Dreams of the Compass Rose (32 page)

“
Oh! What then will I do? I have another storytelling session tomorrow night! The Princess Egiras herself is not easily moved one way or another, but hates to hear her guests weep, and will require only lighthearted stories! Oh, what shall I do?”

Time seemed to fly by more quickly because her mind was embroiled in contemplating such terror, and Annaelit did not even notice that they had arrived at the doors of her hovel.

“
What shall I do, Pokreh?” she repeated, releasing his divine hand to open the old rusty lock of her door with both of hers, rattling and pulling on it with great effort. Finally the door gave way, and she turned around to bemoan her condition one more time, and to invite him in.

But there was no one there. Pokreh, the god of Things Left Over, was gone. . . .

Only the night was left, pitch black as chaos.

T
he feasts at the House of the Princess Egiras were known for their extravagance and for things most unusual.

Egiras was exotic, beautiful as a panther, and had a particularly sharp tendency toward sarcasm. When she had first come to the city she had been received with disdain by the High Court. After all, she was an unknown, and her foreign homeland’s very existence was suspect, the stuff of vague legend. Besides, she had come with nothing but a small caravan and a retinue of servants, a box of priceless jewels, and the relentless escort of a single warrior bodyguard—he was a silent black man of imposingly noble stature, always seen at her side.

But within a matter of days Egiras had bought some of the choicest land in the best part of the city, and with it a great villa.

And then she became their unspoken queen. For her demeanor was capricious divinity and her appearance a cold disdainful elegance, and her natural manner of snubbing the highest nobility caused them to be piqued by her out of perverse curiosity. Indeed, within a moon’s waning, she had the city nobles fighting for her attention and courting her favors. It was now considered a distinction to be invited to one of her exclusive feasts.

Annaelit had been fortunate to have pleased Egiras often with her storytelling, and thus she was a frequent contributor to an evening’s entertainment.

Tonight was one such evening. Annaelit dressed particularly carefully, and applied her kohl and makeup with slightly trembling hands, all the while thinking of an appropriate story to tell the noble guests of Egiras.

She also thought of a certain minor, puny, sarcastic god.

A
nnaelit was admitted into the great House of the Princess soon after sunset, while the dusk was still ringing with the clamor of departing sun. Final dust motes of the sunset’s energy were spinning through the bluish translucent fabric of air. Indigo night intermingled and yet never blended with light particles of burnished gold.

The guests were gathered on a balcony to experience the final vestiges of this glorious sunset, the dancing energy all around them, and to drink warm summer wine. The villa balcony overlooked splendid gardens that in the evening appeared a sea of green moving limbs quickly turning to jet black.

“
Look! I see the first star of the evening!” cried one of the guests, a young woman, pointing at the horizon. She was dressed in silk the color of lapis and wore her long ruddy hair unbound, so that it cascaded unadorned down her back. In her choice of coloration for the feast, the woman was like swatches of this very sunset and encroaching night.

“
I see only a distant lamp being moved through the windows of a house,” retorted a low sarcastic female voice, with just a hint of amusement. “My dear Lady Makeia, it is far too early for proper stars to show themselves at the Western horizon. Indeed, it has just recovered from the day’s inferno, barely dispatched with the sun, and now lies simmering in cool soothing blueness. But—watch the opposite rim that is the East, if you would see stars.”

“
Ah, Egiras, love, must you be so pragmatic?” Makeia laughed. “The stars come out everywhere, and I still insist that I saw the first one tonight.”

“
Then I let you have the star of your choice, my dear,” retorted Egiras. “What do you say, Nadir?”

A little behind her, a tall man-shape stirred in the shadows of the balcony, and then a soft voice said, “It is as you wish, my Lady Egiras.” The tone of his voice was like deep balm.

Egiras laughed, shaking it off, that eternal feel of comfort at her side, that eternal sense of his presence, as though it irritated her at some level. “Apparently it is always as I wish, for Nadir always agrees with me.” She added, “I need not even bother to ask. Don’t you, Nadir? See, there—do not even reply, for I know what you will say.”

