She opened her eyes.
No footsteps outside, no voices yet.
She rose without dressing. Her robe was still folded from the afternoon’s prayer. She slipped it over her head and clasped it at the neck, not bothering with her caps; she needed to have as much contact with the stone as possible. Her hooves clicked softly in the corridor, rhythmic as a metronome.
The prayer hall was empty. She didn’t light the lamps.
Her Tuning tried to settle, but the wyrm shifted like a sleeper disturbed by some sound they couldn’t quite place. She crouched at the front of the room, facing east, where the morning light would come. She placed a hand to the floor and listened.
For a moment the world narrowed to that single point of contact: her palm to the floor. The heat of her skin faded slowly. A new warmth gathered beneath.
There came a pressure. Her tail stiffened.
The wyrm was waking.
Then came the first bell. Not the morning bell; it wasn’t time for that.
She rose and jogged to the vestibule. Outside, in the deepest dark before the hour of morning, the bell of Saint Fillain rang a second time, sonorous and out of place in the dark.
She turned her face to the sound, which moved through her chest, answered by a shift in the Tuning, a chord struck somewhere inside her teeth, her jaw.
The wyrm called.
She took the stairs two at a time, bare-hooved, no veil. Cold wind coiled down the stairwell from above. She passed Brothers and Sisters already waking, pulling on gloves and robes, some running. One of the older Glinnel passed her a light cloak – she threw it over her shoulders without pausing.
The bell in the square rang. The city was being roused.
Acolytes lit the sconces in the High Gallery. Redscale chimes swung gently in the wind as the balcony doors opened. The snow had already begun to fall.
She stepped onto the eastern balcony and the wind caught her like a hand. Snowflakes lashed against her face and throat. She looked up. The clouds above were heavy with unspent weight, the sky purple-black with it. A Sister beside her lit the Tuning flames, four bluescale fires in the chime corners.
High Glinnel Seli joined them, her robes immaculate as always, billowing out with the wind, but she moved forward with stony presence as if the wind wouldn’t dare reduce her composure. The bells on her sleeves chimed as she glided across the balcony. “Snowstorm,” she said. “Glinnel, we’ll sing the Stormsong.”
The others nodded. Several acolytes shivered in the cold, one or two small enough that Lain felt a bolt of pity at the looks on their tired faces. But this was vital work. They would have to learn sometime.
From the courtyard below, the city began to hum as the people gathered, woken by the warning bells. Lain took her place at the edge of the balcony with one hand to the bell at her throat. She didn’t ring it yet. The wyrm’s mind was still coiled, but it was listening. She waited for the tension to crest. The wyrm never rose fast; it was not a creature of moments, but of long centuries, folded over one another like deep roots. Its attention unfurled slowly, vast like the heat that precedes a fever.
Another bell rang in the square below and voices rose to meet her. The Dagorlind had three High Glinnel, and one would be earthside to direct the choir of the citizens of Ivath.
She reached the broad mouth of the serpent bell and touched its metal rim with a thumb. It hung from a sturdy tower, so heavy it hardly swayed in this wind. She hated to ring it before being certain the Underserpent was fully with her. She didn’t like how the sound flattened if she asked too soon.
The storm thickened and the wind rose to a pitch. Storms of this magnitude could cause avalanches, bury frost-resistent crops that needed just a little more time before harvest. The wind knocked her veil loose, and her ears stung where the cold reached them.
“Call the serpent, Bellborn,” High Glinnel Seli said.
Lain raised her hand to the cable, ready to pull, to follow the order –
But no. The Underserpent wasn’t ready.
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She paused, listening.
“Lain,” Seli insisted.
She’d never defied the High Glinnel before. But surely Seli could sense that it wasn’t time.
How often had she pushed the wyrm before it was ready? Too many times to count. But what could Seli do to her now, if she disobeyed this close to the ceremony?
The Underserpent’s presence crept through her, a slow coiling along the scales of her spine.
It was time. She pulled the cable with all her might –
And slipped in the snow on icy hooves.
She yelped as the bell swung, the cable dragging her with it –
But someone snagged her by the waist and pulled her backward. “Got you,” said Sister Hellen. She dragged Lain upright and the bell swung out with a sonorous peal.
The tone poured down the balcony, sharp as sunlight. It moved down her body, through her hooves, into the stone, and the bell at her neck hummed in response. The Spire carried the tone, its halls made to reverberate with song.
Somewhere far below, the wyrm stirred.
The choir of Glinnel around her sang, and her voice rose with them, Sister Hellen’s voice wavering at her side. In slow verses she called out the Stormsong. She took the first note in her mouth like a cold marble and turned it, one hand to her serpent bell, the other raised outward to the storm as she sang.
