The Silences of Home (2 page)

“Dallia,” he whispered, “this is what will come. This is what will come of Mallesh’s boats and weapons. And it is my doing. If I had never spoken of this song—”

“If you had never spoken of this song,” she interrupted, “Mallesh would be mounting an expedition inland with boats and weapons, and you would be mad. Do not talk of meaningless ifs. Do not talk at all—” and she kissed him until he smiled and wove his own arms around her.

“Now follow me,” she said suddenly, drawing away as he moaned and reached for her. She slipped into the pool and he did follow, swimming down into darkness beyond starlight. She led him from pool to river and from river to sea, where the bones of the Old City glowed with opening night-plants and ancient, breathing coral. Leish and Dallia spun slowly, trailing fingers, long strokes of skin that almost felt again like scales. He watched her breathing and yearned to hear her, only her—but singing, hearing, were deeper and broader than one person. He saw her dappled silver and blue, saw her hair and felt it wrapping around him before they moved apart. Then he closed his eyes and listened to the songs of his land, above and below, and he ached for the sea distance in his heart.

“
Finally
she is sending me away,” Lanara said. “But to the shonyn. The
shonyn
!”

The Princess Ladhra smiled widely at her friend. “I know—she just told me. Not the most . . . tantalizing of postings, it’s true—but don’t you dare complain. At least you get to
go
somewhere. You must write me something every day, as you will for my mother. That is, unless you are too busy sleeping, as I’ve heard the shonyn do from sun-up to sunset. . . .”

Lanara groaned and leaned her forehead against the balcony railing. She and Ladhra were sitting in the highest of the palace’s terrace gardens. Their legs dangled among trails of ivy. They were so high that they could not hear the sounds of Luhr’s marketplace, only the wind, and the water that fell against the stone of the fountains.

“I had hoped,” Lanara said, “for the northern lands—Bektha or Gammuz, or places even further away. The ones with no names. She’s known me since I was born—she
knows
I want to explore. But no, she will send me to watch sleeping shonyn.”

Ladhra brushed a long strand of black hair away from her mouth. “Remember, though, Nara: when they’re not sleeping, they gather fruit. And their skin, apparently, is blue. So.” She was smiling again.

Lanara turned to her with narrowed eyes and growled, “I’d pitch you off this balcony if I could.” She shook her head and looked back down at the blur of golden stone that was the city. She knew where her house was: somewhere directly below and to the right of this tallest tower. Her house, nestled against the back of the palace, surrounded by countless other houses like a bee’s honeycomb, all joined by stairways that arched across hot, windy spaces.

“Your father will be relieved,” Ladhra said. “I’m sure he would have worried endlessly about you if you’d been sent to Gammuz.”

“Yes, well, as long as my father’s happy,” Lanara said—but as she spoke, she felt fear and sadness twisting through her eagerness. She would leave him alone in their little house. She would ride without him through the great gates of Luhr, into the desert.

“You
will
come with me?” she asked him a week later, as they stood by the table. “For the leave-taking?” She had not asked him this until now, when her bag lay packed and ready by the door—and he had not told her. Both of them stepping, as ever, around the memory of her mother’s last leaving.

“Of course I will,” Creont said, with his frown that she knew was really a smile. “Why else should I be wearing my best tunic?”

Lanara nodded and looked away from him. The table was littered with maps and mugs and practice arrows, as it had been since she was a girl (they had always cleared away plate-sized places at meals, or eaten outside, sitting on the sun-warmed stairs). The doors to the bedrooms were closed. Her bag—new, pungent leather, a gift from Ladhra—was sitting buckled and bulging beside the door that was open, a bit, to the wind. She swallowed over a sudden dryness and turned again to her father.

“Well then,” she said, smiling up at him, “let’s go. The Queen hates waiting.”

She did not look back from their stairs, or from the maze of steps that tangled down to the palace’s western doors. She felt her feet falling on old, familiar stones and sand, saw the palace doors swing open for her as they had for years—and again she was eager, quick, alight with what would come. Her own, smaller shadow ran like water among the great trees of the Queenswood—her shadow and Ladhra’s, laughing and hiding among the wide trunks, beneath whispering green that almost held back the sun. Their shadows were in the corridors as well: behind statues and hanging vines, streaking past motionless guards. Lanara saw these small shapes, and she felt her strong, present edges in the forest and hallways, and she smiled.

