This dance began exactly the way Amney’s dance had, only the smiling host who led me to the place of honor was Darus, Amney looking on with an icy pretense at a smile in the background.
I sat alone on the same cushion on the same platform in the same lonely place of honor—and no sooner had I carefully disposed my train and my sleeves than that flicker of pressure on my skull presaged the glass-bowl-and-eye sense of scrying. I kept my mental shield locked hard as arrivals minced forward to bow to me, again exactly as they had before, including Raifas. Then once again the scry-eye was gone. Dhes-Andis had been checking in, probably while having more fun elsewhere.
I bowed back to Raifas, formal and unsmiling. He gave me one of those assessing looks, then was distracted when Ingras approached him and began talking in a voice too low for me to overhear.
And—as before—the musicians in the gallery above began the prelude to the Shadow Dance.
The Chosen began their careful advance-and-retreat according to rank and politesse as they sorted themselves into groups of three pairs.
Step-two-three, turn-two-three, mirror left, mirror right, bow. . . .
The dancers began to trip gracefully through the intricate pattern, the left-hand person mirroring the right-hand, and the meaning of the Shadow Dance locked another puzzle piece into place.
This had been a Sveranji dance, taken by the conquerors, who mirrored themselves. By so doing they had subsumed the true meaning, the celebration of human and other shape.
Though this appropriation and change had taken place centuries ago, a swelling of anger burned and bubbled inside of me as hot as any molten rock.
You have only to walk into the middle of them. . . .
The music already had my shoulders twitching and my toes bunching up. I can’t sing, or draw, or truly play an instrument—in fact I’m not very skilled at much—but I can dance.
And I could see the true pattern.
As the first of the three repetitions wound toward its end, all triangles coming back to their starting place, I slid off my cushion, and hair and tail clouding—if you’re going to do something that’s probably a stupid idea, do it with style—I glided off the dais toward the center of the room.
The musicians faltered a single beat, then repeated the prelude.
I glimpsed Raifas laughing for half a heartbeat before he smoothed his face into courtly aloofness; I turned away and stopped in the middle of the room, my right hand out. I didn’t even look, though my heartbeat thundered.
With reluctance that I could feel through my bones all the way to my back teeth, Darus slowly stepped up next to me and bowed low. Everybody else, with a hiss of silks and a shuffle of expensive embroidered dancing slippers, also bowed and reformed into new pairs.
And the dance commenced. Each of the three evolutions had two parts, the first representing the human, which now enabled me to be certain of the steps. When we had stepped, leaped, and twirled round all the points of all the triangles, it was time for the second part: the shadow. The others merely turned to go back the other way, but I lifted my arms out like wings, spread my tail to suggest tail feathers, and added height to my leaps, whirling in the air with my wings wide.
I could feel the startled gazes but I kept on, making pecking motions instead of bows.
“Oh,” Vian said softly to Ingras, her partner. “The princess is being a bird! How sublime!”
Ilhas began strutting like a rooster, which caused a muffled laugh, but he never missed a step or turn, and smiled triumphantly until Amney gave him a freezing stare when they briefly met hands-high. His fun faded and he stiffened into obedient hauteur.
I leaped even higher, spinning three times in the air on the last notes. When I landed, the Chosen (with the expected exceptions) uttered their soft, cooing sigh.
Third evolution.
Human again. I began watching them carefully, for the first time not seeing them as faceless as a set of rice-paper dolls. Yes, out of those Chosen present seven had shadows, though most of them were so faded that it was difficult to recognize what shape they had once had. Except for the eighth, whose shadow was so sharp I was surprised I had never noticed. Because I had ignored him as much as I could.
When the time drew nigh for the mirror dance, I pointed at Voyas, who had the clearest of the seven muted shadows, and said, “You are a leopard.”
His eyelids flashed up. Yes, I thought. Have you lived as a leopard in your dreams? Is he in your nature? He rolled his shoulders and stepped out with a hint of a prowl that caught the eye.
