4. Rock Star #2
“But we have a gig, Tish! A big gig they’re actually paying us for! The Sun King might actually attend and Jake’s sloshed!” Cynda wailed and threw up her hands before stalking off to the back of the stage.
One of the men who was standing had a bushy beard and equally long gray hair.
His paunch was covered by a gray t-shirt overlaid with a denim shirt and jeans.
He had a musical instrument slung over his shoulders and resting against his paunch.
He was staring down at Jake with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.
He began, “Maybe we can feed him enough coffee–”
At that moment, Jake toppled over on his side and began to snore. Loudly.
“There’s not enough coffee in the world to bring him back in time, Hank,” the other man, also lean, but with a scraggly beard that he scratched said.
“Do we really need the two of you to play bass? Can’t one of you take over the guitar for him? C’mon, Mike, can’t you do it?” Cynda pleaded, having stalked around the stage and came back to them again.
Mike, the scraggly bearded one, gulped and scratched his already reddened neck some more. “Ah, no, no way, Cynda. I don’t sight read. And I can’t do those solos so…”
“Hank?” Cynda’s large eyes swung towards the big man.
Hank snorted. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell, Cynda. You might as well ask Tish here to do it, but she’d never leave her drums.”
“Damned straight,” Tish nodded as she continued to thump her leg with the sticks in her hands. “Besides, the only thing I want to do right now is beat things after watching that loser sleep it off.”
“Can we play without him?” Cynda was really pleading now. Her eyes flickered among her bandmates.
None would meet her eyes. It was clear that none of them believed it would sound any good without this guitar.
Tish headed back dejectedly to a seat behind a drum set while Mike continued to scratch his neck raw.
Hank played with some knobs on a black, squat square with a perforated covering on one side.
There was a hum that came from it. He strummed the instrument–a bass, if he recalled correctly–and the music emanated from the black square. It was amplified by the black square.
“Great. Just fucking great!” Cynda pinched the top of her nose. “We might as well get out of town now before Rohannan realizes we’ve messed up his big festival.”
She went over to Jake’s unconscious form and made to kick him off the stage. Her mouth screwed up in frustration and anger. That was when Vex made himself known.
“Hello there!” he called to the group who all jerked towards him in shock. He hadn’t wanted them to notice him until now so it must have seemed as if he appeared out of nowhere. “Sorry to have frightened you!” He chuckled. “But I couldn’t help but overhear your predicament.”
He gestured towards the unconscious Jake.
Cynda, whose lips had been parted in shock at his appearance, blinked a few times as she took him in. “Oh, yeah, he’s… he’s down for the count. Our guitarist and male vocalist. I’m the main singer. Cynda. Cynda Dahl. And you are?”
He flashed a smile that showed his sharp, white teeth. Predatory, but still friendly. “You can call me… Xel.”
“Xel, huh?” Tish tilted her head to the side, her sticks moving restlessly between her two hands. “You mentioned you heard our predicament, you have a solution?”
“I might.” He strolled up to the base of the stage, hands crossed at the wrists behind his back, smile firmly in place.
“You a musician?” Hank’s thick eyebrows furrowed.
“He looks like a rock star,” Mike murmured, ceasing his endless scratching.
“Looking and being are two different things,” Hank pointed out.
“You’re bleeding there, Mike,” Vex pointed to the young man’s neck. A pimple had been scratched open.
“Oh, shit.” Mike used the back of his shirt to dab at the small bloody wound.
Vex used that as an opportunity to lightly lift himself up onto the stage.
His eyes swept over the unfamiliar instruments.
He saw a long necked stringed instrument resting on the ground.
There were flames painted along its length and it, too, like Hank’s bass, was plugged into one of those black boxes. He tilted his head to the side.
“You’re quite right to be suspicious, Hank,” Vex said as he refocused on the group.
“If you want to jam with us,” Cynda said as she crossed her arms over her chest, “you have to prove you can play… and sight read.”
That last barb was sent Mike’s way whose face flooded with the same color as his reddened neck.
“I admit that I haven’t played instruments exactly like these,” Vex murmured.
“You haven’t played an electric guitar?” Tish’s dark eyebrows rose.
“Where I come from, we call similar instruments quilis.” He picked up Jake’s guitar and slung the strap across his body. “Now with that I am quite skilled, but let us see if my ability translates.”
