The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  A commander was supposed to lead men blindly into death. She couldn’t do it. A commander was not what she had ever wanted to be. She thought of Darien, wandering carefree, paying his way with songs. She’d wanted that for herself. But even Darien hadn’t had it for long. The world had caught up to him and the poet’s life he’d been meant for.

  She waited for Syme Oleir to speak. He had gone still. They crouched in the mounded dirt and grass among the stones.

  At last he said, “I know.” He looked at her calmly. “I’ve always known that, Lin.” Reaching out, he caught hold of her hand. Used it to lever himself upright. He stood beside her. “Everyone needs a purpose. Something to make their lives matter at the end.” He looked down at his hands. “Even, perhaps, a Fool.”

  * * *

  SHE had built a fire beside the arch. It was small, striving in its cage of twigs; she had not built it to burn for long. She didn’t have much time. At any moment the Ifreet would take possession of Syme again.

  She wanted light to see by. Syme sat near the fire to warm himself.

  It was deep night. She thought of the people she’d left in the city. One way or another, she couldn’t keep them from the fight. But they were incapable of following where she went now.

  Asterian had gone to the Underworld alone and so would she. Or near enough. She wasn’t sure how far Syme would accompany her.

  He watched her. She stood at the base of the arch.

  “A song of lament opened the way,” she recalled.

  “How will you find things to lament, my lady?” he asked ironically, and she smiled.

  As her hands stirred the strings, she reached for something. For a song. She thought of nights in the Tower of the Winds, reaching for melodies within. She had sent her mind down the well of her past as if it were a bucket, been forced to gaze at the things, exposed and squirming, that it drew forth. She’d felt revulsion, shame at the sight of them, but they were hers. Her shadow. Therefore her song.

  Again she thought back to the boy Zahir Alcavar had been. Rooting through a ruined city for his dead. In a blink the young boy who had desired to be a singer had changed the course of his life; had gone on to do harm like a deep scar in the earth.

  As she played she could see his eyes, that had stayed the same from his childhood until the day he died. She remembered the hopeless chill of his gaze that night, when he knew—when he took in—that she could not be party to his plan.

  She sang to him as if he were there.

  Syme said, “Look.”

  A light around them was growing. The gold of her skin glowed, spilled between the seams of her clothing. And grew brighter.

  “Keep on,” Syme urged in a whisper.

  She sang on, leaning to the harp as if for ballast.

  Valanir Ocune had carried her to the bed that night as if she were a bird. She never forgot. Nor did she forget the still, quiet box of light that had been her room, when she found what she had not thought to find. With him or anyone.

  She opened herself to the lament. Followed the melody where it led.

  And before her, in the space encompassed by the arch, a spiral of brightness was beginning. She saw a vista of green, daylight on the hills north of Tamryllin. She was with her friends again, hand in hand, looking ahead to a tale yet to be unwound. One that she had thought, then, could not be so bad, as long as they faced it together. Darien’s grin, Hassen’s stoic endurance of his friend’s wit; there they were. She had thought to join with them must mean that even if the shadow still fell on her there would be light from them, their songs and laughter. And that it would last.

  It was all right to be a fool when you were young, she thought. Especially for love.

  Asterian had gone to the realm of the dead for love, and in some renditions of the tale—a tale that history had rendered into as many fragments as a shattered jar—he failed.

  His love was no less real for that.

  Syme was beside her now, and he made a frantic call like a bird. “Go go go,” he shouted, his arms raised as if to fly. Reminding her of a gull. He flared green, then the gold that radiated from her skin, then green again. She realized he was fighting it again, fighting hard. “Sing!” he screamed to her. “I am gone, I am lost, you go.”

  So here was the final lament, she thought, tears coming for the first time. She would find words for the sacrifice of Syme Oleir if it took the rest of her life. Or—lacking that time—she’d find them now. He screamed and she sang at a pitch almost a scream, and the gate that had begun as a vision of daylight turned black. Unfurled for her like a banner.

