“No. The majus from the House of Healing will be coming,” she said, her tone flat again. “They will kill me, once they find out what I am.”
“Then Councilor Ayama—” He thought about how Enos shied away from the mental probing the councilor favored.
“Yes. The House of Healing can determine species, if a majus looks close enough. The Sathssn Cult of Form abhors any physical injury or change. How do you think they look upon a species who can change their shape at will? The Most Traditional Servants executed many of the Aridori, after the war.” There was heat in Enos’ voice.
“That’s why you told me.” He gripped the watch, swallowed hard. Can’t trust an Aridori. His breathing was leveling out, but now he felt heat rising up. “Only at the risk of death. You and Inas were fine with playing my friends,” or more than that, “but wouldn’t commit to the whole truth.” It wasn’t a fair accusation, but Sam didn’t want fair.
“We could not, Sam,” Enos pleaded. “I told you, we wanted to. You of all people could understand us.” Fingers touched his shoulder and Sam shuddered away from them, like insect legs climbing up his back.
“This imprisonment was forced on us,” Enos said. “It’s not fair, to me or you. I would not even think of changing, normally. We do not shift our shape except in emergencies. It has its price.”
Sam tried to keep the rage going. If he could see her face, it would be easier to hate her. Instead, the darkness made his imagination blossom, and he shuddered at the thought of her head, like putty, squeezing through the slot in the door.
“Will you let me change my shape to free us?”
I can’t stop you. “What kind of question is that? Otherwise they’ll kill you. Maybe both of us.” He couldn’t get the images out of his head. “Fine, do it.” Might as well ask me to kill her myself.
He heard her get up, and walk to the door.
“It will take a few minutes. We do not have much time before their majus comes. Be ready when I call for you to push on the door.”
Sam grunted, and sat in silence, listening and trying not to. What should I do? When—if—they escaped, what then?
There were sounds at first, murmurs and sounds of effort, and then all vocalization from Enos ceased. There were other small things, twitches and whispery sounds, and Sam put his fingers in his ears. Skin like putty, arms and chest and legs all mashing together in a shapeless horrible blob. He took his fingers away. They weren’t helping.
There was total silence.
“Sam,” came the whisper, minutes or hours later. I can either sit here, captive of people I don’t know, or get up and help an Aridori who’s been lying to me. There wasn’t that much to decide.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“There is a bolt here, but the door is extremely heavy. You must help me move it.”
“What if we get caught?”
“We are caught. Do you want to get out?” She sounded so normal.
It took both of them at the door, Sam pushing and Enos pulling, before it ground outward with a heavy growl. Sam expected someone to come running at any second, but no one did.
Then he was outside the cell, with Enos. It was still dark, but a faint slip of air moved against his face. He hesitantly listened to the Symphony, gauging where the wind was coming from. He reached for notes of his song, and placed them in a single phrase to show him the direction the air movement. There was no shock, no response from the System.
“We can use our songs,” he said.
“Which way out?” Enos asked. She touched his arm again, and he flinched away. “We do not want to get separated,” she said.
Sam forced himself to relax and accept her hand. He was going to hyperventilate. Any second, her hand will grip, puncture the skin— No.
“There’s only one way forward.” He started walking.
A little way down the tunnel, light bloomed in front of them, concealed from the cell by a sharp curve in the tunnel. Sam winced at the brightness, and looked to Enos. She was the same as always, dark hair, round face, short. Did she pick how she wanted to look?
The walls arched overhead, to make a tunnel carved from dirt. The top was just past his head, comforting as it enclosed him.
“We must hide,” Enos whispered.
“Why?” Then Sam realized the light was coming toward them. Gaotha was coming back to get them. “Where? Back in the cell?” There was nowhere else to go. His heart raced, and he turned to Enos. “Can you, you know, do anything?”
She frowned. “I told you it takes time. You also seem to have forgotten I am an apprentice majus of the House of Healing.”
