The Unremembered: Book One of The Vault of Heaven

by Peter Orullian

“What makes a man brave the roads at night, and without protection?” Jastail said, refreshing his own cup of tea.

  “I go myself to Recityv. And my haul is awaited.” Seanbea put his cup out to be refilled, and spoke as Jastail filled it to the brim. “But it is hardly a bounty for the highwayman: music instruments and census records, collected for Descant Cathedral.”

  Descant! Wendra remembered the name from her fevers. She looked away at the wagon; its load had been tied down with thick cords. What accompanying instruments might he be freighting?

  The Ta’Opin went on. “The instruments are old, serviceable maybe, but only to the hand that remembers how to play them. Your man around town wouldn’t have any idea how to go about it with any of these. As for the rest, moldy parchments and rotted books, little to interest a thief.”

  “Still, to ride alone is risky,” Jastail commented as he settled himself comfortably with his mug.

  “Right you are,” the wagoneer agreed. “But an escort would draw attention to my parcels, and really, it isn’t the kind of haul that needs extra riders. Besides, the legends of my people make average men wary, and dull men faint of heart.” He snickered. “And it is my good luck that a smart man rarely takes to the road to earn his fortune.”

  Wendra gave Jastail a vindicated look.

  Returning her expression, Jastail spoke, his pleasant demeanor undisturbed. “To your good luck,” Jastail said, raising his cup in a toast. “Luck to have found us, and not the kinds of men you describe.” Wendra despised the way the highwayman relished the irony that the Ta’Opin could not appreciate.

  Jastail then proffered his cup toward both Penit and Wendra. The boy giggled a bit, and Wendra forced herself to hold the semblance of a smile on her face. Seanbea followed Jastail’s lead, and hummed a few happy notes as he took another drink of his tea. A comfortable silence settled over them for a few moments. Finally, Wendra could restrain her curiosity no longer.

  “Tell me of Descant Cathedral.” She tried to speak evenly to disguise her interest, but she could scarcely contain her desire to hear more of this place of which the white-haired man had spoken during her days in the cave; a place she was amazed to learn was real.

  Wendra immediately sensed Jastail’s anger; it emanated from him like a palpable wave. But he couldn’t know what her inquiry meant, so she ignored him.

  “Ah, Descant, it is a grand place … or was,” Seanbea said. “There was a time when it was the pearl of Recityv, the very reason for it, if you can believe it. The city itself lived for the music they wrote and performed there. It became the heartbeat of Recityv, of all of Vohnce. Children like young Penit here were entrusted to the Maesteri, who would teach the prodigies who lived among them to study and learn the art and passion of song.”

  The Ta’Opin stood. “Its spires rise above vaulted ceilings.” He pointed into the sky as though he could see them even now. “Brass cupolas that once blazed like fire in the sun, now colored by rain, dress the cathedral like green crowns.” He stared a moment, then dropped his gaze, as if looking at the street-level memory of the cathedral in his mind. “Its stone walls are dark now, and many of its colored-glass windows are boarded against vandals. It lies in the old district of Recityv, where rent is cheap and boarding houses stand next to brothels for convenience. The stench of goat pens can be smelled from the steps to its iron doors. These days it is more of a museum than a place of study.”

  Wendra could see the affinity the Ta’Opin had for the cathedral. He wore it plainly even when he described the ruin it seemed to have come to. “You’ve been there, then?”

  “Been there, lady?” Seanbea said with good-natured incredulity. “I sang there, more than once.” He sat again, draining his tea in a gulp.

  Penit’s face glowed with the thoughts Seanbea’s words must have created in his mind. “I’ve done the skits in many cities,” Penit said. “But never in Recityv.”

  The wagoneer looked across the fire at Penit. “You’re a player?”

  “For a while,” Penit answered. “But only on the pageant wagons, never in the theater houses.”

  “All the same,” Seanbea said, beaming. “What a chance meeting is this: A child of the stage, a brother to give me haven at his fire, and a woman—”

  “Indeed,” Jastail cut in. “But we have traveled long today and I think—”

  “We should travel together,” Wendra suggested over Jastail’s attempt to put an end to their camaraderie. “We are faster on the horses than your wagon, so we can keep your pace, and it would be a blessing to hear you sing, Seanbea.”

