Tuning the Symphony (Dissolution Cycle)

by William C. Tracy

  Origon took the book, slowly opening it.

  “Can I?” Rilan gestured toward the body. Investigating it—him—felt wrong, but it was the only way she could think to help. At least she might be able to determine what happened. Origon waved a hand at her to proceed and she went to the table.

  She closed her eyes and delved into the Symphony. Near the top were the reactions in her body, and those in Origon’s and the Festuour’s. She mentally pushed those aside and listened deeper. Everything organic in the room had some signature, but now that Delphorus was dead it was harder to find his song instead of that of the wooden table he lay on. Every living—and once living—thing had one. Maji were just able to tap into theirs.

  There.

  Signs of decay permeated already, even in the chilly room. Parts of the song that once defined him were missing, or breaking down, with notes and phrases dissonant. But that wasn’t what killed him. She was looking for something specific, violent. An animal attack, or a natural occurrence. It should show up in the Symphony, but there was nothing.

  “I can’t find how he was killed,” she said.

  “What’s she sayin’?” The Festuour cocked an ear at her. She had forgotten to speak in the Trader’s Tongue. It was so natural in the Nether simply to speak in her native language. She tried again.

  “I..not am…finding death cause…” She spoke in broken phrases.

  “I don’t think he died of a cold, girlie, if that’s what you’re trying to say.” Wint squinted at her.

  Rilan tried not to get frustrated. “I said he has no having any wounds.”

  Wint just looked confused. “No what now? Why would he do that?”

  “Wounds!”

  “He was insulted?”

  She growled in annoyance. “Origon?”

  But Origon was staring at his brother’s body. She touched his shoulder and he jumped.

  “She means my brother was not killed in a manner that is obvious.”

  “Well why didn’t she say so?” Wint scratched at his snout. “I could have told you that. Don’t know what he died from, and we’d rather not have a big incident in our little town. We’re quiet here. Don’t like folks from the big city coming down, messing things up. Figured we could handle it quiet-like.” He gestured to Delphorus’ notebook. “Don’t have a translator ‘round here for Kirian languages, neither.”

  Origon looked down at the notebook, still open in his hand. It was filled with the same style hieroglyphics as were stitched into Delphorus’ robe. If they were still in the Nether, Rilan would have been able to read them with the aid of its translation. Her friend didn’t look like he was taking in any of the words.

  “What does it say?” she prompted.

  Origon started again. “It is to be his journal log,” he said. The yellow aura still hung at his throat. He was not taking his brother’s death well. She thought it was just his normal aloofness, back at his apartment in the Nether, but now she could tell he was shaken. If his concentration slipped enough, his change to the Symphony might reverse, and then he wouldn’t be able to reproduce it until either some time had passed, or they moved a distance through the town. It would take even longer to find what they needed from Wint. She needed to get him away from here.

  “Maybe there’s something later in the book,” Rilan suggested gently. “Perhaps near the end.” Origon was holding it open at the front, where presumably it held some sort of identification of his brother.

  He grunted, crest flat and unmoving, and flipped through the log. Several minutes passed, and Rilan tried not to fidget. Her teeth were starting to chatter with the cold. She didn’t look at the sheriff, though she knew the Festuour was watching them. It was best for Origon to come to terms with this on his own, but they needed some information on what happened.

  “He was investigating,” Origon said finally. His face showed a little more animation as he read. “There were to be several homicides in his jurisdiction on Bhuontifontona—the capitol of our home province.” He turned a page. “All victims were displaying the same identifying marks—strange circular wounds in their heads and necks.” He looked through a few more pages. “He was suspecting a Festuour, for some reason. It does not say why. He traced the suspect’s movements to near this town, bought passage through the nearest portal ground, and traveled here, one ten-day ago.”

