Trion Rising, page 4
“Sure.” Oriannon caught her breath. “It is.”
“So if you have any other … uh, incidents, you just let me know and I’ll take another look. Right now, though, you just go back to class. Nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Oriannon tried not to notice where the probe hovered, silent and unblinking, once again hidden in the darkness. She felt for the earbud in her pocket, got up and backed away, while Nurse Anno took her hand.
“And … Oriannon?”
Oriannon paused, waiting.
“If you ever hear anything, ah … unusual in your orchestra class, anything the new mentor might say that makes you … uncomfortable, I want you to know you can always come to me. Remember, I’m your friend. And I’m here to help, understand?”
Oriannon wasn’t quite sure what Nurse Anno meant, but she nodded her head and took her hand back.
“Thanks,” Ori whispered. But even in the cozy, warm room, she couldn’t help shivering.
4
Hey, he hasn’t put you on the spot again. You okay now?
By the third day of the new term Oriannon hoped everyone had forgotten the scene she’d put on after forgetting the Aria Corista. Fortunately her instrument hadn’t suffered any more than a tweaked string after she’d dumped it on the floor that first day. Easy to fix.
She was also getting used to running earbud commentary from Margus Leek, comic relief, as if he was sitting in the chair right next to her and chatting the whole time. Which was kind of amusing, considering the rest of the class still couldn’t hear the two of them trading thoughts. Especially not Brinnin, since it would only fuel the silly romance rumors that girl was only too eager to spread.
Shh, she told him, and she had the hang of it now. No moving lips, no funny stares. Not even Mentor Jesmet seemed to notice. I want to hear this story.
“So the drummer from Shadowside quit his group,” the mentor told them, pacing the front of the room, his green robe flowing behind him. To make his points he tended to wave his own erhu like a baton, though it was nearly the size of a guitar. He should have known better than to treat it so, but he seemed more intent on the story than on the instrument. “He thought he would go solo.”
Which brought a laugh from the percussion section. Solo?
Jesmet shrugged and grinned. “Well, he was an excellent player. Gifted by the Maker. His dream was to make it big in the city, become rich and famous over the border in Corista.”
“But wait,” objected Carrick Trice, who played viol, third chair. She wrinkled her nose in confusion, the way she often did. “That doesn’t make sense. Everyone knows no one lives over there— in the dark, even! So how could they come here to Corista? That’s not realistic.”
Mentor Jesmet was about to explain himself, but Margus stood up in the back to wave her down.
“It’s just a story, Carrick. Let him finish.”
Now he was the one who wanted to listen. That was almost as funny as some of Margus’s jokes.
“My father says stories are a waste of time,” she snapped back as she adjusted her hair in the traditional tied-back style. “Unless it’s written in the Codex.”
Count on Carrick to make it sound spiritual, thought Oriannon. Maybe she didn’t mean anything by it, or maybe it just came out that way.
“If that’s true,” answered their mentor, his voice gentle and a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, “then perhaps you should think about not playing the viol.”
“Pardon?” Carrick’s face went pale and she sputtered a bit.
“I just meant that your viol isn’t mentioned in the Codex, either. It’s what you do with the instrument that matters, whom you play for. Not what goes into it, but the music that comes out.”
She opened her mouth to say something back, but must have changed her mind. Margus still obviously wanted to hear the rest, like everyone else in the room.
“So was this guy good enough to play the Grand Hall?” he asked, breaking the awkward silence. Jesmet smiled at them and went on.
“At first he thought he was, but …” Their mentor shook his head slightly, back into the rhythm of the story. “But the only jobs he could find were playing backup for groups in fight halls, where lonely people would gather to bet on fights between treb bears and yagwar. Do you understand the kind of thing I’m describing? These were dingy back alley establishments where the smoke and the Coristan beer were so thick no one could see him, in any case— not the type of place he would normally have visited had he still been living at home.”
