He walked forward then and halted a score of paces away, regarding the man’s dapper form and neat beard, the dagger at his ankle, the claymore at his side.
Standing, listening there, he became aware that the terrain was shifting slowly about him, hills sinking into valleys, other hills rising. It struck him then that somehow they obeyed the music. It was as if the area had grown plastic and were dancing to the skirls and wailings, overriding, somehow, the will of its genius loci.
The piping went on, and on, as did the changes. After a time, he noticed a sudden drooping in the midst of a nearby patch of heather. Then a tiny piece of blackness raised itself above it and moved to one nearer at hand. The heather began to fade, to wither.
“Hi,” came a small voice. “Music’s a great thing, isn’t it?”
He stared and saw that the black patch was a butterfly.
“He won’t stop for awhile yet,” it said. “That’s ‘Band of the Titans’ he’s playing. It goes on some.”
“Who is he?” Donnerjack asked.
The butterfly flitted to his shoulder, the better to be heard above the piping.
“Wolfer Martin D’Ambry,” came the reply, “who piped the phantom regiment of Skyga to many victories in the days of Creation. He is a lost soul of sorts, the Phantom Piper.”
“Phantom Piper? Why is he called that?”
“Because he is of no world, and he wanders like a ghost, looking for his lost regiment.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard the story.”
“In the early days the realms suddenly pulled upon one another and bled through more easily, when the union of systems produced Virtu at large.”
“Yes.”
“When all was cut loose there was a period of chaos, a great flux, as the aions sought to maintain their domains against the pressures from all sides. A world had been born and sent upon its way, but its unmooring was somewhat catastrophic, though it might not have seemed so on the outside. It may have been a matter of moments there, though it ran for eons within.”
“I know of this, and it was actually quite brief in real time.”
There followed a musical chuckle.
“I assure you,” it answered, “that the time in Virtu was real to those of sentience.”
“It was just an observation, not an attempt to belittle any who suffered. Were you present? A butterfly seems such a—fragile thing—in times such as that.”
Again, that laugh.
“If you ever have access to chronicles of those times, check out the name ‘Alioth.’ “
Donnerjack glanced at the piper.
“We have digressed somewhat,” he said.
“True. There was a company of deadly fighters Skyga had imagined. He brought them into being whenever he needed their services in battle.”
The piper skirled on and a hiss began to fall as Donnerjack shook his head.
“‘Imagined,’ you say?”
“Yes. As was customary with gods at the time of the Great Flux, he created what he needed by an act of strong imagination. They don’t go in for that much anymore. Too strenuous. But what he needed then was a deadly strike force.”
“He just imagined them and there they were?”
“Oh, no. Even a god requires some preparation. He had to imagine each one individually in advance, form and feature, fighting characteristics. He had to see them all as clearly as we see each other. Only then could he combine the imagining with his will to bring them into being on a battlefield.”
“Of course. And I suppose he could draw back the injured and send them forth again whole.”
“Yes, he could be a field hospital all by himself. They were magnificent, and the bright flame was their piper, D’Ambry. He did see action, too, of course, and he fought as well as the rest. Better, perhaps.”
“So what happened?”
“As events settled and the call to arms was heard with less frequency, their services were required less and less. Then, following one of the great final battles, Skyga called his troops home to sleep again in his memory. And they all went back in the blink of an eye, save for a lone piper on a hilltop.”
“Why not him?”
“One of life’s little mysteries. My guess is that he had something the others didn’t: his music. I think it gave him that extra measure of being that made him an individual rather than just a member of a company.”
“And so?”
“And so the company was summoned several times again, and it always appeared without its piper. It is said that for a time Skyga sought him unsuccessfully, but after a while the battles ended and he never called for them again. And the piper wanders now, looking for his lost legion. He pipes all over Virtu, calling to them.”
“Pity he cannot forget and find a new life for himself.”
“Who knows? Perhaps one day—”
Abruptly, the piping ceased. Donnerjack looked up to see the piper disappearing beyond the far side of his stony perch. He moved forward. The memories that man must have locked in his head! It would be a full education in the epistemology of Virtu to get him to talking.
Donnerjack rounded the stony outcrop, but the piper was nowhere in sight. He circled it again.
“Wolfer!” he called. “Wolfer Martin D’Ambry! I have to talk to you. Where are you?”
But there was no response.
When he returned to the place where he had been standing the black butterfly was no longer in sight either.
“Alioth?” he asked. “Are you still here?”
Again, he received no answer.
He backed away. Then, on an impulse, he activated his controls and soared. No sign of the piper, but he was impressed by the subtle changes in the terrain apparently in response to the music. Soft rises had grown steeper, steep ones craggier. The land about his perch had taken on a rawer look, as of earlier, rougher times.
Donnerjack descended and released his controls, restoring the normal drift program which permitted the landscape of Virtu to shift through the Great Stage. He could hard-holo or leave soft anything that came by. He left it at soft. Turning then, he departed into his own world.
Ayradyss could easily see the swell of her belly by the day that she finally met the banshee. For some time now, she and John had been in full-time residence at the castle, rarely leaving their Scottish island. Their privacy was a lover’s delight, but she knew it also served the practical purpose of keeping difficult questions about the origin of Donnerjack’s new wife to a minimum.
Ayradyss was in complete accord with John’s desire to keep her Virtu origin a secret. The masquerade would not need to be maintained forever. He had shown her his campaign for inserting data about her into Verite’s records—many of which were kept in Virtu. However, between drawing up the plans for Death’s palace and the occasional business of the Donnerjack Institute, he had put off actually beginning his campaign. She did not mind. Her experiences in Deep Fields, although poorly remembered, still haunted her. The isolated castle with its many ghosts and robots was society enough.
Still, sometimes she left the castle proper to walk near the ocean on a particular isolated, pebbly strand. The fisherfolk never came near this spot—the waves hid far too many rocks and the villagers lived far too intimately with wet and cold and the uneven temper of the sea to find the wild prospect at all enticing or romantic.
Ayradyss, however, enjoyed it and, as her pregnancy drew on, more and more often she took her exercise on the strand, well enough bundled to still the worried nagging of both the robots and ghosts. So it was that one foggy morning she met the banshee.