It had only been attached for two days, and she could still feel the residue of the one who had created it.
The one.
She frowned. “This has only been touched by one majus.”
Origon’s crest fluttered in alarm and he stopped pacing. “Are you sure?”
“I think…yes, though there is interference behind it. But only one majus put notes of their song into this medallion—permanently.” Doing so would make the change to the Symphony last much longer, but would weaken the majus for days afterward.
“Are we to be speaking of a majus with access to more than two Symphonies?”
“I’ll only believe it if I see it,” Rilan answered.
“How are we to be finding them?” Origon looked around as if one might just pop out of the scenery.
Rilan thought for a moment. There was plenty of data here, between the remains of the beast, the medallion, and the change in the group structure of the beasts. But they would need to work together.
“I think we can take a page from our mystery majus’ book,” she said. “Can you find the connections between the group of beasts that ambushed us? I can add a biological tracker with my house.”
Origon thumbed his wispy moustache for a moment, then listened to something hidden from her. “I am having a better idea.” He gestured to the air with one hand, as if pulling ropes, and lines of yellow formed, twisting paths following where the beasts had been. Rilan watched him work. He was doing something with the House of Communication, tracking the air currents and communication between the animals. It took time to identify the correct chords of the Symphony. If they were too fast or too strong, it would be harder to change, more prone to failure. But Origon was quick, and decisive. His other hand came forward and orange light flashed between the yellow ropes, lightning strikes of the interchanges of power and hierarchy between the group. He began to walk forward, favoring his good leg, not even looking to see if Rilan was behind him.
“Or you could do it yourself,” Rilan mumbled. “So the maji of the Great Assembly work for the good of all…”
She followed Origon, one hand on her aching rib.
Hidden Chords
- Upon answering the Lobath’s summons, I found his mate near death in childbirth with severe complications. After a lengthy procedure, I saved the female Lobath’s life. The child, however was stillborn and disfigured in strange ways, as if its body skipped some stages of growth and accelerated others. Medically, I cannot say what happened. One of my colleagues in the House of Healing believes the infant was actively changing three of the six Symphonies. This is, of course, impossible. Nevertheless, the House of Healing followed the woman’s progress for several cycles until she birthed two completely healthy, and otherwise unremarkable, children.
Fragment of a medical diagnosis found in the archives of the House of Healing, 506 AAW
The land rose steadily until they found the entrance to the cave. It was set amidst a cluster of giant cilia-bark trees, and if Origon’s ropes of yellow and orange hadn’t pointed directly to the entrance, Rilan would have missed it.
The entrance was low, but soon opened up into a larger cavern, tall enough even for Origon to stand straight. Rilan was thankful for that, as bending didn’t help her rib any. The walls were natural, a crack in the crust of the earth. Small animals had made their mark here and there. She wondered if the sabretooth beasts used this cave too.
“Look.” She pointed toward a covered lantern hanging from a hook in the wall. An orange aura surrounded it, but it gave physical light as well—a soft yellow glow. Rilan knew it would give that light for many cycles, notes from the House of Power stored by one of the House of Potential. They were common in the Nether. Not so much in the wilds of Festuour.
“This is to be the correct location.” Origon made a dismissive motion. The yellow and orange ropes around them vanished as he sucked in a long breath, his music returning to him, the changes to the Symphony reversed. He limped forward, and Rilan followed him with a grunt. Either standing or walking was fine, but her rib didn’t like changing between the two.
They followed the chain of lights, set in crevices in the walls. The rough floor descended steadily down, while the roof soared far overhead. In places where the walls would be too narrow to pass through, there were marks of tools, expanding the passage.
“There are to be many lights,” Origon remarked. At first Rilan wondered what he meant, but then she saw. The majus lights were set at regular intervals, no more than a few paces apart. Each had their faint aura of orange, with hints of brown to show the work of one of the House of Potential, though the aura gave no real light. They lit the passage very well. Too well. There was more than enough to keep good footing along the passage.
“Why would a majus expend so much of their song on a permanent investment?” Rilan asked. Origon nodded in agreement.
“It is as if this majus does not understand the costs of making permanent changes to the Symphony.” Before long, the majus would become weak, unable to craft the larger changes more complicated works required.
They followed the passage until the first pipes began to appear.
“What are those?” Rilan whispered as she pointed to a brace holding two long cylinders, one of a thin beaten metal, and the other of what looked to be stiff oiled fabric. Their voices dropped in volume the farther they went.
“Vents?” Origon offered. “Maybe there is to be no good source of air deep in the cavern.”
“Hmm.” Rilan watched another pipe emerge from above and join the other two as they walked. “Or maybe there is something below generating fumes that need ventilation.” She sniffed, but the air was still fresh, if a little musty.
“Perhaps we should be moving more quietly,” Origon suggested. The cave was alive with little noises; drips, creaks, and rustlings. It covered the sounds of a person moving slowly and carefully. Still, best to be safe.
“I don’t think I’m the problem.” She glanced down at Origon’s thick boots, just peeping from underneath the edge of his now filthy robe hem. He was clumping along louder than usual, with his limp, but he made an effort to reduce his noise. She tried to silence the sound of her labored breathing.
