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From the moment he saw her, he knew there was something wrong about her. Orvistian had encountered many kinds of wrong, and he had discovered all of them to be revelations of deeper illness - the curdling like old milk that spoke of incipient madness; the tell-tale split ends that showed stress; the billowing turbulence of building vengeance. This was different. This was wrong wrong - she was subtly wrong in the deepest way. He frowned and stared unashamedly at her. She seemed as perfect as any human could be - after all, he thought wryly, we are all perfect until we are marred or broken. Even as he watched, the damsel delicately shifted her balance and a pink hue spread across her cheek. The perfect pale pink that blood brought to smooth cream skin, more subtly shaded than any kind of flower Orvistian had ever seen. Did she perhaps feel the caress of his eyes upon her cheek? Had that brought that delicate stain there? She was indeed a beautiful woman; poverty and power had both overlooked her and her face was free from cares. Her fingers sped nimbly over the strings and music tumbled forth effortlessly. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to be her instrument, and for a moment his heart strings twanged as clearly as those of the dulcimer she cradled closely in her arms, but then the subtle eerie feeling returned. No. There was something terribly wrong about her.
Her hair was the colour of honey - a tumble of amber winding luxuriantly down her back. Her eyes were brown, although she kept them demurely cast down, watching, perhaps, her own hands performing the intricate chording.
There was always one of them, Orvistian reflected briefly. Last night it had been the frivolous brown haired girl with the green glass emeralds woven in her hair. She had played the tambor with the same delicate grace that this girl displayed. The night before there was her bold brown-haired sister. Funny how easy it was to classify women by the colour of their hair. He wondered briefly if women classified men the same way, or if there was some other quality they preferred to use for casual reference to male strangers. In his case, there was only one feature needed for classification. They all pitied the poor one-armed man, he thought, surprising himself with how rough and ready the anger still was. How poorly it was concealed, despite all his lessons in formal etiquette. That one pale sleeve, whether flapping in the breeze or neatly pinned, attracted eyes as if it was made of solid gold.
Again he looked at the girl, but this time he tried to isolate what exactly disturbed him about her. Was it something in the way she held herself? Her body was tautly still, bent in concentration over the instrument, but she was also a study in controlled movement as her fingers alternately clung and danced nimbly. She should relax and allow the music to flow, he thought. Once, before, he had played far more intricate pieces. Now, after, he could still feel the pressure of the strings under his phantom fingers. The sound of his own playing suddenly roared through his mind with brutal clarity and he closed his eyes to hear it all the better. He sighed. It was only the ethereal echo of music and the reality of the damsel playing on the dulcimer quickly penetrated through the ghostly strain.
A petty argument was all it had taken. One disagreement with one man, once a friend, had escalated into jealous competition. Vacino had won that fight. The instant it happened Orvistian could only feel complete surprise that there was so much strength in Vacino’s wiry body. So much passion! He had thought that the man felt nothing, sought only his own aggrandisement. He had not even felt himself fall, but had clearly heard Vacino’s despairing cry; “So much blood!” Now it was Vacino who stood at the King’s right hand as Master Musician, while Orvistian’s right hand lay buried behind the Grey Church, anxiously awaiting the rest of him. The anger had subsided into long consecrated bitterness, and Orvistian hastily allowed it to drop away into the recesses of his mind, forcing himself to concentrate on the damsel once more.
She wore a kindly, sweet expression on her face. Her lips were slightly apart, her tongue held gently between her teeth. The melody pranced across the wooden floor of the inn, a trifle too mechanically for Orvistian’s refined tastes, but he doubted that anyone else would notice. Hell, he doubted anyone else would care. The damsel in her flowing blue gown was as much a spectacle for the eyes as her playing was for the ears. Around him the crowd shifted quietly, not even reaching for the pastries offered by the mousy serving girls. There was no ribald conversation to mar the music. To a soul, their attention was fixed upon the young damsel and the twinkling of her instrument. The soldiers of the Duke’s Rebellion were weary, for the march had been long and the fighting bloody. Now they camped here in Koronad City itself, encircling the King’s Palace closely enough for His Majesty’s guards to be daunted by their war-songs.
