Music and Misadventure

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘Need? You’ve lost a bloody hand!’

  Her jaw set, she stared at me, eyes glinting in the firelight. ‘I’ve sacrificed a hand for this. Hank and Petra and Lily have died for this. We are not leaving.’

  We glared at each other for a few, long moments, each simmering with fury.

  Until Jay, softly, chuckled. ‘Some aspects of Ves’s personality are becoming clear,’ he said to my mother. ‘She’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, and once she’s got interested in something, there is no stopping her.’

  She, to my surprise, gave a wry smile. ‘That’s my girl.’

  Jay looked, enquiringly, at me, and I understood that it was my job to decide.

  Damn it.

  ‘Answer me one thing,’ I said to my mother.

  ‘Anything.’

  Interesting carte blanche, and unusual; no time to take advantage of it. ‘Why did you call me in? Haven’t you got hosts of other, highly qualified archaeologist acquaintances you could have called for help?’

  ‘I don’t need an archaeologist. Weren’t you listening? They were eaten alive. So was I.’

  ‘Right, but—’

  ‘This isn’t about archaeology anymore. I needed an adventurer, and who better than you?’

  ‘What do you mean, who better than me? You haven’t appeared to remember my existence for six years! Presumably, anyone’s better than me!’

  ‘We can talk about that,’ said my mother.

  ‘While you’re quietly bleeding to death? I think not.’

  ‘I’m not bleeding to death. Barely bleeding at all, anymore.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Fire magick. Cauterised it.’

  I blanched. Shit, my mother was brutal. ‘Fine. Okay, you’re not about to die. But you don’t look good, mother, permit me to say. You still need medical help, and a lot of rest.’

  ‘Sure,’ said mother. ‘Later. First we find out where that gate goes.’

  ‘Why are you so interested?’

  ‘We’re in Cumbria. In case you weren’t aware, it’s riddled with folklore.’

  ‘The juicy kind. I know. But most of those kinds of stories are rubbish, mother. You know that. Fairy stories for non-magickers.’

  ‘Most. Not all.’

  ‘You’ve got some particular tale in mind, haven’t you?’

  ‘Might do. We can talk about that, too — later.’

  I sighed. Jay was right: my mother and I were fairly equally matched, but I knew when I was losing. ‘I still wish you’d told me what was going on. I would definitely have brought Rob.’ I briefly considered sending for him, but by the time he got here… for all my mother’s claims, I still wasn’t at all sure she was out of danger.

  Best to get it over with.

  That said… lindworms were no picnic.

  ‘We’re going to need one hell of a plan,’ I said.

  ‘Actually,’ said my mother, ‘I was hoping those pipes of yours would do the trick.’

  ‘I’ve never tested them on a lindworm before,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘But their effectiveness is renowned. Legendary. How did you get hold of them?’

  ‘We can talk about that. Later.’

  She sighed. ‘I deserved that.’

  I thought about it. I may not have tested them on a lindworm, but I had tested them on griffins very recently — twice. And we were still here. ‘We can try it,’ I said. ‘But you’re staying up here, at least until we are sure it’s safe down there.’

  ‘Cordelia—’

  ‘No arguments. You’ve lost one hand and three friends. Do you want to lose more?’

  ‘I’d rather not lose my daughter and her Waymaster.’

  ‘Yeah, still Jay, not Waymaster. And you should have thought of that before you called us in, instead of, say, the cavalry. Off we go. You stay put.’

  I got up and headed deeper into the cave before Mother Dearest could muster any further objections. She was weak. No way could she keep up with us.

  ‘Ves,’ said Jay from behind me. ‘Ves, slow down.’

  I did, slightly. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear your mother? Three people have died down there this week. How about we don’t go marching heedlessly in and get ourselves killed, too?’

  I took a breath, and stopped. ‘Right. Sorry. Lost my perspective for a moment there.’

  ‘The Vespers do have that effect on people.’

  To that, I raised a single brow.

  ‘Never mind. About that hell of a plan you mentioned?’

