An asteroid floated in deep space surrounded by an envelope of clear air perfectly tinged with the scent of radiant light. A citadel of diamonds stood on the uppermost peak of the asteroid shining in shifting kaleidoscopic rays that gave light to a city beneath. Distant stars shone faintly – none near enough for the warmth that the city beneath the citadel enjoyed. The city stood as a perfect circle with the diamond citadel at its center. Concentric rings of upper, middle, and lower cities twinkled in the colors of emerald, ruby, and sapphire respectively. The beings that walked the streets were like living statues formed of every possible crystal, with mixtures and shadings of surrounding minerals. They were shaped like men and women, children, and animals. It was a crystalline version of any other city Siegyrd had seen on a dozen worlds before.

  Siegyrd stepped from the docks and looked back at the ship that had borne him, a living light shining in the center of a broad courtyard filled with ethereal trees that cast their own inner glow. On the edges of the courtyard, iridescent wings like a butterfly’s made of all the colors of the rainbow flapped gently against unseen forces. A soft medium-pitched hum accompanied Siegyrd as he looked back, a longing note heralding luck. The living creature of the ship departed the docks leaving Siegyrd behind, and he sang a note of harmony in return as it retreated into nothingness some irreconcilable distance away.

  Siegyrd stood tall, his deep black armour filigreed with a cobalt blue thread. He carried his songblades hung from a complex weave of fine, weathered straps around his shoulders and down to his waist. He entered a wide, high gate made of brilliant pearl. No guards barred the way.

  Within the gate, on streets shining, statue people moved with grace that belied their gemlike structure. A small child, his body a mix of jasper and carnelian with eyes like starlight, seemed a moving artwork holding his mother’s hand as he stared after Siegyrd on the wide road. Their steps sent scintillating sounds, twinkling notes that together harmonized between the step and walls and reverberation of the crystal buildings all around.

  Siegyrd’s heart felt as though it would burst with the majesty, “It has been long.” Once, long ago he had been invited to perform here, to ply his meager trade against a backdrop envied by even those who heard whispers of the legends of this place. He sighed heavily considering the duties at hand.

  As he entered the central courtyard just beneath the mighty Crystal Citadel a shimmering lake of azure streaked with purest white radiance shot up like sapphire lightning into the heavens and returned in diamond droplets to the lake with all the slow splendor of snow.

  Siegyrd watched this scene three times with an unknown pause between each before he noticed a medium height crystalline woman next to him. He examined her as she quietly stared up at him. Her form was hewn from rose quartz and alexandrite. She closed her eyes as she smiled, her hands folded in front of her. She opened her ruby eyes pin-pointed with diamond irises.

  She spoke, “You were enjoying the crystal crescendo, Ashwarden. I dared not interrupt. Could you hear it?”

  Siegyrd swallowed, his normally silvery shining skin seemed paler in this place, muted, but he replied, “I could hear the faintest echo of its voice, rising higher with each stroke. I could not reckon its full measures.”

  The crystalline woman clapped excitedly, “Oh how delightful! The first. The first not of the crystal song to hear even the tiniest part. For most mortals it is but a silent symphony of light and color, a dazzling dance without accompaniment. To see is beautiful, but to hear, to hear. It is of the Lord Divine. It is the resonance of our being which you heard in echoes.” She paused and lowered her face almost sheepishly, and a tone that Siegyrd had not heard yet recognized struck him - embarrassment.

  “Have I offended?” He looked back up as the crystal crescendo rocketed skyward again, and this time the quiver of the song was clearer, yet still faint, as if sourced in a distant world veiled in a blessedness too pure for this one.

  The crystal woman shook her head quickly and took a step back and bowed as she spoke, “No, Ashwarden, no offensel. Resonance of being is… intimate is all. I…”

  Siegyrd laughed a pure song-filled laugh that reverberated through the courtyard and made many look his way and smile bright diamond teeth without knowing they did so. The crystalline woman stopped speaking and smiled too, and he felt again a note of resonance. “I think I comprehend, daughter of songstone, princess of crystalline light. Aoide in name.”

  Again the tone, an auditory blush, then a pause of stunned silence before the woman spoke, “You are awaited by the council, Ashwarden. I will guide you.” She indicated a path around the lake to the foot of the crystalline tower and gestured for him to proceed.

  Siegyrd put out his arm as any gentleman leading a lady, and the woman’s eyes went wide. She smiled and laughed her own song which pirouetted through the courtyard drawing looks and smiles all around. She took his offer, and they walked arm in arm along the path around the lake toward the citadel’s base, listening and speaking not a word through the surrounding symphony of the city.

  #

  Three thrones rested at the top of the tower beneath an impossible sky. Siegyrd stood in the dead center. A woman of onyx split with gleaming golden veins sat on the throne in front of him. Her eyes were silken sapphire with diamond irises. To his right was a woman made from clouded emerald and bursts of citrine color. She stared at him through jade eyes with carnelian irises. To his left was Aoide, the rose quartz woman. Nine other thrones sat empty between the three with names carved in light upon them that Siegyrd could not read, though he could vaguely recall.

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  The onyx woman spoke, her voice firm, resonance strong and solid and beautiful.

  “How many mortals have glimpsed the Songlake, true source of true music?”

  The two others spoke in unison and harmony, “Glimpsed, countless. Seen, some less. Heard? None.”

  “And of the Ashwarden come?” The Onyx woman addressed Aoide.

