Songspell

This story is a work of fiction. It often contains references to both sexual and violent behaviour, along with expressions of physical affection and compassion. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental and uncanny.

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46 - SongSpell

Hamlet. Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special

providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,

'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now;

if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is

all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what

is't to leave betimes? Let be.

Hamlet V.ii., line 220-225

Ierwbae and Par-shetope came in behind a rumpled-looking Ddronhelim and a gaunt but serene-looking Darhelmir.

The King waved away any gesture of worship. "A chair by the fire for this man to sit in," he commanded. "Have you kin you would give warning to before we assay this?"

Aldul smirked and shook his head slightly at his friend's idea of tact.

Ddronhelim answered. "They know, Your Majesty. Our mother's sister and her brood have feared for my brother and me for a long time. They have long harboured anticipations of the doom that o'ertakes some males of our line, without the comfort of certainty. Your offer evoked a fierce refusal from them."

"Better the ralur you know than the binturong you do not?"

Darhelmir nodded and spoke between laboured breaths. "That is their stance. But the choice remains mine. And I have lived with this...leech. It is no tolerable companion to me."

"Again I do ask," Evendal grated out. "You know that my efforts may accomplish what your ailment as yet has not?"

With his brother's help, Darhelmir sat before replying. "Our mother's sister has made sure I comprehend that. Your Majesty. As any hale man would, I want to continue breathing. And to serve...without worries or doubts...as to the worth of that service. Such has been my durance of late...that I trust Your Majesty in Your Majesty's uncertainty...more than I trust my own body. Should Your Majesty not achieve our mutual ambition..." The Guard shrugged, the skin around his eyes pearlescent in his malady. "The Wheel turns."

Ddronhelim looked horrified at his brother's apparent indifference, but said nothing.

A shiver caused the muscles in Evendal's face to twitch. "Commune with your brother for a time, and await me," the King bade, and motioned for the priestess.

Before the King could engage the woman, Kri-estaul interrupted, directing his hurried speech to Karondeo's earlier question. "Papa said that I died, and he hurt so much he set the stones on fire and he asked me to live so I did. I do. And did you see, Papa? I turned."

"Yes, my son, I saw. That rolling chair is not built for such virile usage. You left bits of the wheel on the floor.(284) We shall have to ask of the Felters to restore the device. Please do not force your chair to do that again. You will have more entertainment when Spring arrives and you learn to ride a horse."

"What is this tale that gushes from His Highness's lips?" Karondeo enquired.

"It is true!" the Prince insisted, but stung more at his Papa's lack of glee over his accomplishment.

Almost grateful for the diversion, Evendal gave answer. "You recall my talk of Emial of Kernost?" The seaman nodded.(285) "When his heir emerged from concealment with blade bared, Our son was first to sight him and, seeing the man's goal, rushed to thwart him. Emial, Emial's son, changed targets and killed Kri-estaul."

"He stabbed me right here!" Kri-estaul added eagerly, rubbing his breastbone.

The King of the Thronelands leaned over, set aside the mobile chair's weighted sash, gripped his son by his armpits, and lifted the boy up and onto his lap. Evendal rested his head on his son's shoulder, then carefully wrapped an unsteady arm around the again happy child. "I don't rec... I don't want to recall what passed after." He spoke clearly but softly to Kri-estaul's neck.

"You ignited the walls that make the Council Chamber?" The seaman pointedly surveyed the square, stark hall.

The Council Chamber had been one of the first palatial stone buildings rebuilt in Osedys after the Nikraan Advent; palatial only in the sense of location. Its rectangular structure and spare look had abided unchanged since that time. Unadorned walls of ash and dun grey tones pressed on the guilty visitant with a feeling of uncomfortable otherness and a Damoclean weight that each supplicant unthinkingly ascribed to the Royal Authority. The very lack of character, the severe and unrelieved effect, encouraged people to linger elsewhere.

"Yes."

Karondeo nodded again in understanding. "So we have you...Your Majesty to thank for the improvements. But that feat, though remarkable, was --- to you -- incidental, wasn't it? Your Majesty."

Evendal lifted his head and shone incandescence on Kri-estaul. "The most awe-full gift had been given to me, and then blithely destroyed. And a room full of people, watching this fool emerge with purpose plain, lacked the imagination or the charity to give an alarm that could have prevented it. In that moment I knew of no cause that justified their continued breathing. Or mine own. But, yes, you are correct. My immediate goal, when the flames first sprouted unbidden, was the torture and death of Master Emial of Kernost."

Without a shift in body or tone, Evendal redirected his speech. "What have you determined, Your Eminence? Is it solely his heart?"

Sygkorrin squinted in surprise before answering. "Yes, Your Majesty. Those of our discipline who pursue these matters guess that a heart can get called into service while incomplete. Its...walls, its curtains, unfinished or unfashioned. And as the afflicted one grows, the lack becomes more dear. An adult's heart is basically two cordoned well-pumps. One sends blood to the lungs to restore its virtue, the other sends that restored blood through the rest of the body. For some the unfinished wall is the one between the two `pumps', and blood meant to be restored gets sent forth with no virtue to it. Or blood invigorated gets pressed back into the lungs, to no purpose. The liquid of blood has been found in lungs in place of air."

