Nemienne opened this door cautiously. She did not know what she expected, only something exotic and amazing. What she found was a music room. As this did not seem as fraught with possibility as the beech wood—indeed, it seemed a little disappointing—Nemienne stepped through the doorway. An ornate floor harp stood in the center of the room. A dragon was carved all down its face—not the more familiar sea dragon, but a serpentine creature with a long elegant head. Its talons were of opal, its throat and spine edged with mother-of-pearl. Delicate antennae tipped with lapis nodded above its eyes, which were as dark as the winter sky. Above the dragon were set three beads, one above the next: a bead of smoky glass, a bead of hematite, and a silvery pearl. Nemienne at once thought of the book by Kelle Iasodde, of his discussion of the ephemeral versus the eternal. She resolved to search for what meaning the pearl might have when balanced against glass and iron.
Symbolic meaning aside, she could not begin to imagine what such an elaborate harp must have cost. She touched a harp string, but gently, not sounding the note.
Besides the harp, there were three sets of pipes and a plain flute of bone or ivory on a stand. A more complicated flute, made of rosewood, with stops and a mouthpiece of brass and thin adjustable reeds in its throat, rested on a stand of its own. A scroll was clipped open beside it to show a strange spidery musical notation. An ekonne horn carved of black wood occupied another stand, and an unstrung kinsana stood in a corner, its strings coiled neatly on a shelf beside it.
With a last glance at the dragon carved on the harp, Nemienne left the room. She closed the door gently behind her and stood for a moment, studying it. On impulse she opened it a second time and looked in, but the music room was still there. She could hardly believe it was just an ordinary music room, but what else could it be? Did Mage Ankennes come here to play these instruments? Nemienne had never heard music in this house, but if he didn’t play, why have a music room at all? She shut the door again, questions unanswered, and went thoughtfully toward the mage’s workroom.
She could not help but glance sidelong at the plain black door when she passed it, but she didn’t touch it. She felt somehow that if she so much as brushed it, it might open, and she found she was afraid of it. It might be on the main floor of the house, but it looked like the sort of door that would open on infinite depths of darkness. She went past it hastily and up the stairs.
The mage was indeed in his workroom, doing something mysterious with an unidentifiable object of spun glass and copper. Nemienne perched on a tall stool on the other side of the table and watched him.
The mage glanced up, but did not speak. He was measuring a glittery white powder into a glass bowl held aloft by a ring of copper. Mage Ankennes made a fire burn in the air below the ring with a gesture. Then, apparently satisfied, he grunted and flung himself into a chair that whisked over to catch his weight.
“Well?” the mage asked her.
Nemienne told him about the music room first, at his prompting describing each instrument she’d found in it. “Are they magical?” she asked. “The harp looks like it ought to be magical.”
The mage half smiled. “It might be. It’s meant to be. I didn’t make it, though I had it made by Erhlianne craftsmasters. That harp isn’t really a thing of magecraft at all, but meant for a different kind of magic altogether, more akin to the sorcery of Kalches. Did you try to play it?”
Nemienne shook her head, hoping she hadn’t been expected to. Probably sending her to that room had been one of the mage’s subtle tests, but whether she’d done well or badly by not trying to play the instruments she’d found there, she had no idea. Watching the mage’s face gave her no clues.
“I’ll show you a book that describes dragon magic and bardic sorcery,” he told her. “You’ll find it on the table of your room. Kelle Iasodde wrote this one also. He wrote it several hundred years ago, so you may find the style difficult. Also, not everyone can perceive the words he set down in this book. You may be able to read it; if you can, I’ll ask you to tell me something useful about that harp in… shall we say, a month or so. Now, the beech door?”
The book sounded fascinating. Nemienne wanted to go look at it right away, make sure she was one of the people who could see the writing in it. She was sure she would be, only not really sure. She wanted to go find out. She wondered if the spell that let you read a language you had never learned would work on language you simply found difficult…
“The beech door?” the mage prompted patiently.
“Oh—” She described the beech wood. Mage Ankennes leaned his chin on his palm and made little hmm noises to show he was listening, but she couldn’t tell what he thought.
“It isn’t really a wood?” Nemienne asked him after a moment, when he didn’t seem inclined to speak. “If you go through that door?”
The mage smiled. “Oh, yes. It really is. That’s part of the enchanted forest of Enescedd. Enescedd possesses a strange sort of magic, different from any other I’ve encountered and less, hmm, tractable, than one might expect. Men there don’t, mmm, employ magic in any sort of craft. The magic is simply there. You come upon it unexpectedly, at the oddest times and places, and it seldom takes any form you would expect…” The mage rubbed his chin, studying Nemienne. “You didn’t go through that door. Did you want to?”
“Yes,” Nemienne admitted, wondering whether that was good or bad.
“Yes,” murmured the mage. “Hmm. Probably it would be better if you resisted the urge for the next little while, eh? Even if Enkea should go through the door ahead of you, yes? It’s easy to lose yourself in that wood, and not entirely safe. Although I would find you eventually.”
Nemienne nodded, relieved that she had resisted the impulse to step into the wood. “If that door leads to Enescedd, does that mean there are other doors in the hall that lead to Miskiannes? Or even…” She hesitated and then completed the sentence: “Even Kalches?” She wasn’t sure she even wanted a door to Kalches sharing this house with her, fascinating as the idea might be. Maybe that was why Mage Ankennes had a music room and had ordered the harp made—because he needed to be ready for Kalchesene magic? As soon as this occurred to her, it seemed not only plausible but likely.
Mage Ankennes paused, lifting an inscrutable eyebrow at her. “Perhaps,” he said maddeningly.
“Is Enkea here?” Nemienne asked, changing the subject.
“No,” said the mage, sounding doubtful. “I think not. She is sometimes a difficult creature to keep in one’s eye. I am, in truth, a touch surprised at her. But she is an unpredictable creature.”
“Do you… know why she wanted me to go through that other door? Last night?”
Mage Ankennes regarded Nemienne dispassionately. Instead of answering her question, he said, “I will be going out again, not tonight, but tomorrow evening. There will be a gathering at Cloisonné House.”
“Oh?” Nemienne couldn’t quite decide whether she would like to see Karah in her new role as a keiso, or whether that would be too strange.
“Your presence at a keiso banquet would not be quite suitable, apprentice.” The mage sounded mildly regretful. “Besides, you haven’t been invited. However, it’s not likely your sister will be attending the banquet either. Deisa sometimes do, but she’s very new to the flower life. However—”
“Oh,” Nemienne said, a little startled he didn’t know about Karah, though there was no reason he should. “Karah’s already a keiso—she was made keiso early. So maybe she will be there, do you think?”
Mage Ankennes paused. One eyebrow lifted, giving his heavy features a look both quizzical and sardonic. “Was she? Well—she might, then, I suppose. However—” and here he lifted a hand sternly, preventing a second interruption “—I am afraid your presence at the banquet would still not be suitable. You will have to visit your sister later, and not, hmm, during the candlelight hours, eh?”
Nemienne, disappointed but not surprised, nodded.
“So I’ll leave you here. Do
please remain in the, hmm, I was going to say more ordinary, but let me say, instead, more traveled parts of the house. However swift your sister’s rise in her new world, you are still a very new apprentice. There are much more uncomfortable places to end up than my front porch. Understood?”
Nemienne was sure there were. Lost in an enchanted forest in some far distant country probably didn’t begin to cover the possibilities. She was surprised at the pang of regret she felt at the injunction not to explore, stronger even than the regret at the missed banquet, but she suppressed it firmly and nodded.
“Now,” Mage Ankennes said, picking a candle out of the clutter on the table without looking and reaching across the expanse of the table to set it in front of Nemienne. “Melt it, if you please,” he told her. “Without lighting it.”
CHAPTER 8
Taudde liked Cloisonné House immediately. It was a large, formal building of pale gold brick and weathered white limestone. Ivy crept up the brick to meet vines that dangled from long balconies, dotted with delicate pink flowers. Surely the flowers would not last through the coming winter, but they had not yet been withered by the chill in the air.
Girls came out to hold the carriage horse while Taudde stepped down onto a clean walkway of crushed limestone. He turned to face Cloisonné House, and paused. He still liked its graceful proportions. But even so, somehow the long shadow the house cast in the late sun seemed darker than it should. Or fell, perhaps, at an odd slant. Or into a place that wasn’t quite the same evening in which he stood… He shook his head slightly, not sure what he was perceiving.
One of the girls, not more than seven or eight years of age, ran ahead of Taudde to open the door for him. The other girl, a little older, jumped lightly up onto the driver’s bench beside Benne to show him where to take the carriage.
Taudde laid a hand momentarily on the door as he passed through it. The wood was smooth and unexceptional, yet he felt a faint echo behind that ordinary surface, as though his hand might have passed through the door by some measureless fraction to touch something else entirely. Something old beyond age. He lifted his hand, disturbed, and glanced at the girl, who seemed perfectly ordinary. She bowed him into the House. Taudde wondered what the building might have been before it had become a keiso establishment.
“It was a noble’s house, before the Laodd was built,” the girl explained when he asked her. “That was ever so long ago!” When she saw he was genuinely interested, she went on, “It was Mage Lord Meredde Rette Danoros Uruddun who built this house. He built lots of houses, all over Lonne, but this was his best. They say he had island blood, but they don’t mean Samenne when they say that! They mean Anaddon. The invisible island, you know, the island in the west, beyond the sunset. It’s a way,” the girl confided, “of saying he was a kind of mage without just saying so, because when Lord Meredde built Cloisonné House, mages weren’t really respectable the way they are now.”
Taudde wasn’t surprised that a mage had built this house. He was more surprised that this detail was still remembered. The era to which the girl referred was more than two hundred years ago. A long time, by the energetic standards of Lirionne.
From what he could see, the residents had reason enough to be proud of their House, whoever had built it. The entry hall, spacious and serene, held no echo of the strangeness he had felt before he entered. It was decorated with little tables that each held a single pretty object. Taudde admired a little finger harp with silver strings and a frame of bone; the string he touched gave back an ethereal note, and he smiled.
The banquet chamber was intimate, meant for a small party. Decorative screens of fine wood and sea ivory closed off the balcony against the chill of the evening, but the room was well lit by a dozen ornate porcelain lamps hanging from the ceiling. A fire burned cheerfully within a broad fireplace.
In the banquet chamber, the girl turned Taudde over to a grave-faced young woman with remote storm-gray eyes and robes of subdued slate blue. The woman’s hair was so dark it was almost black, her nose small and straight, and her mouth stronger than the rigid standards of Lonne preferred—though certainly by Kalchesene standards she was beautiful enough. From the plainness of her robes, she must not be a keiso—a little surprising, given her beauty. Well, despite the pretty picture of keiso life Nala had drawn for him, no doubt many women preferred a less, well, flamboyant life. But there was something else about this woman… something…
The woman offered Taudde a small, formal bow, interrupting his puzzlement. “I am Leilis,” she informed him, almost as though this was a title rather than her name. Her voice was low and a little husky. It was a good voice: attractive and compelling. Taudde thought she would sing alto, probably base alto. But there was something else in her voice, as there was something odd about her physical presence… some unexpected undertone he couldn’t quite understand.
“I have prepared lists of the courses that will be served and the keiso who will attend,” the woman continued, unaware of Taudde’s curiosity. “Please inspect these lists. If my lord does not approve of any dish, I will be happy to suggest substitutions.”
Taudde noticed that the woman didn’t offer substitutions if he didn’t care for one or another of the keiso. He smiled and shook his head at the lists. “I’ve no doubt everything provided by Cloisonné House will be perfectly suitable and of the highest quality.”
Leilis inclined her head in graceful appreciation of the compliment. “We have arranged for Bluefountain, our premier instrumentalist, and Rue, the finest dancer in the whole of the flower world, to attend your banquet. And we shall send in the youngest of our keiso. It will be her first banquet. She is a sweet child. I am certain she will please my lord’s guests.”
Taudde inclined his head in acknowledgment, though he couldn’t concentrate on the woman’s words. He was thinking instead of his… guests. The thought of approaching vengeance should have been satisfying, but in fact tension made him feel slightly ill. And the need to conceal everything he felt made the tension worse. He touched the small, heavy packet he carried in an interior pocket of his robe, wishing he found the weight of it reassuring. He only wanted to be rid of it.
“As I believe my lord is not from Lonne—” Leilis added, and paused for him to return his attention to her.
Taudde, glad to be interrupted from thoughts tending darker and darker, looked up, met her eyes, and made himself smile. “I would certainly welcome any advice you might offer.”
The woman gave him a calm nod. “It is the custom in Lonne for the host of a gathering such as this to present each of his guests with a small gift. If my lord should not have provided himself with suitable items, Cloisonné House would be honored to supply appropriate, tasteful gifts for the occasion.”
Taudde again touched the package he carried and answered, only a little too grimly, “Indeed, I thank you, but fortunately I was aware of the custom and I am thus fully provided with small gifts.”
The young woman accepted this assurance with graceful approval, though with a slight reserve that suggested she might have heard and wondered at the harshness in Taudde’s tone. But she did not, of course, comment. She nodded instead toward a sideboard of polished wood and said, “If my lord would care to place these items in the accustomed location?”
Taudde hesitated for a bare instant and then nodded in return and held the packet out to the woman. A slight hesitation before she put out a hand to take it suggested, a heartbeat too late, that she’d expected him to take the package of gifts to the sideboard himself. Distracted by his own dislike of what the packet contained, he hadn’t noticed her expectation. Then, as Taudde gave her the package, he brushed the woman’s fingers. At once, a powerful echo sprang up between them, wholly unexpected.
Leilis jerked back, dropping the packet, which Taudde caught, barely. With his other hand he caught hers, firmly, resisting her sharp attempt to wrench herself free.
An ugly dissonance echoed and re-echoed, splintering Taudde’s percept
ion of light and sound. He set his teeth against a strong desire to let the woman go… for a beat and another beat of time, and then released his grip. Their hands sprang apart as though propelled by some independent force, and they each took a hasty step to recover their balance.
Then Leilis took a hard breath, collected her dignity—no wonder she moved and spoke with such reserve, yes, that made sense now. She said with frozen disdain, “Your guests shall be shown in as they arrive, my lord,” and began a measured retreat. Not a rout, Taudde thought: nothing like it. “Wait,” he said hastily. “Please—wait only a moment. Allow me to beg your pardon. I had no idea—”
The ice thawed just a little. Though the woman didn’t turn back to face him, she at least paused.
“Cloisonné House itself has a strange depth to it. Have you felt this?” Taudde said, speaking not quite at random. He let his words come quick and unguarded. He wanted to hold the woman a little longer; he wanted a chance to perceive that strange blended enchantment more clearly. “As though its shadows are darker than the shadows of other houses, and its light clearer? As though in this house, voices and music and the slam of a door resonate in more than one direction? I think this may be in some way related to your—your—”
“Curse?” Leilis did turn, now. She gave Taudde a steady, neutral stare.
“Is that what it is? I haven’t… It’s some sort of… echo, or interaction, isn’t it, between a mageworking and something else…” His voice trailed off. Something of the sea. Or, if not of the sea, at least something similar, or allied. It was a unique sort of working, whatever blend of magery and other ensorcellment had created it… No wonder he found the woman so compelling. He himself was trying to achieve just such a blend. Though not for so cruel a purpose… He regarded the woman with redoubled fascination, wishing for the time and opportunity to examine the strange curse. He might learn a good deal if he could unravel it, see how it had been made… It would be a kindness to unravel it, if he could…
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