Song of Time

19

The digger had told the elves about him now, so it was only a little more difficult moving in and out of the fortress. But long in the service of the Raptor and his Ninnites, Naruq was an expert at such things and rather enjoyed the challenge, when he thought about it. He settled himself into his hiding place in the meditative cell nearest the door just as Cheyne and his party entered the Treefather's chambers through a series of connected portals, their iacy roofs covered in wild rose and berrybramble. Yob waited outside, positioning himself, as usual, by the doorway.

"Place him here before the stone," said a warm voice, compassion seeming to carry in every word.

Cheyne looked up and around as he helped Doulos position Javin on a long table, the central feature in the large, airy room. Behind the table, a small glass container held a white gemstone suspended in water.

"That's the firebane. They keep it in the water so the power accumulates around it. When it was set in the center of the ring, the other stones did that," said Og quietly.

Cheyne nodded and looked around. Rising to the vaulted ceiling, columns carved from whiter wood than Cheyne had seen outside braced forty or fifty intricate, curving ribs that met high overhead in an elaborate filial of stylized leaves and acoms. Pale light filtered down from a few high windows, and as his eyes adjusted, Cheyne realized that the columns were carved to look like tall, thin trees themselves. Cheyne could find no break in their grain, no beginning or end to them, and with a shock, he realized that he was standing in the hollowed interior of the biggest tree in the fortress.

In calm efficiency, the Treefather rose from his prayers and stood to greet them, going immediately to javin. "Hello to all of you, and be welcome here in the sanctuary of our forest home. I am Luquin."

He smiled as he worked over Javin, checking his pulse and his pupils, his breathing, the several new gashes the canistas had given him, and finally the site of the scorpion's sting. After they had passed through the curtain, Javin had begun to stir in his fever, to thrash and jerk and mutter. He seemed worse than ever now, but Cheyne held his tongue, watching the Treefather carefully.

Luquin was taller than most of the elves they had seen in and around the fortress. His face shone with an inner light, and his gray eyes crinkled at the edges only a little when he smiled, which seemed to be often. Luquin, seen anywhere other than his home, would cause almost anyone to stop and stare, to wonder about his every feature, to become mesmerized by his movements and the sound of his voice. Here, Cheyne thought, he seemed to be just another part of the transcendent beauty, the towering majesty of the forest and the fortress. Here, it was his hands that pulled Cheyne's eyes to them as though they had a power of their own. They were not the hands of a person who spent his time in soft work. Luquin's hands were rugged and knotted, their many white scars testament to far more than a life of contemplation.

As the Treefather touched the swollen area around the sting, Javin began to stiffen and contort in bone-breaking spasms, and Doulos cried out. Luquin did not seem distressed and did not stop, but called for two of his assistants to hold Javin on the table. Cheyne and Og drew Doulos away, soothing both him and themselves with low words of assurance.

At length, Luquin looked up at them and told them the truth.

"It is very bad. His spirit has already left his body. It wanders, but we will dance." He smiled, "Prepare the stone," he said to his assistants, who bowed and removed themselves from the room.

Still hiding in the cell near the Treefather's chambers, Naruq frowned his impatience behind the door, waited for them all to leave, then slipped out of the narrow doorway and faded into the green depths of the fortress hedges.

Moments later, the silent call had gone forth, and in the center of the fortress common the elves had gathered from their work, many still with clay upon their clothing, some with wooden tools in their hands, and others with farm implements strapped across their backs. They stood together in a loose circle, the Treefather in the center, with Javin, still unconscious, stretched across the same finely carved table. In his gnarled hands, the Treefather held the firebane, now dry and glowing in white brilliance, its inner flames flashing rainbows.

"He'll chant for awhile in the old language, then the lightning will come. Best move back," warned Og, but neither Cheyne nor Doulos stepped away.

"All right, then," Og pronounced, and held his own ground, too. Yob, a little disturbed at the sight of so many elves, waited a few paces behind them.

The Treefather held the firebane high and began his prayer. His voice magnified with every syllable, until it became so loud that Cheyne could not distinguish the words any longer and thought he heard only the roar of many waters, or the sound of thunder. When it became almost unbearable, the wind bore down on them, the elves linked hands and began to stamp their feet in a quick, complicated rhythm, and the firebane flashed its light into the sky above Javin's contorting body.

Cheyne had to shield his eyes and he could feel the crackle of the power on his skin. The Treefather quickly stepped back just as the bolt of lightning struck Javin's chest, lifting him off the table and into the air several inches, then dropping him hard back onto the wooden surface. Immediately, the light disappeared, the noise ceased, and the Treefather collapsed as the two attendants moved to catch him. The elves continued their dance until he rose, holding the firebane, then stopped in unison with a quick double stamp.

