Children of Magic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  But it took them some time to rise, and in rising, they became children again, lost and unruly. Shahira spoke to the closest in her low, sweet voice, and they quieted. Taking her example, the other girls sought to do the same, but to her surprise, Estavos did likewise, calming them by being, somehow, calm.

  “You do me honor,” he told them, when at last they stood again in two orderly rows, “and likewise, the people of my kingdom, even if they know it not. Have you learned the song of awakening?”

  The looked at each other nervously. Shahira stepped forward boldly and lifted her chin. “We have,” she said quietly, and stopped short of saying more.

  “Good. It is three days hence that you will be called upon to sing, and when you do, you must sing perfectly. It is the only thing I will ask of you, but I must ask it. While you dwell under my care and protection, you will practice, and I will be your only audience. Come the third night, I must be satisfied.”

  There was no threat in the words he offered, although his voice was grave.

  But Shahira nodded again. He frowned at her boldness. “Your name, girl?”

  “I am called Shahira by my kin,” she replied with care. And then, discarding care, added, “but it is seldom that we are called upon to give our names to one who remains nameless.”

  “Indeed. It is an act of subservience,” the King replied, “or obedience.”

  And it came to her that Kings must be hard and cold, like their thrones, and just as splendid, as distant. She would have knelt, but he did not demand it, and her legs were stiff.

  “Very well,” he said. “You will now follow me, for we have begun our work, and your presence is required.” He paused and added, “You may speak among yourselves, but you are not to speak of this to any other living person; it is a great secret, and it is not one that can be safely shared.”

  Again, he offered no threat, but Shahira was old enough to hear the threat beneath the surface of words, and she marveled that words could be like a dagger, sheathed but waiting, edge only hidden, but never forgotten. She did not ask him what would happen to those the children she might speak to; she had no need. It was evident.

  “You were born,” he said, “for this; you are a part of the magic, and a gift in need to the people from whom you came.” He gestured, and guards appeared, as if by the self-same magic; they were not Adelos, and they were as finely attired as the King himself, or so they seemed; grim and cold and somehow perfect.

  To the Priests, he now bowed, and if the bow was not low, it was still clear. “You will attend,” he said, “three days hence. Take your leave and be at peace; you have had a long, long journey.”

  She was forced to bite her tongue and clamp her jaw to hold her peace; the words seared the inside of her mouth as she contained them. He had offered no like words for the children who had been taken from their families. Even his honor was cold. Her grandmother had been cold and stern, but never like this, and she would not soon forget.

  But if they had dreamed of palaces, the truth was like waking; they were now led from a room that had seemed a place for penitents, to someplace that was like a dungeon. They were led, first, to a door that was old, and surrounded by rough, pocked stone into which were engraved shapes and symbols. Shahira could not read; she thought, however, that had she the skill, it would have made no difference. There was something about these marks that was old, older than the barrows in the hills in which all her ancestors of note had lain for hundreds of years.

  Here, torches were lit, and they were needed, for sunlight did not penetrate the darkness into which they stepped; there were stairs that went down in a winding spiral, and the guards ordered them to stay close to the walls; they themselves walked upon the outside of the children, enforcing that order by their presence.

  But the children—except perhaps Ademi—did not need to be told twice; there were no rails here, and steps such as these had never been seen by any of them in their lives. Down they went, and were it not for the presence of the King and his guards, they might have wept or stopped. But if they dared the anger of Priests, not even the youngest dared the wrath of Kings, and this was wise.

  This man, Shahira thought, had seen the long Winter, but he had not been part of it; he had crested above it, oblivious to the cold and the danger of death that lay waiting outside his walls.

  As if he could hear the thought, he paused to look at her, and she realized that he had chosen to walk, to place his feet, beside her. His gaze was keen and clear as he assessed her, barren as the fields. And it came to her then that he was weary, as weary as Adelos. She felt no pity for him; pity was not a thing to offer Kings. Nor did she feel any warmth, or even compassion. He was not hers.

  Only the children were, in this place, and she could count the length of days that that responsibility would last, for he had named them himself: three.

  Three days.

  The Winter in her heart grew cold as she met his gaze, and colder when he at last looked away. In the darkness, she dared this much, and in the darkness, he allowed it. “You are their keeper,” he said quietly. His voice did not carry, and given how loud their steps were, she was surprised, but she should not have been; she thought the heavens themselves might bend at his command.

  And that he might be cautious before the giving of it.

  “I am their eldest,” she replied with dignity, “and they are the brothers and sisters of my spirit. We were born to the same fate, and for the same reason; we are bound together.”

  “You are a strange girl,” he replied. “For I feel you understand some of your fate.”

  “Only some,” she told him softly.

  “And you walk without fear?”

  “I am never without fear. But it is better spent for them, than upon myself. Or so I’ve been taught.”

  “Then you have been well taught, child.”

  She said nothing. She had been taught more, besides; that fear itself was foolish, but that it might be honed and used if one were cautious and had ones wits about one. Her grandmother’s voice was strong in this place.