The Duke had requistioned buildings to house his men, and the roomy ‘Poem and Legend’ was large enough to house a small army. It had been set up as a mess hall for the troops, but was now the realm of the Duke’s officers since most of the men had already made themselves comfortable for the night in appropriated bunks and crudely erected tents. Koronad City looked like it had suffered fire or flood, Orvistian thought, draped as it was with scraps of tied canvas.
Orvistian was well known throughout the seven camps as the Duke’s trusted advisor. He knew Koronad City well. The familiarity of its streets was like the curve of his beloved tambor resting against his chest. The tambor had made the most exquisite of gifts. He had presented it to Vacino to congratulate him upon his lofty appointment. Vacino had been unable to politely refuse, doubtlessly well aware that the instrument was a double edged gift - a beautiful instrument, but a constant reminder of his guilt. Yet Orvistian had no pleasure in the giving. Bitterness makes a poor dessert.
We’ll take the city off them. Duke Lymos will take the crown and I’ll take my tambor back. The Duke’s seven daughters will make seven lovely princesses - a fitting tribute to their dead mother. They are the only family the Duke has left. How kind it is for Duke Lymos to send his seven daughters out into the encampments to boost the morale of the common soldiers.
He wondered briefly what the girl thought of the experience. Would she rather be elsewhere, in more refined company? Did her nose wrinkle at the rumpled sweat-stained uniforms and the heavy smell of massed bodies? Was she a sacrifice for her own cause, or for her father’s only?
The tune shifted to one he had known well in his youth, and instantly his thoughts were transported back to those days. His thoughts had been his own, then. His mind had been separate from the flow. It was not until some odd quirk of his injury awakened the thing in his mind that he had been forced to hear the sing-song drone of the minds around him. His body, long accustomed to exercise and good food, had never suffered a window of pain of any great length before the accident. The priests said that the sudden shock had opened a conduit. It was forged by pain and mental anguish. Some of the priests said that the exposing of his mind, the removal of impediments to his gift, had been Keth’s compensation for his loss. Without the benefit of the healing skills of the Priests of Sharm he would surely have lost his life - if not from the early loss of blood, then certainly from the wracking fever that followed it. While he lay, tossing and turning in his sick bed, his mind filled with other people’s dreams and thoughts. At first he mistakenly thought they were his own dreams, and he wondered why his head was suddenly filled with strangers and impossible ambitions. He thrashed soundlessly in a mire of deceits and impulses, misunderstood insults and overwhelming lusts. After his injuries had healed, as soon as his new abilities became apparent, he had been taken in by the priesthood.
Keth’s gift indeed! Had Keth wished to test him, to push him even further than he had been pushed already? If so, then perhaps the awakening of his mind could be termed a “gift”. Admittedly, he had been kept so busy coping with the flood of thoughts tumbling unbidden into his mind that the matter of the lost arm had seen a minor thing. It was not until he made his way back into the world that he learned how hard life could be for a one-armed man. Now, after years of practice, he was finally able to dim the continual current of thoughts - to relegate it to the status of background noise, and most of the time to ignore it, just as he had learned to do many things with one hand that other men did with two.
Rising out of these thoughts like a diver emerging from strange seas, he suddenly realised what it was about the damsel that was so strange. Although the current of thoughts flowed about him, unnoticed and unbidden, nothing but silence emanated from the damsel. It was like she had no mind at all.
Impossible! She must have a mind! Perhaps her maidenly thoughts were merely unusually soft and modest, difficult to hear. Curious, he concentrated his hidden senses; allowed his habitual shields to drop, so the full force of nearby thoughts could flow through him. The pattern was unusually regular and synchronised. It was only a moment before he recognised that the thoughts, although each was individual and personal, flowed with precisely the same metre as the tune the girl strummed. Iambic pentameter, all of them, and all perfectly in time....
The music was controlling them.
