SongMaster's Realm

by Wolfram Donat

  SONGMASTER’S REALM

  by

  Wolfram Donat

  ©2008 by Wolfram Donat. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied or distributed without the express written permission of the author.

  ONE

  Joel Peters cursed. It was still raining hard, just as it had been since late last night. Muttering under his breath, he sloshed across the parking lot to his beat up ’74 Chevy pickup, unlocked the door and climbed in, carefully putting his guitar next to him on the seat. He didn’t mind rain, but it made it hard to see and harder to drive. This particular storm had blown into Phoenix out of nowhere, it seemed, and showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. Although rain was welcome during the Arizona summer, the sudden deluge was prompting flash flood warnings all across the county and making it dangerous to drive anywhere out off the beaten path.

  For now, however, he merely needed to concentrate on the drive home. As he pulled out of the studio parking lot and negotiated the wet streets to the interstate, his cell phone rang from inside the pocket of his guitar case. He flipped it open, noting from the caller ID that it was Rick, his friend and agent.

  “Hey, Rick.”

  “Hey, Joel! How’d the gig go?”

  “Went pretty good. I don’t really like the producer, but I don’t need to. Track went down without any problems. Got something else for me?”

  “Actually, I do. I need you on Thursday at 3, down at Syntax Studios.”

  “Is that the one on Camelback?”

  “Yup, that’s the place. Should be easy money. The drum track is done. Ronnie’s going to put down the bass line tomorrow, and then you’ll need to lay down some light jazz on top of everything else. Think you can handle that?”

  “No problem.”

  “Good. Say, Joel, what’re you doing Friday night?”

  “No plans yet. Why?”

  “Well, Lindsay’s sister is in town, and we were thinking you could be a fourth for dinner.”

  Joel sighed as he merged into traffic on the freeway. “Uh-huh. So what’s wrong with her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She can’t find a date by herself? Her sister has to set her up with a non-ambitious, untalented hack of a musician?”

  Rick was silent for a moment. “Joel, when’s the last time you were on a date? I mean a real date, not hanging out with the guys after a session?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of months. Why?”

  “Well, despite what Lindsay may have told you after a few too many drinks, she likes you almost as much as I do, and we both think a date would do you some good. It’s never –”

  Joel interrupted him. “Rick, the last person I dated was Susan. Remember her? We lasted about a month before she was telling me how I needed to join a band and get some ambition. Before that it was Rachel, telling me the same thing after three months. Dammit, I like what I do. Is that okay?”

  Rick sighed. “Of course it’s okay, buddy. But you need to get out sometimes, even if you’re not dating somebody. And women aren’t exactly knocking down your door, are they?”

  They weren’t – Rick had a point. Joel wasn’t a small man, but he wasn’t terribly large, either. Tall and lean, he tipped the scale at 170 on the days when he bothered to weigh himself. His black hair brushed his shoulders, and a beard was just starting to darken the edges of his angular face. He had never been called handsome – striking, maybe, but not handsome. His nose was a tad too long, and his piercing blue eyes had a tendency to make people fidget and suddenly remember that they had left the stove on at home. A long, faint scar running from above his left eye down the side of his nose to his right cheek did not improve his beauty.

  Abruptly he changed his mind. “All right, Rick. Friday night sounds good.” After confirming the date, he found his exit and continued home, windshield wipers flipping back and forth. Only one blade worked. Thankfully it was the blade on the driver’s side, but it skipped so badly Joel had a hard time deciding if it made it easier or harder to see the road. He settled for leaving it on, squinting the entire way, leaning forward and straining to see.

  It hardly seemed possible, but it was pouring even harder when he pulled into his apartment complex twenty minutes later, making a mental note to buy himself either a pair of glasses or a pair of wiper blades. He shut off the engine and gazed out the window for thirty seconds, bracing himself for the dash to his front door. He gritted his teeth, wrenched open the door, got halfway out, realized he had forgotten his guitar, went back to grab it and succeeded in getting thoroughly soaked before he actually got out of the truck. He ran to his front door anyway, doing his best to dodge puddles and thanking the gods for waterproof guitar cases.

  Maestro, his black kitten, was waiting for him when he finally got inside. Joel set his guitar down and shook himself off. The cascade of water sent Maestro scurrying underneath the couch. After relieving himself of his coat and shoes, he checked the kitten’s food dish. It was, of course, empty. “What’s the matter, kid?” he called. “Hungry?”

  What sounded like an affirmative meow emanated from under the couch, so Joel got out a can of food from his rapidly dwindling supply and poured it into the bowl. As soon as the kitten had ensured he was no longer in danger of being soaked, he emerged, padded over the bowl and began munching happily. Joel smiled and went to dry himself off and change.

  Five minutes later he walked into his front room, still towel-drying his hair, and checked the clock over the stove. 3:30 – time enough to practice for an hour or two before he made an attempt to scrape up some dinner. The thought made him grimace. Because he really needed to go grocery shopping, it would probably end up being either hot dogs or macaroni and cheese. He picked up Maestro, who was purring contentedly, and strolled over to the window to see if the rain had lessened any.

