Tuning the Symphony (Dissolution Cycle)

by William C. Tracy

  “My canteen is empty,” he said, shaking his leather pouch.

  “And mine spilled last night,” Rilan answered. She closed her eyes and felt the Symphony of the forest spill past her, like a warm summer wind. The trees soaked up water stored beneath the ground, but they were better fed in one direction.

  “This way. I think there’s a stream nearby. We can both get more water.”

  “Were you hearing...ah…anything else?” Origon didn’t look at her.

  “There are no more of those creatures close.” She answered his unasked question. “This ecosystem wouldn’t be able to support many more of them anyway.” She glanced to the trees where she could see bits of fur slide out of sight. The prey animals on the ground were well hidden.

  The morning was still warm, and humid. Condensation beaded on the bark of the trees. The land rose gently as they made their way to the stream, and Origon was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said, trying to ignore the pain in her chest. Origon looked up.

  “For what?”

  She gestured at his leg. “I’m not very good with healing. It’s like the notes just slide away when I try to do it. I can understand the music of a mental state, or a set of pheromones, or even change the way a body works, but to actually grow new cells?” She shook her head.

  Origon shrugged. “Some are to be better at certain things. It is natural.”

  “It’s about the only thing Vethis is good at,” Rilan continued, hardly hearing her friend’s response. “He always held that over me.”

  “Your testing rival? I am seeming to remember the two of you arguing through one of my classes.”

  Rilan snorted. “Rivals. He’s the lazy son of rich parents. He had everything I didn’t growing up. He barely got through University, and most of that was from cheating off his friends. Yet he tested with me. It’s so rare to have the ability to change the Symphony, and it’s wasted on him.”

  “But he can heal,” Origon offered. “We are always needing good physicians.” Rilan rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, he’s decent at it. He would be better if he practiced it rather than mooching off his parents.”

  “Surely he is to be proficient at some things.”

  Rilan waved the comment off. “Maybe, if he applied himself to them.” She thought about their test, how he passed just as many challenges as she did. “If he had been my brother growing up, I would have forced him to work for…” she broke off as she realized what she had said.

  “I didn’t think.” She felt her cheeks redden. “Here I am, complaining about that waste of space, when we should be concentrating on where Delphorus went.”

  The stream came into view in front of them.

  “Yes, well, he could not have traveled much farther on his own.” Origon finally said.

  “Whatever he found must have been a few days walk or less,” Rilan agreed. She pressed a hand to the side of her chest. The hike this morning had taken more out of her than she liked. “He was close to death when he fell near the edge of the forest. He wouldn’t have traveled far like that.” She glanced to Origon. “Sorry.”

  He nodded, bent, and filled his canteen. Rilan did likewise.

  “Give yours to me,” he said. When she did, he took the caps off and held both, an orange aura springing up around his hands and the containers. Steam rose for a moment from the open caps, then disappeared. When he gave her back her canteen, the water was just as cool as the flowing stream.

  “There were small creatures in the water that would be causing sickness,” he said. “Now there are not.”

  Rilan took her canteen back. She would have known that, if she thought about it. But Origon had much more experience traveling through the wilderness. If she had somehow changed the creatures so they were not toxic, it would have taken a permanent investment from her, and she would have lost those notes of her song. It would have taken a few days to build them back up. But Origon merely applied heat, then took the heat back—a reversible change. The houses of the maji had many ways to accomplish the same goals, but some were better than others.

  She took a sip of water, grunting, as raising her arm pulled on her rib. Clean and clear. “Can you tell which way your brother came from?”

  “Last night, the air remembered him passing this direction,” he said, gesturing with a long finger past the stream. “But I cannot be forming another map to trace him from here. The connections are too sporadic.”

  “Then we continue in that direction until we find another clue.” Rilan pulled a strip of jerky out of her bag and began to chew it, moistening the meat with water from her canteen. If there were any berries or nuts in the woods she would have eaten those instead, after using the House of Healing to make sure they weren’t toxic. But it didn’t seem to be the season for fruit, if the scrubby bushes even fruited here. She wasn’t sure what season it was locally, though the air was hot.

  Origon limped along behind her, occasionally reaching out with one finger, smoking in the humid morning air and ringed with an orange aura.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Breakfast.” As he answered, Origon reached out and Rilan saw a large beetle fall out of the air—faster than she expected—crisping from the heat coming off the Kirian’s finger. He caught it with his other hand and popped it in his mouth.

  Rilan shook her head, then stopped when it hurt too much. “One of these days, you’re going to catch a disease from eating foreign bugs.”

  Origon only smiled, chewing. “The heat is sterilizing the insects, just as it did the water.” He caught another delicate flying thing with the finger and it fell from the air, smoking. “Even if they are to be overcooked.”

  Rilan opened her mouth to argue, but an odd shape on the ground ahead caught her eye. “What’s that?”

  She moved to the shape, holding her chest, then called Origon over.

  “It’s the ones from last night,” she said. In front of them were two large carcasses, insects already buzzing around. The sharp metallic smell was strong, but mixed with others now; blood, and effluent, and death.

