Songs of the Dying Earth

“I am curious as to what use a musical charm might be to one as learned in the incendiary arts as yourself.”

Paytim stared at the rod in her lap. She frowned, then flicked her fingers as though they were wet. A thread of flame appeared in the air, darkened to smoke that, as it dispersed, left a fluttering fold of purple velvet that fell onto Paytim’s knee. Quickly, she draped it around the silver rod. Both rod and cloth disappeared.

“There,” she said, and Saloona noted the relief in her tone. “For a day and a night, we can mention it with impunity.” She sighed, staring down at the foothills of Cobalt Mountain. “I have been summoned to the Paeolinas’ court to attend the coronation after-ball.”

“I was unaware the Queen was ill.”

“The Queen was not aware of it either,” replied Paytim. “Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.”

“An occasion for celebration. The charm is then a gift for him?”

“Only insofar as death is that benefaction offered by envious gods to humankind. My intent is to destroy the entire lineage of Paeolina, so that I will never again be subjected to their abhorrent notions of festivity.”

“It seems excessive,” suggested Saloona.

“You have never eaten with them.”

For several minutes, they sat without talking. The prism ship hummed high above the trees, arrowing homeward. A red-dimmed fog enveloped the sky as the dying sun edged toward the horizon, and the first mal-de-mutes began to keen far below.

Finally, Saloona turned to the fire witch, her gray eyes guileless. “And you feel that this — spell — will be more provident than your own fire charms?”

“I feel nothing. I know that this is a charm of great power that relies upon some subtle manipulation of harmonics, rather than pyrotechny. In the unlikely event that there are survivors besides ourselves, or an inquest, I will not be an obvious suspect.”

“And my innocence?”

A flurry of sparks as Paytim made a dismissive gesture and pointedly looked away from Saloona. “You are a humble fungalist, awed by very mention of the Crimson Messuage and its repugnant dynasty. Your innocence is irrefutable.”

The mal-de-mutes’ wails rose to a fervid pitch as the prism ship began its long descent to Saloona’s farmstead, and the humble fungalist gazed thoughtfully into the enveloping darkness.

Paytim was understandably disgruntled over the destruction of her home, and, to Saloona’s chagrin, showed little interest in preparing breakfast the next morning, or even assisting her hostess as Saloona banged about the tiny kitchen, looking for clean or cleanish skillets and the bottle of vitrina oil she’d last used three years before.

“Your cooking skills seem to have atrophied,” Paytim observed. She sat at the small twig table, surrounded by baskets of dried fungus and a shining array of alembics, pipettes, crucibles, and the like, along with discarded circuits and motherboards for the prism ship, and a mummified mouse. Luminous letters scrolled across a panel beside the table, details and deadlines related to various charms and receipts, several of which were due to be completed the next morning. “I miss my basilisk.”

“My skills never approached your own. It seems a waste of time to improve them.” Saloona located the bottle of vitrina oil, poured a small amount into a rusty saucepan, and adjusted the heating coil. When the oil spattered, she tossed in several large handfuls of dove-like tricholomas and some fresh ramps, then poked them with a spoon. “You have yet to advise me as to how I will address the customer whose charm you ruined.”

Paytim scowled. The divining rod sat upon the table beside her, still wrapped in its Velvet Bolt of invisibility. She waved her hand above it tentatively, waited until the resulting flurry of silver sparks disappeared before replying. “That flaccid oaf? I have seen to him.”

“How?”

“An ustulating spell directed at his paramour’s bathing chamber. The squireen has been reduced to ash. The optimate’s need to retain his affection has therefore diminished.”

Saloona’s nostrils flared. “That was cruel and unwarranted,” she said, and tossed another bunch of ramps into the skillet.

“Pah. The optimate has already taken another lover. You are being uncharacteristically sentimental.”

Saloona inhaled sharply, then turned back to the stove. Paytim was correct: this was more emotion than Saloona had displayed, or felt, in decades.

The realization unnerved her. And her dismay was not assuaged by the thought that this unaccustomed flicker of sensation had manifested itself after Paytim had uttered aloud the names of the harmonic spell that was, for the moment, contained by the Velvet Bolt.

Saloona shook the saucepan with more vigor than necessary. Since that moment in the tower, she continued to hear a low, tuneless humming in her ears, so soft she might have mistaken it for the song of bees, or the night wind stirring the firs outside her bedroom window.