“Then we’ll meet back up tomorrow,” said Mizuki. Her hand went to her bag and the money there. “Thanks for making the trip, by the by.”
“Of course. We’re a proper party now. We all have to do our part.”
Chapter 16 — Notions from Elsewhere
Verity sat in the backyard, surrounded by the wild plants and the struggling ones that had once upon a time been cultivated. There was work to be done, an enormous amount of work, but that would have to wait for later. She was hoping there was plenty of equipment, like a sun hat, gloves, a trowel, a hand rake, and a water can that would hopefully connect up to a water tank inside the house… But for the moment, what she needed was not to work, but to be alone. The best way she knew of doing that was immersing herself in music. She began idly playing her lute, hoping that a song would find her.
“A merry lass with hair of red / she mends the sick and bakes her bread,” Verity murmured. It was too straightforward though, the kind of direct song that always felt a bit cloying to her. It was always better to approach a subject from the side, in layers of metaphor and simile, not that Verity thought she was any great lyricist.
“The wolf he stood so tall and proud, trying to find a pack / but when he found the other four,” the rhyme failed to come, as it sometimes did. “Their bonds had too much slack,” she tried, but it didn’t sound quite right. If Alfric was the wolf in this metaphor, a strong, noble creature, then he was a wolf who had found a pack that didn’t quite fit him, and he was struggling to turn them into wolves when that was clearly not what they were best suited for. Verity was never going to be a metaphorical wolf.
“The wolf, he knew the secret / of the frightened widow’s heart,” Verity continued. “He stilled his tongue and kept his word / as he watched her make her art.” Again, this wasn’t quite right, the kind of thing that would need to be massaged in a hundred different ways before she’d feel like it was worthwhile to sing for anyone. “For if the wolf spoke freely / he knew the widow would depart.”
She thought about that for a moment. It was clear that Alfric did know, but it wasn’t clear to Verity what she would do if he told the others. She knew how she would feel, angry, depressed, anxious, and betrayed. She could already feel those emotions welling up inside her in anticipation of it happening, even though there was nothing to indicate that it ever actually would. It was a storm that felt largely contained within her gut, as bad as any pre-performance jitters. But as for what she would do, that remained a mystery to her. She could leave Pucklechurch, but it was clear that her nine months of playing in the tavern had been nothing but a reprieve from the clawing grasp of home.
Verity had been an exceptional musician from a young age, in part because her parents had pushed her into it. She’d tried three other instruments before settling on the lute, though she had a particular affection for singing to accompany herself, something that her instructors had reluctantly indulged. She was perhaps twelve years old when she first realized that she was being groomed for something. Her musical instructors began talking to her about parties and guilds and the ways in which bardic magic was used to boost the powers of everyone involved.
It was clear to Verity that for her parents, this wasn’t simply about wealth, though a bard of her predicted caliber would make a fair amount of money with the right placement. It also wasn’t simply a matter of public service, though there was some element of that, as though she had some obligation to do the thing she was good at, above and beyond the ability of others to pay her for it. But no, the overriding concern seemed to be that of status, the nebulous quality that her mother had a keen eye for. Some of this was with designs toward finding a good match for her, but some of it was simply to make sure she reflected well on ‘the family’ in terms of whom she was playing with, what she was playing, and what awards or accolades she’d achieved.
All that had been miserable enough, as though it was an attempt to deliberately destroy her love of music, but everything had changed when she was fifteen.
She had been Chosen.
Six was a magical number. It was the number of sides of a hexagon, the number of strings on her lute, and the number of gods. Each of the six gods had a Holy City, and each of them had six sets of six sets of six Chosen. Two hundred and sixteen for each god sometimes seemed like an enormous amount and other times seemed like barely any at all.
Verity had been waiting on a market street for her mother, who was looking for more decorations for their house, this time with an eye toward coating the Dungeon Room with all kinds of nicely evocative henlings. The store promised ‘Notions from Elsewhere’, and Verity had stepped out, in part to get some air and in part to have a break from her mother’s verbalizations about what might look good in which location, which the shopkeeper seemed happy to listen to and offer opinions on.
Verity had been humming a tune to herself when she felt her hands suddenly clasped by a man in fine clothes. She pulled back at once, but his eyes were glowing, and she found herself transfixed. Besides, he was much stronger than she was. He pulled her close and spoke in a language that Verity didn’t understand, his warm breath on her face as the words spilled out of him. Then, almost as soon as it began, it was over, and the man had released her. He was blinking, his eyes no longer glowing, and he seemed a bit taken aback that there was a young girl in front of him looking at him with wide eyes. He mumbled an apology, then took off down the street, moving at a jog and occasionally looking back at her before disappearing around a corner.
She hadn’t said anything when her mother had come out of the store with a paper bag filled with curiosities. By that time, her hands had stopped shaking, and while the image of the glowing eyes had remained, the encounter was starting to fade.
The second time it happened, Verity had been in one of the conservatory’s practice rooms. A small woman had burst in, interrupting the music, and again said something in that same alien language. This time though, as Verity watched the glowing eyes, she heard a phrase she recognized, or rather, a name: Xuphin, one of the six gods, the God of Infinity. Again, the glowing eyes faded, and the woman seemed confused about where she was and why, but unlike the man, she didn’t seem frightened and afraid. Instead, she was angry, and having nothing else to do with that anger, she directed it toward Verity. The matter escalated up the conservatory, until eventually it was brought to the attention of a cleric, who recognized it for what it was.
This, the Choosing, happened four more times. Two of them had been public, one of them at a conservatory, the other at a temple of Qymmos, and word had spread, to the delight of Verity’s parents. Chosen were rare. Chosen were special. Sometimes, anyway.
The Church of Xuphin sent clerics over to confirm, and it was formally announced that Verity was joining the exclusive ranks of the Chosen. This position, if you could call it that, came with no formal training or duties. It held no powers. Instead, it came with status and the weight of expectation. The Chosen sometimes had divine revelations, or at least unique insights, and sometimes they contributed to the world a Great Work. If you were Chosen, it was because one of the gods had a plan for you, of a specific nature, or perhaps they knew something about you, something they liked. Given that Verity was a promising young bard, it was supposed by the clerics that she would contribute a song at some point, either a song of infinity or something of that nature. But sometimes, Chosen became nothing special. Whatever purpose their Choosing had been for passed by, unseen and unknown. The gods never offered clarification.