  There were many avenues to death, but few entered in the flesh.

  Syme screamed to her above the stormcrack of the opening gate. Winds and thunder poured forth as if it opened to a stormy sea, but she knew … she could feel in its clammy smell … that the storm was somewhere deep beneath the earth.

  She didn’t know how to help him, other than to close this gate and let it go. Lin mourned him as they gazed at each other across the widening abyss. She sang on the edge of death.

  At last the gate was wide as the arch, and Lin knew she could no longer delay. She stood before the storm a moment. Looked at Syme screaming to her. And then she jumped.

  * * *

  DORN Arrin hunkered down in the grass. Otherwise the wind would have knocked him over. The oncoming storm had blocked the sun. An artificial night had fallen.

  Etherell caught his arm. “Steady.”

  “You know what this is?” He had to shout.

  “No idea.”

  It was hard to see what was happening. The black wave of a new army was sweeping toward them. He had a vague impression of people running, the Queen’s army fleeing before the wave. Wind and flashes of lightning came with it. A collective shriek arose, and Dorn felt, tugging at him, a current of emotion like sorrow.

  “Oh gods,” he said. “It is the dead.”

  Etherell didn’t hear him. He looked out at the advancing army—for such it had to be—a wall of spears made of night—and seemed puzzled.

  It was bearing down fast.

  “They’re about to attack us,” said Etherell. “Well.” He drew his sword.

  That was when the first wave of dark spearmen swept into the ranks of the King’s army. Into it, and through. The King’s grey warriors crumpled like paper thrown in a grate.

  Next the dark army came for the Queen’s front ranks. The young men who had been Academy students, Elissan Diar’s Chosen, made immortal through magic. They stood and faced the onslaught as it came. And to a man they fell. Not for the first time. And then lay still, which was new.

  In later days when the bodies of the Chosen were heaped on a pyre, no one believed they’d burn. People expected that the men would rise, dead-eyed and intent to kill. No one stayed to watch the pyre burn itself out. It took days for the flames to die away. In the northern villages, which were near Almyria, they saw the smoke and were reminded of things they’d been attempting to forget.

  What remained was a hill of ashes. A month later, following the winter rains, a rose garden sprang from the burned patch of grass. In time the field became famous for its profusion of white roses, delicate blooms that didn’t belong in the mountain climate but would nonetheless endure, year after year.

  * * *

  MOMENTS before she led the attack, Lin Amaristoth had turned to the army behind her. Their cries rang in her bones. Men, women, and children wore the same face, masks of suffering.

  The wind from the portal whipped at her, at all of them. But she was the one who felt it. She was still alive.

  “When you fall here today,” she said, addressing the ranks of tortured eyes, “your pain will end. You will gain a true death.”

  The souls of Vesperia cried assent. At her command, they charged.

  * * *

  JULIEN’S mind had narrowed to a single point: to shield Archmaster Hendin from the storm winds. The noise of battle blended with that of the storm, and
she looked away from it all, wrapping them both in his cloak.

  Dorn was out there, she thought. But she had no idea what to do about it. She had no powers. She had nothing left.

  She clung to the Seer’s body as wave after wave of battle crashed beneath her. Julien trembled, and didn’t know if it was fear or from the force of the noise. The clangor and screams.

  After whatever form of time it was that passed, after however many assaults took place in the darkened fields below, the noises ebbed. Then faded to the sound of wind, and then were altogether gone.

  It might have been quiet a long time, the winds gone away, when an instinct made Julien Imara look down at the field. She saw someone climbing the hill. Heading towards her.

  And what could she do? She had a knife, but didn’t know what to do with it. But would anyone want Archmaster Hendin’s body? Why would they? A sob rose in her throat.

  The storm was lifting, and with it, the inky dark. Sunlight was breaking through the clouds. The purplish-blue of the hills was brightening again to green. Now she could see who was coming. A slight figure, moving with purpose through the grass. Bringing her own light as she came.

