Till Human Voices Wake Us (20 page)

They waited, listening. She waited, smiling. He waited, his entire being thrust into himself again, Raphael there before Heloise, who had been his oldest friend besides Kasian. She waited, smiling.

She was fully open to him: she was ready for that final journey, the prize of Aurielete and fool, the final gift and terror of all mortals, even such magi as they.

Waiting to die, she lay there smiling at the sun.

Waiting for his decision, the winds spiralled to the edge of the sky.

Kasian had said,
I will see you unmasked yet
.

Will had said,
And so you answer: duty
.

Circe smiled at the sun.

Raphael had taken up the crown of Ysthar with words in his mind from Dante’s
Commedia
, the words Virgil said to Dante at the top of the mountain of Purgatory, when the poet had become fully human. Raphael knew his God by another name, a God who had once given him choice of three things, this sword, this crown, and the third thing that was closed away in that wooden chest by his hearth.

Lord of thyself I mitre thee and crown
.

Some choices that seem duty and inclination are between duty and conscience
.

All things except those necessary to the continuance of the universe are to be held subordinate to these rules of the Game
.

All things: except—

I will see you unmasked yet
.

There was an exception, because these rules were not the oldest thing. Before the shadow comes there is always already the one who casts it. The shadow that flies before the morning had written those rules into the matter of creation, deeper than magic; but he had not made creation.

Circe lay smiling at the sun. Her magic was living, not corrupt; she was beautiful, as beautiful as the sun or the moon or the trees on his hill. She’d sung a spell and broken him not with the magic but with the simple music he had given up, the music that was the third thing, the third gift, the reason he had accepted the crown and the sword and the title.

This is not you, either
, Kasian had said, looking full on him, his brother who loved him, his brother who did not flinch from meeting his gaze.

He had played the Game, all its tortuous moves, challenges and forfeits and works of high magic and low cunning and wrought-iron persistence. He had played by the letter of the rules, because he refused their spirit, their spirit that came of that shadow before the morning, that shadow he had once destroyed an island in his efforts to escape. Foolish as he had been then, he had thought he could escape.

Which way I turn is hell; myself am hell
.

And if it was, if he could not escape, what then? Did he go to his death with this death on his conscience? Or …
or?
Was he willing to bet everything that there was something higher yet than the rules of the Game? Over the course of the Game he had bet his body, his honour, his character, his reputation, his magic, his life, his world: and though he had lost much of those in the end he had won. Circe lay there smiling, awaiting death, that mystery on the other side of the Sea of Stars.

(
Let us go then, you and I
 …)

He’d thought Circe broken by the pursuit of black magic. She had powers he did not know, from far beyond the borders of his world, but they did not come of that deeper shadow, they came from the tangled woods between the worlds, from the rich and strange currents of magic there.

He thought of how he had reached up into the dragonfire with ardent yearning.

(
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each
.)

He thought of that music twining like a pea-vine out of the green darkness of the river, that simple movement of forgotten happiness, which he had not dared to follow.

(
I do not think that they will sing to me
.)

He thought of the way sunrise had looked this morning, when he saw it opening like a flower above him, when he thought it would be his last one seen through human eyes. More human eyes than they had been since he was a child, with his magic gilding the world after a day of it unilluminated and bare.

(
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
)

He thought of that day in the beech wood, when he had chosen the opportunity to play one song over his whole future: become the Lord of
 
Ysthar for the price of a song.

(
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
)

There would still be no music for him, none of that music that undid him, that broke him as no magic had, not even that black magic that had destroyed Astandalas. There would still be duties, and pain, and fear of himself and by himself and by others; there would still be all the unspoken words between him and Kasian, and Robin and Scheherezade and Will.

(
When the wind blows the water white and black
.)

There would still be all the half-lives whose gradual collapse over the last months of the Game he would now have to sort out. There would still be celebrity and notoriety and strangers staring.

(
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
)

There would still be the problem of his father.

(
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
)

There would still be no music. The Eater of
 
Worlds knew his name, and was waiting another false step.

(
Till human voices wake us, and we drown
.)

This might be that false step, Raphael thought, unbreathing, unmoving, unblinking, the sword between them. He had been warned not to look back. He had been warned.

Yet: he had not looked back to the fall of Astandalas or to the destruction of Phos, and where had that led him but nearly letting himself drown in the river the night before the Game ended?

(
Till human voices wake us, and we drown
.)

The shadow was waiting for him to fall again. But he had kept his eyes down too long looking for the Abyss. He had seen Circe down there below him, and thought she was looking for the powers that could be gained down there in the darkness. Yet here she was, with the light in her eyes, smiling.

(Did it matter so much where you stood, if you were looking the right direction?)

Did he dare did he dare did he dare to eat a peach? The winds were calling him to play. He could hear them, they promised the dissolution of all these problems, the power of the world dammed behind his will. The fraying of his humanity into simply the title, the anonymous Lord of
 
Ysthar.
 

A power that might remember, occasionally, the small things it once had loved, tea and roses and Shakespeare’s poetry. Oranges and lemons and the feel of grass on his feet, exchanged for the long slow healing of a world his best efforts so far had left sorely ravaged. Ysthar of the Magic, unknown to itself. It was sovereignty of a sort.

(
Which way I turn is hell; myself am hell
.)

Waiting for death, she was smiling.

Waiting for life, he was terrified.

(
And where is your soul in all these errands of yours?
 
