by Anne Perry
She kept pace with him up the shallow incline and the flower-strewn steps, unable to avoid treading on the leaves, so the air was filled with the pungent aroma of wild thyme. At the top he stopped and turned. She turned also and saw below them the houses of Malgard spread across the valley, the pale blur of blossom trees, the glasslike reflections of still pools and the whisper of fountains. In the distance the sea gleamed in the radiant air like a pale silver shield, barely rippled by the breath of night. Only the stirring of leaves and the distant call of a bird, clear and sweet, broke the silence.
“It is perfect,” she said gravely. “Now that I have seen it, I do not know how one could desire anything else.”
“It is a true glory, is it not?” he agreed, and again she heard the profound and abiding satisfaction in his voice.
“Your guests will miss you,” she said. “I think you are as much the guest of honor as the host.”
His eyes were wide in the folds of his extraordinary face. “You are quite right.” He nodded very slightly. “I should return. We both should. Come with me.” And he held out his arm to escort her, but loosely now, inviting her simply to lay her hand on his. She went down the steps with her head high. For the first time since she had woken in the palace with the sound of screams filling her ears, she felt the knots of pain inside her ease and let go.
That night Tathea’s sleep was deep and dreamless, a last releasing of all the fears left by every old wound and scar in her memory, stretching back long before the assassination.
She awoke in a room filled with the sun’s brightness. She rose and dressed. Downstairs Salymbrion was nervous and excited about the festival. He tried to keep his mind on offering his guests food and drink and assuring himself of their welfare, but he kept forgetting what he was doing halfway through a task, and laughingly Ishrafeli would complete it for him.
“I’m sorry,” Salymbrion said with a blush of embarrassment. “I want to win so much that I can think of nothing else. No, that’s not entirely true,” he corrected. “I want to do my very best, to stretch myself as never before and create something of such beauty it will be a joy to everyone who hears it.” A shadow crossed his face. “Am I grasping for too much, do you think?”
“No,” Ishrafeli said instantly. “You should always reach for your highest dreams.”
Salymbrion laughed; the answer clearly pleased him.
At mid-morning they joined the crowds entering the great amphitheater and took their seats. As guests they were given the best.
Ikthari rose to open the proceedings, and there was instant silence in the amphitheater. He stood in the center of the stage in a black and golden robe with the moon and stars embroidered on it. He announced the first contestant and then stepped back to allow a young man in a green robe with a flute in his hand to take center stage.
He began to play gently, plaintively, with an aching sweetness. Then he took the instrument from his lips and sang of the rebirth of nature after the winter’s sleep, the first melting of the ice from the grip of frost, the swelling of buds beneath the bark of birch and oak, and the awakening of the squirrels and hedgehogs. His voice was clear and his words full of tenderness and wonder.
When he had finished, the applause was tremendous. He bowed, flushed with pleasure, and withdrew.
Tathea glanced at Ikthari and saw him watching her. His smile widened minutely before he looked away as the second contestant, a woman, appeared. Her instrument was the lyre, beautifully carved. She sang of her love for the animals. There was laughter in it, gentleness, and a wealth of joy. She too received warm applause.
A man with a bass voice, deep and soft as the growl of far thunder, sang of his days on the mountainside as a shepherd, of his care for his sheep and the grace and perfection of the wild creatures and the abundance of the earth which supports and nurtures them all.
A thin man with a radiant smile played a lute and sang softly of his love for woodlands and gardens, how he watched the changing seasons. He sang of the delicate first leaves of spring, the pale, cold scent of hyacinths. The languorous profusion of roses and the whisper of ancient trees rising into a cloudless sky. He moved to the splendor of autumn, ending with the sweet pungency of wood smoke, the dancing sharpness of winter, and the perfect circle of life.
All day singer followed singer, some more excellent in their words, some in the loveliness of their voices, some in their skill with their instruments. They sang every kind of song; with passion, gaiety, or sadness, but always with love.
At last as the sun sank in the sky and the light in the amphitheater turned amber, Salymbrion stood up to sing. There was a breathless expectation. He was the last. Would he also be the best?
