Till Human Voices Wake Us Read online

  Big Ben tolled the second hour of the morning. A comfortingly familiar sound, though it had taken him months to grow accustomed to it when the clock tower was new. That was years ago, now, the bells steadily accumulating their measures of time, if time were truly a thing that could be measured with bell-rings. He knew philosophers who said that time was fundamental to the composition of the universe, others who said it was the measure of the soul.

  Some said that a soul might attain to a certain age by its own secret processes of maturation. Slow or quick one never knew: one could age in a night, live a thousand years and still be young. These hours hummed and jangled along the railing, fitful sparks of magnesium-fire white. He had no idea how old he truly was. He glowered at the wrought-iron gate to his house, which in a fit of youthful pride he’d shaped into the emblem of Ysthar, a phoenix sitting in a rose tree.

  There was a soft step behind him and he turned away from his threshold. Wrapped in a greatcoat and walking somewhat like a heron came the solemn figure of the God’s messenger.

  “Lord Gabriel,” Raphael said, bowing. The world shuddered momently, the borders between Ysthar and the other worlds shifting. Despite it being partly his own doing he nearly lost his balance at the motion, half his magic yet bound in those borders. He lifted his head, almost to listen, to the heavy humid air, to a wind that rose up then in tattered streamers.

  “My lord of  Ysthar.”

  Raphael pulled his attention back, dulling his senses to quiescence with the force of long habit. It was important that he act appropriately for the moment—otherwise—he closed down that thought and smiled courteously instead. “I hope you are well?”

  “Very. And yourself?”

  “Quite, thank you.”

  Gabriel took one step towards him. Raphael could step back no farther; the railings were already pricking his shoulder-blades. Instead he settled his features even more to the moment: he was the Lord of  Ysthar being polite to his colleague. (One could call them that: Gabriel was outside the usual hierarchies.) Gabriel seemed—concerned? was that the expression? It was dim, half-formed, as if Gabriel wanted to say something outside of his own role but chose not to.

  Whatever was behind the look, Gabriel did nothing more than place his hands deliberately into his own pockets. Raphael wondered if he might have mail for him, as when not otherwise engaged Gabriel delivered letters across the nine worlds. But no. He merely said, in formal tones, “I have a message for you.”

  Raphael raised his eyebrow in an enquiring fashion. Gabriel’s mouth quirked in an expression that might almost have been a smile, if he hadn’t been as good as the inimitable Jeeves at being discreet.

  “Don’t look back.”

  Raphael hid his mystification with practiced facility. “Thank you.”

  Don’t look back? The only things he was looking back at were the rules of the Great Game Aurieleteer, and surely this week, of all weeks, they should be much in his mind. The Game ended on Wednesday, and if he did not act rightly the world could break in his hands, his and Circe’s. He’d lived through the end of the world, once, before he came into magic, when Astandalas fell. He had no desire to see such a thing again.

  Don’t look back, he thought. Don’t forget the second rule, that meant, very likely, that no codes of honour or morality were preeminent over the rules of the Game, and so death was the inevitable conclusion. The fatalism was irksome; but what else was there at this point? The rules of the Game were very clear.

  Gabriel said, “Good night, my lord.”

  Raphael looked at him and found not a single thing to say. Sometimes he felt that he was the only one in all the nine worlds to remember that the Game had been invented by the Enemy, its rules set into creation by him who broke open the Abyss.

  Gabriel regarded him again with that inscrutable expression, which Raphael was uncomfortably aware he should have been able to read. After a very long pause in which the quarter-hour chimed, he found his voice. “Good night, Lord Gabriel.”

  Perhaps it would be easier if he forgot that once he and Circe had been friends.

  Before he slept he lay in bed thinking about the borders of Ysthar, sounding out the major currents of power, finishing little things. Long habits of discipline prevented him from thinking about another story, rather more famous on Ysthar, concerning a certain very great musician who, most notoriously of all visitors to hell, was told not to look back. That man had, to his regret, the day that Phos (most beautiful island of all on Ysthar, once) was destroyed.

