The Infinity Concerto

First edition
Author	Greg Bear
Cover artist	Kinuko Y. Craft
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Songs of Earth and Power
Genre	Fiction novel
Set in	Modern
Published	1984
Media type	Print
Followed by	Serpent Mage

The Infinity Concerto (ISBN 0712616721) is a 1984 fantasy novel written by Greg Bear. The plot centers around teenager Michael Perrin's search for what is a Song of Power and why some think he can create such a thing. Transported to another realm, he discovers beings known as the "Sidhe" intervened in Coleridge's incomplete poem, "Kubla Khan". They have stopped others from creating Songs of Power and now they are looking at him.^[1]

The Infinity Concerto was followed in 1986 by The Serpent Mage.

Synopsis

In 1939, a composer named Arno Waltiri premiered his latest work, Concerto Opus 45: "Infinity". After the concert, another composer, who had been in the audience, filed a lawsuit against Waltiri, claiming that he was no longer able to properly hear or compose music after hearing Waltiri's work. Over the next several months, dozens of people simply disappeared, and the only thing they had in common with one another was that they had been in the audience at that same performance. Waltiri had been inspired to write the concerto by several conversations with a mysterious man named David Clarkham. The Concerto turns out to have been a "Song of Power". Songs of Power, if properly applied by those who understand them, have the power to literally remake the world. Songs of Power can exist in many artistic forms, including music, poetry, dance, art, architecture, and some less obvious creative fields. Clarkham had disappeared after the performance too, but he had left Waltiri a book and the key to his house, which Waltiri had never used.

The book's present story follows the experiences of a 16 year-old young man named Michael Perrin, a would be poet, who lives close to Waltiri and befriends him. Michael meets Waltiri two months before the latter's death, and receives from Waltiri the book and the key. Following the instructions on a piece of paper he found inserted in the book, Michael enters Clarkham's house, which has been vacant for decades and, through a creepy garden and back-alley acting as planar gates, Perrin finds himself in Sidhedark, a world inhabited by a powerful race of beings calling themselves the Sidhe (pronounced "shee"), who are divided into many sub-races (Faers, Umbrals, Riverines, Meteorals, Pelagals, Arborals and Amorphals) of different shapes and magical abilities, and are associated with many ancient human myths about fairy folks. Michael appears at what he learns is the dilapidated house of someone called the "Isomage", who disappeared years ago, and here meets a huge, strange woman named Lamia, who is cursed to grow larger and larger and periodically shed her own skin as does a serpent. Her curse also forces her not to leave the ruined mansion of the Isomage. Michael is already in danger, because by treaty there is only one town where humans are safe from being hunted and killed by the Sidhe: Euterpe, where Lamia hastily sends Michael before anyone finds him.

Humans occasionally find their way to Sidhedark, and those who survive all live in Euterpe, a town in the Pact Lands, which is the only place humans are permitted in Sidhedark, following an ancient war between Sidhe and the Isomage. There Michael is befriended by a former teacher, Savarin, and learns that the humans are barely tolerated by the Sidhe, who detached a small army of riders led by Alyons the Wickmaster to act as wardens of the treaty.

He returns to the Isomage's house to talk to Lamia, asking her how he can get home, and she said that he will need training in order to make his way back to Earth. She orders him to go see the Crane Women, who are a trio of "Breeds" (part human, part Sidhe), who live on the outskirts of another town populated by other Breeds called Halftown. They train him with exercises that seem pointless and incomprehensible, and also provide fragments of lore hinting at a primordial magical war between the humans and the Sidhe that is at the origin of the current distrust among the races and of the general status of both Earth and Sidhedark realms. During his training Michael returns periodically to Euterpe, telling Savarin about things that he has seen and learned. He also learn that humans are persecuted by Alyons and his riders, who just abide to the letter of the treaty, and exploit every loophole to make the lives of the humans as miserable as possible. The people of Euterpe are not allowed to produce music of any kind, for fear they may create some Songs of Power, and they get only very limited supplies of wood and clothing. During winter time, Alyons and his minions rarely come to Euterpe, to avoid addressing any issues caused by the cold weather to the humans.