As if in response to this precise realisation, the power struck him. If he had regarded the Damsel’s playing as stultified in comparison to the delicate pieces he had once excelled in performing, then now he saw the force of his own mind to be a tiny meandering stream compared to the tumultuous river that seethed around him. It bound him into silence, and for the merest frightening instant, his body was not his own. A strange mind burned within his own, demanding silence, stillness and unremitting compliance. For that merest moment Orvistian swayed, tempted to bury himself in the suffocating nothingness where all the tragedy and skewedness of his chosen path would quickly become unimportant. In the end, it was the sheer otherness of it that drove him away. Instead, he hurled himself into the torrent of pain.
He had had his fill of it long ago, and yet it was something he recognised. It was almost like meeting an old friend. Reflexively, he had thrown up the years-hardened shield that allowed him to ignore the buzz of other minds. Now maintaining it was instinctive, and although the power that railed against its walls was horribly powerful, distressingly crushing, Orvistian ignored it, and embraced the pain.
For a moment he considered striding up to the damsel and dragging the dulcimer from her arms, but he could see the result of that in his mind’s eye, as though he were looking through a window to the future. Instead he used his foresight as a weapon, drawing on his imagination to fuel the attack he made with his mind. He would know the source of this strangeness...
Around him the crowd mumbled and sighed curiously as he surged to his feet.
“Quorm Orvistian! Where are you going?” And as he strode determinedly towards the damsel: “Don’t make a fool of yourself, man!”
There was a jeering cry, as if someone was convinced of his lunacy.
Orvistian felt as though he was in a trance, beyond the reach of mortal voices.
Hands clutched at him, but he slipped beyond their grasp and wrenched himself free. He reached the damsel’s side. Her eyes were wide and panicked, struggling with some internal fear, although a hesitant smile played across her lips. She had retreated from Orvistian but her hands never paused on the strings.
Something scrabbled desperately at the boundaries of Orvistian’s mind, tearing, flashing, and cascading pain to block his vision. He ignored it, stoically focusing on the imaginary scene stretching before him.
His hand reached for the flinching damsel, and he clumsily clawed the flimsy fabric of her dress with his single hand. It caught in his fingernails; tore slightly. Still, she kept playing. He could sense the rush of the crowd behind him, reaching for him. Still she smiled. Still she kept playing. Orvistian cursed his lack of balance, cursed his single arm, and reached for the dulcimer even as the crowd dragged him down off the podium.
The music boiled around him, a tantalising, mesmerising whirlpool. Orvistian screamed soundlessly as the boundary of his mind was pushed closer and closer inwards until it finally buckled in upon itself.
***** The next day, the Palace had fallen before the forces of the Rebellion. A weak-minded guard had given the Rebels easy access. Looting was kept to a minimum. The capital was assumed with a minimum of fuss, and Koronad had come under the sway of King Lymos. To Orvistian it was a fog-filled time, indistinct and hazy. His memories of the whole event were limp like yesterday’s flowers. He couldn’t quite recall what his own part in the conquest had been. It was as though he had dreamed the whole siege and had only just awoken. He tried to lay aside his uneasiness and to embrace the riches and respectability that victory had brought him.For life in the capital was all that Orvistian had hoped it would be. His lost arm seemed a small hindrance, lost in the glory of winning of a kingdom. Duke Lymos made a fine king, and Orvistian, as his advisor and lieutenant, was instrumental in organising the hunting down of the fleeing partisans of King Erimol and making examples of them in Kiszen’s Square. He had barely had time to breathe.
Vacino had not been amongst those captured, something that secretly relieved Orvistian. He was puzzled to find that he had no real desire to gloat over his ancient rival. He hadn’t even dared to search Vacino’s chambers but had ordered them sealed up. He knew those rooms would dredge up too many unpleasant memories from the depths.... Cowardice, he told himself severely, but still he waited.
***** He swung the door open with considerable effort. The chamber lay, not as Orvistian had envisaged it - in hastily abandoned disarray - but tidily laid out, with everything in its place. The smell was faintly musty, but not unpleasant. The bed lay neatly smoothed. Here were Vacino’s clothes - apparently his old friend had put on a little girth in recent years. Orvistian found himself smiling, and wondered why.