  It was three days before the end of the Game, and he was the Lord of Ysthar. He had his duties to fill his mind and his heart. Certainly he did not think how once he had sung so that the trees walked to hear him, and the winds knew his name.

  Chapter Three

  Kasian

  While shaving the next morning Raphael noticed a gnawing restlessness growing within him, a kind of impatience with indoor air, with his thoughts, with what he had left to do.

  Only settle his personal magics into place. Just play Hamlet with reasonable aplomb. Merely decide between suicide, oath breaking, and the end of the world.

  He dressed inconspicuously and went into the garden. Outside it was raining, a pattering drizzle that soaked through the mist without dissipating it. As he walked through the garden the magic puddling about the hill pulled at his mind.

  Most of his garden, or park (for it was large enough to be called one, especially on the northwestern side where the trees thickened into a small wood), was flat or gently sloping, cut by a few terraces he’d built over the years, shaped into gardens. It was full of fountains and small streams, hedges and statues. There was also a steep-sided tor, grassy, crowned with three trees and a fountain, geographically unlikely.

  It had been built by someone, he believed. It had been there, with its three trees, and its fountain, and its wall, long before he’d come. He’d come to guard it, built his own house around the stout stone tower by its side. He’d added his protections: instead of the dragon that had once guarded it, it was his enchantments, his circles of misdirection and invisibility, his riddles and his quests that now kept strangers from entering the bounds. Very rarely somebody knew the answers, fulfilled the quests, knew the right questions, found the door, won the right to climb the hill, pluck a leaf from one of the trees, drink of the fountain.

  Over the years it had become the anchor of his power, the hidden retreat he sheltered under, that high tor with its three trees. Sometimes it was such a relief to know that it was not his, that there were powers higher and more secret still than him. For someone else had built the winding path up to its crown, someone else had built the low white wall carved with more than Alhambran skill, someone else had shaped the basin of the fountain and its four cascades.

  It was said that the trees had been planted by God.

  He climbed to stand indecisively before the fountain, staring at the dark pewter water, wanting to pray and unable to formulate words. Words never were his strength. He felt stuck inside the circle of doubt, of should he—shouldn’t he—should he—shouldn’t he. He should kill Circe to win the Game. Shouldn’t he? He should do everything possible to win, whatever the personal cost. Shouldn’t he? He shouldn’t choose inclination over duty, whatever Will suggested. Should he? That was an easy one.

  A soft patter interrupted his half-articulated thoughts. It was nearly a chime, coming from the tree across the fountain.

  The tree was deciduous, though its seasons followed no mortal rhythms, sometimes centuries long, sometimes mere days. It had held an autumnal corona of gold for one hundred and fifteen years, but now, even in the moment it took him to acknowledge the sound and look up, in that short duration it entered winter. The leaf fall revealed a gloriously white bird that had been roosting on an inner branch: the phoenix of Ysthar, his satall Ishaa, whom he had not seen for months.

  She lifted her head to fix him with a firecoal eye. He reached out unconsideringly, wistfully, across the fo
untain. She curved her head down and for a moment he thought she would let him stroke her, but instead she pricked his finger with her beak.

  He kept his hand outstretched across the fountain in curious relief. In the dull light the welling blood looked like a garnet on a quartz vein. It didn’t hurt. One drop fell into the fountain, and as the water silvered with heavy ripples the tree flurried suddenly through the rest of winter into spring, its crown heavy with blossoms. While he watched with a complicated wonder the mist in the garden lit into golden haze, illuminated like the flowers and the water with the white-gold scintillation of phoenix fire.

  Ishaa cried out in a voice so piercingly sweet he couldn’t hear it, only feel it in the suddenly-woken throbbing of his finger. Green-scented leaves unfurled, roused his senses into some virile dream of May. Against the greenery the blossoms drifted down perfectly white and beautiful, a visual haiku; the green leaves spiralled into gold and, finally, fell again.

  Ishaa tucked her head under her wing and to all appearances went to sleep.

