“We do not know what happens, Majester, but it cannot be beneficial,” Sir Coriand says. “Look at the trial we already faced. Perhaps we have only one chance to solve this box or we will perish here. And if that is true, we ought to hurry. As to the puzzle, Sir Hefertus, we refer to the etching showing the sun moving through its courses.”
Hefertus grunts. “Oh, well we all know what that meant. Not much of a puzzle.”
He is greeted by stillness and silence except for the whistling of the breeze through the cutouts in the stone.
He looks around slowly, his brow furrowed. I barely suppress a grin.
“Is something wrong?” Hefertus asks.
Sir Coriand sets down his bowl of tea, a slightly bemused smile on his face. “Are you saying you know what the etching means, Sir Hefertus?”
In answer, Hefertus whistles an odd tune, a little breathy and lilting. It does not suit the mood at all, though it reminds me a little of what he was playing on the organ. A dirge if ever there was one.
“Is there any of that tea to go around?” he asks when he is done.
Sir Sorken snaps his fingers and one of the golems lurches into action, attending to a kettle. It is only then that I realize they are burning rags to heat the kettle. Some of them look a little too familiar and my stomach twists. Have … the golems haven’t pilfered from the dead to light their fire … have they? That cloth looks very much like the Inquisitor’s cloak.
Hefertus accepts the mug and drinks like a man badly in need of a brew, and I stand unhappily, striding away to stretch my legs and clear my head for a moment. I still don’t feel quite right. My heartbeat is too fast, my lungs sore, every bone in my body aching — though especially the arm. I think perhaps I am feverish. The whole world feels hot. Far too hot. As if the sun has taken against me, though I cannot see even see his face.
“Is he going to tell us or what?” I hear the Majester’s anxiety creeping into his whispered question, but I don’t look at him.
I don’t look at anyone. I just need a little air. Just a little. I make my way to the cutout bas-relief and put my nose and mouth to a hole too small to even shove a hand through. I feel like a prisoner looking longingly at a floor drain.
“The sun marks are times of day, obviously,” Sir Coriand says. “But how did you get musical notes from that?”
Hefertus whistles a single note. It’s not his usual clear, melodic whistle but a breathing one that sounds more like the wind than a song. I close my eyes and let the cold air blowing in from the sea wash over my face, and I treasure that scent of salt and pine trees. It feels so far away and yet the same wind washes over them and washes through this rock prison and over me.
Hefertus’s whistled note fills my ears, seems to grow.
But that’s not it at all.
His note simply matches the wind as it washes into the room.
“Something about the shape of the rocks outside and the bas-relief and the tide must change the sound of the wind whistling in,” Hefertus is saying. “Or maybe it’s none of that. Maybe it’s magic.”
“The tune you whistled?”
“It’s just the notes the wind makes as it runs through the carving. In the order of the times on that little chart.”
In the silence, I hear quiet feet approaching me. I grit my jaw, but even though I was ready, I flinch when a hand drops lightly on my shoulder.
“Are you well, Poisoned Saint?”
The Vagabond’s voice is like honey on my tongue and sun on my face.
“I beg you. Remove your hand,” I gasp out as quickly as the words can form.
Forsworn, forsworn, forsworn.
My mind chants the word but though I know what it is meant to be, it still sounds like “lost” to me and I want to reach out and take it back. I want to take back her touch that flies away and leaves my shoulder cold. I want to snatch her hand in mine.
“I am well enough,” I manage, not wanting to reject her kindness entirely, but I dare not look at her.
“But he already whistled it and it did nothing,” Sir Owalan is protesting in the background. “So it can’t be the answer.”
“I think it’s meant to be played,” Sir Coriand says. “Would you try to play it for us, Sir Hefertus? On the pipe organ?”
I know my friend will say yes. To him, playing a song is as natural as breathing.
