Hymn

by Ken Scholes

  It was just as he drifted into sleep that it struck him.

  All I want, Rudolfo thought, is to live in peace among my people and give the world more light than it had before my time in it.

  And warmer than any down quilt, that thought carried the Gypsy King into a solid sleep filled with the smell of books and the lamplit rows of the pine shelves they rested upon in the library he raised at home.

  Vlad Li Tam

  Wind whipped at Vlad’s face as he clung to the metal man’s neck. Twice he’d nearly lost the staff as it banged into the corners of buildings or the poles of empty market stalls, and once they’d rounded a corner to stumble into a small group of refugees that he drove the metal man over to the sound of bones breaking beneath the metal feet.

  It was far easier than he’d realized. Isaak had entered the room, and with a flick of the staff, Vlad had paralyzed him. Then, laying his hand—and the ring he wore—upon Isaak’s chest, he’d commanded him with a basic sentence and they’d fled.

  He counted the turns and time and looked up as they passed into their last alley. They were near the Magisters College now. When Isaak slowed, Vlad climbed down and waited while the metal man removed the metal hatch that would give them access to the city’s sewer system. Vlad climbed down first, eyes watering from the stench, and waited for the metal man to put the lid in place and then join him.

  There was no need for Isaak to carry him here, and Vlad set out at a brisk walk. “Follow me, mechoservitor.”

  He heard the soft whistle and hum as Isaak complied. Vlad reached into the aether with a tentative probing thought. Amylé?

  She had been waiting for him. I am here, Lord Tam.

  It will not be long now. He took them left and then right as he maneuvered them beneath the college and found two of the Lunarists waiting at the hole they’d made in the wall, each dressed for fast travel.

  “Is everyone here?” Vlad asked as he approached.

  They nodded with sober eyes. He moved past them, and Isaak followed. He’d run the route himself with the others, and when he slipped into the college’s sub-basement, he knew which route to take for the hatch.

  More Lunarists waited there, and the others from the sewers joined them as well. Then, Vlad descended into the Beneath Places with the army his pain had fashioned him.

  The others gathered in the room. Most were men—older—but a few were young, and there were a few women as well. Their priest was gone along with their families, bound now for the moon in an Y’Zirite vessel they’d liberated. These that remained had chosen to, and now they watched Vlad in the dim light of the lichen that grew overhead.

  Vlad took a deep breath. “Sit down, Isaak. This will be brief.”

  The metal man’s eyes fluttered, and he sat heavily upon the floor. He stepped forward and pressed the ring against the silver head. I require access.

  Access granted. Vlad’s eyes narrowed against the swell of noise and light, and then he found himself in the library. He could smell the paper and the burning oil of lamps turned low. This is the place he retreats to. Vlad knew it was merely a construct within the fabric of the aether but marveled at the detail Isaak had put into it. A robed figure seated at a long table looked up from a book. “Lord Tam,” the metal voice wheezed. “What are you doing? I’ve come to implore you to—”

  “Isaak,” he said, raising his hand, “I know why you think you’ve come, but I can assure you that it isn’t as you believe. You are here because I called you here with this staff. And when I have finished with this staff, I will keep my word and give it to young Nebios to carry back to his new home where it belongs.” The feelings were there again, and he ignored all of them except for the ones that served his army best. He took a breath. “There is something you’ve carried for far too long, and I must take it from you.”

  The metal man started to shake, and here, in this place, Vlad could see that this wasn’t the mechoservitor he’d run with so recently but the original version—the one Rudolfo had found in the crater of the old library. Steam released from Isaak’s exhaust grate, and his eyes flooded with rusty tears. “I am the only one that can carry it, Lord Tam.”