  “Are you sure?” Origon toasted one of the flies that got too close to him.

  “Positive. I copied their pheromones. I can tell these are the same. Besides, these are apex predators. There wouldn’t be others so close.”

  “It is like they were tearing each other to pieces.” Origon gingerly poked at a strip of flesh hanging from the nearest beast. In the daylight, they looked like a cross between the jaguars that frequented the jungles near Rilan’s home city of Dalhni and some sort of hulking, hairy bear. They had long hooked claws to allow them to catch branches of the bare trees around them. She didn’t look closely at the mouth. She had seen quite enough of that the night before.

  “Which pheromones were you using?” Origon asked the question casually, but she caught him glancing at her.

  It looked like the beasts had died from the deep clawed wounds. There was a trail of guts from one of the beasts. “Unless they like to kill each other while mating, I don’t think I caused this.”

  “Then why are they dead?”

  Rilan looked closer. There were more wounds on the creature’s backs, but these were half-closed, and scabbed over. “Something isn’t right. Look here.” She pointed to a long slash of purple down one of the beasts’ backs. She listened for the Symphony.

  The music was slowing, becoming lethargic. They hadn’t been dead long, but there was another melody underneath, something running counter to the creature’s natural tendencies.

  “Someone changed them,” she said. “And not very well.”

  “The majus?” Origon’s crest rose with interest.

  “It must be, but not a very good one.”

  “It is to be one of the House of Healing, then.”

  “Ye-es,” Rilan hedged. “There was a component of my house involved, but there was something else, too. I can’t hear what it is.”

  “So our majus might be a mem
ber of two houses, as I am.”

  “Isn’t that rare?” Rilan looked at Origon. “An order of magnitude higher than those born able to hear one Symphony? You’re the only one I know of.”

  Origon shrugged. She knew he was trying to look humble. He wasn’t succeeding. “You know others. We are tending not to advertise our other abilities, rare though we are.”

  “Still, they aren’t common,” Rilan said. “Why would a majus be in the middle of nowhere modifying wild animals?” She gestured at the nearest corpse. “Why don’t you give a listen. Maybe you can hear other changes.”

  He looked surprised by her request, only for a moment. “That is to be…a good idea.”

  “I do have them sometimes.”

  He bent over the beasts, head cocked, crest fluttering. “I cannot hear any changes to the Symphony.”

  “Then the other ability was the House of Strength, Grace, or Potential,” Rilan concluded.

  “Most likely Potential, to be able to store changes to the Symphony,” Origon said.

  “So what did this have to do with your brother?”

  The Kirian’s face fell, crest drooping. “I do not know.” His large eyes met hers. “But I will be finding out.”

  A shiver ran down her back at his expression.

  “Are there enough clues here to determine where they came from before they attacked us?” Rilan could potentially trace their biological footprint, but she wanted to give Origon something to focus on with the House of Power.

  “I will try.” As he moved again to the bodies, a deep grunt rang through the forest. Rilan jerked her head and bit back a curse at the pain. She felt her braid hit her shoulder, the little bell at the end chiming.

  “Origon.”

  “I am seeing it.” Origon rose, very slowly, his robe clinging around his legs. Another beast stood not twenty paces away, a deep rumbling coming from it. It was either purring or growling, and Rilan didn’t want to find out which.

  It roared, and its two tiers of serrated teeth shone between its tusks.

  “No more apex predators?” Origon asked.

  “So maybe we were near the edge of their territory,” Rilan snapped, looking for anything to use against the thing. Aside from dead branches, there was nothing. She scooped one up, holding it in both hands. It wouldn’t do much, but might give her enough time to make contact with it without losing an arm. Or her face.

  It charged.

  Origon’s skinny arms rotated forward like he was trying to flourish a handkerchief toward the creature.

  “Exhale!” he shouted, and Rilan felt the air pressure drop around her, like a storm was approaching. She blew out the air in her lungs. Her rib screamed at her.

  There was a deep thump and her ears popped. The beast skidded to a stop, shaking its great head as if confused. She saw a trickle of bright purple blood flow from one large ear, and then from the gash of a nose above its teeth. It gave an almost pitiful moan and flopped to its side.

  “Is it dead?” Rilan edged closer to the mound of fur. There was something very wrong here.

  “I am sincerely hoping so. I cannot be generating so big a change in air pressure for a long time, or unless we are far away from here.”

  “There can’t be that many predators nearby, not this large. And I doubt we’re on their regular diet, since we’re not even from this homeworld.” She stepped closer still. She didn’t see any movement.

  “You are right.” She looked back. Origon was listening to something again. “There is to be some connection here, in tune with the structure of the ecosystem. I can almost tell—”

  He was interrupted by another grunt, followed by a snarl.

  Four more beasts moved out from behind trees, one far bigger than the others, with fur black as pitch. The others were in shades of gray and brown. With a whump of displaced shavings, a fifth dropped from the trees behind her and Origon. They were surrounded, the corpse of the beast Origon had killed blocking their only exit.

