Last Song Before Night

by Ilana C. Myer

  CHAPTER

  32

  WHEN Kiara dropped a gift in your lap, you could not refuse it. To do so was not only foolish—it was a display of rank ingratitude to the goddess. Whatever else Valanir Ocune did or did not believe, in the solitude of his nights of composition he at times felt distinctly the visitation of a being outside himself. Lauded as the greatest poet of the age, Valanir knew—sometimes too well—that such music was the dark murmur of the goddess in his ear. Not him at all. He was dust, and as he aged, he could no longer deny it within himself.

  Yet even so, Valanir was haunted by the image of Lin Amaristoth’s eyes turned up to his, liquid with trust after she had cast off her mask, and he knew some gifts were themselves a kind of trap. He knew he wanted, needed to see this staggering thing as a gift of the goddess. For if not, what did that make him?

  So he had left the silken and gold comforts of the sultan’s court, where for decades he had been an honored guest. He would not consent to be an official poet for the Kahishian ruler, insisting on his independence, on vanishing into the desert or mountains for weeks at a time; but nonetheless his standing in that magnificent court was all that he could desire. He was given a tower for composition, its great height reminiscent of the Academy cells where his journey had begun. Such had been true for Edrien Letrell as well; for centuries, the citizens of Kahishi had seen themselves as patrons of Kiara’s art, though they had another name for her.

  He had departed the court and set upon the great trade route that ran between Majdara and Tamryllin, the two capital cities of his life. He wasn’t sure where he was headed, but so far his dreams had provided a fragile sort of guidance. His dreams, and that one night when he had awakened in a cold sweat, ablaze with the knowledge of a terrible thing that had taken place in the depths of the Eivarian north.

  The road was cold, the wind that tunneled through the borderland mountains growing chillier with each passing day. Last time Valanir Ocune had made this journey had been the height of spring, when he had traveled with caravans bound for Tamryllin and the Midsummer Fair. The days had rippled with conversations with merchants, guards, and lone fortune seekers; nights came alive with the music and dancing of performers of every stripe.

  Now only Valanir’s thoughts accompanied him, and only the wind would do for music. The roads were nearly deserted and therefore dangerous, but most Kahishians showed reverence for a man of the harp and ring and welcomed him in their homes.

  He was certainly not without defenses. It was his skill in areas outside the realm of music that had helped spread his fame. People wanted heroes, Valanir thought; they would not revere a man in possession of only a single gift. He had complex feelings about the nature of fame; he knew a true Seer should not allow such considerations to cloud his heart.

  No one could see his heart, in part because Valanir Ocune had never allowed anyone to come close. But the goddess Kiara did. Perhaps that was why her gift to him now was tainted with a bitter draught; she returned to him the mingling of dark and light that throughout his life was all he had been able to give her.

  It was on a day near the end of autumn, just before the border crossing amid a landscape of skeletal trees, that he discovered just how thin, how frangible had been his plans. He was Valanir Ocune, most celebrated poet of the age, revered among the poets in Eivar and in the court of Majdara; but he was only a man, for whom events beyond his control must relentlessly unfold. On that day he awoke believing he could anticipate the next twist of the road; by the day’s end, he would know that there was no road at all, only a tangled wood with no light.

  It began when he was assailed by a voice that rose up from within his mind yet came from outside as well. His inner defenses bypassed, for the first time in his life. “He has her,” said a voice that was instantly familiar. The power of it was so great, so painful in its reverberations that he fell to his knees. The mark on his eye, the Seer’s mark, was liquid fire. Breathing deep, Valanir clutched at his head, bowed as if in submission to a tide.

  “Are you there, Valanir?” The voice rolled over and through him. “He has her. Help me.”

  * * *

  IT had not taken long for Darien to discover what had happened. At first he became anxious simply because he wanted to hurry on to the next phase of his life. Added to his anxiety was a discomfiting guilt as he thought of Lin’s wounds—acquired for his sake—and how vulnerable she would be traveling alone.

