The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 6



Ilbran listened dully to the footsteps passing back and forth through the dungeon corridors, echoing noisily in the low-roofed halls of stone. He had heard them for days. He could not think clearly, to know the length of his imprisonment. He thought of his mother and father and clenched his teeth to keep from sobbing aloud. His mind was a crazy jumble of pain and despair, with one red glint of revenge-hope in it. He clung to that one hope—it steadied his mind—but even it was dimming. They had said he would die tomorrow.

Lord of all life, who led my fathers into this wide land, give me the courage to fight them and win a quicker death, he prayed.

He did not look up as the footsteps came nearer, a firm confident tread, and a stumbling, shuffling one. Then they halted. His cell door rattled, and his mind froze with the terror he had thought he could not feel again. Had they changed their minds? More torture?

This time, he would fight, not go meekly. There would be one moment, when they unshackled him from the wall, before they held him fast again. He glanced up, trying to keep his face numb and uncaring.

Giter! Bruised and bloody, almost unrecognizable, the man that the guards held between them was Giter! Ilbran sprang to his feet and pressed to the limit of his chains, all pain and plans forgotten.

One of the guards let out a bark of laughter. “Back! Be patient! You’ll have your dancing day tomorrow.” He laughed at his own joke so heartily that his hands shook and he could not fit the key into the lock. Finally the other guard, a man with less sense of humor, pushed him aside and opened the door.

Giter was shoved inside. The door slammed closed. The key clicked in the lock. Ilbran stared at the butcher, filled with a bitter joy, a fiercer joy than any decent one could be. When do I tell him? When do I let him know? Not yet. Not yet.



Giter stared at him, wild-eyed. “My Lord Fisherman,” he gasped, and then looked as if he regretted the words.

Ilbran spoke mockingly. “When the stars change courses, lords as well as honest shopkeepers can fall to dungeons. What are you doing here?”

No answer came. “I see. Not knowing who told them the truth, they will torture both till one confesses.” He laughed like a madman, unable to control himself.

Giter backed into the farthest corner, holding out his manacled hands as though to ward off an attack.

Ilbran tugged against his chains, knowing that they were too short to allow him to reach the butcher cowering in the farthest corner, but relishing the look of terror on the other man’s face. Giter seemed to have shrunk and withered within his layers of fat. The guards had not been gentle with him.

A messenger passed through the corridor with brisk confident steps, then came a guard with a slower, heavier tread. Ilbran sat down again, watching the other man narrowly.

Giter was the first to speak, made nervous by the silence. “I never meant to tell them.” Silence was the only reply. Then more silence. Then a man’s scream echoed down the corridors, again and again, high and terrible. It ended abruptly, and then there were heavy footsteps, and more silence. Giter shuddered, and hid his bloodied face in his hands.

“Sometimes they torture one of us in his cell,” Ilbran said in a conversational tone. “They feel it teaches us to speak more promptly, when it is our turn.”

In the stillness, they heard a man sobbing, a nagging sound like a child crying himself to sleep. The late afternoon sun shone golden-dim through the high slit windows.

“I thought you would surely understand,” Giter said, raising his head to look desperately at Ilbran. “She must have paid you. Why else would one of the fisher-folk shelter one of them, like mice rescuing a nestling falcon? It would not have harmed you to share your gold with one other man.” The butcher looked at Ilbran with a kind of baffled fury. “Why were you so greedy?”

Ilbran stared at him. So simple, so heartbreakingly simple. They could have bribed him with Andiene’s gold, and bought safety at least for a while. He thought back to that last conversation. He had been a fool not to realize. Every word burned in his mind, taking on a new meaning. He spoke harshly, trying not to think.

“In my speech, threats mean threats. Why were your actions so different from your intentions?”

“You tried to kill me,” Giter said simply.

If only I had, Ilbran thought. Before he was on his guard. It would have been easy then.

Somewhere down the hall, a voice called out, “Any news of Erit Maassanfil Alenefile?”

“No talking,” shouted the guard, before anyone could answer.

“Why did you come, that night?” Ilbran asked softly.

“I saw you at the market-place. You had the look of one with a secret. When I went home, I could not forget. I dreamed about it every night, a voice whispering, telling me of the gold to be gained.”