  “Are you sure you can’t make the pressure change again?” Rilan hoped her voice didn’t shake. The Symphony came to her, and she followed the unspoken pheromone exchange between the beasts:

  Food.

  Hungry.

  Prey.

  Origon cried out, and all the creatures turned toward him. Heedless, he limped in a run toward the one he had felled. Rilan rotated in a circle, falling into the steps of Fading Hands, though it would do little good against this crowd. She wouldn’t even be able to use her hands effectively with her broken rib. She began to pick apart the notes of the pheromones, hoping to create something to buy them more time.

  “I have it!” Origon cried, holding up something that had been strapped to the creature’s back. The rest watched him, heads tilting, their motion stopped for the moment by confusion or interest.

  Then their heads snapped back to her, almost in unison. She felt their stares boring into her.

  “They are all connected!” Origon called, and twisted the thing in his hands, arms held above his head like a madman. Rilan could only spare a small section of her attention to what he was doing.

  There was a snap like wood splitting and the pheromones in the air suddenly changed. The beasts looked at each other, grunting and calling. Then one turned and stalked away.

  Another caught a tree and pulled itself into the branches. Two more traded cuffs, knocking each other’s heads with their wicked claws, then scampered away, catching branches at a distance.

  The last, the great black-furred one, circled her. She could hear it snorting and sniffing. The three tusks pointed toward her, away, toward her again…and then it turned with a whuff of air, kicking shavings back toward her as if she wasn’t worth the effort.

  It wandered off.

  Rilan let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, her arms slowly drooping from her guard position. Her legs were nearly locked into a stance of Fading Hands. It would have done no good with her muscles so tight. Her ribs complained at the movement, as her adrenaline rush faded.

  “This is the key!” Origon called, gesturing with something. Rilan stalked toward him, fists clenched.

  “What was that? Are you insane? We could have been killed and you just run off like you’re chasing butterflies!”

  Origon fell back, his crest flattening at her admonishment. He held the pieces of something out in both hands as if it explained his actions.

  “What. What is it?” Rilan gestured impatiently for him to hand over the objects. He did, with a look of trepidation.

  It once was a medallion made of wood, with lines carved into it in a now unreadable pattern. Origon had shattered it into five uneven pieces, each of which held the fading orange and brown auras of two of the houses.

  “You heard the change from the House of Power.” It wasn’t a question.

  Origon nodded. “That was the connection I was hearing. It became louder as more of the creatures came closer. They are solitary, but their hierarchy was adjusted with my house so they were becoming a pack, tracking intruders. I am believing each of them has one of these.”

  “Why did breaking one medallion destroy the pack bond?” Rilan wasn’t questioning their good fortune, but it did seem odd.

  “The web of Power between them was very fine,” Origon answered. He brushed his moustaches down, smoothing them. “Each one was to be connected to each other. The medallions might have been created together, though I cannot tell. The creation was using the House of Potential. Breaking one must have tangled enough strings of the web to be bringing the entire construct down. To rewrite a Symphony of such complexity and size would use many notes of one’s song. There are many parts I cannot hear, or I would be knowing more.”

  Rilan lifted one of the pieces. She could barely make out discordant notes, fading rapidly. “My house was used in the medallion too. It adjusted their behavior so they could live together for long periods of time. I must have disrupted that when I increased the mated pair’s sex drive.”
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  Origon nodded. “It is quite ingenious. Despite the change in the House of Healing being sloppy, the overall change was to be well crafted.”

  Rilan frowned as she tucked the broken pieces of what had been an artifact into her vest pocket. Something still didn’t add up. “Three houses, and used in a harmony and precision that rivals some of the Council’s workings. Are there two maji?”

  Now Origon frowned. “You are correct. Even if one majus was of two houses, that person would have had help to craft this.”

  “You’ve never heard of someone belonging to three houses, have you?” Rilan asked. It was a silly question. Everyone knew the answer.

  But Origon took it seriously, pacing through shavings on the forest floor. “There are schools of thought among the houses—especially with those who are members of more than one—postulating why there are to be maji who can hear two Symphonies. There has never been any recorded case where a majus has heard more than two. The prevailing thought is to be that the strain on the mind is too great. Those who would hear more than two aspects of the Grand Symphony die before they are born.”

  Visions of secret societies and meetings in the dark flitted through Rilan’s imagination. She was only beginning her path to become a majus, and there were still many secrets to unlock in the houses. She looked at her friend, her lover, her old teacher in a new light. How long had he been steeped in that even more rarified atmosphere?

  “Can you determine who has touched it?” he asked, breaking through her reverie. His face was questioning; no hint of any secrets.

  “Touched…what?” Rilan shook her head, carefully, to keep her rib from taking offense at the action. “Oh, the artifact.” She drew one of the larger pieces out of her pocket, hearing the topmost layer of the Symphony even as she did. She banished the thought of secret societies to the back of her mind, assigning a mnemonic to it so she wouldn’t forget.

  The overwhelming sense of the broken medallion was of the beast to which it had been attached. Muscles bunching and loosening, prey caught, and several wild sprints through the branches.