Birds of Paradise - 1. Chapter 1

Cyrus Zadryar, Master Bard and Loremaster, halted his tired horse in front of a grand house. Built of the white stone brought upriver from Gyrslayn and heat-fired blue tile from Oarsdown, the house sparkled like fine porcelain in the late afternoon sun.

The house sat nestled within, but apart from, a grand garden. Planned and overseen by several generations of gardeners, wondrous colors were to be seen at all times of the year. Rare ice blossoms from the lands beyond the icewall had even been coaxed to thrive in the imported, nutrient-rich soil. Cy had heard that the Shah's own Chief Gardener had been an apprentice here.

The only thing missing was the music. Dreams of his boyhood here had always included the everpresent sound of the two songbirds in the heart of the garden.

Songbirds were magical creatures, half man and half bird. Cy had seen many in his studies and travels, of all different colors. The birds of this house were blue. Their skin was like the sky after a storm, glittering as if sprinkled with pearl dust. The feathers cascaded down the neck and over the shoulders and back like a strange cloak. The largest feathers were the length of a man's arm in a tail over where a man's backside would be. Smaller, softer feathers grew in decreasing size to flow over the outside of the arms and legs, where they ended at elbows and knees.

The feathers were every shade of blue imaginable, from the lightest of baby blues closest to the skin, to the darkest colors of midnight on the tips, and they were as soft as goose down. Their eyes dominated their faces, overlarge, round rather than oval, and all black but for a ring of color around the outer edges.

They were the most exquisite creatures Cy had ever seen, and their music! Nothing he'd seen or heard could match a songbird's aria. The music had taken root in Cy's soul from the very first moment he heard it, on the very first day, the very first step he'd taken, not as an orphan, but as a ward of Lady Parisa Purdar, Lady of the House of Ashguza, an ancient family line once considered cousins to the Shah.

Twenty years later and Cy still yearned to master the entrancing music in his heart and recreate its essence with his own hands and voice.

Shaking off the dregs of memory, he paused no longer and dismounted stiffly to lead his horse to the stables. Within a half-dozen strides, however, the great, main doors opened and the Lady of the House emerged. Her hair was now mostly white and the lines upon her face were deeper, but her smile was as genuine now as ever it once was.

"Cyrus!" she called, arms outspread in welcome.

He turned with a wide smile, leaving the horse to stand, and enveloped the older woman into his embrace. Titles and time forgotten, they hugged with glad tears, both speaking at once, stopping to laugh, and then beginning anew.

He called her Aunt, though she was in truth only a kind-hearted, lonely widow who had agreed to foster a handful of war orphans. Cy was neither the first nor the last, as seen in the young faces sitting down with them for supper. They were happy and boistrous as ever were lads and lasses, lifting Cy's spirits and making him quite forget his heavy burden of expectations.

They pestered him for stories, for none had ever seen a real Loremaster before. Only rarely had they had opportunity to hear a bard, either, and never one classically trained, as Cy was, and so he sat in the nursery and told them of his travels, edited for their ears. Even the older two lads came from their rooms and joined them. Of an age to be apprenticed, Cy answered their questions of the war candidly, once the younger ones had succumbed to slumber.

Cy had observed many battles during his months with the army. The dangers of the jungle were many and fierce, though he had not ventured far beneath the hot, humid canopy. The warrior women guarded their domain relentlessly. Their chilling war cries, like the scream of a panther, still had the power to wake him from a sound sleep, and those were only the memories.

"The women," he said, "are powerful and beautiful. Each one is as tall and strong as a man, with skin like ebony, teeth white as ivory. They shave their heads, you see, and pierce lips and ears with sharp bone. They are as wild as they are beautiful, and they do not surrender."

For two centuries had Parsu explored and expanded to the South, pushing ever against the wet jungle. The last Bard and Loremaster, Siris Purfar, had lead the envoy to the jungle tribes, bringing back the first songbirds as a gift for the Shah. For two and a half centuries, the two countries maintained an uneasy peace, but sometime in the year of Cy's birth, that peace unravelled.

