Last Song Before Night

by Ilana C. Myer

  His harp cradled tenderly in his arms, Darien was still a moment, as if there were not palace guards bearing down upon him. He plucked the strings, and the tune that streamed from them was not surprising; it was, Lin thought, an inevitability. She had played it so many times.

  No matter the color

  of the branch—silver, copper or gold,

  there is one surety:

  It is false. It is false.

  When he stopped, the silence in the square was disturbed only by the harrying of the guards and by the birds calling as they wheeled indifferently overhead. Darien approached the edge of the rooftop, and for an instant Lin was afraid he would jump. Like a bird spreading its wings, he stretched out his arms above the transfixed spectators as if to bestow a benediction upon them all. When next he spoke, his voice held a kind of wonder. “I had a dream last night that turned out to be no dream, after all. Now I believe the Path is real.” More stridently he called, “You go ahead and win the false branch, Marlen, my dear friend. I am going to find Edrien’s Path, and the real Branch. And who will be the greater poet then?”

  The guards had reached the house now, Lin saw, her throat choked with anxiety. What is he waiting for? Is he truly a fool?

  Marlen was still smiling. “Find it,” he said, an arm outflung gracefully, “and I will kneel at your feet.”

  “Done!” Darien said gaily. “Until that day, then; wish me luck. Oh, and the rest of you—enjoy the fair!”

  He dashed from the edge of the roof and out of sight, just as the guards advanced on the door of the house and kicked it open.

  Very often in her life—and especially in the depths of that winter a year ago when she had wandered the dark forests alone, expecting to meet her death—Lin had found it difficult to believe, to truly believe in the existence of any divinity. Growing up with a mother who was mad … For really, isn’t that what it was? The truth of it?… a father bound entirely in his wife’s shadow, a brother who ruled Lin with his fists and boots … if she believed in any power, it was in her mother’s contorted idea of Estarre, the huntress, pitiless and cruel and concerned only with rewarding the strong.

  Only when Lin found love, for so brief a time, did she begin to feel that perhaps the divine was present in her life. It was then that she opened herself to belief in Kiara, who was protectress of poets, among other things, and saw in the trembling beauty of the forests surrounding Vassilian a hint of transcendence, a curtain thinly concealing eternity. The frosty air, the mountains, the falcon wheeling with a lonely cry that resounded for what seemed an endless time—all of it took on a larger significance, and at last the rote lessons of the Temple she had been taught all her life seemed to cohere. As if it had been an incomprehensible code and at last she had the key.

  When she lost that key, she lost it all. The pale beauty of Kiara then seemed as cruel, as unreachable as the fire of Estarre. But still she nurtured a hope that was not quite faith, nor was it disaffection. She lit a candle in the Temple the day of the ball because she had hoped, for her and Leander’s sakes, that there was power in such things. Unlikely as it seemed.

  The image of Darien vanishing from the roof and out of sight, the guards in pursuit, prompted Lin to do what she usually did not do: she prayed. Kiara keep him safe, she murmured. Kiara, Thalion, Estarre … please keep him from harm.

  She could recognize the courage of what he had done, and what it meant for all poets. Even for her.

  Afterward it was difficult to concentrate on the contest. The performance of Marlen Humbreleigh was flawless, of course: he had sung a comedic refrain that still disturbed, a technique that he and Darien Aldemoor had made popular. No one laughed. When his victory was announced, only a smattering of people applauded, and not for long.

  Second place was awarded to a small, sour-looking man named Piet Abarda, whom Lin vaguely remembered seeing at the Ring and Flagon. The prize was a jeweled copper buckle that he threaded onto his belt. When Piet gripped both hips and strategically posed so the buckle caught the sunlight, his head flung back, the audience applauded with unusual energy, as if unleashing all that they had kept pent up from Marlen. Piet grinned then, with visible pride, and Nickon Gerrard had to prod him to leave the stage.

  But the real reason Lin had come, the only thing that had drawn her to secure a place for endless hours in the sun, was the dispirited-looking man that no one noticed now.

