McKillip, Patricia A. - Song for the Basilisk

by Song For The Basilisk(Lit)

  Arms, they were discussing. The inept trapper who had spilled them all over the Tormalyne Bridge. Whom to trust. Whether to trust.

  "We must wait, Nicol," Justin insisted. However passionate, they kept their voices low, barely above a whisper. "He must be watching for us now."

  "He'll be watching the Tormalyne Bridge. The Pellior Bridge is always crowded with people and wagons crossing to and from the countryside."

  "He'll be watching all the bridges."

  "Then what possessed the trapper," someone wondered, "to cross the Tormalyne Bridge when he would have been safer crossing farther down river?"

  "It's natural for someone coming in with a wagon load of furs from the forest."

  "How much did it cost us," someone else asked dourly, "to be betrayed to the Basilisk?"

  "He didn't betray us. He didn't have time," Nicol said. "Why would the prince suspect Tormalyne House? He destroyed it. He left some life in Iridia House. He wouldn't trust Marcasia House just because it allied itself with Pellior House during the war. Either of those Houses could be suspect. His own heir could be."

  There was a small silence. A young woman said som berly, "What about Luly? Griffin Libra called himself Griffin Tormalyne and went up there, as far as you can get from the Basilisk without vanishing into the hinterlands. And he is dead. From fire on a rock in the middle of the sea. Justin is right. He suspects Tormalyne House."

  "The House no longer exists," Nicol said stubbornly. "A few poor scattered scions. No one bearing the name was left alive. Why should he suspect us?"

  "Because he is who he is," Justin said. "That's why Griffin went to Luly. Because he had some vague idea that Arioso Pellior has secret powers. I think he was right. And I think that it was no accident that Griffin Tormalyne was killed again by fire. Arioso Pellior has a long memory and he sees with killing eyes."

  "But with all that power," a young man in the shadow of empty ale kegs asked perplexedly, "why would he fear a House he destroyed? Why make such a gesture across such a distance? What did he think Griffin Libra could do to him? Or even Griffin Tormalyne?"

  "What would a basilisk fear?" Justin asked, and answered himself, "His own eyes."

  Nicol sighed. "Metaphysics aside, we can't afford to wait, if we want to strike during the autumn festival. That's the time he'll be off-guard. If he ever is. We should bring arms across the Pellior Bridge. And we need to find the witness who ran before the Basilisk does. If he knows anything at all—if he speaks—"

  "We're searching, Nicol."

  "Well, search discreetly. We can't let the prince know that anyone else has any interest in him at all."

  "It's hard to look and not look—"

  "Don't speak. Just listen. And trust no one. No one."

  Caladrius eased back into the darkness. They would have set a watch somewhere: just outside the window, most likely, since no one had stopped him inside. He must wait until they left before he could. He found another open doorway, another room, that held moonlit windows and no secrets. There he slid to the stone floor and stared into the night, contemplating the unsettling image of the heirs of the ruined House raising what arms they could manage to get across a bridge against the Basilisk's guard. They would be slaughtered. He quelled a sudden, futile urge to appear among them, name himself. He would not dissuade them; he would only give them something more to fight for: an illusion of the future. He turned the pipe in his fingers absently, feeling the subtle intensity of heat above its finger holes. A live thing waited within it to be set free, to sing. He thought of Justin's question: What would a basilisk fear?

  Its own eyes. Its own power. So a claw of fire had ripped across Luly, where the great bards were taught to find their own power within the hinterlands. The young man calling himself Griffin Tormalyne had come to Luly in a search for such power. Caladrius had considered him misguided then; now, holding such a song in his hands, he realized it was he himself who had been misguided. The Basilisk saw far more clearly the dangers in the hinterlands, and what he feared was the meeting of his enemy and all the ancient powers of the north.

  We have met, Caladrius thought. Still now, he watched the silver rim around the window slowly darken as the moon set. They had gathered so carelessly under a full moon. At least they would not disperse under it. He would wait, he decided, and fight with them, when they fought the Prince of Berylon. He would play a song for every basilisk he saw.

  They left finally, with as little noise as they had made entering. He watched for the darkest hour. Then he followed shadows through side streets and alleys. He sensed no turmoil in the streets: the children of the House had scattered like the stars before the dawn.

  At his window above the tavern, he watched the music school until its doors were opened to morning by a yawning magister. He crossed the street, walked between the griffins into the halls. Even that early, someone played a harpsichord. He remembered the smells of flowers, resin, lamp oil. He lingered there in the hall, trying to put names to the various white-eyed heads who studied him, until someone living, dressed in black, came along.

  They recognized one another; she smiled, surprised.

  "Master Caladrius."

  "Magister Dulcet," he said, relieved at the sight of her calm face after a damp night underground. "I have come to borrow books."

  "Veris Legere must have books on everything you need."

