Modern Magick

Music and Misadventure: 16

Some half an hour later, a period of intense search on the part of the three sprites, and the four of us as well, it was Descant who suddenly screamed, 'I FOUND IT!'

Her sisters rushed to her side, as did Jay and I, though there was nothing to see. She had hold of a fine, large bubble in her small fist, its shell pearly-white, and she waved it around in triumph. 'It's the oldest of all the old ones! Here, Cadence, see if it isn't the oldest.' And she delivered the melody into her sister's hands with a flourish.

Cadence considered it closely. 'It is well-found, Descant. We will see if the lyre remembers.'

'How old is the lyre?' asked Jay.

I looked at it, but being unfamiliar with Yllanfalen aesthetic history I was unable to determine anything to the purpose at all. Except that it was pretty. So very, very pretty... its curves shone moon-bright, and its strings flowed like sunglow on the sea—

'Ves,' said Jay, and gently turned me around until my back was to the lyre.

'Thanks,' I sighed. 'Why does it do that?'

'Maybe it's because you've got those pipes. Like calls to like.'

My adored Great Treasure was proving to be almost as much a liability as a boon, here in this place of its making. That seemed unfair.

I heard music, then, and cautiously turned back around. Cadence had done I-don't-know-what with the melody, and now the lyre was playing it by itself, its fluid strings rippling in song as an ancient, haunting air filled the echoing library.

I hastily turned my back to it again. Curse the thing, it was almost agonisingly pretty.

'What's this song?' said my father.

'The King's Lament,' said Cadence.

'A song of mourning.'

'Yes.'

It did not sound sufficiently lamenting, to my ear, to qualify as a dirge, but then different cultures do mourn in different ways. This was a hopeful tune, and perhaps that was fitting enough.

Once the song's final strains had died away, though, the lyre lapsed into a thrumming silence, ostensibly unchanged.

Father picked it up and played an experimental note. 'Ineffectual,' he pronounced.

'In what fashion?' said Cadence.

'I want to restore the lyre to its state prior to the events of thirty years ago. Before Ayllindariorana altered its song—'

'Ayllin?!' said Jay and I together.

'That woman?' said Mother.

My father looked helplessly at the three of us, nonplussed. 'You've met.'

'She's the one who guided us through to the vault,' I said. 'She's the reason we found you at all.'

'But why would she do that? She hates me.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm sure. She wanted to install herself as queen, not me.'

'Why?' I said.

He blinked. 'What?'

'Why did she want to be queen so badly?'

'I never asked.' He snorted. 'I hadn't time. They were too busy throwing me out.'

'They who? Was Ayllin one of them?'

'I can't remember.'

Jay and I exchanged a long look. 'Doesn't make sense,' said Jay.