  As he paced the ground with the rhythmic monotony of a pendulum, Darien decided that he would suggest—no, insist—that she allow him to escort her to a town where she could rest, be safe. In the back of his mind, he knew it was a foolish plan: Rayen was pursuing her, as was the Crown; there was no place in Eivar where she could be truly safe.

  Darien could not have said when it was that the woods started to seem too quiet, when exactly he started to worry. He began by calling her name, softly, though it was a risk. But soon he didn’t care anymore for risk, and struck out to look for her, calling her name frantically. Until he came to a clearing where Lin’s cloak puddled in black folds on the ground. The cry of a lone falcon as it circled and swooped overhead was the only sound.

  Surprisingly, Darien’s response was to grow calm. All along, he had known that this was the risk in falling in with Kimbralin Amaristoth—for Darien didn’t think for a moment that it was anyone but her brother who had stolen her away. He knew he did not have the skill to track Rayen Amaristoth through the forest. And from what Lin had said, her brother would intend something terrible for her. There was very little time.

  Idiot, he chided her within his mind. Again and again you thwart my plans.

  He had to believe she was alive. It was that, or go on his way to the eastern passes and into Kahishi before winter set its bar of ice across the border.

  That was not an option now.

  Darien unwrapped the papers he had taken from the Academy. They had only brought sorrow upon him and Lin; yet with them he had awakened forces he had once imagined were Kiara’s province alone.

  Two portals had opened for Darien Aldemoor, or so he now thought: his vision of the khave house in Tamryllin, and the dream that had led him to Lin Amaristoth.

  Or was it three? Death was another portal that had opened for him, this time at his command, perhaps within Lin herself. For some sins, Darien thought, he would never succeed in making recompense.

  Turning to the page he needed, Darien drew a shuddering breath. The woods seemed to challenge him with their silence.

  “I found you once in a dream,” he said aloud, as if Lin stood there beside him. He could almost see her gentle, faraway smile as she considered how rash he was. She would have told him to make for the border as quickly as he could go. But then, he thought, that was her deepest flaw: that she did not think of herself.

  And what was his flaw? Why, that he was reckless, of course. He had made his choice. With Lin’s blood, Darien had accessed the enchantments once. To find her, he would do so again.

  * * *

  “THEY were scared of us in Korrit,” Marilla was saying. She rode with the grace of a noblewoman, as she did everything. How she had come to know how to do these things remained a mystery to Marlen. Perhaps it was her mystery, he considered, that had allowed him to tolerate her this long.

  That, and that somehow she held the keys to him.

  “You give those peasants too much credit,” said Marlen. “I doubt they were clever enough to be scared.”

  “I know the signs,” she said. They rode single file, with her following him on the narrow paths. Once leaving Dynmar, they had been forced to take the dirt roads that diverged from the king’s highway and snaked into the heart of the north. Once in a while Marlen would glance back, catch a glimpse of her smile. To have those teeth flashing at his back, he thought, was little different from having a knife there. And from that thought he moved to its inevitable sequel: she had betrayed him with another man.

  “People like us, Marlen,�
�� she was saying. “We are the shadow these people fear in the deepest heart of themselves.”

  “Or they just got a look at my blade,” he said. Her words disquieted him more than he would have wanted her to know. He tied his cloak closer around his neck against the cold.

  Every night of their journey, he took her with savage coldness from behind, tearing his long harper’s nails into her flesh. Even when he didn’t want her he did it, even though he knew that for her it was no punishment, but the opposite. Trying to exact revenge on her was like climbing a wall of slick, dark obsidian. He saw her nurse her wounds in daylight—long purple slashes on her back and shoulders—but she seemed to wear them with ease, as if she considered them a decoration. Some would leave scars. Did they mark her as his, he wondered, or did her indifference to them mean that she was always beyond him?

  According to the innkeeper of Korrit, Rayen Amaristoth had last been spotted with a prisoner slung across his horse, a boy that he claimed had impregnated one of the maids at Vassilian. “I’ll see that he gives the filly her due,” Rayen had reportedly said with a laugh.

