Till Human Voices Wake Us Page 24

  Don’t look back, Gabriel had warned him—when was that? Sunday night? An age of the world ago?

  You are not the Lord Phoenix, and I am not the Shadow King.

  No.

  It was an age of the world ago, he realized. The Great Game Aurieleteer was over. Parallel times around the nine worlds would be measured from this date.

  Don’t look back.

  Sherry, telling the story of Orpheus the musician, of his journey to the Land of the Dead, of the prohibition and the promise. Will, looking askance at him when he said that there was a conflict of duties in the tale, replying: And what is she, his beloved? His muse?

  No, he thought forlornly; just his beloved. And he had not gone after her, because he was the Lord of  Ysthar, and he had duties.

  Don’t look back.

  But in the stories they told, the prohibition was not to look back before he reached the light. Raphael could not say he had reached the light. He was sitting in the dark between the phoenix cloak and the fire, and the wooden chest that Calaïs had salvaged for him from the ruins of Phos still stood in the corner where he had abandoned it. Never opened, never moved. No doubt Circe and the psychologists would know what to make of such an object in his living room, but he had trained himself not to see it, had forgotten it, until Kasian came and made him look anew on his house.

  Don’t look back.

  It was the quiet moment of choice. Raphael was deep within himself. The desire struck him again, worse than the harbour-wave blow of Circe’s magic throwing him against the stone. He trembled with its force, wishing more than anything he dared turn his back and let the flood take him.

  You are not the Lord Phoenix.

  But his duties still stood there … the sword of Ysthar, the crown, the God’s price, they were still his. He had not lost the Game. He had won.

  What if he were to become the Shadow King?

  No.

  The negation cracked through him like the strange desire, shuddering the magic in his house. The fire flared: but that was all. The honey wind still twirled gently in the room. Kasian still sat there, looking at his wine-glass, patient.

  Don’t look back.

  From the window he could hear quite clearly the plashes from the fountains and rills hidden about the garden. Somewhere not far away the blackbird burbled a few notes, questioning the hour, then fell silent again. Again the thought came to him, that in that moment he would have given anything to play.

  He had won the Game because he had refused to play by the Adversary’s rules. Yet the Game had not been with the Adversary, but with Circe.

  Circe who had not been in the Abyss after all, who had not taken from her husband the powers that had broken Astandalas, who was beautiful in her magic.

  She had called the new game the game of truth and consequences. Truth, which he found so hard to speak. He couldn’t find words to say anything more to his brother, who sat there very quietly, smiling into his wine-glass, patient.

  Don’t look back.

  Patience never was Kasian’s strongest suit. And consequence … ? Here he was, the first person ever to sit across from Raphael in his house, the first person to see Raphael in the Lord of  Ysthar, the first person to name him truly since she had fallen into the crack in the mountainside.

  How endless those bells had been, when Astandalas fell. Three days he had thought one.

  Nearly a third of his life, measured by phoenix years, he had given to the Great Game Aurieleteer. Half his life to Ysthar. Five thousand years by the sun he had forced himself to play, and hated—

  No, this was a place of truth. He knew that by the pause, as if he stood in the balance while the feather of Maat drifted down on the other side.

  Truth was, Circe was right, and he had become something much greater than he had been by virtue of the Game. He could not say in truth that he had hated every moment of it. And consequence … ? Circe was alive, because she had made him see something of goodness even in the Game created by the Enemy.

  The Enemy, who had called him cousin.

  It was very silent but for the blackbird in the garden. Starting, stopping again. The fire was once more subdued, creeping along the edges of the wood.

  Truth was, he was more willing to bet his life for someone else’s soul than he was for his own. Will had said as much to him, and Robin. It was true he wouldn’t hold anyone else to that standard. And consequence … ?

  Sword, crown, and the third thing, the one he had wanted so badly. He had not wanted the crown and the sword, but the lirin. The lirin: the instrument the Shadow King had used to play the song of creation, before he became the Eater of Worlds, before he became the Enemy, when he was just the darkness cast by the created standing before the Lord of Light.

  The Lord of Light had given him the lirin. Surely it was not wholly evil, surely it had not been given him to damn him, surely it had been given as a true gift.

  Raphael had sold his future for the price of that lirin, for the pure desire to play one song for the God in the golden wood. He had played it, played the light singing to the light, as on Sunday his magic had tried to reach up through the dragonfire to the fire behind it. Tried, and failed, because dragonfire was not light of the light, and he had forgotten how to transform it into something greater than its parts.

  Forgotten? The thought was bitter as the dragonfire in his hands had been. Forgotten … spurned … rejected …

  Truth, he thought. Here he was in his house, his home, the one place he was true to himself, where he tried to be honest to himself, say the truth that was so hard to say—he had no words—he never had words—why else hide himself in anonymity? No one knew who the Lord of  Ysthar was, and why? Kasian had not asked him that. No one had ever asked him that.

  But Kasian had come. Forgotten, spurned, rejected, he had thought he was; until his brother came on account of a phoenix dream, and said: I will see you unmasked yet.

