Songspinners

by Sarah Ash

  Below the Upper Temple lay the source of the sacred spring itself, the raw fissure in the natural rock from which the waters exploded, fizzing with heat. The Lifhendil had constructed a labyrinthine trail to lead the worshipper to the source of the sacred spring and as Orial passed beneath the ancient archway, she experienced a prickling shiver of apprehension. Steam clouded her spectacle-lenses and for a moment she was blind, lost in the gloom. She wiped the steam away and slowly groped her way forward, drawn by the roar of the bubbling waters until she found herself on the rim of the gaping fissure itself, a raw, iron-red gash in the living rock.

  She gasped, gripping hold of the slender rail, balancing precariously above the churning energy of the swirling waters. The fine, warm spray dampened her face and she could taste the acrid tang of the life-giving minerals on her lips.

  Silvered shafts of daylight dimly pierced the misty air from slits cut high above in the vaulted roof, slits that also served as vents to let out the drifting steam. As Orial’s eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw curling green ferns growing from the walls.

  And standing watching her, in the billowing steam, a dark-veiled figure.

  Silent, mute as a revenant from the far shore.

  For one terrified moment Orial stared back, transfixed. Then she remembered what had brought her here to the source of the spring.

  The Priests and Priestesses of the Temple kept constant vigil here, day and night, each taking a turn to assume the cloudy veils of the Augurer.

  ‘What do you seek, daughter?’ The voice floated towards her, low and drowsy. Orial could not even be certain whether a man or a woman stood there, gauzed in night-spangled veils. It was said that the Augurer fasted before the vigil… then inhaled the dark drugfumes of Arkendym dreamweed to lay their minds open to the will of the Goddess.

  ‘I – I seek guidance. Answers, maybe…’

  ‘I speak for Her whose place this is.’ The Augurer began to move towards her through the clouds of steam. ‘Ask your question.’

  ‘It’s… difficult.’ Orial twisted a straying lock of hair between finger and thumb. ‘It’s about my mother. I need to know – to know why she died?’

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  Orial stretched out her hand and felt the light finger-tips of the Augurer touch hers. The other hand reached out to brush her forehead. Beneath the starry veils, the drug-darkened eyes were mesmerised, smoky casements to another world.

  Jewelled wings dart over black waters, leaving a comet-trail of light sparks in their wake: leaf-emerald, hyacinth-sapphire, white-opal –

  ‘A flight of dragonflies…’ The Augurer’s voice was now so low, Orial could barely hear it.

  ‘Dragonflies? On the Day of the Dead?’ Orial asked. ‘Or – on the stelae?’

  ‘She comes through fire… through water… to set them free.’

  A shudder ran through the Augurer’s body and the fingers suddenly lifted from Orial’s.

  ‘She? The Goddess? Elesstar?’

  The Augurer did not reply.

  ‘Tell me,’ Orial pleaded.

  The Augurer turned and went drifting away until the cloud-gauzed figure was obscured by the gusting steam.

  Orial sighed. She had come for answers – and had found only further questions.

  Dragonflies. Even on the most ancient of Temple stone carvings, the stelae, the motif prevailed. Symbols of the souls of the dead, flying from the darkness of the Undercity to the light of day beyond.

  The funerary stelae of the Lifhendil still lined the passageways of the Under Temple.

  Orial’s fingers hovered over the carving, tracing the worn images. She could never understand why the Lifhendil had abandoned all sense of proportion and scale in their engraving of these ancient stones. Here the dragonflies had been carved the same size as the officiating priests and priestesses. She peered more closely at the carved figures. The slim bodies of the dragonflies could almost be human; from this angle it was possible to see them as winged men and women, winged messengers from the otherworld, come to carry the souls of the dead…

  Bordering the image were the intricately carved slashes and squirls that Jolaine Tradescar insisted were inscriptions in the lost tongue of the Lifhendil. But as she had failed so far to crack the code, her theories had been dismissed by eminent scholars and the true function of the stelae remained unknown.

  ‘A flight of dragonflies?’ Orial whispered.

