Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  She played with the patterns that she knew, the simple Heal-all spell, the dove-shaped Courier, the Spriteblind. Then she turned the essence as black as pitch and worked the Silence and Freeze and Seduction spells with the Dark. It was interesting exploring the limits of her magical ability, but she knew she was just distracting herself from her real problem. She was worried about Ethea. Too much time had passed and nothing had been done to save her. Ethea did not have time. Tabitha could hear her whispered call, the plea for help, over and over in her mind. It felt wrong to be safe in the Sanctuary. She was a wizard, and she should be in the midst of things. She should not be in hiding.

  Something fell in a room nearby, probably the night wind, gusting through some scrolls.

  She should not allow the wizards to dictate how she used her power. Tabitha hummed the Lifesong a little louder, determined to shrug off her sense of helplessness. She would find a way to reach Ethea. She wished she knew how to cast the Transference spell. The wizards had forbidden her from following them up to the roof-quad when they had departed, so she had been unable to examine the pattern they used. She needed the pattern because if she lost her way in the awesome expanse of infinity, she might never return.

  The surface of the Gyre’s pool rippled. Probably her fish, she had glimpsed it turning in the depths.

  She contemplated making up her own kind of transference spell. The second stanza of the Lifesong turned flesh to clear essence. If a person was disintegrated in one place, and recreated in another using the first stanza, would they really be moved, or would they die and would another soul be born? Tabitha couldn’t tell. She supposed it might be possible to do such a thing, but she couldn’t see how she could sing herself to life again once she was disintegrated. She supposed that she would be able to learn the secret from Ethea.

  Was Ethea’s plight still so desperate? Did the Sorcerer still torment her?

  Words, whispered words, barely audible over the Lifesong stanza she was humming.

  “Oh little Singer…”

  Although her lips were closed she heard the words again, carried on the bars of her own music—whispered words full of sorrow.

  “Oh little Singer, I have found you!”

  Ethea?

  “I have reached for you for so long, and you have hidden.”

  Ethea’s voice was carried in the music like a melodic resonance.

  “Why do you never sing? Are you ashamed of me, of my weakness? Why do you hide from me? Help me, oh help me, I grow weaker, so weak, he will make me commit a horror. I cannot allow it, but I cannot escape. Oh Singer come to me!”

  The words wrenched at her heart. She was ashamed at herself for not having the courage to face down the wizards and demand they save Ethea. The Gyre had left—how was she to help the Goddess now? She continued the Lifesong melody on her lyre and whispered her own words into the hollows in the music in the hope that somehow they would be carried to the Goddess. “I am in another place, trapped in my own body. How can I come to you? Is there a way to sing it so?”

  The Lifesong themes swelled within her. Ethea’s whispers were clearer this time, floating on the notes. “The song moves through all of it. The song is here, the song is there. Be the song and nothing more, give yourself to the music. A-way-a-lay. Come to me.”

  “I did that before, my Goddess, but my body stayed behind. I need to be whole to be able to help you. How will my body move?” But the Goddess did not answer. Tabitha played on, hoping for some whispered guidance. Maybe Ethea had no answer. Maybe the Goddess did not know how to work with the strange limitations that flesh imposed. She was about to ask another question when a frightened cry came upon the carrier notes of the Lifesong.

  “The water! The water! It is upon me! He threw another rock down. Now it rains. Oh, the weight of it! He breaks me, he breaks me…”

  Ethea gave a forlorn wail, and the Lifesong came to an abrupt and discordant end on Tabitha’s lyre. She had come upon a gap in the music and could play no further. The emptiness she sensed in the song was worse than any vision of torture. There was nothing to reach for, nothing to sing. The Goddess was losing the fight.

  “No! Ethea! Hold on! I am coming!” She cast around in the room, desperate to find something to assist her. The chamber was stark, empty. She would have to make her own spell. There was no time to waste anymore. Ethea was dying.

