CHAPTER 1

Quick note:  If you haven't read the previous 2, now's a great time to checkout:
http://lepsnovel.blogspot.com/2016/11/prologue.html

and
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTL3BbtiUJ9VZqJrmQLqnYCdL3Et5BHyrxdJAn9ETsvwfqdrynbGWRoBTm2ZnTBONyglzErGcP4HTjN/pub

There you will find the previous novels in all their unedited glory, just as I posted them while I wrote them.  One of these days, I will edit them. I'm sure.  Yeah. /nods.   Or you can start here and be REALLY confused. Because I don't have a synopsis of the other 2 yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later tonight. Who knows??

Wingbinder Saga Part 3

The faint, sweet song was driving him mad.  It was incessant. Every second of the journey here, and every moment on this planet was full of it. It was a simple melody, and it wasn’t. I was, as near as Michael could tell, all one interminable song, plaintive and beautiful, vaguely sepulchral. It made his teeth itch. Nothing blocked it. Not earplugs, not spells, not their own humming and songs, not devices that had been brought from the ship.  It had no source, no start, no end. Even if Michael could sing, or hum, he couldn’t sing along. Nothing in it repeated. In the two weeks they’d been on and around the planet, whatever it was called, no phrase had ever been repeated. Ra’Cha had some device on the ship attempting to analyze it. The device kept crashing before it could capture enough of it to find a pattern.

Sometime during Day 2, Brent had laughingly dubbed the planet Eversong. Michael had dubbed it lots of things, but none of them were nice. To start with, it was next to impossible to fly here. Well, not really. He could fly, but it didn’t do any good.  The tree canopy went hundreds of feet high from bare yards above the ground. The brush was thick. He could fly over the treetops...but he couldn’t see anything or travel with his companions if he did.  Not that they were down here anyway. That had stopped after day 2. After Brent attacked Master Gryth. Michael sent them all back to the ship that night, and made sure they left. Then he continued on himself, edgy and twitching like the rest, but alone and unlikely to turn on anyone. For some reason, the tune didn’t make him angry like it did Brent, Paul and Randall, nor weepy like it did Gryth, or worse...ummm...excitable like Ra’Cha. He was just tired.  His leg hurt. His stump ached. His armpits were sore and blistered from teh crutches. The chair was too hard to maneuver...And so help him, if another bug...

“OW.  DAMMIT. My blood is supposed to stay INSIDE!”  He swiped his hands ineffectively though the air to dislodge whatever new tiny predator had now obtained a sample. “That does it.” He ran quickly through the spell to connect his voice to the ship’s speakers and said “I’m done with this section. There’s nothing here. The song isn’t different, the volume’s the same, all the energy signatures are the same. Portal me up.”

Ra’Cha’s laughing voice came back to his ears. “Now, now. What’s the magic words?”

“Not saying it. It makes no sense. I have no idea why you even make me say it.”  He really, really, wasn’t in the mood.

“Then I’ll have the old fool send you down a sandwich.”

“Fine. ‘One to beam aboard.’” He glared at the canopy of trees over his head as though Ra’Cha could see it.

“That’s ‘One to beam aboard, Mr. Scott,” she corrected.

He glared a little harder and gritted his teeth. “One to beam aboard, Mr. Scott”

“You forgot to say please.”

And THAT is when Michael lost his temper.

He tore at the tiny spell they had been using to communicate, grabbing it in his hands , stretching, breaking, and reforming it in a dozen places, and then focused his anger on it until it exploded in size. The construct was enormous. It blazed with light. And Michael added the power from his wings until it echoed, hundreds of meters wide and tall blazing bright in the daylit sky until it could be seen by his friends above.  Gryth had time to mutter a hasty “oh shit” before Michael screamed.

“THAT. DOES. IT!”  The words thundered across and through the planet. Trees near him were blasted to dust. Lakes hundreds of miles away rippled in the grasp of a new tide. But Michael wasn’t done talking. He was 16 years old, he’d been stranded on this dumb planet for 2 weeks, he’d just been told he was never going to die so he could keep some crazy God company until the end of time, his friends back home were probably dying, and he’d get there too late to save them and he’d still have to kill the Lady, and none of it was going to matter and it was all because this one. Stupid. Daughter. Of. The. Tribunal. Was. Hiding.

Michael took to the sky, the obliterated trees having left him a path.  He didn’t soar upward, he didn’t climb. He blazed.  Like a comet in reverse he blew up from the ground with a terrible noise, trailing starfire in his wake.  Brent, watching on a screen from the ship up above, gasped.  “Is that...”

Gryth snarled “Yes.”