The King frowned. "Your priests...They `guess'?"

Sygkorrin gave her king a look as dared him to complain. "Yes. You expect better? Your Majesty has never heard what nonsensical assertions once served us! Shall we wait until the moon waxes full, its influence must surely keep the blood strong? Or shall we wait for the new moon, since it resembles a bottle being stoppered -- what we want in Darhelmir's heart? Or shall I explain to your Guard how his heart is flawless; he merely was fashioned(286) to not live as long as his brother?

"Your Majesty knows how delicate the structures in a body are. Your struggle for His Highness at the Temple shall ever abide in my mind. Though the flaw is in the heart, the whole body suffers. Were a servant to unlace and remove his boots, you would see consequent swelling in Darhelmir's ankles and feet."

"We accept your vassals' best `guess'. The heart, then, is like an old-style fortress, though its walls breathe more rapidly." Evendal m'Alismogh let his mouth continue without censor. "I shall need the hearth fire built up, and well-fed. Two or more chairs beside it and Darhelmir barefoot in his. Set the krater down by the hearth also."

Par-shetope relinquished the bowl and fed the fire while Ierwbae set about providing chairs.

Evendal waited on his throne, gripping Kri-estaul around the belly while holding Karondeo's hand on his right and thinking. He had made a promise. As Darhelmir's liege, were his royal powers merely political he would stand obliged to provide his Guard little more than sustenance and shelter. Added authority, Evendal knew without reflection, obligated him to employ that extended authority in the service of those who served him. Vassal Darhelmir suffered an inherited malady. Did not a King's purpose encompass his menial's need? Evendal had no doubt he could readily deliver the young Guard into lasting good health.

More was needed than personal impunity; the flaw was borne in both blood and seed, and Darhelmir might himself thrive only to helplessly watch all future offspring suffer and die. The Guard's heart was set, from before his first full breath, to grow into a ruined holt invested with a further curse of the cruellest sterility; a fault permeated every stone and only waited to be disseminated.

Yet if a fatal command abided in every crenel and boss, down to the euthynteria(287) of Darhelmir's body, what else did?

"Your Eminence," Evendal called again. "Talk to Us further."

"What would Your Majesty?"

"Some of Our father's men spoke of tent-healing. Of skin-grafting. How it would save them from enduring open -- easily infected -- wounds. Yet, as many grafting efforts failed as succeeded."

"This does not surprise me."

"Does the skin..." The King struggled for the words to approach his suspicion. "Does the skin grafted take on the qualities of the area it is given over to?"

Sygkorrin frowned, bemused. "I do not ken your meaning, Your Majesty. Skin is skin."

Evendal shook his head in dissent. "Skin from a hip, grafted onto a chin. Does it not sprout hair with the skin surrounding it?"

The Priestess's face eased. "Yes, Your Majesty. Though not along the borders of the graft, scarring intervenes."

"And I am given to understand that while malignities such as warts and tumours can fatten under their own impetus, nothing else benign other than nails and hair extends so freely on us."

Sygkorrin answered advisedly. "This had been the Temple's conclusion for a long time. Of late, one elder, long relied on for her perceptions, has argued how every particle of us is engendered, used, discarded and replaced. She contends this...circuit occurs more stealthily than with nails and hair and, like breathing, becomes more slow and laborious with age. Of course all healing oft seems increasingly fitful and incomplete when people near the end of the traditional lifespan."

"So the body's talent for restoration lingers in every organ, losing virtue with the accumulation of years? This would suggest that nascency can be a resource for healing. For making the unfinished whole."

"This was the woman's argument. An unprovable idea. One can hardly return to the womb."

Evendal glanced down at Kri-estaul, then away. "Every element in our bodies has the...capacity to grow rapidly -- much as nails do -- and the knowledge to alter its aspects or qualities -- much as skin does. Just not the...permission?"

Sygkorrin nodded. "Something like. She insisted both form and function in each part are not essential.(288) Rather they are like malleable commands specific to their part, and in some people those instructions are garbled even while the confusion is preserved and adhered to slavishly."

"We envision a common set of commands' for each element, resulting in a normative liver'...or heart', with distinctions, or ornamentation, provided by breeding. Indeed, given different trappings and proddings, these commands either become garbled' -- as you say -- or the wrong command acknowledged in the wrong moment. The result being a liver dispensing bile, and the like."

The Priestess examined her King. "You have thought on this before."

Evendal shook his head. "Nothing so clear as thought." He released Karondeo's hand and waved toward Darhelmir and Ddronhelim. "I am not assured of my competence for this. Yet I grasp what needs doing. We know how a black-furred nis-ralur, mating with another equally sable, can birth parti-coloured kittens. Just so can not Darhelmir's starvation dwell unmanifest in his brother? To be passed on to Ddronhelim's brood?"

Irritated, Gwl-lethry interrupted the Priestess. "Why are we here, Your Majesty?"