  The blushing tone was louder here, and the Onyx woman’s eyes grew wide which was accompanied by a low powerful base note, but Aoide spoke softly, “Echoes of the song he heard, sister.”

  “Echoes of the song we all hear, sisters, echoes grossly less than we recall.” The emerald woman’s voice dozed as a distant airy song.

  “Mneme, speak not secret things.” The onyx woman’s veins looked heated gold as in a fire and another angry thrum went through the citadel.

  Siegyrd rose his hand slightly above his chest in gesture of pause. “Daughters of Songstone, of Crystalline Majesty, Queens keepers of the beautiful, peace.” He sang his next word in a note of drawn-out calm, “please.”

  A pause settled over the peak of that citadel, and the Onyx woman sighed, a medium tone of calm matching his own, then spoke, “Ashwarden, if it is true that echoes you hear, resonance connected, then hope we have of resonance restored. Sourceless undermining of our source is underway. What aid?”

  Siegyrd cocked his head sideways and paused a moment before responding, “Have I so long been absent that your grace does not remember, daughter of true strength, Melete Queen.”

  Again the Onyx woman’s eyes went wide, “You…” She narrowed them and then leaned forward, examining him. “The light of your song is dimmer, suppressed. Yet, its essence is the same and deeper by fathoms, Songmaster Siegyrd?”

  Siegyrd bowed. “I am honored by your recollection. It is my great pleasure to have witnessed the magnificence of your spring, of Pierian itself spoken of in song yet hardly justified in what paltry listless music we call so. I offer my aid in whatever way these twelve daughters of songstone would ask. I have need of your aid as well, but whatever this poor player may do on your behalf, if it is within my power, I will. What aid do you require?” Here Siegyrd knelt in the center, facing Aoide as he did so though his head remained low eyes closed.

  A chorus of voices known and unknown to him broke in around him in tongues he did not know - all of them melodious. He kept his head low, but listened to the rising motion of the choral voices and, when the time was right, added his tenor to their song. A slight pause skipped the beats of the music which he anticipated and matched, and then he and all twelve daughters of songstone sang together in brilliant resonating harmony by the grace of powers above his own which swept him away.

  #

  Twelve thrones with twelve crystalline women surrounded a man singing on his knees along with them, and the whole of the crystalline city soon sang with them, to the edge of a brilliant amethyst sky. On a distant world, the music reached through a floating crystal sword and filled a cavern lit by a magical sun with dazzling delight. Gudrun stood in enraptured awe, joyous tears streaming down her face in the middle of the gallery.

  #

  When the song ended the brilliance of the tower was, if Siegyrd could measure infinities, more infinitely beautiful than before, and every face of the twelve queens wore a broad smile. Nine faded from his view shimmering away as quickly as they had shown, some waving, others blowing kisses, and then there were three left, Aoide, Mneme, and Melete also smiling.

  “Such a song no mortal knows. Yet proved wrong am I, or thou art not mortal, Ashwarden.” Melete spoke, her eyes piercing Siegyrd’s silvery pools.

  “Mortal he is, sister, though forgotten immortality therein rests through Apeiron’s mysteries, a remembrance of a future brighter than he knows.” Mneme’s airy voice hung in air.

  “Scalesong is closer to our lips of crystal than mere mortal flesh,” said Aoide with a wink.

  This time Melete rose her hand to pause him, “May we see truer face?”

  “Of course.” Siegyrd’s voice betrayed subtle sadness, “I oblige.”

  Aoide smiled and stood clapping as Siegyrd spread wide his arms and transformed. A cool blue mist surrounded him entire and rainbow lights played within as his shifting form spun and danced into size greater than itself. The mists expanded covering the whole citadel top. The shadow within the fog hovered just above the ground in a tight ringing spiral of cool wind, and finally, shot skyward like a rocket of silver light directly toward the alien sky. At the peak of his flight, Siegyrd, spread his wings, wide as four full spans of the citadel’s top and hovered there with the lights of this crystalline place frolicking among the mirrored scales of his draconic form. He lowered himself slowly on his wings, their flapping dispersing the blue mists on the citadel top. He landed gingerly, lithe and elegant and tucked his silvery wings against his body.

  Melete’s voice rose, “There is more to song than voice, Songmaster. What aid can we offer?”

  “I seek a path to a rogue world. I have a sense of it, and an anchor, but I have no route. I am commanded, recalled to my duties after long imprisonment. I knew not who else to turn to.”

  Melete stroked her onyx chin, “Rogue worlds, memories lost to us.”

  Mneme’s lilting speech quivered in, “Stolen, rather. The Discordant’s touch is here.”

  Siegyrd spoke as softly as he could in his dragon form, “Will you aid?”

  Melete waved her hand, “Always! We too serve, Ashwarden and Songmaster. We will root a path for you, and in return, sing with us.”

  Siegyrd bowed his giant head and closed his eyes, “It would be my honor.”

  Aoide started the song and the other two joined. Siegyrd’s scales quivered with the song, and resonance took hold of him. The rays of light cascaded off his silvery hide and carried a melody he did not know. He was enraptured in it, and raised his head high, breathed deep letting a building magical blue surround him and cast a frost breath into the heavens which spread its icy crystals wide and high across the whole of the city which flowered with further music still. He heard the rising song of the entire city as of a single being.

  “You will be called upon, Songmaster,” Mneme’s airy voice was in his very flesh, reverberating through bone, “when the Discordant comes, when the Songslayer rises and our melodies are muted in ash, you will carry forth our song. Farewell.”