  In the Upper Temple stood the painted statue of Elesstar, one hand benignly extended, the other supporting a vase from which poured perpetually the spring waters which the worshippers dutifully drank, lukewarm and brackish. The Allegondan import stared smilingly down at the faithful, her features bland and regular; her carven hair was painted yellow, inlaid with gold leaf, her eyes painted blue and her lips red. Deified, she little resembled the Shultan’s concubine who had given up her life of luxury at court to follow the prophet Mhir. Orial had always suspected that the historical Elesstar was Lifhendil – not this smiling Allegondan saint, eyes piously upraised to heaven.

  Reason and enlightenment prevailed in the Upper Temple. But below… below she had just experienced the power of an older, darker, mysticism.

  The legacy of the Lifhendil.

  *

  All night the notes rampaged around Khassian’s head. Swirling, savage strettos; new melodies that swooped and darted like an arrow-flight of swallows; climaxes that climbed and climbed to teeter on the brink of a crumbling abyss.

  Next morning at first light he blundered into Cramoisy’s boudoir. He had devised a method of depressing the door handles with one elbow that permitted him to move – albeit clumsily – from room to room.

  The Diva lay in a bed draped with primrose taffeta, a colour horribly at odds with his flamboyant hair.

  ‘Cramoisy, you’ve got to help me.’

  ‘Go away, Amar,’ groaned Cramoisy, drawing the sheet up over his face.

  ‘Please. I’m going crazy. It’s the finale. Elesstar’s transfiguration scene. It was weak, unsatisfying. Now I know how to improve it!’

  ‘Elesstar?’ The sheet slid down an inch or so, revealing two jet eyes, staring avariciously up at him. ‘My role?’

  ‘Your role, Cramoisy. You have to write it down.’

  ‘At this hour? You know I never rise before nine.’

  ‘You’ll never have a better role. It’s written for you. I know your voice better than any other composer in the whole of Allegonde, you’ve said so yourself. Help me get the music on paper – before I lose it forever!’

  ‘Oh… very well.’ Cramoisy yawned. ‘Give me five minutes.’

  Khassian paced outside the door, his feet moving in time to the insistent pulse of music in his head.

  Five minutes stretched to ten, fifteen, twenty. At length the Diva appeared, draped in a peignoir of celadon silk, his brilliant hair loose about his shoulders, a portrait of studied artlessness. Khassian could not bear to imagine the lengths the castrato had gone to to achieve the effect.

  ‘You said five minutes.’

  Cramoisy gave a little sigh, seated himself at the escritoire and began to fuss with the pens, nibs, ink bottle.

  ‘Cramoisy –’ Khassian growled.

  ‘There now!’ Cramoisy flashed him a glittering smile. ‘I’m ready.’

  It would have been a tedious business even if Khassian could have demonstrated at the keyboard what he intended. As it was he found himself obliged to enumerate each note, how long it lasted, where it lay in the octave compass. The process was so laborious that the notes kept wreathing out of his grasp, evanescent as woodsmoke.

  ‘Si bemol. Dotted crotchet then ut, re –’

  ‘When you say si bemol, Amar, is it the higher octave or –’

  Khassian let out a roar of frustration.

  Cramoisy flung down the pen, ink spattering the page.

  ‘You singers are all alike!’ Khassian cried. ‘Not one ounce of musical theory in your empty brains!�
��

  ‘And you are quite impossible, Amaru Khassian! I’m doing my best!’

  ‘You call this your best? Two smudged lines of stave paper?’

  ‘No one could keep up with your dictation! You need a transcription machine.’

  ‘I could do better with a pencil between my teeth!’

  ‘Then you can try with a pencil between your teeth! For I won’t write another note for you, Illustre. Not one.’

  ‘Very well,’ Khassian said, trying to control his temper. ‘Get me a pencil. Well-sharpened.’

  ‘A sharpened pencil? Do you think I have nothing better to do than run your errands all day? I have visits to make, calls to pay in the city.’

  ‘How insensitive of me. I quite forgot. Of course your social diary must take precedence over my music!’

