Till Human Voices Wake Us Read online

  He stared into the morning. He thought of the candles Kasian had left for his homecoming, of Robin’s completely untoward attempt at sympathy, of Sherry’s acceptance of his brother simply because he was his brother. He thought of the humming city around him, the vibrations in the bridge from the traffic crossing below him, the airplanes winking as they angled past the sun. He thought of his decision, that what mattered was the salvation of this his mad, beautiful world. He thought of all the things he was not telling Kasian, of what was locked inside that wooden chest beside the fireplace.

  He thought of the dragon speaking of Swallow and Urm, and the wasteland that had once been the Garden of Kaph, and that once he had sat by the rivers of Babylon while the first cities of the new Ysthar were being built, and that was all desert now.

  He thought of how his phoenix rejected him, yet stayed in the garden—why?—as witness, perhaps, to some beauty, some possibility, some potential route he was not taking. He thought of what Will had said of the choices between duty and conscience, and of how it had felt to stand in the ruins of cities and read what Dante had written, that year he communed with powers above him, how he had wept for what he had lost.

  He did not weep again. By this time he knew the Game would not be won by self-pity. But he did hesitate a few more minutes, watching the sun rise over the river, thinking of Kasian asking the gods through a phoenix dream how to find him, so long after he had thought him dead.

  Then he spoke seven names very quietly, and the winds came.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Second Song

  Chapter Six

  The Garden of the Hesperides

  By the time he had finished his bindings it was nearly eight. With the winds coiled about him he flew home. It was not the innocent flight he vaguely remembered from the first days of his magic; there was no joy in it, simply the concentration of will and action. He willed himself to his house, and there he went as the crow flies.

  He was slightly disturbed by how vague his memory was, but only slightly.  The magic was funnelling into him more thickly now, the pools gathering strength, and almost all of his attention was preoccupied with it. He could tell he had emotions, in the same way he could tell he had a body with arms and feet and a beating heart: at nearly marionette distance. He felt things the way one sees through thick glass.

  What was fully present to him was his magic. It was Tuesday morning, twenty-eight hours before the final duel. Raphael entered his grounds by the river door on foot, with the resolution to maintain appearances, so that his brother would remember him fondly.

  Kasian was sitting on the terrace in a patch of sunlight with a cup of coffee, a pile of papers, and a distracted air. Raphael walked up the path to him, making sure to settle his veils of insignificance so he was nothing more noticeable than the tiny breeze turning over a dried leaf by his brother’s foot. Kasian watched him come inattentively, only really seeing him when Raphael stopped before him.

  Kasian’s expression flickered from distraction, through worry, to annoyance, and finally landed on curiosity. “Where have you been?”

  Raphael sat down on the edge of the terrace balustrade. He carefully isolated part of his attention to deal with these social niceties. “Working. What have you been doing?”

  “Oh … reading some correspondence. I thought you might be back earlier.”

  “My apologies.”

  “I forgot to tell you yesterday, Scheherezade invited us to lunch today. If you don’t have anything else planned.”

  “Not for lunch, no. What time did she invite us for?”

  “One o’clock.”

  Raphael nodded, and left him to pick up his papers while he dressed. He felt his jaw and shaved, not having spent long enough in the high place of magic for his body to be totally unaware of time’s passing. Kasian, as he saw when he fossicked in the kitchen for breakfast, had obviously made himself quite at home already; there was barely any food left. Raphael found cheese and fruit, but no bread and little else, not even eggs. He put what there was on the table and made tea.

  “Don’t you ever eat?” his brother asked when he sat down with his cup of tea, already halfway through a generous plate. (Second breakfast?) “I haven’t seen you do anything but toy with your food.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You still need to eat. Magic doesn’t replace all natural functions, you know.”

  Raphael shrugged affably, magic humming in his veins, pure energy filling up his soul. “Magic is a natural function.”

  “Why can’t everyone do it, then?”

  “It exists as potential in everyone, though it’s not always actualized.” Listen to him, he thought with a kind of faraway amusement, sounding like a good Aristotelian with his potency and actuality.

  “And the Fall actualized your innate potential?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about … what else do you do, Raphael? Magic, and acting, you said.”

  “Yes. They take up most of my time.”

  Kasian twiddled his fork against his cup. Raphael let his thoughts drift sideways under the whirling magic’s influence, pulling his attention back when his brother added, “What about music? You were so definite at the tavern.”

  And, having been so definite, he thought, did Kasian think he would want to talk about it? He said: “I have nothing to say about it.”

  “As you say nothing about our family, either.”

  There being nothing Raphael could think of to say about that, he merely shrugged and poured them both more tea.

  Kasian fell silent and returned to his breakfast. Raphael drank his tea and tried to remember when he had last gone grocery shopping. At least a fortnight ago, before he had gone to a moot of the rivers at the Humber’s bequest. The South Wind swirled in a great arc around London and settled to roost on Saint Paul’s dome.

  “Forty-five minutes,” Kasian said abruptly.

  Raphael focused with some difficulty down from the upper air. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I have discovered something about myself, which is to say that I can’t go longer than three-quarters of an hour sitting across from you in silence. As you appear to be finished with your tea, will you show me your garden?”

