Tahn knelt to be close enough to speak low and directly into the little man’s ear. “We were attacked by Bar’dyn. One hit my friend in the back with a spiked ball. I pulled the ball free, but in the last several hours his speech is slurring, his eyes are heavy, and his balance is off. I think he’s been poisoned.”
The short fellow buried his face in his stubby fingers. “The first fee of the night and this is it? What, by the deaf gods, did I do to deserve you two?” He stabbed a finger into Tahn’s chest, and immediately went back to his lock box. He produced a key from inside his shirt, opened the vault, and drew out Tahn’s money. Stumping back, he lifted Tahn’s palm with one hand and slammed the coins into it. “I can’t help you!”
Tahn stared, slack-jawed. “Can’t? My friend is sick. What do I do?”
The diminutive fellow went back to his chair to resume his vigil. “He’s got Quiet poison in him. You need a healer from the Bourne. Good luck.”
Tahn’s ire flared. “But I don’t know where to find that. Can’t you do something?” Tahn stood, feeling for the first time the kind of righteous anger he remembered of his father. Things had grown serious, and now so was he.
The small man seemed to hear it, too. He puffed air from his wide nostrils. “The tenendra. They have a tent of low ones at the far end. They say there’s a creature from the Bourne caged inside. Good luck.”
Feeling a speck of hope, Tahn thought about the road beyond Squim. Vendanj had called for them to get to Recityv. But from the beginning, the Sheason had said they’d pass by a library on their way. There were papers there he said they’d need. Scholarship about the Covenant Tongue.
Tahn turned back to the short healer, and held out one of the handcoins. “You can keep it if you can tell me where to find Qum’rahm’se.”
“The library?” the little man said, incredulous.
“The library,” Tahn confirmed.
The man jumped from his chair and snatched the coin. “North road. Ten hours maybe. You’ll see a mountain to the east. Looks like a fine set of breasts. No road that way. But go until you see the river. Follow it north. None of it’s marked. You’ll find it if you root around.”
“You’re sure it’s Qum’rahm’se?” Tahn questioned.
The short healer scowled. “Brother’s a scrivener.”
“Will it take us out of the way if we’re headed to Recityv?”
“You’re pushing the value of a single handcoin,” the healer said with heavy insinuation for more pay.
Tahn couldn’t afford any more. Instead, he took a threatening step toward the little man.
All in a hurry, the fellow said, “Hells, no. It’s all north, lad. Roads are faster. But the roads and the river heading north all pretty much lead to Recityv. Now, can we please be done?”
Tahn nodded his thanks. Then with some difficulty, he got Sutter to his feet, and the two stumbled back into the street. The peaks of the several tents to the north glowed like beacons, luring folks to come and pay the admission fee. Tahn and Sutter followed the crowds in that direction.
The closer they got to the brightly lit tents, the stronger the many sweet smells: honey, molasses, and flower-nectar creams. But with them rose, too, the acrid smell of people long without a bath, massed together for whatever entertainment the tenendra brought to this shady town.
“There,” Sutter said, getting Tahn’s attention.
They rounded the last large building near the end of town and stopped at the massive tent swelling before them. It rose to at least the height of Hambley’s Fieldstone. Ropes the thickness of Tahn’s arm anchored to great iron stakes held the tent in place. Great swaths of color ran in wide stripes to the peak—red, green, yellow, blue, violet. Straw had been laid all about. But in the heat, there was no mud to cover, so chaff rose from the trampled straw, filling the air with the smell of a dry field.
Along the perimeter of the tents were carts filled with honey-glazed fruit, sugar-wines, and rolled flat-cakes filled with berries and dusted with powdered sugar. Men and women and children all clamored for a taste. Torches blazed all around the tents, casting rope shadows here and there. From within the tents came applause and roars of approval and gales of laughter. Outside, those still standing in line for their food looked anxious to gain admittance to the tents and join the fun.
