The Song of Andiene (2 page)

Will, not strength, drove her on. Every breath knifed into her side, and the air burned in her throat and lungs. Her heart lurched against her ribs. She looked about her in bewilderment. The multicolored stone of the true city had given way to the mud-brick and straw-roofed hovels by the very water’s edge. She had never known of places such as these that surrounded her.

The few people that saw her looked at her incuriously. The noise and terror of the hunt were far behind her. In this part of the city, even on Festival Day of Year’s Beginning, unkempt hair and a bedraggled robe would not seem strange.

Her feet were cut and bleeding from the sharp stones, but she forced herself to step evenly.
I am a king’s daughter
, she said to herself
. I do not show my pain to ones such as these
.

She did not think of trusting any of the people she passed; she did not even turn her head to look at them, too weary to fear them. She followed the path in front of her, and found herself at last alone on the edge of the cliff, looking out across the sparkling sea.

“No land,” she had heard the minstrels sing in her father’s hall. “No land to the west, no matter how far the white-winged ships could sail.”

The sea-wind chilled her. Her thin Festival robe had not been woven for outdoor adventuring. The cliff path descended in roughly-cut steps. At the bottom, her feet sank deep into the sandy beach. The salt air was heavy with the smell of decay. Something drew her to the water’s edge—gentle waves, ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep, waist deep. Something called her, drawing her as she had drawn Nahil to her. The water was warm, warmer than the wind had been.

The next wave rolled higher, lifting her feet up, tugging on her, trying to draw her out to sea. No foothold—water above her, water below her. She fought to regain the air, the solid ground. The wave receded. She clawed at the sand. When she struggled to her feet again, coughing and blinking her eyes to wash away the burning salt, the compulsion to enter the sea was forgotten.

The wind stripped all warmth from her body. The sand gritted itself into her torn feet. She fell to her hands and knees and crawled along the beach, seeking a shelter, any shelter that would hide her from the hunters.

Chapter 2

Ilbran greeted Festival morning with joy. The fish had not begun to run, so he could walk in rich leisure. His boat was ready; his nets were mended.

On this day, all mistrust of the land was forgotten. The people sang praises to the One who had led them to a wide and fruitful land. They had survived another weary summer. The storms that ended its fires had stilled. Burning aftersummer was over. Now the land would blossom and grow and feed the people again.

Ilbran joined in the joy and singing as though he had never known hunger. He walked through the streets, one more white robe in a sea of white. Even the earth was dressed in white; clumps of sweetsnow sprang from every bit of unpaved soil, scenting the air with the smell of honey.

Ilbran walked on, using the freedom of the day to wander the city and forget what he had left behind him.

Dragonsquare was far from his usual paths. The heavy gate stood wide and he entered. It was an awe-inspiring sight, though few people were drawn to it, too grim on this day of rejoicing. By the west wall, a ring and fetter gripped heavy bones, dragon’s bones, the smallest of them as thick as a man’s strong arm. They were picked and dry, white as stone, all that was left of gray Yvaressinest, who was enchanted and chained by Lanissiril and Karstir; all that was left of the great dragon who lay in the city till the enchantments weakened, and then gnawed off his own leg to escape.

At the far side of the square, Ilbran saw the gray robes of a grizane, one of those unhuman wizards who had joined their strength and power to exile Yvaressinest from the land. Dragon’s wrath is fierce. If they had let him fly free, he might have torn the city down around their ears.

The grizane stood and watched. His face was hidden by his hood, but his body was turned intently, as though he saw some meaning in the dry bones that escaped others.

A voice beside Ilbran said, “What manner of men did they breed in those days, to do such great things?”

Ilbran looked at the stranger, a young man wearing the blue and gold badge of a king’s man. It must have been newly won, to make him so proud of it that he would wear it on his Festival robe.

“They were not our kind,” Ilbran replied. “They were the ones who came before us, the ones we killed.”

The man standing beside Ilbran frowned. “Karstir was human, even if the other was not.”

