Till Human Voices Wake Us Read online

  “I came to find you.”

  “You came too late.”

  There was a plunging silence. Raphael realized in shock he was serious. Kasian raised his hands in something like despair, or anger, or sheer affront: Raphael was contemplating the way he felt, as if he’d snapped a teacup: and his brother thrust him off the bridge.

  The air held him for a moment. The water looked strangely bumpy, lumps of smooth water girdled with braided ripples and pointillist bubbles. He had a confused impression of lights red and white and yellow around him. Then he hit.

  For a moment the water was welcoming, but it did not take long to turn against him. The downstream current dragged at his clothing, his legs, his shoes; the upstream, almost its equal in force, yanked his hair across his face and his collar tight against his throat. The tide was turning.

  He spun. He opened his eyes. The river was a deep murky green fading to black in all four directions. Two drew him, opposite each other, though he had no idea whence they came nor whither they led. One tugged relentlessly on a hard knot somewherebetween his throat and his gut. The other one was as dark but from it came a thin trickle of music, old familiar music. Sunlight and shadow in his mind, the softest echo of a song he had tried to capture in the thought of high green valleys on a windy day. Music he had once known with every pulse of his heart.

  He spun. Now the other two directions were above and below him, both of these flecked with silver bubbles of air. His ears were ringing with the tintinnabulation that was not his music. The edge between the greenlit water and the darkly shining was blurred with ribbons that might have been magic or might have been waterweed or might have been both. No, not magic. He still had no magic. Whatever the ribbons were they came with deathly slowness through the silver froth until they wrapped—gently, slowly, softly—around his limbs.

  He spun. He had no idea which direction led to the surface, upstream, downstream, the river-bed—and, he knew—without words, simply with ancient instinct—three of those ways were death. The water was heavy on his skin and his thoughts heavy in his mind—he searched slowly as a somnambulist after that echo of a memory of music—music that drifted away from him.

  It danced tenderly just outside of his reach, a thread of gold-green music far too slight to hold his weight. But he wanted only to hold it, just one more time, just to hold—once he had tried to support himself with it, and that time the thread had snapped. He had learned his lesson then, as the tapestry of which that thread was one bright strand unravelled under his fumbling touch.

  He had been so good at music once; and yet now it was all gone.

  He reached out to the tendril of music but hesitated before his hand closed around it. And what if he broke this phantasm? Would the remnant of the great song, his lost song of songs, break rhythm and fall silent? What would happen then? How would he know?

  And what, whispered yet another voice, even more quietly, what would his dying now do to his world, his mad beautiful Ysthar? … What would happen to all that extra magic stored up behind his will, those winds bound for tomorrow by his attention, those other powers he had arranged for the end of the Game? What would happen to Robin, the only other great mage at hand, the one most likely to be affected besides himself and Circe? … What would happen to Kasian … ? Kasian who had come too late …

  Kasian had come too late … or too late for everything except destroying Raphael this night before the end of the Game.

  In that, he thought bleakly, Kasian had succeeded.

  Yet Raphael had given up his music for his magic, and now with his magic gone he was offered again his music.

  The water was fading to black closer to hand, the shadows falling closer. He was completely disoriented now, the only thing he could feel besides the tug-o’-war pressures the little spill of light cupped in his hands. He wanted to follow it. He had no idea whether it came of the One Above or that shadow below, the shadow that he had stood against once, full of folly that anyone could stand against it untainted.

  His whole body seemed to concentrate itself in the place where his nose joined his throat. He clenched in a spasm of passion—and thought, with some bare part of himself that still cared—it was better he died humiliated tomorrow than taint that little remnant light, if light it was from above.

  He uncupped his hand and it drifted away like a jellyfish or a will-o’-the-wisp. He stared after it. He had no air. He had no thoughts. As soon as it was gone he was sure he had failed the last test. He had no being except that he thought his chest might shatter, but what suffocated him he could not have said.

