The Seeds of Dissolution

by William C. Tracy

  Soon they were bumping along the city streets in the carriage, the seven of them squashed together. Sam was between the twins, trying to bleed away his tension. Mhalaro’s knees were in Sam’s legs, and Caroom took up two seats.

  As they left the town, Sam was pushed back by a sudden rush of speed. They tilted into a curve and Sam clutched at Inas’ knee, his other hand digging for his watch.

  Inas laughed, the movement pulling his lips wide. “Look outside.”

  Sam risked a glance across Majus Cyrysi’s chest. They were flying across the landscape, at least thirty or forty miles an hour, but the carriage’s suspension had smoothed to a gentle roll. Sam stared back to Inas, then to Enos, on the other side.

  “There were too expensive for our—our family to use.” Enos barely paused on the word. “System Beasts are useful for quick transportation, and I do not think Majus Cyrysi wants to wait any longer.”

  Their conversation fell off, and Sam listened to the snatches back and forth between the Etanela professor and Majus Cyrysi about what they would do when they got to the site of the Drain. It was over his head, both magically and technologically.

  The whole time, the System Beasts’ pace never faltered, and the carriage swayed gently side to side, though the road was simple packed dirt. One of the maji—probably Councilor Ayama—had thought to buy flatbread, a cheese spread, and dried fruit for the road, and they ate on the way, Majus Cyrysi grumbling about how none of the food moved. Sam judged the journey was a couple hours long, but it gave him time to cool off. I have to be strong for Inas and Enos when we get there. It’s like if they went back with me to the house. Thoughts of Aunt Martha traded off against spikes of adrenaline when he looked out the window. He let his mind work through things, safe against the warmth of Inas and Enos.

  They were hot from the stifling carriage when it finally stopped near a giant depression not far from the road, the sun sinking. Everyone piled out, and Sam looked around for something else to mark this place. He expected panic to tug at his throat. Am I getting used to new places? I should be frozen, with so many new people and places in one day. He would need a day to himself when they got back, but for now, his breathing was under control, his heartbeat only a little fast.

  Caroom creaked like a tree in a storm, stretching their arms out wide. Inas brushed dust off his yellow silk shirt. Majus Cyrysi and the professor stomped off, talking back and forth at high speed. Councilor Ayama had her hands out toward the oxen-like System Beasts, white and olive ringing her hands. Steam was rising from the creature’s backs, and Sam was surprised to see they bent their necks, tearing chunks of grass and leaves away from the ground and nearby bushes.

  “I didn’t know they ate—” He turned to the twins to find them pale, watching the depression where Majus Cyrysi gestured next to the professor. The Etanela was unpacking things from the case that caught the sun’s light.

  “We don’t have to go over there,” he said quickly. Is this what it would be like if—when—I go back to Earth? What if I went back where my parents— “Come on.” He grabbed for Inas’ hand. “We can sit in the carriage for a little—”

  “Sam, you should be practicing the application of song with me,” Majus Cyrysi called from a distance. Sam winced.

  “Go, if you are able,” Inas told him. “We will be fine here.” His voice was steady, but Sam saw how his friend clasped his hands together. Enos had her chin high, looking across the treetops further down the road.

  “Sorry,” Sam told them. The words were not enough. They’ve helped me so much, and I’m walking away from them. He looked away, guilty, and walked toward the majus and the scientist. His steps were shaky. It’s not like something’s going to swallow me up. This is my chance to find out more about the Drains. Keep going.

  Majus Cyrysi was standing at the edge of a vast, raw chasm of dirt, the towering Etanela next to him looking like an oversized cotton swab with his mane of brown hair waving in a slight wind. Sam carefully stopped a body length away from the edge and peered down. It was large enough to make his heart race, and his throat tighten.

  “We need to be getting a sample of dirt from the center of the depression—as close to the Drain’s epicenter as possible,” Majus Cyrysi said.

  “Can we—can we climb down?” Sam asked. The sides were strangely smooth, like the dirt had been compressed and polished. He could see rocks, and further down, boulders, cut in half and polished to a reflective shine.