  He found that a strange question from his brother. “Why?”

  Kasian rolled his eyes. “Because at least it will give me something to look at while you stare off into space. It seems an extensive park, and quite lovely. Liassa will want to know about it. My seneschal too, he’s a gardener at heart.”

  The part of him that remembered to be courteous spoke up. “What does he grow?”

  “Tomatoes, mostly. Do you remember them from Astandalas? They’re a kind of savoury fruit.”

  “We have them here, too. From the American continent.”

  “That’s the new one, right?” Kasian opened the door outside into the garden and stepped out. It nearly banged shut on Raphael, and he thought that perhaps he should fix its hinges to close less rapaciously. Not though it had bothered him much in the last … century, was it, since he had replaced it? He retrieved his attention again when Kasian continued. “I had to get someone to redraw all my maps when the news came that there were two new continents. It seemed excessive, I must say. One new continent—well, it is possible one had just missed it before. It could happen to anyone. But two?”

  “Four, actually. North and South America, Australia, and Antarctica.”

  “That really is excessive, O brother mine. It’s one thing for countries to change borders, quite another for a world to change borders so much. Mind you, Ystharian political geography changes so frequently I don’t bother to keep up with all the details.”

  “Time can pass quickly here.”

  “How many years has it been for you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Kasian stopped and stooped to finger the furled stubs of what would later be scarlet tulips. “Could you hazard a guess?”

  Raphael frowned at a
scattering of winter aconite, each yellow flower folded asleep against a green ruff like an Elizabethan collar. “Twelve or thirteen years of the phoenix.”

  “How are you not certain? Of all people, you should know.”

  Raphael glanced up the hill, at the three trees, not even sure if Ishaa was still roosting there. “I lost count.”

  “I find that hard to believe, from my brother who was offered a place in the Imperial University for mathematics at the age of thirteen.”

  “Time passes strangely here,” he said, “and sometimes the years are very full.”

  He led his brother to the small court enclosed by the wings of the library, going widdershins around his house to leave the hill aside. He gestured at a few interesting plants, primroses and snowdrops and the witch hazel that was indeed blooming with spidery flowers in hot orangey pink and sulphurous yellow. Kasian seemed more interested in the architecture of the courtyard, went up to the stone table, drew his hand over its polished top. It was inlaid with a chess board, brought here from a house where Raphael had often had guests.

  Sherry had been a guest in that house, he thought suddenly, the memory cresting like a fish in a river. She’d told him stories upon stories of the adventures she’d had after she met the Lord of  Ysthar in the desert, in full veils with a phoenix in his arms—two years of the phoenix ago that was, when Ishaa had built her bonfire nest somewhere in what had once been the Fertile Crescent—when he’d rescued her from the elements, and then told her that some of her stories were true.

  He had been so glad she hadn’t recognized Domenico degli Innocenti the Venetian glass-blower as the Lord of  Ysthar, that they could be friends. She’d rescued Domenico—him—from murder, pretending on no acquaintance whatsoever (that she knew of) to be his wife, so that they could run off laughing merrily. How they had laughed about her instant improvisation once they were safely out of the city.

  “Raphael, what happened in those three days?”

  He had no idea what Kasian was talking about. No memory fish jumped at this question, merely a puzzlement. He felt awkwardly suspended out of the river of magic that was rushing about him. “Which three days do you mean?”

  “The three days between our birthday and the fall of Astandalas. I’ve always wondered what you did in them. We couldn’t find you.”

  His heart dropped, like a stone into a well, or the first raindrop of the great flood. “There were three days?”

  Kasian looked at him almost fondly. “Phoenix! Even you could hardly have missed noticing three days.”

  Raphael fumbled his way backwards to one of the seats. It was cold stone and though uncomfortable he welcomed its durance. He’d fallen quite out of his magic. Fortunately this was inside his grounds, protected by all those circles of wards and enchantments, somewhere he couldn’t really lose control, merely set it down for a few minutes of relaxation or despair.

  He concentrated even so on not losing his grasp on those new powers that had come from his night’s work. With his attention on those wild pressures, he noticed but could do nothing about the fact that the fine control over his voice slackened, timbre roughening, accent thickening, tongue stiffening. “There were n-never three days.”

  “Yes, there were. We spent them looking for you.”

  “I thought it w-w-was one.”

  “What on earth were you doing?”

  There was no delicate way he could put it. Words came to mind, one—another—another—all of them hard as the stone table and none of them pleasant. He rubbed his palms on his trousers and shivered in the soft cool air. Subtle trailers of mist draped across the lower parts of the garden; rain fell, spangling off the flagstones, pattering around him. This was not the fish of a memory cresting in a river; this was drowning.

  Kasian, who was wearing his thick crimson sweater and moreover was protected by the eaves of the house, sighed, sat down, and unlatched the box to one side of the chessboard inlaid on the table top. The box was grotty with cobwebs. Raphael watched as he rubbed the gossamer between his fingers until he could flick the ball of it away. He gave Raphael the onyx, keeping the alabaster for himself.