  He closed his eyes against the darkness and wished he had died by dragonfire and desire and not by cold water.

  Something touched him. He flailed around in instinctual terror. A silver cloud of bubbles enveloped—Kasian—Kasian? Kasian with his arms reaching out to him, face twisted in exasperation, in fear, in hope. Kasian.

  Raphael stopped struggling in astonishment, and his feet touched bottom.

  With his feet on the river-bed he knew at least which way was the surface. Kasian started to swim upwards. Raphael could see nothing but darkness, followed doubtfully. His feet were leaden and kept pulling him down and sideways, and he had to twist around in the water to get his shoes off. The water was still dragging his clothing around his neck but the upstream rush was slowing, slowing, slowing towards its weakest movement.

  He hit something on the bottom and again pushed upwards. The water was unbearable on his arms and he struggled to undo his coat. It was tangled in the strap of his satchel and he hit the ground again, sinking up to his ankles in ooze, as he writhed out of the bag. Kasian grabbed him by one hand and began to tug him along. Raphael could hardly resist when he was so bewildered and couldn’t see the way to go; once his feet left the river-floor he lost his orientation again.

  He was halfway there—he was sure of it—when a noise and a light rang through the water. He gasped in surprise and inhaled water, choking it out again in sudden atavistic panic. Twice the explosion repeated itself, three times driving a sledgehammer into his skull.

  For a moment he forgot his brother: but Kasian did not forget him. He seized Raphael’s shoulder and neck in a firm grip and dragged him upwards. Raphael flailed at the noise and the light and the pressure and did his best to follow. It was familiar light—the brilliant white and gold fire of his phoenix—the sound was a great horn, deep and full and terrible as the hammer-stroke of dawn.

  They broke the surface while the last trumpet-call yet hung in the air. Raphael listened to the solid note as it died, wishing that it might go on and on until it drove all the silence of the world before it and left music. But of course all it gave him was his magic.

  This time when he slipped from Kasian’s grasp it was because his mind was so full of power he couldn’t control his limbs. The suddenly responsive winds filled the river-bed with a billow of flung spume and night airs, twisting around them as Kasian once more grabbed him. This time they got to a ladder.

  Raphael stared at it, uncomprehending, until Kasian shoved him towards it. Then he grasped the lowest rungs with clumsy fingers and, with his brother urging him on, heaved himself up it. Finally he stood dripping on the pavement. His chest was rising and falling uncontrollably and he found that he was shaking.

  Scheherezade ran up from somewhere and stood, also panting, before him. The phoenix feather she held cast a warm light on their faces, but he could see that she was pale and her eyes started. She looked at him blankly, and the feather drooped in her hands.

  He had given it to her at their first meeting, when she knew him only as the Lord of Ysthar, so that she could call on him if ever she found herself in grave need. He had promised her he would come, if she called from anywhere on Ysthar. He wondered where she had come from now. It was the first time she had ever summoned him.

  His brother was there, wet and breathless, but unhurt and unshaking. Kasian’s hands were clenched into fists and a few freckles stood
out starkly on his face. Lit from below by the fading phoenix light his eyes were dark and unfathomable as the river. Raphael’s heart was leathery and alien and completely unable to deal with Kasian’s strange actions. But—oh—Kasian had come—but—oh, the wild magic was writhing through him.

  His mind was ballooning with the magic, the winds coiled around Stonehenge, the tightening powers. He was giddy with power, with all that high magic he had called down. He could feel it vibrating through the ground, the air, the way the light fell upon him. He saw his wall, the dark hill, the clouds tucked close like a comforter.

  He looked again at Sherry and Kasian, who were staring at him. He was completely unable to decipher their expressions, not through the magic swarming like bees through his senses. Bees, he thought, perhaps there would be bees in the spring—if there were a spring—it was the last night of winter—it was the last night of the Great Game Aurieleteer—and, O God, he thought, O God, O God, his magic was back to him.

