Eggs Unsung

Chapter 1

Cyrphon sighed in relief as he stepped off the aethertrain. Normally he loved travel, especially through the aether, but that was usually coupled with a private cabin and a clear window. The last leg of his travel to Sagia had been on a train old enough to have carried Cyrphon's grandfather, stuffed full of families returning from vacation, and the windows were so encrusted with salt as to be almost opaque. "Tell me there's some sort of private transport for the return journey," he muttered to himself as he deftly swerved through the crowd in the land-side station.

Sagia was an older world, and the architecture of the aetherstation showed it. Oh, the station was in good repair—had probably been renovated to keep the spirit of the original alive, might even be a documented historical site—but it was still a dated sort of structure. Besides, the echoes off the salt-and-marble hall made the crowd sound twice as big as it was.

The emitter in his pocket hummed, quiet but invasive, and Cyrphon pulled it out.

"Have you arrived, Cyrphon?" Ampherdien's voice was poorly transmitted, and the lower resonances of his speech were dropped, but Cyrphon knew his agent's voice well enough to fill in the blanks.

"Just getting off the train," Cyrphon replied. "See if you can't find me better transport when it's time to go home."

"Oh my darling, spoiled egg-singer, was it really so horrible to travel the way the rest of us do?"

"You've never traveled less than first class in your life."

Ampherdien laughed.

"This job had better be worth it."

"You know I'd never land you a job that wasn't."

It was true, Ampherdien wouldn't. He'd been Cyrphon's agent ever since Cyrphon needed an agent, and this would probably be the job that made Cyrphon's career. The one that turned Cyrphon from an up-and-coming egg-singer into one of the top singers in the universe, and Ampherdien would rise with him. "Dr. Saige was supposed to send a man, wasn't he?" Just as Cyrphon said it, his emitter interrupted him with a beep, and a quick glance at the screen showed the position of his ride in the morass of people. "Looks like he's found me, I'd better go."

"Call me when you get settled. I want to hear about his mansion and if it lives up to your standards."

Cyrphon scoffed and ended the call. A few minutes later he was tucked inside a ground-car, of all things, his bags safely stowed in the back. The driver had said it would be a few hours' travel, so Cyrphon settled into his seat, and looked out the window.

It probably should have made Cyrphon happy, since now he was in a private cabin, with clear glass windows on every side, and a beautiful world to look out on. Yet where Cyrphon saw trees and mountains, and a bright yellow sun, he found only that he missed the endless glowing swirl of colored mist that was the aether. Sure, these were some impressive trees, and if the glass broke, they were much less likely to kill him instantly, but the vast mystery of the aether would always hold Cyrphon's heart.

Pulling his eyes away from the view, Cyrphon opened the files about this job on his emitter. The client was Doctor Edgar Saige, whose family—or himself—had made a huge fortune in pharmaceuticals in the fairly recent past. He'd then bought a world, or just had it renamed after himself, and the next thing the aethernet knew about him was that he was looking for an egg-singer. That much everyone knew—assuming they had an interest in rich medical doctors from vanity-worlds. Cyrphon himself didn't know all that much more about Dr. Saige, but he did have some knowledge about the egg, since he was the one who would be singing it.

Dr. Saige's egg—the Saige Egg, lacking a better name—had been assessed by three different oologists of varying renown, all of whom had estimated the egg at around a thousand years old.

A thousand years. Cyrphon had never heard of an egg that old. No one had. The oldest known egg was about eight-hundred, and that was the Royal Egg of Nostinghan, which they were keeping unsung until their millennial anniversary—assuming Nostinghan was around for another two hundred years, which was highly debatable based on their current political situation.

The next oldest eggs anyone had ever heard of were in their six-hundreds. Cyrphon had seen one unsung that was five-hundred once, and he'd sung two that were over three hundred years, but a thousand years, that was something new.

Dr. Saige had seen or heard of Cyrphon's success in singing the damaged Egg of Ambient Crystal—after it had been declared silenced by every oologist who looked at it—and had contracted Cyrphon to sing what might very well be the oldest egg known to man.

For now there were discretion clauses in the contract—in case the egg was silenced, as two of the oologists expected it to be—or because Dr. Saige didn't want the attention until it was unveiled—or for any number of reasons. Cyrphon didn't really care, because if he sung this egg—once he sung this egg, his career would be made, and his name would be heard in every household, and the naysayers waiting for him to fail after his early successes would have wasted their salt.

Cyrphon looked up from his emitter and out the window, tapping the device against his palm. There was always the chance that this whole job would turn out to be a hoax or a curious case of mistaken assessment, so he shouldn't get his hopes up too high—but, assuming the egg was what it was alleged to be…

Cyrphon smiled, knowing there was only a small gap between now and the wide salt-paved road ahead.

The road twisted among the trees, giving glimpses of views that even Cyrphon had to admit were breathtaking; the much-closer mountains skirted with green, jeweled with rivers, and capped by pure white snow. Then the trees cleared for a stretch, and Cyrphon had a clear view of the broad river valley between him and the mountains, and then it was nothing but forest as the road plunged back away from the ridge and into the foothills.

The road twisted and turned, then finally wound between two hills, which grew steadily closer together and sharper in slope until they were driving through a cliff-sided gully, a modest river running alongside them.

The gulley continued to narrow, until it wasn't much wider than the road and the river, then it opened up again into what Cyrphon thought was a box canyon and a dead end, until he realized that the end of the gully was not an end, but a building, built to fill the gap between the two cliffs, rising to their tops, and sprawling there as well.

The ground-car slowed to a stop by the sweeping staircase that led to the front entrance.

Author's Note:

Hi, guys. Did'ya miss me? I've missed posting here, actually I've missed writing in general, but I think I've got my life sorted out to where I seem to be doing it again, so I came to share the joy.

Remember to leave a review if you like this. If you don't know what else to say, a simple "I'm here" will let me know that you're lurking out there, and will help inspire me to keep writing and keep posting.

Or you can let your cat walk over the keyboard, that's always a good way to handle leaving reviews, IMHO.