Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  “Ah, Jhan, that is too sad. You have still your words, nê? So all is well. Feast well tonight! In the morning can you your anger to the battlefield take.”

  Sihkran clasped the man’s arms. Jhanmestikan broke from his hold and hurried away through the clustered crowd who brushed him with their outstretched hands.

  “And so the Sorcerer more from us steals. Oh! How we him hate.”

  “What happened to Jhanmestikan?”

  “It is most sad,” replied Sihkran. “He has forgotten…how to read it.”

  Tabitha saw a fire in the Spearleader’s eyes that was shared by many throughout the chamber. The Lûk down had become suddenly hot.

  “Yes, Tabitha Mahgu, we lose our talents to him.” He punctuated the word with three raised fingers jerked into the air. “We write the history on the walls, we record our culture in the story-patterns. We write even how to write, in case that is from our minds next taken, but the Chaos erodes everything like water that through saltrock eats. We write our name-stories upon these bongs ... so we do not forget. We will not become like the Hunters, broken into tribes, no! We bind ourselves together. We learn the ten tongues. Yet nothing in this world can be relied upon. We do not know where the wildfire will strike next, what will stagger out of the wastes and fall upon us, who within us will be struck by the silverblight. We live under the scourge of the Sorcerer.”

  “Do the Lûk ever use magic, Sihkran?” she asked. “Do you have wonder-workers?”

  “Well no, not within us, but we have the Mahgu, the wizards. We see little of them. The wizards are not Lûk. They are an unchanged race, more like you than me, yes indeed. They have been with us since the old times, but they have done little to stop he who can not be named. They merely seem to limit his effect.”

  “But where are they?” Tabitha asked. “Can they be found?”

  If she could just contact them, any one of them, she could find out so much; the Riddler most of all. Twardy Zarost would know what she should do, or he’d ask her just the right kind of infuriating questions to drive her to find the answer herself. Had the wily wizard returned to Eyri and found her missing? Would he look for her? She had thought of sending a butterfly to find him, as she had done before, but that would require using the essence, and that seemed to trigger the wildfire. She desperately needed to know how to use her power in this hostile world.

  “In Koom, in the capital of our six-sided land, there know they such things as wizards,” answered Sihkran, “but I think not they can ever be summoned, they just come, usually when we don’t want them to. Always are they harbingers of coming sorrow. When the Writhe came through they appeared, to warn us of the path of destruction. I suppose we did save much due to their efforts. Nonetheless, one does not usually look forward to meeting a wizard.”

  “What was the Writhe?”

  “The dorrabalaan? You told me of the valley you walked in the wastes. The shattered rock? That was the tail of the Writhe. That is the remains of the spell. It was the worst that the Sorcerer has unleashed upon us in all these years. It tore through the length of the Six-sided Land. Even farther than that! It punctured the Winterblades before it struck upon our homeland, so it must have crossed the lowlands too. Some say it stretches back all the way to the Pillar. Who knows where it ended?”

  The Pillar in the lowlands! Sihkran knew of the Pillar, where Ethea was confined.

  “How far is it to the lowlands? How far to the Pillar?”

  “To Turmodin? No one knows for sure, no one has the lowlands for centuries travelled, no one would want to. It is a wild place with the worst dorrakaan—silverspawn—deadly, vicious beasts. But Slipper at the border to reach would take a runner on the woven roads near to a sevenday. Longer, now that so much of the weave has been damaged. Beyond Slipper? Who knows. Another sevenday? Two? Who cares? You can not in that land travel. It belongs to the Sorcerer.”

  Tabitha glanced down at the chart. “Is that why there is nothing marked in the lowlands?”

  “The land changes too fast there. Nobody can it chart. Who would want to?” Sihkran turned to give her a hard look. “Nothing there but Chaos. Nothing but death, for all of us.”

  Tabitha began to appreciate the scale of what she was attempting. They had walked a tiny portion of the distance to the Winterblade mountains, and beyond that there was a vast area of uncharted land, before Turmodin. She slumped against Garyll. Ethea didn’t have weeks left, she had days, possibly only hours. But if the lowlands were so far away, and so dangerous to travel through, how would they ever save the Goddess in time? They might catch Bevn, but what then? Without the Goddess Ethea, there would be no Lifesong. Tabitha was certain the whole world would begin to crumble and die without Ethea’s vital power.

