Last Song Before Night

by Ilana C. Myer

  “Not exactly,” said Valanir. “You’re joined to Nickon Gerrard—he has access to you. All along, his plan was to inhabit your body. The laylan has just about devoured his.”

  “So he thought, why not become young again—and a swordsman, too?” Marlen stretched. “Understandable.”

  “Marlen,” Lin said then, sharply. The first thing she had uttered in a long while, her voice almost a croak. “Darien is dead.”

  Marlen looked at her, still weary. “I know.” Words that fell heavily into the quiet of the woods. “And we speak of my death now. The difference is I’ve earned it.”

  She covered her face in her hands.

  Valanir said, “Based on what Marlen saw, Nickon Gerrard has kept his body alive with a potion. Something he could have acquired only from the far east, where such magic is made.”

  “Dane Beylint was famed for procuring rare items from perilous places,” said Rianna.

  “Obviously he didn’t know what he was dealing with,” said the Seer. His face was all shadows, save where moonlight struck gleams of light from the mark on his eye. It shimmered a slow, rhythmic pulse, as if in time with his heart. “We will need the strength of every one of our people. Everyone I can gather—the Seers at the Academy, the younger poets as well.” He gazed across to Lin, who sat hunched before the fire, her face raw with grief. “Lady Amaristoth—I ask that you lead them with me.”

  “Lead them?” she said, her voice hollow, stripped of its accustomed melody.

  “Yes,” said Valanir. “I want you to be in command.”

  * * *

  FOR days, Lin and Marlen had sat squinting over maps he had drawn of the palace passageways, the secret tunnels that he had discovered to Lord Gerrard’s rooms. Lin was amazed by his memory, as well as by the cleverness that had led him to find what were certainly among the Crown’s most guarded secrets.

  “I was bored,” he said with a shrug when she remarked upon it, but she was not sure she believed that.

  Yet even Marlen had not found the room Rianna Gelvan had seen on the Path. Nickon Gerrard’s hidden room, where he kept the altar of bones and performed divination and murder.

  She and Rianna had exchanged few words following Darien Aldemoor’s death, until the evening before their arrival in Tamryllin. They were camped in the northern forests, where their numbers would be most likely to go undetected, and the plan was to travel to the capital through a portal in the morning. Such an expenditure of power would have been too great for one poet, but for the two hundred that they had amassed, joined together, it was suddenly possible. There had been a tense moment when Marlen Humbreleigh and Piet Abarda had encountered one another in the camp, but in the end Marlen had stalked away from Piet’s taunts, upright and dignified with Marilla on his arm. Lin had taken Piet aside after that, had told him in no uncertain terms how she expected him to conduct himself, “snake” or no.

  The snake was, after all, going to be their vanguard. The one most likely to fall.

  That was the least of Lin’s worries during those days. Handling the tensions between Academy masters and hotheaded young Seekers had presented yet another headache. Lin found that between planning their strategy and preventing the poets from killing each other, she was hardly getting any sleep. Valanir Ocune would accost her at various times and convince her to eat.

  So it was only the night before the battle that she came upon Rianna, sitting alone at one of the fires. The girl had taken to wearing men’s clothes, though they curved alluringly on her figure as they never had on Lin, and to wrapping her head in a colorful sash Valanir Ocune had from Kahishi.

  There was surprising vulnerability in her face when she saw Lin, that was apparent even in the uncertain light. “Lin—are you avoiding me?”

  Lin was taken off guard, then realized that there was justice in the question. “No, of course not, love. Of course not,” she said, and joined Rianna by the fire. But she hovered at the other side, not venturing too near. “I have been … afraid, I guess, that you might hate me. For what I let happen to you.”

  Rianna shook her head. “You tried to protect me,” she said. “You didn’t know where the danger would come from, in the end. You couldn’t have.”

  “I am so sorry about Darien.”

  “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?” The firelight danced in Rianna’s eyes. “On the Path, I understood—I realized that I had never known Darien. He was beautiful, and he was not mine. And he did not know me—no one did, not even me. Or maybe he did, and I changed.”

