Till Human Voices Wake Us Read online

  Her eyes widened again. This time it was almost certainly embarrassment, for she scrambled to her feet and ran off down the hill. He got up to follow, but his knees were so unsteady he was obliged to sit down again. All the normal noise of his garden started up in a thunderous rising chord. He was suddenly very aware of his body, and wiped his hands on the sarong.

  There were all sorts of questions he could think to ask: Why so embarrassed? Why the water? (No, that was clear. How the water, yes, that was the question.) Why had Robin enchanted her? He stared westward whither she had vanished, doing his best to think. His mind kept grounding on two questions, a reef the size of a mountain in what he had thought was open sea. How was she alive at all? And why did she not remember him?

  But then he realized that he did not care. He brushed his hand across the strings of his lirin in a sudden triumphant arpeggio and he realized that it did not matter he had no words, did not understand, had not the faintest idea what had happened for her to be there. For she was there, and she had smiled on him.

  He had thought his heart too full for words before. Words were not his strength, and he had forgotten the reaches and heights of feeling that rose up ever loftier beyond the mere constraints of speech. But if someone had asked him a question just then he would have had to answer as Dante did once after another woman gave him greeting, in the street of the City of Flowers when he saw his Beatrice: Love!

  Raphael smiled to himself for he had not thought that word in connection with himself for a very long time now. Finally he decided he could not answer his questions, at least not today, when his mind was too full of—Love!—to allow any other word inside. There was the touch of the divine on her, and he did not know, could not even begin to guess, what that meant. Except that he had already discovered in himself the root of his belief: that his God was—Love! Dante’s love, too, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.

  He stood and went slowly down the hill, lirin under his arm, and into his house. He found Will in the kitchen with Kasian. They were arguing amiably about the best way to make tea, and how much longer the brioches needed to cook. At length Will turned around. “Nice outfit.”

  Kasian laughed. Raphael, too astounded to be embarrassed, could still find no words, and only smiled. He hastened upstairs, tripping near the top on the sarong. He twitched it up, then flung himself into the bedroom. Another slow smile burst into his heart. He beamed at the pictures on the wall. He could go hear Venice rising up in a golden morning, now; could go to the prairies and hear the dawn singing across the wide spaces; above all, could look her in the face. She was alive.

  They would meet again, and he would see what was toward. Surely her memory would come back to her. He would pour music and magic at her feet as if it were the treasure of Fulgor Goldhladen. He would show her all his world, his Ysthar, his wide, mad, beautiful Ysthar.

  She was alive.

  Dressed in something he couldn’t have described, he flung himself back downstairs. Kasian laughed pleasantly at him. “We’ve set the table for breakfast.” They went into the dining room, mimosas in the crystal goblets, tea and coffee ready for Will’s mugs. They’d baked the croissants and brioches, and made bacon and eggs and toast, which last was propped up on the lost piece of Will’s pottery.

  It turned out he had words after all. “I thought I’d left that behind.”

  “We found it in a box in that spare room of yours,” Kasian said. “I was looking for plates and found some wooden trenchers. And that. Will told me it was a toast-rack. I wasn’t sure what it could be.”

  “I can see why you were having difficulties,” Raphael said without thinking. Then he blushed furiously. “Er, Will, I’m sorry, I appreciate that you made them for me, really I do, it’s just … just …”

  He looked beseechingly at his friend, whose face was solemn. For a long moment no one said anything. Raphael was unable to bring himself to say he liked the puce-and-purple object. Will had one of the mugs in his hands. He turned it over a few times, thoughtfully, examining the colour, the faint cracks in the glaze, the chip that spoke of its long use. Then he looked back up at Raphael, and his solemnity cracked apart.

  “You didn’t think I was serious about these, did you?”

  Raphael laughed and sat down. With the music swirling so about him, he said his thoughts: “I did, you know.”

  “And yet you’d lost it.”

  “I half-deliberately meant to leave it behind, and have felt guilty for years on account of it.” Raphael took a mouthful of tea and nearly spat it out when he started laughing again. “Who made this tea? It’s revolting.”

  Kasian pushed the coffee pot towards him. “Will tells me tea is from another part of Ysthar and he’d never drunk it before this year, and I’ve not made it before.”

  “The rule is to put the tea in the pot first, then pour boiling water over it.”

  “And the next time I want to spend a week’s expenses on a drink, I’ll remember that.”

  Raphael sipped the coffee experimentally; it was much more agreeable. He felt simply happy to have them there in his house, to have Will sitting at his table, his brother passing him food. He ate heartily, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so.

  When at length he slowed enough to feel inclined to talk he found Will and Kasian grinning at him. Will finished his toast and said, “Do you know, from Robin’s stories I thought the end of the game would be much more noticeable than it was. I thought that even non-magic folk would feel the effects.”

  Raphael poured himself more coffee. “I have spent a considerable amount of time setting up layers of protective magics so that it wouldn’t. I lived through the fall of Astandalas, which left Ysthar a nearly uninhabited wasteland for, well, thousands of years, and I was determined to avoid that.”

  There was a pause: Raphael realized after a moment he had severely disconcerted them. He wasn’t sure what else to add, finally came up with: “I don’t think we’ve seen the effects at all, actually. I mean, I have, a few, but there will be more. I called down high magics. There will be repercussions.”

  Another pause, then Kasian said, “Shall we sit in the other room?”

  In the living room Will examined pictures, the books still piled on the floor, the cheerful fire Kasian had lit. Raphael moved the lirin from his chair and sat down to watch with it held in his lap. Kasian had brought his coffee cup with him, drank it with an air that made Raphael think of Venice in the days when coffee had first been introduced to Europe.

  Will’s circling brought him to stand next to Kasian; they both regarded him, smiling. Raphael realized he was plucking the strings gently, a counterpoint to his surging joy. He smiled half-apologetically, not sure what the apology was for.

  Kasian set down his cup. “Would you play for us again? Please?”

  “Please!” Will added, throwing himself eagerly onto the floor next to the fire, a position he had often taken in discussions of poetry and philosophy and history, careless of soot or dirt if it allowed him to sit in the light.

  With that thought a song took perfect shape in Raphael’s mind, though the lyrics trailed after (as, to be quite honest, they always had, in every language). He thought—he could ask Will for words, set his poems to music—set the world anew to music—

  Raphael lifted the bow—paused as a joyous wind curled itself through the open windows and settled into minor rufflings in the corners of the room—waited while Ishaa followed it in to her perch on the mantel—and then at last, with none of his earlier hesitation, he began to play.

  About the Author

  Victoria Goddard is a fantasy novelist, gardener, and occasional academic. She has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, walked down the length of England in 2013, and is currently the sexton of an Anglican church in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  She blogs on a miscellany of topics at The Rose and Phoenix Inn, where you are most welcome to come visit, leave a comment, ask what happens nex
t ….

  For news and further information about new releases, you may be interested in joining her mailing list, which you can access from her website or via this link.

  And, if you are curious about how Robin, Will, and Scheherezade came into Raphael’s life, you might be interested in the short stories of the ‘Tales from Ysthar’ sequence: “Scheherezade,” “Inkebarrow,” and “Rook” are currently available in ebook form from the major vendors, with more to come.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2014 by Victoria Goddard

  Book design copyright © 2014 by Victoria Goddard

  First published by Underhill Books in 2014

  Smashwords Edition

  Underhill Books

  5435 Cornwallis St.

  Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3K 1A8

  www.underhillbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and incidents are either fictitious or used fictitiously.