Song for the Basilisk

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Thirteen

  Caladrius, returning to Pellior Palace the next morning, walked through a dream of Berylon, in which familiar objects had become scarcely recognizable. Doors were no longer made of wood but of flowers, corn husks, wheat stalks, braided and shaped into birds and animals. Ribbons and long streamers of grapevine grew out of windows. Huge, grotesque faces loomed at him unexpectedly; the phoenix, the basilisk, the chimera walked the streets on human legs, their fierce faces fashioned of glittering threads and feathers. He saw no griffins except those involved in colorful and gory battles along his way. The griffins always died.

  Hollis had argued vehemently against his return. Caladrius, who still had some trouble speaking, simply pointed out that he and Brio should not both disappear at the same time. He could move easily enough by then, though through what world he was not always certain. A dull fever or something lingering from the quarrel tip exaggerated commonplace sounds, faces, words, until they took on the intensity and ambiguity of dreams.

  The guards at the gate of Pellior Palace seemed to watch his approach with the hunger and ferocity of the mock basilisks fighting on the streets. But he passed unchallenged; they saw a librarian, not a griffin. As he entered the palace he heard, very faintly, a high, pure voice singing of some enchanted world that existed, like a bubble, only in that moment.

  In the hall outside the music room, the basilisk’s eyes found him, brought him to a stop. He bowed his head and waited, thinking the librarian’s thoughts of manuscripts and dates, not the griffin’s memories of violence in the night, a song played on the deadly instrument he wore beneath the librarian’s discreet and modest black.

  “Master Caladrius.”

  “My lady,” he murmured.

  She had turned away from him, to something small and elaborate she was building on a table of pale green, filigreed marble. It looked like a birdcage made of fine gold chains and slender rods. As he watched she shaped chain into a pentangle on a round mirror, and lifted the cage to stand on it. Then, smiling, she reached between the bars, swirled the chain around her finger, and the pentangle vanished.

  “Master Caladrius. I hear you have been ill.” She looked at him again, her eyes lucent, warm; he could not force himself to look away.

  “For a day. My lady. I am well, now.”

  “You look very pale. Perhaps my father’s physician should see you.”

  “It is a lingering headache. It will pass.”

  “It was sudden, this illness.”

  “The change of seasons,” he suggested.

  “I fear the change of seasons must have also stricken one of my cousins. Brio Hood. Do you know him?”

  “Only slightly, my lady.”

  “He said you rescued him from an attack of ravens. Perhaps they wished to use his hair in a nest. Do you think so, Master Caladrius?”

  “It’s long past the nesting season.”

  “So it is. And my cousin did not have an extra hair on his head to give away. Does not. I spoke of him as if he were dead. Is dead. Words are imprecise, in this situation. Is he or isn’t he? What do you think, Master Caladrius?”

  He tried to answer; words caught, trapped in the strange, nightmarish spell left by the tiny quarrel. He forced them out finally. “Words fail me,” he explained. “My lady.”

  “Yes,” she agreed softly. “They do, Master Caladrius.” She held his eyes a moment longer; he glimpsed a cooler temperament behind the warmth, and found it enticing, like shade in a bright garden. She turned abruptly, loosing him; he closed his eyes, regaining some lost inner balance. “Words fail my father also,” she continued. “He calls for Brio; Brio does not appear. My father grows impatient and disturbed, for Brio has never failed my father in his life.” She paused, attaching tiny circles of gold to the ends of two chains dangling from a rib of the cage wall. “It would be accurate to say that Brio would only fail my father in his death.”

  Caladrius watched the braided light run down the trembling chains. Memory intruded, tangled with sight; he felt chain, massive and cold, wind around his arm, the ring of gold clamp on his wrist. Cage, he thought, giving words to what he saw. Bird. Caladrius.

  Her smile became brilliant, as if she had read his thoughts. “But, Master Caladrius, I am keeping you from your work. Which is so important to you that you have come, half-ill, to study the musical heritage of Tormalyne House. Though I suppose it cannot be called a heritage if there is no one left to inherit it. Do you agree?”