“
How did you manage to get such a handsome warrior to serve you with such loyalty?” said Makeia, glancing coyly toward the man in the shadows. In the rich twilight she could not see him, and yet she knew there were muscles like iron and satin and a well formed face of surprising gentleness hidden somewhere in there, in the dark.

“
Ah, that is a story I shall tell you properly some other day,” said the hostess. “But speaking of stories, where is my favorite Teller of Tales? Someone go fetch Annaelit, for it is time!”

“
I am here, my Lady,” said Annaelit, waiting just a few steps away from the noble crowd.

Egiras turned, seeing the storyteller’s familiar outfit and form. And the slanting almond eyes of the Princess widened with excitement, reflecting distant persimmon-gold fire. For even now oil lamps were being lit all around them in the gardens and all over the villa.

She clapped her hands to attract everyone’s attention, and announced that it was time to return inside for the evening’s entertainment.

The noble guests followed her, and soon the party had spilled back from the balcony into a cozy chamber filled with warm golden glow and furnished with divans and soft pillowed lounge chairs.

“
Make us laugh tonight, Annaelit!” exclaimed the Princess Egiras, settling into one of the seats. Here in the bright interior light, one could see her sleek beauty, her hair like a river of smooth jet waters, pouring in long waves to her ankles.

A few seats away, the tall dark-skinned man called Nadir sat back silently, watching her. His form was rich with contradictions. There was a sense of quiet contained power—merely in the capable way he folded his hands and the confident but gentle curl of his fingers which seemed relaxed yet were primed for movement in a split second. And in that same gentle silence he appeared self-effacing, and his clothing was so simple that it stood out from the rest of those present.

And yet the acute presence that was in his eyes gave him the demeanor of a lord.

“
Before you begin your tales, I want to know the latest gossip,” said Egiras, taking a delicately fluted wine goblet from a servant. “So tell us, girl, what is it that I hear has happened this past night at the Palace of Lord Ostavi? Were you not there when he entertained the illustrious stranger Lord Dava? It is spoken all over the city that there was an imbecile drunken display on the part of both, and now they are the greatest of enemies—the dear fools. Well? Have you any news?”

Annaelit bowed to the hostess and the rest of the fine gathered company. “I was there indeed, my Lady, and had the misfortune to observe some of it.”

“
Hah!” exclaimed Egiras. “Tell us, what caused this fight?”

Annaelit smiled ruefully. “Words,” she said. “Words caused it.”

“
Words always do. But what was the actual catalyst, the thing that made Lord Dava so utterly mad, as the rumors go?”

“
Hard to say, my Lady. . . .”

Egiras raised one fine dark brow. “Don’t be silly. Tell us now, girl. No one will fault you for divulging only a bit more of what is mostly already known.”

“
Very well,” said Annaelit, glancing at the red-headed Lady Makeia. “If you must know, the cause of it all is that Lord Dava fancies himself fatally in love with the Princess Makeia.”

“
What?” It was Makeia’s turn to raise her brows. She laughed.

“
Why, I do believe the tale grows more flavorful by the instant . . .” said Egiras in a purring tone, settling deeper in her chair. “Go on, girl, tell us the details of this infatuation.”

“
But—” exclaimed Princess Makeia. “I don’t even know this Lord Dava!”

“
Obviously he thinks he knows you, my sweet,” retorted Egiras.

“
He also seemed to be extremely confused and the wine had gone to his head. I think he had seen a glimpse of the Lady Makeia somewhere.”

“
How ridiculous,” whispered Makeia. And then she added, “Incidentally, would you say the Lord Dava is handsome?”

“
Handsome enough,” whispered Annaelit. “But now, my Lady Egiras and the rest of my Lords and Ladies, would you like to hear me tell a tale?”