  “You have heard stories about the magic in this place?”

  “We have all heard stories,” she answered cautiously, lowering her voice.

  “Then you will see the truth of them—or the lie—for yourself. I can offer you no comfort, but you do not ask it.”

  “Not for myself.”

  “Not at all.”

  She nodded again and continued to walk, as he did.

  They came at last to the end of these stairs, the torches flickering brightly. He led them to another door, older still than the one above; she could see a glimpse of similar carvings in it.

  “We delved here, when we came,” he told her. “To plant our roots and take our place. This is the heart of my kingdom, and it is laid bare to you for these three days; make of it what you will.”

  And so Shahira looked first into the heart of a kingdom and blinked, for it was dark here, and the walls had given way at last to stone that had no discernable shape and no end; it went up into a blackness that torchlight was too meagre to penetrate. Sunlight would have been too meager; here there was only the shadow that no light casts.

  She was afraid, then.

  And because she was Shahira, she clung to old stories and the harsh affection of her grandmother’s longhouse voice. And the King said, “here we first woke the sleepers at need. And here, in return, once we had paid their price, we were offered a Kingdom.

  “But here,” he added softly, “when the time has come, we must renew old vows if we are to keep what we have built.”

  “What vows?” she whispered; she could not raise her voice.

  But the King did not answer, and she did not ask again. Instead, listening to the voices—and the silences—of the younglings, she moved away from the man whose word was both life and death, and returned to the duties she had chosen.

  “Here,” the King told her, “you will reside. Here, you will practice, and eat, an
d sleep. For it is here that you will be heard, and here, in the end, that your fate will be decided. In three days, you will understand what you cannot understand now, and in four, you will be allowed to leave in honor.”

  “How many of us?” Estavos asked.

  Shahira would have hit him, had she been close enough.

  The King did not even glance at the boy, but after a moment he said, “All that remain.”

  She hated the King, then. She understood the allure of the hatred that drove Estavos, and it burned her, and she stood shaking with it, her hands in fists, her lips a tight line that threatened to swallow all of her words and songs forever.

  But Ademi caught one fist, and Kaylarra, so quiet, the other, and she was torn a moment between a helpless rage and a helpless fear.

  Which will you choose, daughter?

  The strong voice her grandmother’s voice.

  And Shahira, who had accepted her fate, struggled to shoulder it once again.

  Between love and hate, which will you choose?

  Can I not have both?

  At your peril, both. But not at the same time. Choose one and hold it fast. Choose quickly.

  She swallowed, and as Kaylarra’s little voice rose in a quick series of panicked breath, the choice, she felt, was made for her; she gathered the girl in her arms, lifting her from the rough rocky ground and burying her face in the soft, fine hair.

  She had sustained them all the way here, leading them at last into darkness, but she realized as she held the girl and felt the steadying comfort of that embrace, that these children had also sustained her; truly, they were bound.

  Her eyes were wet when she lifted her head; she allowed herself this weakness because it was so hard to see in the gloom. “This is a poor place for children,” she told the King, “but it is cool here; the sun does not reach this far.”

  The King did not smile or falter. “The Summer’s heart,” he told her, “is in this place. And the coming of autumn and the rains. But I am not yet finished, child. Come, all of you, and gather round me.” He lifted both of his hands, and light grew in his palms, a light that was pale and more radiant than the meager torches. The hands of the King, ringed with gold, caught them all as if they were moths and he, fire.

  He led them, by this light, this fey fire, into the heart of a cavern, the darkness pushed back by his presence, and at last, where the ground was warm beneath their feet, to a smooth flat place where sand had been scattered.

  And in the centre of the sand, smooth and large, something white and round and larger than any of them.

  “You must touch it,” he told them, although he himself did not move towards the object that lay before them. “Touch it, and offer it your names.”

  “What is it?”

  “Salvation,” he replied gravely. “It has been waiting for you here, while you lived with your families in distant villages, and it will not wake without you.”

  They were afraid now, for the King did not move. And so Shahira, holding Kaylarra in her arms and trailing Ademi, who could not be dislodged by anything short of force, walked across the sand toward the thing that lay there. If this was magic, it was an odd magic to demand so much and offer so little.

  She laid her hand upon the white surface and drew back in surprise, for it had looked hard to her, and it was not; it was nubbled and strong, but it felt like . . . skin. Like living skin.

  She spoke her name slowly, lingering over each syllable, and almost wished it were longer. But she spoke, and after a long moment, when she had not been devoured or destroyed, Ademi followed, placing first one hand and then the other, and then his cheek, against the surface. He whispered his name to a wall, and the wall, she was certain, absorbed it—but it did not answer.

  Kaylarra looked up at Shahira, and Shahira nodded. So Kaylarra offered what Shahira had offered, and after a moment the children flocked toward her in a huddle to one side of this white monument, this living egg. They offered their names, staring in wonder. Estavos came last, and he placed his hand upon the egg, but he did not speak.

  “Estavos,” Shahira began.