  ‘Shields.’ I began there, mustering strong wards to shroud Jay and I against whatever we might find below. They wouldn’t stop a lindworm in full charge, or have much effect on its teeth. But, mother hadn’t said what species of worm it was. Poison-spitters were bad news, but my wards should take care of that.

  ‘Pipes.’ I retrieved them — Jay politely averted his eyes — and held them ready.

  ‘What do I do?’ said Jay. ‘You seem to have this covered.’

  ‘Still got that Wand?’ I said, referring to the Ruby one he’d been loaned from Stores.

  He pulled it from his pocket, handling it tenderly. ‘Check.’

  I withdrew my Sunstone Wand, too, and held it high. ‘In that case: prepare for battle.’

  ‘Battle. Huh.’ Jay visibly squared his shoulders, and wielded his pretty Wand in his fist, point down, as though he might stab someone with it. ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned, but battle isn’t quite my forte—’

  ‘Learn quickly,’ I said over my shoulder, being already in motion again. I summoned a few more fireballs, and let them drift ahead of me like a parade of wisp-lights, leading us down into the darkness. ‘You do, in this job.’

  ‘I’m beginning to see that,’ Jay muttered, but he caught up with me and kept pace, and we descended together.

  The stone-walled passage spiralled steeply down, soon growing damp, earthy and chilly. For a little while, the prevailing silence led me to think that my mother’s report still held: the lindworm had vanished through its gateway and had not come back.

  Then, after a few minutes of steady descent, a faint sound reached my ears: a distant whisper, shhhkk, as of something scaly sliding over stone.

  ‘About learning quickly,’ I whispered to Jay. ‘Lesson in self-defence imminent.’

  Jay lifted his Wand high. ‘I hope you’re ready with those pipes.’

  3

  Humble proportions marked the space below; no soaring Mines of Moria halls here. Low ceilings; curving packed-earth walls neatly fitted with cut stones; rounded walls and sloping floors; all marked the caverns beneath Sheep Island as a gnome habitation.

  Jay and I stepped, with great caution, into a central hall with three arches leading into shadow-darkened chambers beyond. We kept our backs to the wall, alert for further sounds of the lindworm’s approach.

  Nothing moved.

  ‘Any of those arches could be the gateway,’ I said to Jay in an undertone.

  ‘How do you tell?’

  ‘You don’t. Well, you do, but only by what you might call the “reckless” way.’

  ‘Step through and hope?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Another dry rasp of scales against stone interrupted my thought, and I froze. Seconds passed as those sounds drew nearer, and nearer still — then the lindworm appeared, writhing sinuously across the worn stones of the floor. More serpent than dragon, its hide gleamed mottled green in my firelight. It had wings, after all, but they were feeble, stunted things, folded against its muscular sides; by no means could it fly with such miserable specimens.

  Its blunt-nosed head turned in our direction, its mouth opening to display long, bone-pale fangs. My pipes were at my lips in an instant, my lungs inhaling for a blast of song — but away turned the lindworm’s head and on it went, vanishing back into the darkness.

  I stood, frozen and unbreathing, for some time before at last I let out a breath. The creat
ure was big enough almost to fill the chamber from floor to ceiling. With such bulk, and such teeth, I considered my mother fortunate to have lost only a hand.

  Jay looked enquiringly at me.

  ‘Need to find out where that damned gateway is,’ I murmured.

  ‘So we follow?’

  ‘We follow.’

  We crept away from the dubious protection of the shadowed wall, and passed under the round-topped arch through which the lindworm had disappeared. To my surprise, the chamber beyond was smaller still than the hall; round-walled, like the rest, bare of furniture, and primitive, it was primarily marked by a lack of two important things: one gigantic lindworm, and any other entrance or exit besides the one through which we had just ventured.

  We stood in the centre of the room, momentarily dumbfounded.

  ‘Doesn’t a gateway require, you know, a gate?’ said Jay after a while.

  ‘Or a doorway, or an arch? You would think so…’ I brightened my fireballs until the room glowed in the light, but this had little effect save to confirm the total lack of alternative doorways. Stone-packed walls, unbroken and featureless, met my confused gaze.