"They strike swiftly and with no warning," he told the wide-eyed boys. "They come at us in small groups, visible for no more than a fleeting moment before vanishing whence they come, both in the light of the day, and at night."

Both boys gasped.

"The strongest of our men cannot wield the weapons they rarely leave behind, and they bear away their dead and wounded."

"The war goes badly then?" asked the elder of the two boys.

"Yes," Cy replied gravely. "Very badly indeed. Every year they force us further from the jungle. In our lifetimes we shall be quit of the forest entire."

Dutifully impressed, the boys went off to their beds, with promises to hear more in the coming days, and Cy was able to seek his own rest. He wasn't sure how long he slept, waking suddenly to find his cheeks wet with tears and a damp pillow. In the next instant, a dreadful, heart-rending melody had him out of his bed and standing by the open window. He wept freely, held motionless by such beauty as the pure emotion sighing like a lover's heartbreak in the arms of the heavy, night wind.

As he listened he recalled the silence earlier in the day and the most awful foreboding filled him. He hastened to pull on his robe and slide his feet into slippers. Lighting an oil lamp, he left his room.

Cy almost ran into Lady Parisa in the parlor at the foot of the stairs. Her housekeeper and gameskeeper huddled nearby, shuddering with fright.

The lady looked up as Cy joined them, smiling sadly. "So," she commented, "it begins."

"Beg pardon, Auntie," whispered Cy, unwilling to speak too loudly for fear of offending the grief permeating the night. "Pray tell me what that sound is?"

She didn't look at him, staring as if she could see through the walls to the garden beyond. "That," she explained, "is the songbird."

So it was as Cy feared. "But why? What could cause the bird to sing such sorrow?" To wipe away the tears on his face would dishonor the singer, so Cy let them fall.

With a sigh, the lady sank into a plush armchair. "He sings because he is alone. The other died, quite suddenly, last week. It is why all songbirds must be kept in pairs."

There were indeed always two. They were always male, always identical in every way. The Shah's gameskeeper controlled all songbird breeding and only adult pairs ever left the very private, exclusive hatchery.

Once again Cy came up against the open secret of his patron's connection to the Shah; because once, and only once, had the Shah granted a single songbird to one of his subjects. When the lady was a young women, newly come to this estate, the previous songbirds fell ill from an unknown disease. Lady Parisa nursed them for days on end, able to save one, but the other lingered in a slow, consuming death. She applied to the Shah for companions, hoping that the company of another pair would do what she could not.

As it happened, another pair had been ordered as a gift to another estate. Their path took them past the House of Ashguza, and so dispensation was given to leave a third bird in the lady's keeping. By the time he arrived, unfortunately, the ailing bird had already died, the other the lady had described as singing a lament to make even spirits weep. Now Cy knew what she meant.

"Can you not get another?" he asked, offering the lady his handkerchief.

"Thank you," she murmured, dabbing at her eyes. "No, my darling Cyrus, I cannot. There are none to be had." She knew that songbirds were always born as pairs, twins, but occassionally triplets. If not separated quickly from the parents, the adult songbirds would kill the weakest of the three. Indi was by far the most beautiful, most elegant bird Pari had ever cared for, even as a newborn no larger than the palm of her hand. They'd preserved him for breeding, transfering the little chick to another pair who had lost their young.

"My beautiful bird," she wept, burying her face in the handkerchief.

Every part of Cy yearned to comfort and relieve such pain as wafted to them across the gardens. The music was like the chime of fine crystal, right before it splintered.

"Will he continue thusly?" he asked, voice harsh from sympathetic emotion.