  Vlad shook his head. “No. I can bear it.” And then he stretched out the staff and closed his eyes and waited. It was there beneath the surface, the two songs that defined the existence of this metal man Charles had brought back from the grave of the old world. He heard the Song of Sowing that was Frederico’s Canticle for the Fallen Moon first—and saw within it the motes of light that were the code woven into it. The information had given Charles’s re-creations what they needed—when they discovered the silver crescent that played it over and over again—to find Neb and to prepare the antiphon to carry them to the moon. And behind that melody, the Seven Cacophonic Deaths of Xhum Y’Zir stirred—a storm of notes that also bore a code though Vlad saw immediately that it had been corrupted and twisted beyond its original purpose. He closed his eyes and separated out the songs, drawing the one to him through the staff, internalizing it so that he could study it. He saw each bend and twist in the words and melody that Xhum Y’Zir had composed during all those years hidden away, plotting his vengeance upon the people who had murdered his sons. As he drew it into the staff, he touched the ring with his thumb. Open.

  Another stream of information flowed into him, and he felt the deep roots of the Library of Elder Days lay hold of his mind, tucked away in the grove within the Firsthome Temple. It wasn’t a complete river—there were parts of the grove that had gone dead, and he suspected that the first Y’Zir, or perhaps the last of the Younger Gods, had something to do with that. Most of the pre-Lasthome history and nearly all of the early history of the people who settled here was gone. But as he dug about, he found the threads that matched what he drew from Isaak.

  Then Vlad brought both streams of information together and felt himself moved by the power as they intersected and expanded with a thump that he could feel in his brain. Together, he saw the sum total of it as it danced and warbled, beams of light bending and shifting.

  Isaak opened his mouth and closed it as his eyes flashed amber. A low whistle built deep inside his chest cavity, and Vlad closed his eyes and tapped the staff upon Isaak’s metal chest once again. There was a spark and a flash. And then Isaak went limp.

  “Upon awakening,” Vlad told him, “you will flee this place at top speed and you will find the girl you came with. You will flee Ahm’s Glory, and you will not stop until you are both safe. Then you will find my grandson Jakob and my daughter Jin Li Tam in Endicott. You will see them safely back into the care of his father in the Named Lands. Only my daughter or Lord Rudolfo may release you from this command. Do you understand?” He swallowed and winced against the sharp ache in his left temple as the metal man nodded once. “You will not remember this conversation.” Then he paused and looked again at the bundle of notes and words and light.

  There. He made the change—dulling the one note that would blunt this terrible weapon. And then Vlad made another—sharpening the note where Isaak and the others would need to look to finish their work in this world. “But you will remember this,” he said. “Y’Zir bent the People’s Song of Shaping into his Cacophonic Deaths, and here is where you begin to bend it back into its original shape.” He stepped back. “Okay. Now. Wake up, Isaak. And flee.”

  Isaak leaped to his feet and raced for the door. Vlad did not wait and he did not watch. Time, he knew, was of the essence. He turned to his people. “Lie down with me, children,” he said to them in a low voice heavy with emotion he wanted to discount and pretend was not present in this moment. Then Vlad Li Tam joined them on the floor.

  He lowered them into sleep and joined them in the aether. He shaped the space for them, drawing from the library where he needed to. They all sat about him in a field, and in the distance, a massive white tree blossomed.

  “It’s time,” Vlad said, and they nodded. He held up a sack that materialized in his hand when he wished it to. �
�The fruit that Amylé has gathered will get you where you need to go and keep you alive long enough for the sequence to initiate. When you arrive, you will likely feel disoriented. Stay in the Beneath Places until you’ve got your wits back. Then make your way to your assigned target by whatever means necessary. You only have three days, but most of you won’t need more than a day.” He paused. “After that, find a central location and sing it out, loud and long.” He looked at them and tried to make eye contact with each, but there were too many before the pause became unwieldy. “This hymn,” he said in a somber tone, “will end millennia of darkness and bring back the time of the Younger Gods so long unremembered and uncelebrated by all but you.”

  Then, he taught them the last song that they would ever sing. And when he finished, he woke them and they passed the fruit among them, starting with Vlad himself. He held each piece up in supplication before taking a bite and passing it around. Then, after, he blessed them and sent them out to be his own choir, and they received his blessing, eager to be the mouthpiece of his violent worship. They left quickly, racing down the shafts and corridors he’d pressed into their minds, slipping into the quicksilver with hands and faces still sticky from the fruit they’d eaten.