  ‘The thing is,’ I said, turning in yet another circle, ‘we can’t do gateways anymore. Not the kind my mother means. Those are among the many arts we’ve lost, probably forever, and since so few functioning gates have survived down the ages, we know too little about how they work.’

  ‘In other words, maybe it doesn’t have to be a door.’

  ‘I suppose not, looking at this. But what, then? There’s nothing here.’

  Jay reached the nearest wall in two long strides, and laid a hand against it. ‘There has to be something.’

  I followed suit, selecting the opposite wall, and we groped our way around the room until we’d each covered half. Nothing promising had happened on my side; everything under my hands felt cold, solid and immoveable, as stone should.

  Jay shook his head in response to my questioning look. ‘Nothing.’

  I hovered, undecided. ‘We could wait for the lindworm to come back, and see where it comes from. But that could take hours, and I’m worried about my mother.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she would submit to being taken to hospital, if we’re stymied?’

  ‘I know you’ve spent only ten minutes in her company, but what do you think is the answer to that question?’

  ‘Forget it?’

  ‘Mm. She’ll camp here until she either succeeds or dies.’

  Jay’s eyebrows flickered. He has an expressive face. I’m still building up my mental dictionary of what all these fascinating expressions mean, but I think that eyebrow-shimmy indicated he’d had several thoughts in response to my comment and was disposed to air none of them.

  Probably a good thing.

  I retreated to the lone arch through which we had entered. ‘We’d better get out of the way. When the worm comes back—’

  Gods, the thing just erupted out of the wall like a scaled explosion, teeth snapping. Jay leapt out of its way with a startled shout, and lost a bit of his jacket to a snap of the lindworm’s jaws. He barrelled into me, swept me up, and rocketed away with the beast hard behind him.

  I writhed.

  ‘Stop it,’ panted Jay.

  ‘Need my arm— can’t— there!’ I got my pipes to my lips and played, brisk and loudly. I used much the same melody that had pacified those griffins, upon our first adventure into Farringale, though at a greater tempo, and with urgent flourishes like bursts of trumpets. These last visibly affected the lindworm, for with each little explosion of sound, it flinched.

  We ran out of hall to flee through, and hit the wall. Jay, bless him, released me and turned, Wand raised, facing down the oncoming worm with the kind of courage hero’s tales are made out of. You know, the kind they sing over your funeral bier. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do. I don’t think he did either.

  I got in his way. One advantage to a certain lack of size is nimbleness; a twist and a jump and I managed to insert myself between Jay and those jaws. Having both arms free once more, I held the pipes to my lips with one hand — still playing furiously — and raised my Sunstone Wand with the other. I’m not great at fireballs, but if you spit streams of them into a foe’s wide-open eyes they tend to have an impact, even if they’re the approximate size of a two pound coin.

  The lindworm roared and reared back, shaking its head. Flame rippled over its face, searing its mottled scales. Thankfully, its terrible onslaught stopped.

  ‘Ves, you idiot,’ snarled Jay, but he got the idea. A second stream of fireballs, these green and rather bigger than mine, joined the assault, leaving me free to focus on the song.

  I did that, amplifying its effects and hastening its impact with every scrap of magick at my disposal. It took too, too long, while the lindworm snapped at Jay and at me in (mercifully) blind rage; but at length the creature’s movements slowed, its jaw slackened, and it sagged.

  Jay let the stream of fireballs gradually die. The lindworm stayed where it was, swaying slightly, but otherwise motionless.

  I cast a frantic look at Jay, trying to signal with my eyes: Can you do that thing your sister did and get the stones to hold it?

  His only response was a helpless look at our featureless environs, which I took to mean: no.

  Which left me to play indefinitely, facing down a temporarily-pacified lindworm for, potentially, eternity.

  For once, I agreed with Jay: I really ought to have thought out the details of this one a bit sooner.

  To my dismay, Jay made wait here motions with his hands — honestly, where did he think I was going to go? — and ran away.

