ECHOES
by Michelle West
Rosdan Press, 2011
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
SMASHWORDS EDITION: 978-1-927094-01-3
Copyright 2011 by Michelle Sagara
All rights reserved
Cover design by Anneli West.
Echoes Copyright 2001 by Michelle Sagara, first appeared in Assassin Fantastic ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Alexander Potter.
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Novels by Michelle West
The Sacred Hunt
Hunter's Oath
Hunter's Death
The Sun Sword
The Broken Crown
The Uncrowned King
The Shining Court
The Sea of Sorrows
The Riven Shield
The Sun Sword
The House War
The Hidden City
City of Night
House Name
Skirmish*
War*
*Forthcoming in 2012 and 2013
Table of Contents
Introduction
Echoes
Other Stories by the Author
Introduction
Kallandras has appeared in every novel I’ve written in the Sun Sword or the Sacred Hunt; he is heading his way to Averalaan as I type this, in the final volume of The House War. He’s one of the earliest of my characters, and his role in any of these books has always of necessity been smaller than I would like. His essential situation is tragic; he is driven by love that will always be scorned, and by a desire to protect those who will not only never thank him, but never forgive him making the attempt.
Music is his forte; he’s a Master Bard of Senniel College. In the universe of Essalieyan, this title comes with responsibilities to the Bardmaster, the Bardic College in which he trained, the Kings and the Empire. But if this defines his public face, it is not the driving force behind his life, and this story speaks of that earlier life as an assassin.
Echoes takes place during the novel Sea of Sorrows; it’s a small interlude during the nights of desert travel.
When Alexander Potter was putting together a collection for DAW Books—Assassin Fantastic—he didn’t approach me immediately to ask for a story about my sole assassin; Tanya Huff did. She phoned and said, “I’ve got a story about Bannon and Vree that I want to write, and I figure I can sell it for an anthology about assassins. I want you to write a Kallandras story as well.”
I asked her who was going to edit the anthology, and she answered, ”Alex.” So I said the only sensible thing I could: ”Sure.”
This is that story.
Echoes
WHAT DOES mercy mean?
Kallandras of Senniel College, the most famous bard that the most famous of bardic colleges had yet produced, stirred beneath the growing chill of desert sky. The Sea of Sorrows lay before him, sand dunes rippling out in endless ridges that seemed as solid as stone from a distance. But he knew that the wind would reclaim them, as they did all else in the South.
Senniel College, and the life he had led there, was very far away, ensconced in the heart of the Imperial Capital. The only physical evidence of his time there lay in her case, her strings still. He could not hear music at all, although he listened for it.
Music was the one thing he had found that spoke to him almost as strongly as past voices; that found its way beneath skin, beneath the serene face he presented to the world. But tonight it was absent. They were strong tonight, the old voices.
And he thought he knew why. But he held on to ignorance for as long as he could—and despised himself for it, with an intensity that spoke of the youth in which most of the old voices had their roots. Ignorance served no useful purpose; it changed no fact, it offered no shelter.
“Kallandras?”
He inclined his head in greeting as a figure resolved itself out of the shadows of distant wagons. The dyes applied to his hair for his brief sojourn in the capital of the Dominion of Annagar had been of reasonable quality; their temporary nature only now allowed the natural pale gold to peer through the brown-black so common among the clans.
The Serra Teresa di’Marano stood beside him, the grace of her form encumbered by the heavier clothing that the Voyani chose to wear during their forays into the Sea of Sorrows. Her eyes were dark, her hair the color by nature that his was by artifice.
She did not touch him. She lifted a hand as if she would. It hovered like a moth between them, but in the end, it was not drawn to fire. She said, “I heard you speak.”
He lifted a brow in surprise, and turned away in the same instant, to hide the expression, although in truth it was not genuine. In all things, he was as he had been trained to be.
What was a lie after all, when it was not offered to a brother? “I…was not aware…that I had spoken out loud.” That was truth. He did not attempt to lie to the Serra Teresa in any way that she could hear—for she had his gift, and his curse. They were marked by their ability to hear all things that a voice could carry—and to manipulate their own in such a way that it might beguile or force obedience.
“It is night,” the Serra Teresa said softly. She raised her face to the moon’s; the moon was waning slowly. A crescent of darkness grew across the perfect brightness of her face. “At night, we are forgiven our transgressions against strength.” She bowed.
“I am not forgiven mine,” he replied gravely. He liked her bow because it was so unnatural a movement for a Serra, and yet it became her perfectly.
“Kallandras—”
“Your gift is strong,” he told her; he did not look at her again. There were things that he did not wish to share with anyone.
But that had not always been the case.
He heard it because he could not longer prevent himself from hearing it; it was too loud.
Arkady.