He stood motionless, smiling a little, his smooth face like bronze in the glowing light, his hair black as ink. There was a calm and exquisite joy about him. Slowly he lifted his harp and began to play, a few falling notes like the first light of dawn, so soft one wondered if they were no more than imagination. Then he began to sing of sunrise over the sea. His voice was clear and pure, seemingly effortless in its soaring notes, his words were so delicate and full of joy that as he sang Tathea could smell the sweetness of the wind, the dew on her skin, and the kiss of the cool air.
His voice grew stronger as he sang of the leap of the sun above the horizon and the blue brilliance of the day, of setting his boat out onto the glass-smooth water. He held the harp gently as if it were a living thing that he loved and sang of the silence of the sky and sea and wind. There was no shadow in him, as if the light filled his soul.
Not a person in the audience moved. Every eye was on him.
At last he sang of the homecoming as the light burned gold and waned and the soft haze of dusk purpled the sky, as it was now in the amphitheater. The final notes fell away and there was silence, utter and complete, before the thunder of applause.
There was no need for a debate or a casting of votes. By common consent Salymbrion had won. The thin man with the flute was the first to come forward, his face full of awe for the beauty of the song he had heard. There was no shadow of envy in him, only the love of music. He held out his hand. Salymbrion hesitated a moment, then with a flush of happiness clasped it. The man in the green robe was next, then a woman, then another. Not one withheld their praise or their pleasure for Salymbrion.
At last Ikthari himself came forward, the wreath of laurels in his hand. He lifted it high. For an instant his eyes turned to Tathea, seeming to bore into her as if he would split open her mind and read it. Then he turned back to Salymbrion, and amid rising excitement in the huge crowd he set the laurel on his head. A roar of approval filled the amphitheater.
When at last it died away, Salymbrion picked up his harp again and joined Ishrafeli and Tathea.
“You are the first strangers come to visit Malgard,” he said shyly. “Won’t you sing for us, Ishrafeli, and tell us of your land? Tathea says your voice has great beauty. Please? We should be honored to hear. It would complete our joy.” It was a gracious invitation, made with a whole heart.
Ishrafeli did not reply.
Others added their voices. “Please! Sing for us!” They were all turned towards him, faces eager.
Something in his face flickered for a moment, as if the decision were impossibly hard.
“No ... no, thank you.” He seemed hurt; it was subtle, no more than a change in his eyes, and the way he held his body. Tathea saw it and did not understand.
“Please,” Salymbrion urged, offering his harp. “But if you prefer a flute, or a violin ...”
Ikthari stepped forward between them, some strong emotion clouding his dark face. “Do not press him!” he commanded. “Not everyone rejoices in song. It is cruel to pursue where a refusal has been given.”
“He does sing!” Salymbrion answered him innocently, still holding out the harp. “He is merely modest ...”
“You have asked, and he has declined!” Ikthari snapped, his tone rising with an echo of darkness Tat
hea had felt long ago, somewhere else. It sent a breath of fear through her. “He is not of Malgard,” Ikthari went on quickly. “You do not know what it is you ask. Be still; he has said no.” His gaze burned on Salymbrion’s face, and there was a new kind of stillness in the air, as if the decision were momentous, immeasurably more than the mere matter of a song.
Salymbrion seemed oblivious to it. He had won the laurel. His joy overflowed and he longed to share it.
Ikthari turned to Ishrafeli. They were so close to Tathea she could have touched the embroidered hem of Ikthari’s robe.
“You do not need to sing,” Ikthari said slowly and very distinctly. “The choice is yours, not ours.” He was speaking to Ishrafeli, but it was as if the huge audience was what mattered to him. He lifted his heavy hand, the dark sleeve falling away. “You are our guest. That relationship is sacred.” He lowered his head a little, fixing his eyes on Ishrafeli’s. “We would not trespass on that for the sake of a song.”
