Much that we cannot know.
“It must be recorded, for posterity!” an aged, fretful voice. Darien opened his eyes. He saw two men standing in the shadow of the stacks. One was small-boned, handsome but getting on in years, with extra weight around the middle. His hair was greying at the temples; his face struck Darien as profoundly weary.
The other man, the one who had spoken, was older, painfully thin, also bearded. Both men wore Academy rings.
“There is no reason for anything to be recorded, Tyler,” said the tired-looking man. “It is just as well if no one ever finds it again.”
That was when Darien noticed the gemstone on the man’s ring. A moon opal.
The other man balled his hands into fists. “Edrien. What has happened to you?”
Edrien smiled, and for a moment looked less tired and more mischievous. “Every man must have his secrets.”
Tyler’s face was drooping in a frown, and when he spoke again his voice was nearly a whisper. “Don’t you understand,” he said. “You found the thing … the one thing that gives meaning to … all this.” A wave of his hand took in the library and somehow seemed to include the entire castle, the Isle … and perhaps beyond that. “And now you mean to keep it to yourself.”
“My friend,” Edrien said, “there is meaning in all of this, and there is none at all. What I have seen—where I have been—it changes nothing. I have nothing, Tyler—only a silver branch, and that I took for a memory. A memory I do not even want. It is useless now.” He turned away, as if he could not bear to look at the other man, or did not want him to see his face. “Can’t you understand? We pay a price for everything.”
“Edrien, is it true what people say?” Tyler said. “Is it true that you had a chance to bring the enchantments back?”
And suddenly Edrien looked neither old nor tired. His face hardened. “And where did you hear that?”
“Never mind,” said Tyler, unmoved. “Is it true?”
Blue eyes simmering with anger, Edrien said, “I did not tell such a thing to a living soul. And I intend to never speak of it.”
“You mean to conceal knowledge that Seers have been desperate to find, for centuries?”
“I do,” said Edrien. He was calm now. “And what’s more, it will die with me.”
* * *
DARIEN awoke to find that his head was tipped back, straining his neck with a stabbing pain. Cursing, he straightened. The men were gone. So was the student who had been there earlier. He was alone, his breath the only sound in all that room. He was glad to see his candle still burned, much nearer the base now. Darien sighed and stretched. He wished Lin could assist him—she would thrive in the company of these deadly tomes. In contrast, Darien felt quite ready for his dinner and never wanted to see another book again in his life.
When he reached their room, it was empty. Lin had left a note on the back of their dinner invitation. See you in the dining room.
By the time Darien reached the masters’ dining room, he was weary and ravenous. Still, he was alert enough to be surprised that the dinner was only for himself, Lin Amaristoth, and Archmaster Myre; nor was he too hungry to notice that the woman who stood with her hands resting on the back of a chair as she conversed with the Archmaster was a different Lin.
The dark blue velvet bodice of the dress she wore had been tailored to her frame, bringing out what slight figure she had. Brocade of blue and silver swelled from her waist and struck the floor in a rustling cascade. A dainty collarbone showed where the bodice left it exposed. She had washed her hair, and it curled softly around her ears from a plumed velvet cap of the same fabric as the bodice.
She seemed to be talking animatedly, though with composure, to the Archmaster, but fell silent when Darien entered. In her face he thought he detected vulnerability as she awaited his verdict, tacit or otherwise.
Darien found his voice. “Lady Kimbralin,” he said, and bowed. “You look lovely.”
Lin dropped her eyes. “You are kind to say so.”
“So tell me, Archmaster,” said Darien, “does that dress really belong to a noblewoman who was visiting and inexplicably left it behind, or does the High Master enjoy more privileges than I’m aware of?”
“Darien,” said Lin sharply.
Archmaster Myre lifted his chin. His comportment was majestic as he seated himself at the head of the table. “I see you have not changed, Darien Aldemoor,” he said. “I have done you a good turn, and you repay me with insult. It is no wonder that you have been brought to this pass, is it?”
Darien’s first impulse was to return the thrust with a riposte of his own. Then he knew such behavior for the folly that it was. “I apologize, Archmaster Myre,” he said. “It has been a wearying day, but that is no excuse.”
“It is not,” said the High Master.
Lin said, “I implore your forgiveness on Darien’s behalf, Archmaster Myre. We have recently lost a friend.”
Darien stared at her, for a moment angry that she would invoke Hassen for the sake of smoothing over a quarrel. Then he thought, She only says what is true. Even I am not usually so much the fool. He bowed his head.
“I will accept your apology, Lady Kimbralin,” said the High Master. “Though I suspect your manners are superior to those of your companion—he has no doubt learned rough ways in the stews of Tamryllin and on the road. For your sake I will let this pass.”
Old bastard, Darien thought. “I thank you,” he said shortly, and was relieved when the food was brought in moments later.
As he shoveled mouthfuls of meat and vegetables into his mouth, Darien stole a glance at the girl across from him, who ate more demurely and with evidence of gentle upbringing. He marveled at the fact that this was the same girl he had gotten drunk in a tavern not long ago.