  “We all inherit music,” he answered evenly. “We are all fortunate that it was considered by Pellior House too valuable to burn.”

  She looked down, pushed the chain lying on the mirror into another shape. Horns, he thought. Or the crescent moon. “My sister is waiting for you,” she said; it sounded like both warning and dismissal. “Perhaps the picochet will soothe your headache.”

  He bent his head, thinking: Your cage has no door. Lightning flickered behind his eyes, a dry, distant storm. He walked through it into the music room.

  Veris Legere, among the music cabinets, greeted him without perceptible surprise, made courteous, perfunctory inquiries about his health. Damiet waited for him as usual on a gilt chair beside the spinet. She wore gown the faded gold of autumn leaves; gold flashed her and there in her pale hair. A costume, he assumed, the opera.

  “Do you like it?” she asked as he tuned the picochet to its simplest scale. Her own tunings were erratic and impulsive, done usually through a flurry of words.

  “Very pretty,” he answered absently, and handed her the instrument. “Which song is this one for?”

  She turned her wide, surprised stare at him, that told him he had not pleased. “It is for you, Master Caladrius.” He felt the lightning flicker again behind his eyes and touched them. She shifted on the chair, a rustle of satin and lace. “It is not very comfortable,” she added. “And I cannot hold the picochet correctly. But I wanted to wear it for you today, since you have been ill.”

  “That was kind of you, my lady.”

  Mollified, she set the bow to the string and produced a stringent wail. Something hit the floor lightly among the cabinets. She continued in energetic, incoherent fashion; through jabs and streaks of sounds her bow seemed to drive into his head, he finally recognized the ballad. He said breathlessly, reaching for the bow and her hand, “Perhaps if you held it less tightly. Spread your fingers. So. The wrist does the work—”

  “Master Legere,” she called abruptly; Caladrius wondered wearily if he had offended again.

  Veris turned, letting the scroll in his hands close gently around itself. “My lady?”

  “You must go at once to the Hall of Mirrors and tell Magister Dulcet that I will be late for my rehearsal.”

  “There is no need,” Caladrius said quickly. Veris also had murmured some demurral, that under Damiet’s fixed gaze, faded into the marble silence.

  “Master Legere.”

  “Lady Damiet,” he said expressionlessly, and left them.

  “I will not keep you long,” Caladrius insisted, “if Magister Dulcet expects you. Your singing is far more important now than this.”

  She looked down at her fingers, where he had positioned them, one by one, on the bow. “Is it?” She struck a note, sent it flying with a squawk. “You are not well, Master Caladrius. You came to give me my lesson in spite of that.”

  “I did not realize that Magister Dulcet—”

  “You misunderstand.” She turned the bow and tapped it against the floor, a series of staccato notes. “Master Caladrius, we have no time for this.”

  He felt a warning snap behind his eyes; walls built around him, into a small room smelling of stagnant water; chains with cuffs of gold hung down the walls. “I am sorry,” he heard himself say. “I have misunderstood.”

  “Master Caladrius.”

  He opened his eyes. She dropped the picochet with a hollow thump and rose impulsively, clasping her long, white fingers against her breasts. He watched emotion gather in
her eyes, and the full fury of the storm flared and spat behind his eyes.

  He fell against the spinet; keys jangled under his hands. He struggled for balance, panicked that she would summon help and help would ask too many questions, find too many incongruities. But she did not want their solitude interrupted so soon.

  “Master Caladrius,” she said as he missed the spinet stool and slid abruptly to the floor. “You must speak to my father.”

  She blurred, candle wax and gold, as he blinked up at her. “My lady?”

  “Master Caladrius, I cannot bend in this dress.” She tugged at his hands. “You must get up. You cannot declare your love to me sitting under the spinet.”