“
I would rather like to know how handsome this Lord Dava is,” interrupted Makeia. “Do tell me more. Is he tall with great shoulders, and dark smooth skin, like Nadir here? Or is he fair-haired with pale eyes—?”

Annaelit was suddenly beginning to feel very light-headed once again. It was as though the events of the previous night were happening all over again and she was once again edging out of control. . . .

The truth,
she thought to herself.
Speak only the stark truth that is without embellishment and hence imbued with life’s sorrow. Think, idiot girl!

And she replied, “My Lady Makeia, if you must know, Lord Dava is fair-haired with pale, striking eyes. In fact, he is the very epitome of another man—a great ancient lord, the one who lived when the world was young and the wind blew in unnamed directions—the same lord who conquered a great
empirastan
that spanned most of the mortal world, and whose given name was Cireive. For, they say, he was fair as the sun.”

“
Oh,” said Makeia. “Do go on.”

And, as Annaelit launched with regained smoothness into her Tale, it seemed a great weight of discomfiture, of tense self-doubt left her chest and shoulders. With every word she spoke her voice gained confidence, while there came a gathering of something electric in the air.

The Princesses Egiras and Makeia and the others sat still and expectant, mesmerized by the curious music of the suddenly unfurling Tale. For Annaelit had caught them by surprise, and now held them by wonder.

“
Before the Lord Cireive, handsome and fair-haired like a god of the sun, had become the great ruthless
taqavor
of all the mortal world,” spoke Annaelit, “he was first a young man and, before that, a small boy of great yearning.

“
The boy called Cireive was born in the last embers of spring to a woman of ancient noble blood. Or maybe not—one legend says he was the son of a poor farmer’s wife who tilled the fields. In any case the woman never told anyone who the child’s father was, and thus incurred the rage and shame of her family. She bore the child alone and remained oddly silent all through the first seasons of his life, only singing to him softly as he suckled at her breast.

“
It is said the woman’s songs were so haunting that she made the birds themselves grow silent in the gardens as they listened to her. And, as the child lay in her arms and listened too, he was imbued first with wonder and then with a longing to know the origins of things, of that sound that issued forth out of the woman who was his mother, and of the source of herself and himself.

“‘
Why do you sing? Who am I, Mother?’ he asked, and legend says it was one of the first things he uttered. In reply, the woman held him tight to her, and said nothing at first, only smiled. And finally, after long moments of sun-warmed wind and silence, she said, ‘You are Cireive, my son. And I sing . . . you.’

“
At first that answer was enough. For this woman, his mother, looked at him like the sun itself, warming him with the balm of her presence, and through her voice he felt connected to the whole canopy of day and night and sun and stars and earth and water and sky. Truly, she formed him with the sound issuing forth from her lips and her chest and her lungs, and in the forming made him a part of the universal fabric.

“
But, as the boy grew and learned his place in the world, he learned that the song of his mother was but one small sound in the greater clamor all around him. And he also learned that he was made up of two things—pride and shame. He was a blending, half everything and half nothing. He was the son of a woman and the unknown. For he had one given name and yet no name at all, and his father was a ghost.

“
As time flowed onward, the condition of having no real name became a complex thing of peculiar agony for the boy, even though he had a given name. A true full name could be bestowed only by the father—or at least that was the ancient tradition of their people. And one without a full name, thought Cireive, was no one at all.

“
The boy Cireive yearned for the cloak of tradition to envelop him, yearned to be like all, like the ancients. And he grew accustomed to bearing the shame and the barbed words of others which reminded him of who he was, and who he was not. Eventually the barbs fell upon an impervious core that had become his inner self, for time had become a solid thing of many protective layers, encircling his spirit.

“
No one knows what one thing was the catalyst, what brought him to the edge of bitterness and beyond it, but his spirit, being thus wrapped away securely, could no longer hear the words that caused pain, and at the same time could not hear the distant perfect song that his mother sang and that was a silver thread between him and the all.