Till Human Voices Wake Us Page 11
“Once, long ago,” Sherry began, “there lived a musician. He was called Orpheus, and it is said that he was the greatest mortal musician there ever was.”
Raphael knew the story of the greatest musician of all: the one who was sometimes the black king on the chessboard, the second-created of the Creator, the one who had made the rules of the Great Game Aurieleteer and set them unbreakable into the composition of the universe. The morning star he had been, when he heard the song of creation and played it. The Tantey said that he had played the worlds into being, on his lirin made with wood from a branch of the world tree, strung with the hair of his sibling gods.
Later he had grown jealous and learned the powers of silence and the secrets of the Abyss out of which grows the world tree, and after he lost his game with the Lord Phoenix he was cast into its depths. Now they called him the Unnamed One, the Prince of Darkness, the Adversary, the Shadow King, the Eater of Worlds. Once the morning star; now the shadow that flies before the dawn, worse than the dragon in Beowulf.
“Now there are stories of how Orpheus’ music was so beautiful that stones and trees and wild beasts came to hear him play, that the winds and waves crowded close to hear him, that mountains murmured his songs over to themselves long after he passed on.”
The woman below him began to pace around the tree in lopsided circles, a dark figure against the sallow grass. Her coat caught on the thorns of a lanky rose-bush. She freed herself with an angry jerk and marched on again around the tree. When she neared him Raphael saw that it was Hazel Isling from the play.
“And there were many admirers of Orpheus in those days; for, truly, he was a very great musician. But none of them drew the glances of his eyes or the gift of his heart. Orpheus played so that kings poured ransoms at his feet and the gods themselves tarried to hear him; but he played for peasants and farmers and the silent places of the world as well. He was a wanderer, and stayed his steps nowhere for long. Nowhere, that is, until one day he met Eurydice.”
Raphael began to count the leaves remaining on the crab-apple from the previous autumn, but it was a thankless task. The wind picked up and they blurred in his vision, and several were severed by a gust that made Hazel bend her head and grip her coat tightly about herself.
“No one knows what made her of all women comely to his eyes, nor who nor what she was. She might have been beautiful as Aphrodite or wise as Athena, gentle as Hestia or fierce as Artemis, graceful as a nymph or radiant as the dawn. But of that we know nothing: nothing but that to Orpheus she was beautiful as sunlight and shadow on a high valley, and that one day he met her.”
Raphael’s mind was treacherous: it told him things he did not want to know. It told him, for instance, exactly what had happened that day, how the sun had been in full summer splendour and he had sat by a forest pool with it warm on his head when she came upon him. There were two deer and a dog and a goat with a hen on its back listening to him play, and she had smiled at him until he stopped playing and looked at her.
“Some say they were married, and others not, but all are agreed that one day Eurydice was picking flowers by the river when she was bitten by an adder, and that there she died.”
It was such a simple story. A year and a half he had known her, if that. It was one of those years that he thought had come before he was twenty-one, or about that age; before the Great Game Aurieleteer had fully crushed him into cold competence under its rhythmic pounding thrust of challenge and counter-challenge.
A year when she made him speak and a year when she listened to him. He had not known what a conversation could be, till that day and that year, never guessed that in speaking there could be as much delight for him as there was in music. Music had always been the only activity where his body did exactly what his mind desired of it.
He had not looked at anyone the way he had looked at her: he had nearly forgotten he was human until she asked him. She had listened to him speak of what he had seen, and she had spoken to him of what she had thought, and they had been happy. And then one day he was away on an errand of his duty, and when he returned she was gone as if she had never been.
“Orpheus was disconsolate. But he acted on his grief and he went to the gates of the underworld and, playing, he made his passage there. By his music he gained access to the land of the dead, though he was yet living. Charon ferried him across the Acheron, the river of woe, and Cerberus the three-headed dog let him pass. The Kindly Ones with brazen claws and serpentine hair listened to his playing and were quieted with awe, and all the dead crowded close to hear him.”
Raphael looked down on Hazel walking around the garden in thickening shadows. She did not look up, just hugged her arms to her breast. The grass rippled in the wind. The wind. Of course, this was the North Wind coming into its place. His place. Orpheus’ friend Calaïs was the son of the North Wind.
“Tantalus who is tormented by unfulfilled desire, Ixion on the burning wheel of his sacrilege, Sisyphus with his rock for cheating the death which cannot be evaded, the murderous Danaïdes trying to fill their sieves with water, all these he passed, and all they, the noted damned, were rested and refreshed by his music, as never before or since have they been. For truly he was a very great musician.”
In the west was gathering a leaden sunset. Hazel looked up just as he thought the colour a sickly cast for the dung-beetle of the sun. Her face was dumb to him, though she faltered to a stop to stare at him. He gazed at her steadily and in the background heard Sherry speaking as she had spoken fit to enchant another king for a thousand and one nights.
“At length he came to the grove of cypress and pomegranate and yew in which are the iron thrones of the King of the Dead and his pale Queen.”