"We do not know why you are here, Lord Tinde'keb," Evendal snapped. "Our royal person has chosen this place to fulfil Our pledge to Our Guard. Go, if you so wish, or take a seat with Us amongst the dust and detritus." The King waved carelessly to the seats facing the dais.

"Aldul?"

The Kwo-edan approached the Throne. Catching a glint of perversity in the man's eye, Evendal waited until it looked as though he meant to kneel. "If you mark our different states by abusing your knees, I shall sing you to a chair that only my song will get you out of."

The two men exchanged grins.

"For this effort I dare not rely solely on ecstasy. Have you some litter I might could use?"

Aldul nodded. "Permit me to retrieve it from my rooms, Your Majesty?"

The King shook his head, wanting to spare his friend additional effort and aches. "Out of your kindness, Matron, if you would?"

Drussilikh bowed and left. She returned, with a tool-laden Lialityne olm'Eruidin, to a room slightly changed. Ierwbae had dragged five chairs onto the dais, ranged near the hearth. For the moment, though, only the twin Guard sat by the fire. The King sat his throne, Gwl-lethry, Danlienn and Urhlysha sat in the rows, and the rest -- by their own choice -- remained standing.

Evendal returned Kri-estaul to his chair and secured him with a kiss on his head, then accepted leaves, lap-table, and ink from Lialityne. Staking out the parameters of his purpose proved a struggle. Having someone else offer alternative words or word-order, as Lialityne was wont to do, distracted. M'Alismogh finally confined the young lady's responsibility to examining metre. His first adaptation sounded timorous and long-winded to his own ears. In conferring with Sygkorrin, he came to see how his attempt spent itself preventing any events whatsoever from coming to pass.

Sygkorrin's tuneful voice added a liveliness to the would-be lyrics. "'Let no assemblage of helpers rush to tear what We make'...Your Majesty, you repeat this too often here! You fear too much what command might go astray. By the same token, calling on unspecified `helpers' could submerge the humour needed, or the air his lungs need. The words you've chosen could isolate both blood and air from the heart!" Urhlysha and Gwl-lethry watched in bemused fascination as, engrossed, Her Eminence chided His Majesty without qualm.

Evendal gripped his jaw and rested his elbow against his knee, frustrated. "I do not want blood besieging a heart...wall...just as it is forming! Or clots(289) threatening Darhelmir as they did Kri-estaul!"

Sygkorrin held the rag up and shook it for emphasis. "You concentrate too much on what might go awry! Is your end to accomplish a deed, or ward against one?"

"Both!"

The Priestess shook her head. "On this occasion be singular of purpose, as in those few times I have witnessed your song."

Evendal secreted his misgivings away as he laboured a second time. He wondered how his forefathers Osmaredh and Kahalam came by the burden which made some Thronelander Kings' touches curative. Over a hundred generations apart, yet both kings reputedly healed the scrofulic, the consumptive, the sterile and the infertile. If he himself had wielded the `gift' others once believed he owned, Evendal felt certain he would not have survived his childhood fame. The royal gift that in truth was his, the Left Hand of the Unalterable -- a dignity Kahalam himself had also borne -- manifested only in the face of human injustice. Unlike the curative King's Touch, it did not concern itself with the effects of accident or illness. Or not much.

Documents of the past held no clews. Osmaredh and his grand-daughter lived in a time when writing, for the most part, served commerce and governing; no one had thought healings worth detailing. Indeed, what records as existed of Osmaredh's dealings with Llyssha only came about out of his fear; as a counter to whatever the record-in-coral of the Llyssha might contain.

By the completion of Evendal's second composition, Sygkorrin's considered opinion was blunt. "More to the matter and less art."

Aldul perused his friend's second attempt and disagreed. "As you do not depend on simple rhyme or the strong emotion of your past songs, it seems apt for you to employ example or sympathy to direct and encompass this... undertaking."

Frustrated in his conferences with Sygkorrin and Aldul, the King reconsidered, wrestled his overworked mind into something like obedience, and refabricated the evocation to his companions' satisfaction if not his own.

He glanced from a sleeping Darhelmir to a weary and alert Ddronhelim. "Let us not awaken him. If We can effect this restitution without fanfare, so much the better for all."

Ddronhelim, all but hovering by his brother, nodded.

Evendal then stood, walked to the hearth, adjusted a chair to sit facing Darhelmir and Ddronhelim, and settled the large krater against his feet. Danlienn, Drussilikh, Gwl-lethry, Lialityne, and Urhlysha had chosen to sit in Innocents' Row. M'Alismogh waited for Sygkorrin, Karondeo and Aldul to claim their seats, for Kri-estaul to wheel over, and for Ierwbae and Par-shetope to take their stations.

He began his recital.

True night, the vulture's(290) dam, netted you(291) in her stifling pall;

Your wellhead breached ere that first breath, and half-formed floodwalls flawed.

At the last, you turn to Our pledge, to live or die Our shield.

We, in turn, employ myst'ries no hand can touch, no man wield:

Lambskin scudded and waiting, chosen Kul-stone yet uncarved,

The flooded plain,(292) the unborn child's words, attend Our rough trawl.