  What she really needed was the Transference spell, but she didn’t know how Zarost had done it, except that her awareness had spread until it was everywhere at once, and he had whispered a word, a single word.

  “Infinity,” she tried.

  Her ring flared with heat. A memory flashed across her mind. A tingling pain shot through her palms and she spread them wide, in case that helped her reach outward, but she knew at once that she had made a mistake with the spell. Between her hands was an inky void filled with stars, as if she had peeled open the air to reveal the midnight sky beneath it, or within it. She had summoned something very strange—the space between her palms exuded a feeling of vastness that was unsettling, almost dreadfully huge; Tabitha felt so very small. She was scared she might fall into the ragged hole which yawned and whispered at her. She clapped her hands, and the air returned to its correct place in the ordered reality of the Sanctuary. A boom of thunder exploded above her palms.

  Well that hadn’t worked. Tabitha closed her eyes and searched for clarity. She could move essence anywhere on the three axes, but she knew very few spell patterns. The most advanced Order spell she knew of was the Reference spell, but she had been warned about the consequences of using it on anything living because it was designed to shift matter from place to place and it did not cater for the soul. She wondered what would happen if she used her rainbow essence in the spell, instead of the golden essence of Order. Would the Lifesong carry the soul along the threads of music while the pattern of the Reference produced the shift from place to place? It was terribly risky to cast such an untested blend of spells on herself, but if it was the only way…

  She opened her eyes. The fish flashed in the pool beneath her.

  The fish. She would send one of them to Ethea, and if it worked she would cast the spell again on herself.

  A high-pitched whine sounded outside, like something tensioning. Then there was a hard pop. Lines of disturbance skittered across her vision as her lens went wild. Something was happening to the essence outside. Were the wizards returning with the Warlock? She couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now. They would want to keep her in the Sanctuary, like a prize; just another treasure hoarded in the Reliceum.

  She struck the strings of the lyre, playing into the gap in the Lifesong, filling the silence with her own music. Clear essence gathered around her. She sang a wordless accompaniment. The essence shimmered with dancing colours, a silken cloud of iridescent hues. She set the lyre down but did not release the essence. She worked it into the Reference spell pattern, using the grid that the lens scribed upon her vision to guide the shift from the Order axis down to the origin. That was the balance-point where the Lifesong essence usually collected. Finally, the tail of the reference pattern had to be aimed to the target. She had a moment of panic as she realised she had no idea how to define the Pillar in the lowlands. She only had the vision of that place, the pool and rock and cliff she had seen. As she thought upon that place, the tail of the pattern moved and came to rest at a particular point. She had been there, with the Goddess. The memory of it would have to be enough.

  When the spell was prepared as a tight net of colours in her hand, she looked upon the pool, where the fish turned in the depths. One finned its way closer to the surface and, as it swept past, Tabitha cast the spell upon it. “Begone, and live with the Goddess.” The pattern pierced the water and wrapped the fish in a rainbow of light.

  A puff of bubbles rose to the surface. The fish was gone.

  She had to know it had reached Ethea. Striking the theme of the Lifesong on her lyre, she searched with her music, but
had to strain against a persistent silence, as if she grappled against void for each note, forcing her way through a howling emptiness toward the Goddess and the source of the Lifesong.

  The ground shook. A moment later an explosion pressed against her ears. Outside, the northern sky was suddenly bright. Something about the sequence disturbed her. Had the wizards returned? Were they fighting the Warlock?

  Her right eye was a fury of symbols and lore, blinding and intense.It frightened her, but she knew she had to remain focused on reaching the Goddess.

  “Do you see a silver-blue fish?” she asked the air. She hoped Ethea was listening; she hoped the Goddess would turn away from her despair for just a moment and hear the message carried on the notes. She couldn’t commit until she knew. The music began to flow more easily and familiar warmth filled her heart.

  “Goddess, do you have a fish?” she asked.

