Story #227 - Stone of Songs

Stone of Songs

Vae vittoria, nos regalios.

Charles ran his hands over the inscription again, enjoying the feeling as his heart began to beat faster, of the excitement pumping through his veins. Until now, suspicion had been his only guide, but the tall stone in front of him confirmed what he had hoped.

“Victory to the Singers,” he whispered to himself. Mentions of the Singers were few and far between, and many considered them to be little more than the precursors of other religious thought, inspiration more than actuality. Those many also believed that the Singers were allegory, a way to explain the wind and the rain that had helped shaped the world, to give them voice and purpose.

Charles Plummer knew better, and had spent his life trying to prove as much.

The stone in front of him was the first direct reference he had come across to the Singers, in a bastardized form of Latin that few even in the academic world understood. Of course, the stone by itself wouldn’t be enough to prove that the Singers were real, but it was the first key.

Half-translated scripts of parchment and vague references had led him by the nose for the better part of thirty years, and he had lost two wives and contact with four children because of it. Obsession came easily to Charles – it was how he had made his was through school so quickly – but the kind of pure, desperate fire he had burning for the Singers was something else entirely. It had twisted him up, thrown him around, and left him unable to think about anything else. Colleagues had drifted away, and school after school had been forced to let him go as his passion overtook his desire to work, to publish, or to teach. At his last three jobs he’d been little more than a freak show – the professor whose class you took simply to say you’d taken it – though he didn’t care what students or the faculty thought of him. Steady work meant a reliable paycheck, which let him continue his research.

He was on the edge of scientific madness when he came across the first hints of the stone. Fragments of a text he was translating about the three essential characteristics of the Singers – Tone, Modality, and Pitch – contained mentions of a “stone of songs”, though its location wasn’t stated. A week and a half of desperate cross-referencing with other materials in his library had given him a potential site: southern Chile.

Getting in to the country had been easy, since he’d been just about everywhere in the world during the course of his search. Most of his time in other countries had beens spent in ruins of every type, looking for the mention of anything even more ancient than what was on display, but he had never considered looking near a human settlement, let alone one of the biggest cities in Chile. The more he found out about the Singers, the more he was coming to realize they did not operate as “ordinary” gods should, did not appear where one expected.

And now he was here.

Heart still racing, he stood and began taking measurements. The stone would have to be moved, and that would mean another cost, another bill he couldn’t afford. Most of his credit cards were maxed out, but he was sure he had enough to get this one back to his classroom, and the school wouldn’t fire him until the end of the semester.

A quick phone call and he had a truck on its way; it would be a long ride, but there was no way he was leaving the stone’s side until it safely reached its destination.

***

“Dammit, talk!” Charles screamed, throwing his coil-bound notebook across the room and glaring at the irregular grey shape in front of him. In response, the stone of songs sat heavily, mocking him with its worn inscription.

It had taken three months to get the stone out of the country and into his care full-time, and though he had spent nearly every waking moment with the pitted, grey beast, it had revealed no more of its secrets. He had hoped a meticulous cleaning would show more inscriptions, or add something to the one he had already found, but instead had only made the four-foot stone look less dirty. Not a single piece of useful information had come off the stone since he’d found it, and he was beginning to lose hope.

Rage welled up inside him as he stalked around the stone, hands balled into fists. He was so close! Taking a quick lap around the room, he tried to calm the rage he felt building, but it did no good. A glance at the clock told him it was already past midnight; the campus would be deserted.

Charles took a deep, calming breath and then let a scream rip from his lungs, one that carried all of his passion for discovery and his anger for being blocked at every turn. Beside him, the stone trembled, and his scream cut off abruptly. Perhaps he’d bumped it in his anger, perhaps he’d upset the stand it was resting on.

Wild hope flared. Perhaps not.

He screamed again, loud and long, and watched, stunned, as the stone began to shimmer. Pushing out as much air as he could, he let himself sag, dropping to his knees as his voice finally gave out and the stone returned to its slate-grey state.

Elation surged as he lay on the floor, gasping. How could he have been so stupid? The clues had been right in front of him, but he had been so focused on what he thought he knew that he’d ignored what was obvious, what made sense.

Charles was on his feet as soon as his body would allow it, dashing out the door and angling toward the fine arts section of the campus. He was going to need speakers, amplifiers, and a microphone. His song might not be pretty, but now he had a captive audience.


- D