Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Of course,” Giulia said quickly, and was caught again, by the eye of Veris Legere as he stood quietly listening across the room. She felt herself flush richly. How long he had been there, she had no idea. He nodded slightly to her, his face impassive. He stood among the long ebony shelves and glass cases that held music and courtly instruments; someone knelt behind him, gently placing an armful of manuscripts onto a shelf.

  “Do you think,” Damiet asked, “we might go on to mauve? It is one of my best colors, and it will do for the sad scene—there is always one—just before everything resolves itself by chance and ends happily. Of course I will wear white, with pink rosettes, for the final song.”

  “A mauve song, then,” Giulia said, her hands poised on the spinet keys. “And then the white, and then I’ll leave you.”

  “But Magister Dulcet, there are other colors.”

  “I’ll come for them soon. Perhaps you could practice them.”

  “Why?”

  “It is considered good for the voice. You’ll want to sing your best for the prince’s birthday.”

  The Lady Damiet pondered this. “I always sing my best.”

  “It is like dancing. The more you practice, the easier the steps—”

  “Dancing,” Damiet said inarguably, “is done with the feet. Not the voice. Singing is far easier; there is nothing to trip over. Do you know ‘The Dying Swan’? It is a mauve song.”

  She opened her mouth. A swan, shot out of the air by a hunter’s arrow, thudded heavily onto the marble floor, shedding blood and feathers. It sang its death throes. Veris Legere coughed dryly. A scroll flipped and rolled, was caught and shelved. The man behind Veris Legere rose; Giulia caught a fleeting glimpse of his face as he turned. Her eyes widened. The swan shrieked and died.

  “Mauve,” Damiet said.

  They were romping through white festooned with rosettes when the man returned with more scrolls and a stack of manuscript paper so fragile it scattered a litter of brown flakes in the wake of air. Giulia, absently playing a child’s song, studied his back. It looked sturdy enough, under the discreet black he wore, to have wrestled music out of the picochet. The height seemed right; the light hair was far tidier than she remembered. The boots looked too new. Anyway, what would a picochet player last seen in patched boots in a tavern be doing shelving manuscripts in the music room at Pellior Palace? Then he moved behind a case to put the music down and she saw his face, with its harsh, elegant lines, and his eyes as dark as the bottom of a well. She felt a sudden chill of horror. You were just in the Griffin’s Egg hiding from basilisks, she protested silently. And now you are in the Basilisk’s house…

  Damiet had stopped singing. Giulia looked at her, still playing. Damiet’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but nothing came out. She had just seen her audience; perhaps, in surprise, she had forgotten the words.

  “‘Merry in the break of day,’” Giulia prompted. Damiet looked at her blankly, then brought her attention to bear across the room again, where the men stood, caught and waiting.

  “I am sorry, my lady,” Veris said gravely, “for disturbing your song. Your white song.”

  Damiet neither moved not spoke; Giulia wondered starkly if she were about to throw a Pellior-sized tantrum. Then she gestured, a flick of fingers within the folds of her skirt.

  “Bring the stranger to me. If he is going to listen to me, I want to know his name.”

  “Of course, my lady,” Veris said, and led the stranger to Damiet. He must have seen Giulia before she had noticed him; his eyes, flicking to her, held no surprise. “Lady Damiet, may I present Master Caladrius. He will be assisting me, as librarian, with the music from Tormalyne Palace which was rescued from it, and somehow forgotten.”

  Damiet extended a languid hand. A beat too late for exact courtesy, the librarian touched the air beneath her fingers, bowed unskillfully over them.

  “Lady Damiet,” he said. “You must pardon my manners. I never learned many. In the north.”

  You learned to read music, Giulia thought. In the north.

  “My brother Taur says there are no manners at all in the provinces,” Damiet said, with unexpected civility. Her eyes, unblinking and still faintly unfocused, glistened slightly. “I will teach you, Master Caladrius.”

  “And this,” Veris Legere said in the silence while Master Caladrius seemed to grapple with responses, “is Magister Giulia Dulcet, who is directing music for the autumn festival.”

