Magesong (18 page)

He played the final note, but hardly anyone noticed. 
Overhead, in a lavender sky, the first star of the evening blinked open, and he
knew what to do.  He laid his mandolin on the grass, then straightened and
closed his eyes, feeling himself once again within the circle.

And he started singing.

He sang the Song of Returning as he had first heard it.  He
sang it full yet soft, and he sang it for the people of Lorendal.  He sang it
with his being, and he sang with power, as if it were the very spell of Making.

From out of the realm of power, a waterfall of rarefied
ether fell down on him as he sang, and he took it into his being and sent it
onward with his voice to meld with the life force of magic.  And it returned to
him a hundredfold.  He felt himself buffeted by a torrential river of power,
the Essa itself, and he sang the river.

Then he was done.  No one moved or spoke, and everyone was
looking at him.

Reyin had sung the essence of the magician into his being,
and he knew the truth of what he had done.  He could touch the Essa.  He was a
true magician.

The head butler was staring at him as well, but not with the
same look the others gave.  This man's eyes were full of the weird.  Airen
Libac said something to him, but Reyin wasn't listening.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said to Libac.  When he
glanced up again the butler was gone.

"Where," Libac said hoarsely, "where did you
learn that song?"

"You seemed to understand it, sir.  Do you speak the
language of the Pallenborne?"

"Yes, well enough to know the words you sang.  It was
beautiful.  Is it a folk song?"

"It is the springtime song of Lorendal valley.  The
whole village sings it together, standing in a great circle."

Libac rose and went to him.  "Will you walk with me in
my garden, sir?  I wish to discuss this."

Reyin bowed, and side by side they walked into the labyrinth
of sculpted foliage, the scent of exotic flowers hanging heavy in the dusk.

"I've been there," Libac said, "to the
Lorendal valley.  At least, I've been above it."

"It's unfortunate that you did not stay even one night
with the villagers, who are the most generous folk I have ever met.  They treat
strangers as I would my closest friend."

A shadow crossed Libac's brow.  "How did you know that
I never saw the inhabitants."

"They would have remembered you and told me.  You see,
I have just come from there.  Would you like to hear more about the song?  On
the eve before the first day of spring they gather and sing it.  They sing it
at the end of each day until the first new blade of grass sprouts.  But this
year nothing grows.  Their land has been blighted and is slowly dying.  They
face starvation instead of a harvest, and still they sing the song in hope that
nature has not forsaken them."

Reyin stopped and faced him.  "Tell me, do you think it
is possible for an object to be so exquisite that it can capture a
spirit?"

"Yes," Libac said, looking away.  "I know it
to be so."

"I'm not discussing art."

Libac turned to him.  "No."  Their eyes met and
each knew that they both spoke of the same thing.

"I have felt it," Libac said.  "My wife
thought I had been dreaming when I told her, but I have often thought that it
is a living entity."

"The relic you found at the top of the
Skialfanmir?"

 "Yes."

"Perhaps it contains the life of the valley, and was
placed in that mountaintop shrine for safekeeping."

Tilting his head in puzzlement, Libac said, "How can
that be?"

Reyin instantly thought of Ty'kojin, now seeing the great
difficulty of the task he had put upon himself in teaching.  What does one say
to another who has suddenly discovered the hidden realm?

"There is a way, but I don't really know it."

He silently called to the shadows cast by the rising moon,
summoning them to gather close around him, and then the two men stood alone in
darkness, the torch throwing light on their faces.  Nothing else was there.  Out
of the dark Reyin conjured the cries of starving children and the moaning of
old people dying in the night.

"All I do know," he said, "is that a people
will die."

And then the darkness and the voices were gone.

Libac started, looking over his shoulder and back to Reyin. 
"What?  How?  Did you do that?  Did it truly happen?"  He calmed
himself quickly and looked at Reyin with an uncertain eye.  "I find that I
am fearful of you now, sir."

"I did not mean to frighten you.  I only want you to
believe in what you already know to be true.  This object that you had thought a
forgotten relic you know now to be a much greater thing, something of the
unseen world made corporeal, and something that is, and has always been,
connected to the folk of Lorendal as a life is to a life."

"I take it, sir," Libac said warily, "that
you want me to hand over the artifact to you?"

"It must be taken back if we are to have any hope of
ending their suffering.  I have no desire to possess it.  Return it yourself if
you wish. 
But know this for truth
," he said passionately in the
Essian Tongue.  "You hold the very life of their land.  And you had no
right to take it."

Libac's head bowed beneath the weight of the truthsay. 
"Come with me," he said quietly.

He led Reyin into the house, smiling politely and nodding to
his bemused friends.  They went down a wide hallway with tapestries hanging on
granite walls and passed through a sitting room into a hall with many statues. 
As they approached a door at the end of the hall, Libac broke into a trot.  The
door stood partially open.

