Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  ‘Shall I pour the mocha for you, Illustre?’

  Khassian nodded avidly. He watched the fragrant liquid as it filled the bowl. His mouth was watering painfully at the mere smell of it. Yet as he tried to chew into a roll, his throat seemed to contract. After so many days’ near-starvation, he could hardly swallow down the delicious food.

  ‘Would the Illustre care to dress now for the morning levee?’

  The servitor brought out a suit of clothes; subtly tailored, elegantly understated. The Prince had also remembered his preference for dark yew-green, though the sombre shade was alleviated by delicate embroidery in bronzed thread at revers and cuffs. Even the silky cream chemise was embroidered.

  Khassian stood looking at himself critically in the cheval mirror. The shaving had revealed a dark bruise marring the left side of his face; the elegant court costume concealed the other marks of Commanderie brutality. A stranger gazed back at him. The dark, curling hair of the slim young courtier was like his own – but the eyes, the haunted, mistrustful eyes in that bruised face…

  A distant bell sounded, sweet-toned yet penetrating. The servitor cleared his throat.

  ‘His Altesse will see you now, Illustre.’

  Khassian’s earliest memory of the Royal Apartments in the Winter Palace was of the sheen of gold-veined marble columns, of gilded mirrors that reflected vista upon candlelit vista, receding into infinity…

  All the mirrors had been removed.

  A man knelt, head bowed upon a prayer book, before a candle-lit shrine on which glowed the blood-red image of the thorn-pierced Rose.

  The stab of pain that Khassian felt on seeing Ilsevir was as vivid as if one of the holy thorns had pierced his breast.

  The Prince rose to his feet and turned around, hands outstretched in welcome.

  ‘Amaru.’

  Khassian dropped to his knees.

  He could not look on the Prince’s face. Not yet. For fear the crowding emotions would betray him and he would cry out, ‘Why? Why did you abandon me?’

  He felt the Prince’s fingers absent-mindedly stroke his hair… a gesture that once had meant so much and now seemed no more than an old habit, not yet abandoned.

  ‘Amaru,’ said Ilsevir again. ‘Look at me.’

  He could not disobey. Trembling, Khassian raised his head. The sickly-sweet smell that had tainted Ilsevir’s breath had gone; his skin had lost the translucent grey pallor of the last days of his illness.

  ‘You are looking in the… the very best of health, Altesse.’

  ‘My physicians tell me my recovery is nothing short of a miracle. I feel young again, Amar. My sight is clear. I’ve been riding. I’ve even sailed the barque on the lake.’

  ‘We were all praying for your recovery.’

  ‘And your prayers were answered.’ Ilsevir placed his hands on Khassian’s shoulders and raised him to his feet. ‘I feel renewed, Amar. Reborn. To come so close to death… It made me reflect on what I had done with my life. But he opened my eyes. He made me see the meaninglessness, the emptiness, of my existence… That’s all behind me now.’

  He. Girim nel Ghislain. The golden dream of the past, in which Khassian had been floating since he had entered the Royal Apartments, popped like a frail soap bubble.

  ‘Come, sit with me. Let’s talk.’ Ilsevir gestured to a couch of brocade, golden and black.

  ‘Talk?’ Khassian glanced around, wondering where the unseen listeners were concealed.

  ‘As we used to.’ The Prince leaned comfortably back, one arm over the corner of the couch; Khassian sat, as he was bidden – but on the edge.

  What was there to say? Khassian remained silent.

  ‘My poor Amaru. You’ve suffered needlessly.’

  Ilsevir’s fingers touched his bruised face; he winced.

  ‘Put it all behind you. The suffering. The pain. Come back to me. Resume your rightful place at court. Be my court composer again.’

  Ilsevir still knew how to speak seductively, still knew how to charm.

  ‘And the charges against me?’

  ‘All dropped.’

  ‘On what conditions?’

  Ilsevir flicked one hand dismissively. The glint of a rose-red jewel caught the candelight.

  ‘The details can be discussed later.’ The jewel was cut in the shape of a rose. Carnelian, with a blood-ruby at its heart. The thorn-pierced heart. Symbol of the inner circle of the Commanderie.

