The song that whispered from below the ground was ancient and horrible. A ripple along interlocking fibers, stretching deep into the earth. A rhythmic, undulating vibration between the pressed lips of murmuring soil. 

 Zygo Mycota learned its melody long ago. It was solace. It was home. Mag had taught her how to listen when Zygo was no more than the old hag’s apprentice. The ancient witch shared morbid secrets and the hideous beauty of decay with her enthralled protege until Zygo heard the song herself. Over a century later, it threaded through her as deeply as it delved underground—fathomless. She had never given it voice nor heard it aloud. So when its soft pulse reached her ears amid the raucous music of the Court’s Solstice Revels, the Royal Sorceress was perplexed.

The sea of courtiers was dense and drunk, Zygo’s least favorite combination. They pressed around her with unconscious revelry and overeager overtures of friendship, jostling and loud. Zygo tempered her repulsion. She honed her hearing, picking through the raucous laughter, impassioned debates, wild tales, and banter that crackled like sparks above the roaring blaze of music and dancing. 

The Night Palace of Qalanbar was immense. The Summer Solstice had beckoned revellers from far and wide to join in the spectacle. Dancers, acrobats, and contortionists moved sinuously among the crowd. The realm’s finest mummers acted out the daring feats of renowned Barracks Knights. 

Zygo’s lips twisted as she continued past the entertainment, approaching several tented booths. The mages fortunate enough to secure a place at the court revels practiced slight of hand and vague foretelling for an enthralled audience—a rare opportunity to lawfully practice magic under the kingdom’s strict ordinance. Their baleful gazes tracked the Royal Sorceress as she strode past, determined not to meet any of their eyes, even as her long history with each of them unspooled at the back of her mind.

Amalia, whose clouded eyes had once gazed beyond the veil to garner lost knowledge at Zygo’s request.

Kara, a fleshweld on the rise whose pretty face belied a dreadful appetite for commanding the dead.

And there was—

“Mycota!”

Zygo froze, knowing the voice and the face. A fortune teller, garbed in turquoise silk and tinkling silver raiments, beckoned.

The Royal Sorcerer grit her teeth, glanced once along her path toward the familiar beat that called to her, then turned and proceeded toward the fortune teller’s booth.

“What do you want, Honeywell?” Zygo groused, a deep crease forming against the side of her nose. Her lip twitched and she could not refrain from adding, “This is utterly beneath you.”

“Happy Solstice, sister,” Honeywell smirked, ignoring the barb. The witch flipped a lock of red gold hair over her bare shoulder. “Where were you off to, so determinedly? And with such a rise in your desiccated passions?”

As always, the Empath stoked Zygo’s ire and she was in no mood to humor it.

“Happy Solstice,” Zygo replied flatly, then turned to go. Only, something held her back. Honeywell’s long, copper-colored fingers closed around Zygo’s emerald-skinned wrist. The Royal Sorceress turned on her sister witch, baring double the average in sharp incisors, her scarlet gaze flashing. Nearby, two Barracks Knights melted out of the crowd, her frequent shadows making themselves visible. 

“Sister,” Honeywell warned. Her glance darted between the two knights, and Zygo noted the flash of wicked relish. For the barest moment, a brutal delight, not fear, shone in her rich amber eyes. Then abruptly, she released the Royal Sorceress, and Honeywell’s gaze returned to the scattered cards at her table. “Do not follow it.”

Zygo took a step back, still tense from the fleeting moment of rising threat. Her thumbs drifted over the rings that adorned her every finger, touching each to gauge their potency. A question rested on her lips. But Honey’s attention had moved on. The Empath’s alluring red-lipped grin summoning the next drunken courtier intent on having their cards read.

The Royal Sorceress’s focus drifted. The haunting tune swirled around her, threading delicately through the pounding music, sometimes loud and close, then faint and farther off. Its source stalked her as avidly as she hunted it. She clicked her tongue and stepped off the wending pavestones of the garden path. Lifting her heavy skirts, Zygo kicked off her boots and, with a sigh of relish, curled her toes into the soft mulch. 

The Mycelium pulsed against her skin, echoing the melody that taunted her. Its great teeming organism lurked beneath the soil, infinite mouths devouring dead matter, absorbing and transforming it into sheer incomprehensible power. That great wealth was drawn up through the sorceress’s exposed soles. Her muscles tightened, clawed fingers curled into fists, and teeth clenched in a tight grimace as the flush of energy swelled. The Mycelium’s song thundered in her heartbeat, throbbed in her skull, and screamed in her ears. Every vein pulsed with it, each cell spasmed. When she turned back toward the crowd of bodies, each lit up like a beacon for her hungry spawn. 

