Till Human Voices Wake Us (13 page)

His study felt comfortingly ordinary, full of his magic, familiar. His crown, the crown of
 
Ysthar, sat in its sandalwood box, perfuming the room when he moved it. He opened the box and stood looking at the uncomfortable, beautiful thing he’d chosen to uphold come what may. It represented duty to him, as the sword downstairs was justice.

He’d chosen rightly, he thought, looking on it; what was power without the constraints of duty holding it in check? Tyrants followed their inclinations. He closed the lid and joined Kasian in the living room without looking at the sword on the mantel again.

The winds were orderly, the North Wind sweeping smoothly into the last place, all the magic of the world humming as it waited for the turn to the equinox and the end of the Game. The dams were doing their work, the magic swelling in the places inside him that touched them. He felt far too full to want to eat, but that was all right. He could manage another day’s humanity, surely. Surely.

Raphael slipped into the familiar character of the artist, the small mage of little corners and hidden things his friends knew.
 
An easy character, close to his heart, the nearest of his masks to himself. Today he didn’t have to be the Lord of
 
Ysthar; or James Inelu, film star; or James Inelu not-a-film-star; or any of the other roles he held in London.

And if perhaps his friends had just learned his name, that that aloof small mage and artist was called Raphael, had a brother from another world called Kasian, well, he had to admit he was rather relieved, in that distant marionette way, that he would not end the Game with no one to know his real name.

Chapter Seven

Orpheus

They arrived at Scheherezade’s five minutes past the time at which Raphael would normally have arrived; he was inclined to blame his brother. He felt unsettled by the small misstep, a discrepancy in character like misplacing the accent of a word. Having paid off the taxi, he rang the doorbell promptly. Kasian turned to examine the dusty lace curtains in the window beside the door.

“Does she live in the whole house?”

“Just on the first floor.” He hesitated, trying to remember if in Tanteyr that meant the ground floor as in North America or one above ground level, as in England. “One flight up.”

“Well yes,” Kasian said, eyeing him a bit doubtfully. “Where else would it be?”

There were thumps down the stairs and then the noise of unlatching locks. “Angelica just beat you here,” Sherry said breathlessly. “Come in, come in, James, I’m so glad you could come! Hullo Kasian.”

“Hullo,
Amiar
Scheherezade.”

Raphael trailed after them up the stairs, contemplating the presence of Angelica. She was not someone he would call a close friend. They had tremendously tedious conversations even by his standards, as the most prominent social grace she possessed was prattling. Then he smiled to himself; at least she would cover up any silences of his.

Angelica was arranging glasses of mint tea on the sideboard but turned to them immediately upon their entry. “James!” she carolled, handing them each a glass. “And your darling brother! How nice to see you so soon again, it was such a pleasure to meet you at dinner last night.”

Kasian bowed courteously and Raphael nodded. Sherry told them to seat themselves on the cushions piled in the centre of the room, then disappeared into the kitchen. Kasian sat down with the air of a king condescending to his audience; Angelica seated herself next to him. He smiled at her.

Raphael felt adrift from himself. He crossed the room to the long table by the wall, polished walnut with carved legs, and examined the runner on it. It was creamy cotton with a corrugated texture, broidered with red and gold. He ran the tips of his fingers slowly across the ridges. This sensuousness surprised him; he stopped to look at his hand. There was no change, of course, in his skin. The burn on his other hand started to throb as soon as he thought of it. He shook his head, sneezing at a sudden whiff of incense, and cast a glance back at Kasian and Angelica.

They were sitting close together and speaking softly enough that he could not hear them clearly. Angelica was wearing a peculiar shade of chartreuse that he would not have matched with either her colouring or the tangerine-coloured cushion she sat on; but then his taste in colours had made the leap to the Impressionists only with some difficulty.

Kasian looked up, smiling, at him; Raphael’s glance slid away to the room. More cushions, crimson and sable and emerald, ivory and cerulean and rose, piled on top of brilliant knotted carpets from the desert countries. A cabinet of ebony holding finely-wrought jugs and lamps and other trinkets, the dark wood catching a smudge of light from the three fat beeswax candles on a stand beside it. A small bookshelf with some paperback novels, four leather-bound manuscripts, and a brass astrolabe, and a glass bowl he had made and given to Scheherezade. It was full of oranges. Wandering over to it he noticed one had started to soften. He picked it out and went into the kitchen.