  Maybe she was wrong; maybe the world would carry on, without the music. Most people didn’t even know there was a song beneath the surface of life. She hadn’t really known herself, until she had become a wizard. Maybe, even if Ethea died, life would persist, but what kind of life would it be, without the Lifesong? It was too sad to consider.

  “The Sorcerer is everywhere in Oldenworld. We have a hard enough time surviving here, so far from Turmodin,” said Sihkran.

  “Is that why you live underground?” asked Garyll. “Because of the Sorcerer?”

  “Because of the Dráák,” Sihkran replied, looking puzzled. “You don’t know Dráák? Ah, they were dragons in the Old Tongue, they are kriklik—hated—things spawned in the lowlands at the end of the time of Kingdoms Three. Their only value is in their scales. It can shield against wild fire. It is why they survive. They cannot be changed anymore, they are resistant to the Sorcerer’s magic. We get our scales from the northern settlements like Kah and See’gi. They get the worst of it when the Dráák down from the Winterblades swoop, but at least they get a shower of scales to trade with. We see seldom the Dráák this far south, it is too warm for them here so close to the wastelands, but it never pays to be complacent with such creatures, especially in winter when the air is cold enough their roaming range to extend. The Hunters have the forest to protect them but most of our Six-sided Land is grassed and open to the sky. Only along our western border have we the sheltering trees, but there is just as much danger within the tangled undergrowth as there is within the Winterblade dragon-caverns.”

  “Now after so many years of underground living, it seems strange any other way to live. We have perfected the ways of constructing downs. We have a network of woven roads, underground, that link the heartland together. Only outlying settlements like Rôgspar and Graa have surface roads. Many Lûk need not go outside at all.”

  “Yet you warriors risk it, to face down the Hunters,” Garyll noted.

  “That is another matter! We avenge the death of our windrunners. They have sheltered the murderers who came from your land. They will regret it!”

  “Show for us this Eyri,” he demanded.

  “Where are we now?”

  He stabbed his blunt finger down on a bright dot.

  “That’s Roguespar?” she asked.

  “Rôgspar, Kurum, Spek, Flek, Sark, Kem.” He worked his way around the hexagonal land of the Lûk, “and Koom at the heart. The wastes you passed over are here. The Winterblades here, on our northern border.”

  The highlands and lowlands were spread out before them. Eyri was not marked on the map; Tabitha supposed that for most people in Oldenworld it did not exist. She could guess where it lay, near the bottom of the page, beyond the swathe of contaminated silver-sands. How long before the Sorcerer’s influence crept into Eyri and stole the Order and the Eyrian culture with it, now that the Shield was broken?

  She touched her finger to the vellum, just west of a great range of mountains, south of wastes.

  “Jek-ai!” Sihkran called out. The windrunner captain came close. “Jek? Is this the place?”

  Jek nodded. “As near as a cable. You say your land lies beyond it? I saw nothing but sands there.”

  “It was hidden by a
Gyre spell,” Tabitha offered.

  “I do not understand such things,” Sihkran admitted, “but maybe that magic is to blame for all the wild fire that comes upon the wastes. It is said that magic draws magic upon itself.”

  Tabitha had never thought of that. There were a great many things she would ask Twardy Zarost when next she saw him. Too many mysteries were unexplained, not least of which was the Gyre.

  They spent a long time over the treasured map, exploring its arcane knowledge until the meal was called. The scribe must have been paid handsomely for the map. It was a wonderwork of detail cleverly layered in subtle colours. The sheer scale of Oldenworld took Tabitha’s breath away. Her homeland was a fold in a great page of humanity.

  There was much to eat, for the men of the Fifth Dja had brought supplies from Koom and See’gi to replenish the depleted Rôgspar stores—flour, oatcakes, sugarcane, fruit, wine and barleybree. Something they called takatakêk had been unlucky enough to linger in the warriors’ path.