Rebuke those heralds in you clutching blazons spoiled and marred,

Every fell script, in tissue,(293) vein or marrow, etched awry.

That which would tear the banks of your life's founts into ruin --

Ignored or heeded, large, small, alive or yet to quicken --

Each fragment, its own womb recall and winter's promise ply.

Heed, attend; in your cocoons mend, amend, and miss no shard.

We claim the slab unhewn, hope entombed, the year at its hinge.

We spell your centre lithe, with a strength equal to your years.

Amend. Excise, alter or add, but of virtues lose none.

Inform every mote and grain in you with how it is done.

Mend. Sow no flaw, of surface or substance, as would reap tears;

Bequeath no twist, knot or cavity to cause a king's whinge.

Quicken these wonders in you; in their season heed them all.

And m'Alismogh gestured to the bowl of oatmeal.

Let this, a base and end in Our consumption, answer well;

Use the moist weight of our bounty at need, gleaned and kratered.

What We ask, cement; make fast through begettings uncounted.

We bid winter's veils enfold you, invest a reformed well.

We beg winter's web heal you, her pall secure your heart's caul.

In the silence immediately after the song, Evendal's ear alone distinguished the suspiration from thirteen sets of lungs. And only the King's bones and skull felt a thrumming and disordered rhythm that built up slowly; built up in ferocity so that when Aldul spoke to Sygkorrin, he could not hear the Kwo-edan's voice. After quietly enduring, Evendal determined the beats to be random cycles of one, two, or three strikes accompanied by pauses. One beat, pause, two beats, pause, two beats, pause, three beats, pause, one beat, pause, three beats, pause; and so on. About when he distinguished that whatever assailed him pounded out no more than three strikes at a time, the percussion ordered itself into a succession of one beat, two beats, one beat, three beats, and repeated this series until it faded from his awareness. The thrumming, too, settled into a headache.

Only Evendal's ear distinguished that suspiration from thirteen sets of lungs. The King was not alone, however, in noting when one resident failed to contribute to the ephemeral noise in the Chamber. No follicled blade on Darhelmir's upper lip even so much as quivered.

"Dar!" Ddronhelim cried out, stricken and disbelieving. "No! No! Your Majesty?"

And Evendal who, disoriented from the songspell's wake, saw and felt everyone moving as through an aether of honey-like thickness, wondered where he had erred. "You were right to chastise me," the King commented numbly to the Priestess. "Less artifice might have better served." Likewise feeling affected by the lethargy he saw around him, his gaze dragged to fix, pointedly, on no one person or object in the chamber.

"Your Majesty!" Alarmed for the Guard, Sygkorrin insisted. "Do something to the purpose!"

Evendal's brow bunched; the glow from his eyes had washed away during his cant, leaving them a clarion brass. "Dare I tempt further mischance?"

He spoke lowly, as if mumbling in a drowse. Since no one quite knew what the King's song had effected, none felt prepared to challenge his question. The young lord kept a palm over Darhelmir's face and waited for movement, some perturbation, knowing it a useless gesture. The befuddled attendants sat or stood in clusters of a complicit silence that grew more burdensome and paralysing the longer it remained. The Songmaster looked able to wait out the season in the quiet of the recently devastated chamber.

Discarding the reticence born of self-consciousness, Karondeo moved from Evendal's back and interposed between King and Archate. Where his peers and betters kept silent, Karondeo spoke; yet softly, lest others hear and presume him disrespectful of the royal office.

"Beloved, look on your vassal. He trusts you. He belongs to you. Will you let him get stolen away?"

Evendal startled himself with a louder, anguished plea. "Have I not done too much?" And those not fooled by the King's impassive mien heard the agony of remorse Karondeo knew to be sapping Evendal. The corsair's son ignored the question, seeking to stir a more deep-seated anxiety intrinsic to the Evendal he knew.

Karondeo did not raise his voice to match the King's, testing the measure of the King's truth as spoken to him. "One of your own is failing. Retrograde to both your wills, he is being taken from you. Have you so many as to not miss this one?"

"One of Our's," Evendal affirmed in a whisper. The thought gave him pause. The room righted itself in his perception. "Pledged to Us. Failing or not, he is Our's else he would have died while We were at sea. And whatever else We may have done, We have not released Our faithful!" Karondeo noticed his beloved's shoulders untense, and small signs of animation return as suddenly as they had fled.

"Ddam, hoshe'Ddronhelim," m'Alismogh's amber eyes focused once more as he jabbed the corpselike Guard in the chest with a finger. "Kharemeh!"(294)

Annoyed at the dallying, the seemingly pointless emotion, and the apparent non sequiturs, Sygkorrin again protested. "Do something to the purpose. No one talks like that anymore. A Guard would not know the words you..."

Then Darhelmir obliged his king.

Ddronhelim leaned back from his gasping, insensate brother to gaze on the King with an awe unalloyed by affection. All that the Guard could grasp at this juncture was how his brother was not dead. Yet.

He and Darhelmir had acceded to what were, for them, unclear risks in seeking Evendal's succour. They had served under the Beast and the Walking Abacus and both rulers had been worse than indifferent to physically weakened or `sentimental' Guard. And while Menam's Heir had shown regal magnanimity, the thought of presuming on it felt as perilous as the family malady.