  And consequence … here he was, on the balance point, weighing his heart against himself. His satall was not here to brood over his soul: she was in the garden, waiting, waiting perhaps to see what way the balance would turn, what the ending of the story would be.

  He had thought Wednesday would be the end of all his stories.

  And yet Scheherezade the Storyteller had promised him that there was always another story after one finished.

  He came close to the bare moment, and admitted to himself, in that still quiet place of choosing, that what he wanted was a new story.

  No. Not a new story. He wanted a new song.

  I will see you unmasked yet.

  As deliberately as when he stepped into character Raphael let slip the shreds of the pseudonymities he found he was even yet clutching to himself, like the rags a beggar wore of his forlorn dignity.

  Naked to himself the desire called him as strongly as the pea-vine of music had called him in the river. He wasn’t any more certain now that this was the way out of the darkness, the way to the surface, the way to the air, but this was after, the place of truth and consequences, and he had lost the last of those masks and it was time, time at last to accept the consequences.

  There in the still moment of choice he knew with complete certainty that damnation and salvation were laid before him, and he had come to the crux.

  Without even pretending to himself it was just that he was stiff, he stretched out his arms. His right shoulder twinged a little but not very badly, not really. His left arm was fine. He looked sidelong at his brother. Kasian’s eyes were half-closed and he seemed to be meditating on the wine.

  The candle flame burned calmly. The phoenix cloak smelled of damask roses.

  There was no reason, Raphael thought slowly, that he could not play without the music. Everyone else did, after all. Perhaps he would not be able to write music as he had once, but … and but, and but, and but.

  The blackbird was trying out its song again. The merle. He’d always preferred that name for it, the merle, English onl
y via the French. It was agallen in Tanteyr. Each note fell into his ears like rain.

  He unlocked the door of his mind that kept out music, and let himself listen.

  It was like looking at a scattering of points and suddenly realizing the pure curve that joined them, like looking at a room and suddenly realizing that its proportions followed the golden rule.

  The melody came out of nowhere and he wanted to cry, for here, here in the dark thirstiness of his mind, here at last was sweet water.

  He stood as quietly as he knew how; Kasian didn’t move. He crossed the room, knelt painfully before the brass-bound wooden chest, hesitated. There was only the haphazard pile of books between him and the lid. He lifted away the books, set them gently on the floor. The brass latch was cool under his touch, and unfastened easily, the lock moving under his hand like the ones on the lapis chest Circe had brought; the hinges didn’t squeak.

  It was more the memory of a scent than anything else. Early summer or late spring, a day that had begun with songs to the rising sun, and ended with him asking Eurydice to marry him. The Tanteyr did not give rings to mark betrothals, but rather crowns. In each marriage they were the Lord Phoenix and Shargán of the Desert plighting their troth at the foot of the World Tree; the marriage bed was canopied with stars for those that rose above the crown of that tree, far beyond the mortal worlds.

  Raphael had had no money then for a plighting-crown, and the crown of  Ysthar was not his to give away. But on the morning of that day, as the sun climbed heavenward and the air was fresh and clear, he had gone walking with Eurydice, and he had called the white rose into being as they walked.

  I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, he murmured silently to himself, lifting out the chaplets, which were withered and brown now, but there—in the heart of his home, in the tower that had once belonged to the Hesperides, in the heart of a garden where the phoenix lived—they were brown, not dust. Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine …

  He could still smell the ghost of the white roses, the first there ever were. Underneath them lay his lirin and its bow, wrapped in a weaving that depicted the West Wind bearing Psyche home. The small remnants of his happiness that Calaïs had salvaged for him out of the ruins of Phos.

  What friends he had, he thought, who would do such things for him.

  He touched the instrument with clumsy hands—his finger caught on a high string. A note spilled forth, half-broken by the weight of his attention. Cold water, piercing wind, the flash of a leaping fish, the stab of light on a mirror, the descant of trembling aspens. He was trembling as he lifted it out, as he stood, as he turned to his brother.

  Kasian did not appear to have moved. The candle flame danced on the table, giving off the clean warm scent of beeswax. The wine was motionless in the glass he held, a perfect circle of gold-lit red. The blackbird still trickled out a few notes, stopped, started again. The garden felt full of mystery; the moon had not yet set, was gilding the three trees he could just see through the eastern window.

  Of course the lirin sounded true. The story went that it was to this instrument that the nine worlds were tuned.

  Raphael leaned back against the mantelpiece. The flagstones were cool and comforting under his feet, the fire warm on his calves: he shifted his weight a few times until he felt secure. His mind did not remember what to do, but his muscles did, once he allowed the memories to surface, to leap up from where they had lain long and long amidst the stones and dust of his memory palace. Such a strange sensation, for him whose kinetic memory was otherwise almost entirely conscious.

  Sayo Alen telling him to straighten his back, to breathe from his gut, to hold the lirin so and hold the bow so—quite different from cello or viola or violin—to place his fingers on the neck so—above all, to play like he meant it.