Sam blinked. With her revelation, he had forgotten. Not only an Aridori, but a majus. Are there others? Later. He would deal with it later.
“Back a little,” he said quietly. “We can get a moment of surprise where the passage curves.”
Enos nodded and hurried back, close to the open stone door of the cell. There was a device attached to the wall, softly glowing brown and white and blue. Enos closed her eyes, head tilted. “I can hear him, in the Symphony. There is only one.”
“Get ready,” Sam whispered. He crouched, hands out. I have no idea what I’m doing.
“I believe you are also an apprentice of some sort,” Enos hissed.
Sam felt the blush heat his face, and listened. The music of the air diverged into two strains as it went around a form, the air describing a jig in the eddies from a torch. Staccato beats came from booted footsteps, and steady breathing. Quiet echoes of their speech made little cadenzas.
As Gaotha’s black cloak rounded the corner, Enos’ hand shot out to touch him, white blossoming from her fingers. Instead, a black glove caught her hand, white with turquoise accents beating down her color.
“Do you not think, young one, that a majus of the House of Healing could tell when two apprentices are hiding around a corner?” It was not Gaotha. The words were quiet, sibilant. The glow enveloped Enos’ arm, spread. “Back to your cell. Your escape, I do not know how you managed it, but it will not happen again.”
White flared from Enos, fighting the other, but it died quickly and she gasped as if hit.
“You have not been taught well if you try the same change to the Symphony twice,” the Sathssn said.
“Sam, do something!” Enos shouted, and he jerked. The smooth voice had lulled him into a stupor.
Air can be compressed. The medium to allow communication can also stop speech. The thought was odd, separated, but Sam adjusted his notes, condensing the melody of the air around the Sathssn into an abridged version, tighter, quicker. He cupped his hands, and a wash of yellow left him and condensed around the black robes. The Sathssn tried to step back, but moved slowly, in molasses instead of air. Sam plucked out more notes, tightening the melody further, making the air denser. The tunnel was heating up, almost sweltering. He heard a rasp of breath, as the majus’ cowl jerked. The white and turquoise faded and Enos wrenched her hand back.
“Run,” she said, and tried to dart around the majus.
Faster than thought, one black-clad arm shot out to grab her again. It glowed white and turquoise, sped up somehow, with the House of Healing, but the rest of the Sathssn was stuck in the sphere of condensed air. Sam grabbed Enos around the middle, pulling her away.
“You will be good candidates for the Life Coalition’s new army,” the Sathssn said. His voice sounded like it came from underwater. “You are strong, and resourceful. If you are free from defect—”
The cowl bent forward, and white and turquoise reached up Enos’ arm and shoulder, reaching up to her head. She strained away.
“No! Don’t let him, Sam!” Her own white flared against the majus’, but died quickly. Sam pulled, but she was stuck fast to the Sathssn, who gasped.
“Another. How curious. I knew we did not capture them all.” The colors intensified around Enos.
“No!” Instinctively, Sam pushed his notes into
the Symphony, bubbling and writhing around him, music discordant and complex. The Sathssn was talking, but cut off as a blast of air, tinged with Sam’s yellow, shot toward him. The torch flickered low, casting weird shadows down the corridor. The majus fell back, oddly slow. Sam found the link of communication between the Sathssn and Enos, separated one melody from another.
The black-gloved hand spasmed and let go, and Enos staggered toward Sam. The sphere of compressed air he created fractured and flowed away, and the Sathssn fell hard to the floor, his cowl falling back.
Surprised red eyes, catlike, stared at Sam out of a face halfway between reptile and mammal. Delicate scales, light green and gray, covered the Sathssn’s face in place of skin, and his elongated snout, a wispy white beard beneath, opened to show remarkably human teeth.
Enos tugged him forward. “We have to go.”
Sam left the majus sprawled behind them, snatching his notes back as he did. A hole in his being refilled. The Sathssn wouldn’t be far behind.
“He knows I am Aridori,” Enos panted as they sprinted down a long corridor.