Cheyne let go of the breath he had been holding.

"The work is finished," announced Luquin shakily, and the elves broke the circle, quietly departing the common, leaving Cheyne, Og, and Doulos with Javin, who lay still now on the carved table, his face deadly pale, but the scorpion's sting completely gone.

"Is he…?" Cheyne began. The Treefather held up one hand.

"He lives," said Luquin, then he bowed and left them alone with Javin.

All that day, Cheyne waited for Javin to wake up. Cheyne spent the time looking at the little bronze-bound book, thinking, and running his ringers across the glyphs on the totem's smooth face. When the elves brought Javin inside the Treefather's chambers at the middle hour, Cheyne sent Yob and Og to eat, but Doulos would not leave. When the Treefather entered for his afternoon prayers, Cheyne and the slave jumped to their feet, a hundred questions on their lips.

"He lives, and I believe he is healed. But I cannot tell you when he will awaken. It could be anytime. Or it could be much longer. But here, we pay little attention to time…" said Luquin, smiling.

"But I need to know that he's all right. And I need to know what he wanted to tell me in the forest." Cheyne put the book down, picked up the totem, and turned it over and over in his hands.

"Muje?" said Doulos. "Remember that you have many other things to ask."

"What does that matter if Javin doesn't wake up? I… I got him into this mess by leaving before he could find the Collector. He told me to wait. 1 should have."

"But Muje, he came because he wanted to. And you came back for him, leaving what you thought was your only chance to see the Treefather, just as he left his work to look for you. If you do not ask about the Clock, all that he cared about will be as dust."

There was time, not many days ago, that Cheyne would have answered that all Javin cared about was dust anyway. Old dry, dead things that had nothing to do with the living people around him. But not now. Cheyne knew Doulos was right, but it didn't ease the pain of guilt in his chest.

The Treefather looked long into Cheyne's troubled eyes, then gently took the book from him.

"I know what you seek, Cheyne. And I will tell you what I can."

He turned through the fragile pages of the little book, shaking his head at first, then stopping at the last several leaves. Finally he took the totem and held it to the light. Luquin's brow creased as he studied the last glyph. Cheyne waited patiently, but his eyes were on Javin.

"The last glyph is a woman's name. The marker- that fingerprint is feminine-but I cannot read the letters. It's inscribed with magic." he finished.

"A woman's name," breathed Cheyne, hardly believing his ears. "Then that means the totem…"

"Is a woman's totem, yes," said Luquin gently, his eyes full of compassion. "But it's much more than that, Cheyne."

"What? What do you mean?"

"It's the key to the Armageddon Clock."

"The-"

The Treefather nodded. "Your book says so, at least. Cheyne, do you know why Javin sought the Collector?"

"Only so that he could find the Clock. It was his… great quest."

"Yes. Because the Collector was the one who invented the Clock. Let me read something to you."

He began slowly, pronouncing the words first in the old language, then repeating in the modern tongue. "The Clock shall have a key. It shall be the totem of my daughter Claria, to whom I bequeath all my knowledge, and all my possessions, and to all of her line successively shall it be so-"

"Did you say Claria?" asked Cheyne before Luquin could translate. Og mirrored his startled response.

The Treefather raised his eyes and nodded. "Yes. It's an uncommon name, even in the Collector's time. May I go on?" Cheyne nodded, a peculiar smile lifting his lips.

"The key shall fit the twelfth spire, the tallest, I believe, from the edge of the middlemost part of the valley the elves call the Chimes. When it is inserted into the cleft in this spire, and the spire is made to be whole once again, the slightest breeze will cause the other spires, in their peculiar properties, to sing until they shatter, and the void they leave shall summon the godscream from the erg, and the ensuing power of its voice shall break the crystal door."

And $ve up its treasure to me, thought Naruq, eavesdropping again from his hiding place. This was going to be far easier than he thought.

"Want to make a trade, digger?" Naruq stepped out into the shadows of the chamber, still hidden but for the light that sparkled from his silver cloakpin.

"Ah, Naruq. We have been looking for you," said the Treefather, unperturbed. "It seems you have found employment outside the colony."

"And your skills are yet sharp, ancient one. But not as sharp as mine. What about it, digger? The girl for the totem?"

"I don't think so, Naruq."

"Too bad, since that beast Riolla employs seems hardly able to keep his hands off her. Appears he has some kind of professional score to settle with her. And with you." Naruq chuckled. "Care to think again?"

Cheyne looked helplessly at the Treefather, who only nodded and smiled.

"You must do what you must," said Luquin, his long finger gently tapping the book. There is more, said his eyes.

"Then I will set the terms," said Cheyne. "You will meet us at the Chimes before dark, alone. When I see the girl is well and unharmed, I will give you the key."

