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

spoke last night, that Kasian was here. Had he sent Kasian here, to this frankly rather boring garden out of all London’s parks, this morning after that conversation last night, when he had warned him—
    Gabriel had spoken in English; they always spoke in the local language. Raphael did not acknowledge their relation, not since that day when Gabriel had come on his first errand to the Lord of Ysthar and instead of a close cousin’s welcome offered dismayed formality. Raphael and Kasian were speaking in Tanteyr. Raphael was surprised he had no difficulty with it. He had barely spoken his own language since the last time he had seen his brother.
    His brother, he thought. His brother, Kasian. His twin brother Kasian, who was after all not dead. Not that Raphael had really believed him to be, for Kasian was lucky. His brother. Who was standing here in the Victoria Tower Gardens talking to him, Raphael, who couldn’t bring himself to walk away as he was terribly sure was the right thing to do. He needed to be in control for the end of the Game. Which ended in three days. Two and a half days. And Gabriel had warned him not to look back. No. Told him.
    “I can’t believe it’s you that—that you’re the—that you’re—” Kasian stopped abruptly. Raphael regarded him sidelong, wondering what the end of that sentence was, but all Kasian said was, “That you’re here.” Which Raphael was certain was not what he had first been going to say. That he was—what? Alive? Reacting so strangely? Looking exactly the same—or entirely different? But Kasian—his smiles were exactly the same as they had ever been. Raphael moved a ribbon of magic out of the air and began to fiddle with its loopings.
    Despite his good intentions, he found curiosity stirring tentatively inside him. Kasian had not even been here a full day.   Yet here he was in modern clothes, jeans and a WWII-ace style leather jacket. Would Gabriel own such a thing? It was barely conceivable. Not that Raphael knew what Gabriel did in his free time. He could have a passion for anything, really. Pigeons, motorcycles, taxonomy, the Sarum rite … Trust Kasian, he thought, nearly smiling, to find such an outfit within his first twenty-four hours in a new country. A new world. He hadn’t been to Ysthar in all this time, of that at least Raphael could be certain.
    There was nothing of Tanteyr literature he could quote from memory. Only scattered pieces of Shaian poetry came from his youth, primarily Fitzroy Angursell’s great subversive epic Aurora , which he had quoted last night to Circe and thereby lost the penultimate move in their little game of truth or dare. But the deeds and misdeeds of that princess offered him nothing.
    Kasian offered, “We thought you were dead, you know,” so conversationally Raphael wished he had come up with a line dripping in satire first. He made himself nod amiably.
    “Yes,” Kasian went on. “You were gone—and then, of course, there was the fall of Astandalas. Earthquakes. Magical destruction. The nine worlds torn apart and rearranged. All that sort of thing. Most of the city simply disappeared and everyone with it. Most of Ysthar disappeared. We thought you must have died … You weren’t in our part of the city, the part that ended up around Kilturn on Daun.”
    Raphael traced the patterns the wind made around him, the magic tilting towards Salisbury Plain. He smoothed out the energies couched around Stonehenge, the circles of protections that he hoped would prevent his and Circe’s magic from spilling out beyond the vicinity on Wednesday. Kasian looked up, hastily down again when Raphael carefully did not meet his gaze.
    “Later, when things settled down and people started travelling again, when a handful of people dared hazard a journey between the worlds, we asked those who came from Solaara looking for their relatives. Another part of Astandalas ended up there, did you know that? In Solaara on Zunidh. Anyhow, we