Last Song Before Night

by Ilana C. Myer

  It was all she could do not to cry. Their words pulsed in her temples now, clear as if they stood next to her. She thought, Why are you here? I am as good as lost.

  I knew she would say that. Darien Aldemoor, with amused exasperation.

  Lin, you have the key to escape within your grasp, said the voice of Valanir Ocune. You must know this.

  She could see them now: as if a translucent curtain had fallen over her eyes, Darien Aldemoor and Valanir Ocune hung superimposed upon her view of the cottage ceiling, and of Rayen carving beside the fire. An ache filled her at the sight of the two of them. I know I have Edrien within me, she told them wearily. But I can’t approach his thoughts of the Path. When I try, the images slip away.

  You never told me about this! Darien protested.

  I believe we can help you, said Valanir. Can you feel us in your mind?

  Lin thought a minute. Yes, she replied, a bit wonderingly. Darien is hungry.

  Darien rolled his eyes and sighed.

  And feeling conflicted about seeing me bound and exposed in this way, she went on, with a hint of mischief.

  Conflicted? Darien responded. Please. You’re skin and bones.

  All right, children, said Valanir. I notice, Lin, that you say nothing about me.

  I don’t know your thoughts, said Lin. As usual.

  Valanir nodded. He was sitting cross-legged on what looked like a bare stretch of dirt. Beyond him, Lin could make out the shapes of sunset-colored stones and a glint of sunlight that caught in the silvering strands of his hair. Join hands with me, he instructed. Both of you.

  And incredibly, Lin felt a warm hand in each of her own. She tightened her fingers and felt their flesh respond, though her physical hands held nothing and were bound with rope. It’s done.

  Now recite Edrien’s verses, said Valanir Ocune. Recite them, and, as you do, the three of us must all focus together on uncovering that final verse. The one buried in your mind.

  Lin began to nod, then remembered Rayen and stopped. He, meanwhile, rose and said, “I’ll be back. May as well go kill us something.” He left the cottage, shutting the door behind him.

  Lin let out a long sigh. In her mind, she began reciting the verses. As she did, the sensation of Darien’s and Valanir’s hands in hers mingled with an assault of images. Somehow even as she took in their faces and the surrounding cottage, Lin could now also see a mountain before her, its peak bathed in mist. Daggers of smaller peaks peered through the clouds, beckoning. A white wind howled between them, buffeted her with annihilating cold.

  Lin heard singing and realized it was coming from her, but it was not her voice. It was a man’s voice, and ragged, not golden as it had been in the royal courts and palaces that had given him his name.

  She saw black eyelashes flicker open, a world of reproach in those eyes. And then they were gone, and intermingling with the sound of Edrien Letrell’s voice raised in song was a tearing, gasping sound. Lin understood, suddenly, feeling the wet sting in her own eyes: he was weeping.

  You must first lose everything, Edrien Letrell had told Darien, his voice tunneling like a great knife through her body from the realm of the dead.

  Lin thought then of Alyn, of Leander and Hassen and Rianna and even, inexplicably, of her family. Of the brother who could have been her staunchest friend in the world, and was instead a monster.

  She could write songs forever and still not begin to cut to the heart of her losses. She had no words for the core of them, for the way they twisted in her veins and clenched her heart.

  And there, suddenly, was the final verse, and she and Edrien sang it together, as she clasped hands with her last friends in the world and reached, with every scintilla of her being, for the world that lay beyond.

  * * *

  THEY heard voices even before they reached the clearing by the lake—a man’s voice raised in anger and then splitting the air, a woman’s shriek. Marlen Humbreleigh wondered if it would be unwise to proceed, but Marilla urged him on, a candle of anticipation in each eye. “This is what we’ve come for,” she said, inexplicably. Shaking his head, Marlen drew his sword. They had followed the directions to the Amaristoth property by the lake. Marlen wondered if Lin Amaristoth had tried to escape, if her brother was killing her. That would be a fitting end to the plans of one so black-hearted as Nickon Gerrard—but would be singularly inconvenient for Marlen.

  On the other hand, Marlen was becoming more aware that, all along, he’d had other purposes in entering this wood. “You know I’ll kill your boy if we come across him,” he told Marilla.