  ‘And my hands?’ Khassian slowly raised them to show the Prince. ‘How can a court composer perform his role with hands like these?’

  For an instant he saw a expression of repugnance pass across Ilsevir’s calm countenance – a breeze glancing across limpid water. Then the Prince’s eyes fixed on his, ignoring the burned hands.

  ‘You are still that rare creature, an intuitive. You can direct, conduct, instruct others. Who else in Bel’Esstar has your sensitivity, your musicianship? Not even old Talfieri. Of course there’s Lissier… but his style is brash, unrefined.’

  ‘What if I refuse?’

  Ilsevir looked at him a moment in astonishment – and then began to laugh.

  ‘My dear Amaru, refuse? I do not make such offers twice.’

  Ilsevir rose to his feet and beckoned. Khassian followed him to the window. The Prince pulled a golden cord and as the heavy swagged brocades whispered aside, a vista of Bel’Esstar appeared, a shimmer of grey stone and glass, cupolas, balconies and weathervanes.

  A civilised façade.

  ‘A fine sight, still, would you not agree? Yet my city is stricken with a mortal canker, slowly eating it away from within. And what is the reason? Pride, Amar. The pride that comes between man and his Maker. The pride that makes a man turn away from his god and set his own needs first.’

  Ilsevir placed his hands on his shoulders. Khassian tensed, remembering the gesture of old. Once this had meant the prelude to a drawing closer, the touch of mouth on mouth… And maybe Ilsevir knew it too, maybe he had done it on purpose, evoking an intimacy long-since dead to serve his present intent.

  ‘You have it within your power to heal this canker.’

  Khassian tried to move away but Ilsevir’s hands still held him, his eyes still held him.

  ‘Yes, you, Amar. You are still loved, respected amongst the artistic community. You have immense influence.’

  ‘I have nothing –’ began Khassian.

  ‘You underestimate yourself. If you were to make this one gesture of reconciliation, others would follow. There would be no need for a Sanctuary. No more hunger… no more suffering.’

  Khassian felt his determination beginning to waver. His eyes could not help but stray to the great curtained bed, plumed with gilded feathers. To sleep in a soft bed again without fear of the interrogators coming in the night…

  Don’t do this to me, Ilsevir.

  ‘There is to be a ceremony of consecration at the Fortress of Faith. I want you there, Amar. I want your music to enrich the ceremony. I want you to train the choir and musicians.’

  It all seemed too golden a prospect to be possible. Khassian began to sense another’s voice speaking behind Ilsevir’s.

  ‘You want my music? Or the Grand Maistre wants it?’

  Ilsevir pointed to a pile of drawings on a marble side table.

  ‘Have you seen the sketches for the Fortress? Look at this: the great rose window, blazing with coloured glass, the light falling on to the choir stalls. What a wonderful setting to enhance the spirituality of your music.’

  Ilsevir’s hand rested on the drawing. Light splintered through the petal-facets of his rose-stone ring, a red glow staining the white paper. Khassian’s eye was drawn to it. Blood staining the walls of the Fortress, the blood of his fellow Sanctuarees, mixed into its cement.

  ‘I – can’t do it,’ he said, each word wrung from him.

  Ilsevir sighed.

  ‘Why is it so difficult for you?’

  Khassian did not, could not, reply. And it saddened him that he must
play word games with the man he had once honoured as patron, protector… and lover.

  ‘You have changed, Amaru. I do not recognise the man I once knew.’

  ‘It must be the effect of the Sulien waters.’

  Khassian’s riposte was flippantly bitter; even as he heard himself deliver it, he knew he should have kept silent.

  Ilsevir reached out and, fingers closing around the bell-rope, pulled it.

  Khassian panicked.

  He could still retract. There was still time –

  The doors opened and the two Guerriors entered.

  ‘The Illustre is ready to return to the Sanctuary,’ Ilsevir said. His face betrayed nothing. He looked straight through Khassian as though he was not there as he turned back to the sketches of the Fortress of Faith.