  Marlen wasn’t sure what to do about Rayen, how deeply involved he was in Nickon Gerrard’s game. But he felt a kinship with the man, from the little he knew. He had hopes that he could be reasoned with. And if not, the sword.

  * * *

  SHE was flat on her back on the dirt floor, her wrists and ankles bound at her sides to stakes that Rayen had driven into it. The ropes bit into her wounded wrists in a continuous shrill note of pain. Green-filtered sunlight angled through the window of what she took to be an abandoned woodcutter’s cottage.

  He had tied her legs. He’d had to, after she had succeeded in extracting the knife from her boot, and—painfully with her bound hands—lunged at his back. A desperate move, and with the ease of a dancer he had spun, laughing, and twisted it from her grip. Though not before she had wounded him lightly behind the knee. “Naughty,” Rayen had said with amusement as he cleaned and bandaged his leg. “That’s my just reward for not trussing you like a pig, my dear. It won’t happen again.”

  Now he was humming as he prepared a fire. For once, the memories of Edrien Letrell within Lin were silenced, as if her fear had banished them.

  “I’d gag you, but honestly, who would care if they did hear you scream?” Rayen said cheerfully as he worked. “Ah Lin, did I tell you yet how much I’ve missed you?”

  “Rayen,” Lin croaked through cracked lips. “What happened to us?”

  He stood above her and looked down into her face. His eyebrows were drawn together in bemusement above a half-smile. “Happened?”

  “What brother and sister are like this? Have you thought of that?” Her tongue sought moisture in her mouth, her throat contracted like crumpled parchment. “It’s because of Kalinda … surely you know that?”

  He chuckled softly, knelt beside her. “Oh, Lin,” he said, with what sounded like indulgent affection. Then he smacked her across the jaw with an open palm. Blackness flickered in Lin’s vision for a moment, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Do you know what she once said to me, about you?” he said, still gently. “She said if she had known what you’d grow into, when you were an infant, she’d have fed you to the dogs.”

  Lin didn’t move. “There’s nothing you can tell me about her that would shock me, Rayen.” Deliberately she trained her eyes on his. The tears leaked away, clearing her vision as she looked up at him. “You hear me? Nothing.”

  For a moment he looked as if he might hit her again. Then he smiled. “Trying to goad me, are you,” he said. “Clever.” He began to unbutton her shirt.

  Her entire body tightened. “What are you doing?”

  “Do you worry I’m attracted to you? Don’t flatter yourself.” Cold assaulted Lin’s breasts and belly. She began to shiver. She saw Rayen take a small clay pot and dab his fingers into it. “I was given instructions how to prepare you,” he said. His fingers came up from the pot a shocking red.

  Blood. Lin froze, trying not to flinch as, with his fingertips, he drew a complex symbol on her skin, from chest to abdomen. His neat, slender fingers reminded her of her own. She couldn’t see the symbol, but it seemed like a kind of knot—similar to the mark of the Seer.

  “Prepare me for what, Rayen?” she forced out, watching his finger go into the pot, onto her skin, and then back again as if hypnotized. The red design was rapidly drying to rust, like a convoluted wound.

  “Nickon Gerrard is sending someone here, to perform the enchantment,” said Rayen. “He should arrive soon.” He drew his knife, and before she could react, he had made a small, efficient cut above the cheekbone at each side of her face. Warmth trickled down her cheeks.

  Rayen smiled with all his teeth, like a white wolf of the north. “There, dear,” he said. “Now you’re all ready.”

  * * *

  THE mountain lake glimmered, a mirage of dancing sunlight emerging from the trees. Beyond the crystal belt of water rose the iron heights of the mountains, uncharted by any map. Their peaks wreathed in drifting, soundless white. Beyond, Rianna knew, was an ice forest of peaks that went on so far that no one had ever found an end to it. Some called it the end of the world.

  The cottage was tucked in a grove of trees beside the lake. They approached as silently as they could, breaths frozen in their throats. Rayen Amaristoth’s sleek grey horse was tethered to a tree outside the door, and smoke rilled from the chimney.

