Song for the Basilisk
Patricia McKillip
Ace, 314 pages
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For centuries the walled city of Berylon was ruled by the House of Tourmalyne, until rival Pellior House, led
by the man known as the Basilisk, rose up and took the city for itself. A single Tourmalyne heir survives the massacre
of his family and the burning of his home by hiding in a fireplace. So that the strangely gifted Basilisk will
not find him, he turns his thoughts to ash. Rescued by a few scattered Tourmalyne survivors, he is renamed Caladrius,
after the bird that sings at the deathbed of a king, and sent to Luly, a school for bards so far away it is nearly
at the end of the world.
Thirty-seven years pass. Caladrius becomes a master of music, and begets a son, Hollis. He has willed himself to
forget his identity, his heritage, the carnage that claimed his family. He wants nothing more than to stay on Luly
forever, though he can never become a bard, for to play the harp, the bard's instrument, brings him too close to
the threshold of memory. But when a descendant of one of the surviving Tourmalynes comes to Luly, seeking the power
it is rumored the bards possess, the wall of Caladrius's forgetfulness is breached. Dreaming of fire, he remembers
who he is, and vows vengeance.
Caladrius travels to Berylon--followed, without his knowledge, by Hollis--and takes a post as music librarian in
the Basilisk's household. He acquires a fire-bone pipe, an instrument that plays what lies deepest in the player's
heart, and can make music into death. He intends to play a killing song at the Basilisk's birthday celebration.
But there are others who have plans for the celebration--Hollis, who also has found a fire-bone pipe, and a group
of revolutionaries intent on restoring Tourmalyne House to power. Within the frame of the performance of the opera
commissioned for the occasion, whose plot accidentally embodies the truth of Caladrius's story, all these elements
collide, with catastrophic results.
Though it takes the form of a tale of revenge, Song for the Basilisk is really about love, transformation,
and power--the power of memory, of hatred, of forgiveness, of family, of self, and of music. Music--the mystic
music of the bards of Luly, the wild music of the magic-rich hinterlands, the ordered music of the magisters of
Berylon--both drives the story and is its central metaphor. Music enables Caladrius to forget his past, and then
stirs him to memory; it is the vengeance he chooses, and also the way in which Hollis makes claim upon his father's
heritage. It is the purest expression of feeling--throughout the book characters express their grief, their longing,
their unrequited love through the music of the picochet, a peasant instrument tied to the wild powers of the earth.
And Caladrius's journey of revenge and redemption is also (though he does not know it) a quest to become the bard
he was meant to be, by unlocking the personal power that loss and fear have trapped within him.
McKillip is without doubt one of the finest stylists now working in the fantasy genre. Her exquisite, evocative
prose sings with all the power and magic of the music she describes. Her technique is elliptical, sometimes challengingly
so: a great deal of latitude is left for interpretation, and often more than one reading is required to tease out
the meaning of a scene or passage. Experiences and emotions are not so much described, as evoked--Caladrius's vow
of vengeance, for instance, is embodied in his dream of a mythical beast; his forgotten and remembered heritage
is expressed in images of ravens; his sorrow is conveyed through metaphors of ash. Characters' conversations are
terse and oblique, with much more unsaid than revealed. The story spends a great deal of time outside its protagonists'
heads--an enigmatic, somewhat detached narrative style that periodically abandons its cool distance for moments
of wrenching emotional clarity.
Song for the Basilisk is demanding reading. Yet such is the beauty of the writing, the vividness of the
images, and the strength of the characterizations that it's possible to read the book for these things alone, without
dipping more deeply into the complex web of symbol and allusion that lies beneath the fairy-tale surface. This
would be a shame, for it's in those deeper levels that the book's real power resides. But such qualities are not
very often a feature of contemporary fantasy, nor are they much regarded where they do occur. The novel's accessible
upper layer will at least ensure a popular readership for this fine author, who deserves much more acclaim not
only beyond but within her genre, and hopefully ensure many books to come for those who value complex, challenging,
truly literary fantasy fiction.
Copyright © 1998 Victoria Strauss
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