  “I don’t see why not,” the Ta’Opin answered.

  “No.” Jastail spoke harshly. The edge in his voice silenced them all. She turned on him and found him glaring at her. The searing stare lasted a long moment. When Jastail realized he’d momentarily dropped his facade, the anger melted from his face. “My apologies,” he said. “We are going to Recityv, but we must stop at a friend’s. That will take us a day off the trail. I don’t suppose you can spare the time, my friend. Though I, too, would have liked to hear you sing.”

  The Ta’Opin held an affable expression on his face, but Wendra thought she saw concern in the set of his jaw. He took a lingering look at Penit and then at Wendra before looking back at Jastail. “I cannot, you are right.”

  “A shame,” Jastail said, his control reestablished. He offered his cup to Wendra, and she fought the urge to push it back into his face.

  “I’ve no stomach for it,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  I could snatch the boy and dash to Seanbea’s wagon. Surely he would defend us against Jastail. He is a good man.

  The thoughts pushed her to her feet, and she carefully eyed Penit, who looked wistfully at the two men, his elbows propped on his knees and his head held in his hands. She took half a step toward the boy, but then Jastail rose to his feet and cut in front of her. He took a quick seat next to Penit and wrapped an arm around him.

  “We think Penit’s going to win that race,” Jastail said. He turned to the boy, his fingers riffling Penit’s hair. “Isn’t that right?”

  Penit smiled, slightly embarrassed, then put his own arm around Jastail’s waist.

  “He’s your boy, then?” Seanbea said, careful eyes studying them.

  Wendra knew Jastail would register the curious way the Ta’Opin eyed them as he asked. And she suddenly feared for Seanbea.

  I’d hoped he could rescue us, and now I may have to rescue him.

  “Not my son,” Jastail said.

  A pained expression tore the smile from Penit’s lips.

  “Closer than that,” Jastail added quickly. “We’re like brothers, right?”

  Penit nodded, but Wendra thought the boy looked as though he was still reeling from the powerful shift in emotions that swept through him.

  The Ta’Opin looked at Wendra. “Then you—”

  “Will you sing with me?” she broke in.

  Seanbea’s confusion seemed plain. He slowly shrugged his massive shoulders. Wendra could not bear the feigned closeness Jastail used to inspire respect in Penit and turned away from them when she went and sat near the Ta’Opin to sing.

  “What shall it be?” she asked.

  “‘The River Runs Long’?” the Ta’Opin suggested in a distracted tone.

  She could see that behind his eyes he still worked at the problem of the relationships among the three. Jastail may have claimed closeness to Penit, but by virtue of what? And Wendra had not explained her affinity for Penit. She could tell it had raised questions in the Ta’Opin’s mind, and where Wendra had thought he might be able to rescue them from Jastail, she now simply hoped Seanbea would safely ride his wagon away.

  “I don’t know it,” Wendra said, “but sing it through once, and I’ll join you.”

  Seanbea eyed her, then looked back over his wagonload once before putting his cup aside and clearing his throat. She heard a deep hum in his chest, like water on a whetstone to prepare it for us
e. Then suddenly, the concern that had tensed his jaw relaxed and the Ta’Opin began to sing. The melody settled low around them, as though hugging the earth and rising only as far as their ankles. It came softly, and soothed out in legato strains that flowed effortlessly from his throat. Wendra heard the refinement in his voice, the sweet richness and clear call of each phrase. He sang slowly, allowing each note a life of its own. After but a moment, Seanbea shut his eyes and followed the song where it led him.

  Across the fire, Wendra glanced briefly to see Penit paying rapt attention, a smile of wonderment lifting his cheeks and arching his eyebrows. Jastail listened, too, but the deep resonance seemed to capture something different in him, leaving the highwayman to stare at things he alone seemed to see. The blank look of indifference she’d learned to hate in him hung heavy in his lids, drawing the lines at his mouth taut in an expression that bordered on sadness.