Is that good, or bad? What happens when we get back? Another curve was ahead, illuminated by the torch sputtering by the Sathssn majus. They turned the curve, and almost bumped into a thick door of raw wooden planks.
“Push!” Enos said.
Sam took a quick look at the hinges—rough iron—as Enos leaned forward. “No, pull,” he said, and grabbed the wooden block that served as a handle. Rough rock walls, an unfinished door, a block of wood for a handle? He had seen so much beautiful handiwork in the Nether that the contradiction registered in his mind.
Gaotha stood behind the door. “The little birds, they fly from their cage,” he said, deliberately blocking the tunnel. “Zsaana, he will not like that. He is only trying to help—to make sure you are fit to serve the Holy Form.”
Sam’s hand came up, yellow flaring, the melody of the alien’s words singing through the Symphony. Stop the words, push him away. They had to get away from the majus—Zsaana.
Enos’ arm came up at the same time, dripping white, contacting Gaotha’s cloak with one finger. She changed some phrase at the same time Sam did, and Gaotha gurgled, catching at his throat. He collapsed.
“What did you do?” Sam said, alarmed. An Aridori trick?
“I slowed his muscle reactions. What did you do?”
She’s a majus too. “I stopped his speech. It’s too much.” He took his notes back, as Enos’ white glow returned to her. Gaotha still gurgled and gasped. Sam stooped to help, but there were footsteps behind.
“No time. Run!” Enos suited words to actions. Sam spared only one glance for their jailor. He wasn’t breathing. Did we kill him, by changing too many notes?
“Sorry,” he whispered, and sped after Enos. Hopefully the majus, Zsaana, would tend to him. Death follows the Aridori. No. Not fair to think that.
Past Gaotha, the excavated tunnel was lighter, an occasional torch splitting the darkness. Sam caught up to Enos at a branch in the tunnel.
“Which way?” Enos panted. Sam closed his eyes and listened to the Symphony. Air flowed equally from both, but there was a trill of voices to the left.
“Right,” he said.
Three more times the tunnel branched, and each time Sam picked their way. He thought briefly about separating from Enos, running the other direction. No. Have to take her back to Majus Cyrysi and Councilor Ayama. It was the right thing to do.
A last tunnel ran into another crude wooden door. Even without the Symphony, Sam could hear voices.
“Back the other way?” he whispered. Enos waved him to silence, took in a shaky breath.
“We may be able to find out where we are.” She pressed her ear to the door. Sam kept a wary eye back the way they came, and let the Symphony flood his mind, picking his notes to amplify the chords he heard. A change to this phrase, to make it a little stronger. Each change to the Symphony came easier. Voices filled his ears.
“Zsaana, he should have been back with the apprentices.” The speaker had the same sibilant quality, though in a higher register. Another Sathssn, then, probably female. Was that the only species here?
“Maybe he found them wanting to the Holy Form.” This voice was lower.
“If so, this, it is a waste. We will need all the aid we can find. Must we test these blasphemers? Them, we know they are wanting. It is a farce to test.” Another low voice.
“I will not abandon the precepts of the Most Traditional Servants, even if you do so, Iano,” said the first voice again, cold and haughty.
“Not all here fit in that category, Janas,” said a fourth voice, equally as cold. Sam thought he recognized Dunarn, the one who captured them, but couldn’t be sure. “Eventually, the Life Coalition, it must spread past your limited branch of the religion. What then?”
Enos tugged on his arm, and Sam flinched, then realized she was trying to tell him something. The voices faded away as he pulled his notes back.
“Footsteps. Zsaana.” She pointed the way they came. There was nowhere to go. Sounds echoed far in these tunnels, and he couldn’t be sure of the distance. He found the Symphony again and tried to bridge a phrase to bring the sound closer, as he had done to the voices in the room. The notes slipped his grasp and he gasped at a shock like a glass of water thrown in his face. Can’t make the same change twice.
“A portal. We need a portal back to the houses.” Enos said.