Darhelmir had been reticent, despondent in the aftermath of the priest's cavalier treatment and disdain. Prior to this bell, Ddronhelim thought he had endured the limit of unrelieved frustration in the struggle to help maintain his brother's sangfroid after that dung-spewing Archate discard had visited. Ddronhelim had turned to him, believing that what he might not understand or notice in his pain, Darhelmir might grasp. But Darhelmir's anxiety for his brother had rendered him deaf to all but delusion and hope. It seemed clear that neither he nor the King knew what good or ill the King might accomplish.

The niggling but earnestly nibbling doubt that he and his brother were being toyed with again, in service to this creature of odd dispositions and disjointed fancies, added to Ddronhelim's fear. Discovering still more opportunities for that all-too-familiar feeling of helplessness did not endear this sovereign to him.

Both brothers calmed as their King watched without comment or censure; Ddronhelim back into his rounds of self-recrimination, Darhelmir back into apparent sleep.

Karondeo's grip on his shoulder startled Evendal and reminded him that not everyone held him in a distancing fear; the hand's steady pressure and warm weight gave the troubled Songmaster the impetus to chant more recklessly.

By song and vow

We claimed you at Our start.

We claim you now.

To sing whole your tired heart

We keep Our claws in you,

Assuring every breath;

And in your brother too.

Now's not your day for death.

What errors each mite and weaving holds,

Of blood and bone and seed within you,

Emend down to life's moulds,

That your lines beget wholesome issue

If that is the path your will unfolds.

His chant came out mangled, mixing metres and rhythms and using too few dynamic eikhons. At the short song's end Evendal first looked to Darhelmir, breathing obediently, and saw him blush. Curious, the King touched the Guard's face. His hand tingled, with fingertips melting a translucent rime by their warmth. The Guard did not flinch or respond. As the King and his coterie watched, Darhelmir's seated form slowly collected what looked like flakes of white ash out of the air. When, befuddled but wary, Ddronhelim made to brush at the debris, the King gestured him to forbear.

The ash-hued bits of ice multiplied, adhering into a rind of patchy grey and white scales. Soon enough Darhelmir resembled a Kul-stone carving; his serene effigy breathing shallowly. This patina of sleet attached itself exclusively to Darhelmir. Moments passed. Occasionally small sections of slush would slide off of the Guard and puddle on the floor, replaced soon enough. Though proximity to the room's hearth caused continuous dripping, in less than a quarter of a bell a suit of winter's armour encompassed Darhelmir, pulled seemingly from the moisture in the air and unimpeded by the hearth-fire.

His Majesty's attendants patterned their haviour on their King's. No visible response.

All attendants but one.

"Whence all this?" Ddronhelim demanded, fear and fury leashed but evident.

"Par-shetope? Ierwbae?" m'Alismogh directed. "Please to lift Darhelmir --- by this seat --- away from the hearth for now." The logs in the fireplace looked to be burning well, but Evendal no longer felt heat from them. Uncertain if what he felt or failed to feel was shared by others, Evendal ignored the anomaly.

"Your Majesty," Ddronhelim pleaded, as he anxiously shadowed the labouring Guard. "As you love me, what passes with my brother?"

The King's countenance matched Darhelmir's body for chill. "What must."

Satisfied with his brother's transposition, the beset young man returned to face his liege. "Your Majesty, I beg of you..."

Evendal rounded on the distraught Guard. "No! Do not. We have never asked it of you. We never will. What do We ask of you, Guard Ddronhelim? What?"

Astonied, Ddronhelim fumbled in his answer. "Truth, honesty, loyalty."

"The phrase you march carefully around is `earthly worship'. To treat with Us as if We were valued by you. As having worth in your eyes." The King flattened his lips against his teeth and squinted grimly at his obstreperous Guard before continuing. "What shines out of those eyes when you look on Us, Guard Ddronhelim? Respect?"

Himself squinting against the royal glare, the Guard let silence damn him; Evendal would not.

"We asked a question. Guard. Of. Our's."

"No, Your Majesty."

"No. Respect is fled. We tell you a secret any Court-bound Guard must know, shallow-hearted vassal -- We do not manifest the King's Touch. We never have. We are not Ir's darling. We are not the `essential King.' We do not encompass in Our person all gifts politic as are granted to humans. You will have a long wait for such a ruler. Shall We say aloud what passed through your heart at the seeming failure of Our song just now? Or will you confess it? And which do you suppose would soften Our own heart toward you more?"

Shaken by the King's ferocity and his bluntness, Ddronhelim stammered out a nonetheless angry confession. "You merely toy with us. Our lives and deaths mean nothing to you."

Evendal shook his head, clenching his teeth until he could control what flew past them. "A rather glib summary. Did We consign your brother to a cell in the Archate, away from Us, to be watched over by strangers until he ceased to breathe? Did We order his death as a tool no longer useful to Us? We refuse to bleed merely for your comfort. Go. Leave Us ere We decide to banish you, away from your healing brother."