I used my supposed rank and pointed to the rest of my half-dozen: “You, a lillend, you, a hippogryph, you a minotaur, you a lamiar, you a sphinx, you a yeth-hound.” None of them reacted; they clearly did not recognize their animal natures, perhaps too thinned over the generations, or too buried in dreams to ever be acknowledged.
And I came face to face with my partner, the eighth, whose courtly mask showed no expression besides a faint upper-lip crimp of contempt, but whose ophidian-eyed wolf-shadow glared in teeth-bared hatred.
“Wolf,” I said to Darus. “You are a wolf.”
His gaze widened in a flash of anger, then narrowed into suspicion, and it was then that I remembered my danger.
“Oh, what am I?” Pelan asked. “Please, Your Imperial Serenity. . . .”
“A dove,” I said, glad to turn away, and I began choosing at random to hide my blunder. Swiftly I handed out birds and beasts, and when I came to Amney, whose mouth smiled mockingly, I said, “Eagle.” And though the mockery remained, she lifted her chin in the briefest instant of satisfaction that at least I had given her a bird considered noble.
She turned away, mocking and yet still graceful in her swoops and dives, her sleeve tassels streaming, and those who must always follow mimicked her with not-quite-hidden zeal.
Then I came face to face with Raifas, and my alarm flared again. “Centaur,” I said, and he laughed a little as he stepped away.
And so, for the first time in centuries, the animals danced in mirror image to the humans—except for Darus, who stalked through the dance with cold precision, his wolf up-hackled at his back, though no one could see it but I; and Raifas, who danced as he always did, neither mocking, pretending, or affronted. To him, complacent in his human superiority, it was all a joke.
Yet around him hippogryph pawed, and eagle soared with a flash of peach-colored wings, leopard prowled, dove fluttered, and fingers sparked tiny greenish stars when hand met hand, building a heady effervescence that somehow brought out the horns in brighter tones, the strings hummed in a shimmer of sound, the cymbals rang in entrancing patterns.
At first I thought the shift in my perception due to the dizziness caused by my spinning so often, after not having danced wildly in too many months to count. But the shadow vision dissolved the walls, so that the stars beyond the never-ending storms shone down and magic glistened through the chamber.
And in the distance Firebird bugled, echoed more indistinctly by four other great gryphs, the brown gryphs, and higher, the grays, finally, almost indistinct, the tiny voices of the lizardrakes. . . .
And the cats.
Then the last notes died away, and silence fell, inside and out. Partners smiled at one another, eyes bright, cheeks flushed. For a few heartbeats we all shared the giddiness of joy.
No, not all. Amney was the first to stiffen into courtly grace, her expression masked; Raifas bowed to her and she bowed back, exquisite in their civilization. Darus lifted a hand to signal another dance and the joy sank under courtly hauteur. It was then that I felt another scry, a longer one, as everyone moved in stylized order as if whatever had happened never had.
The musicians altered their style, commencing a technically complicated pavane that required sedately intricate steps.
Darus faced me, as blank as a statue, and I felt his unspoken challenge. I said—as I suspected I was supposed to—“I do not know the steps to this dance.”
He bowed,
turned to another partner, and I retreated to my cushion, the last vestige of joy doused by the time My Imperial Seat landed on the cushion. I was not at all certain what had almost happened during that Shadow Dance, but this much I knew: I had to be careful. I had almost revealed my ability to see those animal shadows, and to an enemy.
TWENTY-SIX
Back to court tedium for the remainder of the night. Now that I’d seen Darus’s vigilant wolf, I couldn’t stop seeing it instead of the tall, handsome courtier wearing four layers of green, cream, yellow, and gold silk folded into a sharp V below his fais, which glinted between the stiffly embroidered collar points at his throat. His fais did not have a diamond, I noted when he passed me by dipping into one of those exquisitely icy bows. The only one with diamonds belonged to Jardis Dhes-Andis. I still did not know if the diamonds had magical properties or were mere imperial decoration.
