"But," Giulia whispered.
"There is no safe place anywhere in Berylon," he reminded her, "If he is signaling—"
"Or the guards. A trap, maybe."
"Who would be stupid enough to walk into it?"
No one answered. They began to move again, toward the beckoning light.
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Chapter Six
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Caladrius stood in the dark beneath Tormalyne Palace, trying to see. His wrists were bound by chains and cuffs of metal: gold, memory kept trying to persuade him, though in that place metal would be rusted iron by now. He recognized the air dense with horror and pain; he had no idea how he had gotten there. He had wakened abruptly out of some dream of terrible loss to find Hollis gone. A ring and a charred bone lay on his empty bed. Caladrius had recognized the ring. He had stumbled then into another dream. Someone had stolen his heart; he had to find it quickly, quickly… Searching had led him to Tormalyne Palace, into that deadly room where, as far as he knew, Brio Hood still lay moldering on the stones at his feet. Why he had not been seized by the Basilisk's guards, and who had chained him to the wall, he could not remember. But he guessed.
He gripped the chains that held him, seeing her eyes in his mind: the Basilisk's eyes. He remembered the flick of magic in her fingers that had brought the stone basilisks alive to save her father. An agony of impatience and dread burned through him. He wiped sweat out of his eyes on one arm and tried to think. He could not believe that Arioso Pellior would be content to let him starve to death in the silence of Tormalyne Palace: He would want to watch Caladrius die. Perhaps Luna wanted something from her father, for which she would trade Griffin Tormalyne. But why she had taken Hollis, and left Raven Tormalyne's ring and his fingerbone like a message, Caladrius could not imagine. What was the message? he wondered starkly. The message was fire. The message was death, to the Raven and the Griffin. But what did she want with Hollis, if she had Caladrius himself? To present Griffin Tormalyne's heir as a gift to her father? The thought left Caladrius breathless, weak with fury and terror. His heart had been stolen, he would give anything…
As if she heard his incoherent, piecemeal thoughts, she stood before him in the blackness. He did not see her; he only sensed her: someone else alive in that death-ridden place.
Her voice came out of the dark, cool, composed, as if she strolled through a garden. "I have taken your son."
"I know," he said numbly, feeling the blood beat painfully behind his eyes.
"What will you give me for him?"
"Anything. Everything."
"Tell me."
"I will give you my name. I will give you my life. If you will let him leave Berylon."
"I have your life," she reminded him.
He closed his eyes, gripping the chains. "Then what can I give you?" he pleaded. "You must want something. Or you would have given me to your father. You would not have brought me here."
"Oh, yes," she agreed softly. "I want something." She let him see her face then, luminous and beautiful, smiling and not smiling. He sensed her power, something vast and elusive, unpredictable, like the power in the hinterlands.
"Take it," he begged her. "You have my heart. I will do anything, give anything, if you set him free."
She was silent, studying him; he could not guess her thoughts. She turned away from him finally. "Follow me," she said, and he felt the weight at his wrists melt away, as if he had only imagined it there. She moved ahead of him through the dark; he saw her easily, moving surely, gracefully across damp, sagging flagstones, through the maze of rooms. He felt the blood pound again behind his eyes. She knew the place where he had been born as if she had claimed it for her own.
She spoke as they finally reached the marble stairs beyond the wine cellar and began to climb. "You saw your father die."
"Yes."
"You recognized his ring."
"Yes."
"Where were you?"
He swallowed, his mouth as dry as ash. "In the hearth."
"Why did you wait so long to return to Berylon?"
"I thought I was dead." She turned to look back at him. He added tautly, "Another child burned and was mistaken for me. So I found it easier to make the same mistake than to remember what I had seen."
"And what made you remember?"
He shook his head, finding it difficult to answer. You are mine, her gaze reminded him. You have given everything to me.
"I began to dream of fire. I made a journey into the hinterlands. Unknown places. I remembered, there."
"And there you found that pipe."
"I dreamed of it there. I recognized it here in Berylon and took it."
"From the music school."
"Yes."
She was silent a moment, as if hearing the overtones of the lie in his voice. But she did not challenge him. "And what else did you play in the hinterlands?"
"Many things. Odd instruments."
"Do they all have such strange powers?"
"Some more than others. All respond, like the fire-bone pipe, to the workings of the heart."
They had reached the top of the stairs. She wound a path through some clutter of debris. He closed his eyes, feeling wood, ash, bone under every step.
"And so you left the hinterlands and came to Berylon. To kill my father."
"Yes."
"And to reclaim Tormalyne House?"
"I did not expect to live beyond your father's death."
He felt her glance again. "But you brought your son with you. To claim his heritage."
"I would never have asked him to inherit such bitterness. He made his own way here without my knowledge. He refused to leave me."
"It was he who played the first pipe, that summoned the power in it."