  When he was alone, Vlad sat in silence. For a single moment he allowed the weight of his choices up to and including this one to settle fully upon his back. It bowed him, but it did not break him, and finally Vlad Li Tam stood.

  It is because I have already been broken.

  Then he slowly shuffled out of the room and made his way to the stairs.

  The hallways of the Magisters College were empty, and Vlad let himself out into the courtyard. A few men in dark robes moved about, noting him with looks of concern. He ignored them and went to a bench near a large fountain carved from obsidian.

  He inhaled the scent of the city and took in the smudged horizon. Now.

  Amylé did not answer, but he knew she heard. He saw a flash of silver two leagues to his west as she rose above the city. And as her wings beat furiously, the kin-dragon fled north.

  Closing his eyes, Vlad squeezed the staff tightly and willed it to sustain him as he offered up a hymn to those who had been taken from him, cut away by the blades of Y’Zir.

  And as the ground shook and the fire fell, Vlad Li Tam laughed and wept in delight and in despair at the glory of his handiwork.

  Chapter

  18

  Marta

  Marta ran, her nose filled with the reek of vomit and smoke and her wrist numb from Ire Li Tam’s running line. Behind them, the shrieking of the kin-dragon pierced the air, mingled with the shouts of the New Espirans and the crashing sound of walls collapsing as the beast thrashed about in close quarters.

  “Look straight ahead,” Ire whispered harshly after Marta had thrown up. “Don’t look at the ground.”

  But looking ahead didn’t seem to help much. And looking down was worse. Because I cannot see my own feet.

  They’d followed Isaak and Vlad Li Tam as best they could, dodging down alleys and avenues until finally losing them.

  Ire pulled them into an alley where they found a dark corner. Marta blessed the pause in running that it granted her and tried to catch her breath. The kin-dragon’s cries were farther apart now.

  “I don’t understand what he’s doing,” Marta finally said. “Where are they going?”

  “I don’t either,” Ire replied, “but my father is at the center of it, and it does not bode well. The Imperial Magisters College is near, but I do not know what he would seek there.”

  Marta rubbed life back into her wrist and tried to keep worry at bay. Something had gone wrong. She was certain of it. And Ire’s tone was a confirmation. “Then we should go to the college,” she said.

  This time, Ire slipped the line around her wrist. “How is your stomach?”

  It roiled again, and she felt a buzzing that built behind her eyes and made the world seem to vibrate just slightly around her. “Better,” Marta said.

  “Then let’s run.”

  They left by the back of the alley and down a street lined with nicer houses. Marta tried to keep her focus straight ahead, but the newness of everything drew her eye—the colors, the stone buildings and palm trees, the few people that were out, their skin covered in silk and scars.

  Ire pulled her around a corner, and suddenly they were on a thoroughfare leading to a large, dark series of buildings tucked behind a wall. “They probably entered through the sewers,” Ire said.

  Marta opened her mouth to answer and then fell to her knees as her head exploded in light and noise.

  MARTA!

  She cried out at the weight of his voice as it fell upon her and flooded her mind. “Isaak?”

  She looked up to see a flash of silver as something hurtled over the wall and crashed into the cobblestones just outside the gate, sending up a shower of broken stone and dust. Isaak’s eyes glowed like blood in the haze, and they turned toward her.

  He was a wordless blur as he closed the distance between them. And it was as if he saw right through the magicks. His metal hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

  Marta resisted as he pulled her toward him. “Isaak? What are you doing?” He said nothing as he scooped her up, and she felt panic rising. Marta kicked and punched at him. “Put me down.”

  But instead, he put her over his shoulder and started to run. The silk line that tied her to Ire snapped, and Marta screamed.

  Do not be afraid, little human.

  And at the same time, another voice nearby panted in her ear. “I’m here, Marta.”