After ten eternities the evening finally ended. I left first, as before.
The next morning, I said loudly to Kal and the staff, “The music was so fine last night that I am inspired to resume my music studies. I shall retire to play the harp.”
There, I thought. Let whoever had to report my doings repeat that.
But scarcely had I consumed half a piece of nut bread when I sensed a sharp alertness in Tay, who had brought me fresh peach tarts, and Kal and Chith waiting in the larger room. Fais communication? They began fading back as if some kind of storm approached below the horizon.
The double doors opened to the hands of imperial guards and in walked his emperorship, Jardis Dhes-Andis.
My nerves flashed painfully anyway as I jolted to my feet and gave him his emperor bow.
His manner was at its most benign as he indicated my never-used formal chamber. With a running flash of pale silver silk sleeve complementing the deep violent panels of his stole, he settled in a quick, graceful movement on the principal cushion. Out of all my roiling fears a single breath of relief trickled through me as I recognized no shadow about him. At least I didn’t have to not notice it.
I sat opposite him. He waved off servants and guards with a slight lift of his forefinger, and the door shut on us, leaving us alone.
He said, “I understand you introduced a change into our oldest imperial dance.”
I said, “It seemed like it might be fun. No one told me I couldn’t.”
“It is not their place to deny your whims. As I am certain you are by now aware. What gave you the notion to change the dance?”
His manner appeared so benign except for that unblinking amber gaze, and yet in my new perception I sensed the dragon wings of death beating slowly around me. It had nothing to do with the physical realm—it was not his dragon, that is, he had no shadow, but I sensed it as ineluctably as I had the walls dissolving to that canopy of stars during the Shadow Dance.
I dared not tell the truth—
And white lightning ripped me to ash, then left me a quivering puddle.
The wings pressed close around me as I sobbed for breath.
“It grieves me to be required to repeat the obvious,” he said without any sign of emotion. “That was for your hesitation, which could only be due to your concocting some lie, and this is for stupidity.”
The universe ripped me into tiny components of pain.
Slowly, inexorably, they coalesced. My wits had scattered so badly I could not find my name, or even my self—though my first desperate thought was to scrabble mentally for my mental shield. As Hlanan had promised, once I made it solid, the unconsciousness of sleep would not permit its alteration.
Memory rebuilt awareness, a flutter of images connecting on some deeper level I was not yet able to perceive. But one image lingered: my guest room at Ardam Pennon.
“Why,” Dhes-Andis said, “did you disrupt the dance in a way that has been described as deliberately uncivilized by two witnesses?”
I gulped for breath. Sat upright, though I had to clasp my hands on my knees to keep me there. “At Raifas’s castle, there is a carving all around the ceiling in the guest chamber. Winged lions and hippogryphs and aidlars bowing to their partners,” I said. “After looking at it each morning when I woke, the fancy stayed with me. It came into my head when the dance began.”
“Ah.” The wings lifted, hovering. “I have seen that chamber. Why did you not tell me when I asked?”
“Because it was impulse,” I said, thumbing away the tears that burned my eyes. “The dance, I mean. I didn’t think about it, it just came to me as a fun idea. Because of the fancy I from looking at the c-carvings,” I almost said animals, and caught myself. My verbal stumble passed because my voice was already so unsteady.
“Did you hear the cats yowling?” he asked.
“Cats?” I repeated witlessly, and he took that for surprise that cats should be yowling, rather than surprise that he would bring up the animals’ strange response. I shook my head slowly, then said, “Animals hear things that humans don’t, even when there aren’t musicians playing. Maybe there was some noise from down the cliffs, or in the wind.”
“They will learn decorous behavior again,” he said, but the tension in his shoulders eased minutely, and so did his breathing. It occurred to me that he had never once touched me, but I was conscious of every subtle change in him. If he ever did, it would surely slay me.
Two heartbeats, three. Then he said, “We began adversely, I am aware. In an effort to mitigate that, outside of the necessity of your education, my intent was to leave you free to become acquainted with the Chosen. In particular your family, and without my presence. But it seems to have been less successful than I had expected. We shall change that.”