  “Julien,” said Lin Amaristoth. “What’s happened?”

  Julien stared at her. The Court Poet shone as if she had been dipped in gold paint.

  “Oh I see,” Lin murmured. She knelt beside Archmaster Hendin in the grass.

  “I lost him,” said Julien.

  Lin’s expression was tender. “Perhaps not,” she said. “The gate is still open.”

  “The gate?” Julien looked down the hill. Saw the patch of dark that hovered in the field like a departing storm.

  Lin didn’t answer. She was murmuring over the Archmaster. She put a hand to his closed eyelids. Then smiled, fell back, as his eyes opened. She was still shining. “Welcome back.”

  * * *

  THE Queen stood like a lone white pillar in the field. Two other figures, smaller and dimmer, alongside her. Everything in her presence was dimmed. As they approached, Julien tried not to look at the bodies that lay scattered on the field. Academy students, most of them. The only ones who had not vanished or fled. They had been trained to obey, to fight to the death, and they’d done so.

  “Your grace,” Lin Amaristoth called across the field.

  The White Queen’s hair danced in the wind. “You.”

  Julien hung back with Archmaster Hendin, a few steps behind Lin. But gave a cry when she recognized Dorn Arrin with the White Queen. He was dressed in the formal black and silver of a poet. She stared. Something about seeing him fitted out that way made her uneasy.

  Etherell Lyr was there, too. That was strange. She wondered if he, too, had been captured.

  Coming forward, Lin sketched a bow. “It is my understanding,” she said, “that your opponent has gone. That it’s over.”

  The White Queen curled her lip. “He was always skilled at saving himself, and little else.” She looked at Lin, up and down, undisguised contempt. “So you’re the one who ruined it.”

  Lin spread her hands. “We act on our own interests, your grace. It is the way of battle. But there is something I can offer you.” She pointed. “Over there is a gate that will take you wherever you wish to go. Any world at all. I don’t have that sort of power, but you do. You can use it how you like.”

  “It would save trouble.” The Queen’s eyes grew thoughtful. “You are fortunate that my strength is diminished. My name was used against me. No use destroying you, when I must restore my strength.”

  “The fortunes of war undo us all,” Lin said delicately. “How may I speed you on your way?”

  “You need do nothing,” said the White Queen. “I will use your portal.” She closed a hand like ivory pincers around Dorn’s wrist. “This one comes with me.”

  Nearby, the croak of carrion birds as they hovered and fought among themselves. Picking at the bodies.

  Lin said, “What would you take instead?”

  The White Queen laughed. “Nothing. He is mine. If he doesn’t come, that portal will stay open, and I will return for him when I’ve regained my strength. Nothing that belongs to me can stay. These are laws beyond even you, Seer.”

  Julien sprang forward. Everything blurred around her: Dorn’s face, the grass, the luminous pillar that was the Queen. When she spoke, and the Queen’s gaze fixed on her, she quailed. But stayed the course. “I read … I have read something about … exchanges. One mortal for another.”

  “That is true,” said the Queen with a dismissive gesture. “You’re all interchangeable.”

  “Good,” said Julien Imara. “Take me.”

  Now Dorn spoke up. “Don’t you dare.”

  She turned to him. Her gaze caught on his like cloth on a nail; she couldn’t look away. And thought she would never forget how he looked then: pale and lost, but resolute. Behind him, she could see crows capering a shadow dance on the field among the dead.

  A memory: Nothing is freely given or gained.

  In her innocence, or stupidity, or both, Julien had imagined she’d lost everything. But it was only power she’d lost. Only that.

  Lin Amaristoth said, “I will not see my poets give away their lives. Either of them.”

  Julien felt Archmaster Hendin stir beside her. He’d been hardly able to speak since Lin Amaristoth revived him. Now he was coming to himself.

  “I’ll go.” Etherell Lyr, coming forward.