  His mentor shook his head, crest rippling. Frustrated? Dismissive? It was harder to read the Kirian now they were out of the Nether. Nothing gave Sam any hints. He found he missed the mental cues.

  “Much easier to be using the Symphony, and it will give us a chance to practice. Be following my lead.” Majus Cyrysi raised a hand, swaths of yellow sweeping from him down over the side of the pit. Sam closed his eyes. Each time it was easier to find the music of the Symphony. Stay calm. It’s there. Prove you’re useful for once.

  There was buzzing, as if a huge bee flew nearby, then the melody of this area erupted in his mind, and Sam gasped. The amount of interconnected melodies threatened to overwhelm him. Small animals nearby twittered in cadenzas of desires and threats. The air was a turbulent fugue of shifting patterns. Even the trees and earth passed metronomic messages of time and shifts in the ground. Sam stepped further from the ledge, panting. Too much. He looked away. Professor Riteno was connecting pieces to a large contraption of metal pipes with a glass bulb at the end. It looked scientific.

  “Focus, boy,” his mentor said. “I am certain you can do this too. Simply listen for what I do.”

  Sam forced his way into the melody swirling though his mind—the Symphony of Communication. He ignored most of the music, listening to a forming counterpoint in the fugue of the air, new notes playing over and over, countering those that defined the wind. At points around the bottom of the chasm, little dust storms gathered samples of dirt. Beside him, Majus Cyrysi was pale, but kept his hands moving, long fingers splayed as if he was conducting. Sam heard more music appear, coming, he knew, from the majus’ own song.

  I can do it this time. Always before, he had failed. Sam breathed in crisp mountain air. Maybe this will help Enos and Inas, too, make up for me leaving them. He grasped at the little rondos of air currents, notes slipping away from him.

  Like this. Form these notes. Keep them in your head. Put them here. Change the Symphony to your purpose.

  Like someone was showing him the way, he found the notes of his own melody, coursing through his being, like musical DNA. He struck each note, heard how it behaved. They could be placed to affect the physical world. He gripped one and tore it away from his being, kept it from slipping back. He took more, feeling as if he were running up a steeper and steeper slope. Each note he placed into the melody of the air, copying the rondos Majus Cyrysi made.

  Another patch of dirt stirred at the bottom of the chasm—a feeble wind compared to his mentor’s. Sam looked down, realizing he was reaching out, yellow droplets forming like beads of water at his fingertips. They dripped, fading to nothingness.

  “That is the way,” Majus Cyrysi said, and the approval in his words jostled Sam back to reality. He only kept hold of the music with an effort. “Keep at it. Your wind should be following mine.”

  There is no anxiety in the Grand Symphony, Sam realized. There couldn’t be. The effort took all of his concentration. He added more of his notes to the little melody, bringing the whirlwind toward them. He held his breath as it moved, skimming bits of dirt closer.

  The professor had laid a plate beside his device of metal and glass, like something seen in a mad scientist’s lab. Majus Cyrysi’s winds obediently placed their samples of dirt in little piles, then dissipated. Sam’s followed slower, erratically, as he bit his lip, adjusting measures in the strains of music. Where Majus Cyrysi’s composition was a classical masterpiece played on a Stradivarius, Sam’s creation was a squeaky recital. His hand, s
till outstretched, shook with the effort to bring the whirlwind to the plate.

  “Reclaim your notes,” the majus explained, “and the wind will die.”

  Sam blinked, then grabbed at the little rondo he had made, the notes slipping back into him. The wind died, depositing dirt in a swath, half on, half off Professor Riteno’s plate. Sam breathed in deeply, as some part of him he hadn’t realized was missing returned. I changed the melody. Then he saw the mess of samples on the scientist’s metal plate.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” he told the Etanela, who gave him a confused look from several feet above Sam’s head.

  “A good first attempt,” his mentor congratulated him. The Kirian was breathing heavily, his crest in disarray. “Maybe I will be bringing you outside more often when I want you to understand what I teach.”

  Professor Riteno was looking back and forth between then with a blank look.