Oriannon looked around the practice room to see everyone else in the band hanging on every word. She wasn’t sure where this story was going, or if it even was true. She wasn’t sure why they were all so fascinated, either. Perhaps it was more the way he said it, like a brook that you wanted to jump into, to float along and feel the current.
Or maybe it was just his singsong Northern accent. Either way, something was pulling them along. And the current of Jesmet’s words tugged, and tugged hard.
“His instrument was destroyed after just a few gigs,” Jesmet went on. “One of the other men in the fight hall became angry at some imagined slight, put his fist through it, and simply walked away.”
“Bummer,” commented Margus, and the rest of the orchestra nodded agreement. “Did he get it replaced?”
“Unfortunately he ran out of money, and the rest of his funds were stolen as well. He ended up cleaning the floors around the fight pits, then the bathrooms. You can imagine how distasteful that must have been.”
Carrick wrinkled her nose at the thought.
“Some solo career,” replied Margus. “He probably should have stayed put.”
Maybe Margus had forgotten where the drummer in the story came from. At this point it didn’t seem to matter.
“Exactly what he thought as he was scrubbing toilets,” replied Jesmet. “So can you guess what he did?”
Their mentor paused for a moment, maybe waiting for the question to sink in, maybe waiting for someone to answer. No one did.
“He quit his toilet-scrubbing job,” he finally told them, “and walked home— halfway across the continent and back to Shadow-side— to see if they’d hire him back just to carry their instruments. Even after what he’d been through, he imagined he could still do that.”
“Probably beat cleaning toilets,” quipped Margus, and some of the others giggled. Jesmet smiled.
“True. And the bandleader was so happy that he paid for a new drum out of his own pocket. Custom-made. He received his friend right back into the band, just as if he’d never left. They had missed him.”
“Happy ending, huh?” Margus obviously liked that part. “But, did all the other band members get new instruments too? Doesn’t sound like it would be fair if they didn’t, since they stuck with the band that whole time, right?”
“Actually, they didn’t.” Jesmet shook his head no, which didn’t make much sense to Oriannon, either. But it was his story, and she supposed he could end it any way he wanted. And this was all true? She asked, just to be sure.
“You decide.” Jesmet told them, and they all groaned. But now he was already heading out the door with his erhu snapped up in its worn leather case. “And while you’re deciding, bring your instruments along. It’s time for a little outdoor rehearsal in the Glades.”
That might be easy enough for those with their smaller instruments. The percussion boys, Margus included, grabbed what they could of the smaller drums and followed. And with a stern warning for them to stay close, Jesmet marched them right out the back door of the school, and out into the dappled shade of the terraced gardens and pools surrounding their whitewashed stone building. Carrick even followed, clutching her flawless viol. Maybe she wanted to hear another unrealistic story after all.
“Here?” asked Oriannon, but Jesmet wasn’t stopping at the reflecting pools or the flower gardens. For the next half-hour they kept pushing through fern grottoes and thick stands of elephant leaf and wild orchids. This was the Glades— a circle-shaped buffer of thick, watered forestland surrounding the school. Wilder than the gardens, but not as wild as the Outlying. Never mind the shade; as usual Margus was sweating in the heat— but of course he was always doing that in the seasonless, all-year summer of Corista. Were they outside? It would be warm.
“Concert in the Glades?” Oriannon asked, stopping to catch her breath and let some of the kids go by. She glanced around to see if Carrick had lagged behind.
“Why not?” Jesmet smiled at her, wiped his brow, and pointed to several moss-covered logs where they could sit down, where it might be a little cooler in the shade. Water trickled from a nearby irrigation pipe. “I always think music sounds better out here, where it’s designed to be played.”
“As long as Headmaster Knarl doesn’t find out.” Margus looked around at the dense green forest, and Oriannon thought the same thing. She also wondered why a security probe hadn’t followed them out here— or maybe it had, and it was just hiding in the flamboyan branches.
