Trapped

2: A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME ZUL-HUJAH

My pocket watch said it was one o'clock. In the morning.

Under cloudy black skies, I walked up the drive of Feliss Academy, gravel crunching beneath my boots. Alone, alone, all alone — my drinking companions boarded in rooms off campus, and didn't plan on returning to musty F.A. till the weekend was over. I, however, occupied a don's suite in the school's residence wing… which is why I was still on my feet, trudging a full kilometer past the town limits, when my friends were already snoring in their beds.

Let me list the pluses of don-ship: cleaning staff emptied my wastebaskets, washed my linen, and occasionally removed the dust coyotes that had long ago devoured the dust bunnies under my bed. Let me also list the minuses: long late liquorized limps from the pub, back to a place where I was required to serve as shepherd, mentor, and surrogate father to twenty teenaged boys, all either wealthy brats, wealthy wallflowers, or wealthy nice-kids whose eyes glazed over at the word "geometry."

The academy seemed peaceful as I approached. The calm was due to the season — in the official calendar of the Spark Lords, it was the Month of the Quill, but in the classic calendar still observed by my family, it was Zul-Hijjah: the ash-end of winter, leaving muddy clumps of snow mixed with snowy clumps of mud all over the school's campus. That night, the vernal equinox was a single day away… and while the weather was unlikely to change just because the almanac turned to a new page, I fondly looked forward to the moment I could shout, "Spring, spring, spring!"

Everyone I knew was sick of winter. The students had long ago lost interest in icy midnight frolics (diving naked into snow drifts or stealing trays from the refectory to go tobogganing down the greenhouse hill); every last kid in our dormitory was now a sweaty stick of dynamite, just waiting to explode in spring madness. One breath of warm wind and kaboom, the school grounds would be littered with teenaged bodies, wriggling under every bush, sprawled on the banks of our local creek, or snuggling in more imaginative trysting spots (up a tree, down a storm sewer, on top of the school roof)… but for now, it was still too cold, too muddy, and too much the middle of term. As summer approached — as holiday separations loomed, and, "Who knows if we'll both be back in the fall?" — the antics and romantics would sprout behind every bush, and I would…

I would…

I would seethe with envy at their feverish innocence.

Envy was an occupational hazard of teaching — envy and cynical disdain. Teachers affected by such feelings usually went one of two ways: either they acted like adolescents themselves, or else they viewed youth as a disease that must be cured by heaping doses of tedium. Our academy had plenty of both types in the faculty common room: middle-aged men and women dressed in frowzy imitations of youth fashion sitting cheek by jowl with other middle-aged men and women who ranted about "irresponsible immaturity" and devoted themselves to expunging every particle of teenage joy.

Was I becoming either of those? I fervently hoped not. I'd set my sights on becoming a font of inspiration, guiding young minds and spurring them on to heights of intellectual…

Damn. I wasn't drunk enough to believe my usual diatribe. Lately it had become my habit to wax eloquent about the glories of my career as I tottered home after a session of poisoning my liver. Some drunks weep about the girls they left behind; others rage at the girls they didn't leave behind; still others sing random verses of "The Maiden and the Hungry Pigboy," or tell (for the fortieth time) about the night they saw a Spark Lord battle a headless white alien atop an OldTech skyscraper. When I was drunk, I made speeches to myself: pedantic internal monologues where I tried to find the perfect words to express why I hadn't been wasting my life teaching the same classes, year after year, to kids who'd forget every lesson the moment they graduated.

My goodness, what an important job teaching was! How crucial for students to know someone like me, levelheaded but possessed of a sense of fun, a man of science, a role model! How especially vital it was to enlighten these children, the sons and daughters of privilege, the future leaders of the world!

But I wasn't sufficiently soused tonight to believe my own propaganda. The words I habitually recited to myself kept getting confused with the truth: that I'd fallen into teaching because I had nothing better to do, that I did an acceptable job but not an extraordinary one, and that the whole student body of Feliss Academy consisted of rich second-raters who wouldn't recognize excellence if it bit them on the silk-covered ass.

