Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

" S olomon!"

Marieke called his name again, and this time the assistant instructor turned. Recognition flashed through his eyes, and Marieke was relieved to see his face relax into a friendly smile. Whatever ill will she'd created at the council, Solomon didn't seem to be affected by it.

"Mari! What are you doing here?"

"I live here," she said brightly, crossing the last of the distance between them. "Or at least, not here in Bull Creek, but in this region. My home is only a couple hours' ride away." She directed her smile toward the woman standing beside Solomon. "Instructor Oriana. It's good to see you again."

"Marieke," the instructor greeted her. "You too. I didn't expect to find a graduate out here. I thought you were planning to stay and work in the capital."

"I've been visiting my parents," said Marieke. "I'm afraid I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with myself, so I'm not using my songcraft much yet."

The instructor looked surprised at this declaration from Marieke, who had been a determined and driven student. But she made no comment, perhaps thanks to Mr Mosley joining the conversation.

"Is Mari here being modest again? Don't let her tell you she isn't using her singing abilities! She used them to save my farm! And all our farms, probably. We'd be in true strife if not for her."

"Is that so?" Instructor Oriana and Solomon both turned interested faces toward Marieke, who felt her cheeks going pink.

"It was fortunate I was on hand and able to help, but Mr Mosley exaggerates my role."

"What poppycock!" Mr Mosley contradicted. "I ain't exaggerating anything."

Marieke was about to protest further when a memory forcibly asserted itself—of her having much the same argument with Zev when he tried to downplay his part in thwarting various of Gorgon's attacks. She snapped her mouth closed.

"She stopped the fire with her voice," Mr Mosley continued. "Changed the wind, made it rain…things I'd never believe if I hadn't seen with my own eyes. All by herself!"

"Goodness." Instructor Oriana spoke mildly. "That's advanced songcraft for a solitary singer just out of the academy."

"I was careful," Marieke said quickly. "I did no more than was necessary to put out the fire. And I've stayed in the area since, monitoring the elements. I don't think my intervention had any unintended impact on the weather or environment."

The instructor's smile was indulgent. "I wasn't criticizing you, Marieke. I'm impressed—I'd forgotten that agricultural song was one of your key areas of study. And frankly, I'm relieved. We left the capital in a hurry when we received the report of another huge wildfire. We didn't know what we'd find, and I admit I was expecting things to be in a much worse state when we arrived."

"What do you mean another huge wildfire?" Marieke asked with a frown.

"This is the third one in the last fortnight," Solomon said gravely.

"I haven't heard anything about that!" And Marieke had thought she'd been keeping her ear to the ground for any major reports from the capital.

"The others were in different parts of the country," Solomon said. "It takes time for news to travel."

"Were the others caused by magic?" she asked quickly.

Instructor Oriana gave her a sharp look—it sat strangely on her round, friendly face. "We'll just get settled in, Marieke, and speak with the town elders. Then we can discuss these matters more fully somewhere comfortable."

Marieke accepted this dismissal with a nod, not averse to having the extra time to gather her thoughts. She hung back as the other singers followed Mr Mosley into the town hall that sat just off the central square. She'd prefer to tell her version of events in private anyway, rather than in the company of the local witnesses.

When the group from the capital emerged, Marieke was waiting. She fell in with the small crowd trailing along behind as the newcomers were guided toward the site of the fire.

"I don't suppose you can repair any of the damage?" Mr Mosley asked hopefully, as they all came to a stop near the blackened field.

"I'm afraid not," Instructor Oriana said, sympathy in her voice. "I'm no expert in agricultural song, but I don't believe there are any songs that can revive plants this badly destroyed."

"No, the crop is gone, I'm afraid," Marieke chimed in.

Instructor Oriana nodded sadly. "What I do have experience with is storytelling song, however. I can't fix the damage, but I can assess it. And maybe get a picture of what happened." She turned toward the destroyed crops, a look of calculation on her face.

"How can storytelling assess damage?" The whisper came from a local man standing just beside Marieke.

"Storytelling is a broad term," Marieke told him, her own voice quiet as well so as not to disrupt Instructor Oriana's process. "And a misleading one, because it makes the area of study sound insubstantial or primarily for entertainment. It's actually one of the hardest and most powerful types of songcraft. There are very few fully qualified storytellers, and Instructor Oriana is one of them."

"But what do they do?" the man asked. "Tell stories?"