“Is that because...”

Gryth half turned and snapped his teeth. “How in hell should *I* know? Do I look like I’ve kissed a major cosmic force?  Do I? Do you see stars in my eyes you aren’t telling me about?  No? Then shut it while I pray the cub doesn’t get us all killed.”

Oddly, Paul noticed that Randall didn’t seem perturbed at all. He was watching through the screen with the rest of them, but where the rest were at least a little afraid, Randall’s face showed nothing but rapt fascination. Paul returned his gaze to the massive event below.

Michael was hovering miles above the canopy now, his wings were flared wide and blazing with what was clearly not ordinary fire. “ENOUGH! WHERE ARE YOU?  I’VE BEEN HERE TWO WEEKS LISTENING TO YOUR STUPID SONG. IT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE WORDS! WHERE ARE YOU??  MY FRIENDS ARE DYING, AND YOU’RE LAYING AROUND SINGING SOMEWHERE. GET OUT HERE!”

He waited for a bare minute as the words careened around the planet, crashing tides and tearing winds in their wake, then blazed even brighter.

“FINE. BE A COWARD. LEAVE IT ALL TO ME. I’LL JUST GO STICK A SWORD IN THE LIGHT, PRAY THAT I CAN KILL THE DARK, AND WATCH EVERYTHING DIE SO I CAN SPEND ETERNITY CRYING NEXT TO SOME COSMIC DATE-RAPIST WHO THINKS I HAVE PRETTY WINGS. FINE. HAVE A NICE LIFE.  I HOPE YOU ROT.”  He turned his face away from the planet and climbed higher into the sky. He may be the only one who didn’t notice that when he turned, there was no more sound. The song had stopped.  When it resumed, it blew him clear out of the sky.

His body smashed through the atmosphere into the vacuum of space in less than a second. If he hadn’t been wreathed with starfire, sheltered by his own wings, the sound of it would have shattered him. He hung in space for a moment, grasping at the planet for air, and then he struck back.

Paul gasped. Gryth gripped the edge of the table in front of him so hard his claws went straight through. Brent collapsed onto a bench. Even Ra’Cha was appalled. But Randall just stood there and put one hand gently on the screen. “There. Now she’s listening.” They all swiveled their heads to look. “She thought he was part of her song. Part of HER. He hadn’t done anything her song wouldn’t do. Now he has. So she’s listening.”

Gryth looked at him strangely. Randall just shrugged. “Trust me. I just...know.”

They all returned their focus to the scene below.  Michael soared at the edge of the atmosphere, wreathed in starfire, light, and incredible sound. Voices and tones roared around and through him, and he answered in blazes of light and shouts of his own. The planet shuddered; the ship, far above, in orbit, began to rock and vibrate. Ra’ Cha started to run for the controls, and Randall laid a hand on her shoulder, risking both the hand and his life. “Wait. He’s got us. We’ll be OK.”  She gave him a frankly skeptical look and then returned her gaze to the screen to witness the ongoing insanity. Michael was carving paths across the air, blazing trails of color that did not dissipate.  She grasped what was happening about a second after Gryth and 3 long breaths before the boys. “He’s not...”

“He is.”

He was carving a glyph against the night sky. An old glyph. She knew she’d seen it somewhere but couldn’t remember where...

Paul answered the unspoken question. “In the nursery. It’s the lullaby. The old one about the stars. But...It’s enormous. At that scale, it...”

Gryth was quiet. “It will cross the stars. It will rend the vacuum of space. It will vibrate against the planets themselves.  It will carry the softest and sweetest of our lullabies to the edges of the night and beyond. And it will kill him. Even with the Tribunal’s gift, there’s no way. He might be able to tap the starfire, but channeling that much will kill him.  And us.”

Randall stared at them. “He’s not casting it for HIM. Listen!”

They strained to hear what Randall heard. None of them could. He sighed, exasperated and stared out the window. ‘If you can’t listen, just trust me. And love him. He needs your love right now. He’s very tired and this is very hard and he needs our help.”

The other four exchanged glances, and went to stand by the screen. Brent held Paul in front of him, and Gryth took Ra’Cha’s hand in his own. Together they all stood and watched as the beautiful, terrible art of Michael’s magic unfolded against the starry sky. And as they watched, as they watched for the bright spark of Michael leading the edge of the rune, they could begin to hear. Michael was not alone. The song had chased him up into the vast cold night. The vacuum was full of something that could not be there, and it was chasing across the fiery rune, playing along the edges, and singing with a voice they couldn’t grasp. A million small melodies bound together in a construction so complex they could only barely understand the edge. And somehow it was all perfect. No small piece was unstuck from another. It all wound together crazily, but with absolute perfection. And Gryth was absolutely sure that if he understood even a hundredth, maybe even just a thousandth of what he saw and heard, he would see a conversation. He couldn’t speak in it, but he would know it was taking place.