  “Lady Damiet,” he said desperately, pulling himself up on a few demented chords. “I—”

  “We are finally alone, so you can speak freely. I wore this dress for the occasion. Gold is appropriate for the season, and I wear it well, with my coloring. I know that my father may not seem pleased to have a librarian and music tutor fall in love with me. But you must be persuasive. After all, you have persuaded me to fall in love with you, and he must—”

  “Damiet,” he said, and for a moment she was speechless. The storm had passed, leaving only a raven picking at him. He pushed his hands against his eyes. “Please. Sit down.”

  “You sounded like my father.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I am ready now.”

  He looked at her; she sat composed and attentive, waiting for him to speak. Words failed again; he wrestled with them while she watched curiously. He freed his voice finally.

  “Damiet. I am a librarian.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not even that. I am a farmer. Who, having failed at that, became for the moment, someone who—” He stopped, added grimly, “I am not even that.”

  “I know all of this,” she said impatiently. “It cannot matter. I will refuse to let it matter. My father has always given me whatever I ask for.”

  “Please. Listen.”

  “I am listening, but you are saying nothing at all, Master Caladrius. You bend over me, you touch my hand, you are in the air all around me, your voice falls through me like rain. I have given you leave, you may speak of more than music.” She waited briefly, shifting on the chair; satin commented stiffly. He shook his head, overwhelmed. Blood pushed into her pale face; her eyes widened, glittered with frost or tears, fury or pain. “Master Caladrius,” she said, with a logic that seemed inarguable, “how can I possibly sing if you do not speak?”

  “My lady—”

  “Do not call me that. You have called me Damiet.” Her foot swung, struck the picochet. “You cannot call me lady now.”

  “Damiet. You are singing to your father—”

  She held his eyes, her face still flushed, her expression frozen between love and hate. “Master Caladrius. I am singing to you.”

  He sat down on the spinet stool. “I did not hear,” he said softly, carefully. “When you sing on your father’s birthday, I will listen. I promise. Sing to me as long as you can. I’m sorry to be so clumsy now. I am still ill. I can scarcely think, let alone say the fine things you expect of me.”

  “And after?” she said. Her voice was cold, but the angry color had receded, leaving her face marble pale again, and calmer.

  “And after you sing, I will speak.”

  She looked at him remotely, letting him guess, for a moment, whether she would accept his gift. Then expression flicked into her eyes, a vague confusion, surprise, as if she were finally seeing him without music. “I don’t know your name,” she said slowly. “Only Caladrius.”

  “I will tell you then.”

  “Master Caladrius—”

  He bent to pick up the picochet; the raven clawed at him again. “Lady Damiet, for now that’s all I am.” He coaxed the picochet into her hand. “Play for me. You do well on this instrument.”

  “How can it matter?” she asked moodily, but accepted it. “Show me again how to place my fingers on the bow.”

  “Like this. And this,” he said patiently. “It can be, at times, the only thing that matters. Try the ballad again.”

  Veris Legere returned a moment later, cast a glance over the music lesson. A flock of wild geese, honking and gabbling, flew past him, escaped into the hall as he closed the door. He said, when the last goose had clamored away and Damiet rested her bow, “My lady, Magister Dulcet sends her most urgent request for your presence at the rehearsal.”

  Damiet favored him with a chilly stare. “I wish to stay with Master Caladrius and finish my lesson.”

  “Lady Damiet, you must give Magister Dulcet your time now,” Caladrius said gently. “You have worked very hard for her. The picochet will wait until you have sung.” She turned her head, held his eyes obstinately, until he amended, “Until I have listened to you. Sing. Everything can wait until then.”

  “I will only sing if you are listening,” she reminded him ominously.

  “I will be there.”

  She rose, handed the picochet to Caladrius, and cut a glacial path past Veris Legere’s bow. Caladrius had put the picochet back into its case, and was trying to knot the leather strings a fourth or fifth time when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Master Caladrius,” Veris said with sympathy. “Go home.”

  In the hall, he paused to bow to Luna, who was still toying with her cage. Raising his head, he was trapped, birdlike, in her green gaze. The cold marble diffused into a summery mist; again he sensed cooler, darker realms beyond her smile.