His hands trembling a moment in the air, he reached for the only comfort he allowed himself, had ever allowed himself. He pulled, from a battered case, the lute that had been the gift of the Master of Senniel College—an act of faith on her part. And perhaps on his, to accept it. He spoke the lute’s name into the still, cold air.
Salla.
But the darkness returned only Arkady.
It was over. It was over. He was gone.
His knees threatened to fail him, and with the grace that had seen him through decades, he acknowledged and accepted his own weakness. He sat, knees bent, the bowl of a lute in his lap, his hands, his shaking hands, palm up, as if he were begging for something that he could not even name.
Not beneath the Lady’s face.
* * *
But beneath the Lord’s, he had, so many years ago that if memory were weak—it was not, and it was not kind—he might have forgotten it. He sat in the streets of the Tor Leonne’s poorest quarter. His father and mother were dead—or he assumed they were dead. He had escaped the slaughter of his family simply because he had been too far from home when it had happened. But he knew why it had happened. Because, across the distance that meant life for him, and death for them, he had heard their screams; they carried words, when words were allowed them.
And words were allowed them because the clansmen sought information. He could think of those killers, those deaths, without passion. He accepted what that said about him as he had accepted all things
that might once have been considered atrocities.
They had spawned a child with demonic powers: the ability to use his voice to command men to unnatural actions. They wanted that child. He ran, leaving his youth in the Terrean of Mancorvo behind, more than a lifetime away.
Would he have returned to it? No. Not that life. But he had lived more than one. He did not dwell on what happened between death and the Tor; but as he sat, with Salla in his lap, he remembered the shape of the begging bowl in his lap, the pain of blistered skin, the stares his unusually pale hair received whenever someone paused for a moment to notice how much he stood out from the others whose profession it was to beg and plead for the crumbs of the clansmen.
He was careful. He did not use his curse except when the hunger made him weak. He merely sat, letting the advantage of his unusual appearance speak for him.
He had been in the Tor Leonne for three weeks when the old man found him. He had gone from a robust, hefty villager to a slender, gaunt wraith; he had watched his shadow thin with the passage of time. On the second day in which he had gone without food and with little water, he thought that when the shadow disappeared entirely, he would be gone with it, and he was…comforted. He hadn’t the courage to take his own life—not then. The courage to destroy life would come later, when he had something to live for.
But his shadow and a taller shadow had converged, and when they remained, locked against the ground, he looked up to see who had cast it. An old man. Or a man he had thought old, from the vantage of youth and hunger.
“Why are you here, boy?”
He had started to speak, and the words had died. He felt their echo in his throat, just as Salla echoed the bowl in his lap.
“This is not the place for you. Can you stand?”
“I…don’t know. Yes.”
“Good. Stand. Walk if you can.” The old man smiled, and the smile was strange; it was…kind. It was not a smile he had thought to see again. It hurt him. He watched his shadow separate from the old man’s, and he hesitated a moment as light appeared between them, revealing the colors of dust, of dirt, of summer heat. As simply as that, shadows were transformed. He ran into darkness, his breath catching in his throat after only a dozen steps.
The old man turned. His smile was gone, but the look in his eyes had not changed. “I am old enough to have fathered you. But I am not, and will never be, your father.” He held out a hand.”In time, if I am worthy of you, and you are worthy of me, I will be your brother.
“And between brothers, nothing is forbidden. No weakness and no strength. If you need help, I will help you. If I need help, you will help me.”
Kallandras took his hand.
“What is your name, boy?”
“It’s—it’s Kallatin.” The first lie.
The man smiled as he heard it. “You will learn, in time, to be a much more accomplished liar; your life will depend on it. But you will also learn that there is no need to lie to a brother. Come. You are hungry, and I will have wasted much time if I allow you to perish in the street.”
* * *
Kallatin. Kallandras. Two names, neither of them names he was born to; neither of them large enough to contain all parts of his life. He heard, at a distance, the song his fingers absently forced from the lute, and he grimaced. No small wonder the Serra Teresa had chosen to join him; he played the melody and harmony of a cradle song.
* * *
The old man led him to a small house. It was nestled between buildings that were larger, but although of modest size, it was clearly well defended, well appointed. There was a small gate around the house, and a door; beyond the door was a hanging in black, red and white. The old man said, “We are a brotherhood that serves the Lady in Shadow; there is little sun in our world, and we have little use for the Lord’s ways. If you are afraid of this, leave now, and no more will be said.”
“I am not afraid of shadow,” he replied. Firmly. Foolishly.
“We have many dwellings, but no home. Come.” He did not say, do not speak of what you see. The boy passed between the doors as if the doors were sentient and paused in front of the hanging. It was of a flower at night; dark sky, white stars, red blossom. He lifted a hand to touch it; was surprised when his fingers felt linen, cotton, nubbled cloth.