Marieke shook her head. "The discipline of storytelling songcraft isn't about singers telling stories to other people. It's about magic telling stories to the singers. A singer qualified in storytelling can get the magic to tell them the story of what's in front of them—or in mundane terms, to provide an assessment of what they can see. For example, they could walk into a room and use a song to discover what and who might be in the room, without needing to see it with their eyes. That's how she'll assess the damage—she can sing a song that will read the state of the field and report it back to her."

The man nodded, looking impressed, but Marieke wasn't done. That cursory explanation gave Instructor Oriana far too little credit for the true scope of her capability.

"That's the basic level of skill," Marieke went on. "A really experienced storyteller can manipulate the magic such that it will tell them not just the story of the current situation, but the story that led to it. A powerful storytelling song will recreate the events that led to what's currently visible."

"They can see the past?" the man demanded .

"Not literally, but sort of," Marieke said. "They can get enough information about the past to make informed speculations about what occurred to bring us from that past to this present."

She could see she'd lost her listener with her increasingly convoluted explanation, so she didn't add her final point. After all, there was no need to go into the most impressive form of storytelling song, given that as far as she knew, Instructor Oriana couldn't harness it. Marieke didn't think anyone alive could do so. The ability to coax magic into telling the story of what was yet to come was so impossibly difficult to attain that not all experts on singing lore agreed that it was even possible. There were tales of it happening in the past, but Marieke's fellow students had believed them or not as they saw fit.

She smiled as she thought about the first time she'd heard of storytelling song, in a class led by Instructor Oriana, incidentally. Dazzled by the prospect, many students had signed up for the three-week introductory course, which was designed to test aptitude. Almost none had gone on to actually study it, after discovering how very difficult the skill was and how slowly they were progressing in spite of their hard work. For her part, Marieke had enjoyed the course immensely. She would have been glad to continue to do a full semester, if not more. But given most students didn't pursue it, the academy had allocated a small capacity for the class. It had been full both times she'd tried to apply for further study in the area. So she'd focused her energies on agricultural song instead.

Her reminiscing was cut off as Instructor Oriana began her assessing song. Thanks to all the practice she'd had during the instructor's classes, Marieke managed to keep her reaction internal. The good folk of Bull Creek didn't have equal success. She saw winces on all sides, and a few people actually covered their ears with their hands. Others just stared open-mouthed at the venerable instructor, who was standing with eyes closed and arms upraised as she released a song that sounded closer to a bat's screech than a bird's melodious chirp.

Off-key, Marieke's choral instructor would call it. It was a concept very difficult to explain to the majority of the population who were born without the capacity to sing and could simply never learn to make their voices do that. Difficult to explain to some singers, too, she thought, one eye twitching as Instructor Oriana's song changed, swelling from a simple assessment to some more specific task Marieke didn't recognize.

Needless to say, Instructor Oriana wasn't the one who taught choral class. In fact, rumor had it that the class had been introduced because of the storytelling instructor's inability to carry a tune. She was the cheeriest of academy members, liked by everyone. But there was simply no getting around the fact that her singing voice sounded like a cat being forced into a bathtub.

At least it didn't affect her strength, magically speaking. In terms of her grasp of magical theory and her ability to manipulate the magic of the land, she was among the best in the country. The academy required students to study pitch and rhythm and such concepts in choral class as a matter of presentation and professionalism in their craft. It had nothing to do with the effectiveness of their magic. Marieke had learned on her visit to Aeltas that the southern country didn't even have such a class.

Instructor Oriana's voice petered out, leading to a relaxing of the posture of everyone around her. The instructor must have noticed it but, bless her, she never seemed to let it trouble her. There was something to be said for knowing your limitations and not wasting time bemoaning them, Marieke supposed.

"What are your conclusions?" Solomon asked as soon as her voice was silent. There was a frown on his face. "I didn't follow all of what you did, but it seemed as though your assessment was targeting that way." He pointed.

"Yes," said Instructor Oriana slowly. "The magic had a strange story to tell about the land over there."

"But that's not where the fire originated," piped up Mr Mosley. "It was more that way." He pointed as well, his arm several degrees off the direction of Solomon's.

"But you said you could find no sign there of what the cause might have been?" clarified Instructor Oriana.

"That's right."

"Should we examine the area you were assessing?" Solomon pressed.

She shook her head. "No. The story is clear. Whatever was there at the time of the fire isn't there now. We should return to the hall." Her eyes flicked to Marieke. "Or somewhere we can talk more comfortably."