  “We have a saying in Lukish,” said Sihkran. “Takatakêk maradin lek, basti kum kerêk. When a… pheasant…speaks of its own greatness, it will soon be crowned.”

  After a moment of puzzlement Garyll replied “What does it mean?”

  “It ends up in the pot.”

  Mulrano burst into laughter, and after a surprised silence the Lûk joined him. They delighted in the sound of the fisherman’s laugh. Every time he laughed they responded with a greater roll. Theirs was a deep and different sound, like river-pebbles being rolled in a drum, a rumbling hoklok-hoklak-hoklok.

  The takatakêk was very tasty.

  Skewered mushrooms followed the stew, a twisted bread called magding, and a pale mash of nobki that arrived in warmed clay bowls. It was spiced with a sweet cinnamon flavour and it melted in her mouth. And they loaded it in. Garyll grinned at her as he accepted a third bowl of nobki from the tireless serving-man. Mulrano was not shy either, but even he pushed his bowl away at last.

  Lûk children came to clear away the remains of the meal. They seemed to know how to behave without becoming noisy, but a young rapscallion tried to feel her arm. He seemed puzzled by her soft skin. “Watai!” Sihkran scolded the boy. He dropped his hands and backed away at once, and the adults clicked their tongues like mocking crows.

  An old, grinning woman began to tap her palms against a set of small tubular drums. A flute joined her in a minor tone. The Lûk musicians played a short piece, lilting and arrhythmic. Then someone called out, “A song from land Eyri!” and other voices joined in chorus. “Singsong! Singsong!”

  “Will you for us sing?” asked Spearleader Sihkran.

  The room grew still around Tabitha, and she set her sharp-edged spoon down beside her plate of food. A kutl, they called it. Tabitha wondered if they were expecting a demonstration of magic from her or just a melody.

  “Can you?” repeated Sihkran. “Something from your homeland.”

  Tabitha hesitated. She’d told them that she was a singer; she hadn’t explained about the Lifesong. Singing that was out of the question. “Can it be a simple song, not one of my special art?” she asked.

  “Yes, Tabitha Mahgu, whatever you are happy to sing. We will like to share your culture.”

  Singing to the Lûk would be a small way to repay their hospitality. A ripple of excitement passed through the gathered Lûk. Garyll handed her lyre to her, one of her few things which had been saved from the saddlebags. “A moment, please,” she said. Tabitha spent a few minutes tuning the strings, which had stretched badly during the rains. With each note the Lûk leant inward to capture the sound, then muttered and whispered among themselves, jostling to get a closer position without crowding her. She managed to find a serviceable chord, and tightened the strings on their keys. The body of the lyre was true—the strangle-oak would hold its shape forever, she suspected.

  She chose an easy melody to warm up her voice, a joyful madrigal known as Rain upon Barley.

  From the moment she began, she could see that the Lûk were more fascinated with her music than she had been by theirs. Even the giggling children fell silent, rapt. Her fingers danced over the lyre strings. She was glad to be playing music again, ordinary music, with no magic apart from the special joy of being a singer. The song made the world more familiar, filling the air with ordered rhythms, the culture of Eyri. Her homeland surrounded her.

  Tabitha expected some kind of applause when she brought the song to a close, but her final note faded into a dense silence. The Lûk watched her. Tabitha’s attention flickered through the chamber—not a single brightly scarved head moved, not a single body shifted. A toddler cried and ran for its mother’s arms, unsettled by the tension in the air, the strange vigil of the adults; it was settled with a quick “osh!” from its mother.

  She smiled nervously, but nobody smiled back. They appeared wooden, shocked, their expressions unreadable, implacable and terribly sober. It must have been a lyric in the Rain upon Barley, she decided, she must have offended a custom or rule through her ignorance. She was about to apologise when the elder Sihkran raised his hand.

  “Another?” he asked, in a whisper. “Please, another.”

  They were awed, not offended. She saw the sparkle in their eyes now, the anticipation. They wanted her to sing. Tabitha settled the lyre against her shoulder again, and the Lûk breathed a communal sigh. She played Haven from the Storm, I Come Home, and Love is in the Air. The warriors and womenfolk were transfixed. If anything, their rapture grew as Tabitha gave more heart to each song.