Did it matter now? Here she breathed in the heavy, perfumed scent of lonicera vines, sweet as honey, entwined around broad-leafed flame trees that helped form a canopy against the ever- present suns. The gentlest of breezes fanned the leaves around them, which set up a soft kind of rustling background. And all around they could hear the soft chirp of viria birds flittering about the branches … and then a piercing scream.
Oriannon froze for just a moment before running toward the sound. At the far end of the clearing she saw Carrick Trice inching backwards, away from the dark stare of a black yagwar. But way too slowly.
Oriannon caught her breath, then clapped her hands and shouted. The large wild cat bared its fangs and ignored them as it advanced on its prey. Still Carrick stumbled backwards, slower and slower, unable to escape the hypnotic stare of the animal. For this was how such a cat hunted, freezing anyone unlucky enough to be caught in its path.
And now the yagwar crouched …
But Jesmet knew how to whistle, two fingers in his mouth, and the piercing sound cut through the air like landing thrusters on a shuttle. Every bird that had been twittering in the forest canopy went silent as the echo faded and the students’ ears rang.
More than that, the yagwar stood up straight, as if on a leash, then raised his head only enough to meet Jesmet’s piercing blue eyes. And Jesmet now stepped across the clearing toward them, helping Carrick to her feet a few seconds later.
“You’ll find your lunch elsewhere today,” he said, almost too quietly to hear. Talking to the cat? He left no doubt when he stooped to stroke the cat’s ears, then motioned with his head. And a moment later the hunter had disappeared back into the dense underbrush of the gardens, while the kids gathered around a white-faced Carrick.
“That was wild!” said Margus, keeping an eye on the bushes like everyone else. “You don’t think—”
“He’s not coming back.” The way Jesmet said it sounded just as final as his command to the yagwar, so much that Oriannon had no doubt. “Just stay by me from now on, the way I told you. Do you understand?”
Carrick nodded slowly and picked up her viol where she’d dropped it in a soft bed of leaves, but didn’t say a word.
“And we still have some music to practice,” said their mentor, “don’t we?”
After all that, Oriannon didn’t see how they were going to sit in the Glades and practice the Simfonia Seramina. But somehow she still found a place to sit under the flame trees, the flamboyan, along with the rest of the class. She took her erhu out of its carrying case, tuned up the strings, and got ready to play. What else could she do? And then once again she heard Margus’s voice in her earbud.
Hey, Oriannon, you know what a faithbreaker is?
She looked around at the group of them, about fifty-five kids, just to be sure no one else heard. No matter what, this thought transceiver still took some getting used to.
Of course I know. She looked straight ahead. Mentor Jesmet was helping a clarinetist find her music.
So tell me, Your Majesty.
He waited. Oh, brother. Was this some kind of exam? Oriannon sighed.
A faithbreaker is anyone who speaks with the spirits of animals and the dead, magicians and diviners, shamans. Someone who tears apart the faith and undermines what we believe. Which is, of course, all forbidden in the Codex— chapter twelve, verse two.
And the penalty? He wasn’t giving up on this.
You know it’s banishment, Margus. Being sent away for the rest of your life. But come on, that’s just in the Codex. Stories. It’s not like there are any real people today who are as evil as a faithbreaker. Like we have to worry about it or anything.
Margus had an answer for everything.
That’s what I used to think, Ori, but I think we just saw one in action.
She had to ponder for a moment before she realized what he was trying to say. Could he really mean …
You’re kidding. Not Mentor Jesmet?
He didn’t answer, which meant yes. She felt a shiver run up her spine.
Now you’re just being weird, Margus. The heat’s getting to you, again. This always happens when you go outside.
But I’m not being weird, Ori, and the heat is not getting to me. Didn’t you see what happened when he whistled?
Anybody can whistle. She wasn’t giving him this argument quite so easily.
Maybe. But what about when he talked to the yagwar? Didn’t you see that?