Gellior, the old Queensguard who seemed to have stood forever before the Throne Chambers’ doors, winked at Lanara and bowed his head briefly to Creont. “I suppose you want in, girl?” he said in his low, rumbling voice, and she replied, high and childish, “Please, oh great Gellior—may we?” As she passed through the doorway, he said more quietly, “Nara—I wish you well, on this day.”

“Thank you,” she said, also quietly, and went past him into the first antechamber.

Creont, beside her, drew in his breath, and she remembered that he had not been here in a long, long time. She and Ladhra had played here as well, despite the grumblings of some of the Queen’s advisers and guards. This room was large and round and filled with reeds, both real and painted; also a painted sky, blue and cloud-gauzed and speckled with faraway birds in flight. Real birds stretched and flapped around the wide pool in the centre of the room; others swam, drifting lazily, sometimes raising their wings as if to fly. They were water birds, white, with long black beaks and slender, knobble-kneed legs. Lanara touched one on its loop of neck as she passed. It twisted and blinked and clacked its beak at her. She and Ladhra had named them all once, making careful note of the size and shape of beaks, webbed feet, outstretched wings. Lanara thought briefly that these must be the nameless descendants of those other birds.

She glanced at Creont and saw that he was frowning. “Extravagance,” he had declared one day after Lanara had tried to explain, breathlessly, what she had seen in the Throne Chambers.

“But,” she had protested, “it is all to show how the queens have given us life in the desert. The First Queen used her mindpowers to unearth the first springs and make the great pool, and she said that there must always be growing things in the palace, and after she—”

“I know the histories,” Creont had interrupted in his voice of silencing. “And I still say that such displays are more for the glorification of the Queen than of life in the desert. Spend your days at the palace if you must, Lanara, but do not share news of its wonders with me.” She had bristled and sulked then. Now she saw the frown on his lips and in his eyes, and felt too far away already for impatience or understanding.

They walked from the bright, rustling room into a hallway that sloped sharply down, into darkness. “The bird room,” Ladhra had told her the first time they had played there, “shows the beauty of the air and land. Then there’s the other place—because the First Queen also had power over what’s
below
the land.” This other place was a tunnel, bending far beneath windows and ground, lit only by a faint glow somewhere ahead—near or far, it was impossible to tell. Lanara and Ladhra had held hands and run down this tunnel, their laughter muffled and a bit wild, scattering up the hill behind them. Now Lanara walked in long, even strides toward the blue-violet glow. She could hear Creont behind her. Once, he stumbled and she half-turned, holding out her hand, but he continued past her, a tall, stooped shadow against the darkness.

The tunnel levelled out and opened suddenly into a space that rippled with the light of countless water creatures. Lanara knew that the walls of this circular chamber were glass, not stone. She knew that the fish and eels and other things she could not name were bound, that the water flowed around and away. But she halted as always, and for a breath thought that the water would sweep over her, that she would feel tentacles and scales sliding over her skin. Her father had closed his eyes. When he opened them, he walked forward, toward the barely visible arched doorway across the chamber. She followed, her own steps slower now, until her palm lay against the smooth wood of the door.

“Are you ready?” Creont said, and she looked up at him, at the colours that washed his eyes and cheeks like breathing paint.

“Yes,” she said, and pushed the door open.

“Close your eyes—don’t look until I tell you to,” Ladhra had commanded the first time she had led Lanara into the last of the Throne Chambers. As if Lanara could have kept her eyes open in the sudden dazzle of sun, glass, water, blossoms, polished stone and crystal and gems. This time she closed her eyes before the door had swung inward completely. She stood with her face angled up as the light turned her eyelids to gold.

“Lanara.” Queen Galha’s voice, solemn but smiling, rich beneath the singing of fountains. “And Creont. Welcome.”

Lanara opened her eyes. She saw the Queen standing in front of her painted wooden throne, by the rim of the enormous fountain that lay like a lake in the middle of the chamber. Channels ran here as well, rivers that flowed fresh and almost silently into the larger pool. Above the spray of this fountain soared a tower of glass and gold. Galha’s dark hair and the jewels in her long blue tunic flashed in the sunlight. Lanara saw the Queen’s consort-scribe, Malhan, on his own plain throne, beside and slightly behind hers. He was always behind her, the brown of his tunic vanishing in the dazzle of her gowns and jewels. He nodded at Lanara, which was more acknowledgement than she had expected, from him.

She walked forward over flower-strewn stone and across a bridge. Other water creatures stirred below her, some so large that their backs and tails made arcing waves when they surfaced. These creatures were mostly gifts from traders and Queensfolk who had travelled back from distant lands. “Do the animals here ever die?” Lanara had asked Ladhra once.