Ddronhelim, moisture dotting his hairline, hesitated. "He is truly mending?"

The question was one too many and Evendal's face darkened. "Go! Inform Bruddbana you are to troll the wall as your duty hence. Until We grant you leave to visit Darhelmir you do not have the privilege. Go!"

"`Twas ill done," Aldul murmured after Ddronhelim had fled.

To the surprise of all but Kri-estaul, Karondeo and Ierwbae, the King turned a calm and studiously bland mien upon those remaining. "Not at all. Our command fit the need. We are not a well that one may come to for water and then baulk at the taste. He approaches Us in his brother's last extremity, ignores Our caveats, then decides to despise Us when they prove justified. We warned him of Our frailty. He chose to turn a deaf ear. Now We show him another way We are common...not all-powerful(295) nor impassible(296). While Our response was honest, as well might it penetrate his callow armour since it deprives him of a reassurance -- the lack of which he will feel keenly. We have not counterfeited Our anger. He offends Us. And without some seasoning of his humours he may disable Us, becoming a staff We dare not lean on."

"And your own disposition?" Gwl-lethry asked.

"Abroil. His arrogance tried Us greatly."

"What arrogance?" So truly puzzled did Gwl-lethry sound, the King took no umbrage.

"He assumes, still, that We have no genuine fear for a man not of Our blood. He presumes Our words and efforts are trumpery and that We do not in all verity care for those We tend. Because Our concern is not shouted to the horizons, as his is, he expects Our vassals to be as gamepieces to Us. Given time, he himself would come to ape the disdain he ascribes to Us, and come to besmirch Our reign with its consequent actions."

"Papa," Kri-estaul spoke up, eyeing the doorway but pointing to the trident. "What did you do to that man? He did not look at all well."

"No, he didn't. I do not quite know what my song did for him. We shall have to wait and see."

"You don't know?" That did surprise the boy.

"No."

"Why did you make that other Guard angry?"

Evendal pulled Kri-estaul's chair closer to him. "He weighed himself down with anger before he met Us, sweetling. We only make Ourself a person to transfer that burthen onto."

The King waved the matter aside. "Enough on this."

"But what of Darhelmir?" Gwl-lethry shivered, for the room had gotten colder.

Evendal m'Alismogh's expression was sombre, somewhat between grim and sad, as he stared at the unresponsive figure settled under the trident, but he kept his uncertainty unvoiced. "We expect both of Our songs are at work toward his recapitulation. Do not be alarmed should his chest cease to rise and fall with breath for a period."

Lady Sygkorrin shook her head in consternation. "Breath is our boundary-marker between life and death, Your Majesty. How could we not be alarmed?"

Feeling too weary and muddled for further confrontation; the King rubbed his forehead and shut his eyes for a moment. His revived lambency reflected off his palm. "All look on a mountain and -- without hesitation -- call it `living rock'. The phrase is a true one: Stone does indeed breathe, though few men have the patience to mark it. We did not say Darhelmir would cease utterly to breathe!"

"Can you not simply tell us what is passing?" Gwl-lethry persisted, having stood when Ddronhelim fled. "What you have done to...for your man?"

Evendal stared blankly at the manourlord, surprised at the sloth the request revealed. "Did you not listen when We sang both times? If We could explain any more clearly using other words We would have chosen them for a lyric."

Sitting in Innocents' Row, Urhlysha piped up. "Thunder! Your Majesty's every humour reminds me of Her Majesty at her most cryptic."

Relieved at hearing a pacific, undemanding voice, Evendal let a grin spasm on his lips. "Magister, that I cannot remedy. Nor would I."

The King's use of the singular pronoun was not lost on Urhlysha, whose eyes crinkled in an appreciative smirk. "Like Your Majesty, Your Majesty's dam all too often saw what her fellows did not want to; her intelligence ever accurate -- if quelling." The older man's breath huffed out in a mist. "I have no doubt she knew every shameful secret of every ambitious craft-master and manourlord. Likewise, it would seem Your Majesty can hear every contrary motive or impetus of Your Majesty's vassals."

Evendal shrugged. "We are unsure whence much of Our knowledge comes..." He glanced at the now empty krater lying by the hearth and shrugged a second time.

Urhlysha nodded, understanding; in his own never-voiced estimation, his survival and best successes had little to do with any personal wisdom or cunning.

"Ierwbae?"

Metthendoenn's beloved looked up from securing a rug about His Highness. "Majesty?"

"Assign two to stand watch over Darhelmir for the night. They are not to touch him except he open his eyes and address them by name. Reassure whomever you designate that We will know if boredom gets the better of them and they disregard Our stricture."

"Your Majesty," Gwl-lethry persisted, "Do you know what encompasses Guard Darhelmir?"

"Were you truly Her Majesty's pupil?" The King jibed. He forced two deep breaths before replying more clemently. "First, forgive Us, Tinde'keb, Our unmannerly treatment of you this bell. We wrong you."

Gwl-lethry aghd Gilbrahalnir peered ungraciously at Evendal to see if he was being mocked again, then flushed at his own breach. "If His Majesty can forgive my importuning him with questions on matters most particular to him..."