  But Marta suspected that even with her blood magicks, Ire Li Tam would not be able to keep up with Isaak. And even as she thought it, she felt the metal man lurch forward and build speed.

  He is not limping anymore. Instead, he took longer and longer strides, as they raced toward the larger, wider thoroughfares leading out of the city.

  They were within sight of a massive gate when everything went quiet around them in a way that defied Marta’s sensibilities, and over the rise of that silence, somewhere far behind them, she heard a single note ring out. It was the last clear thing she heard before cacophony swallowed them.

  Close your eyes, little human.

  She did, but even closed, they could not prevent the light piercing her even as the noise did the same. The ground began to shake, and it took Marta a moment to realize that the high-pitched whine that built on top of the other sounds was Isaak as he surged ahead.

  And it was in that moment that Marta understood what was happening. “Ire,” she said. “We can’t leave Ire.” Isaak said nothing, and she wrestled against his grip. Marta gritted her teeth and furrowed her brow with concentration. Isaak.

  He faltered at his name and lurched to the left as he lifted Ire Li Tam and swung her heavily over his right shoulder. Then he slowed, and steadied beneath the weight of both of them.

  They were two leagues out of the city when a wave of hot wind lifted them and tossed them to the side of the highway not far from the edge of a canal. She looked up from the sand and dirt to see a pillar of fire behind them—far too close—before Isaak had her up by the ankle and over his shoulder again.

  Roiling clouds of dust and debris spread out around them as the heat and noise grew unbearable, and she heard the hiss of the water boiling away. She could smell hair and cloth burning and could not tell if it was hers or Ire li Tam’s.

  This, Marta realized with an uncontrollable sob, is how my mother died.

  Isaak slowed finally, and a shift in the temperature brought her eyes open. They were beneath a bridge now, the canal waters burned away to the dry stone floor. He set them down carefully, turned to take in the pillar of smoke and fire that filled the sky behind them, and knelt.

  Then Isaak hung his head in his hands and wept. His shoulders chugged as the whine deep within him became a squeal. Marta watched, the impulse to go to him and take him in her arms at war with the horror she felt.

&nbs
p; The thought came again and would not let go. This is how my mother died.

  “Oh Isaak,” she finally said with a sob of her own. “What did he do to you?”

  Isaak said nothing, and perhaps it was his silence along with the steaming tears overflowing his jeweled eyes that eroded her fear. She was head-to-head with him there on his knees, and she encircled him with her arms, pulling his metal body toward her. His metal surface was hot against the patches where her own clothing had been burned away, and Marta closed her eyes against the pain. Not knowing what else to say, she held him and repeated her question. “What did he do to you?”

  She felt hands upon her, gentle but firm. “Are you injured?”

  Marta paused. She was certain that she was. But beyond the heat, she could not determine how or where. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Isaak’s sobbing ceased, and he climbed to his feet. “I must go,” he said, lifting Marta as he did.

  “No,” she said. “Not yet, Isaak.” She wriggled in his grip, and this time he loosened it and she climbed down. “We’re safe here.”

  “I concur,” Isaak said, “and now that you are safe, I am compelled to find Lady Tam and Lord Jakob and return them safely to the Named Lands.”

  Compelled? She blinked. “I do not know what that means, Isaak.”

  “I’ll warrant,” Ire said, “that it means my father is about his business.”

  Vlad Li Tam took the spell from him and then used it on the city himself. “Did Lord Tam tell you to find them?”

  Isaak shook his head. “I do not remember. I remember running him to the Lunarists beneath the Magisters College. I remember waking up compelled to carry you to safety. And then I remember…” He paused, and something low whistled deep in his torso. His eyes flashed red, then went dark for a moment. “Oh,” he finally said. And then his voice changed, and Marta assumed that it was Vlad Li Tam that she heard speaking now. “Y’Zir bent the People’s Song of Shaping into his Cacophonic Deaths, and here is where you begin to bend it back into its original shape.”