The lady nodded. "Until he dies, yes." She knew she ought to have ordered the songbird's death before now. In the hatchery, the surviving pair was put down within minutes of its mate's death, because what one songbird sang would soon be sung by all, and grief of such power could drive otherwise healthy birds insane, not to mention incapacitating all the handlers.

"How long?" Cy whispered.

"Three, maybe four days. He's healthy and young still. Oh!" She rose, blotting uselessly at her tears. "I shall take the house away, I cannot bear it, I cannot! Cy." She turned to him, setting one hand on his arm. "I am so sorry to cut short your holiday. Come. Come with us to the town manor. I am certain you shall not be turned away."

He smiled tightly. Cy was the the youngest Loremaster by well over three decades, and the first dual Bard-Loremaster since Siris. No, Cy would not be turned away, not even by Lady Parisa's overbearing son-in-law. He would not dare, but Cy had little taste for cities.

"Nay, Auntie," he said, taking her hands and kissing her fingertips. "I cannot. I shall stay and see if I might somehow record this music, for it is beautiful beyond compare, however sad."

She smiled and kissed his cheek. All her wards went through a certain fascination with the songbirds, but with the young Cyrus, it had always been about the music. That was how she knew to send for a Priest of the Sun to evaluate the boy.

"Then I shall have some of my house stay and attend you."

Cy caught the servants' horrified looks and shook his head. "You are too kind, Auntie. I am but a simple Bard, and used to far less comforts than your elegant house. Take all your household, for I shall not need them."

"Well, if you are certain?"

"I am." He kissed her again.

"Very well." She patted his cheek, smiling despite her tears. "You are a good boy, Cyrus. Thank you."

With the lady organizing the servants and rousing the little ones from their beds, Cy took his leave and, bearing his lamp, moved out into the gardens.

Lady Parisa's gardens were a marvel to behold, winding, intersecting paths in a maze of colorful flowers, hedges, and trees, all imported from far-away lands. Cy wondered if he might see some of those places one day.

The birdcage lay at the center of the gardens, in a silver cage surrounded by the finest Nyshin glass twenty of a man's strides in diameter. The cage sat high upon a brick pedestal beneath which a furnace burned day and night through all seasons to keep the inside a steady temperature mimicking the heat and humidity of the jungle. Lady Parisa had even placed plants in great pots around the edges. Only the Shah's songbirds had larger, more ornate cages.

Cy had run along these paths as a boy and easily found his way. To the East, the sky lightened in the pre-dawn gray, but the mournful singing drowned out the usual day's greetings. The closer he came to the cage, the worse Cy felt until he collapsed at the base of the wide stairs, sobbing uncontrollably.

He had not once returned to the lady's house since leaving for the Temple of the Sun. When he began his apprenticeship, the priests and bards praised him for his stamina and perfect pitch, all due to sitting on these very same steps as a child and singing along with the songbirds, until his voice grew too hoarse to continue. The birds were his past, his very reason for everything he'd ever done.

The songbird's death dirge reached inside of Cy, breaking away a piece of who he was, the shattering of a precious childhood memory.

Step by step, leaing the lamp behind, Cy ascended to the top level, fumbling for the latch on the door. The early morning chill pressed against the heat from inside, fogging the glass and causing water droplets to fall like rain along the translucent walls of the cage.

A trough collected the rainfall and funnelled the water into a cistern. The birds always had fresh water in a wide, shallow pool to one side of their cage. The gameskeeper placed fresh fruit twice daily in a bucket affixed to the bars, and a swinging ladder led to a bower hanging from the roof. Multitudes of large, soft pillows made a comfy nest on the heated floor. There was also a perch, re-coated with sticky resin every year, that could also be reached via the ladder.

The remaining blue songbird slumped against the bars of his cage, his back to Cy. The feathers were ruffled and messy, dull where they should have been glossy. The bricks underfoot were stained rust-red in places. As Cy watched, the songbird reached behind him and yanked free one of the blue, lifeless feathers from his back. Fat, red drops spattered over the floor when he tossed the feather aside, his song hiccuping briefly.