The cavern passage split several times, but always the lights went one direction, and they followed. More pipes joined the three, until there was a bundle on each side, above their heads. There was more metal now, though a few pipes were still made of oiled fabric. Rilan could see valves, gears, and pressure catches in the light from the lamps. Origon was paying careful attention to them, and she wondered if he was listening to the Symphony of Power. What would it tell him about the forces directed along the pipes?
Before long, another sound began to intrude on the other ambient noises. It was continuous, a hissing tick every few seconds like a large clock run by steam. Rilan traded glances with Origon. There was a brighter glow ahead, where the passage took a turn to the left.
“Someone has been here a long time,” Origon whispered.
Rilan positioned herself just before the turn in the corridor, gesturing Origon beside her. The rough wall poked her back. She could see marks around the bright entrance, as if someone made an effort to make the opening regular.
She held up three fingers, then two, then—
Origon silently turned into the room ahead of her. Rilan rolled her eyes and followed him, her cracked rib complaining at resuming movement.
The room was illuminated by many majus lights, and Rilan shielded her eyes until they adjusted. The run of pipes in the corridor had nothing on this room. Bunches of them reduced to smaller, thicker tubes, feeding into cabinets filled with whirring gears, pistons, and bellows. Dials and readouts fluctuated above them. Machinery lined the walls of the cavern, twenty or thirty paces across. Some of the equipment was mechanical, while other tables held chemical reagents. A large cabinet near the far wall was the source of the hiss-tick they heard in the hallway. Puffs of steam left it with every bea
t, and dials spun in the body of the thing. In the middle of the room was a table, obscured by the furry figure bent over it. It was a Festuour.
Origon was in the middle of the doorway, Rilan positioned behind him. They hadn’t been seen, and she was just about to pull Origon back when the figure turned.
“Oh! You’re early.” The Festuour—Rilan was pretty sure it was female, and somehow familiar, at that—was draped in an apron filled with pockets holding calipers, pencils, rulers, and scientific looking devices for which she had no name. The Festuour glanced at a dial on the wall through three pairs of spectacles set at various distances down her snout. “I was sure as punch you would get here twenty minutes later. No matter.” She drew one of the devices from her apron—a tube with a piston on one end and a dial on the other. She waved it in Rilan’s direction and it made a whistling noise, creating a strange harmonic with the Symphony. Rilan shook her head. “House of Healing. Fine.” The Festuour waved her device at Origon and Rilan saw his crest flare. He swayed back in surprise. “And House of Power. Have one of those already.” She lifted the middle pair of spectacles and peered through the other two, then turned the dial on the side of the device. “And the House of Communication! That’s much better.”
Rilan tensed.
“I don’t have many visitors out here, as you must imagine,” the Festuour told them. Her voice was high, her fur brown and green in patches. She was not old, from what Rilan could tell. Was this their fearsome adversary?
“And so many these last few days!” the Festuour continued. “Well, you must admit, that’s surprising as can be. Still, I try to be a hospitable host.”
Rilan looked at Origon again. More visitors.
“Someone else has been here? Another Kirian?” she asked. The Festuour blinked at her, seeming not to hear.
“You must excuse my manners. Let me introduce myself. I am Aptibontigon Ket, Maker. Fernand Vethis has told me much about you.”
“Wait. Vethis?” Rilan wondered if she heard wrong, then realized why the Festuour looked familiar. It was the one she had seen him with after their test.
Ket moved her mass to one side. “Yes. Didn’t he tell you he was coming? Let me guess. Wanted to keep all the fun for himself.” The Festuour was certainly a majus. They had no trouble communicating, and Rilan was making no effort to translate her words.
There was a body on the table Ket had been leaning over. Rilan saw enough of the dark hair and a hint of his face to recognize her classmate. What had he gotten into now, and how? Was he even still alive?
“What about my brother?” Origon’s hands were at his side, clenched. His crest rose like a fan. He spoke before she could ask more about her rival classmate, motionless on the table.
Ket blinked again. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about him. You must explain. What house does he belong to?”
“He is not a majus.”
Ket pulled her middle set of spectacles off again. Glancing down at the strange instrument she still held, she fiddled with it, then pointed it at Origon. “Curious. You are older than he, I gather.” She seemed unconcerned they had found her.
Apprentice Fernand Vethis
“I…” Origon stopped short, his hands loosening. “I am. How are you knowing that?” Rilan took advantage of their conversation to sidle slightly to one side. Maybe she could get close enough to see what Ket had done to Vethis. If he was here now, he must have left around the same time they did. She had seen them again the morning they left. Ket could have brought him directly here, of course, but why? What did he have to do with this?
“You belong to two houses,” Ket said, as if it were self-explanatory. Then she made an annoyed click of her tongue. “I forget others haven’t studied the theory of the Grand Symphony as much as I have. I studied acoustics when I was young, you know. Still do.”
Rilan concentrated on getting out of the Festuour’s field of view, using slow footwork from Fading Hands, though the creature was as good as ignoring her. Maybe it would have been better to go on the offensive immediately and incapacitate the majus, but something in her protested against such violence when their opponent was so calm. And, her rib hurt too much.
