Eventually the search led her and Tazi downstairs to the cellars. Here, mercifully, the wonders and anomalies seemed less abundant, though the music sounded as loudly as before.
Tazi tested the handle of a stout door reinforced with iron bands, found it locked, and rapped on it. On the other side, someone gave a wordless, gurgling cry.
The two women exchanged a glance, then kicked the door in unison. It banged in the frame, but held firm, and Shamur could tell that they could batter it for hours without effect.
Tazi gave her mother a sidelong, uncharacteristically diffident look. "I… may be able to do something here," she said. From the small, beaded pouch on her belt she removed a supple roll of chamois. When she opened it, it proved to contain a shining assortment of steel picks and probes, tucked through a series of loops to hold them in place.
Now it was Shamur's turn to stare at her companion in astonishment. She knew something of her daughter's wild and contrary ways, but still, was it possible? Tazi a thief, just as she herself had been? She supposed she ought to feel outrage, but the emotion wouldn't come, and she surprised both the girl and herself by bursting out laughing instead.
"Yes, get us in," she said. "And may Mask kiss your fingers."
Shamur saw with a wistful twinge of pride that Tazi's touch was as deft as her own had been. The lock, though relatively sophisticated, clicked and yielded in a trice. The older woman gave her daughter time to rise and ready her knife and long sword, then threw open the door.
Inside was a low-ceilinged cell, with shackles intended to secure a brace of prisoners to the far wall. Unfortunately, the power of Guerren Bloodquill's music had altered the nature of the chains. They started out from their mountings as lengths of metal links, but after a few inches turned into thick, lush-smelling green vines, grown and twisted together to become some sort of plant. In the center of the intricate tangle dangled the helplessly writhing form of Quyance, with pairs of serrated, fleshy leaves clamped around his limbs like jaws. Judging from the little man's raw skin and blisters, the leaves secreted a juice that was slowly digesting him alive.
Tazi exclaimed in disgust and hacked at the plant.
Three gaping, traplike sets of leaves shot out at her like striking adders. Shamur swung her sword and severed one of them, and the younger woman accounted for the other two.
Killing the plant proved to be far from easy. It had countless mouths with which to strike at its attackers and no obvious vital areas at which the women could aim their blows. Still, Shamur felt confident that she and Tazi would defeat it in time, because she assumed it couldn't pursue them when they found it expedient to retreat. It was, after all, rooted to the back wall, and probably to the floor as well.
Then it made a fool of her by lunging, its roots either stretching or ripping free of their moorings. Shamur pivoted toward the doorway but couldn't reach it in time. A wave of creaking, rattling foliage slammed into her and Tazi, shoving them against the wall.
The mass of the plant pressed all around Shamur, blinding, smothering. Pairs of leaves closed on her, soft but powerful, relentlessly stinging her with their acids and striving to immobilize her. Snarling, she cut at the thing over and over again.
Finally, it stopped moving.
"Mother?" Tazi gasped. "Are you all right?" From the sound of her voice, she was still only a yard of two away, but completely invisible inside the jumble of vines. These were already turning brown, and, from the stink of them, beginning to rot.
"I'm fine," Shamur said. "You?"
"The same, but that was close."
"Close calls are good for you," Shamur said. It was a remark she'd often made to other thieves and adventurers. "They get your blood pumping."
"Sometimes right out of your body," Tazi replied, "but I take your point."
With considerable effort, the women struggled clear of the plant, then turned their attention to Quyance, stripping away the leaves and coils of liana that bound him. To Shamur's relief, the little man wasn't burned as badly as she'd initially feared.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"You're welcome," Shamur said. "I wish we could take you directly to a healer as well, but we haven't time. We have to stop the opera, and we need your help. Exactly who are you, Master Quyance, and what do you know about what's going on?"
"I play the glaur," said Quyance, "and when the Hulorn was assembling his orchestra, he hired me. I was delighted to have the chance to participate in such a historic performance, even though I frankly couldn't understand why a master like Guerren Bloodquill had chosen to spend his talent on such a work. His genius was manifest in every phrase, but the effect was so unpleasant."
"We noticed," Tazi said.
Despite the pain of his injuries, the horn player gave her a wry little smile. "Actually, we didn't have inanimate objects turning into man-eating plants during rehearsal. Still, odd things did happen. Stacks of boxes falling. A rack of costumes catching fire. A rat dancing on its hind legs. A layer of frost in a hallway. And Bors the drummer-strong, young, healthy-keeled over dead. His heart just stopped for no reason at all.
"Given Guerren's sinister reputation," Quyance continued, "I suspected that the music was responsible. I told the Hulorn of my concerns, but if anything, my report made him more eager than ever to have the work performed. I didn't entirely understand him, but he seemed to believe that the opera might contain an arcane message sent down the ages from Bloodquill specifically to himself. A communication that would lead him to some mysterious 'destiny.'"
"Ah, yes, Andeth's destiny," Shamur said. She and Tazi lifted Quyance clear of the dead plant and helped him to a bench in the corner. "He's been seeking it for years, with never a clue as to what it will involve. Though I think we can rule out wise decisions and responsible governance."
"Well, when I persisted in my objections, he discharged me," Quyance said, "and before I left the palace, I purloined a copy of the score. I'm not merely a performer, you see." He drew himself up a little straighten "I'm also an initiate of Milil and a scholar of music in both its exoteric and esoteric aspects. I hoped that if I studied the opera, consulting the texts I've collected over the years, I might find out exactly what was going on with it, and I felt I had a duty to attempt precisely that."
"What did you come up with?" Tazi asked.
"Something more terrible than I could have dreamed. Guerren wove a sort of ritual into the score, which, when it reached its conclusion, would create a permanent region of primal chaos here on the earthly plane."
As a rebellious scapegrace of a girl, Shamur had seldom cared to study, but, gifted with intelligence and a good memory, she'd often assimilated her lessons more or less despite herself. Now she recalled her philosophy tutor explaining that on those levels of reality where chaos, a fundamental force of the cosmos, reigned unchecked by the counterbalancing principle of law, all things were possible, and therefore, nothing was stable or permanent. Under such conditions, human life could not long endure.
"Why in the name of the Abyss would he want do that?" she asked.
Quyance dredged up another weary little smile. "Well, the tales do say that he was mad. But perhaps it was intended as a weapon. You make your enemy a gift of the opera, he has it staged, and it destroys him. In any case, it was only tonight that I finally discerned its purpose. I raced back here, slipped in through a side entrance… but you know the rest."
"How big a region of chaos are we talking about?" Tazi asked, restlessly toying with her knife.
"I can't be altogether certain," Quyance said, "but I think it might engulf the entire city."
A chill oozed up Shamur's spine, and the music jangling in the air seemed to laugh at her. She pushed horror to the back of her mind and forced herself to concentrate on practicalities. "There's one thing I still don't understand. During rehearsal, you people must have performed the opera from start to finish. Why didn't the ritual take effect then?"