The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,100

never seen such unrighteousness, to make the women’s skirts so wide, and the men’s so narrow.”

“Excuses will not do!” She giggled, full of a mood like the first time he had seen her. “You’ll not be rid of me so easily.” Then she caught hold of his arm, and pulled him into the dance.

Andiene watched them with a smile, until they disappeared into the crowd. Then she looked around, to see Kallan and Syresh standing apart from the crowd, locked in some dispute. She made her way toward them, staying close to the wall. “Ask her then,” she heard Kallan say.

Syresh shook his head and walked away. “I’ve had enough of good advice,” he said over his shoulder as he left.

Kallan watched him stalk away into the crowd. “There’s nothing more pitiful than a jealous man with no rights in the matter, like someone who’s drunk without ever having tasted a drop.”

Andiene smiled. “Let him play the fool in his own way.”

“He will, whether I let him or not.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Why did you play such a fool’s trick? Announce yourself as though you had an army of ten thousand men behind you?” He seemed more bewildered than angry.

“You said that Nahil lived in fear now. He will have all the long summer to think of me. He will know that I am returning. And he will know other things besides. How great do you think his fear will be, when he hears what took place today?”

The music had stopped; the talking grew louder; the feasting would begin soon. “Guard my back now,” she said, and she walked swiftly to where a juggler spun a ring of balls in the air. Kallan followed her.

The juggler stared and his hands stopped their turning, as his toys sprang away into Andiene’s hands. The wooden balls leaped into the air again, though her hands did not move. They arched higher, higher yet, faster, still faster, merely a painted blur. Then they slowed, but as each one spun separately, flames sprang from them. The crowd was silent and staring.

Syresh rejoined Kallan. “What is she doing?”

“We should have kept our swords. We may have to fight our way to freedom.”

“Not if she is on our side,” Syresh said in simple awe. As the juggling slowed, the flames leaped higher, a ring of fire spinning on her hands. Then her hands slowed still more, and the balls spun through the air to where the juggler stood amazed. He did not try to catch them, but let them roll into the crowd. Though the flames had died, the people stepped aside and let them roll where they would. When Andiene rejoined Syresh and Kallan, there was a wide circle of bare flagstones around the three of them, and people had drawn into little knots, to murmur and whisper.

“Will a messenger dove fly to my land in time that he may hear of this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kallan said. “Nahil’s summer will not be easy—but what of ours?”

“They will not touch us now—from sheer fear,” she said confidently. “Besides, power is pleasant to wield like a toy. I have never used it so childishly before.”

“You cannot trust this king.”

“I know, I know, but now he will walk wide of me. So full of fear, he will not dare to plot and scheme.” She glanced down the corridor, to where the king sat, his hands clenched white-knuckled tight, his gray eyes watching her with a look of grim appraisal.

“I did not like the way he looked at us this morning, as though we were only barefoot wanderers,” she said simply.

The dancing was over; the tables were being set up for the feast; the benches were being lifted down from their high stacks. Andiene stood and watched and smiled.

Lenane bent over her lute again, with Ilbran standing by her side. Her fingers rippled in many patterns, the deep strings hummed in harmony, until the notes shaped the lilting tune of Iasaprer’s Quest, how he searched for the end of the world.

Then Ilbran sang, and Lenane’s voice was silent, but her fingers wove harmonies and subtle counterpoint for his tune, until it seemed as though a whole chorus of ghosts sang with him. Syresh listened in gloomy jealousy.

“I never realized,” Andiene whispered, when the song had ended, and Lenane tuned and tuned again, a lutenist’s endless task. “I never knew. She is a master. This trip would have been worth our while if only to give her fingers a