  Faint clicks as he set down each titled figure—kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns. In one of the Tanteyr versions the game was a re-enactment of the battles of Tassakar the Magnificent, her sister Lenór Amian the Dancer, and Mirshave the fifth Lord of Ysthar against the Adversary. Kasian had always admired Tassakar the Magnificent, greatest monarch of their people, and took white when he could.

  Raphael had complained a few times, when they were young, that he should get to play on the side of Lenór Amian (not knowing in those days he would one day be heir to the Lord Mirshave), but Kasian had overruled him with the idea that he shared an interest in music with the one who had been greatest before he became least.

  He responded automatically to Kasian’s opening gambit. In another reading of chess each game was a reprise of the courtship of the Lord Phoenix and the Lady Shargán, the ancestors of the Tantey.  The legends surrounding that courtship were manifold, but white belonged to the Lord of Light and black to Shargán of the Desert, who some said was the night. A less repugnant idea than standing in for the Eater of Worlds.

  The orderly array of pieces broke up, began to disperse and shift about the board. There was a pattern underlying the chaos, a logic Raphael could not describe. His mind was occupied looking for words with which to say—not the ineffable, but rather that dark unspeakability which in Latin was called nefas. There were no words but the barest ones, if he were to tell the story.

  If. If. He’d never looked for words before. He wasn’t sure why he looked now, except that most of his thoughts were bound up in the high winds, and he wanted Kasian to know that there were reasons for his distance without telling him the real ones.

  He moved his knight, which Kasian promptly captured. It occurred to him that Kasian was temperamental, and would seek vengeance if he thought it necessary. Kasian was very courageous, certainly, had always fought for him. Undoubtedly a great warrior, with his muscular shoulders and inherited skill. But there was no way he could stand against the ones who had broken an empire of magic to pieces, no matter how heroic he was.

  No names, then, Raphael decided: nothing that would give his brother a place to aim. But the truth, yes, perhaps Kasian deserved the truth—it was all Raphael had to give him, a thin cold truth like an empty hut in a storm. He was in control again now, the initial surprise of the question lessening, the magic filling up the holes, like wind in the sky. He wanted Kasian to be sympathetic and distant, so that when tomorrow came he would mourn but not grieve. Surely he had grieved enough for him already.

  “I was captured by a black wizard.”

  Kasian’s voice was abstracted from Raphael’s reality, the memories far stronger. “How so?”

  “I was going towards Green Square, and he seized me. He needed a—a sacrifice for a spell.”

  “What did he do?”

  He played out a few more moves. White and black moved around the board. Tassakar fought against the Abyss; Shargán courted the Lord Phoenix. And who was to say which pieces would survive and which be taken? Which player would win, and what the significance of that in the end? The wind was nosing around the garden with curious motions.

  There would be different stories told about tomorrow than the ones the dragon told of Urm and Swallow who sank three continents, or Agrinalaine and Ghizhaur who made the Desert of Kaph, or that Robin told of the Moss Mage and the Kilkannany Cobbler who had turned a burgeoning worldlet into ice volcanoes. Raphael had promised himself that long ago: that he would lose before letting all the magic loose to wreak what it would. Half his power was bound in protective enchantments.

  “He practised black magic, Kasian. What do you think he did?”

  “But—on you? Or—or w-with you?”

  It was strange to hear Kasian stammer, when his own voice was clear. “Both.”

  “But you’re
alive—forgive me but I don’t understand—”

  “He was interrupted.”

  There was a long silence. White advanced; black regained ground; the pile of captured pieces grew. The pattern grew no clearer to Raphael, who was trying very hard not to relive those three days he had thought in his despair one, and who was only succeeding because he had that higher pattern to hold in its place. He siphoned off his excess emotion automatically, into the cool air, the burgeoning winds, feeling his face calm even as the fog in the garden dissipated.

  At last Kasian spoke. “By whom?”

  “A rival wizard.” The present Lord of Eahh: Circe’s husband Tavin.

  “What did he do?”

  Why did he ask these sorts of questions? He could hardly want to know the details. No one could want the details. Raphael picked out a strand of the East wind, bound it to a swirl of electricity-borne fire, misplaced his rook so Kasian took his queen. “He killed the first wizard.”

  “And—and you?”

  Raphael moved some pieces in ways that meant nothing to him, while in the sky he felt the first approach of the North Wind sweeping down from the Arctic. “And I?”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I merely … was. Most of the spells to do with me were done by then, but for the final—”

  “Murder.”

  Raphael inclined his head politely, though none of his nightmares, when he was still sleeping long enough to dream, had ever made it clear what the last steps of that particular spell were intended to accomplish. “The half-finished spell went awry. It cracked the worlds apart and destroyed Astandalas.”

  “I always heard that it had broken because someone tried to make himself emperor by summoning the Eater of Worlds.”

  “That may have been part of it. Fortunately it remained unfinished.”

  “Fortunately,” Kasian said, very quietly, and they played a few more moves.

  Raphael tried to focus on how Ishaa had distracted the black wizard at the opportune moment, and not remember how Tavin had killed his father while Maugraian’s mind was yet entwined with Raphael’s, so that Raphael had lived through his death to the point he had not believed it another’s.