  Dame Jolaine Tradescar had lodged for fifty years in the same ramshackle garret over a courtyard tucked behind Millisom’s Street. Behind the elegant carved façades of Sulien, many such dingy courtyards were to be found, criss-crossed with lines of washing. She had never troubled to find anywhere more spacious or elegant as she spent her days in the Museum or below ground, investigating and mapping the Undercity.

  Now that she was forbidden the Undercity – and had been locked out of her own Museum – she found her rooms confining and stuffy.

  Frustrated at the very moment when her researches were coming to fruition, she whiled away the days poring over her notebooks, looking at her sketches of the mosaic floor in the Hall of Whispering Reeds from every conceivable angle, and postulating, puzzling, theorising…

  So when she heard someone tapping politely at her door, she leapt up from her chair, eager for distraction.

  Theophil Philemot stood on her doorstep, a large bundle in his arms.

  ‘Your – possessions, Dame Tradescar.’ He seemed a little out of breath.

  ‘You can bring them in,’ Jolaine said stiffly, all her earlier good humour evaporating at the sight of her successor, ‘and then you can be off about your business.’

  But there seemed nowhere to put the bundle in her cramped parlour; every available space was piled high with books.

  ‘Maybe on the table?’ Philemot suggested, moving towards the least cluttered area.

  ‘No!’ Jolaine hurried to slam shut the open books, placing herself in front of them. Her work on the hieroglyphs. Her mosaic floor. ‘Just put the bundle down. Anywhere.’

  Philemot did as he was told.

  ‘I’m sure you have much to occupy your time, Dr Philemot, I don’t wish to detain you a moment longer.’

  ‘Dame Tradescar,’ he burst out, ‘you must believe me – I would like to consult you on some matters of scholarship. I would truly value the benefit of your expertise which is without parallel in the field –’

  ‘So unparalleled that I have to be pensioned off, hm? And young upstarts like you brought in?’

  ‘It’s about the hot springs.’

  ‘Well?’ At least the young man was persistent.

  ‘You’ve heard that the springs have dried up?’

  ‘I’ve heard that they’re blaming me.’

  ‘Which is completely ridiculous!’ said Philemot hotly. ‘How could meticulous scholarly excavations cause a geological phenomenon such as this?’

  Meticulous? Scholarly? Jolaine Tradescar was beginning to take a reluctant liking to Dr Philemot.

  ‘So you don’t believe in this ancient evil that I have apparently awakened by desecrating the holy places with my digging?’

  ‘Think back, Dame Tradescar. Yesterday, and two days earlier, there was distant thunder. But no storm, no rain. Most people I have spoken to agree it was coming from the mountains.’

  Dame Tradescar rubbed her hands together.

  ‘You have a theory?’

  ‘Better. I have a map.’

  Philemot produced the map from his pocket and spread it out on the table.

  ‘No one has ever traced the source of the springs?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. The Temple Court discourages that kind of investigation.’ Jolaine looked up at Philemot over the rim of her pince-nez spectacles. ‘It’s all bound up in the spirit of the place. It’s hard to separate Sulien from its springs – and its springs from its tutelary Goddess.’

  ‘But even the Goddess’s gift could be abused by men. Men quarrying deep into the hills. Blasting deeper with charges of firedust. Silting up the sources of ancient springs. See here? The site of an Allegondan quarry.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Jolaine suddenly chuckled. ‘Sit down, Dr Philemot.’ She scooped up a pile of books from an ancient armchair and patted the upholstery. A little cloud of dust motes arose, shimmering in the sunshine.

  ‘And there’s another reason I wished to consult you. It’s probably of little interest to you… but it’s always intrigued me since I first spotted it in its case in the Antiquities Cabinet in Can Tabrien. When the Antiquarian learned I had secured a position in Sulien, he let me bring it here to ask your opinion. He has read several of your monographs on pre-Allegondan Tourmalise.’

  ‘Has he indeed?’ Jolaine was flattered, though she was damned if she was going to show it. ‘So – where is this thing of little interest?’

  Philemot brought from his pocket a bundle of soft cloths and carefully unwrapped the contents.

  Inside lay an enamelled fragment, about half the size of a man’s palm, with delicate petals, white and pink, inlaid upon verdigris. Lotos petals.

