Klara stood at the top of her high tower with the spray catching the sunlight behind her, and listened.

  At first she did not hear anything strange. Nothing to note, not in particular, except to think, The city sounds fine today.

  The song rippled towards her in stages, soft as mist turning to rain; or the sun rising. It was already sounding forth in the bells when Klara realized what it could be, what it must be, what it was.

  Who it was.

  Her tower was high, spray-dazzled, glittering in the sunlight. (The sun was high: this was another sort of sunrise, another sort of dawn, another sort of light altogether.) Klara stood there with her white birds circling around her, all the white doves of the city flashing, fulgurations of white wings, the thunderclaps of their wings clattering against the stones.

  The stones hummed under her feet. Klara was barefoot, this fine spring day, the water and the light washing over her feet, the cool stone vibrating into her bones, her blood, up her spine, into her heart.

  The bells rang, the silver-lipped bells Alina had made; the great bronze bells that were older than the sun or the moon; the tiny crystal and glass bells that had been strung on long lines throughout the city, tongueless and mute in honour of that one whose voice had been lost.

  (Tamsin’s brother Harlin had blown them, bell after bell, relearning his craft. Each one a perfect gradient, white through all the blues to violet, to red, to orange, to yellow, to green, to dazzling diamond-clarity.)

  The bells were singing now, their voices freed at last, each tone as flawless as its colour.

  Klara gripped the stone parapet, where the water fell down upon her in the finest droplets.

  The birds circled; the bells rang; her heart whispered. Tamsin, Tamsin.

  She traced the path he walked by the way the Song unfurled around him. Under his footfalls the stones resonated, power coalescing under each step, vining outward in tendrils that budded and blossomed in light and song.

  All those tongueless bells, singing forth. All those silver trees, blooming gold. All Klara’s shadows, pouring towards him like the waters rushing down a cataract.

  The road curved, the stairs opened up, the colonnades shifted, and Tamsin walked home.

  Klara stood on her high tower, a Song of greeting in her throat, her hands on the stone parapet, the water running down her face, listening.

  He did not sing. Not then. Nor did she. But the city did.

  She did not go down; not at first.

  She stood on her tower, the world whirling about her, the birds hanging in the air, still as painted images, as memories. She stood silent in the midst of song; stood transfixed by hope and fear, so perfectly balanced.

  Tamsin, Tamsin, cried her heart.

  Tamsin, Tamsin sang the city, her city, his city.

  Later—how much later she did not know, could not tell; there was too much light in her eyes, too much Song in her ears, too much time thickened around her, heavy as grief and yet sweeter than honey, than love—later, later, she heard his voice.

  The harp-music came first, a trickle of notes winding their way up to her eyrie, her high perch, climbing up the scintillating water-drops that had once been ice, once been tears, once long ago been hope. It was not the music of her water-fountain, her crystal spire, her shadows and her ice and her birds: but each note twined with each of hers, matching leap and whirl and poise⁠—

  Once Klara and Tamsin had wheeled and whirled around each other, their voices raised in challenge and delight, two eagles soaring ever higher until they could lock their claws together and tumble down and down and down all the footless halls of the sky.

  Klara stood frozen at the top of her tower as the harp-music rose about her, note by note building a city of memory.

  It was not the perfect, flawless, faultless playing of her memory. This was the music of one whose hands remembered pain and death, who had been broken, who had fallen and faltered and failed.

  Who had stood up, each time he had fallen; who had tried again, each time he had failed; who had put one foot in front of another long after he had drained every last drop that could possibly have been squeezed out of his heart of hope. Who had walked and walked and walked, silent, silenced, dark-eyed, stony-hearted, until out of nowhere there had been the light to which he had so long been bound, which he had so long sought, and with all the bonds broken, he had dived down into the murky water and grasped it at last.

  She knew the halls of his memory: the soft light of the Lamp of Day, brilliant without the edge of the bright Sun; the softer-yet light of the Lamps of Night, bronze here in the City of the Firnoi, casting everyone into sepia hues but for Klara in her silver and Tamsin in his gold.

  The harpist built the city as it was long ago, so long ago her memory had almost lost it; so long ago his memory had burnished it smooth and sweet as a river-worn stone.

  Klara gripped the stone parapet, the water beating on her shoulders, each drop beading in her hair, netting it with silver and crystal spangles. She could feel the city listening through the stone, through her hands, the resonant memory, slow and deep, rising in the stones (in the queen who had slumbered in her moat all these thousands upon thousands of years; in the old king who had sunk deep into his own palace); in Klara, who held this city as it was in her heart.