Take the Caryatid's Freshman 4A. All showed a modest talent for sorcery, but none had the drive and obsession to get into a genuine school of wizardry. Perhaps one among them would surprise us; perhaps some formerly feckless freshman would catch fire (so to speak) and go on to more intense pursuits. The majority, however, would return unchanged to their wealthy families, bearing with them a few cheap parlor tricks, plus a handful of disconnected facts that got lodged in their brains by accident and stayed behind like slivers under the skin. (A former student once wrote me, asking for help on a question that was "driving him wild": he could remember F = ma because I'd harped on it so much in class, but for the life of him, he couldn't recall what F, m, or a was.)

That was the type of student who came to Feliss… and we teachers weren't much better. To return to Freshman 4A: if the students were dullards, the Caryatid herself was only a step above them on the ladder, a humble drudge compared to any working sorcerer. She grasped the basic principles and could present them in ways a teenager might understand; but she was the first to admit she wasn't moon-mad enough to practice magic for anyone more demanding than Two-Jigger Volantes.

I wasn't moon-mad either. My curse was to have a documentedly high intelligence — back in college, I scored 168 on an OldTech IQ test — but I was utterly devoid of genius. I could get good grades in any academic subject, but apart from answering exam questions, I hadn't a clue what to do with myself.

Music? I could play, compose, and improvise on half a dozen instruments… but I didn't yearn to fill the world with glorious sound, I just futzed about writing funny songs, hoping I might someday impress a good-looking woman out of her petticoats. Poetry? When depressed about the failure of the aforesaid songs to woo the aforesaid women, I could ink up the page with my woes… but they were such humdrum woes: whiny pedestrian bitching, not deep outcries from a passionate heart. (My immune system seems to produce highly effective antibodies against angst.) And science? I never got less than top marks in math, physics, or chemistry, but when it came to original research, my mind went blank. There was nothing I wanted to do, no realm of knowledge I hungered to explore. I digested textbook after textbook, but lacked the drive and vocation to aim my life toward any thought-worthy goal.

Lots of brains but no special calling. All dressed up with no place to go.

So after I got my Ph.D. (on a thesis topic suggested by my tutor, regurgitating an OldTech treatise that applied projective geometry techniques to modeling the asymptotic behavior of relativistic space-times… in other words, sheer mental masturbation), I fell into a job teaching at Feliss Academy. Specifically, I was hired to teach the woefully elementary tidbits of science that were still relevant four hundred years after OldTech civilization had spluttered out, plus a survey course on all the things we couldn't do anymore — computers, rocketry, bioengineering, nuclear fusion, organ transplants, mass production, heavier-than-air flight. Ye Olde Wonders of Earth and Sky. Students approached the subject as a not-very-interesting branch of mythology, barely more credible than Gilgamesh, Sinbad, and the Twelve Labors of Hercules. Thus I spoon-fed teenage drudges the same material, term after term, year after year, while visiting backstreet taverns each weekend in the hope Impervia would start a fight and get my heart beating faster for a minute or two.

As my willfully morose college roommate used to say, "So it's come to this. And hasn't it been a long way down?"

The fastest way to the residence wing was a shortcut through the school itself — the building was shaped like a four-storied T, with classrooms forming the front crossbar and dormitories extending out the back. I used my pass key to unlock the doors at the center of the T… and the moment I passed inside, I heard the sound of weeping. Quiet little sniffles, welling up into tightly choked sobs. They echoed off the walls and terrazzo floors so I couldn't tell where the whimpers came from.

Hmmm.

A corridor of classrooms ran left and right; a short passageway lay directly ahead, leading into the dorm wing. But the whole area was pitch-black… no light except the spill of starshine coming through the glass doors behind me. Since I never carried a lantern on drinking nights (best not to be holding breakable glass filled with flammable oil when you expect to get into a brawl), there was no way to see who was crying in the darkness.

Tentatively I moved forward, thinking the sounds must come from the residence wing; this wouldn't be the first time some student crept out of bed and huddled forlornly in the hall, shedding tears over bad grades or love gone wrong. But as I advanced down the passageway, the sniffling grew fainter, fading to inaudibility. I backtracked, picked up the noise again, and was soon feeling my way past darkened classrooms — keeping one hand on the wall to maintain my bearings.