“What kind of a voice? The voice of your own greed?”

Giter shuddered. “No. It was a whisper, a harsh voice, rustling like rats running over the dry leaves. If I listen, I can hear it yet.”

Ilbran shook his head. It meant nothing to him. Idly, he scraped away a patch of lichen that had grown on the wall for perhaps a hundred years. The fragile lace fell in splinters of pink and white and red, like flesh and bone and blood. “What news of the girl?” he asked.

“None. You hid her well. I swear that is the truth.” Giter eyed him for his reaction, then added, “I heard a wild story from one who was on the beach that night.”

“She spread wings and flew away?”

Giter coughed, and spat blood. “No doubt you know all about it. But they made a song of it, and it must have spread far beyond the city.”

“What do they say?”

“That a boat came in on the tide. That a girl—they say it was the girl—got in it, and then it went out, with no sail, against the tide.”

Ilbran shook his head. “You know nothing of that?” asked Giter.

“Nothing.”

“Then what became of her?”

“I do not know. We told them that we had sheltered her, finally, hoping that it would be a quicker death. For them it was. I saw them die.”

He was silent for a while. If he thought of that first night when the soldiers took them … there were the makings of madness in that. Time for his revenge. “Why did they take you?” he asked.

Giter twisted his hands together. “I do not know. They seem to think that I was your confederate. If you swore to them that I was not, that I had nothing to do with it, have no idea where she is … ” His eyes showed unquenchable hope. “They think it is a case of ‘when thieves fall out’, but if you said that I knew nothing of it, they would believe you, would they not?”

Ilbran smiled grimly. “There is no chance at all that they would believe me. They promised me a respite from torture if I would name my allies, and I could think of only one man worthy to be so named.”

Giter looked at him in shock. “They believed you?”

“You are here. They do not take chances, it seems. But I did not expect to have the pleasure of your company so close.”

Giter whimpered, and cowered in his corner. “They tortured my son, to make me confess, and when I confessed to stop them, they killed him. My wife, my children, they took them away. I do not know what they did with them.”

Ilbran caught his breath in horror. He had not realized, he not stopped to think, what his impulse for revenge would bring.

His thoughts ran in mazes of self-condemnation. They believed me. Nahil’s men believed me because I had broken. I would have betrayed anyone. If I had known her hiding place I would have told them. But not knowing that, I lied, and brought death on many, ones I do not even know. I am without honor or pride.



He bowed his head. Little was left to him but emptiness and despair. He thought of the future—of the few hours he had remaining. The torturers had been skilled; they had given great pain but little injury. They had left his body strong to live a long time tomorrow, when they would strip him and tar him, chain him to the tall stake in the center square of the city and set him on fire, the slow fire that would cling and burn, and would only spread and burn the more, for all that he tried to stifle it.

Burning, the cruelest death of all. He would try to fight, to win a better death on a soldier’s sword.

He had seen an execution for treason once, when he was too young to understand. They muted them somehow, so that their screams would not disturb the gentle nerves of the executioners.

He had thought that the black animal dancing and capering on the end of the chain was some sort of a clown, and so he had laughed and amused himself with the rest of the crowd, until his mother came and dragged him away. That night he was scolded and sent to bed supperless, filled with the shame of doing something terribly wrong, though he did not know what it could be.

Now he understood. His parents had thought he knew. They had thought he was laughing at the sight of death. Now he could never explain.

He had escaped lightly from the torture, because the soldiers, clever brutes, had known that the surest way to a confession was to torture father and mother while he watched. We were too stubborn, he thought. We should have betrayed the girl, worthless royalty, the moment the soldiers seized us.



Giter still moaned and shuddered in the corner. Ilbran, gazing at him, tried to recapture the bitter joy of revenge, but now he felt nothing but shame. What use to apologize? It would be a coward’s act, to ask for forgiveness when no repayment could be made.

The doors clanged open, and the familiar footsteps came down the corridor. “Where will we put this one?” asked one of the guards, the humorist. “In here. They won’t be crowded for long.” He guffawed at his own wit.

“These days, the Sudains should give us a cut-rate price on tar,” the other guard agreed.