  She smiled. “You’re so kind to think of all these little ways to amuse me.”

  Light broke through the trees as they reached the clearing; it was late afternoon, and the sun was descending toward the water and mountains on the horizon. Rose and gold light illuminated the cottage where it stood hard by the water.

  The sight that greeted them distracted Marlen from any thought of the time of day.

  Three people struggled at the center of the clearing. Marlen recognized Rayen Amaristoth, his neck encircled by Ned Alterra’s arm as the latter stood behind him. Ned’s grip bound Rayen fast in place. Rianna Gelvan held a knife to his throat.

  “Two against one,” Marlen said mildly. “That’s hardly fair, is it?”

  Rayen smiled, shaking strands of sweaty dark hair out of his eyes. “There you are,” he said. His breath was coming hard. “Took you long enough.”

  “I was unexpectedly delayed,” said Marlen with reflexive courtesy.

  “Gentlemen,” Rianna said, her voice piercing the air. “Lord Amaristoth and I have not finished our conversation.” Her eyes as they passed over Marlen made him shiver. The skin on the left side of her forehead and on her cheekbone was scraped purple in a giant bruise. Swathing her head was a velvet snood, which had slipped to reveal delicate skullbone above one ear, carpeted with stubble.

  Marlen heard a falcon cry out into the autumn air, saw its shadow flit across the ground, circling, circling.

  “I left Darien alive,” said Rayen, “so he could see what was left of you. And how you betrayed him.”

  Rianna pressed the point of the knife into Rayen’s skin; a trickle of red puckered up from the flesh. He didn’t flinch. “Speaking of betrayal—you betrayed my father, didn’t you?” she said. “I’ve had a great deal of time to think, here in this wood. I think Nickon Gerrard sent you into our home to investigate him. To find out his secrets.”

  “For that I had help,” said Rayen. “My lord Marlen Humbreleigh, who has arrived now so fortuitously, informed Lord Gerrard of your father’s heretical practices. My task was to uncover evidence. Nickon Gerrard knows full well that I am a hunter.”

  Ned spoke for the first time. “Lord Humbreleigh … is there no end to your treachery?”

  “I weary of this,” said Rianna Gelvan.

  Ned looked at her as if in deference, though it was the strength of his grasp that held Rayen Amaristoth in place. “I believe the honor must be yours.”

  “This is nonsense,” said Rayen. “If you kill me, do you know how hard the justice of the kingdom will pursue you? I am Lord Amaristoth.” His eyes fixed on Rianna. “You may think Darien could love a whore,” he said. “But a whore and a murderess? Do you think he’ll lick the blood from your hands like a little dog?” Rianna stared at him. In his silken voice Rayen said, “Will you tell him how you cornered a man without his sword? You could never have taken me otherwise; but for that, and my wounded leg. You’ll sicken one such as Darien Aldemoor; he’ll seek an innocent and sweet girl with pristine hands.”

  “Shut up, Rayen,” said Rianna. She lifted the knife from Rayen’s throat. Then she plunged it into his stomach and slit him open like a fish. A cry escaped both their throats at once.

  Rayen’s eyes bulged; his mouth gaped in a dreadful, whistling shriek. Rianna stumbled back, so pale that the veins in her face showed like spiders. Then she danced forward again and in a single motion cut his t
hroat.

  Ned Alterra dropped the gutted body to the ground. Rayen Amaristoth’s staring eyes grew dim as red fountained from his throat.

  Marlen felt sick. “That was a dishonorable killing.”

  “For a dishonorable man,” said Rianna, in a hard, clear tone like a glass bell. Then she fell to her knees and began to retch. Ned leaped to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder, his gaze warily trained on Marlen Humbreleigh and Marilla as they watched from the height of their mounts.

  Marlen wondered why, through all this, he had not moved to stop them. He wondered if even with his considerable skill, he could have. Something in Rianna Gelvan’s thin, hungry face crept a sliver of ice down his back.

  Marlen turned his attention to Ned. The man looked a mess, his lank hair wild and his face drawn as if in pain. “Lord Alterra,” Marlen addressed him formally. “We must have a reckoning.”

  Marilla spoke then for the first time. “I don’t want you to, Marlen.”