I was already so wrung out that I guess the fresh suffusion of horror didn’t show.
He went on in a reasonable tone, “Your gesture was perhaps well-meant, but childish and ignorant. You must not mock the oldest and most revered of court rituals.”
“I wasn’t. . . .” I flinched at his glance, my fingers pawing at the fais. I yanked my hand down.
“Mocking?” he asked, watching my hand. “It was not, perhaps, your intent, but the effect was the same.”
That was two uses of perhaps. Both flashed my nerves with warning.
“But this is to revert to unpleasant subjects. I told you that success and effort are always rewarded, an advantage I never had. I want to reward you. I like rewarding you. Yet you ask for nothing.” He bent his head a little closer, and I had to tense every muscle to keep from scrambling backward. “What do you want, Elenderi?”
“My freedom.” It was out before I could stop it. At the narrowing of his eyes I gulped in a breath, and no amount of control could keep me from flinching, my shoulders hunching tight under my ears, both my hands tense lest I give in and yank futilely at that horrible fais.
“You have freedom.” He opened his hands. “Within reasonable limits. Even if I were fool enough to send you back to stealing your next meal, do you really believe Aranu or that interfering Magic Council would permit you to run about, now that they know what you are capable of?”
“No,” I had to admit.
“You existed for years with no discipline or responsibility. You knew nothing else. But it has left you stunted, in all important ways still as unruly and ignorant as a child, with a child’s preoccupation with its own whim. I wanted you to discover the talents you should have been training all along, but perhaps it is time to begin your education in a more systematic manner. Come.”
Of course I must come.
He took me down to the governmental level, which I’d been through before on my Fire Stick hunt. No matter how busy people were, they dropped to their knees, heads bent—except for the Chosen, who stopped what they were doing, took three steps back and made the formal court bow.
I didn’t comprehend half of the stream of explanation as we walked from department to department. One thing was clear: all important decisions were made by the emperor. Everyone else was there to gather, to sort, to facilitate
dividing matters into piles from urgent to trivial. He called that responsibility, and I could see that he believed it, but the lesson to me was that he held all the power.
Only one incident is worth recording, when we entered the Chamber of Wisdom. There Darus sat with two other Chosen on a dais.
When they saw us everything stopped and all bowed. My gaze snapped to Darus’s wolf, which gave me a hackle-risen, noiseless snarl, though he stood with hands out and head decorously bent.
“This,” Dhes-Andis said, “is where the Most Noble learn to listen, evaluate, and summarize with discernment and precision, so that I may swiftly reach judgment. They serve here for at least a year, more often three, before being considered eligible for pennon stewardship.” He lifted a hand and the room’s occupants returned to what they were doing—or pretended to, as every ear was cocked our way.
Before we passed out of the room Dhes-Andis said to me, “I shall expect you to begin attendance here.”
The door shut behind us, but not before I felt the wolf’s wrath like a blow to my already pain-tender spirit.
o0o
My knees had turned to water by the time we finished that very long tour in demonstration of the steely strength of Sveran Djur’s pyramid of power.
The last chamber contained maps with magical lights and markers twinkling over them, some moving minutely.
Dhes-Andis took me to one, a set of small islands not far from a continent I had never heard of: he named off the kingdoms of the continent, and I vaguely recognized Damatras among them.
“Ndai.” He spoke the words with distaste as he flicked the islands. “Run by a family of witches whose control over squabbling natives is non-existent. They can squander months arguing and hollering at one another while nothing is efficiently managed. The world’s most excellent rice grows there—enough to guarantee comfortable winters for half my islands—and an uncounted variety of fruits grown year round. Civilization can only benefit such wretched disorder.”
When at last he let me go, he said in that benign voice, “I am told that tonight’s entertainment is specially selected for you, a superlative rendition of one of our most famous plays. Tomorrow,” he added, “you shall begin lessons with the scry stone.”