Naruq cocked a silver brow at him and laughed. "We will be there." He stepped backward, seeming to melt into the shadows.

"Are you sunstruck, man?" shouted Og.

"No, I am trying to buy some time to think of a way to bring Claria to safety without giving him the key to the Clock, Og," replied Cheyne.

The Treefather eyed Cheyne curiously. "There is more here that you should know. Naruq is very bright and a talented woodsman, but he has never learned to consider the entire forest before he chooses his trail. Here is the rest of what the Collector wrote. 'The beast is pure evil, a thing of terrible beauty and the bringer of terrible fear. I have looked upon it and lived, and that is a horrible blessing. I have put it to sleep with a common spell, amplified by my brothers in the Circle. It is all we could do…'"

For a long time, the Treefather read to Cheyne and Doulos the account of the battle the Collector had fought, of his pain and loss, his agonized decision to give Mishra the doomsday weapon he sought, and how he had arranged the keys so that it would destroy the beast the first time Mishra tried to summon the creature.

"But the last page is missing, Cheyne. Here is where it was torn away." Luquin showed them all what Cheyne had already seen.

"The writing stops in the middle of a sentence about the Collector's killer-'The Circle is betrayed, the Raptor has come for me in his evil wind, but he can be destroyed, yet only by the one who-' This part looks like he burned it into the script over other words, as though he were in distress and had no time."

The color had drained from Cheyne's face and he hardly felt the Treefather's gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Cheyne? There is more," said Luquin.

"Goon."

"The same name on the totem is inscribed inside the back cover."

I know. And it's on the amulet that Javin said he used to protect me from someone he called the Raptor. But he was fevered and babbling. I still don't understand what the glyph means to me." He pulled the amulet from beneath his tunic.

At the sight of the amulet, Doulos broke into a huge grin.

"That's the key!" he shouted.

"No, the book said the totem is the key," said Cheyne.

Doulos could not be dissuaded. "I mean the key to the little clock, the chroniclave, as your father called it."

He ran excitedly to the cabinet where Javin's pack had been stored, retrieved the clock, and brought it to Cheyne.

"See? The very same mark. I told him if there was a key, we could find it. Try it, please, Muje."

Cheyne examined the chroniclave, turned it upside down, and found yet another inscription of the same glyph. "Where did you find this, Doulos? It's Claria's. She had to leave it in a cave at the oasis when Yob surprised us," he said, taking the amulet from beneath his tunic.

"The king found it as we left the sea," Doulos said, shrugging his shoulders.

Without taking the amulet off, Cheyne inserted its end into the slot, gave it a cautious turn, and removed it. The chroniclave sprang to life with song, a lilting melody that played over and over, filling the room with a sweetness that thousands of years had not dimmed.

"That's the most beautiful song I ever heard," said Og reverently. There is magic in it, I can tell."

His glance fell upon the totem in the Treefather's lap, and he remembered the day Cheyne had first shown him the artifact. "May I see the totem?"

Luquin gave it to him. Og held it up and turned it as the music played, catching the sunbeams from the high windows in the hollow tree. Suddenly the room filled with a burst of brilliant light, a rainbow seeming to bring fire from the totem's edge and sending a tight ribbon of color into the depths of the dim chamber- the outline of a woman's hand sparkling into the darkness. Cheyne found himself mesmerized at the image of the hand, its first two fingers slightly crooked, until the vision disappeared with the last notes of the song.

And then he remembered Claria's hand on the polished wooden floor of Wiggulf s lodge in the dying firelight, how her first two fingers had exactly the same little crook in them, just at the first joints.

He looked at Og, who nodded in silent agreement. "The totem belongs to Claria, too. The glyph writes her name, just as it wrote the Collector's daughter's name."

Cheyne wound the chroniclave again and Og tried the name, as the Treefather had pronounced it, against the song. The syllables and accents fit perfectly.

It took a few minutes for everyone else to find their voices. In the meantime, Cheyne gave the clock's pendulum a little push, and the clock's hands jumped to life, as though they had been waiting for his touch.

"What does this mean?" he breathed. "All of these things must have belonged to the Collector. He says in the book that there was a namesong that would destroy the crystal door forever. This must be that song. Og, do you think you can sing this? We may have the way to save Claria without letting loose the Beast of the Hours!"

"Well, results-" Og began. Entertainment was one thing. Even healing, he knew he could do. But this was… this was the Armageddon Clock.

"No," said Cheyne. "This will have to be certain. No variation. No 'almost right/ Og. This will have to be perfect. Can you do it?"

Og tried the little tune in his best voice. It cracked. He tried it again. It cracked again.

"I need the stones, I think." He looked longingly at the firebane. "All of them."