  “Sings Garyll?” asked Sihkran.

  “No,” he answered curtly.

  “Oh, come on!” Tabitha cajoled. “You can sing the tavern-song Fynn Fell Down, at least.”

  Garyll tried to hold a stern expression, but the Lûk began to clap in time and stomp their feet, and his scowl faded. Tabitha played an introductory bar on her lyre, and let her voice fly.

  Mulrano began to hum a counter-harmony to the song in a deep bass tone, surprising Tabitha. They sang Fynn Fell Down together, and toward the end even some of the Lûk joined the chorus once they’d learnt the words.

  When Captain Jek requested a tenth song, Tabitha had to decline.

  “My fingers ache,” she explained, raising her voice to carry throughout the chamber. “Please, that is all for now. I must rest my singing voice. I hope you all liked it. I would love to hear more of your own music tonight.”

  That broke the spell. They applauded her in the Lûk way, with whistles, yelps and trills, which filled the down to the far ends of the passageways. The children danced about and began to chase each other.

  A serving-man appeared at Tabitha’s side with some goblets of dark brew. She sipped at the spicy dark fluid. It did little to soothe her throat, but it shot warmth and excitement through her blood.

  Sihkran came forward.

  “Thank you, Tabitha Mahgu, thank you! Tonight, have you shown us something we did not know.”

  “I enjoyed your culture and your music just as much,” she replied, bowing gratefully.

  “It is more than culture,” Sihkran insisted. “No, it is far more than the joy of a tradition from a place we did not know existed to taste. Your music brings for us a gift that we can not equal.”

  “It was not the Lifesong, they were just traditional Eyrian ballads—many other singers sing them.”

  “Then must Eyri a truly blessed place be to live, to have such tradition.”

  “But you have your own music, quite beautiful itself!” Tabitha objected.

  “Ah, but some of us the difference recognise. Yours is truer, it is older, far older than ours. It stirs something in our blood, an ancient memory. Something we knew, but have forgotten. Something we once had, but have lost. You gave it back to us, in the moment of your singing. Your music is together in a great pattern tied, a regular pattern, a ... now and then.”

  Sihkran’s brow furrowed as he searched for the right words to express what he was thinking.

&nb
sp; “You mean rhythm?”

  “Yes!” he exclaimed. “But it is more than that alone. Everything is in the place wherein it should be. You share something that structure has. Orderliness.”

  “That is what we have in Eyri: Order.”

  “I fear we have all but forgotten what that is. That is why your music us so moves. In my blood, I remember a time of order. We thought we had much of it retained, but when we your first song heard, could we hear that we had lost it long ago.”

  “We have been protected from the touch of the Sorcerer, but without the Kingsrim that Bevn has stolen, the spell cannot hold together, and our king cannot maintain his control. The wildfire will touch Eyri.”

  “And so turn it also to Chaos,” finished Sihkran. He stood silently for a moment. “This Bevn must be stopped, if the last place of Order shall be lost to the world without the Kingsrim. Such a rare thing must be preserved. We have heard its value tonight; we have the product of such a place in the three of you seen. The world would poorer be, without your kind.”

  “Don’t judge us all by her perfection, Sihkran,” Garyll interjected. “Tabitha is not ... typical of Eyri. Very few have her heart, or her talent.”

  Tabitha shot him an admonishing glance, but he held her eyes with a confident gaze. She turned back to Sihkran.

  “I see you are weary, Tabitha Mahgu, forgive me. We have talked too long and hard on sober matters. This night is meant for celebration! Enough! We must be strong for the morning. Would you like to rest, now? Sunni! Musti kan!”

  A girl came forward, her grey skin as smooth as polished marble, her rounded cheeks marked with red circles. She had a sweeping stripe above and below her eyes, and a pale flaxen headscarf with rounded knots.

  “Please, take our guests to a kott, see that they have all they need,” said Sihkran. He turned back to Tabitha and Garyll. “My daughter will show you to a place for the night.”

  “Thank you, Sihkran. You have been very generous.”

  “As have you. I shall your special songs in my head for many years keep.”