  Leander Keyen’s material had been strong—none knew that better than she did—but he had fumbled one of the chords, and that had thrown the rest of his performance off-kilter. He had not managed to recover from the mistake. It was what she had always feared—that his anxiety would get the best of him.

  She could feel nothing but sadness. He had abandoned Lin, but first he had saved her. She did not forget.

  * * *

  THE place for a Poet is on the Mountain, the wind in his face. Unexpectedly, his thoughts had turned to this, one of his Masters’ favorite platitudes, as he emerged from a luxurious carriage into the haze of honeysuckle scent and moonlight. Yet it occurred to Marlen that his place had lately been in rooms and that it was in rooms where the path of his life took shape time and again. Shaped by Marilla, by Master Gelvan, and now—just now—by Nickon Gerrard, the Court Poet himself, as he ushered Marlen with breathtaking solicitude into his palace suite.

  No mountain, this, with its velvet-covered couches and graceful hardwood table, the deep carpet with its strands of many colors. Yet to Marlen—who was jaded to velvet and carpets—more precious than these were the books: shelves upon shelves of leather-bound treasure. Legends, myths, and discourses upon the meaning and theory behind them. For legends were considered by some to be symbolic tales whose meanings were veiled by descriptions of enchantments. Lord Gerrard apparently subscribed to this relatively modern thought and lined his shelves with the evidence thereof.

  Marlen had been drinking, and the excitement of victory pulsed through him. This was the highest point of his life so far. Bought at a steep price, but it was too late for regrets. The parties and congratulations showered upon him by fellow poets and aristocratic benefactors were a concoction stronger than any drug.

  Now it was nearly midnight, yet Court Poet Gerrard had chosen this time to invite Marlen to his private rooms. “Wine?” he asked Marlen, removing the stopper from a decanter. The glistening of rubies seemed to wink at Marlen from behind the thick glass, and he could not help but accept. No wine more potent than this night, he thought as he swirled his glass. Stirrings of a song.

  He remembered one of his first lessons as a spindle-legged fifteen-year-old, when he and Darien had sat jabbing one another with their elbows, sharp with youth, whenever the Masters’ backs were turned. When they had learned of the sanctity of composing songs by night; for enchantments, they were taught, must come in darkness. Each boy was assigned a tiny cell with a desk, each cell carved into the rock of the mountainside. A candle lit the angular gloom of each. The windows faced out upon ocean and cliff rock; the murmur of water and the call of seabirds the only sounds.

  Marlen had hated those exercises at first, the enforced quiet and the loneliness. Yet as time went on, they became a part of him. And now, long after they were over, he saw how the nights of composition—thoughts running from mind to pen to parchment in the solitary glow of candlelight—had been the only moments in his life when he felt at peace. When he had been able somehow, through the alchemy of darkness and the flow of words, to submerge his need, the terrors that lurked in the recesses of his mind like sea creatures deep underwater. Invisible but nonetheless continually, terribly present.

  Cutting into his reverie with the deftness of a knife, Nickon Gerrard said, “I had looked forward to meeting you ever since your impressive performance, Marlen. But that can be no surprise to you. My interest in new blood is surely no secret.”

  Marlen sat back in his chair. It was surprisingly comfortable for all its angles and carvings, but he did not let himself relax. It was tru
e that he had won the Branch, but he could still go wrong. This man, who would name a successor in his lifetime, held the key to Marlen’s future in his smooth hands. So Marlen said, more cautiously than was his wont, “I am honored, my Lord Gerrard. I hope that I shall be so fortunate as to continue to meet your expectations.”

  “Meet, and exceed them perhaps,” the older man said, and laughed.

  His heart beating faster, Marlen said, “I am delighted to be of service in any manner that I can.”

