The Sound of Broken Absolutes

by Peter Orullian

  He turned a fair hand as a bowmaker, and had made countless bows in his day. The viola bow, in particular, proved to be a favorite, though, as its three extra finger-lengths over its violin counterpart allowed for a greater-than-usual variety of breaks and spreads. He’d fit it with a wider ribbon of horse hair, too—two hundred fifty strands. But the gradations he worked through now were the thing. They needed to be precise so that the bow remained equally flexible from tip to handle.

  He sight-checked his work with a wooden template, too, though he preferred the exact measurements he got with his caliper.

  Lesser luthier shops rushed through bow construction. They missed this crucial bit. Divad liked to tell his impatient students that: The viola, it is the bow. His overemphasis on the need for precision in its construction would, he hoped, mean they’d take care in all parts of making an instrument. It was true, though, that a well-made bow had a marked effect on the timbre of the instrument. More than anything else, he thought it gave the player a better hand at legato. Easy, fluid transitions in a piece most pleased his ear, so he didn’t mind spending extra time to craft a proper bow.

  He was in the process of bending in the delicate centermost section when indelicate footsteps crossed the luthier shop threshold.

  “You’d best have a powerful reason for charging in all clumsy-like,” he grumped. “You know this is delicate work up here.”

  “I think you can take a rest,” came an unfamiliar voice. There was a calm but commanding tone in it, as from one who feels sure he’ll be obeyed.

  Divad released the pressure on the camber and looked under his armpit to see three men from the League of Civility entering his workshop. They weren’t bustling, really. But they might as well have been, compared to the easy manner he instructed Descant members to use when coming into this place. The League liked to say of themselves that they served the common interest. Their emblem of four interlocking hands, each clasping the wrist of the next in a quadrangle-like circle, seemed comically obvious. Though the modest chestnut brown of their cloaks did just as good a job of conveying common while also setting them apart in uniform fashion.

  He put the bow down gently and turned, wiping his hands on a dry cloth dusted with talc. “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  The lead man slowed up, beginning to walk the line of instruments hanging from pegs in various states of repair. He ran a finger across each as he passed, the motion one part intimidation and another part casual familiarity. Close behind the other two Leaguemen came three Lyren, their arms outstretched as if they’d been beseeching their guests to slow down. Divad held up a hand for them to relax.

  “Just some questions. Nothing that has to become contentious.” The Leagueman’s lips showed the barest of grins.

  “Sounds harmless,” Divad replied. “Always glad to educate. Shall we go and have a seat. I can offer you some—”

  “What is it you do here?” the man asked.

  Divad looked around. “I should think it’s somewhat obvious. I repair instruments.”

  The man offered a soft chuckle. “You’ve wit. Please answer the question you know I asked.”

  “Fair enough.” Divad leaned back against his workbench. “I teach music. And for some—those who have the gift—I teach intentional music. Most likely you call these folks Lieholan. It’s as good a name as any, I guess.”

  “And these Lieholan, their job is singing a song that you would have us believe keeps us safe from mythical races, yeah?”

  “A rather cynical way to describe it.” Divad again wiped his hands of the sweat that had begun to rise in his palms. “If I look ahead of your questions, I suppose I’d say that what we believe on that score is ours to believe. And it doesn’t cause a wit of harm to the League, or the people for that matter. May even lend some hope to weary—”

  “Ah, see, that’s the arrogance I expected.” The Leagueman crossed to a near bench—the one where the glued viola rested beside a mostly reconstructed new one.

  The stranger’s nearness to the instrument made Divad panicky. “Does the regent know you’re here? Or is this less . . . official?”

  Something changed subtly in the man’s face. And it surprised Divad. The Leagueman’s demeanor actually became less guarded, less scrutinizing, as he began to run his fingers along the unfinished viola. “Let me start over,” the man said. It was a masterful change in manner. One Divad would have fallen for if he hadn’t been changing the tone of his own voice to color vocal performance for the better part of thirty years.

  Divad played along. “I’d like that. I’ll admit to being a mite weary. So, truly, how can I help you?”

  “I think maybe there’s too much mystery around what Descant does these days,” the man said. His tone was almost apologetic, as though he were on a forced errand. “I’ve been asked to invite several of your singers of Suffering back to help explain it to us.” He smiled magnanimously. “I’ll tell you something else. I’ll wager when it’s done, we find ourselves more kin than kessel.”

  Divad kept from smiling. Kessel was an Ebonian word that meant ‘separated,’ but most folks used it to mean ‘enemy.’

  “I’ll be glad to accompany—”

  “Not you,” the man said abruptly, then raised his hands as though to revise his own terseness. “That’s not how I meant that. I’d imagine you have a good handle on your purpose. It’s those you teach that we need to talk to.”

  Divad began to lose patience. “Is this a trial of some kind? Because if it is, I’ll want a letter with the regent’s seal.”

  The man’s stare narrowed, though his grin did not falter. “No. Not yet. But mind you, a man might wonder about the person who frets over being invited to explain himself.”