Sure, but just because he chased away a wild animal doesn’t mean he’s talking to spirits.
I’m telling you, Ori, he’s a faithbreaker, and if he is …
He didn’t get to finish as Mentor Jesmet raised his arms for them to begin. For a moment Oriannon thought the horrible fog that had once made her forget might be returning, but she choked it away, the same way she choked away Margus’s crazy words. Why did she even bother to keep wearing the earbud? She should have taken it out a long time ago.
“Ready?” Jesmet asked them. “Everyone please put their handhelds down. No handhelds. Just real life. Real music.”
As a couple of students groaned, Oriannon looked up at their mentor’s concentration. There was no mistaking that the life had left his eyes. No laugh remained, no sparkle. He wiped at the perspiration on his forehead with the back of his hand. When he glanced at her, she had to look away.
And she didn’t know how, but once more she had the feeling that somehow he’d heard. Somehow.
“So we begin,” he told them, and the students all raised their instruments in unison. Oriannon caught a glimpse over her shoulder at Margus, still staring at Mentor Jesmet with a frown on his face.
A faithbreaker?
5
Oriannon felt more than heard the gentle knock, which could only mean her father. Who else?
“It’s open.” She looked up from her Seer Codex study book to see him peering in through the doorway to her room.
“Oriannon?” He hadn’t yet changed out of his green Assembly robe, meaning he must have come home early from his meetings. “Got a moment?”
She caught her breath, wondering what was coming. After what had happened in school that day— or actually, what had happened in the Glades with Mentor Jesmet and the yagwar, she’d actually been waiting for her father to say something about it. But of course he couldn’t already know what had happened unless someone had told him. She decided quickly she would not be the first.
“Sure.” She put down her stylus and scooted back the chair. She was bored with memorizing precepts anyway.
“Actually …” He didn’t uncross his arms and the wrinkles never left his forehead, and he waved his hand at her holo media screen to mute the sound. “Why don’t you take a little break from your studies, get some fresh air with me out on the terrace.”
She hesitated a moment, but grabbed her shades and followed him out the back door and onto the gravel path. Their landscaped terraces cascaded to a show pond fringed with royal palms and cerise bushes, always studded with unscented pink blossoms. They looked nice, but unfortunately smelled like nothing.
Beyond the valley below and off to the north stretched the gently rolling Plains of Izula, dotted by low white stucco homes and criss-crossed with the tidy patterns of irrigated gardens and orchards in all shades of green, carefully tended and watered, covered with a fluffy violet blanket of haze to match the always clear sky. Shuttles broke orbit here and there, returning to land after voyages to other nearby moons.
And if she could have seen it, in the farthest distance lay the Security Zone and the forbidden border with Shadowside. Only a cooling breeze from that direction gave any hint of the place. But of course no one even talked about the Security Zone, much less Shadowside, which was just wild darkness and dead ice, period.
Right now she just wondered why her father would drag her out here in full sun with only the brief shadow of their palm trees for protection. Still he removed his own shades and looked at her directly, blinking away the brightness. His face looked pale and tight, with black circles under his eyes, as if he had not been getting enough sleep.
“You’re ready for Seer Codex?” He shaded his eyes with his hand, and his voice sounded friendly in a forced sort of way.
“Almost. I’ve got it memorized to page three hundred.”
She dipped her fingers in their pool of cold, clear water, watching ripples glitter in the sun. Here the supply came directly from Shadowside, from melted ice, with a light blue tint that spoke to her of glaciers and darkness, a weird contrast to their world of bright suns that never set.
“Your mother would have been proud of you.” He smiled, and Ori nodded. The mother she’d never known, except in videos.
“Well, good thing they won’t ask me to recite it all.”
She meant it. Memorizing was one thing. Standing up in front of people— quite another. So as long as she didn’t have to say too much, she might yet survive her upcoming Seer Codex, the coming-of-age ceremony every young Coristan faced before turning sixteen.
