The Song of Andiene

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.

He had worked on other men’s boats for a share of what they brought in—they had let him work from sheer pity, he thought sometimes—till he was strong and old enough to go out to sea by himself.

And he had not done much better working alone. He looked around the one room they lived in and grimly appraised its flaws. The roof would not hold through one more rain—it had begun to leak in the summer-ending storms. That meant a trip inland to gather blaggorn straw, and more time spent thatching, and that would be the time when the fish were running their best, the height of the autumn year.

The mud-brick crumbled constantly, not that it mattered if one thought of cleanliness. How clean could a dirt floor be kept? But if the roof gave way, the walls might melt and crumble to nothing in one hard rain.

The net that Hammel was knotting spread halfway across the floor. It would bring a fair fistful of coins when it was done—unless it had to replace Ilbran’s own, too old and weakened to be used much longer.

And Kare Maya … he looked at his mother with sudden grief as he saw the gold of her hair darkening itself to gray. She was too young—and the lace that she knotted was held too close to her eyes—especially since it was yet early evening. That lace would be ten days work and bring them the worth of two meals, he knew bitterly.

He sprang to his feet and paced across the room, four strides, turn at the wall, four strides, turn, four strides, turn. Out there was a fugitive with a price on her head that would let them live without work for two years, or lighten their life for twenty.

What had Ranes Reji and his kind ever done for him but lay high taxes and speak of war? The new king was doubtless no better, but what of it? Let the sea-coursers tear one another, he thought. All we can do is stand apart from their quarrels.



His father and mother were people of honor. They would not agree to the betrayal of a defenseless fugitive. What lie could he tell them to explain where he had found wealth? He would be willing to take the burden of betrayal on himself, if they would not know.

He had only to stretch out his hand and he would have no more dread of the illness that would keep him idle long enough to starve. There had been good times lately. It had been four years since they had starved. That year, they could have lived on the fish he had caught, a wearisome diet, but good enough. But the fish had to be sold for money to pay the king’s taxes, and when that was done, they had no food. That was the year his sister died.

“Stop your walking,” said his father suddenly. “You could have been at the king’s palace had you walked in a straight line.” Ilbran settled himself on a straw mat on the floor. “That is better,” Hammel said.

“Maya,” Ilbran said, “have you been outside this day to hear the news?”

“No, love,” his mother answered. “I was with your father. What news is there that touches us? Is there war? Is that what concerns you?”

“No war, only death.” He told them what he had heard that day from lord, herald, and merchant. They listened gravely. “What do you think?”

“The poor, poor people,” said his mother. “We are better off here than they were in their palace. Let us hope that Nahil Reji will be good.”

“Good? What can you mean by ‘good’ when he begins like this?”

“What your mother means,” said his father, “is that he will not raise the taxes, or wage war. What is it to us if lord kills king with every changing of the sky?”

“Truly, it should not matter, sire,” Ilbran said formally. He rose and pulled the door flap aside, a piece of sea-courser hide hung across the opening. The sun had set. Yellow light showed through cracks in the doors and windows of the houses around him. “I shall come back soon,” he said, and pulled the door flap closed behind him.

He had made his decision. Kin was more than charity. He would hide the betrayal money—use it only when necessary. Could he even call it betrayal? She had not asked for shelter, nor had he made any covenant with her.

No use to quibble and try to make his deeds seem better. But the money—how could he explain it? He could tell some tale of othermen’s money that he found on the beach. They might believe that. Stories were told of such luck, but always stories of strangers.

He walked rapidly through the streets, seeking the squares near the king’s palace, where the soldiers would be gathered. He passed patrols, walking in pairs through the streets. That was too dangerous. He would tell his story to an officer, someone high enough to be trusted not to cheat him out of the reward.

Ilbran came out in a deserted square. The starweb lit it brightly. This was no place he wished to see. His steps had led him astray, but to a grimly appropriate place. Tall stake and long chain, in a wide empty space … this was where the traitors died. “Death by pitch and fire,” the herald had cried. The pitch clung but burned slowly, so that they danced on the end of their chain for a long time, with the crowd watching and laughing.

He pushed aside his shameful and sickening memories. Even now, if someone discovered the girl hiding under his boat, his life might be forfeit, and his father’s and mother’s too, uselessly. As for the girl, it would be a quick death for her, no long-drawn-out torture. He turned his steps toward the lights and voices, the quarter where people still were gathered.

The noise grew louder, and voices harsh and angry. A man was being questioned. But by the time that Ilbran reached the place where the guards stood, all questioning had been forgotten. The man lay on the ground, doubled up, futilely trying to protect himself from their kicks.

At last, a guard left his pleasant task, and strode over to where Ilbran stood. “What are you doing, loitering here?”

Although he was the smaller man, he had a sword. Ilbran tried to disguise his contempt. “A man may walk where he pleases on Festival day.”

The other man hesitated. On Festival day, there were little enough ways to judge a man’s wealth and birth. In the dim starlight and torchlight, it was almost impossible. His thoughts were clear to be read on his face. He weighed the disgrace and demotion to be suffered if he picked a quarrel with a nobleman, against the shame he would earn if he did not punish impudence from a lesser one.

Ilbran waited, filled with rage at the soldiers, at himself. He longed for a reason to fight. Maybe the other man saw those emotions flicker in his eyes. Whatever the reason, he backed a step away, speaking harshly. “Mind your own business, or you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you can handle,” and he walked back to a prey that was easier to deal with.

Ilbran stood watching the guards. Their victim was still conscious, but poor entertainment, not even trying to protect himself now. They began to drift away. Ilbran looked at them in despairing anger. They were nothing but filth, not worthy to wear the saffron robes of the polluted corpse-carriers who carried the dead out to the rocks. He slipped away down a side street. There was nausea in his belly as though he had received some of those blows. His throat burned with acid. He leaned heavily against the blank windowless side of a building, fighting back tears of rage, of self-pity, of self-contempt. He had been ready to demean himself to those brutes—present himself before them, bowing and kissing the dirt and saying—“If you please, I think I can help you with your duties.”

A man approached him, slipping silently through the night, not in Festival dress, but swaddled in a thick all-enveloping gray cloak. Ilbran recognized a grizane, and flattened himself against the wall to give him as wide a path as possible.

But the man, or otherman, as he might be, veered toward him. His footsteps padded silently; the only noise was the faint rustling of his robe. Ilbran stayed where he was, too proud to run in panic like some little child. The grizane stood in front of him, a bulky figure in the heavy robes. His hands, as they emerged from the sleeves, were tiny, wrinkled, and claw like, old-looking beyond belief. Nothing could be seen of his face but the faint glint of eyes, far back under a deep hood.

They stood like that for some time, Ilbran not daring to move, scarcely daring to breathe. At last, the grizane spoke, in an almost-whisper, although down the whole length of the street there was no one else to hear him. “Whatever choice you make, it will bring you sorrow.” Then he turned and walked swiftly away.