  “We have met,” the librarian said swiftly as Giulia wondered. He took her hand, held it a moment, warmly, in provincial fashion. “You let me play your picochet.”

  Veris lifted an eyebrow. “You have surprising talents, Master Caladrius.”

  “I learned it from my father. To play for the crops.”

  “To play for the crops,” Giulia said slowly. “That’s how my grandfather put it. On the farm.” She smiled suddenly. “You have me speaking that way again. In fits and starts.”

  Damiet made a rare, graceless movement beside her, a rustling fidget of skirts. “What,” she asked frostily, “is a picochet?”

  “It is an ancient instrument,” Master Caladrius explained. “Much loved by farmers. My lady.”

  “So you are a land baron’s son, Master Caladrius.”

  “I’m hardly that, my lady.”

  “Well, you are hardly a peasant. I will ask my father to find me a picochet. You will teach me to play it, Master Caladrius.” The idea left Giulia groping; there was not a flicker in the librarian’s opaque eyes. Damiet continued, “Now I am learning to sing opera. I will not be singing these songs, of course. Magister Barr is writing music for me. Tonight we are simply choosing the colors of my costumes.”

  “So I gathered,” Veris murmured, a pinprick of amusement in his eyes.

  “I am to be the heroine,” Damiet continued, holding the librarian’s attention with her unblinking gaze, her deliberate voice. “I will sing the most important songs, as a present to my father on his sixty-fifth birthday.”

  “He will be pleased. I’m sure,” the librarian said a trifle shortly. Unaccountably, Damiet did not take offense.

  “You must come and hear me sing again. I still have other colors to explain to Magister Barr. Perhaps you would have suggestions for me. As to color.” She paused; they gazed at her wordlessly, transfixed in varying degrees of bewilderment. Above her, the Children of Music played sweetly in unheard realms; Song awakened the music in Voice; she turned her eyes to him, opened her lips, and brought him out of herself. Damiet’s white fingers linked; her lashes descended, rose. “Veris Legere will see that you are here, the next time I sing with Magister Dulcet.”

  They all shifted then, still transfixed, making small movements, discreet noises, to struggle free.

  “We still have white to get through,” Giulia said breathlessly.

  “I will be pleased to help in any way that inspires you to sing,” Veris murmured. “Master Caladrius will be sorting scrolls here for some time.”

  Damiet extended her hand once again, her full lips parting slightly as she watched the fair, trimmed head bend over it. Giulia searched his face as he straightened, found neither humor nor calculation in it, nor any interest whatsoever. There seemed only the expressionless darkness. Damiet folded her hands again, and breathed more audibly, her eyes following the librarian as he returned to his manuscripts. She loosed him finally, looked at Giulia. Her fine, pale skin was flushed, Giulia saw; her eyes held a brighter sheen; in the depths, expression struggled to form.

  “I will sing the white song again,” she said. “From the beginning. You must tell Magister Barr that the white will be a very special song. Very special. There must, beyond doubt, be a happy ending.”

  Giulia sank down on the spinet stool, barely seeing the keys her fingers touched, barely hearing Damiet as she envisioned scenes of the impending disaster: the furious father, the obstinate daughter refusing to sing until she is promised her happy ending, no one able to provide
one, Hexel in despair, the music director in disgrace, the festival in ruins, the librarian counting his bribe and leaving the city, or, more probably, languishing in a torture chamber beneath the palace until he is finally forgotten and the prince’s daughter finds her ending far too late for anyone except herself. Giulia thought, torn between laughter and despair: I had better tell Hexel to put a librarian in the plot.

  But, she thought more coldly a moment later. He is not a librarian. He is still a stranger. A farmer who studied with bards. A man hiding from basilisks behind my picochet. Who exactly has Damiet Pellior fallen in love with?

  Damiet finished her song and reminded Giulia: “White.”

  Above her the courtly instruments played a final flourish.

  Five

  Reve Iridia received Caladrius coldly at first, not knowing him: the stranger in black at her door. She turned away disinterestedly, leaving Kira to shut him out.