"Orez!" Libac shouted as threw himself at the
opening.

He stumbled, then stood still before an empty pedestal of
white marble.  "It's gone," he said in a strangely casual tone. 
"Nothing else is missing."

He turned back to the open door.  "Orez!" he
yelled furiously, threatening to burst a vein at his temple.  "I need Orez
sent to me at once!"  Then he returned to speaking evenly as he examined
the door.  "The lock isn't broken; it is simply unlocked.  But that's not
possible.  I locked it myself this morning and I have the only key."

Libac paced the room and Reyin looked at the treasures he
had seen in his vision on the Skialfanmir.  The captured elemental had been
here only minutes before.  He went to the pedestal and laid his hands on the
place the relic had sat.  At once, he began whispering the incantation that
would call to it.  An impulse, an echo, came back to him.

Libac strode into the hall and stamped his foot.  "Where
is Orez?" he called to the heavens.

A dark-suited butler, walking quickly, approached him and
bowed.  "Your prime retainer is nowhere to be found, sir.”

"Have you checked the wine cellar?"

"Yes sir, the stables too.  He is not anywhere on the estate."

Wrinkles grew on Libac's face.  "Why would he go
somewhere at a time like this?  He's supposed to be overseeing this entire
affair."

The butler glanced at Reyin and lowered his voice.  "I
wouldn't know that, sir, not knowing his habits.  After all, he has been with
us for less than a month, sir."

"But still," Libac said, thick in his ruminations,
“he knows how important it is to be here."

Reyin stepped quickly to his side, grabbing him by the arm
and whirling him about.

"By the Spirit, man.  Don't you hear what he's telling
you?  One of your treasures has been stolen, and your chief of staff has gone
missing at the same time.  Use that mind of yours, Libac, and bridge the two
events.  What's wrong with you?"

Then he saw.  The man had been touched by glamour.

"How long have you known this man, this Orez?"  Reyin
demanded, still clutching Libac's sleeve.  "Less than a month?"

Libac nodded slowly, his shocked look changing to one of
resignation as the truth washed away the bright illusion of glamour.

Reyin, too, crossed a bridge.  The man he had thought of as
the head butler had used the sight on him.  The man had been a magician and had
carefully engineered this theft.  He must be one of the Supplicants of the
Final Grammarie.  Why else would the Unknowable have shown him the vision of
their inner shine?  And now they had the last
Aevir
.

"I'll have to send for the Chief Constable," Libac
said.

"He will be of no use.  Nor will a squadron of private
guards, nor the best thief-catcher money can buy.  None of these will ever get
close to this man you call Orez."  Reyin placed a hand on Libac's
shoulder.  "And I think you know this as well."

Libac dismissed his servant.  "What's to be done,
then?"

"I am going now.  I will find him and take it from him,
and I will return it to the Pallenborne.  It is lost to you."

Reyin left Libac standing in his treasure room and went outside
into the street.  He stopped under the lamp at the small side-door and hissed
into the shadows.

"Farlo!  Farlo, are you there?"

Silence.

He peeked around the corner.  "Farlo!"

He saw and heard nothing,  He didn't know why he expected
his companion to be there, but following and spying on him was just the sort of
thing Farlo would do, and now Reyin needed it to be so.

"Farlo?"  No, no one was there.  Farlo still
waited in the ruined city. 
Why did he choose this night to be sensible and
do as I asked him?

He looked up.  A full moon had climbed high into the night
sky.  He had no more time for calling into an empty street.  Inside, at the
pedestal, he had felt an impulse, and now he chased it down the lane, deeper
into the city.

Artemes had told him that the supplicants travelled the
world in search of talismans, grimoires, and other relics from the lost age of
the magician, but he had not explained the nature of their final grammarie. 
Did Artemes not know of their attempt to reunite the
Aevir
, to resurrect
the most obscenely powerful form of magic that had ever been?

And now they could do it.  His steps came faster and faster
as he reasoned, and with the last thought, he began running.

The sun had shone white and hot that week, as if it pressed
closer, and Syliva perspired freely as she crossed the stream, heading home
after her morning rounds.  When she walked into her house, she found Aksel and Jonn
at the dining table, Aksel gripping the shaft of a hunting arrow tightly with
both hands while Jonn finished lashing the arrowhead with fine catgut.

"That's the way, son," her husband said. 
"That's good.  Take another loop.  Now another loop — no, inside the first
one.  Yes, that's the way.  Now pull it tight and cut it.  Good.  Now go get
the hot tar from the fire and finish it."

"So you're teaching him everything about bows and
arrows," Syliva asked, "not just how to shoot?"