"Oh Blessed Day," Cy mouthed. He pulled himself the rest of the way up and tried to work his swollen throat to allow him to sing, but he could not.

By the time the sun rose, Cy's eyes and nose were puffy and sore, his body as empty of tears as the house was empty of occupants. The songbird's lament had not lessened, and he'd lost two more feathers. With the dawn came a new resolve. Cy could not let this gorgeous, magnificent creature go unheralded to another night. He rose on unsteady legs and returned to the house.

With each step the burden upon his heart lightened and if he'd still had tears, Cy would have wept in relief. As it were, he remained at the house long enough to wash up and dress. Gulping hot honey tea to ease his throat, he slung his harp across his back and returned to the birdhouse.

He expected the grief this time, but he staggered instead of walked to a spot within the glass walls and settled in a morning sunbeam. Slowly, and with care for the finest instrument he'd ever had the honor of playing, Cy opened the triple-reinforced case and withdrew the harp from its velvet bed. He ran his fingers across the strings to test the tone and his eyes fell shut with pleasure.

The harp was a gift of the temple upon earning his Bardic mastery. The harp was the instrument Cy loved above all others. The grand, two-player harps of the temple were the only instruments Cy had ever encountered that could even approximate the voice of a songbird.

His small lap harp was made of rare redwood from the jungle and carved with depictions of the exotic flora and fauna. The harp sang to Cy as he played and, if he listened hard, he could bring out the hidden music.

This day of deepest darkness, he stroked the strings idly, closing his eyes to let the sun's warmth lull him into peace, and letting the harp tell him what to sing. He listened as the songbird filled the glass house with sadness and at first the harp played accompaniment beneath his fingers, but, gradually, as the sun inched its way across the sky, a note changed, here and there.

As he continued to play, Cy's weariness and sorrow dissolved into the music, lifted into the sky with the passing of the clouds above. His soul would one day take its rest there, too, and he sang; he sang of mornings and afternoons, of the eternal coming of the dawn and the dusk. One day's sorrow was another day's joy.

Like a flower closes its petals against the rain, the trees drooping their branches, so, too, would the blossoms open once more to the sunshine, and the trees stand tall. There was no greater magic than the Blessing of the Day. Let sorrows turn into joy with the passing of darkness into light, as night once more became day.

The last note faded away as soft as the encroaching dusk and Cy realized he no longer played but stood, arms outstretched facing East as if to hurry the progress of the moon and stars. He let his arms fall, breath leaving him with a sigh.

That was when he heard the silence. He turned.

The songbird kneeled just out of reach, his hands clenched tightly around the bars. His normally blue skin was gray, and dried residue clogged his nostrils. His eyes were sunken, red-rimmed and bruised in appearance, but they were bright and round and held Cy's gaze with unexpected strength. In fact, the eyes that met Cy's were almost ... intelligent.

Questions filled Cy's head. He wanted to back up, but his feet remained unresponsive, frozen to the ground. His hands were cold, his body hot, and he suddenly couldn't drawn in a normal breath. He dropped his eyes out of confusion, and they fell directly on the songbird's uncovered groin.

When he'd been a boy, the songbirds had seemed larger than life, huge and untouchable. Although they were small, fine-boned creatures no taller than an average man's shoulder, the perception had persisted. Like the warrior women of the South, the songbirds were fierce, dangerous creatures, or so he'd been told. He'd been forbidden to enter the glass house without an adult, though he'd often sat upon the steps and watched through one of the many open doors. Only at night or in bad weather did the gamekeeper close the doors.

But that little, blue cock standing there could have been his own, with a mound beneath that could be testicles, the same rigid staff and taut foreskin. It wasn't right to stare, and he glanced up quiltily, but there was no contempt in the blue and black eyes, only desire.

He couldn't maintain that look, and so Cy fled.