  “That tells me what I needed, folks,” Wint said, unheeding of Origon’s state. “There was a madman brought down in a big city up north, just after he got here.” He waved a paw at the table, “That must’ve been who he was looking for, but he went the wrong direction in his investigation and ran himself afoul of something local that didn’t agree with him. We have a mighty dangerous world for those unfamiliar.”

  But that didn’t make sense. Only an idiot would go to a little manufacturing village when their target was in a larger metropolis. Origon’s relatives might be arrogant, but she doubted they were stupid. Had Delphorus found some other clue?

  She was about to argue with Wint, who obviously wanted them out of his quiet town with the least fuss, and didn’t particularly care about Kirians, when Origon turned back to his brother on the table, gently arranging his robe. He was in no state to reach logical conclusions.

  “So will ya’ll be takin’ the body back with you?” Wint asked.

  “Give us one moment,” Rilan said, slowly enunciating her words so Wint could understand her poor speech. He nodded.

  “Origon, tell him you need to make an offering to your ancestors over your brother’s body,” she said, in her native tongue.

  “But I do not practice…” he cut off at her glare, blinked, and repeated her words to the sheriff. At least he was together enough to take her hint.

  The Festuour exhaled a cloud of mist. “Don’t take long now. It’s cold in here.” He shut the door behind him.

  “What were you—” Origon looked more clearheaded.

  “There’s something wrong here. I couldn’t find how your brother was…what happened to him.” She went back to the table. “The portal ground is up there, so why would he come down here if the one he was after was in the city up north? He must have had some other objective.”

  Origon cocked his head to the side. “You are correct. See if you are being able to find anything else,” he gestured to his brother’s body.

  She leaned close to Delphorus, searching deep into the Symphony. It resisted, as she had done the same thing just recently. But she hadn’t actually used her song to make a change, so it was possible to perform the same action. There was no sign of trauma in the body’s past, and she searched deeper, to where the Symphony divided into smaller and smaller parts, like repeating solos that made up the body. Something was off at this level. Parts of the music seemed to be missing, as if Delphorus’ life had been leeched away. The music felt wrong, as if it had been…

  “Origon,” she said. He looked at her, catching her mood. “Can the House of Power tell you how his life energy was connected to his body? I think something stole it.”

  He moved slowly, looking thoughtful, paused, then, reached out with long fingers to hover over his brother’s chest. His face was set in a frown. An orange aura appeared, moving down from his fingertips to the body’s chest. Origon was using his secondary house. Those maji’s specialty was to hear how the Symphony connected one thing to another.

  The orange glow spread to Delphorus’ body, as Origon closed his eyes, tilting his head as if listening intently. Finally, he opened them again.

  “There are to be changes, very deep in the Symphony. The way my…the way this body was connected together has been changed at a basic level.”

  “That’s what I suspected. I think your brother was killed by a majus.” Rilan held his eyes for a long moment. “We need to find who did this.”

  Origon nodded in agreement. “For more than one reason.” His face was dark.

  Rilan almost expected the cold surface of the door to resist her as she pushed, but it op
ened easily, and they exited into the hot and humid interior of the law office.

  The big Festuour was holding a sheaf of paper over his belly, a length of charcoal gripped in his paw. “We can pack that body up for y’all, if you like. Just give us an address. I’m assuming y’all came from the Nether, seein’ as you’re maji. We can request a special portal for it.”

  “Thank you,” Rilan told him slowly, since Origon was silent. “But we will come tomorrow. Tonight, we must find lodgings.”

  Wint’s long snout lowered and his charcoal drooped in disappointment. “Ah—of course. The Harvester’s Stump can offer accommodation. Tomorrow, then? We’re a quiet town, best to button this all up before it causes more hubbub around here.”

  Maybe the sheriff’s idea of a “hubbub” was different than hers. Rilan thought for a moment, but her language skills weren’t up to the task. She whispered to Origon, who translated, the glow still hanging around his neck.

  “Are there any local maji in Martflen?”