  A breeze stirred in the grass. After the events of the morning, its murmur passing through was peaceful. Even if they could see, several paces off, the darkness that hung in the distance. The gate.

  Dorn was white as paper. “What are you doing?”

  “I betrayed you.” Etherell stood at ease, stating a fact. “This makes it right.”

  “You can’t stand to be in debt.”

  “Besides.” The other man grinned. “Have you considered the adventure?”

  “There must be another way.”

  “No.” It was hard to read Etherell’s serene blue eyes; no way to know what he thought or felt. “You know there isn’t.” He turned to the Queen; with a mocking gesture extended his arm to her.

  Dorn said, “Wait.”

  The serenity of Etherell’s expression wavered. “It is better,” he said. “I don’t really belong here. I hurt people.” He fixed Dorn in his gaze. “I hurt you.”

  Time seemed to move differently here, as it had on Labyrinth Isle and the western sea. It seemed only moments later the White Queen and Etherell Lyr were a distance away, heading for the patch of blackness on the field. Julien blinked; she had not seen that happen. The two moved steadily. Until the Queen set her hand on the back of Etherell’s neck. He vanished into the dark. She followed close behind, through the gate.

  The light of afternoon folded over them as it closed.

  CHAPTER

  28

  THEY were back on the hill of standing stones, away from the stench of the field, by the time the sun began its descent. The shadows on Hariya Mountain deepening. Its surface reflected every change of the sun, much like the sea. Soon an entourage from King Eldakar would come—his Magician had sent word. Until then, there was nothing to do but rest and wait among the stones. Julien Imara lay back on the grass, her cloak wrapped around her. She wanted shelter from her thoughts. It had felt like the longest day of her life. Archmaster Hendin had fallen asleep where he lay.

  Nearby, Dorn Arrin sat picking a blade of grass to pieces.

  “So, Julien,” Lin Amaristoth said. She was the only one who appeared at ease, seated cross-legged in the grass. She looked different than when Julien had seen her last—she wore trousers, and had cut off her hair. “You had the Queen’s name. How did that happen?”

  Julien curled deeper into the cloak. “It was a … a bargain. I went to the Lost Isles.”

  “The what?”

  Archmaster Hendin stirred. “Wait until you hear, my lady,” he said. “What this girl has seen and done. I’m afraid i
t’ll make you jealous.”

  Lin smiled. “Poets thrive on petty jealousies. I should like to hear.” Her glance at Julien was kind. “When you’re ready.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” said Julien. “When the Queen was weakened … so was the King. But I didn’t have his name.”

  Dorn spoke, the first time in a while. “I did.”

  Julien gaped. “How?”

  “Never mind.” Though it was dusk, he had visibly reddened.

  “You can’t be like that!”

  “Oh yes I can.”

  “A story like that would be invaluable for our archives,” Archmaster Hendin began, then stopped when Dorn Arrin looked at him with a face like thunder.

  Lin Amaristoth spoke. “Perhaps we ought to put this interrogation to rest,” she said. “And simply say thank you.”

  Dorn covered his face with his hands.

  Julien knew better than to go to him. She ached. They remained silent after that, and watched the last red bands of daylight disappear.

  * * *

  WHEN the king came, he and his entourage went to work to build a pyre for the slain. It took the better part of the day.

  The next day they spent traveling to put a distance between themselves and the smoke. They plunged into the forest, rock-strewn pinewoods that reminded Lin Amaristoth of northern Eivar. But she was far from home. At least the winter here was gentler.

  “Does Rianna want to kill me?” she asked Eldakar as they rode.

  He grinned. “Best put your affairs in order.”

  “I thought so.”

  That night they pitched tents in a glade. Eldakar invited Lin to dine with him alone. There was an air about him she had never seen, excitable and melancholy at once. When they were alone she asked after his health.

  “My surgeon predicts my shoulder will be better by spring,” said Eldakar. “I think it is getting better. Though I always know when a storm is coming.”