Aksel had not looked at her much of late, and when he did,
she hadn't liked what she saw.  It didn't matter how many times she told him
that anyone in world would have been powerless against fenwolf fever, he still
blamed himself, as if he could have resisted the disease had his will been
stronger.

"It's something a man of the Pallenborne should
know."  Then he saw her face.  "What's wrong?"

"He's going to die."

"Kestrin's father?"

"Yes."

"I thought we were feeding them.  If there's something
he needs that he's not getting we can trade meat — a whole goat if need
be."

"It's not that.  He has the wasting sickness that no
one can cure.  If it had been a wet springtime I could find a fungus that would
at least help him with the pain, but I can't find any now, even at the . . .
"

"Are you sure?  Is there nothing you can do."

She shook her head.

"How long?"

"You never really know, but he looked much worse
today.  Soon, I think."

"I'm sorry, dear heart," he said, the squint
coming to his temples.  "I truly am.  Poor man."

He stood to take her hand, but then Jonn came in with the
bucket of hot tar.

"Hold it, son," Aksel said.  "I think we'd
better do that outside."  He looked at Syliva.

"Go ahead, I'll be alright."

But after they went she sat and stared at the wall.

Tired from the inside out, she laid her head on her arms. 
She should be elated at the way this strange part of her life had turned out.  Aksel
had recovered from the fenwolf fever, and he and Jonn were closer than they had
ever been.  No one talked about armed committees any longer.  But she felt no
peace.  Only emptiness.

She had planned to get away after suppertime, but long-term
fatigue caught up with her then and forced her to rest.  Everyone in the valley
now suffered from occasional fits of weakness as they further cut their daily
rations, half of them now faring on an ersatz bread made from flour mixed with
dried ground ice-moss.  Lovisa and the other pregnant women never lacked for a
good meal though.  The Monjors and the Barlsens and the others who had enough
always saved their best for them.

She felt better that evening as Aksel said his goodnights
and shuffled sleepily to their bed, and she put on her field boots.  She went
out into the last warm light of the day and struck out northward.  Past bedtime
and it's still warm, thought Syliva, pushing up her sleeves.  She skirted
around the village, and after entering the deep shadows of the forest she felt
like the blanket of heat had been thrown off her.  The pines smelled strongly
of sap, but their needles, brittle and dry, fell away as she brushed past them.

As she approached the pond, with twilight settling over the
valley, the air changed.  She could taste moisture in it, more and more as she
went.  Each breath was like a cool drink.  Up ahead, the willows surrounding
the pond stood motionless while a silver mist rose among them.  Vague shapes
formed from the mist, breaking away to twirl and then reunite with the fog. 
Shining with its own light, the mist moved on ghostly currents and split into
dozens of shapes that outlined elfish figures trailing silver flames.  The
elf-flames danced in a circle around the spring, twisting and leaping as they
went.  Some of the figures reached skyward when they jumped, as if they tried
to grasp the moonlight.  Some of them took a partner, spinning small circles
inside the larger one.  Syliva watched the dance, the world suspended between
day and night.  Then the light of the full moon pierced the fog, flooding the
clearing, and with a cold gust from the mountains the mist elves wavered and
vanished.

The bare branches of the willows gleamed starkly against the
blackening sky as Syliva crept forward into the clearing around the spring. 
The elf dance.  She had seen the elf dance.  No one now living in the valley
had ever seen it.  To be honored by the forest spirits like this — it was
something from the Poem.

And she knew all at once that the wellspring didn't belong
to her.  But now she had something that was better than a secret place, and it
would be hers and hers alone forever.  She had seen the elf dance.

She knelt by the pool and saw
her reflection by moonlight.  Then, in the depths of the well, she saw the
valley, green and lush and thick with ripe harvest.  Cupping her hand, she
raised the cool water to her lips and drank.

"I don't lack respect for the tradition, Syliva,"
Kurnt said.  "You know me, Midsummer Day is my favorite holiday."

"But to not have the festival?"  Syliva couldn't
hide her disappointment.

“It wouldn't be much of a festival.  We would be thinking
about all the food we usually have at Midsummer's.  Most of us want to observe
the noontime rites, but after that I think it would be best for everybody to
return to their homes for a quiet evening with family and close friends." 
He mopped his face with a handkerchief.  "I figure the whole village will
be at your house, mine, and the Barlsen's."

"Alright, if that's what everyone wants," Syliva
said, shouldering her waterskin.  "In this terrible heat, it might be for
the best."

She said good-bye to Kurnt and started toward the village
with the water she had fetched for Lovisa.  When she discovered Lovisa's house
empty, she took the wooded trail that led to the bluff overlooking the bay.  Syliva
found her friend sitting there with her legs dangling over the edge.