“Where are you from?” Tish asked.
“Is it… on? Like yours, Hank?” Vex ignored her question and gestured to the bass.
“Yep, speakers working.” Hank went and adjusted one of the knobs. “Rohannan actually has generators that he’s letting us use. Don’t get me wrong, acoustic is good and has its place, but it’s not the same as electric.”
Thinking of that soul-piercing whine he’d heard outside, Vex would have to agree.
“Here’s a pick!” Mike said helpfully as he fished out a small plastic disk that was pointed on one end.
Vex nodded, realizing what it was for as he strummed the strings and heard the speaker crackle, but then with another adjustment by Hank, it let out clear notes that sang up to the roof of the tent.
He smiled and adjusted the fingers of his other hand along the neck of the instrument to depress the strings.
He swiftly moved through various chords and strummed the instrument, seeing how it reacted and the sounds it produced.
Those changed vastly as he moved his fingers up and down the neck of the guitar. His smile grew with every note.
“Look, it’s great that you want to help us, but we need someone who can actually play,” Cynda began. She had a sheath of pages in one hand.
That was when Vex started to play a song of his youth.
The Fall of Last Light. It began with a low growl from the guitar as he turned the stealthy approach of the Kindreth’s enemies into song.
The song shifted to soft notes yet somehow taut with tension as he related the many Kindreth on watch around their pathetic, truly indefensible ramshackle city that perched on the high bluff.
The light from the lichen brighter there than anywhere else, more like the star-spangled skies that the Kindreth had left. Had been forced to leave.
The notes sprang from low to high as the first of the invaders took out the Kindreth watchers. Men and women snatched into the darkness sometimes without so much as a strangled, cut off cry and a bead of blood left on cold stone. One. Two. Three. A dozen. Two dozen.
Gone.
Vanished.
Killed.
Immortal lives snuffed out like candle flames as a storm moves in.
The music rose up, rushing, as the enemy surged over their outer defenses and slithered into their streets. Defensive spells not firing as they used their own mages to counter them before they went off at all. No notice. No sign. No warning.
More wailings of the strings as yet more Kindreth defenders were cut down without anyone being the wiser. Their bodies fell like silent leaves in autumn. But the Under Dark did not have trees. Not like those from where they’d come whose branches moved in the wind and rain.
The music quickened as their enemies, having realized just how well their victory was going, bared their serrated teeth eagerly and began to lope forward. They were still low. Still silent. But not as careful now. Racing. Surging.
And then…
A single Kindreth child. A girl whose name was lost came out of her single room dwelling, seeking to relieve herself in a thin stream behind her house.
Her red eyes had likely been heavy lidded with sleep.
Her movements sluggish and resisting as her bladder forced her out of her warm, if fetid hovel into the chill of the Under Dark’s constant night.
The music pulsed as she must have caught sight of those low, slithery figures racing through the silent streets of Last Light.
Her head must have lifted and jerked towards those forms. And those creatures saw her too.
They saw her and they were coming for her and they would cut her down just like the warriors and mages they had already silently slaughtered.
But they were too late.
Because this unnamed, unknown girl had time enough to scream.
Her scream was represented by the music wailing, rising up almost painfully, to the heavens. Vex leaned back to keep that note going and going and going just as her scream had done.
It woke the Kindreth to the doom that was coming on silent feet. It woke him. And his father. His mother. His brother. His sister. This was a fight to the end for the Kindreth then.
Iefyr.
It was a cry that he created after this battle. For all the battles after it. When he forged the Kindreth into the mighty empire it now was. But that night they truly were fighting for their lives. And it would have been their end, but for that unnamed girl’s scream.
And Lysanthir’s life according to my father.
He’d closed his eyes at some point. He wasn’t sure when. The note died away. He slowly opened his eyes to see the others staring at him wide-eyed. The pages of music in Cynda’s hand fluttered down to the ground as she blinked at him.
There were tears in Tish’s eyes. “Damn.”
“Wow,” Mike whispered.
“Holy fuck,” Hank laughed softly. “You really are a rock star.”
Cynda stepped up to him. Her eyes glowing with wonder. “Forget our music. Can you teach us that?”
The others were all nodding. Vex’s throat felt too tight to speak. His hands smoothed over the front of the electric guitar. This was a true instrument of the gods.
He nodded. He would teach them.