  "For the history of Pellior House," he explained. "Not Tormalyne House. Where the music came from."

  "Of course," she breathed. "I wasn't thinking. Come in here. Take whatever you need." She opened a door. Within the room, a young man kneeling to see a book on a shelf, flashed a look at him and rose abruptly. They stared at one another, while Giulia introduced them.

  "We have never seen a bard this far south before," she added, as if the bard were a migrating bird. "He is visiting for a while. The students are fascinated. Master Caladrius has come to borrow books on the history of Tormalyne House, to help him catalogue a collection of music."

  The bard murmured politely, got out of their way.

  Giulia moved along the shelves, choosing appropriate tomes and manuscripts, while Caladrius, blinking, gripped the edge of a table to keep himself from following his son out the door.

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  Chapter Eight

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  Which is interesting as far as it goes," Hexel said, "but I can't get it farther than that. She is in love. He is in love. Lovers are only interesting to one another. He sings of love. She sings of love. What else is there to sing about?"

  "Clothes."

  "Giulia, are you paying attention?"

  Giulia stopped roaming Hexel's cluttered study. She stooped to pick up a stray sheet of music on the floor. "Now I am," she said firmly, trying to convince herself. She had not seen Justin for days, except very briefly, for moments snatched away from her duties. He did not complain; he, too, seemed preoccupied, but by what she could not guess. Another woman seemed most probable. But, she thought, I would guess that.

  "What are you thinking about?" Hexel demanded. "You are not listening to me."

  "I was thinking of Damiet," Giulia answered, which was another perplexing worry: Hexel knew her only by Giulia's tales; he had not yet heard her. He grimaced.

  "Bad enough she must sing my music, must she also occupy my study?"

  "She wants me to find her a picochet, so that the librarian can teach her to play it."

  "Is she still in love with him?" Hexel asked promptly, on the scent of a plot.

  "She watches him come and go while she sings. She sulks when she doesn't see him. She asks his advice about her singing, as if I am only there to turn pages. She dresses for him, and is offended when he doesn't notice."

  "And he?"

  "He doesn't notice." She frowned, gazing absently at the manuscript sheet, which had a dusty footprint across it, and a message, not written in Hexel's hand, in the margin.
"He is polite."

  "He loves someone else."

  "I don't think love is on his mind at all. He seems oblivious of Damiet's state. He should be careful. Damiet Pellior rejected by the music librarian could be dangerous."

  "Her father will put an end to it soon enough."

  "Her father hardly seems to notice her state, either. He told Veris to have Master Caladrius give her lessons."

  Hexel, seated at his desk with a scribble of notes in front of him, rapped his pen impatiently on the paper. "What kind of a plot is this? It is completely useless. A love unrequited, a beloved who pays no attention, a father who does not care—Give me something to sing about."

  Giulia was silent, trying to think. The message on the music sheet resolved itself under her gaze: Magister Barr, I no longer find it possible to hide my feelings for you. My heart is in tumult. Only you can give me peace. Meet me… ' 'Hexel—"

  "I've finished a duet about their perilous and passionate love. They meet at night, in secret. They sing, they part. Now what?"

  "Someone sees them."

  "His family or hers?"

  "How much singing to you want Damiet to do? Hexel, did you?"

  "Did I what?"

  "Meet Cressida under the orange tree at midnight?"

  "What Cressida? What orange tree? Giulia, try to keep your mind on my work. The families are feuding, the lovers must hide their love—How can it end happily?"

  "Someone must help them," Giulia suggested. "Him. Damiet does not need to sing much, but she must have scenes to wear her dresses in. They part after their duet, he climbs her wall and falls into the path of—No. Better yet, someone discovers them in her father's garden. That way he can sing, and Damiet can be seen."

  "Who discovers them?"

  "Her sister, who, being in love herself, takes pity on them."

  "Do we have someone who can sing the part?"

  Giulia sighed. "Yes. But she'll make Damiet sound like a goose with its tail feathers caught in a door. They can't be in the same scene together. Perhaps a brother would be better. Or some wise servant."

  "What's the point of their families being bitter enemies if all they do is skulk around in the dark? Where is the dramatic tension in a wise old servant? Giulia, you're trying to keep this too safe."

  "I'm not—"

  "The father sees them."

  "He'd toss her lover in the dungeon. How are we supposed to get him out? This has to have a happy ending."

  "You'll think of something," Hexel said briskly. "And I can write a sad, bitter, despairing aria for him to sing about love, life, loss and death, just before he is set free."

  "How?" Giulia demanded. "How will he be freed?"

  "I don't know—the families reconcile or something. That way we could have everyone sing at once, and drown Damiet."

  "But, Hexel, it would be easier if he is never in the dungeons in the first place."

  "I must have some drama!"

  "I'll let you figure out the rehearsal schedule. But we must know where this plot is going, so that I can tell the scene painters."