One night a number of creatures called Riverines and Umbrals raid Halftown and kidnap three of the Breeds who lived there, taking them to serve Adonna, a sort of god of the Sidhe, by bleeding them of magic. They attack and try to take also Michael, but he barely survives because is discarded as being a mere inferior human, unfit for the service to Adonna; the young man makes his way back to the Crane Women.

To provide Michael with a basic way of defense against such attacks the Crane Women intentionally place the young man on a trafficked path used by Meteorals, where he is easily spotted by them. To escape their persecutions Michael is forced to use his training to throw a "shadow" of himself as an illusion that deceived the Meteorals long enough for him to escape.

The Crane Women take him with them on a journey across a desolate area known as "the Blasted Plain", which surrounds the Pact Lands. The Blaster Plains were created by the war between the Isomage and the Sidhe, and are populated with Adonna's failed experiments, magical monsters originally buried underground which where freed by the energies unleashed by the war. Only a magical powder called 'sani' can allow for a safe passage, and further protections are necessary to avoid being lured by the monsters who crave for the souls of the passers-by. In a lush forest joust outside the Blasted Plain, in main part of the Sidhe world, the group meets Biri, a young Sidhe who has been sent to the Crane Women for training as a priest to Adonna. He and Michael come to live in huts close to the Crane Women's shack in Halftown, and share some knowledge about each other's worlds. Meanwhile, Michael reads Clarkham's book that Waltiri gave to him, which is a book of poetry, and tries to write some of his own in the dirt. Sometimes, though, it seems as if he is writing words that aren't his own; he likens this experience to being "tuned into Death's Radio", giving a name to this strange contact, which comes and goes.

Michael finds himself attracted to Helena, a human woman of Euterpe who, prior to his arrival, was the most recent arrival from Earth (a pianist and dancer from New York). He learns from her that it is dangerous for humans to have sex in Sidhedark, because if the woman conceives, as no human souls are available for the baby, the body of the newborn will be occupied by one of Adonna's abortions, who will turn the baby into a monster. Many of such 'Children' are imprisoned in dark pits in a kind of asylum in Euterpe, after having killed their parents or other people. Alyons would be able to get rid of such magical monsters, which the humans are not able to kill, but he sadistically decided to let them live among the other humans. Michael also learns that the humans of Euterpe are secretly working on a plan to rebel and escape from the Pact Lands into the rest of Sidhedark, where they hope to find a place to live free of Sidhe control. Meanwhile, a Breed woman of Halftown named Eleuth is attracted to Michael, and it doesn't bother her that he is in love with Helena, because Sidhe men apparently don't fall in love, although the women do. Michael, while appreciating Eleuth's attentions, is not in love with her. Eleuth lost her job at the local warehouse following the kidnapping of her father Lirg during the Umbrals' raid and, albeit being only one-quarter of Sidhe blood, started practicing Sidhe's magic in the attempt to better her lot. The Sidhe are possibly more disrespectful toward Breeds than they are towards humans, except for those possessing magical abilities, like the Crane Women.

In the meantime, also Michael's inner powers increase thanks to the Crane Women training, and he becomes able to generate heat and warm from inside and to hide his thoughts and memories from external scrutinies, becoming able to perform a superficial screening of the aura of the other beings. He also learned that the Isomage was a human very gifted in magic who reached Sidhedark from Earth centuries before and appealed to the humans there, stating that he was able to bring all of them back home and free from Sidhe abuses. This sparked the war with the Sidhe, which ended into a stalemate as the Isomage faction was defeated and exiled in a far-away corner of Sidhedark, but the Sidhe were afraid of the magic curses the Isomage hid in the lands, so established the creation of Euterpe and Halftown as relatively safe havens for the humans and the Breeds.