Hazel did not seem to want to look away. They were not far from each other; if the window had been open he might almost have been able to reach down to her. Her eyes were dark grey and rimmed with black where mascara had run. They bored into him so that he could not see the rest of her face.
“Now know this,” said Sherry: “the king of Tartarus had a heart of stone. The only thing that had moved it was the Spring herself, Demeter’s daughter Persephone. It was her he seized and she who sat gravely beside him for that half of the year which the earth mourns as winter. For she was the daughter of a goddess, but had eaten of a pomegranate in the underworld, and those who eat the food of the dead are bound to its laws.”
Like in Fairyland, Raphael thought. Hazel looked like she could use a touch of magic; the very slightest touch. Too much would harm her. His head was light and his hands against the windowsill did not belong to him; their calluses were wrong. He breathed in deeply until he knew that the air, at least, was his own. He raised his hand just slightly to point towards the west.
As Hazel turned he wrenched a cleft in the clouds so that light flooded out. It was burning gold, and stitched the gap between the sun and the earth with threads of bright fire. But Hazel’s face, returned to him as she passed out of the courtyard, was full of a brighter and more sustained light.
The clouds cleaved together again like the Symplegades crashing on the dove’s tail-feathers, and all the weight of the world landed back on his shoulders. He slumped against the glass, wishing he could fade away and disappear, wishing he were Atlas turned to stone. Sherry continued on with her tale.
“Orpheus played so that the desiccated heart of Hades softened and became for a moment green with joy, and his bride, whose coming was autumn and whose going spring, smiled, smiled as she had never smiled in that country before, as if his music was water of life in the land of Dis. And the King of the Dead spoke to Orpheus the great musician:
“‘Mortal,’ said he, ‘why have you come hither before your time?’
“Orpheus replied: ‘I have come for my beloved, who died untimely, that she may live a full span with me. And then we both of us shall come to you, for we are indeed but mortal, and we shall be yours until the stars fall.’
“The king deliberated. Orpheu
s played, and his music touched the king so that even he felt compassion, who gathers all that comes to be into his kingdom, as Ocean gathers all waters. And he said: ‘Then take her and go. But take care that you do not look back to her before you reach the light, or else you shall surely lose her.’
“Orpheus accepted this condition. He turned and went out from the grove of cypresses and yew and pomegranate. Again the crowd of the dead pressed close, the blessed of the Elysian Fields and the damned of Erebus both, but nowhere could he see her whom he sought. If she walked behind him it was silently, and she did not weigh down Charon’s ferry as he did when he crossed, and he heard neither footsteps nor breath behind him as he climbed the long, long road out of the darkness.”
Sherry paused a moment and her voice was grave when she continued. Raphael closed his eyes against the light reflected in the glass and tried to listen only to the timbre of her voice, but he had long ago closed his ears to song and he could not help but be drawn in by her words.
“Here the tales diverge, and some say one thing, and some say another, and the versions refuse to admit concord of meaning. I have heard it said that Orpheus continued on into the light and when he turned she was there, and hand in hand they went into the day. According to that story they lived out their lives in all happiness together, and when they died it was Orpheus’ music that was remembered and little more. It is true that on the nine worlds there are many songs that are called Orpheus’, and that this tale is little known.
“Others say the true tale is that Orpheus doubted the god’s word as he made his way from the land of the dead; doubted so terribly that he turned before he reached the light. But she was there, and when he turned she dwindled into shade until when he reached out to her there was naught but darkness to meet his touch.
“In this story he tried to gain entrance again into Tartarus, but Charon blocked his ears, and the Acheron is not a river to swim across, and Orpheus was abandoned to his doubled grief. It is said that his sorrow maddened him and poisoned his music such that when he came out again from the secret places of the earth those who had adored his music now shunned him in his madness. The winds and waves and the mountains mourned with him until all thought that the earth had again lost her beloved, so dark had it grown.
“There were those so enraged by his laments that they tried to stop him, but his music was yet too powerful. When they drew near their limbs grew heavy with his sorrow. If they tried to hurt him from afar their stones and spears and arrows remembered his glory and fell harmless to the ground at his feet. Finally a band of Maenads, women who follow the god of wine, came upon him. They were flushed with the zeal of their god and their clamour was such to drown out even his music.
“In their fury they overcame him, who had overmastered the Sirens, and tore him bodily to pieces, and when he was dead they threw his head into the river. It is said that it floated out to sea and to the island of Lemnos, where it prophesied as an oracle until the god of prophecy took pity and silenced it.”
Outside black-winged night mantled over the garden, waiting for the light to court her: the moon was still far under the horizon. The wind blew, but it did not seem to know its proper work, and it whistled meaninglessly through the hollow places.
“But the story I have heard,” said Scheherezade the Storyteller, “is that though he doubted he went on until he came to the mouth of the cave, and when he stood in the light streaming in he turned. And there behind him was Eurydice. But she had not yet reached the light herself; and he lost her.
“And I have heard it said that when he went again after her and found the land of the dead barred against him he swore he would find out its secrets. It is true that for many centuries there have been rumours that there are those who say they follow the secret teachings of Orpheus, who understood great mysteries. But they do not claim that he found Eurydice again; only that he found God.”