“Darien, Archmaster Myre and I were discussing the recent events in Tamryllin,” said Lin, as their knives rattled against their plates. “The High Master has sensed that for some time now, Nickon Gerrard has been meddling with dark powers. But it is still secret among all but the innermost circle of the masters. There would be chaos and panic, otherwise.”
“All Seers bear the same mark, and this binds us together forever after,” said Archmaster Myre. “Even when a mark is broken, as in the case of Valanir Ocune, it cannot be undone.”
Lin looked startled. “How did you know Valanir Ocune’s mark was broken?”
The High Master’s mouth crinkled slightly in what was not quite a smile. “Lady Amaristoth, think a moment. We are all connected—thus we felt it. All the Seers, of whom there are very few in these days. Some twenty, most of them in Eivar, the rest scattered in the wide world.”
“Does that mean you can tell what Court Poet Gerrard is doing?” Lin asked.
Archmaster Myre shook his head. “The connection is faint. We are made aware of it mostly in ways I cannot explain. And in dreams. But in ancient days, when our powers were real, a cadre of Seers joined together could be a terrible force.”
“If that could happen again,” Lin said slowly, “the enchantments brought back … doesn’t that mean the Crown may once again see the Academy as a threat to be crushed?”
Archmaster Myre’s pale eyes were unblinking. Darien noticed that he had barely touched his food. “She is quick,” said the old man to Darien. “It is well that at least one of you is.”
Lin said, “Archmaster Myre, Valanir Ocune has told us that Nickon Gerrard’s use of forbidden magics is bringing a darkness to the world. The Red Death, and worse.”
He closed his eyes. “I know.”
“You mean he has told you?”
Now his eyes opened, trained coldly on her. “I mean in my darkest dreams I have seen it.”
They completed the meal in silence. Darien thought Lin looked pale with worry. Yet she had carried the conversation until this point—had in some ways known how to communicate with Archmaster Myre better than Darien had.
It had been a mistake to imagine he knew her remotely
well.
And Rianna Gelvan, how well did he know her?
It was with a new sense of disquiet that Darien followed Lin back to their room that night.
She wasted no time when the door shut behind them. “Did you find anything?” she asked. The room was dark, but for the glow cast by a candelabra set in the wall. Four candles, light playing softly on her face, the sleek velvet of the gown.
Darien rubbed his face and sat on his bed with a sigh. “Nothing important,” he admitted. “Some bits about portals. And I had a strange dream when I…”
“Fell asleep?” Lin said dryly.
“You’ve got me there.” In his mind he had been going over it since the library. “It may have been more than a dream, though I didn’t think so right away.” He recounted to her the exchange he had seen, or dreamed, between Edrien Letrell and the man named Tyler. “It is interesting,” he said at last. “But even if it was not just a dream, I don’t see how it helps us.”
“Nor I,” she said. “I’ll give some thought to it during the endless time I seem to have these days, to think. Can you smuggle books to me?” She pulled off the velvet cap, ran a hand through the short waves of her hair.
“I suppose I could,” said Darien. “But I don’t see how we’re to get anywhere this way.”
“I know,” said Lin. “If we could only figure out where to use the key. It has the Seers’ mark upon it; it must be of this place.” In the half-light he could see her mouth set in a thin line. “Damned Valanir Ocune.” Businesslike, she began to unlace her bodice. Darien realized that he was staring. Turning away quickly, he had to smile; they had shared a room more than once, there was no reason it should be different now. A change of clothing should not make such a difference.
A song was forming in his head; only the merest outline, not yet the words. My lady … Pluck of a string, two strings against a backdrop of silence. A melancholy air. My lady.
He thought of Rianna Gelvan and how sweetly remote she had always been. The walls of the garden protecting her.
He glanced over his shoulder at Lin. She had changed into a knee-length shift that he had not seen before, lace-edged and clean. Another remnant of the mysterious noblewoman. She had bony knees and angular skinny calves, like a colt. “Lin.”
She turned, and again he saw that vulnerability around the chin and eyes. “Yes?”
He inclined his head to indicate the bundle beside his bed—his harp, left sealed in its wrappings since he had left Tamryllin. “Do you mind if I play?”
She looked surprised. “Not at all.”
In the silence of night, the sound of the sea made gentle music. The shape of the harp in his hands, the smooth warmth of the wood, was like returning to the embrace of a lost love. Darien sighed, his chin resting against the frame of the instrument he loved so well. It had been too long. A part of him had all this time been missing.
It was a private moment in a way, and he wished he was alone. Then he thought perhaps it did not matter. In her own way, Lin might understand. He felt her hungry gaze on him, his instrument. She wanted a harp more than anything, he realized. Perhaps when all this was over … His mind had trouble forming an image of how the end of all this would look. But he would be pleased if it happened to include Lin Amaristoth hale and smiling for once, and wearing a harp of her own.
“What shall I play?” he asked the air. One string, two strings in the silence; a song coming to him there in that moment, the waves singing melancholy counterpoint. It was the sound of all that had befallen him in the past months: the loss of one friend to betrayal, another lost because of him. Love waiting in the luminous city that had cast him out. And through it all, the songs. They had haunted him throughout this strange journey, sleeping and waking, begging to be written and released. He had a duty to transmute his losses, his grief, into the music that now danced through him.