"Readily. And to answer your query... No. Our best suspicion is that his body cannot mend while serving all the demands it(297) commonly fulfils. Send blood here,' equalise that humour there.' This...slumber, then, would be like unto the snake's, which must retreat to a chill burrow and sleep in order to shed its skin. But, in truth, We do not know. We cannot claim any comfortable certainty that such is what we witness."

"What's the purpose now?"

Evendal grinned slightly at his son, who stared uneasily at the splotchy white figure under the trident. "We retire for some much needed rest."

That answer clearly did not soothe the manourlord, who opened his mouth to react, and then shut it with a clack.

"Your eagerness puzzles Us, good Gwl-lethry."

Gwl-lethry bent his head, startled away from his pursuit. "My wards have been all my concern, Your Majesty. Some other bell I would like to tell you specifics of the trek eastward that they endured. Their trust, their courage, and their weakness. Not all of them had the constitution the journey demanded. And I... I have knelt beside rugs that became deathbeds. I have held too many uncomforted siblings and grief-filled friends. Niem Dir chided me as too soft, but...Ddronhelim's misery is familiar to me."

"And you seek an auspicious, and swift, summa -- to assuage your nerves, your memories, and your sensibilities?" The King shook his head and waved a hand toward the trident. "As would We, were the choice and authority Ours. We have no such sop. Though We call Our gift `Songmastery', We are not its master. The true master here is..." Evendal stopped short, hard pressed to convey what he felt, what he perceived. Predisposed Chance: Whatever embodied the process when the small decisions and the deferred decisions of many unrelated people create conditions unforeseen by those in media res. Whoever or Whatever governed the apportioning of momentum and inertia in all things seen and unseen that pushed for one conclusion and not another. This perception shone clear in his mind, but had no avenue for conveyance in Hramal-regnan. Then the moment and insight passed. "...Ir." he concluded.

"Whose Ir?" Gwl-lethry responded brashly, surprising Evendal with his own apperception. "No `Ir" I might acknowledge. Even before Mausna, we your subjects wanted nothing more than the life Your Majesty's family had long safeguarded. The pedestrian greed of the Landed never sought beyond the excesses permitted by our estate; the ambitions we enacted were common, traditional. Yet the unwholesome fancies of a rabid few impelled Ir into overturning our world along with her wheel. Is it not high time that wheel turned again, to raise up these your vassals?"

Evendal had no quibble with Gwl-lethry's sentiment. "You ask a heresiarch, Tinde'keb. The world We accept is not a bureaucracy(298), where litanies and rituals influence Ir's hand each day. Neither will, nor wish, nor hope, nor drive... No thought long harboured, no passion long-hoarded, nor need long-suffered, has ever caused a grain of beach sand to move so much as its own width. Twas not the intensity of those few dogs' hunger that fed them their success. Twas their readiness. They permitted no distance between resolve and act. They ground under foot what made them Hramal, what kept their hearts soft, and counted it no loss. They delivered away what was not theirs to discard. They were ruthless toward themselves and more ruthless toward others. The same can not be said for those who might have opposed them, who in doing so might have evoked a different outcome."

The manourlord looked suitably scandalised, though with a macabre mirth curling the corners of his mouth. "So had I heeded Niem Dir, or took my lessoning from the Abacus and the Beast...had I treated every stranger I met as chattel, every citizen as only a tool for my hand and nought but dross when useless to me, I would not now be starting at every noise, nor would my levity and gentilesse have so completely fled."

Evendal grimaced, weary. He sniffed back moisture in a too-cold nose as he stood up. "Do not strive to rile Us with hyperbole, good Gwl-lethry. We speak of defying those effective few with a mirroring commitment, not with identical methods. We can count on one hand, and leave Our thumb free, the number of lords owning a purity of heart for the weal of the realm. Most courtiers wished, wanted, and hoped for the good of the kingdom -- and accounted those mental...visitations sufficient. So did the wheel turn."

Glancing up and out from the dais, the King went still. After a moment, his face reddened. "Is there aught else for Our dispensation this bell?" His voice came out thin, unsupported.

Drussilikh and Gwl-lethry debated with solemn glances between them but felt no cause as yet for heraldry and kept their own counsel.

Inexplicably distrait, the King sputtered. "Think you the masons would object... to a reappointment of this room? At this bell in their efforts?"

"Not to usurp Chancellor Fillowyn's offices, Your Majesty," Aldul proffered, puzzled at the change in concerns, "but would that not be an extraordinary expense?" Mercifully, no one commented on Kwo-edans and frugality.

"The t'bo's share of the labour is already done for them," the King insisted, his arm fanning out to indicate the accidents before them.

Twice Lord Evendal m'Alismogh had unwittingly altered the room's layout. The first time in the fury of his grief, fire had consumed old, ossified mortar and had cracked stone. The simple, deliberately basic, structure of the hall rendered this damage essentially cosmetic.