  “No,” Divad said flatly. “You have no authority to insist. And none of us is freely going with you. We can talk here, if you’d like. Beyond that, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  The man’s genial manner fell away entirely. He stood glaring at Divad with calculating eyes. Then he turned to look back at the unfinished viola. He picked it up in both hands with a delicate kind of grace. The room fell silent and taut with expectation.

  “It’s fine work,” the man said. “My father was a fair hand with a knife. Though he used his skill to gut sea trout and coalfish, and mend nets and loose deck planks.”

  “Sounds like a decent fellow,” Divad offered.

  The Leagueman nodded. “He was. Up until I was nine,” he replied cryptically. He then began to wave the viola by its neck, his agitation slightly more manic. “Your students. They’re free to choose whether to go, yes?”

  “Of course,” Divad said, tracking the instrument worriedly as the Leagueman began to use it to point around the room.

  “What about you,” he said, jabbing the viola toward the Lyren near the doorway. “Nothing preventing you from leaving, is there?”

  The Lyren shook their heads rather emphatically.

  He turned back to Divad, being sure their eyes locked. Then he raised his arm, and began to swing the viola down toward the workbench. Divad felt that sinking feeling again. His first thought was a random one: that instrument bows were historically a weapon, and how he wished just now he had the former kind. On the heels of that thought, song welled up inside him. It had nearly burst forth when the Leagueman stopped his swing and rolled the viola onto the tabletop. It fell harshly but remained unbroken.

  The room hung in a stunned silence at the Leagueman’s forbearance. After a moment he stepped close to Divad, an obvious attempt at intimidation. The smell of rain-soaked wool was strong.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you,” the Leagueman said, his voice deep and soft and accusatory.

  Divad shook his head. “You have my apology if I should.”

  The man leaned in so that his lips were near his ear. Softly, he began to hum a chromatic scale. When he reached the upper end of his middle register, his voice broke over the passagio—the natural transition point in the vocal
chord between middle and upper registers. It was a difficult transition to master. But absolutely necessary for advancement at Descant.

  It wasn’t the break that brought the man’s name to mind, though. It was the timbre of his rich bass voice. “Malen.”

  He’d spoken the man’s name without thinking, and drew back to look him in the eye. Years ago the young man had simply left Descant, after struggling for the larger part of a year to learn how to sing over the passagio.

  “You needn’t have left,” Divad said, offering some consolation. “We’d have found a way.”

  Malen smiled bitterly. “And I’d have believed you. They all do.” He reached down and picked up the bow Divad had been shaping. “Still using sour mash, I see.”

  “Let me pour you a drink. Settled nerves make better music.”

  “You and your music metaphors. A teaching technique, yeah? Well, Maesteri, you then are Descant’s bow.” He tapped the side of Divad’s neck with the length of Pemam. “And you play each Lyren for the fiddle he is.”

  Divad felt some compassion for the man. Each musician hits several potential break points—passagios of a different kind—that they either work through or are defeated by. But Divad’s sympathy quickly turned to anger. He didn’t like being threatened. Less so here within the walls of Descant. And least of all in the peaceful confines of his lutherie. “Don’t retaliate against us because you failed here. Or are you still being played, only the fiddler now is the League Ascendant?”

  Malen brought the unfinished bow up between them, and began to slowly bend it, holding Divad’s defiant gaze while he broke the Pemam stick in two. The two Lyren at the threshold gasped.

  “Maesteri?” he said, “I’m not asking permission. Four of your Suffering singers will come with me. We have some questions we’d like answered. If we find everything here is aboveboard,” he gestured around to mean Descant, “they’ll be back soon enough. And because I’m fair-minded, I’ve left you two Lieholan to sing Suffering. Just in case I’m wrong that it is all myth.”

  He grinned and departed unceremoniously, leaving Divad breathless with anger. When Malen left the cathedral, Geola, Harnel, Pren, and Asa left with him.

  It wasn’t a quarter hour before another visitor came to Descant’s doors. This time it was the young regent, in her seat less than a year. She explained that the League had twisted a new law, the Rule of Impartiality—meant to prevent treachery. Under its provisions they were broadly questioning various affiliations throughout Recityv. She’d heard they were coming here. And she apologized for arriving too late to help.

  “What can I do?” Divad asked.

  The young regent, Helaina was her name, answered, “Come with me.”

  He put out his alcohol flame, doused his lamps, and pulled on his cloak. He gave brief instruction to Luumen, the senior of the two remaining Lieholan to whom he was leaving Descant while he was away. Then he hastened into the street, and struggled to keep pace with the purposeful gait of his regent.

  Anger and worry twisted in his gut. He caught her eye and asked, “Can they really do this?”

  She gave him a reassuring wink. “Not while I’m around,” she said, and if it was possible, strode faster still.

  EIGHT

  I NEVER MADE it to the line. After singing the Sellari to death, I crawled back to my horse, and eased my way to my tent. I’d found an absolute sound, and the weight of it proved difficult to bear. Some songs were heavy. Knowing them was like shouldering a yoke of brick. Suffering was that way. Suffering was an absolute song. Its passages swirled in my mind now that I better understood its underpinning.