)

Sovereignty of a sort, something other than the one he had claimed all these years. He was so disciplined, so supremely in control, so perfectly balanced in his behaviour no one saw the Lord of
 
Ysthar unless he chose, or James Inelu, or Dickon, or any of the others.

—Except Kasian had recognized him.

—And he had won not by discipline but by surrender.

O God, he thought, he had surrendered.

O please, he thought, please, let Scheherezade be right, let there be another end to the story.

(
Till human voices wake us, and we drown
.)

He leaned forward and kissed Circe full on the lips.

In sublime intimacy she breathed in his breath and he hers.

(
Lord of thyself I mitre thee and crown
.)

He felt her shape the farther edges of his magic and falter in astonishment and something that was not fury, was not awe, was perhaps confusion mingled with wonder, then he thought was perhaps hope, and then realized was the simplest of things, far simpler than either of them usually let themselves feel, almost too simple a thing to name, and yet something that was so great that it was one of the names of God.

In a dizzying interchange he saw himself through her eyes, a double vision of ordinary man and great mage, the crown of
 
Ysthar kindled with white fire-roses by the sun behind him, his eyes like windows of the night sky just as morning is coming, the sword still hovering between them opening the gateway to the Sea of Stars behind the night.

Also he saw this: the ordinary man who knelt over her in deliberation as his heart weighed itself, his face closed and calm as he had seen it in the reflection on Scheherezade’s window in a moment between the tale of Orpheus and the
nirgal slaurigh
, when the sky stormed for him.

(
Till human voices wake us
 …)

Perhaps he would yet drown. Yet—and yet, and yet, and yet.

With a soft movement like loosening a knot he opened the dam. Through Circe’s eyes he saw the power come rising behind him, a windstorm with no clouds bringing the sun closer, in her eyes looking like a great firebird, his phoenix writ large as the sky.
 

He felt her instinctive recoil followed suddenly by a heart’s outpouring of sheer acceptance, of heart’s desire, of that simple thing that glimmered along the sword he held between them, the sword that had been wrought by the one who cast the shadow into the Abyss.

With one blink he was back in his own mind watching her accept him choosing her fate. Her face was radiant, beautiful, as Eahh had so surprisingly been beautiful.

The flood of magic went straight through him, channelled along the narrows of his life, rushing through—and through—and out, into the broad brushstrokes of energies he’d arranged standing on Tower Bridge awaiting the sunrise.

***

He did not look back as he walked away; he had been warned.

Chapter Eleven

The Lost Bet

He came fully into himself, into Raphael whom he did not know, in a moment so suddenly
present
he had no idea where he was or what he was doing or who he was expected to be. He held himself perfectly still, not even moving his head, just blinking. The qualities of light and dark seemed excessively brilliant, but that was all he could think.

Will was standing before him expectantly. Raphael stared at him in total disarray, saw in Will’s eyes some dawning realization, saw Will had eyes that mixed a little green with their brown, hoped he wasn’t bringing too much magic to bear.

The floodtide of magic was ebbing out of
 
Ysthar through the reopened borders. The whole world felt frosted with beauty like gold filigree.

Raphael did not know what else to do, remembered the poet saying he should give his friends the opportunity to help him, and therefore waited patiently, hoping Will would say something to connect him again into the wider present.

The silence was ringing expectantly, as if a great wind had just stopped. Raphael begged Will with his whole being except his face, body, words—in case he knew not what—to explain where he was and what he was doing there and why the silence was so gaping.

Will’s expression transmuted into a kind of horrified amusement. “That is most certain,” he said carefully, hesitated when Raphael still stared blankly, added, “
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will
.”

Raphael was terrified at this message, the yawning windless air, the draining magic: then realized he was on stage.

He had to deliberately recall the next lines from his mental image of the text, but as he said, “‘Up from my cabin, my sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark groped I to find out them,’” something made him turn with a gesture, and then, “‘had my desire …’”—and he managed the sharp turn out of the magic and back into Hamlet, and once more forgot himself.

Chapter Twelve

Then Again, Temptations

Raphael woke face-down on a soft surface. It was lightly sprung and smelled vaguely familiar. Everything felt vaguely familiar, in fact, down to the comprehensive ache that seemed located somewhere between his mind and his body. He held himself still, trying to remember what he’d been doing to be in such a state, and what character he was playing that he should enter into when he moved.

It was clearly not Hamlet, not if he were lying face-down. That unfortunately left a very wide range of possibilities, none of which he could recall just this moment. The pain made it clear it was a dangerous role needing careful handling, so it probably wasn’t James Inelu either. That left—he kept being distracted from that most-crucial determination by this pain, which slung him between body and mind and back again.

Someone crossed the boundary of his safe personal space. Three quarter-seconds of thought: he was in pain, he couldn’t afford to be worse injured, none of his present roles required total self-effacement.

Three seconds later he held the assailant by the throat three feet off the ground against the wall across the room.

Six seconds later he realized it was Kasian.

Very carefully he set his brother down on the ground.

Kasian touched his throat wonderingly. “You didn’t use magic.”

The question dropped him out of all the freewheeling choices of roles into confused honesty. “No, not unless someone uses it against me first.”

“That was remarkable. I would have sworn your injuries would prevent you from doing that.”

He blinked. “My injuries?”

“Concussion, fractured shoulder, two cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, and magefire down your whole right side? Also, miscellaneous cuts and bruises from a mean swordsman, and some odd markings I presume are from other kinds of magic. Together with exhaustion, grief, confusion, and a serious case of magical burn-out, or I’m a pigherder. Not to mention blisters on your hands from a sword you’re not much used to using.”