  “But you love Ned,” said Lin. Ned Alterra had been a great help to her in the past weeks, training poets in the rudiments of weaponry, in case. She hoped there would be no need for drawn blades, but she was not going to send men who had never learned to fight against the palace guards without some training.

  Rianna’s smile was radiant in the dark. “Yes.”

  Lin was not certain what impelled her, though it had something to do with the stillness of the night and the memory of Darien Aldemoor and an amazement that, after all that had happened, there could be such a thing as uncomplicated as love in the world. She bent and kissed Rianna’s forehead, her eyes pricking as if with hot needles. “The Three watch over and bless you both.”

  * * *

  IT was dawn when Marlen Humbreleigh found himself within a circle of chanting Seers, their voices twining like an invisible net cast around him. Once he would have joined them, added his celebrated voice to theirs just to evoke a response. Always it had mattered so much what others thought of him, how impressed they were with his talent. Now he stood silent within the circle. Beyond, he saw Lin Amaristoth and Rianna Gelvan standing together, watching quietly. Lin had her arm around the girl, as if to shield her from the sight of him.

  Standing apart was Marilla, her face like stone. She had barely spoken to him since the Path. All she did was clasp his hand when they were together—not tightly but with an inextricable weave of her fingers with his.

  Valanir Ocune was part of the ring of Seers. As they continued to sing, shrouded in their grey robes so that Marlen did not know them—knowing only that some had been his own Masters—Valanir stepped forward into the circle, rested his hand on Marlen’s shoulder. Tired and admittedly afraid now, Marlen allowed it.

  “You have shown courage these past days,” said Valanir.

  Marlen shrugged. “Too late.”

  “Once you are released from our concealment, Nickon Gerrard will have you.”

  “We’re counting on that, aren’t we?” said Marlen.

  The Seer’s gaze seemed to pierce Marlen to the fear he concealed. He looked regretful. “Yes, we are.”

  * * *

  THEY heard the screams as they pelted up the stairs of the passage that according to Marlen’s maps led most directly to Nickon Gerrard’s chambers. Behind them, Lin heard a clatter and anguished cries and knew the guards had encountered some of the poets who followed in the rear. Her army of Seekers, who for days had practiced the simple rite of Disarming. Not all would make it through.

  Grief surged in her, but she pressed on toward the screams. In her heart she cursed Valanir Ocune, who ran now beside her, for placing her in command.

  When they burst into the room, the sight that greeted them was from nightmare. Nickon Gerrard’s body lay tumbled on the floor, eviscerated as if his innards had been carved out. His face was drawn back in a silent howl, the eyes bare sockets.

  Beside the Court Poet’s hollowed body lay Marlen Humbreleigh. But what drew Lin’s eye was the figure that loomed over Marlen, black as if a void had been cut into the space, edges blurred like smoke. When the face turned to Lin it was a mask of white, blue fires where the eyes should be.

  “Hold!” she said, to distract the thing while Valanir ran in beside her.

  Ned and Rianna were running to the corner, where the king was cowering. They had sneaked in earlier that day, disguised as palace servants. Rianna threw her arm around Harald’s neck, said, “Call off you
r guards, or I’ll kill you.”

  Lin and Valanir joined hands. The thing before them swooped, and Lin raised her knife with a cry; but instead it whirled at Ned and in seconds Ned’s throat was slashed red and he lay on the ground. The thing that had been Nickon Gerrard held Ned’s knife aloft, began chanting words over the growing puddle of crimson that ran from the wound onto the ornate carpeting. Rianna’s shriek filled the room.

  Lin felt her heart contracting. “Valanir, now.”

  He looked savage, lips drawn back from his teeth. “Are you ready?”

  As if in answer, the room fell away around them.

  * * *

  “I’M afraid,” Valanir Ocune had confessed to her one night in the northern woods, in a rare moment of quiet. They sat a distance apart, her anger fluttering between them.

  “Of course,” she said. “We all are.”