  Sherry said, “There is always another end to a story.”

  She spoke intensely, seriously, lit by phoenix light, as if this were the most important thing she had to say in an ongoing conversation. But there was no ongoing conversation. There was just the magic unfurling in him.

  With a huge effort Raphael pulled his attention down to the immediate circumstances; but he had no words.

  With her face again radiant, though he couldn’t see her face, just the magic, O God, the magic, she said, “If you can bear it—there is always a choice. Always.”

  He knew his choice, he had made it, he had called down the winds, and the winds had come. The Game was its own story, and its ending was already written, had been written in early days of creation, when the Adversary fell. Circe would die, or he, lest the world fall.

  Kasian opened his mouth but said nothing, just stared. Raphael surprised himself by smiling and saying: “Good night.”

  He took a step backwards from them, preparing to follow the magic that was calling him. Just as he turned Kasian said, with a curious intensity Raphael noted but did not understand, “This is not you either. I will see you unmasked yet.”

  The magic was calling him. But the intensity in Kasian’s voice pulled him, and he hesitated, turning, looking back.

  His face felt wide open with duty and inclination fighting; he couldn’t spare any attention to control it, not with the magic booming through him, not with—but he hesitated—until Sherry said, “Go, if you must.”

  His glance slid to Kasian, who said: “The phoenix lives by fire, and woe betide the one who tries to quench it.” And he bowed a farewell without flourishes, if not without irony.

  The bells of Big Ben tolled and Raphael was reminded of the endless alarm-bells of Astandalas when the empire had fallen, and also of that message of Sunday night. He could feel his heart thudding the refrain of the warning Gabriel had given him—don’t look back—don’t—don’t.

  The bells rang down the wind to call him home and to the last night of the Game. He turned and followed the sound, relief hammering hard in his throat. He thought it was relief.

  Chapter Nine

  The Last Night of the Game

  He sank into the shields around his house as completely as he had fallen into the river. But he understood these patterns, these energies, these interwoven and imbricated pleatings of power and thought and ancient metaphysical currents.

  He lit the fire in a firework burst of magic, just because he could, because the dammed magic was so fully present to him he wasn’t really aware of anything but the ribbons of power circling him like a maypole. He was alive: he was alive: the world was alert and waiting, the magic tense and awaiting his will like a dog before the hunt.

  Moonset: he climbed up to the roof to stand on the edge of the tower’s platform. The chimney ran up one side of it, so he could stand there with the warm stone at his back. From there he looked eastwards, to the hill with its three trees still lit by the Moon. She was just off full. He unwove the cloud cover over southern England. The winds roosting on Saint Paul’s stirred as his magic passed over them.

  With the borders between the worlds closed he felt strangely benumbed. Not in the same way as he had under the effects of the nirgal slaurigh, but more as if some few notes were dampened and mute. Or more as if accustomed colours in a palette, or accustomed flavours in a dish, were missing. Without the tang of Alinor and Daun, Voonra and Arvath, Fairyland and Zunidh, Kaphyrn and Colhélhé and, yes, even Eahh, Ysthar felt muffled and incomplete. Waiting.

  Waiting for sunrise, he thought. Waiting for the end of the Game. Waiting to see how the end would come. In a bang or a whimper, or in strange convolutions as those wrought by Urm and Swallow, or Agrinalaine and Ghizhaur, or the Moss Mage and Ogali the Kilkannany Cobbler.

  Sunrise came like a flower opening across the horizon. He met the sun’s rising with open eyes strengthened by much magic, gobbling the sight almost hungrily, just in case.

  Then he let all considerations of his heart go and stepped fully into the role of the Lord of Ysthar, among the greatest living magi of the nine worlds.

  He descended the spiral staircase through his attic and into his bedroom where his formal robes hung awaiting this day. Morning-glory blue and ivory and indigo and gold.