Rejoining the thick crowd, Zygo picked through the shifting mass of living fuel as she hunted the soft refrain of her source’s song, emitted by something other. The glands in her throat prickled as her spawn massed, prepared to be released in a toxic cloud with her exhalation. The interloper was not of the Mycelium…but it soon would be.

~

Zygo blinked slowly, her eyelids heavy. Beyond them, the world was blurred and…shiny. Rough stone scraped against her cheek and the taste of straw dust coated her tongue. She turned her head, trying to make sense of the giant shelled creatures that gleamed in the torchlight, towering over her. One by her head hovered close, reaching for her. The witch flinched, then settled with recognition. Not a shell…armor…plate armor. Sir Jaime’s wide dark eyes peered anxiously from beneath his helmet. His tense mouth formed muffled words. 

Zygo frowned and pressed herself upright, the glowing lights and dazzling color of the courtly revels swirling. Three more Barracks Knights stood around her, facing away. One stood braced at the forefront, sword drawn and shield ready, the other two flanking with crossbows. The thick crowd of revelers had scattered, pressing as far away as the enclosed courtyard walls would allow, while still affording a glimpse of the unfolding scene. Zygo tilted just enough to peer beyond the phalanx of knights before her, as curious as any onlooker. 

Two figures thrashed on the ground. One was willowy and sapphire-toned, trapped in the brutal embrace of another Barracks Knight. The entrapped person’s eyes bulged with fury over a small pointed nose, their symmetrical androgynous features framed by long tapered ears. Rough metal fingers dug into the elf’s cheek, clamping firmly over its mouth. The elf struggled violently, and the knight could not manage a firm pin.

The foremost knight in the phalanx shouted something, their voice incomprehensible through the persistent ringing in Zygo’s ears. The knight struggling with the elf shouted back. Zygo’s auditory capacity resolved itself just enough to hear her protector’s vehement response.

“Like hell!” With this declaration, Lady Maeve charged toward her struggling comrade, striking with furious precision.

“No!” the knight on the ground shouted, but it was done. The struggle ceased, and the elf went limp in the knight’s grasp. 

Zygo rose, waving off Sir Jaime’s assistance. A disturbing impression surfaced as she took shaky steps toward the dead elf. It was…loss….something missing. 

Sir Carrick knelt over the elf’s body. At Zygo’s approach, his head lifted. Around them, Barracks Knights were ushering party-goers to the interior ballroom, clearing the courtyard of gawking courtiers.

“She was humming,” Sir Carrick said, as though it were an explanation. “It sounded like nothing I have ever heard. I didn’t think about it, until Jaime was shouting and you were on the ground.” 

Thoughts tumbled in Zygo’s mind as she considered this. A witch. Likely an Aural. 

“I didn’t want to kill her.” 

Zygo tensed, a wrinkle forming between her brows as she refocussed on Sir Carrick. The knight looked away, his lips pressed into a thin line.

“Horse-shit,” Lady Maeve snapped. “We are witch-killers, Carrick. That is what we do. The Royal Sorceress is one too.” Zygo barely managed to disguise her flinch. “Depths, Carrick, you’re the one who told me there is no such thing as a good witch.”

Sir Carrick’s jaw tensed and he looked away, coming to his feet. 

“She chose her fate,” Zygo murmured. Her pensive gaze returned to the corpse. A prickling revulsion danced across her skin. She felt…unclean. And angry. And something was missing. 

 “Music is its own kind of magic,” Zygo mused. “Sounds and songs tie themselves to memory. Decades from now, when you can barely remember your own name, a familiar tune will bring coherence to your thoughts, and vivid life will breathe through your broken mind.”

“Something to look forward to,” Sir Carrick muttered, ruefully. 

“Lost knowledge can be reclaimed this way,” the witch continued. “Or taken before its time. That witch took something.”

“Took what?” Sir Carrick’s fingers drummed on the hilt of his sword.

Zygo wracked her brain again and drew a blank. “I’m not sure.”

Lady Maeve gestured at the body at their feet. “You are welcome to ask.” 

The three of them gazed despondently at the body.

“She stole with a song,” Sir Carrick said. “Can the same song recover it?”

“That’s not my kind of magic,” Zygo hedged. “Perhaps—”

“Maeve plays,” Sir Carrick volunteered, then raised his hands as the knight and the sorceress turned on him—one furious and the other doubtful. “The lyre.”

“My mother had such hopes I’d be a lady,” Lady Maeve snarled, lifting her shield for emphasis. “I’ll need the tune. I didn’t hear it.”

Sir Carrick grinned. “I did.”