One night Eleuth accedes to Michael's request and tries to send Michael home to Earth, believing that she has learned enough magic to do so, but only manages to send him as far as the gateway within the Isomage's house. Michael no longer has the key, though, and cannot unlock the gate, and Lamia's monstrous sister nearly captures him, but Eleuth sacrifices her life to save him. At the same time, the humans in Euterpe stage their rebellion, and the Sidhe retaliate violently. Michael returns to Lamia's house and rushes to try to help his people, but ends up being pursued by Alyons into a circle of stone teeth at the outskirts of Euterpe, where one of the Isomage's leftover magical traps goes off and kills Alyons, allowing Michael to escape.

Now that he has killed a Sidhe, the Crane Women know that his race will not stop until they catch Michael, so they give him what they can, advices on how to access the inner knowledge of unshielded people, how to shed parts of his personality he does not want anymore and how to get some kind of extracorporeal vision. Then the Crane Women disappear, leaving Michael to fend off by himself in his quest to find the Isomage, the only one that perhaps could help the humans trapped in Sidhedark - including Michael - to come back to Earth.

Michael crosses the Blasted Plane on foot and without protective 'sani' powder, evading the monsters there only by means of using the training the Crane Women gave him. After he crosses, a shadow of Alyons comes to him and tells Michael that since Michael killed him, he must now accept Alyons' horse. Michael argues that he didn't kill Alyons; a trap set by the Isomage did, but it is to no avail; as a matter of honor he must accept the horse. So he does, and the horse makes his travel quicker.

He comes to a golden valley where there is a beautiful palace, inhabited by a man named Lin Piao Tai. It turns out that he is a Spryggla, neither human nor Sidhe, one of the few remaining of the many races that existed long ago, before the Human Sidhe war. The Spryggla were skilled architects. Lin Piao tells Michael a lot about the past, and how first the Sidhe, then the human factions lost in the ancestral magical war, the former losing their souls, the latter being turned into mice, being forced to gain back their original shapes and intelligence over the eons. Following the war the Sidhe left Earth for the stars, only to fight strange and perplexing wars with the alien intelligence they found here. When the battered Sidhe survivors returned to Earth, they found humans back in their original shape but at a primitive state of development. For a time they established their rule over the humans, leading to the first Breeds to be born - among them the Crane Women - but then most of them left when Adonna, their most powerful mage, created the extradimensional world of Sidhedark for them.

Lin Piao is very excited that Michael has a book containing the poem "Kubla Khan", because it is the first part of a Song of Power, and that a Sidhe faction had him build another part of the same Song architecturally on Earth for the mongol leader himself. The valley that Lin Piao Tai lives in is also his prison, however, due to his failure to properly deliver the song to the Khan, and Michael begins to suspect that Lin Piao won't let him leave either. Moreover, the Sidhe have crippled Lin Piao Tai's magic with a weakness: the color blue is his undoing, and a blue flower that Michael had earlier pressed into the book falls out from between the pages, setting off a magical chain reaction that destroys the Spryggla's creations and turns him to stone.

Michael travels onward and meets a human man named Nikolai, who has been living in a forest as a hunter. He was originally a dancer, and was pulled into the Sidhe world just as the Isomage's war was ending. He is welcome in the Sidhe city of Inyas Trai, however, and he takes Michael there. Michael meets the Ban of Hours, a powerful Sidhe woman who tries to protect him, but not far from the city is the Irall, the Temple of Adonna, whose priests would certainly punish Michael for Alyons' death if they caught him. Nikolai takes Michael to see a rare phenomenon known as the Snow Faces that occurs in the nearby mountains, where he meets some other pilgrims who have also come to see it. As they are returning to Inyas Trai, some of Adona's Sidhe followers known as "the Black Order" arrive to arrest Michael and take him to the Irall. Michael is brought before the god Adonna itself, who reveals itself to be Tonn, ancient Mage of the Sidhe, though most have forgotten this and now simply worship him as the god Adonna. Tonn reveals that he is growing tired and Sidhedark, which he created, will soon crumble and die, along with all within it. The only way to save the Sidhe is for Sidhedark and Earth to be reunited, but for the followers of Adonna, who hate humans, this is a blasphemy that they would never accept, even if Adonna itself told them. So Tonn needs Michael's help, but first he must deal with the Isomage, who has been manipulating Michael from the beginning. Tonn temporarily erases most of Michael's memory of the conversation and sends him back.

