Songs of the Dying Earth

It was after one such had made excessively libidinous suggestions to her that Saloona, aggrieved, unclasped the necklace, muttered an activating charm, and crushed the first of the toxic vesicles beneath his nostrils.

“A sumptuous odor,” the courtier leered. Immediately, he loosed a disarming squeal and fell onto his back, wriggling arms and legs agitatedly before expiring into a sudden, deep slumber.

Saloona regarded her handiwork, then began to make her way across the crowded atrium. Every few steps, she would remove another vesicle, invoke the appropriate incantation, and crush the gemlike receptable between her fingertips. She did not pause to look back until she had made a circuit of the room and deployed every fungal poison. Only then did she turn and, with a self-satisfied smile, note the startling perturbation in the crowd.

First one and then another merrymaker leapt into the air, thrashing and whirling as with St. Vitus Dance, and as quickly dropped to the floor, insensible. Others froze in place like costumed statuary. Still others began to laugh with rash hilarity, then, with maddened eyes, tore off their garments and raced through the atrium, crowing like cockerels and gargle-doves.

“Sweet Bentha’s hips, the King’s lunacy has contaged them!” a courtier exclaimed.

Saloona stood on tiptoe, and observed a tall figure racing toward the royal dais. The fire witch dashed onto the platform, flinging aside dancers and musicians and janissaries until she stood before the King, who screamed with laughter when he saw her.

“Here’s a cormorant to be caught by tickling!” he cried, and attempted to grasp her by the waist. “Long have I awaited your return to our jolly company! Come, dance with me, sweet sot!”

“Cymbolus Paeolina!”

The fire witch’s voice rang through the atrium. Gasps could be heard at the sound of the King’s given name, and a few improvident guffaws. But the King only swayed back and forth, laughter burbling from his flaccid lips as the fire witch raised her arm.

“Witness now the destruction of your witless lineage!” she cried. “Let bones and sinews be the harmonium upon which your last gavot is played!”

Dreadful light candled Paytim Noringal’s eyes. Her wristlets melted into strands of hissing gold; the basilisk comb bared its teeth. She lifted her hand, displaying a wand of glaring adamant, aflicker with abstruse numerals and unknown symbols. A fiery line traversed its length, and the rod split in two parts, each ablaze with clefs and breves and mediants, forking clews and fabrudans; every one an eidolon of some arcane note or tongue or hymn.

Saloona blinked, too stunned to flee or even move, as with a piercing cry the fire witch raised the wands above her head and struck one against the other. Silence, save for the ragged breathing of the King.

It is a fraud, thought Saloona, and from within the crowd heard similar sighs and expressions of relief.

Quickly, she turned to go, deeming this an expeditious time to return to her ship, when from somewhere high above sounded a single note of penetrating sweetness.

Saloona froze, enraptured. Such a note might Estragal have blown upon his yellow reed when he first played morning to the Earth, and roused dawn from deep within the dreaming sea. She began to weep, recalling a girlhood afternoon when she fell asleep among a field of coral fungus and fairy clubs, and woke to a sky painted with shooting stars.

Never had she heard such music! The lingering note suffused her with benevolence, a taste as of hydromel upon her tongue; and every face she saw reflected her own, mingling rapture and regret, desire and satiation; transport and pensive yearning.

All save Paytim Noringal’s. With acrobatic intensity, she dismounted from the dais, paused to imbibe the contents of a small vial, and fled toward the door.

Saloona frowned. Her rapture faded into a dim memory of something less pleasant, a more astringent flavor upon her tongue…

The Ubiquitous Antidote.

Frantically, she sought within the folds of her silken gown for the reticule containing her pharmacopoeia. Her fingers tore at its ribands, dug inside to retrieve the crystal vial. Saloona unstoppered it and brought it to her mouth.

Only a droplet touched her tongue. In disbelief, she tapped it against her lips, then inspected it more closely.

The vial had been emptied.

Perfidious fire witch!

Too late, Paytim’s betrayal grew plain: she had insisted that Saloona come along solely to make use of her prism ship and steal her share of the Antidote, doubling her own protection. At this moment, she would be stealing another conveyance outside, while her naive neighbor perished from Paytim’s treachery. Desperately, Saloona sucked at the crystal tube, attempting to absorb some particle of resistance before she succumbed to the Black Peal.