The wind outside sounded like a distant cataract. Inside the room there was a deep silence. Kasian broke it: “What do you think, Raphael?”
Raphael breathed in very deeply so that he was his own again, and only then turned towards them. “I think,” he said, “that it is a very beautiful story.”
“Yes it is,” Angelica said, fumbling ineffectually in her pockets. Raphael stared at her, then strode across the room to offer her his handkerchief. More than anything else, that his stride was quick and sure and his voice cool and calm told him how far he had come from who he had once been.
But because he did not want Kasian or Sherry to ask him too many questions he did not add what was foremost in his mind: that it was a very beautiful story, but that it was not true. There had been no journey to the underworld, no petition before the god of the dead, no prohibition and no promise, no word to doubt. There had been none of it but the madness and the storms and the grief and the abyss yawning at his feet.
He had never had recourse to the lands beyond the fields we know. He did not know what happens after death; and Eurydice had died. He had tasted of the River of Woe without ever being able to cross it.
He had seen the Abyss, had seen the darkness below, had tried so foolishly to fight. And after he had destroyed the island of Phos—most beautiful island of Ysthar, once—he had seen that Orpheus was dead as a shadow.
He had stood on the edge of the sea looking at the roiling water where there once had been an island, and it was then that he renounced his music. His music had led him to madness, to the breaking of the world he had sworn to keep safe.
Duty—Raphael thought bitterly of what Will had said, about the perils of choosing duty over conscience—but when his conscience had led to death—duty remained. He had thrown his lirin down, turned to see Calaïs the son of the North Wind pick it up, place it in a chest, say, “One day you’ll want this.”
With that innocent defiance their friendship had broken as utterly as his heart, as the scarred world where the sea was rough as whitewater rapids. Orpheus was dead with Phos, as Raphael had died with Astandalas, and he—he had forgotten what names he’d assumed then; there had been so many since then—he went into the wilderness. In place of his music he learned to speak and to walk and to act among men, and no one knew now that once he had been a great musician, and known joy. Calaïs had taken the chest to the garden of the Hesperides for safe-keeping, and there the chest had remained, in the bottom of the tower where the nymphs had left it, never opened or even moved in all the years since this story was new.
Raphael had never quite been able to forgive Calaïs for that.
“Well,” Sherry said, “that’s the story. I’ll get the food.”
“I’ll help,” Angelica said, and both women disappeared.
Kasian turned to Raphael and spoke doubtfully. “Are you … well?”
He straightened his back against the weight of the sky. “Should I not be?”
“You merely … you look a bit pale.” Raphael stared at him, knowing this was meant charitably. “I thought—What you said earlier—I’m sorry I brought it up.”
It took him a moment to disentangle his thoughts from the shadow falling across them. “You weren’t to know.”
Kasian fiddled with the tassel on his cushion. “Yes, but … Did you like Orpheus’ music? You always wanted music so badly, and—”
“He was a very good musician,” Raphael said severely, clamping down on himself.
“So you did hear him play?”
Raphael’s head was muzzy with a thunderous headache. Too little sleep, he thought. He tried to reckon up how long it had been since he last slept. Not since Sunday. That in itself had not been either very restful or very long—he had slept perhaps an hour and a half—and the last time before that had probably been the Tuesday before.
No—it had been the Wednesday—or was it Thursday? He couldn’t remember clearly. He didn’t see how he would be able to sleep this night either, not with the winds running down his magic, not with the skies opening, not with the Game ending.
He tried to persuade himself that Kasian probably was trying to be kind.
“I told you,” he said, and to his half-deaf ears his voice was rough and ugly as concrete, “he was a very good musician.”
Kasian’s voice suddenly rang with kingliness; he used, in the Tanteyr fashion, the royal pronoun for himself. “Don’t take that tone with me.”
Simmering rage overmastered Raphael, an acrid wrath jagged as broken glass: he wanted to hit his brother. Instead he leaped to his feet and back to the window. A low keening wail erupted out of nowhere and drove the remaining leaves of the crab-apple before it, struck the water from the sky.
The pain splintered into lightning. His hands scrabbled for purchase but the air slipped away from his touch. The memories in his thoughts were chaotic, nauseatingly inchoate, images in his imagination that dissolved into profound blackness.
He blinked, and for a moment his emotions so overcame him he saw no magic.
Inside the room draperies swayed decorously. In the faint ghost of his image on the window he saw that his face was perfectly calm, as if all this storm were two fish below the surface of a pond. Sherry and Angelica were laughing as they came back out from the kitchen, bearing food on wooden trays.
“Where did that come from?” Angelica said. “I’ve never seen a storm come up so fast.”
The sky was writhing: a storm roiled out of the upset teapot of his soul.
Raphael drew a deep shuddering breath that he felt to the soles of his feet. Outside the wind howled like a demon wailing. He gripped the window-sill and refused to speak until he knew he would not shout or rage or rave or crack like the bottle that the woman on the Underground platform had knocked.