  The sword of the Lord Phoenix from the mantelpiece.

  The crown of Ysthar, in the form of three rose branches twisted together.

  He put it on with a faint murmur of words in his mind, lines from Dante, per ch’io e sovra te corono e mitrio.

  Lord of thyself I mitre thee and crown.

  This was the first time he had ever worn the crown. He set it on his head gently, and in that moment he wished Kasian were there to say farewell.

  But Kasian was safely away: and Raphael had work to do. This was the end of the Game. He was the Lord of Ysthar, and he had work to do.

  He sheathed the sword in folded air and walked out the door with the wind in his ears and magic in his steps.

  The world turned quickly under his feet as if he were wearing seven-league boots, and with the sun at his back he found himself at the Salisbury Plain with no sense of anything but the magic of the world in his mind.

  Chapter Ten

  Aurielete and Fools

  The sky over Stonehenge was milky white with high opalescent clouds, the winds coiled smoothly around it and the grass lying orderly as if it combed. He’d been the one challenged; the location of the final duel was his choice.

  He’d picked Stonehenge because in those days it was barely a place at the far edge of the world, far from the tender new civilizations in the Fertile Crescent where the Game began, far enough the fallout of their duel would harm few, he’d thought.

  He’d not anticipated how the world’s magic would be shaped by his attention and inattentions, not known that the navel of the world could change over time. Not realized that nine years of the phoenix would mean five thousand years of the sun. What had been an edge became a centre, full of old powers.

  He walked into the centre of the circle and considered the stones. With the world gradually tautening to the equinox the ache of missing sarsens and bluestones was disconcerting. With such a weight of power in him it was not a matter of more than casting his thought to it to bring the stones from the slumber of oblivion and dust to their proper positions. He stretched physically and magically and felt utterly calm.

  Circe’s approach was from the west, riding a bay horse sidesaddle, wearing crimson and white and cloth-of-gold and a gold circlet to bind her smouldering hair back from her brow.

  He felt her arrival like a streak of molten gold and violets. The winds swirled briefly about him, then subsided.

  His attention was halfway between the two modes of perception he employed: the one that he thought of as himself, the part of him that walked and dreamed and spoke and was hurt by sticks and stones and words, and that other part that was the lord of the world, who spoke to mountains and rivers and sometimes descende
d into the normal world to discover that half a hundred years had gone by in a conversation or a magical working.

  The moon started its climb over the horizon.

  She came up and stood before him. He thought that she would not miss that the horseshoe curve of arches was like the arms of a throne around him. She stood beside the altar and put her riding gloves down on it with a faint slap. They were an incongruous white kid.

  Around the divided skirts of her gown she wore a belt of woven gold, and suspended from that belt was a sword, the one she had brought back from Eahh: Kavu Zeram. There were many old stories told of it, and of that dark ruby in its hilt. But this was not a contest of swordsmanship, at least not primarily. His own sword’s name was Adonai Adamai, and though it was made of magic it had no particular attributes that he knew of. He unsheathed it from its scabbard of air with a flourish.

  “Well met, O Queen.”

  “My lord,” Circe replied, for there were proprieties to observe. Her face was remote and glorious as the moon whose equator was approaching the horizon down the great avenue of stones to the east.

  Raphael had two sets of cloaking shields, one for protection against magical assault and one for concealment. The moon rose just above its centre; down the aisles of stone he could see it framed by the arches.

  At the moment the moon was perfectly framed he dropped his shields. The first time he had done so this week he had been standing on the outside edge of the world, looking upon the Thunder Dragon, but now he was at the navel of the world, a breath—a heartbeat—before the equinox.

  Circe still had one hand on the altar and now her eyes widened. Her magic was violet and gold and shimmered in the air around her. His—it had always been hard to see his own magic—his was rose-scented and white-gold like a wild dawn, or the phoenix of Ysthar, or the sun.

  The heart beat, the world dropped like a stone, and she struck.