  Wint looked confused for a moment. “Just you two. The nearest is up north, and she only makes an appearance here once in a bear’s age.” He frowned. “Haven’t seen her for about three cycles now, in fact.”

  “And in which direction was my brother’s body found?”

  Wint frowned, but pointed across the town with his charcoal. “East of town, right where the forest starts. Why do you ask?”

  Rilan waved the question away, smiled at him tightly, and dragged Origon with her out of the law office. She hoped she hadn’t given the sheriff any offense while she was here. She couldn’t remember nuances of Festuour body language. How did people live outside the Nether? No wonder one didn’t see alien species on other homeworlds often.

  Once in the street, they turned in the direction the sheriff pointed.

  “We can be purchasing a room at the local common house later.” Origon said. “I want to see the place where it happened.”

  “Yes. Something’s off here.” She walked along beside him, shorter legs taking more steps to keep up with his stride.

  “Are you thinking Wint is keeping something back?”

  “No,” she answered slowly. “I think he really is just trying to protect his little town from scandal. I don’t think he knows about this other majus.”

  Origon looked back to the law office, stopping in the middle of the street.

  “There’s nothing you can do for your brother now,” Rilan insisted. “But you can honor him by finding out why he’s on that table.” She had to keep him moving or he would stop like he did in the morgue.

  “They’ll thank us after we bring back the majus responsible for this. Come on. You love wandering out in the wild. It will help you feel better.” She caught one of his hands, his long curved nails sliding along her skin; hard, and with an edge. She pulled, and finally he came with her. They headed through the town.

  They stopped in a general store on the way out, at her insistence. Origon would have been happy to go off into the forest with nothing at all, but she wanted supplies. The Festuour had always been allies to her species, and over the cycles, there had been cross-pollination of foods and other cultural likes. That meant she could find dried jerky to eat. She also bought several canteens of fresh water, rope, and a pack to carry them in. She even found a folding tent, but Origon stopped her from buying that for some reason. She was surprised how little it cost. This town must have been poorer than she thought. She used only a few small clear chips of the Nether’s currency, and still got several sticks of local currency back in change.

  Soon after leaving the store, they faced a wall of the cilia-bark trees. The town was not that large. “You will be more tired for carrying that pack,” Origon told her. His voice was the one he adopted lecturing to freshmen, and Rilan rolled her eyes. She had it strapped to her back, her leather vest providing some padding between the rough fabric of the pack and her linen shirt. The yellow glow had faded from his throat sometime in the past few minutes as he reversed the change he made to his speech and reabsorbed the notes of his song. They shouldn’t need translation in the woods.

  “I’ll be fine. You just worry about helping me track where Delphorus went.” She knelt down at the treeline, hands just above the ground. Chords and whole musical phrases of the Symphony flew past her, containing the many biological changes in the forest. There were numerous creatures hidden around them. However, there had not been harvesters at these trees recently, so any sentient disturbance would stand out. People made their own very definite impact on the music of the universe. She used her song to make a minor chord major and the differences popped to the forefront. There was something to their left, and she went that direction, Origon following.

  They went a few hundred paces. “Here. There’s a footprint.” It was partially buried in the dusty shavings the trees dropped from the end of their cilia—probably some form of waste product. She reclaimed her notes and the obvious signs faded from her perception. No matter, they had the trail now. “What can you find?”

  Origon bent down next to her, the orange glow of the House of Power already forming about his arms as he laid his hand in the footprint. It had been made by the large three-toed foot of a Festuour, facing toward town. The aura transferred to the footprint, tracing the outline, uncovering how this one piece was connected to its surroundings. Two orange lines spread from the print, one back to the town, the other into the woods, outlining another footprint nearby.

  “This way.” Origon stood, still concentrating on the ground. Rilan followed, watching her friend for any sign of distress. Yes, tracking work would be good for him. It would keep him busy.

  They followed the footprints backwards, until they reached a larger disturbance, not far into the treeline. The ground was trampled, and several of the trees had patches of bark scraped off.