  She opened her mouth to take the song back, to claim the city for her own, to reclaim all the years the harp-music did not⁠—

  And then he began to sing.

  Tamsin Tammorath, whose voice had heralded the new-risen Sun. Tamsin Indorath, whose voice had summoned and strengthened armies. Tamsin Korrokaith, who slew cities; who had slain the great Dragon; who had struck off the head of the Old Enemy upon his throne.

  Tamsin the seventh son of Dâr and Alina, whom Klara loved.

  Tamsin sang.

  No. Tamsin Sang.

  His voice wove through the city’s voices, all those sweet-sounding bells, those resonant stones, those curious hearts and souls of his family and his people. He sang of the youth of the world⁠—

  No. He sang of the youth in the world, the spring come again after the long winter, the sun rising after darkness.

  He sang of safe shadows, kind strangers, forgivable mistakes.

  He sang of waking after a sleep that might have been death or might have been enchantment but was, whatever else it was, rest.

  Waking to birdsong and sunlight and the wind in the leaves, waking to health and painless scars and a voice.

  He sang of a road, where there had never been a road before, passing from death into life. Of walking that road, facing all his dead, all the fearsome ranks of his dead—all the midges and gnats and game-birds and rabbits and fish and deer and goblins and monsters and elves⁠—

  The grief of the elves dead at his hand, at his voice, this voice, which had been a weapon and was now a gift, a glory, something splendid.

  He delved deeper and deeper into the Song, quarrying the stone that his heart had become, cracking open the rough lump and finding within the glittering crystals of something … lovely.

  He sang of the bridge between death and life: how joy and hope and pragmatic sense had held him to his course, had guided him even past the elves, past the Dragon, past the Old Enemy, past all the dead dross of himself.

  He sang of the friendly strangers who chose to become friends, who looked on the most feared warrior of the Shadowed Age and saw instead someone who needed a kind and helping hand, and offered it.

  He sang of the flowers and the grass of the Downs, the high clear air, the wind blowing sweet and warm, the cold water running over the white chalk. The fires of an evening, comfort and company after so long alone.

  (Always, echoing back and forth, the dark shadows that had not been safe, the strangers that had been enemies, the mistakes that had broken himself and his family and his people and the world; the loneliness and the dread that had swallowed him, as once Klara herself had seen the self-inflicted curse of the Oath stretching its jaws wide to swallow him.)

  Tamsin sang of this new Elfland under the Sun, new to no one but him and the children born that year, and step by step how he had found his way home.

  Step by step, Klara followed the music down.

  Two eagles they had been, spiralling ever higher, daring each other to heights beyond anyone else’s imagination. Tamsin had sung himself into the instrument of death—into Death itself, as the song that had come to be sung of him had it, that Death who came crowned in moonlight and blood.

  He had sung himself into Death, had Tamsin Tammorath, but he had once been the poet of spring, the bard of spring, and now he sang the seed of himself out of death once more into life.

  Klara had sung herself into shadows and ice, and sung herself out of her winter into spring.

  It was the spring of her imagination that held the city now, that welcomed him home.

  Two eagles had they been, spiralling ever higher, always putting off the moment when they would lock their claws and tumble down the footless halls of the sky.

  The exquisite harp, the flawed harping; the flawless voice, the broken heart.

  The city of ancient memory, hazy with the antique glimmer of the Lamps, given to a new shape, a new life under the Sun.

  Two eagles had they been, spiralling ever higher.

  Step by step, Klara followed the music; and step by step, her feet ringing heartbeats and chimes from her crystal spire, her glittering fountain, her silver trees and singing birds, hardly aware of her voice at first, she began herself to sing.

  She sang of the two superlative singers, peerless but for themselves, their voices shaping the world, too proud to realize how they shaped themselves. She sang of their glory and their folly, their strength and their skill, their pride and their joy.

  Tamsin sang of flowers and sheep, shepherds dancing on the green, the prickle of teasel seedheads in his hands, the country she had once loved and left behind.

  Klara sang of the crowns of flowers and of jewels, the crafts of his brothers’ hands, the storms and sky-colours woven into cloth, the arts of the Old City as it was now, a brilliant jewel set in the white stone of the encircling wall, the verdant plains.

  Tamsin sang of the tournament that was for strength and courage and skill, and not for death: of the banners of the once-dead flying proudly: of the city full of faces he knew, and whom he loved.