  Marlen’s whole body jerked in the saddle toward her, and suddenly he felt dizzy. “What do you mean?” he said. “Are you not mine?” The naked vulnerability in his own words made him feel faint, as if he had exposed his neck to a knife.

  “I am,” she said, and for once there was no mockery in her voice. “I am and will always be yours. But I don’t want you to kill him.”

  “So that’s why you came with me,” said Marlen. His fists had clenched without his noticing. He tried to steady himself. “I don’t know what I think of that.”

  Marlen was never to know what she would have said in response—if she had a response. For in that instant, the entire clearing was bathed in light so blinding that it was as if the sun had fallen to earth. And then the light was everywhere, everything. The woods were gone.

  CHAPTER

  33

  IN a swirl of blue silk skirts and chestnut curls streaming to her waist, the woman in the garden rose to greet the young man who had just entered. Surrounded by rose hedges and with a profile of symmetrical perfection, she gave the impression of a work of art. Her blue eyes were crinkled at the corners, lines that told of laughter and gave her an expression of amusement even when she was not smiling.

  The man who bowed upon entering the garden was tall, with a lean and handsome face. At his side was buckled a golden harp, and his ring glittered a rose hue in the sunlight.

  “Lord Gerrard,” Rianna heard Ned mutter in her ear. But when she tried to turn to look at him, she could not; nor could she even see her own hands in front of her.

  It was true: the man was Nickon Gerrard, but without a strand of grey in his hair and with a face smooth as a babe’s. “My father’s garden,” she murmured back. But that he must have surely noticed for himself.

  The woman in the garden, meanwhile, reached out a long-fingered hand to Nickon Gerrard, allowed him to kiss it. The only adornment she wore was a gold ring on the hand she outstretched to him.

  “Nick,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you. Gidyon isn’t at home.”

  Nickon Gerrard straightened, took his place on the garden bench beside her. “Where is he?”

  “Taking Rianna for a walk,” she said, and dimples dented her pink cheeks when she smiled. “I thank the gods I married a man who is such a devoted father.”

  Nickon Gerrard appeared impassive. “No doubt he is grateful for his good fortune, Daria. Whatever god or gods he may thank for it.”

  She inched away from him in her seat, a chill crossing her face. “What did you come for, Nick?”

  “To extend you an invitation,” he said, his voice smooth with the awareness that her tone had changed. “Visit me sometime. I work all day, and there are days that I have trouble believing I may be Court Poet someday.”

  “I had thought it decided,” said Daria Gelvan. “It is known that the prince favors you.”

  “That is true, but then there is the king,” said Nickon Gerrard. “I fear I may have failed in some way to please him. He speaks of Valanir Ocune, but I know Valanir doesn’t even want to be Court Poet. Thinks he’s too good for it, no doubt.”

  “I am sure you are as talented as Valanir Ocune,” said Daria. The mechanical tone of her voice suggested it was something she said often. “Nick, in all the years that I’ve known you, your troubles have remained the same.”

  Nickon Gerrard bared his teeth in a grimace. “What are my troubles?”

  She rested a hand on his wrist, looked up earnestly into his face. “You’re afraid.”

  A mist engulfed the scene, and the colors of the Gelvan garden in spring—green of leaf and grass, red and pink and yellow of the roses—melted into white oblivion. Rianna still couldn’t see her hand before her face, but she could feel Ned’s hand in hers. “I’m afraid,” she said aloud.

  “Don’t be,” she heard him say. His voice hung strangely in the air, as if contained in a small space.

  “Where are we?”

  “I have no idea,” said Ned. “But we don’t seem to be in danger.”

  “That was … my mother.”

  “I know. I remember her, a little. I didn’t remember how much you look like her.”

  “If she could see me now,” she said, and choked a laugh. Perhaps it was a blessing that she could not see her own hands, caked thick with blood and worse. That wet, surprisingly tough sensation of plunging the knife through Rayen’s guts was a continuous echo running from the tips of her fingers to the palms of her hands. Rianna kept seeing his face in that moment, his mouth a black moon of agony, eyes bulging like glass pebbles from his skull. She closed her eyes and saw it; she opened them and there it was, too: a skeletal mask floating between her and the world.

  Rayen had been right about the intimacy of the knife. One final lesson she’d had from him.