  “Not of Nickon Gerrard,” he said. No trace in him of the charming lawbreaker she had known in Tamryllin. Now each of his words seemed imbued with the gravity that in recent days had come upon him. “I mean if we succeed. Having access to our powers, finally … it is what I have worked towards for more than half my life. But now I understand … this magic changes you. And we won’t have the guidance of the Seers before us. It will change us in ways we can’t foresee.”

  Relinquishing her anger she said, “I know.” Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, a song of Edrien drifted in faraway notes of longing. “For me, it has already begun.”

  * * *

  THEY were in a place of nothing, or so it seemed to Lin: no light or dark, just the fire-eyed tower of black that was the laylan growing larger by the moment before them. Beside her, Valanir with his hand in hers. She glanced at him a moment and experienced a shock: his face was young, hair tumbling in locks of red-gold over his forehead. The moon opal ring and his mark of the Seer shone blindingly as one.

  An awakening, she thought, even as she turned back to confront what faced them.

  And then she saw something else: a ring of men in grey, their hands joined, blurred in the distance as if by mist. The Seers who now stood outside the gates of Tamryllin, their magic linked to her and Valanir Ocune, their song flooding the emptiness of this place between worlds.

  Valanir Ocune raised his hand, the light around him stronger, his face strangely open, exposed. His voice joined with the melody coming from Lin, from the men who surrounded them.

  A blackness had begun to slit the air. A portal. As the laylan drew nearer to Valanir, Lin saw that its borderless substance was being pulled, almost imperceptibly, toward the void they had opened.

  A night spirit could not be killed. But without a body to inhabit, it could perhaps be transported back to the Otherworld. Or so they had gathered from the writings of Seers long ago. They had staked their lives on it.

  The laylan reached Valanir Ocune; blackness enveloped the Seer. From within the cloud, Lin could hear him scream.

  “No! I’ve got you!” Lin cried and felt with some amazement that she could turn the laylan back with the full force of what was gathering in her. It recoiled and began to be drawn ever more insistently into the portal.

  Valanir collapsed against her, but his hand remained firm in hers. “Once more,” he gasped, and together they both cried out as the agony overtook them. Around them they could hear similar cries from the Seers, men surprised by the dreadful intensity of what this new power demanded of them in turning back the dark.

  And then the laylan shrieked, vanished into the portal that closed behind it. And as Lin and Valanir drew breath to recover from the annihilating pain that had rolled through them, the palace returned to what it was. The Seers melted out of sight. Rianna held a bleeding Ned in her arms, and the king wept tremblingly in the corner beside the bodies of the Court Poet and Marlen on the floor.

  CHAPTER

  37

  SHE was alone in a hallway of many doors, strewn with a light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Treading softly on a floor that kept flickering from tile to parquet to carpet and back again, as if she were in many places at once, Lin wondered a moment if this dream was hers. She listened, but heard no woman’s voice, no strains of a centuries-old song.

  The long corridor was hers, as it had always been.

  No way out but forward, she thought, and knew what it meant: she turned the handle of the nearest door and it opened on a stream of sunlight, golden as summertime. She stood in a green meadow where patches of lavender grew among dark green bushels of sage and rosemary. The weave of their combined scent drifted toward her on the breeze. She was surrounded by waves of green that went on forever. The hall was gone.

  A child was running toward Lin: a little girl, almost a baby, her golden curls bouncing in a flurry around pink cheeks. She was giggling, and Lin could see a familiar cast to her face, to the shape of her blue eyes. Before she reached Lin, the girl halted, suddenly, and turned to look behind her. A distant figure was approaching through the grass, more slowly but with a wave. The gold glint of a harp caught the sun.

  Laughing again, the little girl jumped into a patch of dandelions and vanished. There was no sign that she’d ever been, not even a puff of dandelion dust or a bent blade of grass.

  Darien Aldemoor was within sight now, smiling. He was clad in blue and red, the House colors of Aldemoor. As he came within earshot, he said, “I’m glad it’s you.”

  Lin reached out her hands to him. “I miss you.”

  He took her hands, a familiar gesture, then raised one of her wrists to his face. A purple-brown gash ran like half a bracelet across the tender skin on the underside of her wrist. Darien winced. “I will never forgive myself for this.”