He had to swallow again before he could speak. "He didn't know—"
"But you knew."
"That it was deadly? Yes. I killed Brio Hood with it."
She led him across a broad room to another set of stairs; they began to climb again. It seemed to him that she walked up night itself, step after step carved out of darkness, so that the stone beneath his steps was always unexpected. She said, "Tell me why you killed my cousin Brio."
He told her as they reached the crest of night and turned to cross another plane. She said, "And then you returned to Pellior Palace, Master Caladrius, to give my sister Damiet a picochet lesson. And to listen to her proclaim her love for you."
"Yes."
"My father killed your father's children."
There was a question in the words, he realized; he tried to answer it, but found only confusion. She turned again to look at him, the faint smile in her eyes, as always, concealing what she saw.
"We three are our father's children," she said lightly, like a riddle. "We are what he has made of us."
She opened a door; they began to climb again. He could see, in the room at the top of the stairs, a faint, silvery glow. He stared down, remembering the griffins carved into the marble on every step he climbed. He smelled the bitterness that still hung in the air after so many years. A question formed by fire and memory wrenched itself out of him.
"What will you do with Hollis?"
She did not answer.
He recognized the room they entered. Light revealed the massive hearth, the charred ring on the floor, the ash and bone within it. He felt himself grow invisible again, a ghost of his own past, a nameless child made of ash.
"What are you doing?" he whispered. She did not answer. The light came out of a crystal on one of the scorched, empty window ledges. Round and milky as the moon, it illumined the room and spilled silver into the night. He heard shouting from the gardens below, a muffled, repetitive thudding.
"They can't get in," she explained. "I have locked the doors until my father comes."
He felt the hollow where his heart had been, the dry, papery taste of ash. "Where is Hollis?" His voice refus
ed to come; he spoke only the shape of words, but she heard him. She looked at him, her eyes flashing white, reflecting light, and did not answer, even when he screamed the question at her.
She was marking a circle with her footprints into the wind-strewn ash on the floor, when she stopped, mid-pace. She listened to some sound beneath the tumult at the door.
"Who is coming up from the dark to join us?" she wondered, and finished her circle. He watched her steps link themselves through the ashes of his dead, enclose the fragments of their bones. He closed his eyes and heard the song they played, fire-bone pipes, wailing sorrow and fury. Steps, slow and tentative on the stairs, caught his attention. He drew breath to shout a warning; her voice stopped him.
"Let them come. I want them."
He opened his eyes, stared helplessly at the open door, listening, with heart and bone, for Hollis. Hollis did not appear. Three faces came clear in the wash of pale light: all haggard, uneasy, oddly transfixed, as if they dreamed awake. He knew them. They saw him and their faces came alive, no longer spellbound but struggling with wonder now, saying his name without words, until Justin spoke.
"Griffin Tormalyne," he whispered. "We've been looking for you." His head turned suddenly, as if Luna had just formed herself out of light. His voice came more clearly then, trembling. "You. What are you doing here?"
"Waking the dead," she said, and tossed a finger-bone and a gold ring into her circle.
Ash and bone and gold ignited; a figure formed within the flames. Caladrius took a step toward it, loosing the cry that the child in the hearth, being dead, could never make. But it was not the raven in the fire, he realized even as he took another step. It was the Basilisk.
He saw a coil of night, with a flaming crest and mad, restless eyes of lizard green and gold that seemed to draw life from everything they touched, and leave a shadowy husk behind. Its crest stiffened, flared with fire as it saw Caladrius. It hissed a warning mist of black, and rolled toward him out of the circle, stunning him with its gaze: Arioso Pellior's eyes, seeing at last the child hidden in the hearth.
He could not move. The world vanished around him, turned to memory. He tasted ash again, smelled the charred bones of the dead. He saw nothing but the Basilisk's mad, glittering eyes. You are nothing, they said. You are mine now. You are dead. He breathed ash, felt it whisper into his heart, drift into him, enclose his bones. I am nothing, the child made of ash thought, transfixed in the Basilisk's stare. I am dead. There was only this left to do: wait for the last ember that was his heart to flare and die, and then there would be only ash.
He waited, within the silence of the marble hearth, while the terrible eyes drained memory out of him, his life, his name. Finally, he felt the spark within the ember flame, and he opened his mouth in pain to give his last breath to the Basilisk.
The raven flew out of the fire.
Caladrius felt it strike his heart. The clawed, rustling darkness burrowed into him, looked out of his eyes. It spread its wings, reached down with its beak to break a bone from one of them, out of which song poured like blood. He stared back at the Basilisk out of ravens' eyes, his father's eyes, and saw the death within the looming gaze. He heard his own voice in some fierce, harsh word of recognition. And then he felt the music of the fire-bone pipe playing through his bones, reshaping him with its song until he was the pipe, and the music, and the magic that had made both. He opened wings then, flew out of the flaming ember in the ash. He swooped and seized the deadly eyes in his claws, wrenched them out of the Basilisk, and dropped them into the fire.