The door of Ilbran’s cell swung open. He stared in amazement and incomprehension.

The man that the guards held between them, gray-clad, in bulky robes. A grizane? Or some impostor masquerading in gray robes? No, a grizane, true enough. It would have been less amazing to see Nahil Reji himself a prisoner manhandled by the guards.

No king would ever … no king had ever … set himself to war against the grizanes, who went where they pleased and swore oaths to no lord, spoke little with men and had powers beyond imagining. At least, so the stories went.

Ilbran could answer at least for their foreknowledge. “Whatever choice you make, it will bring you sorrow,” the gray one had said. Sorrow had come, and despair.

But what had brought a grizane to this place? Some doubted that they were men. This one seemed human enough, leaning against the cold stone of the cell wall and drawing great gasping breaths as though to calm himself. They had chained his hands together, but otherwise he was free. The blood was dry on the sides of his face where it had run down from his empty eye sockets.

Outside the cell, the guards talked, trouble and bravado mixing in their speech. “They say they can spell you with a glance,” one said.

“Who cares for that? This one won’t be glancing at anybody anymore!”

“Sure, sure, but how did they take him?”

“While he was asleep. The northern guards did it. Afraid of him, but more afraid of the King.”

“Why a gray one?” the other guard asked. It was Ilbran’s unspoken question, too.

“All sorts of stories. They say that the king was put under a spell, or is afraid of being put under a spell, something like that. The sorcerers and jugglers he’s killing at once, but this one—I suppose they were afraid to go that far—or maybe wanted to question him.”

The other one laughed, as they started to walk away. “When did they ever get anything out of magicians but riddles and tricks? I heard that it began when the girl escaped. That she used witchcraft on him … ” The outer door clanged shut behind them.

Ilbran crossed to where the grizane leaned against the wall. His chains would reach that far. “Come, good father, sit and rest.” The grizane staggered, and Ilbran caught him by the shoulders to steady him as he sat down. For all the bulk of the man in his gray robes, he was as frail and flimsy as a summer-dry leaf.

“They feed us in the evening, a little later,” Ilbran said. “And here is the water jug. Not as foul as you might think. Drink some, it will do you good.”

The grizane took a deep draught of the water, and shuddered. His hood fell forward over his ruined eyes, but he turned toward Ilbran as though he could still see. “What brought you here?”

“My own folly.” He had meant to say no more, but he was unnerved by those sightless eyes turned toward him as though they still could see. “I sheltered the true inheritor of the kingdom, and I can claim no blessing from it, for I did it grudgingly. Yet it brought my family to destruction, and me here.”

“And the one that you sheltered?” the grizane asked.

“I do not know. They have not caught her, or the hunt would not be so high.”

“Tell me of all that happened,” the grizane said. “From the time that you first saw her.”

His voice was hard to disobey. Ilbran began at the beginning, and when he spoke too shortly, the grizane questioned him, drawing out little half-forgotten details. So he told of his doubts and fears, the other grizane’s prophecy, Andiene’s dreams, and Giter’s betraying dreams. They spoke softly; Giter himself was deep in sleep or stupor and did not hear them. The light grew dim. Ilbran peered through the dusk to study the blinded and dreadfully old face of the grizane.

He told of his father and mother, though it wrenched his heart to speak of them. “They were good and brave and honorable. No king could ask for a better epitaph.”

He told of the wild stories that were spreading through the city. The grizane listened intently. “The seashore,” he murmured. “The western shore … ” Suddenly, he leaned toward Ilbran. “You are whole? Your eyes and limbs are whole?”

“Yes. They wanted their entertainment tomorrow.”

“What would you do to gain your freedom?”

“Anything. I have nothing left to lose. No kin, no honor.”

“No honor?”

“Do you see … forgive me … Giter who shares our cell is asleep or unconscious, I think. I lied for revenge, and betrayed him to the king’s men, him and all his family, innocent ones and children. And once being done, how can it be undone? So you see, my ‘honor’ is but trash to be thrown over the cliff.”

“What would you give up to be free?” the grizane asked again.