  ‘How it came to be in Can Tabrien, I have no idea.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ Jolaine Tradescar said, staring. ‘Good gracious me.’

  ‘It is genuine, isn’t it?’

  Jolaine’s fingers reached out greedily – and then stopped.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Please do,’ Theophil Philemot said generously.

  Jolaine took up the fragment and lovingly turned it over and over in her hands.

  ‘I think we may have something quite remarkable here.’

  ‘Ah?’ Philemot was evidently trying not to sound too excited.

  ‘It is without doubt of Lifhendil craftmanship. Late period.’

  Jolaine set it down again. Should she share her discovery with Philemot? Confound it all, why not? She went to her desk and brought over her find and laid it beside Philemot’s. With trembling hands she brought the two halves together – to make a complete lotos.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ whispered Philemot.

  ‘And what is more,’ Jolaine said, ‘I know exactly where in the Undercity these belong.’ She took up her notebook and showed Philemot the sketches of the mosaic pavement.

  ‘This should fit at the centre of the mosaic. The dragonflies can then be seen to fly into the lotos – and out of it again.’

  ‘We must put it back in its rightful place!’ Philemot said.

  ‘The Undercity is forbidden, remember? Especially to meddling ex-Antiquarians.’

  ‘But what is its precise significance? Decorative or ritual? What manner of rites were held in the chamber where you found it?’

  Jolaine gave the young man a long, appraising look. His eagerness reminded her of a certain Jolaine Tradescar at exactly the same age: irrepressibly curious, incessantly hungry for knowledge. Perhaps she had misjudged Theophil Philemot.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Now… where shall we start?’

  ‘The Priestess will not see you, Dame Tradescar.’ The elderly Priest made to close the door of the Priesthouse. ‘Not today or any day.’

  ‘But I have important information.’

  ‘We’ve troubles enough of our own… and we have only you to thank for them.’

  ‘Then please at least give her this note – and see that she reads it. I’ll be feeding the pigeons in the forecourt if she cares to speak with me.’

  The Priest hesitated then put out his palsied hand to take Dame Tradescar’s letter.

  She went back down the steps and took a paper of bread crusts from her bag. Soon the pigeons had come fluttering down
from the Temple pediment to peck at the crumbs. She sat down, humming, and centred her attention on the pigeons.

  ‘Dame Tradescar.’

  Jolaine rose to see a veiled figure beckoning to her from the colonnade. She approached.

  ‘You used to call me Jolaine when we were at school, Elysie. Or was that in another existence?’

  ‘These transcriptions.’ The Priestess ignored the question, holding out the letter Jolaine had written. ‘Are they authentic?’

  ‘You call my scholarship into question? Of course they’re authentic. Intriguing, aren’t they?’

  ‘Tell me more about this Lotos Priestess. The one you call Songspinner.’

  ‘The role of the Songspinner, as I understand it, was to be a living channel between two worlds: this world and the next. The Lotos Priestess – or Princess – stood at the doorway between life and death.’

  ‘A kind of shamaness?’

  ‘A Priestess, gifted with the ability to hear the voices of the spirit world.’

  ‘And these spirits – Eä-Endil – they came through the Songspinner to guide the souls of the dead to the light?’

  ‘I can only interpret this to be the origin of our present-day ceremonies. The dragonflies have become merely a symbol.’

  ‘Don’t think this information will persuade me to let you back into the Under Temple!’ The Priestess wagged the folded letter at Jolaine. ‘The springs are still dry. No burials can take place in the Undercity. Besides there are many amongst the Temple fellowship who will dismiss these ancient rituals you describe as primitive. We live in more enlightened times…’

  ‘But you, Elysie? What do you think?’

  The Priestess hesitated.

  ‘The traditions are all lost, long forgotten. Even if we understand the role of the Lotos Priestess better, how can we find and train anyone to perform that role?’

  ‘Perhaps the Lotos Priestess was not trained, she was born to shamanhood,’ Jolaine said excitedly.

  ‘I do not know.’ The Priestess shook her veiled head. ‘All I know is that it would be advisable for you to stay away from the Under Temple until this present crisis is over.’

  ‘I can slip in by night. No one will see me,’ pleaded Jolaine.