  “I take few students,” she said, letting her voice drift back to him. “Most of them are children.”

  “I know,” he said. “I was one of them.” She turned then, slowly, circling her jeweled walking stick. He remembered her eyes: they had not changed, except possibly to grow more human with age. They fascinated him as a child, their gray so pale they looked luminous, sometimes seeing with alarming clarity, at other times blinded, it seemed, with light. He still found them startling.

  “I no longer remember names,” she said, frowning slightly. “There were so many of you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I only came to pay my respects, Magister Iridia. If that would please you.”

  She turned again, still slender, upright, in gray silk much darker than her eyes. Her hair, which he remembered as pale gold, had grown ivory. She kept it drawn back, coiled and pinned; he remembered her pins, an array of them that changed constantly. She had smiled in those days. Now her face had settled into grave and bitter lines, the expression she found least need to change.

  “You have a pleasing voice,” she answered, making her stiff and regal way toward her favorite chair. “Tea, Kira.”

  Seated, she pointed with her stick at a second chair. The dark-eyed Kira, who, a decade or two younger than her mistress, still remembered how to smile, nodded encouragement at him. He glanced around the room as he sat. It was small and quiet, with heavy draperies and carpets. Its furnishings were good but sparse; she kept no signs of her profession in that room except a small brass gong engraved with the chimera of Iridia House breathing fire at a flock of birds. Some of the flock were fleeing the firestorm; others fell, burning and unrecognizable, like bright leaves. A black-lacquered hammer lay beside the gong.

  She caught him gazing at the scene on the gong. She said dryly, “A memory. Now, of course, the chimera is just that: a dream of power. Or perhaps I should not say such things to you. But I do not think Pellior House would come to me.”

  “I have no relatives in Pellior House,” he assured her. “I barely have a connection to Berylon itself. I have been away for many years.”

  “But you were here as a child.”

  “I was born here,” he said. “I came to the Tormalyne School to study with you when I was very young. Until—” He gestured toward the gong, a movement which seemed to arouse both memory and curiosity in her. Her eyes changed, saw past and present at once.

  “So you remember the Basilisk’s War.” He was silent, waiting. Kira came in, set a tray between them: cracked porcelain cups as delicate as old bones, a pot that seemed nearly transparent with age. Reve poured, handed him a cup, and a lemon wafer that was slowly petrifying. “I had to leave the school because of that,” she added, growing unexpectedly reminiscent, trusting him with her past. “For some years I stopped teaching. I hid with one relative or another. Iridia House on the whole fared much better than Tormalyne House, though a decade passed before the family ventured back into Iridia Palace. But I was afraid…”

  “Of what?” he asked gently. She lifted her astonishing eyes to his face.

  “I had been in love with Arioso Pellior’s cousin Demi. We had planned to marry. Then Pellior House tore Berylon apart, and Iridia House chose to fight for Tormalyne House. It was a disastrous alliance. Demi played the lavandre.” She took a sip of tea. “We played duets. Until he came to me secretly one night, furious, weeping, cursing my House, cursing his love for me, promising to run away with me in one breath, then swearing fealty to his House in the next. He made me promise to wait for him, until Berylon was peaceful again. He left me his lavandre. I did not see him again for six years, until his wedding day, when he rode in procession through the streets to Marcasia Palace to claim his bride. Then I realized it was safe for me to come out of hiding; no one of Pellior House had any interest in me at all. So I began to teach again.”

  “Do you still have his lavandre?” he asked after a moment. Again expression changed in her eyes; he glimpsed the ghost of a smile.

  “He came for it one day, years after his wedding.” She sipped tea. “Now tell me what took you away from Berylon, and what brings you back. Perhaps,” she added, musing, “you are Mistas? His hair was dark, I remember.”

  “No.”

  “A delicate boy with such big, dark eyes…Talented, too. I don’t know what became of him. Did you leave because of the war?”

  “During the war, yes. I barely knew what war was, or that there was a world beyond Berylon.” He paused; his eyes strayed back to the chimera, the fire, the fleeing birds. “We went north, to a place where no one knew us. This is the first I have seen of Berylon since then.”

