at his belt. A silver-haired ermine cloak draped his shoulders. He could have been the subject of one of those portraits that had graced the halls of the Zahra. It was only because Nameir Hazan had been beside him these many weeks that she saw that he still favored his right side.

  He had taken the message from the woman who brought it, then with barely a glance at the paper passed it to Nameir. The messenger remained in the tent doorway. The hood of her red cloak had dropped to reveal pale, silver-fair hair. A face without expression, of indeterminate age. Gold chains encircled her neck, fell to a corded leather belt that wound around her waist multiple times. She gave a nod. “Her words.”

  “She doesn’t say she awaits me,” said Eldakar Evrayad with an ironic twist to his mouth.

  The woman who had introduced herself as Aleira Suzehn cocked her head. Eyeing the king, as if considering whether he was stupid. With a note of forced patience, “She holds the city for you.”

  “Yes, I understand that is the crux of it,” said Eldakar. “Loyalty.” Now it seemed he might laugh. But reined himself in to attend to business. “How am I to know this is not some trick? This is the first I’ve heard from Rihab since … since Nitzan.”

  The Feast of Nitzan was when the queen had abandoned the king, to his humiliation before the world.

  “You know it’s her,” said Aleira. “She said you’d know her writing.”

  “It’s true.” Eldakar looked thoughtful. As he advanced toward the woman in the red cloak, the stiffness of his posture was more pronounced. In late summer he had taken an arrow to the shoulder. One of numerous battles fought on the banks of the Iberra. Eldakar’s men had succeeded in turning those of Vizier Muiwiyah back—they had retreated across the river, to their lands in the east. But only for a time. Muiwiyah Akaber was determined to take advantage of Eldakar’s exile and defeat to assume the throne. To unite the provinces once more—this time under his rule.

  “I don’t understand,” said Eldakar. “Rihab knows I can’t come to Majdara. Muiwiyah’s men guard all routes to the city. And my only advantage, at present, is that I’m not trapped in a siege.”

  “You have several advantages,” Aleira countered. “One that the queen holds the capital against the traitor Muiwiyah. He tried to capture it. Her forces beat him back. Myrine wants you to know the city remains in safekeeping against your return.”

  “Myrine.”

  “Her name.”

  “I know,” he said. “Her father told me. Each time I hear it, it brings to mind that I married a stranger.”

  This did not divert Aleira from her point. “There is another gift she sends.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Word reached the queen that you were visited by Ramadian Magicians. That there are threats beyond this war—beyond Muiwiyah. A Poet King arises in the west. The enchantments he may unleash—these would make Almyria only the start, not an ending.”

  Smoke still rose from the ruins
of Almyria. On clear days, from the hill of their camp, they could see it.

  “So the Ramadians said,” said Eldakar. Subtle lines around his mouth told Nameir that the wound gave him pain. “Before they fled to prepare their armies. They expect the threat will reach them even there.”

  “So it might,” said Aleira Suzehn. “And to meet this threat you will need a Magician. Those left alive from the Tower of Glass are too young and green. Myrine sent me,” she went on, proud eyes belying her words, “to be of service to you.”

  * * *

  “DO you trust her?” Eldakar was pouring wine for the two of them into goblets of iridescent glass. Nameir was supposed to serve him, but there was no use expecting typical behavior of Eldakar. This cup of wine before bed had become a ritual. They would talk over the day’s events, or the plans for tomorrow, before she went to her tent for the night.

  A fire crackled in a brazier near the tent flap, left slightly ajar. This place was hardly akin to the luxury of Eldakar’s former life. Maybe that was why he kept Nameir close—she was, in a way, his guide. This life was the only one she knew.

  “I don’t think … the queen … sent her to betray you,” she said. “Lin Amaristoth spoke of this woman. How she helped her in the past. She owns a bookshop in the city, it would seem. But also knows something of magic.”

  “Yes.” He handed her a goblet, and sipped from his. “I will have her watched. But you are likely right. I believe Lin would know a traitor. Though who among us is immune?” He smiled and Nameir could only guess what was in his mind. This was a man who had been betrayed by those nearest him not once, but twice.

  First had been the queen. Then had been Zahir Alcavar, his closest friend. The first had been a public betrayal, making the king a laughingstock; the second known only to a handful. From snatches of talk she’d overheard between Eldakar and Lin, Nameir understood that Zahir Alcavar had been in league with the powers that had brought down the Zahra. Yet nonetheless they mourned him. A thing she, who recalled the horror of that night too well, could hardly understand. But knew it was not her place to question.