  He had the immediate sense that he was being watched. He instinctively jerked away from the window, and then peered around the corner of the sill, feeling rather foolish. The usual view greeted his searching gaze. A lone car hydroplaned by on the street. Several empty cars were parked outside in the lot. He looked around at the trees and bushes, half expecting to see a dark and mysterious figure lurking there, but all he saw was rain. As he continued to scrutinize the empty lot, the sound of his neighbor’s stereo began to creep through the wall, and Maestro started playing with his hair.

  He still felt the invisible eyes on him, however. He glanced around one last time and stepped away from the window, feeling even more foolish than before. What’s that saying? he thought. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you? The rain was probably getting on his nerves. He put the kitten down and walked into the kitchen.

  The clock over the stove still read 3:30. He frowned. He thought briefly of a power outage, but then realized the kitchen light was still on. He checked his watch. It, too, read 3:30, and when he inspected it more closely, he saw that the second hand had stopped. Very strange, he thought, and then, as he watched, his watch started ticking again as if it had never stopped at all. His eyes darted to the clock on the wall and saw that it, too, was running normally once again. He frowned again, shrugged, then began to practice and soon forgot all about it.

  TWO

  Fender Ponske was dreaming. He stood in a long, dimly lit hallway. It stretched away from him for forty or fifty feet, with five doors on each side, spaced at equal intervals. The floor was tiled, and each tile had a very intricate design etched into it. The design struck him as being immensely important, though he couldn’t imagine why, and he bent to study it more closely. It was an odd combination of a straight line and several curved ones that seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it.

  He was s
oon distracted by the disturbing fact that he was moving forward. He looked up and noticed for the first time the large wooden door at the very end of the hallway. The door looked to be very thick and very old, and was inscribed with runes that were glowing softly. The door was slightly ajar, and a pale blue light shone through the narrow opening onto the floor. He continued to move forward as if pulled by some unseen force, and a very strong sense of disquiet settled heavily upon him. The door and the room beyond it had a very menacing feeling.

  Then he was at the door and without warning it swung soundlessly inward until the entire room within was revealed. It was not a large room; he guessed it was about ten feet square. In the exact center was a wooden pedestal, upon which sat a large, heavy-looking book. It was bound in what appeared to be leather, with no markings except a thin gold trim. It emanated power, and was glowing faintly with a light that made Fender dizzy when he looked at it.

  However, the book was not the source of the pale blue light that had spilled through the open door. The light was coming from the far wall of the room, which appeared to be made completely out of glass. It was perfectly reflective, and he could see nothing in the wall except for his own reflection and that of the room around him.

  It was at that point that Fender ceased to be a participant in the dream and became merely an observer. As if he was not there at all, a young girl of about twelve or thirteen entered the room. Not looking around or speaking, she moved directly in front of the book on the pedestal and stood before it, head bowed as if in prayer. There was an air of deep sadness and defeat about her.

  Nothing happened for a moment or two, and then the girl looked up sharply, as if someone had spoken. The book began to pulse gently, and the waves of power it exuded gave Fender the sensation of falling off of a cliff with his eyes closed.

  The girl did not move for several minutes. She remained still, head bowed, looking for all the world as if she was listening to someone speak.

  The book abruptly stopped pulsing. The girl seemed to give a sort of mental shrug, and then without hesitation, she walked forward, into the glass wall, and disappeared.

  Fender awoke with a start. He was sweating profusely, and most of the sheets and blankets had been kicked onto the floor. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat up, reaching automatically for his pipe. Brushing the hair out of his eyes, he lit the pipe with a thought and began to go over the events of the dream again.

  Whatever else was said about him (and a lot was said in very quiet tones) there was no denying that Fender was old. He had a spring in his step most of the time, and was almost annoyingly healthy, but he was still old. He was, in fact, over three hundred,

  although he didn’t look a day over sixty. He had seen the reigns of six kings begin and end, and the present sovereign, Peter, was nearing eighty. Fender expected to live through Peter’s son’s reign and probably his grandson’s, and after that he wasn’t sure. He normally didn’t think that far ahead. His years were still a fairly light burden on his shoulders, and that was all that mattered to him.

  Steel-grey hair streaked with white brushed his shoulders, and he absently pushed it back from his forehead as he contemplated the dream. He had dreamed the same thing for the past three nights, and it grew more vivid with each recurrence. He could recall the girl’s face easily now and was confident that he had never before seen her in his waking life. She was very pretty and very petite, and had long brown hair that almost reached her waist. Unfortunately, the tile design had once again slipped his mind, and he mentally berated himself for not sketching it on paper immediately upon awakening. It still struck him as very important, but for some reason it would not stay in his mind. He shivered involuntarily as he remembered the book. Something about it reminded him of something. Something…

  He shook his head and peered out the window. “By the gods,” he muttered. It was still pouring outside, exactly as it had been for the past two days. His room was in one of the four smaller towers spaced evenly around the courtyard of the castle, with his windows facing the royal house. That position gave him an excellent view of the courtyard, which meant that at the moment he had a rather good look at a broad expanse of mud and growing pools of water. The ground in the yard – as well as in many other places – was proving unequal to the task of soaking up the prodigious amounts of water being dumped from the sky. If it did not stop raining soon, or at least slow down, new drainage trenches would need to be dug. As he watched, a lone squire trudged across the yard, sinking ankle-deep in a puddle or two before entering the royal house and disappearing from sight.