  And then Ned said, “Since it seems we’re not going anywhere, I have something to tell you.” For the first time since he had found her in Dynmar, he sounded apprehensive. Almost like the old Ned who had been so careful around her, as if she might break.

  Rianna thought she ought to relieve him at once. “You fucked Marilla.”

  She heard him draw a sharp breath, then expel it with a wondering sort of laugh. “You must tell me how you did that.”

  “Why else would Marlen Humbreleigh demand a reckoning from you?” she said. “And there was something in the way Marilla was looking at you just now. I think she loves you.”

  “Marilla doesn’t love me,” said Ned. “But yes. You were right.”

  “It’s no concern of mine,” said Rianna. “In fact I … I think I’m glad.”

  “Glad?”

  Rianna felt a sting in the bridge of her nose, as if she were about to weep. “There’s so little I’ve given you, Ned. I’m sorry.”

  She felt his hand on her arm, a warmth in the empty white surrounding them. “That’s not true,” he said. “Can you imagine if we’d never known one another all those years? I can’t. I don’t want to.”

  Rianna was searching for a reply when the whiteness around them flashed away, was replaced with an ornate chamber furnished in crimson. Tall windows hung with drapes of red velvet were grey and splattered with rain. A lonely wind keened as torrents thudded against the glass.

  The room was bathed in the glow of a giant fireplace, around which shadows encroached. It was within this pool of light that Daria Gelvan and Nickon Gerrard stood. Her back was to Rianna and Ned; they saw only the rippling fall of her hair to her waist. Against the light, the Court Poet’s face was awash in shadows, but there was a frantic light in his eyes and he kept running his fingers through his hair. He looked very young.

  Daria held a ring up to the light. His Academy ring.

  “A tiger’s eye,” she said. “Tell me again what it means.”

  Nickon Gerrard cleared his throat, clasped his hands in front of him. “Power and fire dance within you, that must have release in the world,” he recited.

  She extended the ring to him as if it were a gift. “I thought so,” s
he said. “Do you know what else I think?”

  “I’m sure I can guess.” He slid the ring back onto his finger.

  “Power, Nick,” she said, her voice very soft yet carrying strongly in the silence of the room. The rain danced more gently now on the windowpanes. “All the years that I’ve known you, it was the only thing you wanted.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” he said. “I wanted one other thing. It was taken from me.”

  “Gidyon didn’t take me from you,” she said. “Nick, our friendship means so much. Don’t spoil things.”

  “I won’t, then,” said Nickon Gerrard with what was clearly a forced smile. “Come. It’s too rainy to go out. Drink with me.” He motioned to the decanter that had been set out, the two glasses beside it. Daria watched as he poured, and for a moment Rianna saw a shift in her expression, though it may have been the shifting light of the flames. But nonetheless, for a moment: a flicker of what looked like trepidation. The next moment she was smiling as she accepted her glass, raised it in salute.

  “To you,” said Nickon Gerrard with a raised glass, and drank. When he lowered the glass, there was a flush in his cheeks, his eyes like banked coals. “Daria, surely you have always desired me—in your heart?”

  Daria had sipped the wine; now she set it carefully aside. “In my heart,” she said, stretching her lips across her teeth in a smile. “Of course.”

  He grabbed her. For a long time they kissed, a strangely silent act backed only by the sound of rain. Rianna felt as if she could not breathe.

  Suddenly Daria cried out; Nickon Gerrard had thrown her across the couch with a laugh, sending her tumbling. She gathered her skirts, herself, with an effort at dignity. “Nick—”

  “You think I don’t know?” Nickon Gerrard said. “What you’re up to?”

  Daria’s lips parted. “I don’t—”

  “You do,” said Nickon Gerrard smoothly. “And you’ve failed him. This very moment as we sit here, drinking wine, the king is being found dead in his chambers. I thought I should tell you myself.”

  She suddenly jumped, delivered a blow to his throat with the side of her hand, which she had stiffened into the shape of a knife. It was stunning, the speed with which it happened. Her hand caught his throat with an audible crack. Nickon Gerrard grunted. Then he delivered a blow to her chest so powerful that she reeled back with a cry, crashed to her knees. For a moment he rubbed the place on his throat where she had struck him as if in thought, swallowed. And then smiled.