  Nickon Gerrard’s smile in the dim room was a bright flash of perfect ivory teeth. And then he spoke, with the quiet intensity that Marlen remembered from all the other times he had heard the man speak. Even he was stilled by the power of Nickon Gerrard’s voice. He listened in a bit of a daze, trying to assimilate what was being said yet feeling as if the words were slipping past, quicksilver and gleaming as fish in a stream. The goblet of wine lay forgotten in his hands.

  Just as he was about to leave, he poured all the contents down his throat in one gulp. It was the only move he allowed himself that lacked composure. Otherwise, he was dimly aware of having conducted himself with his habitual poise and calm. Lord Gerrard’s eyes could surely not pierce Marlen’s breastbone to see the frantic heartbeat beneath, Seer or no Seer.

  The place for a Poet is on the Mountain. The words whispered after Marlen on the night breeze as he drifted down the main streets. He had been offered a carriage home but had declined. Too many enclosures of velvet and silk and deceit hemming him in, and it was too late now to turn back. He didn’t want to turn back, but neither did he want to continue down the only path Nickon Gerrard had left open for him.

  The Mountain. One of the cleverer students—Piet, perhaps?—had suggested a different interpretation. To be on the Mountain in the path of the wind was to experience hardship. The Master had nodded slowly to this as if half-asleep, Marlen remembered, or as if he had been waiting for exactly this suggestion from one of the students. Eyes half-shut, he had pronounced, in a voice that Marlen could still remember: Those of you whose hearts are wrung for blood, drop by drop, will return with tales to tell.

  Morbid old men on the edge of the final sleep, dreaming of chill winds and heart’s blood in the cavernous embrace of the Academy halls. Marlen had respected their superior knowledge and applied himself with grim discipline to his assignments, but he had never aspired to be one of them. Or anything like.

  Perhaps that was why he had chosen this gilded path, which held no hardship at all.

  He realized that he was making his way toward Marilla’s lodgings. After only a moment’s hesitation, he made an abrupt turn back the way he had come and through a side street that would lead, ultimately, to his inn. He knew what Marilla would say when he told her what Lord Gerrard had asked of him … asked, or ordered. And Marlen knew that he would be committed to his purpose, to the upward climb he had set for himself. But tonight, at least, he would not tell her. The wheel of betrayal could rest on the brink of this night, for tomorrow and ever after, it would be tumbling on, and down.

  * * *

  LATE that night she found him in the seedy inn they had shared, deep in his cups. Lin had known Leander would not be at the Ring and Flagon, where undoubtedly the winners were being celebrated at that moment. But how she knew he would return to the seedy inn they had once shared—well, maybe that only made sense, and had nothing to do with any bond between them. In any case, there he was, deep in his cups, and she felt a twinge of guilt that she had not arrived sooner. It was by now very late.

  When his eyes met hers, they clouded over even more than before. “Come to gloat, have you.”

  She came up behind him and began to knead his shoulders with her hands. He had always liked that. “Of course,” she said. “Without me, you’d have never messed up those chords.”

  “Lin.” It was somewhere between a sob and a sigh. She was silent. Slumping in his chair, he leaned against her arm like a child. Anywhere else, they would have attracted stares, but in this place and at this time of the night, the inn was nearly empty.

  It seemed that a long time passed before he looked up. “Don’t you hate me?”

  “No,” she said. She reached out and smoothed his hair as she had once been wont to do. “Always, even after you left, I’ve wanted you to win.”

  Leander closed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Who are you, really?”

  For a long time, Lin did not answer, and both their breaths seemed to stretch in a quiet duet in the space of silence that she allowed to grow. Night had filled this room as the light faded from the dusty overhanging lamps. There were people scattered here and there, but they were quiet, and the dark isolated each in their own pool of flame-flickering shadow. Finally, Lin bent close to Leander’s ear, knowing what she risked even as she allowed her lips to shape the words. “Kimbralin Amaristoth.”

  Leander pulled back almost violently and stared up into her face. He shook his head. “The one who disappeared. Of course.”

  She set a hand to his mouth. “You must tell no one, Leander. My brother might be in the city.”