  Fender sighed and rolled out of bed. His room in the tower was a little chilly, so he renewed the heat spell and was rewarded with an almost instantaneous jump in temperature. He had traded a scrying spell for the heat spell and was still very happy with the results. Last winter, after learning the spell, he had once gotten a little carried away with the heat. He had managed to cool off the extremely uncomfortable room by simply opening a window, but in the spring he had found several slightly baked pigeons in the loft above his quarters. He had since learned the necessary restraint to keep his quarters comfortable.

  Because he had never been formally trained in the magical arts, Fender couldn’t call himself a wizard, although he was a very accomplished magician. He had learned everything he knew from books and trading with other magicians, and was comfortable with over three hundred spells. He referred to himself as a dabbler, and was well aware of the immense amounts of magic he did not know and might never learn. Magic was not one of the more practiced arts in the kingdom. As a matter of fact, Fender was probably one of the most skilled practitioners alive. Were someone to mention this to him, however, he would probably mutter “not good enough” under his breath and then scurry off to study, beaming happily.

  As Fender dressed and headed downstairs to the courtyard, he recalled a conversation he had had with an unknown duke about a hundred years ago. The man had asked why Fender wanted to stay alive so long, outliving his friends and family and sovereign. Fender had replied that he needed more time to realize exactly how much he didn’t know. There was too much to learn in the world, and he felt like he had barely scratched the surface.

  He reached the entrance to his tower and stood facing the courtyard, squinting at the rain and procrastinating making the several hundred-foot trek to the royal house. The courtyard was square, about a hundred foot to a side, with one side being the façade of the royal house. At every corner was a small tower fifty feet high. The towers were supposed to be for servants’ and guards’ quarters, but Fender had specifically requested a room in the southeast tower, believing it would be quiet enough to let him study undisturbed. He had expected a few problems with noisy parties at first, but the tower’s other tenants seemed unwilling to disturb someone who (they thought) could turn them into a toad. Parties, it seemed, were held in other towers.

  A twenty-foot wall surrounded the courtyard, with the main gate and drawbridge directly across from the entrance to the royal house. The courtyard itself was mainly used for castle festivities, public announcements and greeting visiting lords and ladies. In another week it would be time for the Grand Council to begin, and the yard would fill with the assorted colors of every duchy in the kingdom. Most of the dukes were probably already on the march toward the capitol; those from the far west may have been on the road for as long as a week. The Grand Council took place every year at the autumn equinox and lasted for two weeks. It was a gathering of the entire ruling class of Asria, where problems were discussed, taxes were modified, vacant offices were filled and so forth. Fender looked forward to it every year. The ten other magicians in the kingdom never failed to arrive with their respective courts, and they spent the entire two weeks of the Council swapping spells and having heated magical discussions into the wee hours of the morning.

  Diagonally across from Fender’s tower stood the royal house. It was an imposing building. Built from stone like the wall and the
towers, it stood four stories high, with a balcony on the second level directly above the main entrance. It was from this balcony that the king made speeches and addressed the public. The main entrance itself was a tall archway, guarded by an iron portcullis, a heavy wooden gate and two members of the Royal Guard. At this moment both of the Guard were standing as close as possible to the wall, trying unsuccessfully to stay dry.

  It was toward this archway that Fender now slogged. He had formed a mental umbrella to shield himself from the downpour, but there was not much he could do about the mud puddles. He avoided them as best he could, but by the time he was inside the main entrance, he was covered with mud almost to his knees. He stopped in the entryway beyond the portcullis and closed his eyes. He chose a focal point (the dirt,) imagined it gone, mentally spoke a single word, and walked away spotless, leaving a large mud puddle where he had been standing moments before.

  Despite the rain, when he arrived in the main hall it was packed with people waiting for the day’s audience with the king. Fender knew that this day would progress as any other, filled with petty disputes over livestock and grumbles about taxes, with maybe one or two serious crimes for variety. Sometimes court life could be extremely boring. When the tiresome drudgery of the mundane became too much for him, Fender would retire to his tower to study, or borrow a horse and camp for days in the woods outside of the city. This morning his tower seemed very oppressive and the rain made the thought of camping distasteful, to say the least, so he decided to stay where he was and take the opportunity to suggest better drainage ditches if nobody else did so.

  He was amusing himself watching people in the hall, speaking briefly with those he knew, when a clear voice called out, “Attend the King, Peter the Second, ruler of Asria!” All eyes turned toward the throne at the end of the hall. The King entered, slowly made his way to the throne, and sat down. He was well dressed but not overly so, and the only sign of his office was a thin circlet of gold resting on his snow-white hair. He is old, thought Fender, and the years weigh heavily on him. This may be his last Grand Council.