The tide of the throng took them around the first tent. Two more tents rose against the darkness like enormous, pregnant light-flies. One of these glowed a peerless aqua blue color; the other was covered with sketches of faces in exaggerated expressions of pleasure, pain, joviality, sadness, anger, and orgasmic content. Booths were erected in the thoroughfares that ran between the tents. The intoxicating smell of food and drink wafted over the crowd like an invisible cloud.
Several booths were manned by men and women who hollered the merits of one game or another. Tahn passed one woman wearing an eye patch who barked about the ease of tossing a small dart through a hole in a plank of wood set fifteen feet from the front counter of her stand.
Further on to the right stood three more tents like the first, all in a row. But on the left, out of the way, sat a long, square, dimly illuminated tent. Tahn caught a whiff of something more acrid from that direction.
No one stood in line there.
This had to be the tent of the low ones, with a creature from the Bourne.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Song Box
All things have a song in them. All things. If you’re wise, you’ll listen for it. If you’re blessed, you’ll hear it. And if you’re able, you’ll resonate with it.
—From the study of progressions and their relationship to Absolute Sound, Descant Cathedral
“Don’t be alarmed, Anais,” the gentleman said.
His long white hair was drawn back in a tail. Clear blue eyes shone beneath thick white brows, and the clean smells of sandalwood and oak leaves seemed to emanate from him. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced, smiling paternally at Wendra across the fire.
“Who are you?” she asked, looking around for Penit. Perhaps this was the help the boy had brought back with him.
“A friend,” the man said.
Wendra shook her head and tried to push herself up. She collapsed quickly from the effort.
“Don’t exert yourself,” the old man said. “I’ll do you no harm, and you must conserve your strength.” He took a piece of firewood from a pile nearby and stirred the coals with it before tossing it on the rest. “It’s a joyous sound, is it not.”
Wendra looked at him, confused. “What sound?”
“The fire.” He closed his eyes. “If you close your eyes it sounds like the wind luffing a sail, the rush of water over a falls. Yet it’s gentler than these. And stronger.” He smiled with his eyes shut. “The life of the wood is consumed, reborn into flame and warmth. The force that gives the tree its form, still deep within the wood long after it ceases to grow, is offered up in a bright flame that warms our meals and soothes our skin.”
Wendra licked her cracked lips, but said nothing.
“It’s an old song, older than the races, and one they’ve forgotten.” He opened his eyes. “Its power is still harnessed, but the sacrifice of the touchable becoming untouchable is no longer appreciated. The song is no longer sung.” He didn’t speak reproachfully, and the same kindly smile remained on his lips. “This is the way of things,” he concluded, and rested his gentle eyes on Wendra.
“What do you want?” she asked. “Are you here to help me?” Her voice trembled with emotion.
The man wasn’t really there. He couldn’t help her. She was having fever visions, death dreams. She remembered her dying father holding entire conversations with the empty chair that sat beside his bed. Tears welled in her eyes. Distantly, the tune of her box continued to chime.
“You don’t need my help.” He looked down at his hands, then held them up without unlacing his fingers. “What is their song?”
“I don’t understand.”
; The man unlaced his hands. “I may use them to fashion a home, cup the face of a child. I may even use them to take up instruments of war.” He turned his hands over each time he listed an example. “I can even put them before the light and create forms of things which are not.”
He joined his hands in odd ways and cast shadows of animals and people on the cavern wall behind him. Slowly, the images there became more distinct, moving independently and taking on color and sound. Suddenly, Wendra was watching Balatin playing a cithern on the steps of their home while she and Tahn danced. Her father, laughing, showed them how to perform the next step in the jig, while his fingers plucked the strings, and the yard rang with a lively tune. Tapping one foot, Balatin finally stood and joined them in their dance, continuing to play. Fresh tears escaped Wendra’s eyes as she remembered the tune her father played—the same as the tune in her box.
She gave a manic laugh, and the images disappeared, replaced by the old, white-haired gentleman sitting death watch with her at her fire.