  “You may as well,” Lin said. “You did pay the ultimate price for my life.”

  “I did,” said Darien, his eyes earnest as they met hers. “And now you know it’s up to you, don’t you?”

  “What is, Darien?” There were tears streaming from her eyes, when she’d thought she had already cried all the tears that were in her.

  Darien stroked her cheek under one eye, brushing away the droplets there. A mischievous smile stole over his face. “Kimbralin Amaristoth, for the first time in your life, I want you to live, and make your music. Will you do that for me?”

  Lin squeezed her eyes shut a moment, as if that way she might empty them finally for good. “I’ll try. Darien—who was that child?”

  His smile faded, he let go her hands. “I’ve finally learned where these doors lead, Lin,” he said. “There are many worlds, and some of them are the lives we didn’t choose, the paths we didn’t take. All of them are here.” He was far away now, on the next hill, though he hadn’t moved. His voice carried to her on a warm breeze that rippled the grasses. “I’ve seen some of yours. That’s why I want you to promise me that you will choose life. And your music.”

  Lin thought she might have said, “I promise,” but her words fell into a haze as all the colors of the meadow ran together in a whorl and drained away. She stared into the sudden greyness for several moments before she realized where she was: an inn in Tamryllin, curled in a bed alone.

  * * *

  ONCE, Rianna Gelvan’s tower had been her sanctuary, the place where she felt at peace as she gazed upon Tamryllin’s rooftops set within the encircling hills and trees. Even now the wind chimes brought a wave of memory so intense she nearly had to kneel where she stood by the window, but it was a memory of a place that seemed far distant. And now in the night, all she could see from the window was the moon riding high and nearly full.

  Making it more unreal was her reflection in the bedchamber mirror: a staring skull. She hadn’t seen her own reflection since she left Tamryllin all those weeks past. Her eyes were wild, and her face raw from weeping.

  After the laylan had vanished, many things had seemed to happen at once. Covered in Ned’s blood, Rianna had barely been able to form a coherent word. But it turned out that the wound, though bloody, was not fatal. Valanir Oc
une had bound it expertly with his shirt.

  As Valanir bent over Marlen, who was grey and still, Lin addressed the king, who had collapsed into one of Lord Gerrard’s red-and-gold couches. “We know your secret—about your father’s death,” she said. “But that is not all. Piet—bring me the commander of the guard and his men.”

  Piet Abarda and his Seekers, many of whom possessed skill in swordsmanship from their upbringing as lords’ sons, had captured the commander of the guard and his men after disarming them. The guards stopped dead when they saw Lin’s knife to the king’s throat. “We will not harm him,” she told them. “I want only to show you something. Rianna?”

  Rianna rose to her feet. She saw with trepidation, the memory of horror still fresh within her, that the same tapestry she had seen on the Path still hung on that wall: a saccharine depiction of a royal hunting party, where even the deer seemed to be smiling. Sliding the tapestry aside, Rianna saw that there was indeed a door there.

  Rianna averted her face from the sight within. She would not look again at Nickon Gerrard’s altar with its multiple grins, its weave of bones. People who would not be missed by anyone important, allowing the Court Poet to practice his murderous experiments undisturbed for years.

  Rianna did not need to see the horror again, but she could see it in the faces of the men who stared slack-jawed at the open doorway. Though clad in the official red and black livery of the Ladybirds, the guards looked like lost children.

  “This is why we are here,” Lin Amaristoth said. “This is what Nickon Gerrard has been up to for years.” They were motionless, wordless. They could not speak their minds in the presence of the king. But by morning, if events proceeded as planned, news of Lord Gerrard’s chamber of death would be flaring in every tavern in the city.

  Lin withdrew her knife from the king’s neck; he collapsed into himself like a pathetic ball of soft fat, his bearded face scrunching into his neck as he nearly sobbed. “Now we ask that your majesty release Master Gelvan,” said Lin. “And then we can discuss the relationship between the Crown and the Academy, now that circumstances have—changed. We have our power again, your majesty. And we intend to keep it this time.”