“You are sensitive, Kallatin,” the old man said quietly.
“If you know that’s not my name, why do you use it?”
“None of us own our names,” the man replied. “Kallatin is as useful a name as any.” He pushed aside the hanging only when Kallandras’ hand had fallen, and he led the way into the dwelling. The house itself was entirely ordinary; there were two serafs who tended rooms in which a man might sleep or eat or watch sunrise or moonrise. They bowed when they saw him, but they did not speak. The old man politely requested food for his visitor, and they disappeared, emerging only a few minutes later with fruit, rice, sweet water, all perfectly arranged.
He knew that there was no possible way they could have prepared such a meal in so short a time, but he was beyond caring. If the food were poisoned somehow, if he were to die here, or lose what freedom he had claim to, it was the Lady’s will, the Lord’s—hunger drove him. He ate beneath the watchful eyes of the old man.
Afterward, he slept.
When he woke, he woke to a darkness that smelled of people, in a room that he was almost certain he had never seen before. The old man was standing in the doorway, as if he knew to a second when the newcomers would wake.
“Welcome,” he said, his voice somehow deeper, “to the halls of the Kovaschaii. You will train here. But only a handful of your number—three perhaps—will survive the training to become brothers and servants of the Lady.”
“What will happen to the rest?” someone asked, in the darkness.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” someone else said. It took a moment before Kallandras realized that it was his own voice.
“Why?”
“Because if we are to be brothers in all things, what we build here—at our beginning—will define us.”
The old man bowed slightly. In the darkness, the subtle gesture was missed by several of the young men who snorted or snickered in derision. He did not know their names, that night. Or ever.
“Sleep well,” the old man said, and Kallandras realized that he was, in fact, lying on a hard, flat mat.
* * *
In the morning—if morning existed in a world that was not ruled, or witnessed, by sky—the old man woke them. He carried a lamp and a torch, but both were unusual; neither flickered, and neither seemed to give off heat. “Please, follow me.”
They did. They were nervous, these newcomers; they knew, as Kallandras did, that they had fallen in with the Dark Brothers who served the Lady’s darkest face. To cross them was death. To serve them? He had never desired the life of a killer. It galled him. To live in obedience was one thing; to live at the expense of others, different again. But he was not afraid of either the killing or the dying; the shadows had taken the fear from him. He was afraid of failure.
Of loss.
The old man led them into a vast cavern, whose heights and farthest walls were lost beyond lamp and torch’s reach. “You will not find this a comfortable room to begin with, but each time you return to it, you will see more clearly. You are now at the heart of the labyrinth. Each step you take from this day forth will bring you closer to freedom from its confines. You may mistep; you may take a wrong turn. These are not fatal.
“But if you do not walk the path, you will never be allowed to leave. You know who we are. You were not chosen because you were fools. Today, you will each be given the first of your many weapons; the most obvious weapon we will give you.”
Something touched Kallandras shoulder. He turned. His gaze grazed a strange forehead, and fell until he made eye contact with another boy.
“I’m Arkady,” the boy said. His hair was as dark as Kallandras’ was pale, and as straight as Kallandras’ was curly.
But it caught torchlight and lamplight in a way that reminded Kallandras of fine silk.
“I’m—I’m Kallatin.”
“You arrived last night?”
He smiled. “If it was night. It…wasn’t when I fell asleep.”
“What do you think of this place?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen enough of it yet.”
Light changed its fall across Arkady’s hair as he shrugged. “Did you hear what he said last night? Maybe three of us would survive?”
Kallandras smiled. “I don’t believe it. It’s a test. It must be a test. If we work together—if we stand together—“
“It was you who spoke up.” Arkady’s smile broadened.
“Guilty.”
“Well, if he didn’t have you killed in your sleep, he couldn’t have been offended.” Arkady held out a hand; Kallandras took it. For a moment longer than necessary their palms rested together.
* * *
The weapons were blades, of a sort, with guards unlike any that Kallandras had seen—they travelled from hilt halfway up the length of the blade on opposite sides, and were sharpened into points at their peak. Heavy and small compared to the graceful length of steel that Southern clansmen carried for all of their adult life, they were straight, where swords curved. They were also deadly.
The first thing the Kovaschaii did, in the labyrinth, was to learn their weapons’ use. In ones and twos they were taken first to a large, spare room, second to a small room, third to a room with a ceiling that was only barely taller then the tallest of their number. In each of these rooms, they were asked to test the use of their blades. The old man often came to watch them, or perhaps just to watch Kallandras; there were many old men who seemed to come from, and return to, the shadows during the long hours spent practicing nothing more than slicing air. They were allowed, in the end, to spar properly; it was a disaster.
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