Either the gray one was mad, or he had some purpose behind his probing. And there were strange stories told—one might give up more than life or goods. Ilbran answered cautiously. “As I have said, I have nothing to give. All that I own is forfeit to the king, but, all that waits for me here is a dance in Traitorsquare.”

The visions of torture of death overcame him. The cold eyes of the questioner. The soldiers that looked on. Laughter somewhere outside his range of vision. The smell of pitch in the hot sun. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he stammered, “Truly, I would give up anything I had or would have, as long as it did not involve another. With no regrets. None at all.”

Then he watched in hope and terror, scarcely realizing that he had backed away to the full length of his chain, as the grizane felt his way along the wall toward him.

Cold bony fingertips closed around his wrist, as if to feel his pulse. They felt their way up his arm and shoulder, felt their way across his face. He would have flinched away but his shackles held him tight; he could retreat no further.

“Close your eyes—if you would be free,” the grizane said. “And do not open them until I give you leave.”

Ilbran obeyed, fear and hope mixing in him till he could not tell them apart. The grizane chanted low in some strange tongue that seemed to Ilbran as if he could understand it, if it were but louder. The blood roared in his ears like the ebb and flow of the tide. He was keenly aware of the various reeks of his cell, the smell of blood, sweat, filth, mixed with the damp mustiness of an underground dwelling.

He kept his eyelids tightly closed. The grizane’s fingertips pressed painfully firm against his cheekbones and eyebrows, digging in as though they would mold his skull to another shape.

The chanting was but a distant murmur in his ears. He and his father and mother had paid for shelter in these very cells one summer, or was his memory playing tricks with him? It must have been when he was very young—he could remember how tall the stairs had seemed, when he climbed up into the cool night, to run and play after the hot agonizing day had ended.

Suddenly, red pain tore at his eyes, knives, claws, agony as terrible as the worst that Nahil’s men had done with club or fire. He tried to scream, but he was mute. His muscles were paralyzed, like some icy nightmare. His eyelids were sealed shut.

Then the agony was gone. The pressure left his brows and cheekbones. The grizane spoke hurriedly. “I am sorry. I did not mean to give you the pain as well.”

As well as what? He did not understand what was happening. The pressure left his brows and cheekbones. The grizane’s hands closed around his wrists. “Open your eyes. You will be free soon.” Ilbran opened his eyes and saw—nothing. Tarry black, a starless night, no dungeon could be so dark. He gasped and tried to scream. Again no sound came from his mouth.

Cold hands tightened like manacles around his wrists. The grizane’s voice was sharp, piercing through the mad terror. “Have you forgotten your vows so soon? You said you would give up anything to be free.”

Ilbran fought to control himself, taking slow and deep breaths. “They spoke true,” the grizane said more gently. “Without sight I can work no magic … and sight must come from someone.” Ilbran’s wrists were free of the grizane’s grip. A cold touch, and the ankle rings clicked open. He heard the grizane step briskly across the cell. A lock snapped open in the corner where Giter lay, then the lock on the cell door rattled.

“Come with me,” the grizane said. Ilbran stayed slumped against the wall.

“Come here, you dolt. I have put a spell of sleep on these rooms, but it will not hold against many, if they should try to enter. Remember your vows. You must come with me. I may need to use you again.”

Ilbran opened and closed his eyes, still unbelieving. What more can you take from me? But he stumbled forward and clutched the grizane’s sleeve, following him down the long corridors as he opened locked cell doors and unfastened shackles from sleeping men.

Then the last cell was visited, the last lock undone. The door of the dungeon swung open easily under the grizane’s touch and voice. They climbed up the long stairway, Ilbran clinging to the gray one’s robe. “There may be a guard at the top,” he said. The grizane began another chant, soft as a mother’s lullaby. Below them, a confused murmur of voices arose.

“They are awaking,” muttered the grizane. “The fools have not the sense to escape quietly. They will bring the whole garrison down upon us.” He seized Ilbran’s wrist in an iron grasp and quickened his step to a near-run. Behind them, the noise grew to a shouting, and the ring of steel against steel. Ilbran ran and fell and ran again, stumbling through the maze of streets. Right and left and right again, as the grizane led him on flagged streets and cobbled ways, twisting and turning and at last stumbling up a short flight of steps to collapse against a wall.