  Mention of Rayen seemed to usher him into the room like a specter. She remembered the last time she had seen him and his parting gift to her. The bones of her wrist still ached sometimes. Yet she had been able to play the harp all the night of the masque with Valanir Ocune—Rayen had not succeeded in taking that away.

  Leander had meanwhile taken her hand in his, and without losing his grip, rose to his feet. She found herself noting that he had not used her hand to help himself to stand; for some reason that mattered. It was the old Leander back again, the one who had taught her to take care of herself on the road, who had helped her put flesh back on her bones in winter. Whose melodies poured forth with the carefree pleasure that he took in everything, or had, before the shadow of competition intruded. He met her eyes and she could see the questions forming there. But he only said, “Thank you for telling me, Lin. For trusting me.”

  “Leander, you’re going to be fine,” she said. “No one remembers mistakes made at the contest. And after the Gelvan ball—”

  “Hush,” he said, and leaned in to kiss her full on the mouth.

  It had been so long. That was her first thought, even as her body, rigid with surprise, began to tremble. Too many thoughts tumbling in her head like dice in a cup. This was Leander, who had never been attracted to her. And it had been so long. Memories she didn’t want, breaking over her in waves like the waves of warmth from him.

  Moments or an hour may have passed before she pulled away. She could have loved him once, she knew. If matters had fallen out differently.

  His eyes were unfocused and he was smiling. “What is it?”

  She reached out and touched the side of his face. “You never wanted me. You want comfort now, and I’m here. And that’s not … what I want.”

  “Why are you so sure that that’s all it is?” he said, looking hurt.

  “I think it is. And I … can’t. Though I will always be indebted to you.”

  “Lin, what are you saying?” She could see the beginning of sadness or anger in his eyes.

  “I’m leaving the city,” she said. “I’ve started to think the Path of Edrien Letrell might exist and I want to find it myself.”

  His face fell, and she could see disappointment—possibly even disgust—stamped on his face. “That’s lunacy.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But that’s what I’m doing.” She rose up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. It was cool as marble to her lips. “Try to think well of me,” she said, before she remembered where she had last heard the words spoken.

  Leander sat down heavily. “Farewell, Lin.”

  “Is that it?” she said. “Is that going to be all?”

  He looked up with a flat gaze. Then he looked away from her, straight ahead, as if she had already gone. She felt a rush of anger. Perhaps Valanir had been right.

  “Farewell, then,” she said. The
last thing to keep her in Tamryllin was done. It was time.

  CHAPTER

  13

  THE night held voices that called to him, beckoning just beyond the rim of the light cast by his candle. By his elbow, pinpoints of flame gleamed from the delicately curled leaves of the Branch. Marlen had thought that to have it close might prove comforting. Yet instead its shine was curiously cold. It was an object, no more. He could melt it down if he chose.

  He sat at the great desk within his study, in his new apartments near the palace. Marlen had not slept alone since he was a child and had never had so many rooms to call his own. It was a great honor, he knew. The rooms, with high ceilings and long windows that let in great strips of moonlight, seemed cavernous in their silence.

  Writing by candlelight recalled his school days, a time whose purity Marlen now vainly sought to recapture. The song that had seemed to scintillate within his mind with such clarity on the night of his victory now seemed a frail, evasive thing¸ a pale moth flapping beyond his reach. He thrust his parchment aside and took up one of the books he had purchased that day at the fair. Its wooden covers and yellowed pages showed age. He flipped through it with as much care as he could muster.

  What does he know? he thought feverishly, combing the hair back from his eyes with his fingers. How could he think to undertake such a thing, unless he knows something that I do not?

  The book read like nonsense to him: divination and portals and rites. He was familiar with the ideas but had not seriously read up on such dusty concepts in some time. In here might lie the key to what Darien was thinking, where he planned to go. It was still inconceivable to him that Darien Aldemoor would go gallivanting off after a legend. Not the man that he knew. Yet thus had he promised before all the city of Tamryllin. And had vanished thereafter, despite Marlen’s best efforts to find him for Nickon Gerrard.