  He had never had a problem playing like he meant it.

  He breathed from his gut. His ribs hurt, but he welcomed the pain as a way to distance himself from his emotions, which were once again far too strong for him to bear.

  Except he didn’t have to bear them—not here, not now, not when he held his lirin at last in his hands to speak for him.

  He dismissed everything from his mind but for the way the air fell upon his face, like velvet and lace upon his skin, as he lifted the bow to the strings and slid it across.

  He saw stars falling like petals, and smelled allspice and roses.

  He felt his way like one newly blind in once-familiar territory. Once-familiar, indeed, once his shelter and his strength, his voice and what he wished to say. His voice was mute—he had no words—but he played so that the honey-coloured wind whirled in the candlelight and wove itself through his hair.

  There was too much light in his eyes: magic and firelight and candlelight blurred together, blinding him. He sensed the edge of a precipice approaching but fell before he could help it. The music fumbled but caught him and held him and cradled him to the ground.

  Oh, it caught him.

  For a moment the world was fully present in his mind, a tracery of memory around the unknown beauty of the valley in the wildlands where he had never gone.

  He almost couldn’t bear to stop playing, until some rusty part of him cried out that the piece was finished and any more would be too much. The shock of that sure instinct made him lift the bow on the instant of the perfect ending, and stand there panting and shaking with wonder and utter exhaustion.

  His heart might have been the hammer that wrought Blake’s tiger. It thundered in his ears as he turned—oh, the difficulty of that turn, for this the first time he had played—to see how Kasian would respond.

  His brother was weeping.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fourth Song

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Song of Songs

  Raphael stared at him in astonishment. Kasian, weeping?

  He squinched his own eyes against the light blazing in them to see and be sure. He could see that something in his brother had broken because of his playing. Kasian was crying with unhabitual effort, shoulders trembling.

  He reached out unsteadily to deposit the wine-glass on the table. Raphael found himself automatically stepping forward to catch it, and then he was there right beside his brother, who folded his hands up against his face as if to block out Raphael’s presence.

  Despite the gesture, something slow and shy prompted him to reach out and embrace him. Kasian did not stiffen or pull away, so Raphael leant his head down over his. Sorrow welled up, squeezed everything else in him to the sides: and then it burst and he, too, wept. There were so many lost years, so many wounds left unhealed, so many things unsaid. His heart had broken so long ago he had forgotten that it even could be whole.

  After a while his legs quivered with the effort of standing. He slid to a seat on the edge of the couch, the lirin and bow banging awkwardly as he moved. He said, wonderingly, “I’ve forgotten how to hold them.”

  Kasian shifted upright in a kind of panic joy. Stared wildly, reached again for his glass, drank it off in a great gulp, poured another for each of them. Raphael let himself slide properly into the seat. From this angle the phoenix cloak was shimmeringly beautiful, a fall of firelight.

  Kasian wiped his face awkwardly. Raphael pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to loan him. His brother scrubbed at his face. “I cannot believe you remembered to take a handkerchief with you today.”

  Raphael had no answer. He had no idea where the handkerchief had come from, either. He stroked his hands up and down the smooth wood of the lirin. It felt so fine to his hand, all the calluses he had different from what they had been. The wood was warm. Strange that it was his hands that felt wrong, not the instrument. Certainly to Raphael’s ears it was perfect, though his was now an inexpert touch.

  He plucked each string gently, nine of them sounding out, from the high one like aspens to the low note that was said to be turned to the hear
twood of Arvath. They all sounded strange and yet absolutely right to his ears. The air thrummed happily in response, his magic unfolding like the flower-dawn he had seen Wednesday morning, awaiting the end of the Game.

  This was after.

  Kasian spoke quietly. “I wish I’d known before that you had music like this … I wish I … It’s more than that, though, isn’t it? This is the key to the door no one knows. The golden key. It sounds so real. It’s like—like—like hearing a tree sing.”

  Gabriel’s message slammed through his mind again: Don’t look back.

  There would never be a better opportunity than this, Raphael thought. He hesitated, wondering if he dared speak. (So much easier to stay silent … was that what Gabriel’s message had meant? Don’t look back.)

  This was him, naked of his masks. The Raphael who was left under them—how he wanted to be a person who could trust—and if this was a new story, a new song, if this truly was after—

  He spoke awkwardly. “I heard trees sing, before. I could hear … I heard everything as music.” Silence, a soft unfolding silence like another opening flower. “I d-didn’t realize, not until we were about eight and a half, that no one else did.”

  “Didn’t you think it was odd that no one mentioned anything of the sort?”

  Raphael’s voice wavered in and out of control, responding perhaps to Kasian’s gently wry tone, to his own hands on the lirin, to the honey-scented wind playing with the fire.

  “No one mentions parallax, either. I thought it was like that: that hearing that m-music was as common as something shifting over a little bit when you close one eye and back again when you close the other.”

  “And what happened when we were eight to make you realize that hearing music everywhere you go is not as common a sense as sight?”

  “I found teachers.”