“Have you a compost somewhere?”

Scheherezade was taking a covered dish out of the oven. “Under the sink.”

He deposited the fruit, managing not to wince as his thumb went into its side. He said, “Thank you,” before rinsing his hands. “May I help you at all?”

“No, I think I’m good. Everything’s ready, so it’s just a matter of bringing it out.” She picked up a tray filled with small bowls, of pittas and hummus and tabouleh and olives, dried apricots, and figs. Raphael held the door open for her. He followed her out and was startled when she thrust the tray into his hands.

“I forgot about the table,” she explained, darting into one of the other rooms to return with a coffee table. “I don’t like it, and I meant to get another one last weekend, but I went to see the opera instead and forgot entirely about it. This one will have to do for now, I suppose—you can see how flimsy it is, it always irritates me.”

“How was the opera?” Angelica asked. “Everyone’s saying it’s great.”

“Oh, it was. Please, do help yourselves—James, give me the tray and sit down. You’re looming over us.”

He had been admiring the circle of light in her hair, which was longer than Angelica’s when she let it down, and her loose sand-coloured trousers and Tyrian-purple tunic that suited both her and her surroundings. He smiled and did as he was asked.

Kasian looked doubtfully at the food, then smiled winsomely at Sherry. Raphael thought perhaps his brother wasn’t sure what the protocol was for eating, and reached forward with his right hand to give him an example. Kasian said, “I am not clear what an
opera
is. A kind of play, perhaps?”

“You could say so,” Angelica said. “It’s sort of a story set to music, but there’s not usually a lot of acting, and the singing is very formalized.”

Sherry laughed merrily. “All a-a-ah-a-a!”

“It’s very highly regarded,” Angelica said primly.

“What story was it?” Kasian asked, smiling at Scheherezade, who smiled back wryly.

“Monteverdi’s
Orfeo
. Have you heard tell of Orpheus the musician?”

Kasian nodded. “Who has not? He was a man of
 
Ysthar, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Sherry replied. “Although it’s like pulling teeth to find anyone who remembers anything but his music. He doesn’t appear to have been very memorable in person.”

“But you have met him, Raphael? You will—you would have been here, surely.”

“I don’t think about him very much,” he said, which was quite true. “I—He was a very good musician, but I … he did not care much for socializing.”

Sherry glanced half at him, but did not try to meet his gaze. She continued, “Everyone who did hear him play remembers it. Even the pickiest thought highly of him.”

“Who was he?” his brother asked. “Never have I heard anything of his life, only some of his music.”

“Well, there’s a mystery and a half. Probably for the same reason—” Sherry began, but Angelica interrupted, to Sherry’s apparent slight disgruntlement.

“It probably wasn’t very interesting. His songs are nice enough, but they’re not very exciting, you know?”

“Angelica, you have a tin ear.”

“I just meant that they’re not rousing music. Not like—like Wagner. They’re more lyrical.”

“He did play the lyre. They’re songs. Who knows what else he might have written if he’d lived? Operas hadn’t even been invented then.”

“I have heard that he wrote many other things,” said Kasian. “My sister has a sailor who knew him, who sings some songs I have never heard else. He said that his singing is nothing, a candle to the sun, to Orpheus before he died.”

Angelica sighed. “I think it’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard. Down to the underworld—”

“But what story is it?” Kasian asked, a bit impatiently. “I have heard the ballad of the ship
Argo
, but he was not—
adalli
, he was not the main person in that.” He sang two lines in what was probably Calandran of Ixsaa. It sounded like the idioms he’d told Raphael before. Raphael picked up a handful of figs. His brother had a fine baritone, somewhat husky, attractive.

Scheherezade laughed. “I suspect Jason would probably be irritated to find he’d been superseded in that story. And by Orpheus the musician, of all people. Heracles he could understand, but an artist, not even a warrior? Bah!”

“I have met Jason. He is most skilled—is that the word?—as a warrior, but not the most bright.”

“Here, do you mean? I didn’t think he’d been back to Ysthar in a donkey’s age.”