Randall’s face was beaming. “They’re talking! See?” Gryth was on the edge of tears, trying to force himself to understand, when Paul laid his hand on his arm. “It’s ok. I don’t think we’re supposed to. When they’re ready to talk to us, we’ll understand.” Gryth snarled lightly and Paul pulled back his hand. Gryth whined at the window. Paul understood. “He’s ok. He’ll be ok. I’m sure she *could* hurt him, but she’s not trying. Look. They’re building it together now.”

It was true. Even without understanding they could tell. Michael was nearing the completion of the original glyph and the closer he got to the end, the louder the song became, and the simpler the song. In the distance, a single melody began to stand out from the rest, a single theme made strong. It was the lullaby from the glyph. And as Michael finished the glyph, it flared into incandescence for a microsecond, overwhelming a huge portion of the solar system with light...and an answering song. It didn’t thunder madly, it didn’t rock the ship or tear at the heavens. The tides stayed calm, but as far as the edge of the solar system, to the limits of the light of a hot sun, in perfect clarity, there was the song. And Gryth understood. “She’s not the singer. She’s the SONG.”

Randall nodded. “She didn’t realize we weren’t her because we’re songs, too, to her. And she’s ALL the songs. She’s THE song. So when Michael finally sang-”

Paul’s exclamation was startled: “SANG!?”

“Well, the way she sees it, yes. It’s all a song. Everything. Everything we do. But he was only doing things people do. Walking, talking, breathing. Songs do that. But songs do not blow away whole sections of the forest, blaze into the sky on a pillar of her dad’s fire and then scold her for being a pouty, cowardly child. She’s fascinated.”

Gryth whispered. “Tribunal Save Us.”

“He has.” Brent jumped and screamed, which was fair since the voice came from the air behind him, which had been empty half a second before. Now Michael stood there, hair mussed, wings tucked loosely against his back, holding hands with...they all blinked... with...well...something.  Something was there. They could feel it. They could hear it. Michael was holding hands with ...a song. Brent spoke first. “Seriously. You...Only you could hold hands with a SONG Michael, I swear.”   

The words came from everywhere. From the air, from the steel of the ship, from within them and without. “With THE song. I am not A song, Brent. I am THE song. I will hold hands with you. Will you sing with me?”

“I...do you want me to sing with you?”

Laughter filled the world. “But you are! You DO!  Don’t you know?” He shook his head sadly.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

Randall laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s ok. She doesn’t mind. I’ll explain better later. I will sing with you. I am part of Michael’s song, and I greet you. Please, what may we call you? Calling you ‘The Song’ will be confusing and make it hard for us to find harmony with you.”

Laughter filled the world again, softer this time, delighted. “Ah. A singer. It’s been so long. I have had so many names. So many are cliched from overuse...Please. Call me Josephine. Once, one of the builders wrought a great song for her and I cherish it.”

“I... yes. Of course. I thought maybe a title, like your sisters...”

“I am no lady, no empress. I need no title. I am the song. I cannot be sung. I can only be sung with. Please. Call me Josephine. Or Jo. I like Jo. Yes. Call me that.”

Randall smile. “Thank you, Jo. Thank you for singing with my love. For not ending his song.”

Jo, as much as anything not made of light or solid form could, shrugged. Gryth’s brain struggled for a moment over the concept before he deliberately let it go past. 

Jo's voice was everywhere, but somehow soft and gentle. “His song is not yet done. He will sing long past the point when his melody has meaning to you. Long past when it can be heard among the stars by any but me. And I will not leave him there to sing alone. I promise. His song is beautiful. I will not forget it.”

Michael’s hand dropped, apparently let go of. “But now we must go to my father. I have listened to your songs, and to my sisters far away, and my father is right. I will need some part of him with me to hold them to their ancient places in our melody. I will right them in their parts, and bring us to harmony again. Michael, Ra’Cha, please. Take me to your map. I will ease our way.”

Ra’Cha turned and walked down the corridor. Michael could see that the fur all along her back stood entirely on end. He could also hear Jo’s laugh as Ra’Cha muttered under her breath “Thank the universe for small favors.”

A whisper of song wrapped through Michael’s mind. “Don’t worry. I have a sense of humor. Some of the greatest songs ever written are jokes. I won’t smite her for pique.” Michael smiled.