  The melody slowly rose, coaxed by brighter tones from Seanbea’s voice. The tune quickened and in her mind Wendra could see the river for which the tune was named. She could almost feel its current, visit its shores, and see the world reflected in its smooth surface. The melody did not inspire dance, but filled Wendra with a kind of hope. Not for herself exactly, but in general, the way spring brought hope after a cruel winter.

  Seanbea moved into an elegant passage of music, calls from one voice in the song’s story and responses from a second voice. The first rose like simple questions, a child’s questions about the river and where it led, to be answered by the second voice in a deep register, the voice of experience, of a parent, teaching the child the beauties and dangers and destination of the water’s path.

  Abruptly, Wendra’s mind flooded with the image of a Bar’dyn standing over her, coaxing her unborn baby from her womb. The thick smell of copper filled her nose as she saw again the wide, unsmiling face of the Quietgiven standing at the foot of her birthing bed and seeing her exposed womanhood. She reeled with the memory of her home and the distorted look of everything through tortured eyes. She listened to her own unanswered cries for Tahn to come to her defense.

  Seanbea’s song went on, growing lightsome in the sharing between a parent and child of such a simple wonder as a river, discovery recurring in each question and answer, simple truths revealed to the child’s mind. But every note in the Ta’opin’s song made Wendra’s remembrance more vivid. The beauty of the melody ached inside her, reminding her of the child she lost to the rain and night, but also showing the hope inherent in birth.

  Then her own mouth opened as though separate from her, and Wendra began to sing. Seanbea’s song repeated with new questions, new answers, and deeper metaphors for the river. As he went on, Wendra wove her own harmonies of aching beauty to his lines. She sang without anticipating what she would sing next. Distantly, she was aware of Seanbea turning to look at her. But she sang past him, giving voice to the single cruelest moment of her life. Her lament rose up in a long echo like a loon’s call at dusk.

  The image changed then, and in the Ta’Opin’s song-fashioned world the skies emptied rain into the river, somehow further darkening Wendra’s countermelody. She lifted her song higher, but softer, a delicate huskiness edging the timbre of her voice. She’d never sung like this before, but it seemed right.

  The Ta’Opin’s melody sank to a whisper, falling to his deepest register, holding long notes with open lips to keep the river running while Wendra wove her dark tale above it. The rush and rasp in her throat sputtered and dipped like an injured bird, falling toward the river mud of Seanbea’s vision. And when she thought her song was ended, when she thought giving voice to the pain of losing her child might close her throat, a crescendo of song filled her chest, and reached a height of pitch and pain she’d never imagined. Seanbea followed, in perfect time. Wendra’s chest vibrated with the powerful basso of his voice. But she ascended higher, a clear, piercing note rising and turning in melodic groups until the moment of her loss became as real as this moment by the fire.

  She sustained the note, the sound of it pounding in her head, making her aware of every beat of her heart, while she felt the explosive power of Seanbea’s pulsing rhythm beneath. Then she stopped; Seanbea likewise ceased his song, anticipating the moment as though they’d rehearsed the duet. The brutal memory departed instantly. And she sat next to the Ta’Opin, listening to the echo of their final notes into the alder and out upon the hard roads that had brought them both here.

  When the sound was gone, and all that could be heard was the fire, she looked at Seanbea and saw anguish in his face like that of a father agonizing over a lost son. Had he seen what she saw?

  She glanced quickly at Penit, relieved that the awe in his face remained. But she did not meet Jastail’s gaze. Quietly, she stood on weak legs and left the circle of fire.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Hidden Jewels

  The regent slid through the shadows in a seamy section of Recityv. Fires burned openly in the alleys, and animals lapped at spilled bitter and nosed through refuse on the ground. Here, a woman on the street past dark hour had but two intentions, and Helaina had come alone; walking without purpose would solicit invitations.

  She held her shawl up over her face to guard against being recognized. She’d risked her visit to Descant Cathedral because so much had been put in motion, and there remained at least one more thing to do.