Ilbran lay where he had fallen, his face against the cool stone. There was shouting in the distance, but it came no closer. “Where are we?” he asked.

“On some nobleman’s back doorstep,” said the other. “I can hold it against any passer-by. Till dawn, we are safe.”

“Then when morning comes, what then?”

“I do not know, yet. We have a long night to think and make our plans. Do not be impatient—is it not better than the night you would have spent?”

Ilbran raised his head and opened his eyes. Night-black emptiness. “In truth, in truth it is better,” he said. “This night I will spend planning for life; that night I would have spent planning for death.”

When he closed his eyes, he could speak more calmly. “I did not understand what kind of a bargain I was making with you, but truly, truly, I would be a shabby soul to regret it.” He spoke to try to convince himself, and gained courage and conviction as he spoke. “I do not know how long this freedom will last, but even the freedom to be hunted is better than that which I left.”

The grizane chuckled slightly, a strangely human sound. “With but a little skill and management, you will live past the hour set for your death, and those hours, or days, or more, you may thank me for. I have given you nothing yet.”

“At least you gave me, and those others, a chance,” Ilbran said. “Do you believe that any of them escaped?”

“I fear not. But they died a clean death. I might have stayed and helped them more, but I feared the guards would come. I could not stay. I have a mission of my own. The life of your land may depend on it.”

“What did you do back there?” Ilbran asked suddenly. “What have you been doing? Can you do anything?”

“Is this any time for a discussion of the limits of magic?”

“Why not? There are none to hear but the night-birds and crickets.” Why he was so bold, Ilbran did not know. In all his life, he had never dared to speak a word to one of the grizanes. This was like some strange Festival day, with all the barriers cast down.

The grizane sighed. “It has been long since I spoke to one of your kind for anything more than buying bread in the marketplace, but perhaps I owe you something. Since you wish knowledge, you may have it. It may help both of us, if you know what I can do.”

His voice was not old-seeming, but timeless, clear and precise. “To escape, it was necessary to take your sight from you. Vision is necessary for the use of power. I do not know how those curs knew that, but it is true. Power is brought into being by voice, and strengthened by touch, and directed by sight. Do you understand?”

Ilbran opened his eyes and shuddered. Pretend it is but night, and the day will come soon, he told himself, but he knew that the stars shone bright for one who had eyes to see them. Aloud, he said, “I think I understand. What good is a dagger if your enemy is hidden from you?”

“Good enough,” the grizane said. “All power has its limits. I can do as I will with things of the earth, those locks and chains. I can hold the mind of one person, one guard, one passerby, so that he will see a blank wall, instead of this doorway with two people huddled within. But if a company of soldiers walked by, I would be much harder put to it to find protection for us.”

Then he was silent, only the soft sound of his breath speaking of his presence. Ilbran’s boldness was gone. This was a creature of magic sitting so close beside him. But better to be at his side than alone and blind. Footsteps passed down the street, wooden soles crisp on the stones, not slowing or changing their pace.

Ilbran tried to make some plan. The watchman called the hour; once, twice, later and later into the night. The grizane stirred. Ilbran spoke softly. “What will we do when daylight comes and the streets fill with people?”

“I do not know. Tonight we cannot leave; no one is abroad but soldiers. And tomorrow, guards will be watching at the gates. It is impossible to warp the minds of many. It would come to a match of strength against strength, swords against fire, and I do not know who would win.”

“A disguise might bring us through,” Ilbran said. “Tell me, could you not open this door? Inside, you might find servant’s clothes. A black robe and veil would serve you well. If you can pitch your voice high and cracked, you could be an old woman, and I your lackwit son led by the hand.”

The grizane laughed softly. “With your mouth lolled open, and a shambling gait, you might pass through if there were none at the gate that knew you.”

“There is only one that I truly fear,” Ilbran said. “The officer in charge—the one I saw—he looked too intelligent for his dirty business. Wary and wise—we must hope the guards at the gate are simple fools.”

He heard the sound of a lock springing open, a door opening and closing gently, and realized that he was talking to himself. The grizane had gone in search of a disguise.