This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Cover Design by Books Covered Ltd.

Published by Waystone Press, 2017

ISBN: 9780998847917

LCCN: 2017908889

Created with Vellum

To my princess

The song of the Sirin can overthrow kingdoms. I know. I have seen it. I have seen the song make gods of men. The song carved the eternal city of Vasyllia out of the mountains. The song transformed queens into healers, so that thousands were made well with a single word. But ever it comes as a harbinger of affliction. Only in the fire of adversity does the pure water of healing flow.

-from “The Journals of Cassían, Dar of Vasyllia”

(The Sayings, Book II, 3:35-43)

Chapter 1

The Song

The song teased Voran at the first hint of sunrise. His sister Lebía still slept, and he rose quietly, trying not to wake her. Outside his window, the trees were encased in overnight ice. Branches, like freshly-minted blades, clanged against each other in an almost military salute. As Voran leaned against the sill, the sun breached the summit-lines, and the ice-encased branches glowed from within. The song rose in a vast crescendo, then faded again. It stopped his breath short like a punch to the chest.

“Ammil,” said Lebía from across the room, her hair rumpled from sleep.

“Ammil, little bird?” he whispered, hoping she would turn over and fall asleep again. It cut him deeply that she still could not sleep on her own, despite her sixteen years.

“The sun’s morning sparkle through hoarfrost,” she said, laboring through a yawn. One of her eyes remained stubbornly closed. “That’s how the Old Tales call it. Ammil. The blessing of Adonais, you know.”

Voran smiled, though there was little to smile about in the purple shadows under her eyes. She needed to sleep if she were ever to find her joy again.

“What is that?” She indicated the parchment lying on the sill, garish in its profusion of purple and red.

“One of the Dar’s huntsmen claims to have seen the white stag.” Personally, Voran doubted it.

Her second eye opened. “The white stag? Dar Antomír wishes to hunt the deer of legend?”

“He’s anxious to begin as soon as possible,” said Voran. Too anxious, he thought, but kept it to himself. “His advisers are less sure. The Dar’s called together a small council this morning.”

Privately, Voran wondered at the Dar’s eagerness. Yes, catching the white stag was supposed to bring prosperity to the hunter’s city for seven generations. But although legends grew in Vasyllia with the same profusion as lilac trees, they mostly stayed bound to the page.

“Why does he want the approval of his advisors? Couldn’t he just announce the hunt, and be done with it?” she asked, rubbing her right eye with the heel of her palm.

“It’s complicated…” Only last week, the Dar’s head drooped in sleep during a small council. “Dar Antomír is of a different time. Most of his advisers are young, and they would prefer to leave old tales and superstitions behind. In fact, I think there are some who wouldn’t mind so much if Dar Antomír retired from public life and allowed Mirnían to take a more active role in Vasyllia.”

“I see. Meddling nags.”

Voran laughed. “I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.” He would much rather wander the wilds than sit in council with the representatives of the three reaches of Vasyllia.

“Do you have to be there? Why not stay at home for once?”

She looked away as soon as she said it. His conscience pricked him. Lebía was practically begging him, and he knew how much she hated to beg. It had been far too long since he stayed with Lebía at home, helped in the kitchens, took a long walk through the family vineyards, or actually read something with her. But Dar Antomír depended on him. Even more than he depended on his son, Mirnían.

“I wish I could…”

“Oh well.” She put on a feeble smile like a mask. “Never mind. Only please don’t stay at court the whole day. You can’t imagine how oppressive this house can be.”

Yes, I can, he thought. Why do you think I avoid it so much? Nothing like an empty house to remind you of your parents’ absence.

“I expect I’ll be back before evening,” he said, and his conscience pricked him again. He doubted he’d return before night. “Sleep now, my swanling. You need to rest.”

She looked at him without blinking for what seemed an inhumanly long time.

“Voran, do you think…maybe if I had done something differently—”

“Lebía, don’t.” He hurried to her and sat by her on the bed. “You were the least problematic child in Vasyllia. Mama’s disappearance wasn’t your fault.”

“I remember there were times when Papa looked at me with those heavy eyes, you know? Like he was trying to remember what it was like to love me. To love Mama. Could he have really—?”

“Lebía, don’t believe the gossip. The bruises on Mama’s arms were part of the disease.”

She nodded, thoughtfully.

“I don’t know why she left when she did, swanling. But the fact that he went to find her proves that he loved her, don’t you think?”

Her look only mirrored his own thoughts. He didn’t love us enough to stay.

“Please, Lebía, you need your sleep.”

She hugged him and turned over. Within a minute, her breathing had deepened into sleep.

May all the Powers damn him for leaving you, Lebía.

The curse did not give him the pleasure he hoped. It gave him no sudden illumination about the nature of Aglaia’s disease. It suggested nothing new about Otchigen’s madness and subsequent disappearance after implication in the mass murder of other Vasylli. Nothing but questions, as always.

At this early hour, he went out the back door of the wine cellar, chary of waking the servants. He managed to close the door with no noise, but the gate at the end of the overgrown back garden moaned like a thing diseased. It always did, but Voran always forgot. Cursing inwardly, Voran looked back at the house. No one seemed to stir within.

The house’s two stories lurched over him, the shadows thrown back by the morning sun, threatening him. As though the house itself were angry that Voran was master instead of his lost father Otchigen. As though it were Voran’s fault that his mother had fallen prey to a strange illness, then disappeared inexplicably.

The song appeared again, hardly more substantial than the red alpenglow on the underside of the clouds. Voran’s heart swelled as he turned away.

Otchigen’s house was nestled among the other estates of the third reach of Vasyllia. Voran loved to walk the flagstoned road through the reach as it crisscrossed the cherry groves of the noble families. Amid the trees, the mansions—each a fancy in carved gables, lintels, and columns—stared at each other as though they, like their masters, were jealous of each other’s status. Some of the most extravagant even sported gilded cockerels on the roof. Voran was grateful that it was generally considered in bad taste.

Every house was built on a small mound, to better overlook the other two reaches that extended downward and outward along the slope of the mountain, like the skirts of a great dress. Voran knew that, if looked at from below, the houses sparkled like jewels every morning: a reminder to the lower reaches that such opulence was as far out of their reach as the Heights themselves.

Voran stopped at a crossroads where stairs carved into the mountain led down to the second reach. Just to his left was the Dar’s palace, its seven onion-domed towers carved out of marble blocks, each larger than a single man. He hesitated, unwilling to brave the nagging of the small council yet. The second reach spread out beneath him in clean lines of austere homes set apart by stone hedges, staircases, and canals, all in keeping with the military calling of most of the inhabitants.