~

Several hours later the three of them were gathered in the sorceress’s workshop on the ground level of the Night Palace. Of her apartments at the various royal residences, Qalanbar’s were the least odious. The ceilings were low, the light dim and the space consistently warmed from the roaring ovens of the adjacent kitchens, which permeated the stone walls with the scent of baked bread around mealtimes. The proximity to the kitchens also meant close access to the gardens. All in all, a landslide better than the lofty tower workshop at the capital or the cliffside laboratory at the summer residence. Zygo supposed many of the court might equate her lodgings with servants quarters and see them as a slight to her title and role. Weighed against the boons of the arrangement, this perception did not bother the Royal Sorceress. 

Zygo lay on a sofa in her workshop’s sitting room while Sir Carrick and Lady Maeve painstakingly recreated the witch’s song. Lady Maeve’s furious plucking of the lyre strings paired with Sir Carrick’s tuneless vocalizing was giving the sorceress a migraine. 

“This is pointless,” Zygo said at last. “Neither of you possesses the necessary talent.”

The twitch of a smile tempered Sir Carrick’s frown, but Maeve’s features hardened. Her fingers flattened on the strings, stilling their sound. 

Realizing what they had inferred, Zygo amended, “I meant magic. Anyone can hum a melody to summon something forgotten. But the song an Aural would use to steal a memory is imbued with magic. Neither of you could manage it.”

“Could you?” Sir Carrick inquired. His tone was mild and curious, unassuming. 

Zygo bristled anyway, biting back a blistering retort. “No. I can’t remember.” Seething, Zygo summoned her recent memories and again encountered a grasping vacancy.

“Play,” Carrick coaxed. Maeve harumphed, but began to carefully pick out notes. As the uncertain melody drifted around Zygo, something stirred within her. The texture of cool soil between her toes. The rush of power channeled from the dead. A needling trespass…

“Ah,” Zygo said. “I know what she sang.” She did not add how deeply disturbed she was that another witch had sung the song of Mycelium—a song that was hers alone. Instead, she added, “What you have isn’t remotely close. Although your fumblings helped bring it to mind.” 

Sir Carrick snorted and Lady Maeve rolled her eyes, tossing the lyre on the couch.

“A worthy use of my time,” Lady Maeve remarked. “Perhaps you can burden some magical friends with future mysteries. Let’s go, Carrick.” 

Zygo wasn’t listening. She had been tracing the memory of hearing the song at the revels, trying to pin down what the Aural had taken. But something in Maeve’s words snagged. Her focus flitted through her recollections like an insect over the surface of still water, lightly touching here and there without fully settling as she searched for what should be there…and wasn’t. 

Certainty settled within her, and the corners of Zygo’s lips curled. The Royal Sorceress dipped her chin to hide the blooming grin. Her chest ached and a shudder that could have been a laugh or a sob shook her shoulders. Her chest ached and a huff that could have been a laugh or a sob shook across her shoulders. 

Something heavy touched her tentatively on the back, resting just between her shoulderblades. Zygo’s muscles stiffened.

“Mycota?” Carrick’s tone was concerned, but also wary. The Royal Sorceress lifted a hand, waving him away and the knight withdrew his hand. When Zygo lifted her head again, her expression was carefully manufactured dispassion. The knights were watching her warily.

“You were right,” Zygo began. Lady Maeve raised her brows inquiringly. ”When I took this position, there was risk. Some magic-workers resent the ordinance, and I am its governing arm. They fear me. And they should. I am a witch-killer. Or I could be. What the Aural took…” The witch took a breath, held it, and let it go. “I have lost my sisters’ names and whereabouts. I couldn’t find them if I wanted to.”

The ensuing silence was broken by Lady Maeve’s scoff. “Depths, it isn’t as though we hold witch hunts!” 

Sir Carrick was quiet, his gaze fixed and his thoughts far away. When Lady Maeve slapped his chestplate with the back of her hand, he startled. 

Zygo stood, straightening her heavy skirts. “So, that’s settled. Your assistance was…acceptable. Goodnight.” The knights took the cue, muttering their farewell as the sorceress ushered them out of her sitting room. 

As the heavy door thumped behind them, Zygo took a slow inhalation. She gingerly prodded the tender holes in her vast memory, tasting the bitter ache as she reflected on a century and a half of sisterhood and found her recollections fragmented. 

The witch held the air in her lungs until it began to burn and her hand reached up to cover her mouth. She trembled, her jaw dropping open to release the sound that welled in her chest, demanding egress. The wail that escaped was choked, and her chest rattled harshly. Zygo remained that way, letting the tremulous emotion pass through her, ebbing and flowing, until only a hollow exhaustion remained. 

Light gleamed behind her closed eyelids. Zygo’s eyes cracked open, tracking the dust motes in the first beam of dawnlight through her foyer window. She sniffed, wiping mixed tears and snot and spit from her hand onto her thick skirt.

She sighed, then chuckled humorlessly, and went to bed.