  “This is to be the place.” Origon rolled his shoulders, and the orange glow disappeared again, reabsorbed.

  “Can you figure out what happened, or is that too similar for another change to the Symphony?” Rilan asked, referring to tracking the footprints.

  Origon drew up, lifting his long nose, ends of his moustaches twitching. “Of course I can be figuring out what happened. I was tracking through the wilds of the homeworlds—”

  “While I was still a child. You don’t need to remind me how much older you are.” It was somewhat of a sore point to her, but Origon didn’t seem to notice. He blinked at her blankly.

  “Never mind. Go on.” Rilan waved a hand at their surroundings. She was trying too hard to keep him busy, to not think about his brother, and it was showing. Origon mumbled something, his crest rippling. He went to a nearby tree, listening, then made a tying motion with his hands. As he left one tree to go to another, strands of yellow light fluttered as if a breeze were blowing them, but it was not the same slight breeze that blew through the trees today. The etheric light fluttered to a different wind. He went from tree to tree, and the light trailed after him as if he were making a giant spider web of ribbons. Soon all the nearby surfaces were covered, strands of light all shifting and pointing in the same otherworldly breeze.

  Origon stepped back, cocking his head, as if observing the streamers of light. “It is not to be complete. Can you tell exactly where my…the body was found?”

  Rilan watched what he was doing. She knew he was very good with the House of Communication, which the yellow ribbons indicated. He was harnessing wind currents of some sort, she thought, but didn’t know for what purpose. Still, she nodded and knelt, hands out again. The Symphony resisted. She couldn’t make the same change she had to discover the footprint. It was a novice mistake. She should have held on to the change instead of letting it go the first chance she got. She shook her head, frustrated with herself.

  After a moment, she listened to her own Symphony, using a few notes of her song to increase her sense of smell. The faded scents of the Festuour harvesters appeared as large hazy masses in the air. The body was easy to
find as well, especially since it didn’t move on its own.

  Origon’s brother. Not just a body. But she pushed the thought away. Find the answers first.

  “It was right here.” She outlined where Delphorus had fallen, one arm outstretched. She sniffed. “There were four Festuour as well.” She waved her hands to indicate where they would have gathered around Delphorus.

  Origon nodded, laying a hand in the center of each of the masses, then wordlessly touching the center of where his brother’s body lay with one finger.

  The ribbons of light around them flapped crazily in a nonexistent wind, then died, then flapped again, and the streamers lengthened and joined together. Rilan stepped back, trying to see what Origon had done.

  The streamers of light outlined a scene frozen in time, a body made of yellow light laying on the ground and four larger shapes around it, identifiable as the outlines of Festuour. They were frozen in the act of gesturing to each other and to Delphorus. No lines passed through the phantom bodies. Origon had mapped the air itself in that moment in time.

  “That’s incredible,” Rilan breathed. “How did you learn…” But Origon walked past her, to another shape, vaguer than the others, captured as it hid behind a tree, observing. It was on all fours.

  Rilan raised her head and sniffed. “Someone, or something, was here with them.”

  “The majus?” Origon cocked his head, watching the fuzzy shape.

  “I…don’t know. The smell is heavy, almost like an animal.”

  “It came from deeper in the forest, in this direction.” Rilan pointed, and Origon raised a hand and twisted. The yellow streamers moved along their paths, creating a funnel aimed farther into the woods.

  They moved in that direction, Origon controlling his captured breeze. While walking, Rilan sank farther into the detritus of the trees than expected, and she slowed her pace. No sense tripping over a root and breaking her leg on this heavy world. The woods were strange. Unlike the forests of her home where many types of trees grew together, this forest was all cilia-bark trees, branches like reaching fingers. Rilan wondered if it was planted or if the trees pushed out any other organism. Light got to the ground, but aside from a few scrubby bushes here and there, nothing grew underneath. The floor of the forest was deep with the shaving-like waste of the trees.