"So here you are.  Did you walk all the way out here to
spite me because I wouldn't let you haul your own water?"

Lovisa made a face at her.  "It's not very far.  And I
didn't carry anything but this."  She patted her bulging stomach.

Syliva sat next to her.  "Should be any day now."

"I hope he's born on Midsummer's.  That's supposed be
the best of luck."

Lovisa cast her gaze back out to the ocean.  The sea lay
calm.  "Do you think it's possible for them to find a rune that can cure
the blight?  There hasn't been any rune-singers in the Pallenborne since the
time of the sagas, and the Southerners don't believe in such things."

"Your husband believed."

Lovisa's smile was crossed with pain.  "I've always
thought that if anything happened to him I would know, that somehow I would
feel it in my heart.  But it's not true."

Out on the waters of the bay, two fishermen hauled in their
nets.  They had caught nothing.

"Kestrin didn't know," Lovisa said.  "She
came over to see if I needed anything and her father died while I talked with
her.  She didn't feel it.  She didn't know.  And I'll never know unless he
returns."

Syliva slid back behind Lovisa and began rubbing her neck
and shoulders.  "Do you remember what you've always told me when I felt
troubled?"

Lovisa nodded.  Wistfully, she
said, "All will be well."

The children bounced with anticipation while Syliva paused
dramatically, as if they had not heard the story a dozen times.

"The winter traveller awoke to find that he had not
frozen to death in the snowstorm after all.  Someone had found him and saved
him.  He lay in a warm bed of soft, dry furs, but it was not in his rescuer's
house.  He was in a cave — a cave like no other, for it was furnished with a
huge table and chair roughly carved from granite blocks.  And his lost reindeer
and sled were there too.  From the back of the cave came heat and light and a
sound like massive bellows pumping furiously.  Then a deep voice rumbled with
laughter."

"The fire giant!" squealed Ceryn, her youngest
granddaughter.

"Yes," Syliva said.  "But it's getting late,
and that is another story."

The sun had slipped low, barely skimming the mountains to
the north, but that was as far as it would go the entire night.  It was the one
day of the year when the sun did not set.

"No!  Tell it!" the children shouted.

Syliva looked at the faces surrounding her in the open yard
behind her house.  Women with babies in their arms leaned their heads on the
shoulders of their husbands.  Aksel sat close to Celvake, and Jonn lounged on
the ground with his two nieces.  It had not been the usual Midsummer's
festival, with its day-long feast and boisterous dances.  It had been quiet and
good, though.

Kestrin thrust her head out the window of the guest house. 
"Syliva.  I think it's time."

Since her father's passing, Kestrin had buried herself in
work, carrying water for anyone who felt weak, cooking, trying to help all who
suffered even the slightest ill, and hardly ever sleeping.

Syliva stood and addressed the circle of villagers.  "Well
friends, it seems that I must help with the new life that is coming into the
valley — "

"It's about time," Celvake said, "she's been
in there since before noon."

" — so I will say goodnight now."  She recalled
the words that had been spoken at the end of this festival since the Cycle of
Ice.

"By the winds of the west and the light of the sun,
Midsummer has come and now it is gone.  The days grow shorter, and we shall
meet again soon.  To sing and to dance with the old harvest moon."

As everyone turned to go home, Syliva rushed to the old
house.  Ulrika Monjor, who had been there all day tending Lovisa with Kestrin,
met her at the door.

"The baby is coming too fast."

As she stepped inside, she saw Lovisa fall back to lie limp
in wet sheets, her eyes unfocused.

Syliva went to her and knelt.  "She's already in the
temper?"

Kestrin nodded.  "She just now went into it."

They sat with Lovisa for a time, Kestrin holding her hand,
Ulrika mopping her forehead with a damp cloth, the labor getting heavier and
heavier as the midnight hour dragged by.  The oddly hushed world outside made
every sound in the little house loud and jarring.

Syliva spoke gently to her.  "We're almost there, honey
girl.  I think I can see something."

Lovisa's eyes widened as pain seized her, and with a sharp
cry she almost sat up.

"Come on," Syliva coaxed, "let it happen
now.  No, wait, he's coming out backward.  Don't push."

"I can't help it," Lovisa said with alarm.

"No, no, you must not.  I have to turn him
around."

"Syliva!  It hurts!"

"Hold on.  He's being stubborn."

Ulrika leaned in close to Lovisa.  "Do you want
something to bite on?"  Lovisa shook her head.

I can't turn him," Syliva said.  "Try not to
push."

She turned to Kestrin.  "Reach in my bag and get the
razor I keep there.  You know the one."

"What are you going to do?" Lovisa cried.

"I'm going to take the baby.  And you will both be
well."

She turned to Kestrin.  “Hurry,” she whispered, "before
it's too late."