  Near dawn, Baylet slipped into my tent again. He sat beside the sword he’d given me, which remained untouched. After a long moment he spoke wearily. “We lost two thousand men tonight.”

  I’d have thought there’d be a tone of indictment in his voice. But really he was just tired. Tired in his body. Tired somewhere deeper.

  As I sat with him, we both kept our own observances for the unspeakable loss. Sometime later, while he stared away southward, he said, “You killed the Sellari.”

  It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. I said nothing.

  “You found a way to sing death to a Shoarden man. We need your help.”

  Phrases of Suffering began to repeat themselves in my head. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Because you can’t? Or because you won’t?” If Baylet hadn’t been so weary, there might have been some impatience or indignation in his tone. As it was, mostly the question rang of disappointment.

  It’s how my father might have sounded, were he here to ask me the same. But I wouldn’t have had any better answer for him. The best response I had was to keep silent.

  Baylet shut his eyes and pinched their inner corners as his face tightened in a moment of frustration. When he let go, he tapped the sword beside him as one who’s accepting the way of things. But rather than leave me alone, he said, “While you work through your personal grief, do me one last favor.”

  I gave him an expectant look, preparing for a barrage of insults. Instead, he stood and ducked out through the tent flap. A bit reluctantly, I followed. To my surprise, he neither rushed nor led me south. At an almost leisurely pace, our horses walked north and a smidge east. Moment by moment, the world awakened, near to dawn as it was. Animals skittered in the underbrush, birds began to call against daybreak in that soft way that keeps morning peaceful.

  Several leagues to the west, the tips of the Solden range showed the sunlight gradually working its way down the mountains as the sun rose in the east. Before it reached the valley, Baylet stopped. I came up beside him and looked out over a vast field riddled with humps of freshly dug earth. There might have been eight hundred that I could see. In the distance, the field sloped away from us.

  “I told you before. We’re losing the war.” Baylet took a deep breath, one that sounded like acceptance.

  The graves of soldiers, then, I imagined. Unmarked barrows of the thousands who had fallen. It was a grim thing to see.

  “The histories tell of the Sellari. Of the devastation when they lay hold of a place or people.” Baylet surveyed the field left to right before continuing. “Rough hands, Belamae. They’ve no interest in servitude. They’re glad to make sport of the living before putting them down for good. That’ll mean indignities for families before the blessing of death.”

  “We could retreat north—”

  “And leave the Refrains for the taking, you mean.”

  I shrugged. “Sounds like that’s going to happen sooner or later.”

  The field leader became reflective. “Maybe. But trying to move so many so fast . . . and the Sellari would follow. The feud is an old one. It goes beyond the Refrains.”

  I’d not heard of this, and Baylet didn’t offer to explain. So I let it pass.

  “Rough hands,” he said again. “They’re coming. I don’t have anything to stop them.” He surveyed the field from right to left this time. “They knew it. And they did not wait . . .”

  That’s when I realized what I was truly looking at. Not the graves of his men. But killing fields. All Mor nation children were taught a simple, dreadful lesson when they reached their twelfth name day. If invasion should come, and defeat appear inevitable, our people would not wait for cruel foreign hands to take our lives. By our own hands, we would go to our last sleep with quiet dignity.

  “There are at least a dozen more killing fields.” Baylet’s tone was filled with self-loathing. “They’ve begun to lose hope. By every abandoning God, this is too much!”

  The field leader’s voice boomed out over the field in long rolling echoes.

  I wanted to say something. I wanted to say I would try. But my mind felt like an open wound that even a stir of wind would sear.

  Baylet rode forward before I could find any words. I followed again, and soon we were navigating carefully between the graves. I noted the awful sight of patches of earth not much longer than t
he length of my arm. My mind conjured images of mothers offering their babes what they thought of as a mercy. If I’d felt disheartened before, if I’d thought I was too far from shore, now I felt lost and empty in a way only one song had ever taught me.

  Before I could run that song through my mind, Baylet stopped and dismounted. I did the same. We stood together as the sunlight finally touched the field where we were. Our shadows fell across a pair of graves.

  “I don’t understand what it’s like to sing an absolute,” he began. His voice sounded strangely prayerful in that day’s first light. “I’ve read the music of countless composers who’ve tried to write it down. Black scores. The kind whose melodies never go out of your head, though you wish they would.” He shook his head slowly. “But they’re just approximations. The ability to actually do it . . . it’d be a burden. A lot like keeping the Mor Refrains is a burden, I suppose. I’d like you to know, before I sent for you, my petition to the king for access to the Refrains was denied.”

  It seemed obvious now that all along Baylet had meant for me to find and sing the Sellari absolute. I felt duped. But I didn’t have the energy for anger, and simply nodded.

  Later, as the field began to warm in the sunlight, I asked, “Why are we here?”

  He continued to stare down at the two graves. “Some by tincture. Others by rope. And more by blade drawn across blood veins.”

  Then it dawned on me. We must be standing over the barrows of his family. He fought for Y’Tilat Mor. He fought for his men. But after it all, he fought for those closest to him.