TOWARD THE END OF the summer I accidentally overheard a conversation that shook me out of my state of blissful ignorance. When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
It was evening, and the troupe was camped by the side of the road. Abenthy had given me a new piece of sympathy to practice: The Maxim of Variable Heat Transferred to Constant Motion, or something pretentious like that.
It was tricky, but it had fallen into place like a puzzle piece fitting. It had taken about fifteen minutes, and from Abenthy’s tone I guessed he had expected it to take three or four hours at least.
So I went looking for him. Partly to get my next lesson, and partly so that I could be just a little bit smug.
I tracked him down to my parent’s wagon. I heard the three of them long before I saw them. Their voices were just murmurs, the distant music that a conversation makes when it’s too dim for words. But as I was coming close I heard one word clearly: Chandrian.
I pulled up short when I heard that. Everyone in the troupe knew my father was working on a song. He’d been teasing old stories and rhymes from townsfolk for over a year wherever we stopped to play.
For months it was stories about Lanre. Then he started gathering old faerie stories too, legends about bogies and shamble-men. Then he began to ask questions about the Chandrian….
That was months ago. Over the last half year he had asked more about the Chandrian and less about Lanre, Lyra, and the rest. Most songs my father set to writing were finished in a single season, while this one was stretching toward its second year.
You should know this as well, my father never let word or whisper of a song be heard before it was ready to play. Only my mother was allowed into his confidence, as her hand was always in any song he made. The cleverness in the music was his. The best words were hers.
When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour. By now, a year and a half had passed and folk were almost mad with curiosity. This occasionally led to hard words when someone was caught wandering a little too close to our wagon while my father and mother were working.
So I moved closer to my parent’s fire, stepping softly. Eavesdropping is a deplorable habit, but I have developed worse ones since.
“…much about them,” I heard Ben say. “But I’m willing.”
“I’m glad to talk with an educated man on the subject.” My father’s strong baritone was a contrast to Ben’s tenor. “I’m weary of these superstitious country folk, and the…”
Someone added wood to the fire and I lost my father’s words in the crackling that followed. Stepping as quickly as I dared, I moved into the long shadow of my parent’s wagon.
“…like I’m chasing ghosts with this song. Trying to piece together this story is a fool’s game. I wish I’d never started it.”
“Nonsense,” my mother said. “This will be your best work, and you know it.”
“So you think there is an original story all the others stem from?” Ben asked. “A historical basis for Lanre?”
“All the signs point to it,” my father said. “It’s like looking at a dozen grandchildren and seeing ten of them have blue eyes. You know the grandmother had blue eyes, too. I’ve done this before, I’m good at it. I wrote “Below the Walls” the same way. But…” I heard him sigh.
“What’s the problem then?”
“The story’s older,” my mother explained. “It’s more like he’s looking at great-great-grandchildren.”
“And they’re scattered to the four corners,” my father groused. “And when I finally do find one, it’s got five eyes: two greens, a blue, a brown, and a chartreuse. Then the next one has only one eye, and it changes colors. How am I supposed to draw conclusions from that?”
Ben cleared his throat. “A disturbing analogy,” he said. “But you’re welcome to pick my brain about the Chandrian. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years.”
“The first thing I need to know is how many there actually are,” my father said. “Most stories say seven, but even that’s conflicted. Some say three, others five, and in Felior’s Fall there are a full thirteen of them: one for each pontifet in Atur, and an extra for the capitol.”
“That I can answer,” Ben said. “Seven. You can hold to that with some certainty. It’s part of their name, actually. Chaen means seven. Chaen-dian means ‘seven of them.’ Chandrian.”
“I didn’t know that,” my father said. “Chaen. What language is that? Yllish?”
“Sounds like Tema,” my mother said.
“You’ve got a good ear,” Ben said to her. “It’s Temic, actually. Predates Tema by about a thousand years.”
“Well that simplifies things,” I heard my father say. “I wish I’d asked you a month ago. I don’t suppose you know why they do what they do?” I could tell by my father’s tone that he didn’t really expect an answer.
“That’s the real mystery, isn’t it?” Ben chuckled. “I think that’s what makes them more frightening than the rest of the bogey-men you hear about in stories. A ghost wants revenge, a demon wants your soul, a shamble-man is hungry and cold. It makes them less terrible. Things we understand we can try to control. But Chandrian come like lightning from a clear blue sky. Just destruction. No rhyme or reason to it.”
“My song will have both,” my father said with grim determination. “I think I’ve dug up their reason, after all this while. I’ve teased it together from bits and pieces of story. That’s what’s so galling about this, to have the harder part of this done and have all these small specifics giving me such trouble.”
“You think you know?” Ben said curiously. “What’s your theory?”
My father gave a low chuckle. “Oh no Ben, you’ll have to wait with the others. I’ve sweated too long over this song to give away the heart of it before it’s finished.”
I could hear the disappointment in Ben’s voice. “I’m sure this is all just an elaborate ruse to keep me traveling with you,” he groused. “I won’t be able to leave until I’ve heard the blackened thing.”
“Then help us finish it,” my mother said. “The Chandrian’s signs are another key piece of information we can’t nail down. Everyone agrees there are signs that warn of their presence, but nobody agrees on what they are.”
“Let me think…” Ben said. “Blue flame is obvious, of course. But I’d hesitate to attribute that to the Chandrian in particular. In some stories it’s a sign of demons. In others it’s fae creatures, or magic of any sort.”
“It shows bad air in mines, too,” my mother pointed out.
“Does it?” my father asked.
She nodded. “When a lamp burns with a blue haze you know there’s firedamp in the air.”
“Good lord, firedamp in a coal mine,” my father said. “Blow out your light and get lost in the black, or leave it burn and blow the whole place to flinders. That’s more frightening than any demon.”