“My lady,” he sang, a new tune formed here from the night and candleflame, from the vulnerability in Lin’s eyes and his memories of this place. “Swift the river flows, and with it all my hopes. My lady,” he sang, and then found the line that had been eluding him, that his heart had been searching for all through their long journey. “Never shall we see such times again.”
Lin echoed him, a sweet and unexpected harmony. “Never shall we see,” her voice wavered, “such times again.”
Knowledge came to him, diverting him a moment, though his fingers did not cease their playing. Not a surprise, rather of a weave with the fabric of the night itself. “You’ve had your own losses,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She said, “Please keep singing.”
New words and verses coming to him, a part of his brain storing it all away to be written later—written and rewritten until it was perfect. He sang now not only for himself, but for her. Candleflame, eyes dark with thoughts he could not read. A night in a tavern that seemed so long ago. Strange powers bringing them together, in dreams, toward an end he could not see. A ruthless tide had swept them both from all that they had known and loved.
It seemed a long time when at last he stopped. His mouth and throat were dry; his fingers ached. He looked over at the next bed and saw she lay stretched atop her coverlets, asleep. The neckline of the shift had slipped down to expose the pale skin of her chest, her small breasts still hidden. Darien set his harp carefully beside the bed. He rose, stretched to relieve his stiffened limbs, flexed his fingers. He came to the next bed and lifted Lin gently, and as she protested, eyes still closed, he slipped the coverlets from beneath her and covered her to the chin. She sighed when he set her down, snuggled into the thin pillow. Murmured a name, not his, too softly for him to hear.
* * *
HE walked down a dark hall, a candle in his hand. Doors before him: one, two, three—all of them shut. Trapped within the labyrinth of the corridors, a gust of wind was keening. Not so easy to leave as it is to get here, Darien thought. And the next moment wondered why.
The last thing he remembered was lying down to sleep. And now here he was. The symbols carved in the walls, reminiscent of the Seer’s mark, were familiar to him. He was in the Academy, then, but could have been anywhere in the castle for all that he could tell in this dark.
All that remained to him, then, was to decide which way to go.
And then someone was with him; Darien could sense a new presence in the stillness of the hall. He turned sharply, candle raised. A tall, broad figure emerged from the shadows into the tremulous light.
Darien almost dropped the candle. “Hassen,” he said hoarsely. “Are you…?”
The big man put a finger to his lips. “Quiet now,” he said. “Follow me.” When Darien tried to speak again, to protest, Hassen Styr said with annoyance, “Darien, think. This is a dream.” He strode to the second door, opened it, and vanished within.
Falling silent, Darien followed.
Torches burned here, illuminating a long, magnificent room. The high ceiling was decorated with intricate, arching scrollwork and carvings that cast strange shadows. Darien knew right away where he was. Down the center of the room stood marble pedestals, chin-high, in vertical rows. Atop each pedestal, a harp. They were in the Hall of Harps, where the instruments of the most celebrated poets throughout history were preserved and displayed. Where on a high dais before all, the Silver Branch cast its own light.
Hassen was standing by the door, watching Darien.
“Why did you bring me here?” said Darien. Not knowing what else to say. This is a dream, the man had said.
“I didn’t,” Hassen said. “I am only a vehicle here. You willed the powers to show you something, and here you are. You know, then, what you must do.”
“But I don’t,” Darien muttered. He began walking between the pillars. Tried to focus, though the presence of Hassen unsettled him. Many harps here, even the one that had belonged to the founder of the Academy. Some truly exquisite pieces, as one would expect; gracefully carved willow wood polished to a brilliant sheen. Strings that
Darien could only guess were of gold. He was tempted to touch them but knew that it was forbidden, and even he who rebelled at most rules found himself willing to respect that one.
And then he came to the harp of Edrien Letrell. It was weather-beaten, though its owner had obviously shown it much care. There were nicks in the wood and most of the strings showed wear.
There was a quote etched into this pillar, just below the pedestal. Darien recognized it from one of Edrien’s songs. Sweet sings the wind by the shore. My heart finds peace here, beneath the great oak of my home.
“I think I understand,” Darien breathed. Even a breath seemed too loud in this room.
“There’s a novelty,” said Hassen Styr with the dryness Darien remembered. Darien turned, surprised, but his friend had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.
I never had a chance to apologize, Darien realized. And in that moment, at least, his new discovery did not seem to matter.
* * *
“I’M not going to the library today,” Darien told Lin the next morning. “I’m going outside. Want to come with me?”
Lin was already half into a dress, plainer than the one she had worn last night. It was still pretty, though—white with tiny pink flowers embroidered into it. Catching his eye, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Don’t stare. I hate this dress.” She shrugged her arm through a ruffled sleeve. “And yes, of course I’ll come with you. I’d go to the gates of the Underworld by now if someone asked. But may I ask why?”
Quickly he recounted the dream of the night before, avoiding her eyes during the telling, focusing on his bootlaces as he fastened them. He didn’t like to talk about it, but neither did he want to keep it a secret from her.
Last Song Before Night Page 24