  Klara sang of the river and its otters, its kingfishers and its swans, and the great wide marshes Tamsin had known Over the Waves and which she had seen in her dreams. Tamsin sang back the city of shadows and ice, the deadly beauty of the deepest winter, the slow yearning for spring.

  Spring was all around them, in the flowers foaming over walls, the leaves bursting forth in all their shades of green and red and gold, in the birds flying in Klara’s wake, her midnight gown caught into iridescence.

  Down she went and down, her voice rising up, twining with his, gold and silver as the sun and the moon, their voices mingling like starlight reflected on a still pool.

  He was sitting on her crystal bench in her garden of shadows, which was now a garden of light, for the flame imperishable burned again in the stone basin.

  A white harp was in his hands, bright as moonlight, strung with shadows. His hands were scarred, but they were deft on the strings; his dark hair was woven, as in all the stories, with scarlet and silver.

  He looked at her with his dark eyes, his long lashes, his solemn face, the song pouring forth from him like the light from the sun.

  Death came crowned in moonlight and blood, Klara thought; but Golden-voiced Summer called to Silver-voiced Winter was what she sang.

  Tamsin smiled. Klara had never seen anything so beautiful. She smiled back; and then she had never heard anything so beautiful as the splendour in that splendid voice.

  (They had been peerless, in the youth of the world, before they knew anything. They were peerless still, Klara and Tamsin, no longer young, no longer innocent; their voices held depths that they had never known to reach out of—or for.)

  They sang to each other, winter and summer, two eagles spinning around and around, wheeling and whirling in the halls of the sky, handing off the part of spring as they had ever handed off their parts, until Klara was singing Tamsin’s summer-voiced joy and Tamsin sang Klara’s wintry repose, and the birds and the bells and the holy fire whirled around them.

  Dizzy, dazzled, drowning in light and song, they let the song of spring unfurl into blossoming summer.

  Tamsin’s hands stilled on his harp, the strings folding into the air instead of fading, their voices gathered by the shadows and the sunlight into the leaves and branches and stones and bells of the city.

  They stood there, Tamsin and Klara, facing each other over the stone basin, the flame imperishable dancing over the crystals.

  Tamsin looked exactly the same, and entirely different, and Klara had never wanted him more than with that bone-white harp humming on his knee and the flame for which he had destroyed himself burning merrily before them.

  Tamsin, Tamsin sang the city around them, in full riotous bloom, summer over their shoulders and in their hair and their hands and oh, his eyes, his mouth, his heart.

  Oh, it was their city, it was his, it was hers, hers, hers, and how she had missed him.

  Tamsin met her gaze, solemn and sunlit and alive, and then he said, “Klara.”

  He said nothing more. But then they had rarely needed to speak, back when they and the world were young. Klara smiled, slow and perhaps a little sly, and she said, “Tamsin,” and felt nothing else needed to be said by her, either, just then, when there was all the sky around them.

  They came back hand-in hand, Tamsin Tammorath and Klara Kanorath, their eyes full of light and their voices full of song. Tamsin’s harp was on his shoulder and his sword was at his hip, and Klara’s shadow-birds followed her in their coveys and congregations, for they were not now who they had been, in the youth of the world.

  They walked through the city long that day, wending the streets that were not the paths Tamsin had grown up running, but which ran through his dreams. They walked hand-in-hand, heads bent as they spoke together, their long dark hair mingling over Klara’s gown of midnight and Tamsin’s ancient tunic like the welcome dimness of a midsummer eve.

  Throughout all the Old City the bells pealed. Outside its pale walls the song of the summer tumbled down with the afternoon sunlight, heavy and heady as honey, as love returned manifold, as peace.

  Down in the Tourney grounds, Ash turned to River, and, pleased, said, “He’s home.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Bone Harp stands by itself amongst my works: the Fairyland one might reach from the Nine Worlds is not, exactly, this Elfland; it knows neither sun nor moon, nor a history such as Tamsin’s and Klara’s.

  To follow on from here to my other books, I would suggest The Bride of the Blue Veil, which takes up the fairytale motifs and style, or Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander for an introduction to the main current of Nine Worlds stories.

  I expect there will one day be a sequel to The Bone Harp. To stay abreast of any news, please visit my website, where you can also join my newsletter.

  www.victoriagoddard.ca

 

 

  Victoria Goddard, The Bone Harp

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends