Armali.
“Stop it,” I said.
She didn’t stop. The flesh crept on my neck. She sang of the dead who wander among the caves, the dead who haunt the ruins of the aklidai and the girls who meet them there and are transformed into birds and slaughtered and eaten. She strayed among the stones , she sang, and he was waiting there . Such a terrible song for her pure voice. I listened, enraged. I wanted to smash the diali, to strike her face. I would have swallowed her whole if it meant I could take her with me.
4. Song
The swordmaiden will sing as she rides and the song will cool her spirit. She is happiest when singing the songs of the road. Songs of the hearth may make her body heavy and uncertain: it is difficult to manage a sword at a feast.
All songs that tell of brave deeds are useful, especially those in which the hero is slain. The False Countess was accustomed to prescribe melodies like physic. A man overtaken by trembling would be ordered to sing the ninth verse of the Vanathul. For self-hatred, the Countess recommended “The Pass of the Doves.”
Songs sung in childhood may also be used, but with care.
Melancholy music is appropriate only in peacetime, never in war.
At night, wrapped in her cloak, the swordmaiden murmurs the song of her unknown comrades, swordmaidens past and future: a song without words.
If I live, I will find Seren again.
The camp is silent. In three days, on the Feast of Lamps, we depart for the Blessed Isle. Dasya will meet me there, and together we will take Velvalinhu. We’ll have surprise on our side: everyone will think we have come for the feast. My Telkan Uncle and his priest will fall, while in the north whole battalions forsake the army, charging down from the hills to take the Valley, and in the east, Fadhian rides at the head of the feredhai. This is what I think of now at night.
If I live. If I live.
I lay on the sand with Seren and named the stars, the way Malino had taught me in the observatory. Firelight touched my wrist as I pointed: the right wrist, overdeveloped like the whole arm. I told her she ought to call me Tavis the Warped.
She clicked her tongue at me in disgust.
“Is that che ?”
“Yes. It means who asked about your arm? What’s that one—the bright one to the right?”
The feredhai have their own names for the stars, their own constellations. What we call the Bee they call the Clasp.
If I live.
She told me she had dreamt of me on the night I first arrived. She dreamt I was holding water in my cupped hands. “ Look inside, ” I told her, “it’s a taubel.” She bent and peered into the circle of water. It was completely black.
“This field is for you,” she told me once, “I’ll never take back.” But she did take it back. The day I left she stood apart, near the artusa, while the others kissed me and patted my shoulders and wished me luck on the road. Her sunburned arms crossed and her gaze trained on the mountains. No white cloak today, no sign of grief. She was taking it back. Her hair and her voice and her breath and the scar where she had been bitten by a wild dog. “I yelled like fever,” she’d told me. She was taking it all back. I wanted to be the first to turn away. I lost.
So many memories. But one is missing, because it never arrived: Seren performing at the garden party at Ashenlo. It lies like a needle in the back of my mind. I grope for it, desperate to draw it out. I see again the lamps among the sparse-limbed trees. Gowns brushing over the gravel and the musicians under the wooden arch. Were there three or four? Four, say four, Seren and three others. Guitar, diali, and drum. They glance at one another and nod, the drummer taps his calloused fingers, and it begins. Seren in the center, her strong face and supple, easy bearing, her hands in her lap. The light glints on the parting in her hair. Her plaits are tawny where the sun has burned them. She tosses her head and sways from the waist, using all the coarse,
“Stop it,” I said.
She didn’t stop. The flesh crept on my neck. She sang of the dead who wander among the caves, the dead who haunt the ruins of the aklidai and the girls who meet them there and are transformed into birds and slaughtered and eaten. She strayed among the stones , she sang, and he was waiting there . Such a terrible song for her pure voice. I listened, enraged. I wanted to smash the diali, to strike her face. I would have swallowed her whole if it meant I could take her with me.
4. Song
The swordmaiden will sing as she rides and the song will cool her spirit. She is happiest when singing the songs of the road. Songs of the hearth may make her body heavy and uncertain: it is difficult to manage a sword at a feast.
All songs that tell of brave deeds are useful, especially those in which the hero is slain. The False Countess was accustomed to prescribe melodies like physic. A man overtaken by trembling would be ordered to sing the ninth verse of the Vanathul. For self-hatred, the Countess recommended “The Pass of the Doves.”
Songs sung in childhood may also be used, but with care.
Melancholy music is appropriate only in peacetime, never in war.
At night, wrapped in her cloak, the swordmaiden murmurs the song of her unknown comrades, swordmaidens past and future: a song without words.
If I live, I will find Seren again.
The camp is silent. In three days, on the Feast of Lamps, we depart for the Blessed Isle. Dasya will meet me there, and together we will take Velvalinhu. We’ll have surprise on our side: everyone will think we have come for the feast. My Telkan Uncle and his priest will fall, while in the north whole battalions forsake the army, charging down from the hills to take the Valley, and in the east, Fadhian rides at the head of the feredhai. This is what I think of now at night.
If I live. If I live.
I lay on the sand with Seren and named the stars, the way Malino had taught me in the observatory. Firelight touched my wrist as I pointed: the right wrist, overdeveloped like the whole arm. I told her she ought to call me Tavis the Warped.
She clicked her tongue at me in disgust.
“Is that che ?”
“Yes. It means who asked about your arm? What’s that one—the bright one to the right?”
The feredhai have their own names for the stars, their own constellations. What we call the Bee they call the Clasp.
If I live.
She told me she had dreamt of me on the night I first arrived. She dreamt I was holding water in my cupped hands. “ Look inside, ” I told her, “it’s a taubel.” She bent and peered into the circle of water. It was completely black.
“This field is for you,” she told me once, “I’ll never take back.” But she did take it back. The day I left she stood apart, near the artusa, while the others kissed me and patted my shoulders and wished me luck on the road. Her sunburned arms crossed and her gaze trained on the mountains. No white cloak today, no sign of grief. She was taking it back. Her hair and her voice and her breath and the scar where she had been bitten by a wild dog. “I yelled like fever,” she’d told me. She was taking it all back. I wanted to be the first to turn away. I lost.
So many memories. But one is missing, because it never arrived: Seren performing at the garden party at Ashenlo. It lies like a needle in the back of my mind. I grope for it, desperate to draw it out. I see again the lamps among the sparse-limbed trees. Gowns brushing over the gravel and the musicians under the wooden arch. Were there three or four? Four, say four, Seren and three others. Guitar, diali, and drum. They glance at one another and nod, the drummer taps his calloused fingers, and it begins. Seren in the center, her strong face and supple, easy bearing, her hands in her lap. The light glints on the parting in her hair. Her plaits are tawny where the sun has burned them. She tosses her head and sways from the waist, using all the coarse,
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