Wyrm of root and wind and stone,
Bend the breath but break it none.
Snow may fall and sky may turn,
Spare the hearth and shield the fern.
Only the Tuned could hear the wyrm’s side of it. But Lain heard it perfectly, the soft harmonic that came after every note in answer. This was not a command; it was an invitation.
The snow surged over the rooftops like foam, whitening the upper terraces first, then the temple eaves, the braziers along the south-facing walls. Lain’s song found the curve of the wind and moved inside it, not resisting but shifting its shape.
The wyrm groaned through her with a sound not meant for mouths. She matched its tone and pitched higher, coiling the sound upward toward the clouds.
The wyrm didn’t want to rise. It was weary. Her body knew it before her mind did, her knees trembling, her wrists buzzing with static, the scales over her collarbone aching with old heat. But she sang on, and the wyrm came with her.
Together they turned the worst of the storm.
Seli carried on singing, urging with her voice for Lain to ask more of the Underserpent.
She could’ve pushed it further off, could have destroyed the clouds with the power. But its ragged breath echoed inside her, its brittle scales so tight and uncomfortable, the call of sleep like a summons to home.
At her left, High Glinnel Seli waved her onward as she held the note, encouraging Lain again to push for more of the wyrm’s power.
But she couldn’t.
The densest middle of the storm bent wide over the pass. The cold stayed, but the weight of it lifted, a wind moving the heaviest of clouds southward.
The snow would come. But it would not bury them.
She let the last note fall.
She could feel the wyrm retreating in exhaustion.
The bell at her throat rang once more in the wind as she lowered her hand.
Under the Spire, the wyrm slipped back into its long dark. Before High Glinnel Seli could force Lain to meet her eye, Lain walked back through the galley. The other Glinnel clapped, some acolytes hollered, patting one another on the back. But High Glinnel Seli frowned, and crossed her arms, and Lain felt a thrill at her defiance like none she’d felt before.
The heat of the hall kissed Lain’s frosty cheeks and ears in welcome. She descended the stairs cautiously, her damp hooves sliding on the marble now and then. The bells had stopped ringing. The city would go back to sleep.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Sister Hellen stood with a child who had come in with her parents, cityfolk who had woken to sing the storm off. Several others stood in a makeshift line behind the first family, with bundles wrapped in their arms, their noses red and their eyes mostly half-lidded with fatigue.
Waking the city was a gift the Dagorlind gave to the people, or so it was said; their voices did nothing to turn a storm, but letting them feel as if they had some control was a deeper gift than letting them know the Glinnel carried them all.
Lain lifted her veil and tightened it over her ears self-consciously. She wished she’d thought to put on her robes now.
“Bellborn Lain,” Sister Hellen said, using the formal title before the citizens. “Several of the people wish to show their thanks.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Lain said, finding formality in her exhaustion. “The Unsung Sisters would be happy to receive any gratitude you wish to provide; they will share it with all the Glinnel, as the work of the Underserpent is the work of us all.”
But the girl held a bundle of sugar petals, and stepped out of line to offer her one.
“For you, Bellborn,” the girl said.
Lain smiled and crouched before the girl. She took the petal between two fingers and examined it closely. “Ah, this is fine work. Lovely texture. Did you melt the sugar yourself?”
The girl brightened. “No, mother says the pot is too deep for me to stir, but she gave me a mug, and let me pour the mold, and then I was the one to collect them, and she said I had to make sure we didn’t break any, because the Ceremony is in two days, and mother says ceremony gifts have to be perfect, she says –”
“Apologies, Bellborn,” said the woman, bowing low before placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Ruth, we should allow the Dagorlind to rest, don’t you agree?”
“Oh, yes,” Ruth said, sheepish now. “But please, take another?”
The girl pressed a second petal into Lain’s hand. Lain popped the first one in her mouth. Sweetness exploded across her tongue as the sugar melted, lemony and vibrant.
“It’s wonderful,” she said.
Ruth beamed.
“But of course, your mother is right. We must all get some rest. If you don’t mind, I’ll be saving this for a special occasion.” She tucked the second petal into her pocket. “I’m certain I’ll enjoy it just before the ceremony.”
Ruth grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you, Singer Lain.”
The girl and her mother left the chamber, and Sister Hellen gave her a gentle nod before turning to take care of the others who were waiting. Lain slipped down the hall, exhausted.
Climbing into bed once more, she wondered what High Glinnel Seli would do, to punish her. Even so, she was asleep almost immediately, dragged down by the threads that bound her to the Underserpent.