  Sam realized his hands were shaking. “I did it. I didn’t have an attack. I did it.” He looked up to the Etanela with a smile. “I can help organize the samples.”

  Professor Riteno stared back through his little glasses, head moving left to right, his body never quite still, as with the other Etanela Sam had observed.

  Majus Cyrysi glanced between them quickly. “Ah. I am forgetting. It is to be your first time outside the Nether. You will be able to understand others here, as you are a majus and have been in the Nether, but they will not know what you say unless you speak in their language.”

  Sam’s mentor turned to the professor and repeated a similar explanation, though it seemed to be in the same language. Had the two been speaking in professor Riteno’s language the whole time?

  He wanted to ask more, but his mentor held up a hand. “You will be tired, and Mhalaro and I have much work to do, determining what and who has left impressions on this material. Maybe later, you will be helping to gather more samples.” His crest was waving, and Majus Cyrysi kept glancing to the plate while he spoke.

  Sam let them get to their experiment. His thoughts went back to the twins. Are they alright without me? He left the two talking animatedly.

  The councilor and Majus Caroom were setting up tents, and Sam eyed the hastening twilight. His hands clenched at the thought of sleeping under the sky. Maybe the twins—

  “Where are they?” he asked the councilor. He didn’t see them.

  Councilor Ayama brushed a stray hair back that had escaped her braid. “They went off that way.” She pointed, then made the hand into a warning. “They need to do this, Sam. I’m sure you understand getting used to changes in your life.”

  Cold, seeping into my hands. Aunt Martha’s eyes, staring at nothing.

  “I’m going to be with them,” Sam told her.

  “This one is certain Inas would appreciate your, hmm, company, Sam,” Majus Caroom said. They were methodically connecting braces, to a chorus of pops and creaks. Sam wasn’t sure how many came from the supports and how many from the Benish. “That one has told much of you, and in this one’s experience, a friend may be able to, hmm, dull many troubles.”

  The councilor pondered Majus Caroom for a moment. “You know, I think you’re right.” She turned back to Sam. “Enos obviously enjoys your time with her, though she doesn’t share quite as much as Inas seems to. Go help them out.”

  The affirmations blazing in his chest, Sam backed away from the maji. He found Enos and Inas on the far edge of the crater, next to what used to be a vehicle of some kind. Small metal and wood wheels held it just off the ground. It was in the process of collapsing into rusting metal and gray wood, deteriorated far past where it should be in a few weeks’ time. Half of it was sheared away. As he came abreast of the ruin, the profile lined up with the edge of the crater, on a smooth curve. The cut through the metal was clean as a razor’s, the material shiny. The twins were standing close together, silent. They shifted apart to let Sam slide between them, in his usual place with Inas on his right, Enos on his left. He grasped for their hands, for once not even feeling his own anxiety.

  “I’m sorry,” he told them.

  “You apologize a lot for things that are not your fault.” Enos turned her half-smile on him. Even for a smile, it looked sad.

  “Can I do…anything?” Sam asked.

  Inas shook his head, then rested it on Sam’s shoulder. “Just stay with us. We must grieve, and then we will be in harmony again.”

  Aunt Martha’s head, heavy on my leg. Cold.

  “My aunt raised me since I was eight,” Sam said. He swallowed. He hadn’t meant to say the words. “After my parents died, when we were on a vacation, she took me in. She was a strong woman. If the Drain hadn’t—” Sam broke off, trying to breathe around the hard spot in his throat. He forced the words out. “If the Drain hadn’t killed her, I think she would have lived a lot longer.” His voice wavered higher.

  There was silence for several minutes. Did I say too much? Did I not say enough? Did I talk about myself too much? He had almost decided to step away, to leave the two in peace.

  “Our parents were the heads of our caravan,” Enos said. “There were not—are not—many people like us left—” She stopped suddenly, taking in a deep breath. Inas, on Sam’s other side, lifted his head away and Sam instantly missed the warmth.

  “Your family—you mean merchants?” He didn’t even know what to ask about them. This was a completely different world.