It's odd how the academy's smell changes at night. During the day, the aroma is young, young, young — dozens of different perfumes, lavishly applied by students who get their families to send the latest scents from Bangkok, Damascus, or Sao Paulo. After dark, though, the jasmine and ginger die away, to be replaced by fragrances much, much older: the dark varnished oak of the wainscoting; the mausoleum dryness of chalk dust; two centuries worth of oil paints from the art room, sweat from the gym, and book leather from the library.

At night, the school showed its age. Feliss didn't have the prestige of institutions that traced their lineage a full four hundred years back to OldTech times, but it was still venerable by conventional standards. There was good reason why we attracted students from important families all over the world — never the best, of course, never the talented eldest son or the brilliant youngest daughter, but the "tries-very-hard" middle children who needed decent schooling too. Feliss Academy provided such schooling, in an appropriately time-honored venue… and it was only at night that you could smell the decades of glum mediocrity accumulated within these walls: the psychic residue of generation after generation who subconsciously recognized they weren't destined for greatness.

No. I wasn't projecting my own thoughts at all.

The sounds of sorrow drew me on. The snuffles weren't loud — they seemed to recede as I moved forward — but they continued in quiet anguish, leading me to the Instrumental Music room at the end of the corridor. I stopped outside, peering through the small pane of glass in the room's wooden door. No sign of anyone within, even though an adequate amount of starlight trickled its way through windows on the far wall. Then again, my view of the room was restricted, showing the middle but not the shadowy edges.

When I tried the door, it was locked. That was mildly unusual; most rooms in the school are left open day and night. I got out my pass key again and slid it into the lock, making just enough noise that the weeper would know I was coming. No point in startling some heartbroken teenager who'd come all this way to keep others from hearing the sobs. Opening the door, I said, "Hello," in what I hoped was a comforting voice. "Is there some way I can help?"

No answer. The crying had stopped the moment I spoke. I looked around the room, but saw no one. "It's Dr. Dhubhai," I said. "Would you like to talk?"

Total silence… and I still couldn't see a soul. There were plenty of hiding places available — the big walk-in cupboard on my left where students stored instruments from alt-horns to zithers, plus a smaller one on my right where the teacher, Annah Khan, kept rosin, reeds, and sheet music. For that matter, a timid little freshman might be small enough to cower out of sight behind the tubas or the tympani. "It's all right," I said, "I'm not here to yell at you. Come out and let's talk."

No response.

I knew Annah kept an oil lamp on her desk. Groping through my pockets, I found my own matchbox and struck a light The flame lasted less than a second before a sharp puff of wind blew it out I tried another match; me same puff of wind gusted up in an otherwise still classroom, and I was back in darkness again.

Uh-oh.

Feliss Academy was not immune to drafts; however, such drafts seldom manifested themselves as well-timed, well-focused gusts that came from nowhere. I suspected something more than a chance breeze was making its presence known — especially in light of the Caryatid's sort of a prophecy kind of thing.

Just as the League of Peoples had given us psionics and sorcery, they'd introduced lots of other simulated mystical baggage from terrestrial folklore.

Like ghosts.

Something went ‹PLINK› in the darkness — a single note plucked on a string instrument The pitch was high enough that I immediately thought, Violin. Then came a second note, lower, down in the cello range. Three more notes, low, medium, high… and I knew I was hearing the harp.

The school owned a splendid harp: a hellishly pricey thing all gold leaf and rosewood, donated by some doting father whose daughter was certain she'd become a world-famous harpist if only she could practice on a proper instrument The girl's enthusiasm lasted an hour — the time it took her to realize she wasn't some prodigy who'd be playing Mozart her very first day. At the end of term, the girl departed and the harp stayed. Since then, a succession of other students had tried their hands at the instrument, some with modest success; but none ever came close to fulfilling the harp's true potential.

Now… plink, plink, plink. Single notes, played at random. Then one of the pedals creaked, and the strings began a slow, simple scale.