“No, on Daun. My sister—” He stopped and grinned at Raphael. Raphael continued to chew the fig he had just bitten into and wondered if there was anything else he could possibly do with his magic that would be helpful. “Our sister has a ship, and Jason is one of her crew.”

“A bit of a come-down for him, eh? He was captain of the
Argo
.”

“He knew not much of piracy,” Kasian said, with a sideways glance of improper humour at Raphael, who did not understand but remembered the look with a stab of nostalgia for their childhood. “The first mate is Zauberi.”

“Ah.”

Angelica pouted prettily. “This is all very interesting, but what about the story? It’s about Orpheus and his lady.”

“His lady? I had not known he had one. Though I have heard one most beautiful song—”

“‘Like Sunlight and Shadow on a High Valley,’” Angelica said, sighing in a way that almost made Raphael dislike the song. Almost.

“Yes, that one. Who was she?”

“No one particular, people say,” said Angelica.

Raphael continued to eat his figs methodically. He couldn’t think of anything to do that would be more help than hindrance. There was a twinge in Canada, but it was useless to try to do anything at such a distance now, not with all the magic finally settled into position. It would have to keep. He had the faint idea that there was an archipelago called Zayberii on Daun, but he did not know whether its habitants were renowned for piracy.

He rose, went unobtrusively to the lavatory. He could hear the indistinct murmur of their voices, and waited after washing his hands until he thought it had been long enough for them to change the subject. Returning, however, he discovered that Kasian was telling a story he had heard from Jason, with much laughing and gesturing, about the perils of travelling past the Sirens by sea.

Raphael draped himself on the doorpost, watching how Angelica hung on every word and Sherry, amused, deftly drew out inconsistencies and infelicities from what Kasian said. He almost returned to seat himself, but then his brother concluded with: “Tell me the story of Orpheus and his lady.”

Angelica giggled. Sherry frowned. Kasian looked at her in innocent puzzlement, then grinned with a full complement of charm. “If it please you?”

“Very well then,” she replied, putting down her glass and arranging herself.
 

Raphael slipped over to the window. It faced the back of the building, overlooking a small courtyard garden hemmed by the backs of other buildings. The garden was still noticeably wintry, grass and weeds twining through shrubs and a crab-apple leaning to one side. A woman was standing directly below him, the hood of her black coat up, beads of water catching glimmers of indirect light. He could feel the quality of the air through the glass: it was sodden and felt as if at any moment it would achieve some ambition to become a cloud.

“Once, long ago,” Sherry began, “there lived a musician. He was called Orpheus, and it is said that he was the greatest mortal musician there ever was.”

Raphael knew the story of the greatest musician of all: the one who was sometimes the black king on the chessboard, the second-created of the Creator, the one who had made the rules of the Great Game Aurieleteer and set them unbreakable into the composition of the universe. The morning star he had been, when he heard the song of creation and played it. The Tantey said that he had played the worlds into being, on his lirin made with wood from a branch of the world tree, strung with the hair of his sibling gods.

Later he had grown jealous and learned the powers of silence and the secrets of the Abyss out of which grows the world tree, and after he lost his game with the Lord Phoenix he was cast into its depths. Now they called him the Unnamed One, the Prince of Darkness, the Adversary, the Shadow King, the Eater of Worlds. Once the morning star; now the shadow that flies before the dawn, worse than the dragon in
Beowulf
.

“Now there are stories of how Orpheus’ music was so beautiful that stones and trees and wild beasts came to hear him play, that the winds and waves crowded close to hear him, that mountains murmured his songs over to themselves long after he passed on.”

The woman below him began to pace around the tree in lopsided circles, a dark figure against the sallow grass. Her coat caught on the thorns of a lanky rose-bush. She freed herself with an angry jerk and marched on again around the tree. When she neared him Raphael saw that it was Hazel Isling from the play.

“And there were many admirers of Orpheus in those days; for, truly, he was a very great musician. But none of them drew the glances of his eyes or the gift of his heart. Orpheus played so that kings poured ransoms at his feet and the gods themselves tarried to hear him; but he played for peasants and farmers and the silent places of the world as well. He was a wanderer, and stayed his steps nowhere for long. Nowhere, that is, until one day he met Eurydice.”