“True enough,” said Ilbran with a shrug. “It was long ago.” He looked at the shattered building at the far end of the square. Huge blue-gray blocks, as long and wide as a man is tall, were tossed and scattered like driftwood on the beach. “How much strength did it take to throw those stones to the ground? None of our kind would know how to build them up again, even if it were not blasphemy.”

“A blessing that they drove him from the land before he wrought more destruction,” the other said.

Ilbran made no answer to that. Though Festival garb was meant to be the same for rich and poor, the other man betrayed wealth and noble birth by the rings on his fingers, by his refined accent and courtly manners, by the badge that showed he served the king. What would he know or care of that day of dragon’s wrath, still spoken of with horror though it was centuries past?

Ilbran had heard the stories since his childhood. On that day, the roofs and homes of the poor burst into flames with the touch of the dragon’s breath. Straw burned; mud-brick dried and crumbled to powder. The people fled screaming into the sea, glad for a death that was not death by fire.
Truly,
Ilbran thought,
the rich, the nobles, in their strong cool houses walled and roofed with stone, escaped lightly
.

But it was useless to speak to a nobleman of those things. They spoke of other things, idle pleasant conversation. They walked together to the neighboring marketplace, and sat and drank chal, sweet and rich and hot, flavored by the spicewood mugs that held it.

Syresh was the other man’s name, the son of a noble house, a festival friend. At no other time in the year would two strangers of such different backgrounds eat together and speak together in friendship.

The herald’s cry interrupted their talk with “Reji Marates! Nahil Reji!”

Syresh froze in the midst of his merry talk. His hand came up stealthily to cover the badge that showed his allegiance to the king. His eyes showed fear and calculation.

Ilbran laughed and drained the last of the chal from his deep mug. “Kings do not help the fish swim into the net. It matters little to me who sits on the black throne. But who is Nahil?”

The herald took up his cry again, close now, and soldiers with him, “Veive Nahil!” Ilbran and Syresh joined in the cry heartily—loud enough to please the soldiers who stood tapping their fingers on sword hilts as they watched the crowd.

Syresh spoke more softly. “Nahil is the younger brother. Exiled and fled to the northern kingdom ten summers and ten winters ago, twenty years, before you and I were born.”

“But Ranes had children—heirs—many of them,” Ilbran said in amazement.

Syresh was no older than Ilbran—barely past his second naming, but from his manner, he might have been centuries wiser. “And what of it?” he said. “I doubt that he has them now.” Seeing the look of horror on the other one’s face, he laughed and said, “Stay with your fish, my friend. After all, many more would have died had there been war with the north, as Ranes would have had. You might have gone and died there, so might I have. We have lived in quiet times. In the old days, no king would have lived so long to beget so many heirs. He would have been old in his kingdom if he reigned for two summers and two winters, and wars were almost as common.”

“You must have grown up among talk of history and kingcraft,” Ilbran said. “I am glad that I am a fisherman and not a lord.”

“You had little choice in the matter,” said Syresh. He took a splinter of wood, and began to pick out the crude stitches that sewed the king’s badge to his robe. Self-conscious under Ilbran’s gaze, he said defensively, “I was no liegeman to the king, but soldier-servant only. I am no turncoat.”

You spoke the word, not I
, Ilbran thought.

The herald again cried their attention. “Felon-freed, a girl of six summers and six winters. Madness, danger, sorcery!”

Syresh frowned. “That would be the youngest escaped, not quite a woman yet, but old enough to be betrothed. May she find some refuge.” He looked at Ilbran. “Good that it is Festival, truce time. Those words might be my death if they were spoken to one of my own kind.”

“I would not betray you. But what is this talk of sorcery?”

“I do not know. Some herald’s lively embellishment, to give some reason that they wish to take her—besides the true one.”

The herald cried details of face and dress, and gave warning again of madness, of danger. “Blood price and shelter death! The death of pitch and fire.” They paid him no heed. Others joined them, a baker, a lord’s servant, a traveler from the forest lands. They talked of news and rumors, speaking more freely after the soldiers had gone.

Bells rang at evening time to call the people to the great dance, but Ilbran ignored the forming circles, and turned toward his home. He had had enough of freedom.