I'd never tried the harp myself, but I'd played enough other instruments to recognize the sound of a beginner: the hesitations between notes as the player reached to get the correct finger in place; the extra twang on strings that got plucked too hard, followed by soft almost-not-there notes when the player tried to go easier; the which-foot-do-I-use pause whenever it was necessary to use a pedal. The player in the dark never struck a wrong note, but I suspected the scale was an easy one… like C major on a piano, where you can't go wrong if you keep to the white keys.

The harp stood back in the corner of the room, behind the percussion section — not a good location for the harpist to be heard, but ideal if your first priority was making sure students didn't accidentally break the most valuable instrument in the music department. From where I stood, I couldn't see anyone sitting on the player's stool; but it was dark enough back there that I couldn't be sure the stool was empty.

Swallowing hard, I walked toward the sound… which is to say I began to clamber around the chairs, drums, and glockenspiels that separated me from the back corner.

Meanwhile, the music continued — a two-octave scale up and down, then repeated. The second time through was quicker and more even… as if the player had gained confidence after warming up. I, on the other hand, was losing confidence by the moment the closer I got to the harp, the more clearly I could see that the instrument was playing itself. No one sat on the stool; if there were hands moving over the strings, those hands were invisible.

All right, I thought, it is now time to leave. This wouldn't be fleeing with my tail between my legs; I simply intended to seek advice from someone who understood pseudo-supernatural events better than I. The Caryatid and Myoko weren't close at hand, but surely some don in residence had occult experience. Chen Fai-Hung, for example: he was always boasting how he'd studied at Core Haven for three years, and made it to the second last round for Elemarch of Molybdenum. Fai-Hung might not know as much about uncanny phenomena as a sorcerer or psionic, but he must have learned more on the subject than I did in Differential Geometry 327.

Therefore I took a step backward, intending to scuttle from the room; but before I could retreat farther, a sob wrenched out of the harpist who wasn't there. A heartbroken, heartbreaking sound. At the same time the music shifted, from scales into a simple melody plucked one note at a time.

I didn't recognize the tune — something in Dorian mode, which always strikes me as bittersweet: close to a minor key but more melancholy, with just a tiny B natural of wistful hope. When the piece began, it had the same hesitations and unevenness as the first scale I'd heard, some strings plucked too loudly and others too soft. A few strings were also a shade out of tune… almost always the case with an instrument that spends much of its time unused.

But now, as the playing continued in the darkened room, the hesitations grew fewer and the music flowed more smoothly. Even the tuning got better — the melody never stopped, but I heard the low creak of tuning pegs, as if the harpist possessed a third hand for tuning while the other two hands played. Over the music, the weeping resumed… until gradually, the soft bleak sobs blended with the notes like someone humming through her tears.

Her tears. Yes: the humming sounded female. When I realized that, I couldn't help speaking again. "What's wrong? Are you hurt? Can I help?"

The music bloomed in response… losing all amateurish lack of control, the sound swelling in the blackness: melody, harmony, and counterpoint. A sorrowful song played by a virtuoso, something ancient and rare from an aching soul — as if I were hearing the distillation of all the music someone wished she could have played, a lifetime's worth of longing compressed into a single grieving requiem.

It ended with a minor chord that stretched the full range of the harp, a simultaneous clutch of notes that could never have been played with a mere ten fingers. Then, as the strings continued to echo, a single piercing shriek burst from the emptiness above the harpist's stool — a cry filled with pain and the anger of death. I hurried forward as if there were some way I could help the unseen woman… but when I reached out to where she should be, my hands passed through icy nothingness: a cold so fierce it wracked my fingers and chilblained my arms.

I jerked back quickly, shivering despite my winter coat. Shoving my bare hands into my armpits, I squeezed them tight, trying to force some heat into my flesh. As I did, I caught movement in the shadows beside me… and though it terrified me to look, I turned my gaze directly at the harp.

Slowly, very slowly, liquid trickled down a string. In the dark it looked black, but I knew it had to be red. Deep scarlet.

Blood. How else would a haunting end?

More beads of black crimson appeared out of nowhere, forming at the top of each string and dribbling down into shadow. Within seconds the whole harp was seeping, blood oozing from the air, flowing freely, pattering onto the floor. I felt a drip splash on the toe of my boot… and that's when I finally ran.