had forgotten her way. Diverus, in his green robe, shrugged off the hands of his attendants and sat next to her. He stared at her solemnly until she remembered his request and to the king said, “He’s going to accompany me for the next story.”
The king arched one brow. “Oh. You have another one to tell us.”
“Yes.”
“How does he accompany you?”
“On musical instruments.”
The king leaned around her. The coils of his hair were sharp as knives. “He seems to have arrived without them,” he said, and the feasters laughed.
“I’d hoped you would be able to provide me with something appropriate,” Diverus responded. “You seem to be a musical people.”
The feasters laughed again, and the king nodded. “You’ve read us well enough, young man. What would you play upon?”
“Oh, a harp would be nice. Anything else you might have. I’m very partial to the shawm as well.”
“Multitalented, are you?” He gestured to the attendants to go retrieve what Diverus had asked for. “This should make for a very interesting telling then. Tell me, what story will you play out?” he asked Leodora.
“It’s—”
“We can’t reveal that,” Diverus interjected. “It’s more effective if it’s a surprise.”
She caught something in his voice, but she couldn’t say what it was—some lilt she felt she ought to have known, which she might have identified if her head weren’t spinning with stories. She lifted a goblet of wine and sipped while she waited for the next thing to happen.
The attendants returned with a small four-stringed harp and a lacquered shawm. The king turned from the fire with flames upon his palms again.
Diverus tucked the shawm in his belt and picked up the harp. She paused to watch him, recalling how remarkable his music was. It seemed to be an ancient memory.
He brushed one hand across the strings. His eyes closed and he began to pluck a dancing tune, a reel. It began slowly, softly, but his fingers moved faster and faster. The nearest feasters leapt to their feet and began to dance. They wore expressions of surprise, as if the desire to dance belonged to their feet, which hadn’t told their brain. They pranced and stepped, skipped and swung about, spinning in time with a music that seemed to have taken possession of them. The king, although he restrained himself from joining them, couldn’t keep from performing a small jig in place. Like his citizens, he seemed amazed, and his red eyes narrowed as he stared at Diverus, as if he thought he should be able to identify what was happening. Leodora wondered when her story was supposed to start.
Then all at once Diverus lifted his hands from the harp. The dancers swayed, stumbled. A few of them collapsed. Those farther away were laughing, thinking the whole thing a delightful jape.
Diverus inhaled deeply. His eyes opened. He looked at her and smiled as he set down the harp and picked up the shawm. Pressing the reed to his lips, he stared sharply at the king.
The song that emerged from the shawm was the very essence of grief. More painful than anything she had ever heard him play in the paidika where he had caused patrons to burst spontaneously into tears, it personified loss and longing, the threnody of an empty soul.
This time even the king collapsed beneath its weight. The flames on his hands hissed and turned to smoke. She looked around in wonder as people dropped to their knees and began to wail, to clutch at their bosoms, to claw at the stones.
Then at the highest note, Diverus broke off playing again. He drew the reed from between his lips, and surveyed them.
“Diverus, what are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m bidding them good-bye” was his reply. “Aren’t I?” he asked the king.
The king pressed a hand to his breastbone, reached the other, trembling, toward them. “I—I—” he tried to say.
“Release her from the spell of this world of yours, or I’ll play all of this tune and not one of you will survive it.”
The king shook his head and Diverus put the reed to his mouth again. He raised the shawm like a weapon, taking aim. He played one simple verse and one of the four-armed attendants who’d pushed him into the pool fell dead beside the king, tumbling into the fire.
Diverus lowered the shawm. He stared at the king with disgust. “I know it’s your world that enchants, not you. You merely act your parts, as you said, expressions of the enchantment. But you can shield