Ishrafeli rose to his feet. He stood face to face with Ikthari. Ikthari seemed almost to grow bigger. He raised his huge shoulders an inch or two, and his cloak spread wide around him, massive, as if it were solid. He said nothing.
Tathea sat frozen. The two men were locked in a battle of wills so immense and so savage they were oblivious to their surroundings. Then Ishrafeli looked from Ikthari to Salymbrion’s eager, generous face. At last, very slowly, as if there were an enormous weight on him, he took the harp. He walked to the center of the stage and softly touched its strings with his fingers.
There was silence right to the very furthest reaches of the amphitheater. The evening sky was purple, pricked with the first stars. Torch flames lit the stage.
Ishrafeli’s voice was quite different from Salymbrion’s. It was dark, full of passion and a low, aching sorrow that thrilled and stirred hungers for things unknown. His fingers on the harp strings plucked a melody that returned again and again, each time subtler and more familiar, as if drawn from the memory of the soul. It was the song of a man cast out and alone, a man fighting all evil and despair with no word of hope, no light in the sky, only a blind love of what he knew was good. He sang of the grief of friends lost, of betrayal that stuns and amazes with pain, until the notes were wrung from him like a cry, anguish that could be tasted in the air, heard with the skin and the flesh and the bones.
He sang of the dark night of the soul when a man turns at last to face his inmost self and fights his own devils with no weapon in his hands and no friends beside him.
Then gradually the notes began to rise. There were new cadences; they became stronger and surer until at last they soared upward in sublime, full-throated ease. Tathea was filled with a glory that was more than sound. Her whole body ached with the passion and the ecstasy of it, as if she trod the tumult of the stars and heard the angels speak her name.
When the final notes died, the silence was like a bereavement. She did not move. For minutes they sat, each one alone with their thoughts.
The first one to break the terrible stillness was Salymbrion. With a face as white as that of a man who had looked into the abyss, he took the laurel from his brow and placed it on the ground in front of Ishrafeli.
“I thought I could sing,” he said very quietly his voice catching in his throat. “I can’t.” He swallowed. “Life has carved me shallowly, a cup that holds too little of joy or of pain.” He took a shivering breath. “The power that protected me from hell has also denied me heaven.” There was despair in his eyes as he looked at Ishrafeli, but no hesitation. “I have heard the holiness of man in your song, and I cannot be complete until I have found it for myself. My voice is worthless beside yours, empty of meaning, and it will remain so as long as I live in Malgard ...”
Ikthari lunged forward, his black robes flying, his face twisted with rage. “You cannot leave Malgard! If you do, you will die!” He swung his arms wide to encompass the crowd stretching beyond sight into the indigo night and all the sleeping land beyond. “Everything good is here! Love, plenty, innocence. A whole people of pure hearts—your people, Salymbrion!”
Salymbrion stood silent, his eyes wide.
In Ishrafeli’s face was reflected all he had sung, the glory and the grief.
Tathea waited with her heart pounding, the muscles of her body knotted so tightly the ache filled her, and yet she was barely aware of it.
Ikthari took a step forward towards the edge of the stage and the crowded people. The torchlight glittered gold on his embroidered sleeves. “Out there is only ugliness and pain!” His voice thickened with hatred. “Violence, deceit, and disillusion, and in the end the certainty of corruption. You will find nothing but the long, lone journey towards death and your own dissolution, thoughts that have never entered your soul before, loss you cannot imagine. And there will be no one to save you!” There was almost triumph in his face.
Salymbrion turned to look at Ishrafeli, but he did not speak. He had heard his song. He needed no more. The knives of suffering were already carving his soul into a larger vessel, even as they watched.
Tathea was numb. Why had Ishrafeli sung? His voice held all the unimaginable beauty of heaven. She was ravished by the glory of it, and the hunger to hear it again would never leave her. But the happiness of Malgard was shattered forever, shown to be superficial, a delusion.
Salymbrion looked at the black fury of Ikthari. For the first time in his life he tasted fear, and yet he found the courage to meet it.
“I must go,” he said levelly. “It is time for me to move on. To stay here would be to die.”