  The cathedral had once rivaled Solath Mahnus as the jewel of Recityv. Its marble gables and towering vaults had risen at the same time as the palace and courts. Now it lay surrounded by a rough working class that took no delight in, or even noticed, its splendor. And the coarser among them tended to vandalize or deface the cathedral such that heavy boards had been secured against the lower windows, and its base showed the stain of men who stood against it to urinate.

  All this in her own time, when the league proclaimed that civility had rescued them from the superstition and myths of the past. Free of such burdens, apparently men’s civility amounted to pissing wherever they pleased.

  Even on the symbols of things they once held dear.

  The regent ascended the Descant steps and quietly knocked. A moment later, the door cracked open wide enough for a pair of eyes to see, and surprise lit the doorman’s eyes when Helaina lowered her shawl to reveal her face. He immediately stood back and motioned her inside.

  The door shut smartly behind her. “I wish to see Belamae.”

  Helaina’s use of the Maesteri’s true name startled the doorman. He would not have heard it often used. But the musician-composer and she were friends since their childhood, and she could think of him in no other terms.

  “Of course, my Lady.” The man bustled ahead, retreating into the dim halls of the cathedral. The regent followed.

  She registered the distant sound of song, like a hum emanating from the marble pillars themselves. Among the things she must discuss with her old friend, this song was the most important.

  The doorman led her beneath great vaulted celings until they came to an unremarkable door. The man knocked and bowed as he stepped back. Shortly the door opened, and her old friend with his blazing white hair offered his wide smile in greeting before wrapping Helaina in a firm embrace.

  “You don’t come to see me often enough,” Belamae said.

  “Nor you me,” Helaina countered. “But mine is the greater sin; your cathedral is a more pleasant place to spend an afternoon.”

  “Yet you have come after dark hour, choosing secrecy for your visit. I think I may not like what you have come to discuss.” Belamae nodded in satisfaction to the doorman and sent the man away.

  Together, Helaina and Belamae went into his brightly lit office and took chairs beside each other before a cold hearth. She relaxed back into the leather, made for comfort and not ceremony—a fine treat. And for a brief time, she closed her eyes, concentrating on the distant hum, before coming to her purpose; she needed a soothed heart. The requests that she carried with her were heavy, indeed.

&n
bsp; Moments later, Belamae said, “You’ve come about the Song of Suffering.”

  The regent sighed, then nodded. “There are rumors, Belamae, and if they are true, there is likely only one cause. I know you will not lie to me, and I need to know the truth.”

  The Maesteri patted her knee, then stood and went to his music stand. There he fingered several sheets of parchment. He gathered them into a pile and sat once more. “I read it every day.” He handed the sheets to Helaina.

  She took them in hand. “What is it?”

  “The music that accompanies the words of the Tract of Desolation.” He sat back into his chair. “I do not sing the notes. That is left for the Lieholan in the Chamber of Anthems. But I review it in my mind. It gives me some comfort to do it.”

  “The tract is safe?” It was not truly a question.

  “I would have come to you if it was not,” Belamae said.

  Helaina grew thoughtful. “How long have you been its steward, my friend? Since long before I became regent, I think.”

  Belamae laughed warmly. “I hadn’t even had my own Change. And I sang the Song for twenty years before I began to teach.”

  “Responsibilities fall too much these days to the young.” The regent looked into the flameless hearth.

  “If I recall, you were rather young when you were called to be regent,” Belamae said. When she looked up again at him, he was smiling. “Daughter of the wealthiest merchant family in Recityv, a year, maybe two, beyond your own Change, when the commerce guilds asked you to represent them on the High Council. What was it, a year later when you took the regent’s seat? We were both young once,” the Maesteri said, wistfully, “both making far-reaching decisions at a tender age.”

  Helaina nodded, thinking that she was here now, at a not-so-tender age, with more far-reaching decisions to share. “I have called for a running of the Lesher Roon.”

  “That is what I hear,” Belamae replied. “You’re filling your table in preparation for the convocation. It is wise to do so. Is that why you have come? You’d like me to sit again on your council?”