The fires were gone; they had never been; there was only the .charred circle on the floor enclosing ash and bone, the cold ash in the hearth. The raven flew out of him into the shadows, where Caladrius felt its black, secret gaze. He was trembling. Notes from the raven-bone pipe seemed to flow out of him still, as he moved, searching the room for the vanished basilisk. His fingers loosened from some stiff, unfamiliar position. In the silvery light, a few drops of blood on the marble gleamed black.
He looked at Luna. "What did I do?"
She did not answer, except with her smile, brilliant and weary, the mask she held to the world. He saw three faces beyond her, familiar and unfamiliar, as if they be longed in another tale and had gotten lost in this one. They did not answer him, either. They had been turned to stone, it seemed; they stared at him and could not speak.
He saw Hollis. The raven's song faded, stopped within him, then; he felt his own heart return. Hollis, standing near Luna, did not seem hurt, only stunned by what he had seen. Caladrius went to him, said his name; he touched his father, but could not speak.
The guards came then, furious and sweating, spilling into the room. They recognized Luna and hesitated. She said briefly, "Take them to Pellior Palace."
"Even the librarian, my lady?" one asked.
"He is Griffin Tormalyne."
She walked with them through the streets of Berylon, as though, Caladrius thought, she could not move past music, or fade into night. His mind still grappled with a confusion of images. The Basilisk had come out of the circle; the Basilisk had never been there; Caladrius had become a raven-bone pipe and outstared a basilisk: there had been no raven, no basilisk. Something had happened; someone had left blood on the marble floor. A raven had stolen something—a heart?—and dropped it into a fire which was only a memory of fire.
As if she heard his confusion, Luna turned her hooded head to look at him. He could understand nothing in her eyes; he could see neither death nor mercy. She was not finished, he guessed; she wanted something, but did not have it yet, and what she wanted was not him, not Hollis, not anything he could see.
She spoke softly, beyond the circle of the guards, her voice pitched for him to hear. "My father taught me many things when I was a child, Master Caladrius. I learned best how to see."
"I don't know," he breathed, "what I am looking at."
A guard, rough and edgy, ordered him silent. He walked quietly, watching the lights of Pellior Palace grow near, aware of little now but his steps, and Hollis walking with him. Then they crossed the threshold into light, and time stopped. He could hear Hollis breathing shallowly beside him.
"My lady?" a guard said.
"Send the captain of the guard to my father's chamber."
"Yes, my lady."
It was late, but the door to the prince's chamber was open wide, and candles burned along the walls, beside the bed. Damiet, looking cross, sat at one side of the sleeping prince; Taur yawned at the other. The physician, alarmed at the onslaught against peace, met Luna at the door.
"The prince has been taken with nightmares, restlessness," he said softly to her. "He complains of the basilisk in the canopy, but will not let us take it down. He must rest."
She smiled. "He will rest now. I have brought him Griffin Tormalyne."
The prince stirred at the name. The book closed abruptly in Damiet's hands. She blinked at Caladrius, then her lips thinned and her head turned sharply toward her father. Taur rose quickly, leaned over the prince.
"Father? They have captured Griffin Tormalyne. Wake—" The Basilisk opened his eyes.
It seemed to Caladrius that their eyes met for a long time before the prince turned his head away irritably and spoke. "Who is there? Taur? Why are you sitting in the dark? Did you say—or did I dream—bring me light!"
"There are candles everywhere," Taur said obtusely. "Look. Here is Griffin Tormalyne. Your librarian."
"Let me examine him," the physician said quickly, returning to the bedside as the prince called, with increasing frustration, for light. Caladrius, suddenly unable to find breath, saw the shadow of a raven spilling down from a candle sconce. He remembered the odd stiffness in his hands, the raven's sudden swoop and wrench, the death that it dropped into the fire. It, he thought, wide-eyed, motionless. I.
"I can't see!" the Basilisk cried. The physician, suddenly pale, looked across the bed at Luna.
"There is no reason—" he said inco
herently. "I cannot explain it—"
Taur, his brows raised, passed a hand in front of his father's eyes. "A blind old basilisk," he grunted, surprised, and drew the Basilisk's venomous gaze.
"You think I cannot still rule?"
"I didn't—"
"This will pass, Taur. I will live to see again, and what I do not see is Berylon passing into your hands."
Taur's voice rose. "You have no choice! I am your heir! And you are no longer fit to rule. I declare myself—"
"I declare you nothing. You will inherit only the life you have led, and your sister's permission to continue it. Luna sees for me. Luna will rule, now, while I live, and after I die. You are all my witnesses. This is my will."
McKillip, Patricia A. - Song for the Basilisk Page 25