“You will die if you leave!” Ikthari grated between clenched teeth. “I promise you, you will know day by day, hour by hour, the slow disease of the flesh and the despair of the spirit, and at last the ashes of death will choke your mouth!”
“Then I will die seeking the greater light of a God whose name I have heard tonight,” Salymbrion replied, his head high. “I will not die the soul’s death here.” He swung round to Ishrafeli and met his eyes in a long, unwavering stare. The silence pounded like a heartbeat. Slowly Ishrafeli extended his hand, and Salymbrion grasped it and held it hard and close. Then he let go and walked away, off the stage and out of sight towards the darkening sea and the boats.
Ikthari turned to Ishrafeli, his eyes hideous in their hatred, his wide lips drawn back from his teeth.
“See what you have done!” he said with a scalding rage. “You have touched innocence with the hand of death! A myriad souls will despise you throughout eternity for this. You will taste the fruits of hell and remain unforgiven because you know what it is you do!”
“Of course I know what I do,” Ishrafeli said very quietly, his lips soft with pain. “I have broken a dream with the hand of awakening.”
Ikthari swiveled to face Tathea. “You seek the burden of truth, woman,” he said to her, and there was something in him which was terrible. “Once you find it and take it, it may lift you up to the glory of heaven or it may take you to a damnation far deeper even than that which awaits you if you do not. Promises must be kept.” Now he whispered, and yet his words filled the night. “If you break your covenant with God, you will belong to me, and my vengeance will be hideous. The first beginnings of the knowledge of it would shrivel the life from your body, but your spirit cannot die! There is no escape in the furthest reaches of time or space. Think well on that before you go with Ishrafeli!”
“But I have heard the voice of heaven,” she said through her tears. “For one moment God spoke my name to me. What greater darkness could there be than to lose that?” She breathed in deeply. “I will pay what it costs.”
She did not hear Ishrafeli sigh, nor see his body relax and his lips smile in the dark, but she felt his hand in hers, and she turned and went with him out of the amphitheater and into the streets of the town. As they walked, the air grew colder. The first milk-white blossoms withered and fell petal by petal from the bough. No birds sang. By the time they reached the waterside, a thin r
ime of ice coated the stones.
Salymbrion was waiting by the skiff, shivering, his eyes wide and frightened. Tathea was racked with sorrow for him.
“You were warned the price was high,” Ishrafeli said softly in the darkness. “Did you think the pain would not be real?”
“I thought it would be my pain!” The words were torn out of her, choking. At this moment she hated his glorious voice that harrowed up the soul and left it forever changed. “You didn’t tell me it would hurt so many others!”
He touched his warm lips to her brow. “Of course it wounds others. Our pain is incomplete if we suffer only for ourselves. Salymbrion chose the truth, as you have. You cannot protect him from life, and neither can I. Not even God can do that.” He stepped away over the gleaming ice to unfasten the ropes of the skiff. “Come, we have a long way to go yet.”
Chapter V
THEY SAILED FROM THE shores of Malgard in darkness. There was no fierce wind, no premonition of storm, only a steadily increasing coldness. They each slept a little, huddled in the stern together, wrapped closely in the woolen robes they wore and the silken cloak Tathea still had from the Lost Lands.
Tathea and Salymbrion woke stiff and shivering, moving reluctantly to sit up. The air held the breath of ice in it, and the blue of the bottomless water was chill to the eye, shadowed by steep cliffs and soaring peaks, white-crowned, climbing to the fragile sunlight above. Pale wildflowers and burning lichen on the stones seemed an illusion of the summer they had so recently left behind.
She looked at Salymbrion, frightened, feeling his innocence and aching to protect him but helpless to do it. He stood up beside her, his face towards the light, eyes wide with amazement. He had no conception of what was to come and nothing from which to imagine it or prepare himself. He was as vulnerable as Habi would have been.
She looked at Ishrafeli, but he was busy working the skiff towards the shore, his hands clenched on the ropes, knuckles white. He too was shuddering with cold.