He threaded his way through a maze of rich men’s dwellings, built of huge stones that must have been raised by sorcery. The buildings lay low to the ground, slanting roofs tiled with split stone, blank walls shown to the street, windowed only on the inside court. Only the tall bell-towers rose high into the air. Once, when he was younger, Ilbran had climbed one, to look west far across the city out to sea, and east beyond the stone roofs of the city to see the blaggorn plains that fed them all, and the dim blue of the mountains beyond.

His home lay to the west, near the sea-cliffs. As Ilbran neared it, the streets became narrower and dirtier, the houses not so wide and long. The stone houses built by other men’s hands came to an end, and the mud-brick cottages began, dotted along the edge of the cliffs.

His home was one of the poorest of those. He looked at it with newly critical eyes, having spent a day away from it. The roof would need re-thatching with blaggorn straw when the autumn harvest was done. The mud walls did not give enough protection from the summer’s heat, so he had bought shelter in the city, in the cellar of a stone house. That had used up the last of his winter’s savings.

“Kare Maya,” he called, and his mother came out of the house to greet him, with the black courser that he had tamed for her bounding behind her. Kare was fair-haired, tall, and smiling always; he had gotten his looks from her, but he feared he had not learned her gentle ways.

He knelt and asked her blessing. “So you returned so soon from festival?” she asked.

“No sooner than you, Maya,” he said, knowing she had scarcely left the house that day.

She laughed. “The sky will dance its changes without us to guide it in the dance.”

“Are you blaspheming? After you taught me so well!” he teased her. “Ha, Fel!” and he greeted the courser as it sprang into his arms to greet him, its dagger claws sheathed in its tiny velvet-soft forepaws. Then the courser twisted away, and its claws raked at the edge of his robe. “Fel, what would you?” he asked.

The courser loped some paces away, and turned to stare at him, impatient at his slowness. He followed it curiously. Coursers, the long-legged hunters of the plains, were wise, in their way. If they could speak, he thought that they would show themselves wiser than many men.

He followed the courser down the cliff path, down to the beach. It led him to his boat, where he had dragged it high on the beach and propped it on stones, upside down, so he could oil the stiff sea-courser hide, dried out by the long summer.

Ilbran looked at it in perplexity. He had no enemies to harm his work, and the boat seemed unchanged. But Fel pranced around him as though proud of some great achievement. Ilbran looked doubtfully at the gap underneath the boat—large enough for anything to hide.

Like all of his kind, Fel feared nothing, and could not understand that men might have fears of their own. Ilbran had no wish to corner a sea-courser, though it was near impossible that one would be found on shore this soon after summer’s end. In the chill of deepest winter was the time when they dragged their heavy bodies ashore to lay their eggs.

He studied the sand, too soft for any clear tracks, but there were vague pits that might have been footprints. Even at Festival he carried a dagger strapped to his forearm. He pulled it from its sheath and set the hilt between his teeth before he began to crawl under the boat.

No movement, no sound or stir of any life. His first belief, as he felt his way forward and his hand touched cold limpness, was that he had found a corpse. Then he felt the faint pulse, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he saw other things—the young girl’s face, the gemmed and golden rings, the hands that had never worked—and he knew what he had found. He sheathed his dagger, and crawled out leisurely, gestured for the courser to follow him, and climbed up the steep path to his home, not looking right or left to see who might be watching him.

He bent his head low to go through the doorway. The house was smoky and sweet with the smell of meat broth stewing in a pot swung on a tripod over the fire—a rare extravagance and a special pleasure with the memory of four-score days of uncooked food still fresh in his mind.

He crossed the room to kneel before his father, Hammel, once tall and powerful and merry, who sat in the chair that had been his whole world since the day that his boat foundered and the sea cast him up against the rocks, eight years before.

“Sire,” he said. His father blessed him, laying hands on his head, but Ilbran did not find as much joy in the blessing as he would have, a half-day earlier. He thought of the past, those eight hard and starving years, when he had been sent to reap the sea just one autumn after his first naming.