  Outside, the night sky was split again with jagged lines of light, silver light, deadly light. A sharp scent was in the air. A rush of silver spilled in the window and burned through the floor. Tabitha cried out. She recognised that silver dust. Somehow, the Sorcerer’s wildfire had reached the Sanctuary. This wasn’t the wizards fighting among themselves, it was Chaos.

  A faint whisper came upon the threads of music, small beneath the shrieking and spitting clamour which approached from outside. “I see a fish, it flashes bright within the pool! Ay-lis-ay-lee.”

  At once, Tabitha repeated the preparation of her spell, collecting clear essence, activating it, moulding it into shape. She couldn’t do it quickly enough. Something broke downstairs. A great smashing and rending force shook the building. The magnitude of the approaching power was terrifying. Tabitha reached for Ethea through the song and used her memory to guide her to the place where the sky was red and the warm rain fell upon a bloodied pool amid smoke and clamour. The Goddess should not be abandoned. She prayed she had not made a mistake with the pattern; she knew she was pushing her luck.

  She released the net of bright colours upon herself. “Begone, and live with the Goddess,” she whispered. A terrible ripping impact shook the Sanctuary. The floor cracked open, and the waters of the pool fell away. There was a moment of bright pain then everything was music.

  34. RELATIVE INSANITY

  “An advantage, well concealed

  Can tip a hasty battlefield.”—Zarost

  The Gyre was in a right royal bind. The Warlock had told them that the Sorcerer had gone to the Sanctuary. They had to save the Sanctuary. Too many precious things were preserved within it, and nothing so precious as Tabitha Serannon, thought Twardy Zarost. But to go to the Sanctuary they had to release the Warlock from the clustered containment spell they held. They could not transfer with him and still contain him, because the Transference spell used the crossing point of infinity, and it was impossible to contain something of an infinite size.

  They had to choose between the Warlock and the Sanctuary.

  Zarost knew what the Gyre’s decision would be, and he suspected the Warlock knew it too—he had planned it this way. What made it worse was that it could all be a bluff. They might go to the Sanctuary and find nothing amiss. The Warlock would laugh at them from afar. The Gyre was crippled by the lack of information. They had to go to the Sanctuary to verify the truth, but if the Sorcerer was at the Sanctuary, it would not be safe for one wizard to transfer there, even momentarily. They would need to go together, as the Gyre—which left the problem of what to do with the Warlock.

  “We could kill him,” suggested the Mentalist.

  They considered this for a long moment.

  “No, we need his skills,” the Senior disagreed. “We are forever weaker if he is dead.”

  “But he uses them against us, for crying out loud!” the Mentalist argued.

  “I agree with the Mentalist,” said the Lorewarden. “He is too great a risk to have as an adversary. He knows too much. Let us end him now and if it turns out that the threat to the Sanctuary was a lie, then it shall be a lie that costs him his life.”

  “No!” the Cosmologer objected. “I will not stand for it! Have you heard nothing he has said? He is pretending to be allied to Chaos only to earn the Sorcerer’s trust.” She had taken the form of a sickly violet-spotted child in a bilious green dress for the purposes of the ambush. It was a truer representation of her character, in many ways, thought Zarost.

  “Oh, come now, Cosmologer!” exclaimed the Mentalist. “He has led the Sorcerer to the Sanctuary! What more could he do to prove his guilt?”

  “He’s just saying that! I don’t believe he has done it.”

  “Yet you believe the other things he has said?”

  “Your judgement is clouded, Cosmologer,” said the Spiritist.

  “You cannot redeem him by protecting him, Cosmologer,” Zarost added. “He has been corrupted by Chaos.”

  The Cosmologer turned on him. “You! You have no right to speak like that! I will still spend days chasing down the Chaos you reflected with your ill-considered spell. Should we kill you too, then? The Gods know I’ve wanted to, but I vowed to protect you as I vowed to protect the Warlock. We are the Gyre. If we turn upon ourselves, then we fall apart.”