  Confused but obscurely refreshed Raphael settled his magic into its proper arrangement and stood there for a while afterwards, staring at the way the branches curved over against the sky, like cleverly done knotwork in a cathedral, thinking quite deliberately of nothing.

  A pair of crows on his rooftree suddenly began to argue back and forth. He started, discovered his feet were soaked through, and shook his head at himself. It didn’t help.

  The crows called out again. Ishaa was resolutely asleep, the tree demure as if it had not just whirled through a year’s seasons in a flurry of beauty. Turning at last, Raphael walked down the hill towards the river door, through the wet green grass and the clay.

  Just as he exited his attention was lifted by an explosion of seagulls, and, looking up while swinging his shields into place behind him, he walked straight into a man.

  Raphael jumped back, for a moment seeing the stranger garbed in heraldic intensity: azure, scarlet, sable. No: this was twenty-first-century England: he was wearing blue jeans, wool jumper, leather jacket. Nevertheless he was very definitely from another world. Raphael looked up with an apology in his mouth, and instead said, “Kasian.”

  He could not have said what it was that told him that this was Kasian, except that everything did.

  A look of pure shock filled the other man’s face. Raphael memorized it, as he did all pure emotions, for later use in some performance. His own expression was as restrained as his emotions, here outside the walls of his house, certainly not faltering as Kasian’s expression was. But faltering from what to what Raphael did not know and told himself dispassionately he did not care. It was three days before the end of the world and Raphael had lived perfectly well without Kasian since his fourteenth birthday, when his father disowned him and Astandalas fell.

  The unwelcome thought followed hard that of course it was their father, their birthday, that Kasian, here before him saying nothing and looking, curse him, almost amused, was his twin brother whom he had adored.

  “Well, now, Raphael, this is unexpected.”

  Kasian was smiling, hands held forward in a gesture of puzzlement that looked as if it could turn into—welcome? Raphael took half a step back and essayed a polite smile. He had no words at all. Kasian’s expression turned to uncertainty, and then—Raphael could scarcely fathom this—and then to concern.

  “Raphael, you do know who I am, don’t you?”

  “Kasian,” he said again, again involuntarily.

  “Yes.”

  That was all he said, but he smiled. Raphael’s hands were down by his sides, elbows stiff and straight and hands grasping the bottom edges of his scarf as if taking the place of gravity. He couldn’t find a polite commonplace. He was too close to his house, too distracted by the crying gulls, too shaken by the tree’s movement below the currents of magic he understood.

  Kasian grinned. “Talkative as ever, I see. Whatever are you doing here, Raphael?”

  He found that childhood habits could be depended upon even more readily than the ones so painstakingly built over years; he answered honestly. “I live here.”

  “Right here?” Kasian’s smile and gesture indicated the vast city just barely visible through the mist; and the wall invisible to him behind Raphael.

  No words came. Words, words, words … He groped at inchoate images, nodded.

  “Interesting city. I’ve been staying with Gabriel.” He waited for a moment but Raphael stared mutely at him. “Just since yesterday. I thought I’d—I’d start exploring today. As he was busy. I didn’t expect to find you here!” He laughed robustly.

  The magic broke about him like a rock.  Yes, Raphael thought, grasping at it as an anchor, that was the magic of one so newly come from Daun. A boulder that had flung itself merrily into the river of  Ysthar, that was Kasian in his mind.

  A boulder flung up against the walls of his house that no one knew how to find, except for those seeking by convoluted pilgrim ways the water of the fountain, the leaves or flowers (never for him had they set fruit) of the trees, a feather of the phoenix or a rose of the garden of the Lord of  Ysthar.

  —Gabriel would know where his house was.

  Gabriel had already known, when they spoke last night, that Kasian was here. Had he sent Kasian here, to this frankly rather boring garden out of all London’s parks, this morning after that conversation last night, when he had warned him—

  Gabriel had spoken in English; they always spoke in the local language. Raphael did not acknowledge their relation, not since that day when Gabriel had come on his first errand to the Lord of Ysthar and instead of a close cousin’s welcome offered dismayed formality. Raphael and Kasian were speaking in Tanteyr. Raphael was surprised he had no difficulty with it. He had barely spoken his own language since the last time he had seen his brother.