  “And you came back because…?”

  He set his cup down carefully on a small table. “I came to seek my fortune. I know that is a younger man’s work. But I have nothing to lose. I came to see you because you are among the few things that still remain of my early life here.”

  “What,” she asked curiously, “do you remember?”

  “Of you? I remember the pins you wore in your hair. One in particular, shaped like a dragonfly with blue filigreed wings.”

  She stirred slightly; he heard her frail breath. “Demi gave me that. What else?”

  “The room at the Tormalyne School where you taught. The walls were butter-colored marble, and always cold.”

  “Yes.”

  “And there were two niches in the walls beside the window. One held flowers, the other a man’s head carved of white marble. I have forgotten his name.”

  She opened her mouth, hesitated. He saw her blink, and then her eyes held his again, too clear for expression, blind, he thought, with light. “His name was Auber Tormalyne.” She lifted her cup an inch, set it down without drinking, still gazing at him.

  “I used to imagine that his eyes moved when I wasn’t looking at him. That he watched me play, having nothing else to do but use his eyes and his ears and his mind.”

  He heard her breath again, a long sigh; she put cup and saucer on the table, blinking again. “Yes. I remember his face now. Tell me what I taught you. What instrument.”

  “You taught me several.”

  “Yes. Which one do you remember most clearly?”

  “The bone pipes. You taught me how to hear beyond what is familiar to us. Just because we hear silence, you said, does not mean there is no music. You taught me to play within the registers of silence.” She was silent, absolutely still, as he remembered she could be. He added after a moment, “In the north, I learned to play the picochet.”

  “Ah.” She moved slightly, a sigh of silk. “The peasant’s voice.”

  “I learned to love it.”

  “It became your voice.” She stirred again, leaning back in her chair, her tea ignored. She watched him, her eyes half-closed now, hooded. “What will you do in Berylon?”

  “I will do what I must. Perhaps you know someone who will help me. Or something.”

  “Perhaps. Iridia House has recovered from its struggles, but not easily; as you see, I do not live in luxury. You must not expect too much from us.”


  “I expect nothing,” he answered. “But I have learned to do many things. In the north. I learned that if you pick up a stone and lay it on another stone, and lay another stone on that, you will have a wall, and then a room, and then a house. If you have enough strength and enough stones.”

  “If your stones do not slip and crush you.”

  “There is always that risk.”

  “And you came to me—”

  “Because you listen to silence. Perhaps you hear what others pay no attention to.”

  “How could I, living as I do, in these simple rooms, with few but children and Kira to speak with?”

  “I came to you,” he reminded her. “I don’t believe anyone who ever learned from you has forgotten you.”

  She straightened, reached for her walking stick. The jewel in its knob, catching light as it moved, left a streak of fire in his eyes before her hand closed over it. She pushed herself to her feet.

  “Come,” she said. “I will show you what I have.”

  He followed her to a closed door on the other side of the room, half-hidden behind a dark fall of drapery. She opened it. Again he was surprised by light. The velvet over the long windows had been drawn aside; light burned and winked and slid like satin across the instruments that lay across tables and chairs, hung along the walls, leaned within the window seats. Scrolls and sheets of music were piled in untidy stacks on shelves, on the floor. Some of the instruments were very old, he saw: the horn made out of a massive ivory tusk, patterned with painted eyes around its finger holes; the set of pipes made out of human bones; the gourd rattle with the big bellied, dreaming woman embracing it, becoming it, nearly smudged away.

  He saw the picochet leaning against a little, elegant spinet inlaid with scenes of courtly dances. The picochet looked worn. It had been painted once, probably during endless winter evenings; shadowy wolves leaped across the soundboard, vanished into darker wood.

  She closed the door behind them, and then slowly, curtain by curtain, shut out the light and muffled the noises from the street below, until they stood in twilight, within the silence of unplayed instruments. She did not bother to light candles. He wondered if she saw catlike in the dark, or if she saw more now with other senses.