  “I will listen to you as well,” she said softly, “on my father’s birthday, Master Caladrius. Unlike my sister, I know your name. The caladrius is a beautiful bird, is it not, who sings at the deathbed of a king?”

  He felt a sudden, blind twist of pain; the raven, scoring bone, stared out of his left eye. She did not wait for an answer; she left him there, alone in the hall with the golden, doorless cage, which now held prisoner a tiny, tantalizing object. But if he looked more closely at it, he knew, he would find only himself caught within the mirror within the cage.

  Fourteen

  The basilisk’s birthday began with a brilliant dawn that stained the clouds with fire above the Tormalyne School. Caladrius saw it standing sleepless and dressed at his window. Within the school, Giulia, her back to the fire in the window, began a hasty rehearsal with the piecemeal chorus, half of which had come out of nowhere at the last moment. The bard Hollis, and, to her astonishment, Justin, were among the latecomers. The chorus, ragged but energetic, achieved a veneer of polish as the flames burned out. The clouds faded into gold, and then into a seamless blue that unfurled like a banner over Berylon.

  Under that banner, the prince made his triumphal procession through his city. Caladrius, still at the window, watched a blood-red current of guards flow through the crowds ahead of the procession, along its sides, and behind it. Trumpeters at the windows of the school saluted the Basilisk, creating a noisy skirmish with the prince’s trumpeters. The prince’s heir and daughters rode with him, dressed in the colors of the House. Luna carried a mask on a wand, a gaudy cock’s face framed by a glittering snake. She lifted it now and then, to gaze through it at the crowds, which looked back at her out of a startling array of masks. Enormous puppet faces loomed among them. Flowers, rings of wheat and corn husk figures rained out of the windows. Once something heavier fell; Taur’s horse shied. A scarlet thread of guards unraveled from the procession, wove through the crowds into various doorways. What they did inside was unclear; shutters snapped shut, floor by floor; the people they brought out with them wore masks and what they shouted could not be heard.

  Hollis joined Caladrius briefly after the procession had passed. He wore a magister’s robe and carried music for the opera. Why he had chosen to sing for the prince’s birthday eluded Caladrius completely.

  “This day of all days,” he said tersely, “you pick to walk into the Basilisk’s house.”

  “Magister Dulcet
needed singers,” Hollis answered. He would not meet Caladrius’s eyes, and his voice sounded obstinate. He added, “You’re going.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I told Damiet I would listen to her sing.” Even to his own ears, it sounded preposterous. Hollis only laughed sharply and without humor. Caladrius caught his eyes finally, added mildly, “Oddly enough, it’s true.”

  “Well then, so am I. Going to hear her sing.”

  “Hollis. Do something I ask. Just this once. Stay out of Pellior Palace.”

  “I will,” Hollis said grimly, “if you will. Master Caladrius.”

  Caladrius, his eyes going back to the griffins guarding the doors of the Tormalyne School, had no answer. Hollis gave up waiting for one.

  “I must go,” he said. He embraced Caladrius briefly, and left Caladrius watching him, moments later, striding through the crowds toward Pellior Palace.

  In the Hall of Mirrors, Giulia stood with Hexel, rehearsing crucial parts of the opera with what singers had already arrived. The stage, with its walls and bower, its soaring doves, had been set. The nervous singers wore their costumes. Damiet, who had returned from the procession, had been summoned to no avail.

  “Where is she?” Hexel muttered fretfully as the wrathful father on stage threatened to kill his daughter’s suitor.

  “Changing her clothes,” Giulia said tensely.

  “What is he doing to my music? Listen to that. A nutcracker could sing better.”

  “Hexel—”

  “I want to hear her sing before she sings.”

  “You should have come last night.”

  “I had to rewrite the final chorus. You know that.”

  “I know it,” Giulia said tautly. “I had to rehearse it at dawn. She’ll be here. This is for her father. It’s Master Caladrius you should worry about.”

  “Why?”