His smile never wavered. “Do you understand now?”
Wendra shook her head, then stopped. “Yes. Maybe. These are my comforts as I go to my final earth.”
The old man’s smile broadened. “Dear Wendra, death is a song worth singing, but not yet for you.” He again rested his elbows on his knees and settled in as if preparing to tell a story. “With my hands I can create many things, many good things. But the things I touch and shape are only my best interpretation of what I see and feel inside.” He touched his chest.
“These things can be glorious, like Shenflear’s words or Polea’s paintings. They may ascend into the sky with magnificence as Loneot’s great buildings that arc and rise on the banks of the Helesto. But”—the man leaned forward, excitement clear in his features—“can you imagine what thoughts, what images existed in the hearts and minds of such men and women, but were not perfectly reflected in the efforts of their hands?”
Wendra began to feel cold inside. The fire burned on, but held no warmth for her. Its flames, even the old man’s kindly face, blurred and wavered before coming into sharp focus again. Beyond it all, her wood box played on, slower now as it wound down. She tried to fix her attention on the melody, to grasp something she knew was real, something she could understand.
The old man sat up and flung back his great white cloak. In the firelight, his white hair and beard looked regal. He again fixed his stare on her, never losing his warm smile. “You, Wendra. The instrument you must play is you. It is the first tool, the first instrument. It is a uniquely wondrous symmetry of Forda I’Forza. It is Resonance. And I can teach you. But you’ll have to get up off this floor.” He patted his leg. “So, how will you do that, Anais? Tell me, what song will serve your need?”
“I’m too weak to get up,” Wendra said. “I’ve sent a boy to bring me help, and I worry that he’s lost. Or hurt.”
“The Quiet aren’t looking for you or the boy.”
“My brother … they came to our home … my child…”
“Indeed,” the old man said. “And these are strains of a song that should be sung with reverence … and hope, because they create in you what only you can voice. Learn from them, Wendra. I have stood in places for days at a time to hear and know the voice it sings with. Even this place, this dark cave, knows a song. And it’s inside you now. The rocks and fire and ash. Penit, too, for what you see in him that is forever lost to you. It’s a lament, Wendra. One you may sing of this place, this moment … but what joy there is in that, too.”
“Joy?”
The old man smiled. “Yes, joy. Because your lament can someday be your empathy for someone else, someone who can’t express such things for themselves. Not unlike your box.” He motioned toward her music box. “What’s captured there that causes you to return to that simple melody? Why, it’s things forever lost to you in flesh, but alive to you in spirit. Like the wood expending its form to exist as something brighter. We create as we can, Wendra, but the end must be to fashion something finer of ourselves.”
For the first time, the old man’s eyes grew distant. “But Suffering is changing, and there are few anymore who can sing it. It’s the call of Descant. A call that some are trying to end. And so you must get up.” He smiled kindly, and focused her on this moment. “I ask you again, what song is it?”
In a moment, the old man was gone, leaving Wendra in the darkened cave, drenched with the sweat of her fever. The smell of ash rose in cloying waves. But more clearly, more intimately, she could hear her box plucking its tune in the darkness. The soft click of the gears hummed just beneath the melody. In the shadows, Wendra parted her lips to hum in time with the song of her box. And her chills began to fade.
* * *
The natural resonance in the cave carried Wendra’s soft intonations further than she projected them. But as she sang, she found her voice gaining strength rather than tiring. Her humming grew louder, and soon she was adding words. And memories. Every few minutes, when her box wound down, she rewound the cylinder and sang again to its accompaniment.
She listened to her own voice echo and re-echo off the rock walls. In the welling sound that filled the cave, she found unique comfort … and more. Her fever broke. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been singing, but she knew it was because of her song. She didn’t leave it there, though.
She began to turn subtle changes in the melodies, creating counterpoint to the original tune. But faster and more filled with challenge. The new rhythms and harmonies to the music excited her and she found strength to rebuild a fire to keep warm as she continued to sing changes on Balatin’s simple song.