  “We traded with all the species of the Great Assembly,” Inas said. “Father would show us how that species lived, what their customs were. We learned so much, but never really belonged anywhere.”

  Sam hugged both of them closer. “Even if none of us have families, we still have our friends.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Calamity

  -Dalhni is one of the largest cities on Methiem, rivaling Kashidur City. But where Kashidur City is tall, polished, and gleaming, Dalhni is sprawling, foggy, and murderous.

  From “A Travel Atlas of Methiem”

  “Tell me you have something, Ori.”

  Origon shook his head at Rilan. The sun was just climbing over the horizon. Mhalaro, Caroom, and he had worked all night, and he was exhausted.

  “We are finding nothing about the Drain,” he told her, feeling his crest spike in frustration. “If I had been able to study the occurrence on Methiem’s moon with the song—but that is the whole issue, yes? The underlying vibration of the universe cannot touch it, and we are having similar problems with scientific equipment.”

  “Every test is the same,” Mhalaro muttered, approaching with Caroom. “I’ve stripped out all of the variables, but there is nothing left.” The Etanela took off his little glasses and rubbed at his eyes, red from staring at numbers all night. His words strung together in his emotion, almost no space between. Rilan squinted her eyes at him; even Origon struggled to understand when the professor was tired.

  “Tell me I haven’t risked the wrath of the Council for nothing,” Rilan asked, stumbling over words. She was less fluent than he in Etan’s dialects, and Mhalaro was woefully ignorant in the trader’s tongue. “Ori? Mhalaro? Caroom?”

  “There is, hmm, no burning, no melting, no atomic deconstruction,” Caroom answered. They scratched one arm with a sound like a rasp on bark. “It is as if this ground has always been thus.”

  “It was no mistake Origon’s skills as a majus could not touch it,” Mhalaro said. He looked like he was only half-following the conversation. “There is no trace of what caused this. It can’t be natural.”

  Rilan leaned in. She spoke slowly, probably in the main dialect of Etan, though Origon couldn’t hear the difference. There were downsides to being able to understand all languages. “You say it isn’t natural. As in, someone made it, or not of this universe?”

  Mhalaro thought for a moment, frowning. “Either, or both. There should be residue. With as many tests as I have run, I should find a change at the boundary layer.”

  “Then
if there’s nothing, we have to go back,” Rilan said to Origon. “I know Mhalaro’s reputation as well as you do.” The Etanela straightened a little at the compliment, even under the extra weight the Methiemum homeworld put on his shoulders.

  Origon let his crest flare in disbelief. For the effort to come out here, they could at least run a few more tests. It was not like her to give up so easily. Her mouth was pinched, and a suspicion crept over Origon. “You are in a hurry. What is it you are not telling us?”

  Rilan drew in a long breath, wearing an expression he had only seen a few times, in the over twenty cycles he had known her. “I may not have told you everything two nights ago.”

  Origon screwed his eyes closed, dreading her next words. He treasured Rilan’s tenacity, while foraging through the swamps of Lobath, or the deserts of Sath Home. That tenacity had gotten her elected as the youngest councilor in recent history, and she was good at it, too, even if it had taken her from him. However, Rilan could get so focused it clouded her better judgment. The results were always spectacular. What had she done this time?

  “I told you both I and Bofan were attacked, and the Council wanted to pin both on Aridori, though they clearly were not responsible.”

  Origon nodded, hesitant. “I am remembering that.”

  Rilan bit her lip. “I escaped relatively unscathed—” She paused, looking to Caroom and Mhalaro. The Etanela looked confused. So she wasn’t speaking for his ears. Caroom’s green eyes were dim with concern. “Bofan did not. He’s dead, and the Council will vote on a new head of the House of Power, while keeping the whole thing quiet. I gave my recommendation, though the Council won’t listen.” She looked at Origon, her skin blotchy with anger and embarrassment. Origon drew in a slow, long breath, his hands clutching the sides of his robe. This was bad. No, this was unheard of.

  “Councilor Bofan A’Tof is, hmm, dead?” Caroom said, their voice carefully level.