  “I want it to speak its name first,” he replied with a strained dignity. “It is not my father, nor my King; it is not my god.”

  She glared at him over Kaylarra’s head. Thinking if one and only one survived, it might well be Estavos. Winter was not strong in her heart, and she did not desire death—but more than life she desired the comfort of these children and the easing of their fear.

  “You must choose,” she told him gravely, her voice a whisper.

  “What must I choose, Shahira?”

  She started to answer, and then shook her head. “The children are waiting, Estavos, and the King is waiting.” And her tone implied that there would be no peace while both were true, and she did, indeed, intend as much.

  He met her eyes and held them with his, and she felt again the flare of anger and hatred that had held her immobile; felt it as if it were her own. It was part of her, and she accepted it. Swallowed it. Held it as she held Kaylarra.

  And waited.

  Estavos was as cold and hard as the Priests for a moment longer, and then he exhaled and said, in a low, low voice, “I do this for you.” As if it were an accusation. She did not much care why he did it, and her glare told him as much. He touched the egg, and he whispered his name, and his name was long indeed, and heated, before he withdrew.

  The silence that followed was broken by the King. “I will come myself,” he said quietly, “when food is brought, and I will join you in the song of awakening.”

  “You know it?”

  “By heart,” he told her, and a hint of bitterness was in the words. “It is in my dreams, these days, and it is the only thing I hear. Better to hear it sung in your voices than in the voices I hear.” He offered them no comfort, and she realized, finally, that he never would.

  But he left them, then, with torches and instructions on how to keep them lit. “Do not let them die,” he told Shahira, “for when they go out, they will not be lit again before the time.”

  “What’s in the egg?” Ademi asked, when the King and his men had left them in the darkness of torchlight. They were huddled about her, and around each other, beneath the small wells of light the torches cast, and they stared at the egg as if it would crack open and something terrible would emerge to devour them.

  And as Shahira herself felt the same, it was difficult to cleave to her purpose. But she smiled at him. “Salva tion,” she said.

  “What is salvation?”

  “For us? An end to Summer,” she told him firmly.

  “But what kind of end?”

  “Ademi, enough.” She remembered her grandmother’s words, and she found the Winter in her heart, and held fast to it, for here, at last, she could feel it howling around them all, beyond the walls of ragged stone. “We must sing the song we were taught, and we must sing it well—but there are other songs we must sing tonight.”

  “Harald?” He asked, his eyes bright and shining. Ademi was a boy who loved the long, old songs about bright heroes and shining swords.

  “Harald,” she said, although it was not her favorite. “And then the others. And any voice is good enough for Winter songs. Remember why we sang, in the Winter: to raise our voices against the howling death that waited outside. We worked together, and because we could, the cold did not kill us; it made us stronger.”

  “It’s not Winter,” one of the other children began.

  “It is Winter in our hearts,” she replied. “And if we remember that, we will sing the right song, and we will see Spring.”

  “I want the song about the rabbit and the moon.”

  “But that’s a girl song!”

  “I’m a girl—”

  Estavos hit Ademi on the hand with his knuckles. “Men know how to wait,” he said sternly. Ademi subsided, but he made a rude gesture behind Estavos’ back. Estavos, an only child, hit him again. He had come far, in his long journey. It mad
e Shahira smile, and so little else could she felt comforted by the bickering that erupted around her. Because the longhouse had been full of it; people sounds, happy and sad, joyful and angry by turns.

  That night, they dreamed about flight and heat and fire, and they woke in wonder and fear, babbling each to the other as Shahira walked among them, tending the torches. She did not demand that they sleep apart; in the Winter, all warmth was good warmth. She did, however, demand that Ademi take his elbow out of Estavos’ face before Estavos’ hit him again.

  With no priests and no guards, they were happy in their fear, and the only absence she regretted was Adelos, but he did not come. She wondered if she would see him again.

  And she sang, to the children, not a song of wakening but a song of slumber and safety. It was a lie, but some lies are so strong they become an oasis of truth.

  It was hard to tell morning from night, and it might have been impossible, were it not for the arrival of the King. Food and water were brought, and the meal was fine indeed, for even in this wilderness beneath the city, a King expected to eat well.

  When he was present, they sang the song the priests had taught them, and by his frown or his nod, they corrected their errors. He did not raise hand against them, and the guards did not threaten them; without such threats, they relaxed, and their voices became less quavering and less uncertain. Singing the Winter songs had robbed them of some of their fear and if this song had no words, it was still familiar.

  Shahira made up a story to go with the words when the King was absent, and this helped. But the lack of sunlight, the lack of moonlight, wore on her, for she had no way of counting the days, and the doom, and time became a thing to both treasure and dread.

  But she could hide this because she had to. Well fed, the children were less fractious, and became bold enough to play other games; there was less weeping, less fear. She was grateful.

  But when they slept, and they did, she left them and once again touched the egg with both of her hands. Serpent , she whispered, her lips pressed against it. Swallow Summer if you must, take it and devour it. Fly where you will. But these voices, do not still.