  In the day that had passed since their departure from Korrit, Rianna felt more than ever that she drifted like a ghost beside Ned, encased in white silence. The news that Rayen had taken Lin had nearly brought her to her knees with a sudden nausea; it was unlikely, far too unlikely, that Rayen had let Darien live. But once the moment passed, she had clambered to her feet and allowed Ned to lead her on without comment.

  Their plan was to lie in wait for Rayen to come out and fall upon him before he could draw blade. It was essential, Rianna pointed out, not to kill him immediately: she wanted confirmation of Darien’s fate. Ned had assented with the expressionless calm she had begun to expect.

  So they concealed themselves among the trees, one on each side of the door, their weapons drawn. Their primary strength would be surprise. Their only strength, really.

  When Rayen finally did open the door, Rianna thought she might faint. He looked well, she thought. Not changed at all. It seemed singularly horrible. Rianna felt her body betraying her at the sight of him, filling with a wistful, wild sadness.

  I loved him, a little bit, she thought wonderingly in those lightheaded moments.

  Ned was first to move, as they had planned; his sword aimed to strike at the other man’s head. Like wind—as if he had been expecting it—Rayen Amaristoth pivoted with his dagger drawn and parried the blow. No sword, Rianna thought with wild hope. The blades clashed hard enough to draw sparks. With a hiss of breath between his teeth, Ned forced his blade against Rayen’s shorter one, the tension locking their weapons together. He began to drive Rayen, step by step and with a trembling sword arm, back toward the cottage wall.

  Rianna jumped from her concealment. Together they could pin Rayen to the wall.

  Rayen laughed, the color high in his cheeks. He had seen her. “Mistress Gelvan,” he said, with an indecent emphasis on the first word. “Was it that good for you?” His leg shot out to strike Ned in the groin.

  Ned gasped and buckled at the knees. As he fell he grabbed for Rayen’s leg; the two went down together. Weapons clattered on the ground as the men grappled each other. As Rianna Gelvan ran toward them, clasping her knife, the cry tearing from her was of rage or mourning, or both.

  * * *

  WHEN Lin first began to hear the voices in her mind, Rayen was sitting by the hearth whittling a wood carving. Her heart hammered so hard that she thought he must notice, but he continued to hum as he worked. He had a tuneful voice, like hers. The only time she had heard him sing was once, long ago, when a beautiful noblewoman had come to stay at Vass
ilian for a fortnight. With apparent spontaneity, Rayen had burst into a mournful refrain at dinner one evening, eyes averted from his family and their guests as though he were too distracted by some grief to notice them. His tenor voice filled the dining hall with silvery melancholy. The woman, who had been red-haired and betrothed to a southern lord, looked stricken. Kalinda Amaristoth was still alive at that time, and Lin wondered now if the performance was at least partly for her benefit. Her sensual mouth was curled in a hungry smile as she watched her son.

  The voices had risen to a buzz in Lin’s mind, just on the edge of hearing. Perhaps, she thought, it was the sound of going mad.

  Though in that case, what took so long?

  The red-haired noblewoman had departed soon after, her face dead white, to meet her betrothed for a sun-filled southern wedding. Lin had thought of saying something to her before she left, but wasn’t sure if it might be better for the girl to cherish her small heartbreak for the rest of her life than to know the truth. Better not to know that the way she had wept and bled and begged would provide amusement in the cold chambers of their home for weeks after.

  Did I conspire with him? Lin had never intended to help Rayen capture these women, but she hadn’t prevented it, either. She had seen herself as powerless, incapable of doing more than watching the inevitable descend. And now it had happened again to someone she knew and even loved. Somehow she had come to love Rianna in the short time she had known her. For all the good it had done.

  She hoped—very much hoped—that Rianna had not begged.

  Myra, she thought, and saw blue eyes opening like petals to meet hers, full of wonder and hurt. She closed her own eyes and thought, Perhaps I am already mad.

  The hum of voices in her mind suddenly sharpened, became, Why can’t she hear us yet?

  Lin sucked in a breath. She knew that voice.

  She can hear us, said another voice. Can’t you, Lin?