  Someone tapped on the door. Hexel, pacing, called peremptorily, "Come." The visiting bard stepped hesitantly into his path and was seized. "Just what we need—the poet and storyteller. Sit. Listen."

  "I was looking for Magister Dulcet. I don't mean to interrupt."

  "Then don't."

  "Hexel, let him speak," Giulia protested. "I'm your muse; you can be rude to me. How can I help you, Master Hollis?"

  He glanced warily at Hexel. "I wanted to ask you—Perhaps later—"

  "No—"

  Hexel sat down on the desk beside Giulia. "Please," he said with unexpected mildness. "We need help. Perhaps you will inspire the muse herself. Living among the arias of seals, trumpeting storms, choruses of barnacles—"

  "We are trying to work out the opera plot," Giulia explained succinctly. "Are you familiar—"

  "With opera? No. But with plots…" He paused. Hexel, intrigued, perhaps, by the odd, guarded expression in the bard's eyes, became suddenly patient. "The librarian," Hollis said finally. "Master Caladrius. I wondered where I could find him. He is a northerner. Isn't he? I think we may have met before."

  "Yes," Giulia exclaimed, enlightened. "He studied on Luly. But years ago, he said."

  "Oh."

  "But maybe you've met him since?"

  "Do you know where he lives?"

  She thought. "He never said… I can ask him easily enough. I see him often, in the music room at Pellior Palace."

  The bard opened his mouth, closed it. He produced words finally. "Pellior Palace."

  "He is cataloguing the music of Tormalyne House."

  "In Pellior Palace."

  "It must sound strange," Giulia said, "if you knew him as a farmer." .

  "A farm—" He bit off the echo, leaned back in his chair, his brows drawn. Giulia, waiting, found her eyes lingering on his long raven hair, that looked wind-swept even within the tranquil walls of the school. His face, abandoning its smile, became oddly grave. She felt Hexel's eyes on her and shifted.

  "He plays the picochet very well. Does that sound like the man you know? He played mine when we first met, in a tavern."

  "It sounds—" He nodded, his thoughts returning to them. "Yes. It does sound like him. I believe I met him on Luly." He spoke carefully, as if the meanings of words he knew were apt to change unexpectedly within the city. "I think my mother knew him. She was there, too. On Luly."

  Hexel, smelling drama, asked abruptly, "Is he your father?"

  "Hexel!"

  "This plot is far more intriguing than the one you are giving me, Giulia. We could set the opera on that rock, among the bards. Master Hollis could help us with the music—it can't be that different. The young bard returns there, searching for his father. No. A stranger comes to the rock, spends one night with a woman there—"

  "Damiet?" Giulia interrupted drily. The bard had not taken offense. His face had flushed, but he was smiling again.

  "I do know my own father, Magister Barr."

  "Well, it was a thought… I should leave such business to my muse. But both you and my muse seem to find some mystery in this man. This farmer who is a librarian who studied to be a bard. I don't suppose we can get all that into one act."

  "No," Giulia said flatly. The memory of the picochet player's eyes haunted her a moment, stripped of all expression and unfathomably dark. Her eyes flicked to Hollis, questioning now, and found strength in his face, a kindliness. She could trust him, she decided, with the enigmatic northerner. "When I see him next in Pellior Palace," she said, "I'll ask him where he lives."

  The tension left the bard's face. "Thank you. He wouldn't be staying there?"

  "No. We both come and go. I'm giving the prince's daughter voice lessons so that she can sing in the autumn festival."

  Hollis, about to rise, hesitated. "I don't quite understand the autumn festival. At Luly, we are taught poetry rather than history. I have some idea that it celebrates a victory?"

  Hexel snorted. "If you call the slaughter of Tormalyne House a victory."

  Hollis's hands closed again on his chair arms; beyond that he did not move. "Slaughter?"

  "Berylon had four centuries of comparative peace under the rule of Tormalyne House," Hexel explained. "By peace, I mean that none of the uprisings of the other Houses were permitted to last long. Then the Basilisk of Pellior House opened his eyes, and members of Tormalyne House began to die in mysterious ways. Raven Berylon suspected Arioso Pellior, and fought back. But by the time there was peace again in Berylon, no one bearing the name Tormalyne was left alive."

  "No one."

  "Raven Tormalyne, his wife and children had been slain like animals in Tormalyne Palace. A few scattered scions lived to remember, but no one carries the name."

  "I see." His voice was oddly stiff. So was his face, Giulia saw; its expression, brittle as glass, might have broken at a touch. He stared at something in the air between them.
"This—Arioso Pellior. It's his birthday feast?"

  "And his victory feast. He has ruled for thirty-seven years, since he had Raven Berylon put to death with his wife in Tormalyne Palace. Their children had already burned."

  "Hexel," Giulia breathed. The bard loosened his grip on the chair, drawing breath.