  Words she could well consider herself Zarost turned away from the Cosmologer. There was no use arguing—it would only escalate, and as they argued they lost time. What could they do with the traitor? The Warlock still couldn’t move, he continued to face the sky. He had known they would be divided. He had known he was safe from execution.

  “We’ll just have to leave him,” said the Mentalist. “He’ll stay pinned down.”

  “Not for long,” the Senior noted.

  “Yes, but long enough!” said the Mentalist. “We shall return here once the Sanctuary is safe.”

  “Yes, very well,” said the Senior. “Spiritist? Cosmologer? You agree with that?”

  They nodded, but Zarost knew that without at least one wizard to tend the anchors, the flows of essence would weaken with time. The Warlock would be able to chip away at his prison, layer by layer, until he was free. Was that a glimmer of a smile on the Warlock’s dark lips?

  As the others disengaged from the containment spell, the Lorewarden stepped forward. Zarost watched with interest as he drew designs over the Warlock with his fingers, leaving puffs of white in the air which sank upon the Warlock. Oh, that was a good idea. The smile slipped from the Warlock’s face. He tried to hold his breath, so Zarost gave him a hard kick in the belly. The Warlock gasped and fought against the gas then, but at last his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped against the earth where he was held within a net of golden essence in his hollow in the centre of the ruined tavern in the fortress town of Slipper.

  The Mystery was still retrieving the Kingsrim, but there was no time to track her down. She would look after herself. The Gyre had to save the Sanctuary and Tabitha, dear Tabitha! Zarost chose his destination point carefully, so that he would appear in a hidden corner of the chambers. Infinity came and went in a flash of consciousness. Like falcons fired from the sky, the wizards of the Gyre came upon their temple of collected knowledge, the vault of civilisation and the guard-house of Order.

  Instead of the austere room, Zarost found empty air. The collapsed remains of the building, awash with fatal wildfire, far below his feet. He had already fallen half the way to the ground before he snapped his attention back to the crossing point of infinity.

  Chaos! Upon the sacred chambers! The Warlock hadn’t lied, and it had happened so fast. It had taken them all by surprise. Chaos! He re-emerged upon the sand, clear of the deadly waste. Zarost’s stomach drop away in horror. Thick black smoke hissed through the jagged combs of the splintered walls. Clouds of ash idled upward into the low and brooding sky. A brittle moon rode on the backs of the shredded clouds, throwing dirty silver light upon the sands. The air was tense, too dirty. The wreckage of the chambers hadn’t settled yet. Something organic had been made amid the wildfire—such an acrid stench would
not come off the shattered masonry alone. In places, the earth bubbled and spat.

  There was no sign of the Lifesinger. She would not have survived against this. Ametheus was too wild, too reckless—too angry. Remorse flooded Zarost. Oh Tabitha! We should not have abandoned you! And yet, they could not have foreseen the attack. It was unprecedented. The Sorcerer had not abandoned his power seat in Turmodin for centuries, yet he had used the Transference he had been offered by the Warlock. He had come upon the Sanctuary. He was close. Where was he? Zarost tried to see in every direction at once.

  A figure appeared over the ruins. The Mentalist. He had been dressed as a Hunter with a tangle of braids, but like the others, in his haste, he returned from infinity without the disguise, reformed upon his residual self image, dressed in his hempflax garments. He ran on the floor, which was no longer there, then the Mentalist was falling. A moment later he was gone then Zarost felt the gentle pressure of his arrival behind him.

  “Living hell, but it was made of fortified stone!” exclaimed the Mentalist. “How does he burn it?”

  “If you change stone to wood then it will burn well and good.”

  “If he can strike this far from Turmodin, he can strike anywhere,” the Mentalist said in a hushed voice. He came up beside Zarost and scanned the wreckage with a skittering gaze. The Senior and Cosmologer were there, approaching from some distance away.

  “We should split up!” the Mentalist called out. “We are too vulnerable—all of us could be wiped out in one single blast! We must leave!”