The slightly skewed stones, the cracked rock, fallen shards, and soot damage Lord Evendal had caused had disappeared in the space of two songs. Undetectable to those uninitiated in a mason's craft, living, evanescent song had given substance and pliancy to the filler. Change knows only itself, making the return of original materials centuries old a vain human fancy; so, had Evendal sung for restoration instead of rectification, his failure might have doomed more than Darhelmir.

Even so, gone were the precise angles to the walls; funnels of rough unpolished stone now ornamented the golden mean, the regulum that this hall for justice and equity was built to inform. The once-sharp straight edges at floor and ceiling were now concave with rock additions indivisible and indistinguishable from the original ashlar(299). Abrasive columnar bulges visually divided the east and west walls into even sections. Had organpipe mud daubers learned symmetry, their efforts might have resembled what the Chamber walls looked like to the King's companions.

"What is it for?" Ierwbae asked.

"What brought it to pass?" Aldul asked simultaneously.

The King turned to his travelling companion, who anticipated just such a doubtful expression as the King sported.

"Your Majesty's first song was over-mannered but both were rife with ambiguities. Your Majesty assuredly meant Guard Darhelmir as the sole object of your working. But the...target was not specified in either song. We may find that your songs have wreaked results beyond this room."

Evendal raised an eyebrow and nodded. "A fair concern. Were Our authority the only power employed, We posit that the effect would have remained confined to Our Guard. But Anlota's realm, and its substance(300), has its own routines and rules; imposes its own limits. As We said earlier -- We are not the master in the songs We use. And you are wrong..."

Just then Lin-kaelug entered, Ddronhelim stumbling at her side. "Your Majesty?"

The King waved honours aside. "What has beset him?"

"He is fevered. I found him three doors away, bent over and puking air."

The King nodded, unperturbed. "We were hasty to banish him. He'd best remain with his brother until this reconstitution is complete. Someone retrieve rugs and bedding."

Between gasps and groans, curtailing briefly the urge to vomit, Ddronhelim again railed at his liege. "What have you done to me? Your Majesty?"

"Did you presume that not turning pixie-blue(301) at odd moments meant you, and any issue, were spared your brother's affliction?" Evendal glanced back at Aldul. "As We were saying. Having Darhelmir alone house the fruits of Our song would make an obscenity of Our oaths."

"What runner did you send across Ddronhelim's ken, to prepare him for this?" Aldul pressed, thinking the Guard ill-served.

"None. Do We enquire as to whether Our arm desires healing when the want is plainly there?"

Aldul desisted and helped Ddronhelim to the trident-bearing wall, which the Guard leaned against and slid down until he rested his head on his brother's chair. After a moment's gasping, Ddronhelim spoke unprompted.

"Mother says he came out first. But he was always the slower, quieter one. Cautious and gentler. Forgive me, my long-suffering liege. I don't think on what to say to others until it is too late to say anything. Then Dar tells me if I was wise or churlish."

Evendal had a sudden image of two young rapscallions; one stung beyond endurance and barrelling into a brawl, the other shielding the first one's back. "You've fought the fights he could not." The King observed quietly.

"My brother's no mollycoddle!" Ddronhelim protested, then groaned in nausea.

The King grinned down at Ddronhelim. "He outlived the Interregnum. Of course he isn't. Rest. And consider a life without your most constant companion."

Alarmed, Ddronhelim struggled to stand back up.

Gesturing the troubled Guard to abide, Evendal clarified. "We do not speak of your brother but of Worry.' Has that not fear' been your most loyal companion?"

The worn man nodded, scraping the back of his head.

"Then anticipate your brother's waking," m'Alismogh advised. "And days when you both may breathe easy. Days when you may breathe your own air and not each other's."

(284)~The wheels of such devices are padded with a caged layer of resin soaked cork.

(285) SongSpell 40.

(286)~English does not always serve Hramal-regnan well. The verbs used here do not imply manufacture. `Growth to a deliberate pattern' is closest, with no implication of planning or fabrication. If the Hramal have any stories of a benevolent or malevolent Creator or Architect, they have never put them in writing.

(287) the base of the building that was used to create a level surface on which to build.

(288) of, relating to, or constituting essence. She is saying that they are not types and so are mutable.

(289)~Old-blood-bundles

(290) Neophron percnopterus

(291) Most of the 2nd person referents in this chant are plural form.

(292) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_plain

(293)~blood-lace

(294)~Kharemeh -- (car-eh-may) Imperfect imperative -- (a form fallen into disuse. Uvular `h'): Continue to breathe. "You! Ddronhelim's anchor! Breathe!"

(295)~Hramal does not have a word for omnipotence that includes the natural and praeternatural in its semantic range, so Evendal fashioned a word-cluster.

(296) For those not familiar with theolo...

1 a: incapable of suffering or of experiencing pain. b: inaccessible to injury

2: incapable of feeling.

(297)~Just a reminder that Hramal have -- but tend not to use -- neuter pronouns; I alter the gendered ones to conform to our convention.

(298)~'not a congeries of conclaves'

(299) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashlar. Also, The Medieval Castle; Philip Warner; Penguin Putnam, Inc.; 2001.

(300) The nearest approximate is a Platonic eidolon.

(301) cyanotic