The Princess had shrugged. “I suppose so. My mother probably has servants check for the dead ones.”

“It must be difficult for them, in our water,” Lanara had said, looking down at the shapes that darted or glided below the bridge.

Ladhra had shrugged again and dropped a handful of petals into the pool.

“My Queen,” Lanara said now, holding her hands up before her. Fingers and thumbs pressed together, palms apart: the shape of an arrowhead.

“Nara,” Galha said. “This is such a wonderful day for me. I have taken such pleasure watching you grow up beside my own daughter, as your mother grew up with me.”

Lanara did not look back at her father, but she knew he would be glowering, every muscle rigid. This was another story Lanara had been forbidden to talk about. Her grandmother had served Galha’s mother; Lanara’s mother had been a favourite of both the Queen and the Princess, and had remained so until years into Galha’s own reign. Lanara had been another royal favourite, companion of another princess. Creont had never spoken of this history. Lanara had heard some of it from Queen Galha, and more from Ladhra. When she had asked Creont for details, he had said only, “A queen deigned to befriend your mother, and another has deigned to befriend you. Do not be too proud of this, Lanara.”

“And now,” Queen Galha continued, her eyes and smile shadowed with melancholy, “suddenly you and my Ladhra are both women, and the time has come for me to give you your first posting in the realm. I hope this is as wonderful for you as it is for me—even though I am sending you to the shonyn and not to some fierce barbarian tribe in the north.” Lanara blinked and shifted on the stone, and Galha smiled. “I have known you for a very long time, my dear. I realize this is not a posting you would have chosen. But the shonyn are important to me: I do not understand their ways, even after years of trading, and I need to send someone of intelligence and sensitivity to them. You must write every day of what you see and hear and learn, just as Malhan does. His words and yours will make this land strong when we are all gone.”

Lanara watched as Malhan rose and disappeared behind Galha’s throne. He emerged carrying a bow: tall, made of dark wood that curved and a string that glowed. A quiver also, bristling with ten arrows. He handed these to the Queen, who set the bow before her. Lanara looked up past its tip, into Galha’s eyes.

“Your bow and quiver, Lanara,” she said in a deeper voice without laughter in it. “May you do the Queen’s work with strength and wisdom.”

Lanara curled her fingers around wood and soft leather. The arrowheads sang. “My Queen, I will.”

Galha turned to Creont then. Lanara had not noticed that he had come up beside her. She gripped her bow as the Queen spoke to him. “Salanne would be so proud of her, Creont. And of you.” He did not speak. Their eyes were level and still. “I miss her,” Galha said, “every day.”

The corners of his lips moved, and the tendons in his neck. Lanara heard the sound of her own blood above the fountain and the swimming creatures.

“As do I,” Creont said evenly. “My Queen.”

“Lanara.” The word was quiet, but everyone turned to Malhan. He watched always, and listened, so that all his Queen did could be turned to writing and kept, unchanging—but he so rarely spoke. “Go safely,” he said now. Creont’s breathing was very loud; Lanara leaned forward so that she would hear Malhan more clearly. “Return to us, so that I may write of your discoveries.” And she was there again, in his words that had perhaps been intended to distract: Salanne, a young mother, a Queenswoman who had gone and never returned.

“I will,” Lanara said, her fingernails pressing, digging into the wood of her bow.

Today, during the morning hours, the sun shone strongly through thin clouds. Queen Galha rode out from the palace and into the wide main street of Luhr, accompanying the three Queensfolk who had just received their bows and arrows from her hand. The three were Nant, son of Lenon, daughter of Pelha; Lanara, daughter of Salanne, daughter of Bralhon; and Dendhon, daughter of Carre, daughter of Nanhen. The Princess Ladhra rode beside her mother. Both wore their royal cloaks of blue and green. The three with them wore short blue tunics belted with green, and their arms were wound round with green silk. They will bear the Queen’s colours into the farthest lands.

Luhr’s citizens lined the street and balconies and the rims of the many fountains leading down to the gates. The morning was loud with cheers and well wishes. The Queen herself opened the great double doors that lead the road into the desert. The three young people leaned from their horses to clasp hands with their parents. Then, one by one, they rode past Queen Galha and her daughter, who smiled and spoke private words of encouragement to them.

Nant will go north to the gold miners of Lornuz.

Lanara will go east to the shonyn people, whose lynanyn fruit is prized by Queensfolk.