Not until the older woman was looking right at her did Marieke notice how weary she looked. She'd forgotten for a moment that drawing tales from the land—always a discipline that required a high level of both skill and energy—was more demanding the further back in time you were reaching. It had been the better part of a week since the fire. Instructor Oriana must be exhausted.

"Of course," said Marieke quickly, picking up the silent message the singer was sending. "I've been staying with some friends of my parents', and I'm sure they'd be happy for us to retreat there for a rest." To rest, and to talk more openly about what they'd all sensed in their various investigations.

Instructor Oriana was quick to accept the offer. Soon she, Solomon, and a handful of others from the group had followed Marieke back to her lodgings and settled in the parlor for as private a conversation as they could hope for .

The older woman—who was clearly leading the investigating team—let out a sigh of relief the moment her round form relaxed into a chair. Her eyes drifted closed for only a couple of seconds before they flew open again, settling straight on Marieke.

"Let's not beat about the bush," she said. "It caught my attention earlier when you asked if the other fires had been caused by magic. And after examining that field, I'm even more interested. Why did you ask that?"

"Because I'm almost certain that this one was caused by magic," Marieke said. Without embellishment, she gave her account of the fire, finishing by explaining her intention to make her way to the capital to report it to the council.

"So you coming out here has saved me a trip," she said.

"I doubt that," Instructor Oriana said thoughtfully. "I suspect the council will be very interested in what you witnessed, and will want to hear it firsthand. You'd better return with us, I think."

Marieke suppressed a sigh. She'd been afraid they'd say that. But perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps returning to the capital would offer her an opportunity to pursue her own inquiries about whatever was happening to Oleand. It wasn't as though she was likely to make progress hiding out at her parents' home. No one in her little town knew anything about curses or hidden history or mysterious heartsong magic.

"What did you sense out there?" she asked boldly.

The instructor's kind face lowered in a frown. "Nothing as concrete as I'd like. But it was odd. The land's memory of the incident didn't make a great deal of sense. It was like it was telling me that the fire started in one direction, but came from another."

"Could a singer start a fire from a distance?" Marieke asked.

"Absolutely," chimed in one of the other members of the group. "Not from miles away or anything, but they wouldn't need to be right on top of it."

"All right, I need longer to recuperate, but the rest of you have no excuse for sitting around," said Instructor Oriana, her habitual friendly demeanor robbing the words of any imperiousness she might have been hoping for. "You all know what to do, get on out there and investigate. I want to be as efficient as possible in gathering whatever information there is to be had. Ideally, I'd like to be heading back toward the capital by the end of tomorrow."

There was a flurry of movement as the others obeyed. Marieke stood as well and followed them from the building, pleased when Solomon read her cue and paused in the doorway.

"Everything all right with you, Mari?" he asked. His delicate tone told her that he hadn't missed the tension the council had shown toward her.

She nodded. "I'm fine. Solomon, have there really been other fires as bad as this one?"

"Worse," he said. "And not just fires. There have been some unseasonal storms, and even a few tremors in areas that have never had them before. That's why they're drawing on singers from the academy to join the response teams. The council's own teams are stretched thin."

Marieke frowned. "And these mishaps are targeting singers like Gorgon's attacks?"

"No, not that anyone can tell." Solomon swept an arm toward the Mosleys' decimated field. "I mean, no singers live in this community, do they?"

"Good point." Marieke bit her lip, worried.

Solomon glanced around, then lowered his voice. "Officially no one is pointing out any connection between the various events."

Marieke snorted. "They're hoping people just won't notice that they're frantically dispatching investigative teams the moment news of any calamity reaches the capital?"

"Well…" Solomon smiled reluctantly. "I guess they are, but I doubt anyone really thinks no one's noticing. Unofficially the prevailing theory seems to be that these fires and storms and the like are further evidence of the land's deterioration. The next step in whatever ailment is making Oleand fail."

"It's a logical conclusion," Marieke said slowly. "But my account doesn't fit with that, does it? The magic I felt makes it look more like sabotage than an aberration in the power of the land."

Solomon nodded. "Which is why Instructor Oriana thinks—and I agree—that the council will be very interested in what you have to say."

"That would be quite the change."

Her muttered aside brought Solomon's head snapping toward her, and she grimaced internally. She'd only half intended for him to hear.

"Well," she forced her voice into a brighter tone, "it looks like we'll be traveling together again."

"Yes," said Solomon, still considering her thoughtfully. "It looks that way."