She sang all night, continuing to compose her own lyrics and countermelodies. The weave and flow of her music swelled and quickened her heart. She was facing down her illness. The vaulted cavern resonated with a score that wrapped Wendra in its bold embrace. The sun had not yet risen before feeling in her side and leg returned.
And despite the lack of sleep, her arms felt light, her eyes alert. Without thinking, she stood and felt only the faintest trace of pain in her wound. She lifted her voice in a strong, roughened note and then stopped, listening as her final word echoed into the recesses of the cave.
Carefully, she walked to the rockslide, climbing up and through the hole Penit had made. Outside, she squinted in the light, allowing her eyes to focus. Early-morning haze hung over the lowlands, leaves and grass glimmering with dew. The sweet smell of vegetation washed over her, and she took it in gratefully after the old earth and ashes of her fireside bed.
The dark mists were gone. But she could see no sign of Penit. And the others would be on their way to Recityv. She had little choice but to try and make it to Recityv herself. But how long should she wait for the boy to return? He’d promised he would. How he was young.
Then suddenly, the image of the old man with a white beard and cloak surfaced in her mind, startling her. Fever visions! But it had seemed so real. A smile touched her lips when she realized what had just happened: She’d healed herself by doing nothing more than what came most naturally to her.
Music had always been a central part of her life. But what had happened in the cave was something spoken of only in rumor, a story repeated more in legend than history. A metaphor or symbol, the power of song to affect the way of things.
What had the old man called it? Resonance?
Wendra lifted her blouse, then her pant leg, examining her wounds. The cuts had closed, only thin, pale scars now. They looked years old. She touched them, and felt nothing. “My skies,” she muttered. “How can this be?”
But she didn’t spend any more time thinking about it. In the distance she could see a small river. Penit would have found it and followed its course. She set out that moment.
The river took Wendra east until dusk. Tired, she made camp, lit a fire, and managed a few green roots for supper. The sun dipped below the horizon, and gentle shades of brown and red streaked the sky, leaving sepia shadows on the land.
She filled her waterskin from the river and washed her face.
Kneeling at the river’s edge she listened. She heard as she hadn’t before the musical cadence of the current, the babble and chuckle of the water over stones, the rush of it around stems and branches growing or dangling in its flow. Wendra thought she could also hear the deeper, quieter pull of the current from the bottom of the river, where cold, blue water moved more slowly, more powerfully. The several voices of the river merged into a lulling requiem, its soothing power sweeping away the fatigue of the day.
She returned to her fire and sat as day gave way to night. Softly she began to hum, creating her own tune in dual harmony with the fire and the river, her concentration so complete on her song that she didn’t hear the approach of feet. Before she knew what was happening, three figures stood opposite her, smiling devilishly in the glow of her fire.
“What fortune,” the man in the center said. “This place is like a garden; we leave it and it grows new fruit.”
The two other men chuckled, their eyes appraising Wendra the way she’d seen herders do with new breed stock.
The man who spoke had rough, handsome features, two days’ growth of beard, and thick brows. His eyes shone with an intelligence the others lacked, and his clothes were simple but better cared for.
Their intentions weren’t charitable, but Balatin had taught her never to show fear. “Half the battle is what they don’t know,” her father had been fond of saying. She composed herself, allowing a bit of an edge to her voice, and inclined her chin smugly, preparing to ask the only thing she cared to discuss with these men.
“I’m looking for a child, a boy, about ten years old,” she said. “He would have been traveling this way a day ago.” She leveled her eyes at each man in turn. Their stares were filled only with greed and lust.
The man on the left spoke up in a voice bruised by too much tobacco. “You ought to be worried—”
“Silence,” the first interrupted. He looked at Wendra, his eyes appraising her in a different way than the other two. A softer look spread on his handsome face. “Indeed, lady, we’ve seen the child.” He paused as though he had more information and intended Wendra to know he was holding the rest back.
The Unremembered Page 13
