The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page A

ones. In my day I taught music, but only played a piano poorly. Still, music caught me. I crossed, as they say."

    Michael dressed quickly and followed Savarin downstairs into the dining room. The morning sun revealed that the brick walls were covered with faded hand-painted flowers, arranged in decorative rows in imitation of wallpaper. The dinner of the night before had been cleared without a trace. Only Savarin, Michael and the old man Wolfer were in the dining room. Wolfer ignored them. He sat at his own small table near a window and ate his porridge a spoonful every thirty seconds or so, contemplating the indirect morning light with raised eyebrows.

    Savarin held his spoon on the table upright in one fist as Risky dropped a starchy sphere of porridge into his bowl, then poured thin milk over it from a clay pitcher. She did the same for Michael. The porridge smelled faintly of horse corral, but it didn't taste bad.

    "Lamia wants you this morning," she reminded Michael before returning to the kitchen. Her tone was aloof, as if he were no longer a curiosity or an asset to the inn, and therefore no longer counted for much.

    Savarin grinned at Michael and cocked his head to one side. "You have an acquaintance with the large woman at the Iso-mage's house?"

    "That's the way I came here," he said. Savarin stopped eating.

    "I'd heard the rumor," he said, frowning. "Most unusual. From the house, you mean?"

    "From the gate in the back."

    "Most unusual indeed." Savarin said nothing more until Risky came to take the empty bowls. She removed the half-full bowl from under Wolfer's spoon and carried it away, whistling tunelessly.

    "Did you know," Savarin said, his voice loud for Risky's benefit, "that the Sidhe feel little affection for humans, one of their many reasons, because we often whistle, as our hostess does this moment?"

    Michael shook his head. "Who are the Shee?"

    "Alyons and his coursers, among many others. The masters of the Realm. Whistling irritates them greatly. Any human music. Very sensitive. I believe if you had whistled your way across a Faerie path when they lived on Earth, they would just as soon have flattened you with barrow stones as said good night. Angry about spoliation of their art, you see."

    Michael nodded. "Who is Lamia?"

    Savarin shrugged. "You know more perhaps than I. A large woman who lives in the Isomage's house."

    "Who is the Isomage?"

    "A sorcerer. He angered the Sidhe far more than someone who simply whistles." Savarin smiled. Risky returned with a pitcher of water, which she poured into clay mugs, setting one before Wolfer, one before Savarin, and one before Michael. Savarin tsked her and shook a finger. "The tune," he said. "Bad luck."

    Risky agreed with a nod. "Bad habit," she said.

    "The Shee sound like they-" Michael began, but Savarin interrupted.

    "Pronounce it correctly. It's spelled S-I-D-H-E, from the ancient Gaelic - or rather, the ancients Gaels heard them calling themselves by that name. They pronounce it as a cross between 'Shee' and 'Sthee.'"

    "Yes," Michael said.

    "Try it."

    He tried it. "The Shthee-"

    "Close. Try again."

    "The Sidhe-"

    "That's it."

    "- sound like they're pretty cruel."

    "And difficult. But we do, after all, intrude, and I've been told they came to the Realm to escape humanity. There's been enmity between us for a long time."

    "But it doesn't seem to me that anyone in Euterpe wanted to come here."

    "All the worse, no? Do you speak German?"

    "No."

    Savarin smiled valiantly, but it was obvious he was disappointed. "So odd," he said. "Only one or two German-speakers in the Realm, and yet Germany was so advanced, musically." He leaned across the table. "So you don't know much about Lamia?"

    Michael shook his head.

    "Learn as much as you can. Carefully. I hear she has a temper. And when - if - you come back, tell me."

    "If?"

    Savarin waved the word away. "You'll return. I have a feeling about you. you're most unusual."

    Michael left the