Michael, Nikolai and some of the pilgrims decide to go to the Isomage's palace, but on the way, Michael meets Biri again. He says that he has failed in his training to become part of the Maln, the Black Order, and now despises them. He attempts to teach Michael more about how Sidhe do magic, taking a bitter, solipsistic approach, claiming that to do magic one must emotionally isolate oneself from all love and companionship. Biri leaves Michael to contemplate this. As the group approaches the Isomage's residence, the pilgrims reveal that they are actually retainers in the Isomage's employ, and that they are there to make sure that Michael gets there safely—and that he doesn't change his mind and go elsewhere. Reaching the palace, Michael finds that it is as Lin Piao Tai said: a beautifully-constructed copy of Kubla Khan's palace from the poem. Michael meets the Isomage, who turns out to be David Clarkham, and tells him that Tonn stole the book from him, but Clarkham does not care, he has many copies of the poem along with other works of human literature. Biri is also there; he says that the Isomage represents his best chance for revenge against the Maln.

Clarkham finally reveals what he wants Michael there for: Michael is a poet, and Clarkham is not. He wants Michael to finish the Song of Power. Michael, however, suspects that while Clarkham seems to want to help humans, he really just wants power for himself—he wants to overthrow the Sidhe and set himself up as ruler instead. After discovering some other very unsavory things about Clarkham, he is unwilling to help him obtain ultimate power, but Clarkham threatens Michael with the death of Nikolai and with horrible magical torture for Michael himself if he doesn't cooperate. But suddenly Michael sees the form of the rest of the Song of Power and realizes that it isn't at all what Clarkham thinks it is. Michael writes a poem about the destruction of the great Khan's palace, the inevitable ending of the Song, and Clarkham's palace starts to collapse around them. As it is taking all his power to hold the palace together, Clarkham can't stop Michael and Nikolai from escaping, and Biri reveals that he did not in fact fail in his training and that he has been working for the Maln all along, helping Michael get to the Isomage to destroy him. Clarkham manages to attack Michael magically, but Michael throws a shadow consisting of all of the training that Biri had given him, which absorbs the attack and dies in his place.

Now that Michael had done what Tonn wanted, Tonn gives Michael what he wants: passage back home. Michael falls through the portal that Tonn creates and finds himself just down the street from Clarkham's house, but five years have passed on Earth in what had seemed like only about five months to Michael. His parents are happy that he is alive but upset that he hadn't told them where he'd gone, and they are astonished about how much he has changed. Michael finds a letter from Arno Waltiri's wife Golda, who had died about two weeks after her husband, leaving all of their assets to him but also giving him the responsibility of editing and publishing all of Waltiri's compositions. But meanwhile, Michael knows that Sidhedark is still collapsing and that the being who was Waltiri is most certainly not dead. He may be home, but his troubles are far from over.

Settings

The book begins and ends in the human world existing in the 1980s when the book was published in southern California, but most of the story takes place in the alternate world of Sidhedark.

Characters

Reviews

• Review by Faren Miller (1984) in Locus, #285 October 1984
• Review by Don D'Ammassa (1985) in Science Fiction Chronicle, #64 January 1985
• Review by Thomas A. Easton [as by Tom Easton] (1985) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, May 1985
• Review by Paul M. Lloyd (1985) in Fantasy Review, June 1985
• Review by Charles de Lint (1988) in Short Form, February 1988
• Review by Tom A. Jones [as by Tom Jones] (1988) in Vector 144
• Review by Phyllis McDonald (1988) in Interzone, #24 Summer 1988
• Review [French] by Piet Hollander (1991) in Yellow Submarine, #86^[2]

References