“I have studied several maji belonging to two houses. In all cases, their birth was followed soon after by a younger brother or sister, devoid of any talent with the Symphony.” Ket spoke earnestly to Origon, as if delivering a thesis to the Council.
“This is not to be unusual,” Origon countered. “Many maji have siblings. The ability is rare enough that it often does not show in families.” Rilan would have laughed if she wasn’t so tense. Just like a Kirian to start debating a point when faced with a potentially lethal adversary in a hidden underground lab.
“Yes, but in these cases, the sibling was usually sickly, did not make much of themselves, and often perished young.”
Rilan could see Origon’s face tighten. She was almost around the room now, and had a better view of the table. It was definitely Vethis, and he was merely unconscious, not dead. He had some sort of fabric mask over his mouth, and a tube was inserted beneath the skin of his left wrist. That triggered another memory. Something about circular marks.
“It is my theory,” Ket continued, “That the elder sibling sometimes takes the potential that would be passed on to the second child. The older one robs the younger one, if you will, of its future as a majus.” Her voice was easy and calm, as if speaking over a casual lunch.
When Origon started forward, Rilan took the chance to move closer to the table, tracing the tube under Vethis’ wrist. “I did not rob my brother! I was caring for him, his whole life.” His voice rose, his hands trembling as they reached forward. “I was going to visit him again soon, before I was getting the message—”
“Yes, and you see what happened to him,” Ket interrupted. “Maybe if he had access to that second house you wield, he would have lived. Maybe he could have fended off the thrycovolars that followed him. They don’t usually hunt people, whatever species.”
“You—!” Origon’s normally pale skin was growing more flushed by the moment. Rilan glanced between them. The Festuour knew about Delphorus. She had killed him, or let him be killed.
But Delphorus hadn’t had any marks on him. She remembered the strips of flesh ripped off the beasts—the thrycovolars. They wouldn’t have been able to recognize Origon’s brother if the creatures had killed him. She watched Ket through narrowed eyes. What was the Festuour doing?
Origon had both hands up, a yellow and orange glow mixing around them. He was going to do something, and though the heads of the houses forbade maji to fight each other, Rilan wasn’t sure she wanted to stop him. She traced where the other end of Vethis’ tube vanished into a machine and guessed at the most likely off switch, stabbing down at a carved rocker. The Festuour was ignoring her, for whatever reason, focusing only on Origon. She could use that time to her advantage.
“It is truly a shame about your brother,” Ket remarked, hurrying to the hissing machine on the other side of the room. She switched topics. “You must tell me how the mixture of the Houses of Communication and Power changes the way the Symphony is heard.” She twisted dials and flipped knobs, glancing back at Origon every few moments.
Rilan’s machine sighed, and some life went out of it. She went back to Vethis, sparing a glance at Origon, who was having some difficulty, the aura around him pulsing and fading. The change he was preparing must be particularly complex.
“I’ll need that information after all,” Ket said, “when I get used to the new house.”
Connections bloomed in Rilan’s mind. Ket wanted Origon to attack her. She reached a hand out, wincing at the ache. “Ori—”
Something beeped near Vethis and Ket spun. “Oh, you mustn’t do that.” She gestured, and a brown aura flashed across the room. The House of Potential. The machine behind Rilan started back up. Rilan watched with wide eyes. To rewrite the Symphony of a complex machine was a difficult thing, nearly as hard as
rewriting the Symphony of a living thing. And the Festuour had done it at a distance without hesitation. Rilan would have needed several moments to catch the measure and tone of a person’s music. Ket was fast, and powerful.
Then she saw Origon, slowly sinking to the floor. She was too late. The orange haze was still around him, but the yellow one was gone, or very faint. Across the room, another yellow aura hovered near the hiss-tick machine by Ket. She had transferred it somehow; stolen the change he made to the Symphony. Origon would lose those notes of his song. No wonder he had buckled.
Rilan pressed the rocker switch again. Anything Ket didn’t want her to do was a good thing. When the beep sounded once more, the rogue majus was buried in the dials and didn’t seem to hear it. Rilan patted at Vethis’ cheek, while keeping an eye on Origon. The Kirian was pale and gasping, but still conscious.
“Wake up!” she hissed. Any ally would be an asset, even an arrogant fop like Vethis. He murmured something and his eyelids fluttered. Origon was on his knees, and Ket was still at the controls, doing something. Rilan made eye contact with her friend and made a motion toward him. He shook his head, very slightly, and gestured her back to the table. He wanted her to wake Vethis up too.
Gently, Rilan pulled the tube back out of Vethis’ wrist. It wasn’t in deep, but the diameter narrowed to a point. It was probably injecting some concoction straight into his veins. She only just had it out, blotting the small wound, when Ket turned back, taking in the whole situation with one look.
She tsked. “Really now, that’s rude of you. Do you know how long it took me to prep him? I only perfected the technique a ten-day ago, and I haven’t had the chance to complete the transfer.” The Festuour pushed out with both hands and something glowed between them, both giving off real orange light and ringed with the orange of the House of Power.
Tuning the Symphony (Dissolution Cycle) Page 9