  His brother, he thought. His brother, Kasian. His twin brother Kasian, who was after all not dead. Not that Raphael had really believed him to be, for Kasian was lucky. His brother. Who was standing here in the Victoria Tower Gardens talking to him, Raphael, who couldn’t bring himself to walk away as he was terribly sure was the right thing to do. He needed to be in control for the end of the Game. Which ended in three days. Two and a half days. And Gabriel had warned him not to look back. No. Told him.

  “I can’t believe it’s you that—that you’re the—that you’re—” Kasian stopped abruptly. Raphael regarded him sidelong, wondering what the end of that sentence was, but all Kasian said was, “That you’re here.” Which Raphael was certain was not what he had first been going to say. That he was—what? Alive? Reacting so strangely? Looking exactly the same—or entirely different? But Kasian—his smiles were exactly the same as they had ever been. Raphael moved a ribbon of magic out of the air and began to fiddle with its loopings.

  Despite his good intentions, he found curiosity stirring tentatively inside him. Kasian had not even been here a full day.  Yet here he was in modern clothes, jeans and a WWII-ace style leather jacket. Would Gabriel own such a thing? It was barely conceivable. Not that Raphael knew what Gabriel did in his free time. He could have a passion for anything, really. Pigeons, motorcycles, taxonomy, the Sarum rite … Trust Kasian, he thought, nearly smiling, to find such an outfit within his first twenty-four hours in a new country. A new world. He hadn’t been to Ysthar in all this time, of that at least Raphael could be certain.

  There was nothing of Tanteyr literature he could quote from memory. Only scattered pieces of Shaian poetry came from his youth, primarily Fitzroy Angursell’s great subversive epic Aurora, which he had quoted last night to Circe and thereby lost the penultimate move in their little game of truth or dare. But the deeds and misdeeds of that princess offered him nothing.

  Kasian offered, “We thought you were dead, you know,” so conversationally Raphael wished he had come up with a line dripping in satire first. He made himself nod amiably.

  “Yes,” Kasian went on. “You were gone—and the
n, of course, there was the fall of Astandalas. Earthquakes. Magical destruction. The nine worlds torn apart and rearranged. All that sort of thing. Most of the city simply disappeared and everyone with it. Most of Ysthar disappeared. We thought you must have died … You weren’t in our part of the city, the part that ended up around Kilturn on Daun.”

  Raphael traced the patterns the wind made around him, the magic tilting towards Salisbury Plain. He smoothed out the energies couched around Stonehenge, the circles of protections that he hoped would prevent his and Circe’s magic from spilling out beyond the vicinity on Wednesday. Kasian looked up, hastily down again when Raphael carefully did not meet his gaze.

  “Later, when things settled down and people started travelling again, when a handful of people dared hazard a journey between the worlds, we asked those who came from Solaara looking for their relatives. Another part of Astandalas ended up there, did you know that? In Solaara on Zunidh. Anyhow, we asked everyone if they had seen you. A Tanteyr boy in a city of Shaians … you would be so obvious, we thought. But no one had seen you there.”

  Kasian let that silence drag out such a long time Raphael finally said, “No.”

  “I always hoped you weren’t. Dead, I mean. I always thought you couldn’t be, that I’d know, but they said—I was sure you’d come home if you weren’t—I mean, Da said.” He laughed, a bit nervously, Raphael thought, thinking that nervousness was not a trait he would ever have ascribed to his brother. “I was terribly sick for a while, after the Fall, but so were plenty of others. Da especially, from our family.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “You recovered?”

  “As you see me!” Kasian laughed again, more naturally. “I did have a relapse later, on my—our—twenty-first birthday. It was all very awkward, I collapsed in the middle of high court. Very bad omen, that, given my—our birthday’s the winter solstice. At least it wasn’t the summer one! That would have been worse. But nothing seemed to come of it besides a few broken dishes, and bed-rest for me.”