“I don’t remember how,” Sam argued. He had done more with the Symphony today than since he had arrived. His song was stretched, and he had trouble grasping his notes.
“Try. You’ve done it before.” Enos held his eyes. They were the same as they had always been, dark and serious.
How can she be an Aridori? It’s not fair.
“It’s still me, Sam,” she said. “Inas will be his same handsome self. We both like you. We’d never hurt you, or anyone else, I promise.”
Sam thought of Gaotha, choking on the ground. They had both done that. He closed his eyes, distancing her from him the only way he could. They had to get away.
He rifled through fragmented memories of his escape from Earth, but they slipped through his fingers, their terror making his heart race. He felt for his watch. There was no context. Sam had known nothing of the Symphony or his song. What happened when Majus Cyrysi opened a portal? He opened his eyes.
“I don’t know how,” he told Enos. If she’s caught, won’t it be better?
“Then we shall both be killed.” She wasn’t accusing. Her voice was empty.
“I’m sorry,” Sam told her.
A voice rang out from behind the door. “Yet we are still pure. Now go, check outside again and see if Zsaana is coming with them.” There was the sound of boots.
What do I do? He curled in, ready to squat to the ground. The panic was welling up in him. He couldn’t think.
This way. Tie the two Symphonies together. You know of the Nether. It was a far-off thought, disconnected, like someone pushed a memory up into his consciousness. Then, abruptly he knew how to create a portal. Had the Nether communicated with him somehow and thrust this into his head? Were they even in the Nether? Yet it was simple. Make the Symphony of this place and another place he knew so similar that they occupied the same location.
He placed his notes in the Symphony, building a phrase he knew well. Damp air between wooden alley walls. Birds overhead. A crowd outside the exit, feeding panic with their voices. He stared at the tunnel in front of them and a speck of black appeared, whirling and twisting. A yellow ring grew, and the whole thing turned in a way that made his eyes water. A portal stood before them, and it connected to the Nether, in the alley where he had first arrived.
“You remembered.” Enos’ eyebrows rose. “Know where we are?”
Sam shook his head. He couldn’t tell that. “You first.” He gestured and she vanished through the portal, either trusting his novice ability, or
terrified of staying here.
He faced the blackness, tried to calm his ragged breathing.
The door behind him creaked, and Sam threw himself through the portal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gathering Information
-The Effature, Bolas Palmoran, acts as caretaker of the Nether—the glue between the different areas of government. While he nominally presides over the Great Assembly and the Council of the Maji, his office is largely legislative, handling the minutia of trade, taxes, immigration, and fees. The Effature is famed for his knowledge of history and incidentals, for the fairness of his decisions, and he is consulted by diplomats from all ten homeworlds to find particularly reclusive pieces of information.
From “The Great Assembly through the Ages”
It took Origon a tram ride, a short trip in a cart, and a full lightening of walking to become wholly entrenched in the worst part of Low Imperium. He let the Nether guide him with the intention of heading to the Water Gate docks, which connected the shipments coming in by way of Lake Thaal. The great walls of the Nether gleamed behind him with afternoon light, and a column ahead reflected it, a shining pillar rising from the mess of ramshackle buildings.
He wore a simple robe today, half yellow, half orange—his colors. A pouch of Nether glass hung from his belt. His outfit practically shouted that he was a majus who had wandered far out of his usual habitat. He also wore his heaviest boots, just in case.
Hand Dancer could impress all the others with the fancy web of interactions the Lobhl put together. So what if it was something Origon couldn’t replicate. He pushed his crest flat. There were other ways to get information.
While he walked, he placed his notes into the themes from the House of Power he heard, amplifying the connections between the poor shacks piled on each other, built on top of sturdier stone foundations. The ones who lived in this section of the Imperium changed addresses as often as he changed his robe. Slowly, a web of glowing orange lines grew in front of him, not a neat geometrical shape as Hand Dancer had made, but a mess of angles and intersections.
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