Vacino’s music room was a small studio abutting his sleeping chamber. It held the heritage of a life spent working with music. Instruments of many kinds hung from walls, lay carefully shrouded in their cases, or stood proudly in their stands. Orvistian paused to admire a glistening Wraith Flute reclining in a twist of fine lhisamber cloth. His fingers traced the spine of a Tabaccan harp, and lingered over the casings of a nest of little drums. There, in the corner by a beautiful little music stand, stood a tambor case - a fine leather one, marked with the incidents of many voyages. The letters “VK” were worked into the leather in fine gold letters. It stood ready, as if its owner intended to pick it up and take it with him at any moment.
With a hand that gently shook Orvistian reached forward and opened the case, swinging it gently open. Inside was a tambor. Not just any tambor, but his tambor. Somehow, when he had given the instrument to Vacino, he had imagined it would lie unused in some corner, a caustic reminder that would prick Vacino’s conscience whenever his eye should alight upon it. He had not expected Vacino to use the instrument.
Yet it had been used and lovingly maintained. Fingers quivering, Orvistian reached out to pluck a string and a rich mellow tone echoed through the dusty room. The tone awakened something in him, as did the gentle curve of the instrument. Orvistian stared into space a moment, entangled in confusing strands of memory, and then gently reached out to close the case again.
As his fingers touched the clasp, his eye was caught by a small leather-bound book lying wedged in beside the tambor.
A musical notebook? With idle interest he picked it up and opened it.
It was an old travel-diary. The musty pages held intricate sketched pictures. Although Orvistian had never seen most of the sentient creatures that shared his world, during his youth he had been intrigued by Othermen and had sought tales of them in his master’s tomes. This book was something of a bestiary of the Other sentient races. Here was a picture of a long-legged Loman, very much like a human, but impressively tall with a high-boned large-eyed face. The next page showed several hairy Ruhurdh, squatting in a cluster. He flipped past pages showing sinuous needle-toothed fish-men and sketches of defensive Bemmel. On the next page was a sketch of something stranger. It was a leathery-shelled creature with feeble little legs protruding from below. Its long, piercing tentacles looked far more resilient. The heading at the top of the page read “Pthon”. “The Pthonian race is a peculiar one,” read the annotation beside the picture. “Although capable of moving under their own volition the Pthon show neither endurance nor speed. They regard movement as a final defence, best saved for use in only the direst emergency. Instead, the Pthon rely upon their hosts for both nourishment and transportation. Pthon have been found to dwell mounted upon the backs of both Humen and Othermen, attaching to the spine by means of piercing tentacles. Although they are capable of utilising many of the known races in this way, individual Pthon seem loathe to swap between different hosts. A dissection of a Pthonian revealed that there was little besides brain matter beneath their shells. Their musculature is poorly developed. I have yet to discover how they reproduce. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the Pthon are their prodigious mentological abilities. They are able to control their hosts, not only through biological means, but also through direct mentological control. In my exploration of the shallowest caverns of the Pthonish Underworld, I observed their hosts seemed to be bred for both compliance and placidity, and also that the Pthon are easily able to hold potential hosts in their thrall. Sometimes a single Pthon may control the actions of many hosts at once, directing their behaviour in quite complex and individualistic ways...”
Something stirred deep in Orvistian’s mind.
Something....something about a damsel with a dulcimer. He stood there a long time, ignoring the ringing of the dinner bell. When he moved again, it was with quick decisiveness. He fastened the instrument case, picked it up, and with some difficulty slung it over his shoulder. He hurried out of Vacino’s chamber and strode down the hall. He was going. In some strange way, he was going home. Going to find Vacino. Bringing the tambor to him. Even old wrongs could sometimes be put aright.
***** Even as he left, others were leaving. King Lymos’ seven daughters departed, each in a different direction. They were sent as diplomats to the Dukes of all the Shires. In the scattered courts their beauty and manners might yet win the hearts of the nobles, and their wise words secure the grudging oaths required to unite Koronad once more.
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