  I played on, clammy with sweat. The combination of exertion, fear and too many fireballs at close proximity will do that, even to a fine lady like myself.

  In blessedly few minutes I heard the oncoming thud of Jay’s returning footsteps. When he came back into view, firelight spinning around his head, he had my mother in his arms. She had the grim, suffering look of a woman in great pain, but who’d be damned if she would admit to it.

  He jerked his head in the direction of the mysterious chamber which had, somehow, facilitated the vanishing and reappearance of the lindworm, and departed that way at a near run.

  I went more slowly, playing, playing, beginning to hate every trilling note that soared from my pipes. Beautiful pipes, wretched pipes, how fervently I wished to cease the strain upon my burning lungs, and put the pretty things down!

  But I followed Jay and my mother, stepping carefully backwards, keeping my eyes fixed on the looming shape of the lindworm. Soon I felt Jay’s hands grabbing at my shoulders, guiding me none too gently into the cramped chamber.

  ‘Your mother’s figured it out,’ he said, breathlessly. He pulled me inexorably backwards. As I was facing the wrong way, ever vigilant against the worm, I do not know at what point I went through the wall. I felt nothing, at any rate. I only became aware that, all of a sudden, I could no longer see the lindworm; a solid wall blocked my view of the chamber we’d so lately gone through.

  I permitted myself to play a little more slowly, pausing occasionally to draw great lungsful of air. I dared not stop altogether, yet. We had already received ample proof of the worm’s ability to pass through the wall-gate at will, and I did not know how long my song would hold it once the final notes died away.

  I did, however, turn to survey where we had ended up.

  We were in a storeroom, though largely empty of contents. Much larger in proportion than the rooms we had just left, this room had a high ceiling and white-washed walls, though both were liberally draped in dusty cobwebs. Shelves ran from floor to just below the ceiling, some of them still bearing aged oak barrels.

  The far wall was missing. Well, not all of it; half, perhaps, lay tumbled in stony fragments over the floor, exactly as though a lindworm, say, had broken through it.

  Jay had set my mother down against one wall, and now stood guard over her,
Wand raised. A tiny fireball blossomed at its tip, ready to fire.

  ‘Mother,’ I said, in between notes. ‘Functional?’

  ‘Breathing.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘To the wall? Sang to it.’

  Lacking breath for further conversation, I said nothing, but my eyebrows said: what? eloquently enough.

  ‘Ludovic Deschain’s Songs of Opening and Entry, chapter six.’

  I wondered how the lindworm had managed the process. Did serpents sing? But that was a question for another time.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ said Jay, watching me. Perhaps he was motivated by the beads of sweat pouring down my face. ‘Sooner we get somewhere the lindworm can’t follow, the better.’

  I managed to nod frantically.

  He scooped up mother again, and we went en masse to the make-shift door the lindworm had created for itself. We moved two abreast; encumbered as Jay was with my mother, and distracted as I was by the music I still played, neither of us was best positioned to tackle any new threats. What if there was more than one lindworm down here?

  Thankfully, we did not encounter any more. Beyond the storeroom lay the partially-wrecked remains of expansive cellars, some parts of which still contained dust-grimed bottles of some long forgotten beverage. Nothing stirred.

  ‘I can walk,’ snarled my mother at one point.

  ‘But not quickly,’ said Jay. I thought it fortunate for him that the Vesper women were none of us tall, or he’d have been prostrated by now.

  Having put some significant distance between us, the wall-gate and the lindworm beyond, I finally permitted my song to fade away in favour of gasping in air.

  ‘You okay?’ said Jay.

  ‘Kind of,’ I panted. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘No clue.’

  We found dark stone stairs and went up them, slowly and cautiously, ears straining for any sound of habitation. None came. As we emerged from the stairwell into a darkened hall beyond, the sudden feeling of openness and air told me, though my eyes lacked the light to confirm it, that we had entered something spacious — possibly grand.

  Moments later, lights flared into life, searing my unprepared eyes until they wept protesting tears.