Till Human Voices Wake Us by Victoria Goddard Read Free Book Online

forth. He started, discovered his feet were soaked through, and shook his head at himself. It didn’t help.
    The crows called out again. Ishaa was resolutely asleep, the tree demure as if it had not just whirled through a year’s seasons in a flurry of beauty. Turning at last, Raphael walked down the hill towards the river door, through the wet green grass and the clay.
    Just as he exited his attention was lifted by an explosion of seagulls, and, looking up while swinging his shields into place behind him, he walked straight into a man.
    Raphael jumped back, for a moment seeing the stranger garbed in heraldic intensity: azure, scarlet, sable. No: this was twenty-first-century England: he was wearing blue jeans, wool jumper, leather jacket. Nevertheless he was very definitely from another world. Raphael looked up with an apology in his mouth, and instead said, “Kasian.”
    He could not have said what it was that told him that this was Kasian, except that everything did.
    A look of pure shock filled the other man’s face. Raphael memorized it, as he did all pure emotions, for later use in some performance. His own expression was as restrained as his emotions, here outside the walls of his house, certainly not faltering as Kasian’s expression was. But faltering from what to what Raphael did not know and told himself dispassionately he did not care. It was three days before the end of the world and Raphael had lived perfectly well without Kasian since his fourteenth birthday, when his father disowned him and Astandalas fell.
    The unwelcome thought followed hard that of course it was their father, their birthday, that Kasian, here before him saying nothing and looking, curse him, almost amused, was his twin brother whom he had adored.
    “Well, now, Raphael, this is unexpected.”
    Kasian was smiling, hands held forward in a gesture of puzzlement that looked as if it could turn into—welcome? Raphael took half a step back and essayed a polite smile. He had no words at all. Kasian’s expression turned to uncertainty, and then—Raphael could scarcely fathom this—and then to concern.
    “Raphael, you do know who I am, don’t you?”
    “Kasian,” he said again, again involuntarily.
    “Yes.”
    That was all he said, but he smiled. Raphael’s hands were down by his sides, elbows stiff and straight and hands grasping the bottom edges of his scarf as if taking the place of gravity. He couldn’t find a polite commonplace. He was too close to his house, too distracted by the crying gulls, too shaken by the tree’s movement below the currents of magic he understood.
    Kasian grinned. “Talkative as ever, I see. Whatever are you doing here, Raphael?”
    He found that childhood habits could be depended upon even more readily than the ones so painstakingly built over years; he answered honestly. “I live here.”
    “Right here?” Kasian’s smile and gesture indicated the vast city just barely visible through the mist; and the wall invisible to him behind Raphael.
    No words came. Words, words, words … He groped at inchoate images, nodded.
    “Interesting city. I’ve been staying with Gabriel.” He waited for a moment but Raphael stared mutely at him. “Just since yesterday. I thought I’d—I’d start exploring today. As he was busy. I didn’t expect to find you here!” He laughed robustly.
    The magic broke about him like a rock.   Yes, Raphael thought, grasping at it as an anchor, that was the magic of one so newly come from Daun. A boulder that had flung itself merrily into the river of   Ysthar, that was Kasian in his mind.
    A boulder flung up against the walls of his house that no one knew how to find, except for those seeking by convoluted pilgrim ways the water of the fountain, the leaves or flowers (never for him had they set fruit) of the trees, a feather of the phoenix or a rose of the garden of the Lord of   Ysthar.
    —Gabriel would know where his house was.
    Gabriel had already known, when they