  ‘If you must know, I am going to try to arrange a series of recitals at the Assembly Rooms,’ Cramoisy said in tones of chill disdain.

  ‘And of course the Diva must satisfy the demands of his public, he must give freely of his talents, he must sing, sing, sing –’

  ‘Who do you think is paying for our food and board? Someone has to earn a little money to ensure we are not cast out into the streets as penniless vagrants next week.’

  ‘Just get me the pencil, Cramoisy,’ Khassian said between gritted teeth.

  Cramoisy started up from the escritoire and flounced from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Khassian had been too angry to hear clearly what the Diva was saying. He was vaguely aware he had offended him, wounded his feelings. And Cramoisy could be vicious when offended – as his rivals in the Opera House could testify.

  Soon afterwards the vocal exercises began. The Diva adopted a bright, piercing quality, over-emphasising the vibrato. Cramoisy knew Khassian particularly hated him to employ that technique for the composer had spent long hours coaching him in the use of a more subtle, expressive method of sustaining the tone. But the castrato had never forgotten how to dazzle an audience – and with his supreme breath control, he could dazzle as no other singer could.

  Now the Diva was doing it expressly to annoy him.

  Each scale dinned into Khassian’s aching head like a shower of silver nails until he could bear it no longer.

  He stumbled into the morning room where Cramoisy stood as if on stage, hands formally clasped above his waist. The force of the sound, glossily shrill, made Khassian flinch.

  ‘Cramoisy. Please.’

  The Diva glared at him.

  ‘I’m busy.’ He began the next arpeggio; the notes seemed to rend the air with violent slashes of colour: shrieking yellow, skirling lightning-blue.

  ‘Look – I’m – I’m sorry I shouted at you.’ Khassian struggled to make himself heard above the rising arpeggios. ‘It was – insensitive of me.’

  ‘Yes. It was very insensitive.’ Cramoisy paused for breath.

  ‘If you could stop –’

  ‘And why, pray, should I stop? I must sing, sing, sing, remember?’

  ‘I have a headache.’

  It was the plaint of a fractious child; the castrato hesitated but Khassian could see that this appeal to his sympathy had won.

  ‘You great baby.’ Cramoisy went to his reticule and took out a black bottle, pouring a measure into a glass. ‘Here.’ He held the little glass to Khassian’s lips. ‘Drink up, there’s a good boy.’

  The bitter dark liquid was smooth as syrup. One measure too many… and he would slip into that cold, endless sleep where his stillborn children, his unfinished works, would no longer torment him.

  ‘Please, Cramoisy,’ Khassian whispered, grimacing at the bitter taste of the medicine, ‘get me some pencils?’

  Whirling lines of music still tormented him, weaving in and out of his brain, unable to find resolution or release. He could not sleep for the clamour of the unfinished work that demanded to be completed.

  The sharpened pencils Cramoisy had brought for him stood in a jar on the desk. He bent over the jar, dipping like an ungainly water-bird after its prey, trying to get one between his teeth.

  At last he secured one and sat down over the stave paper. But the pencil was too long; it stabbed him in the palate, making him gag. A shorter one, then. Clamping the wood between his jaws, he tried to angle his head so that he could make the marks – any marks – on the stave lines.

  Soon saliva began to dribble out between his teeth. It slid down the pencil and on to the paper, making slimy marks. The taste of the wood, graphite and saliva mingled, made his tongue burn. Disgusted, he spat the pencil out, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  Then he looked down at what he had achieved.

  A few clumsy strokes, smeared with the saliva from his mouth, were all he had managed. They were almost illegible.

  And in his head, he could hear the brazen splendour of the music dinning on. No one else would ever hear it.

  Cramoisy had left the sedative tincture on the top of the table. The bitter liquid, blacker than a starless night, numbingly cold as the rivers of hell, promised a slow drowning descent into the dark.

  Close now, almost close enough. If he reached out, he could hook the bottle with his elbow into his lap – and wrench the cork out with his teeth.

  He reached out for the phial –

  The bottle fell to the floor and smashed in a dark-smeared puddle of viscous medicine. Khassian began to laugh: hard, painful laughter that hurt his heaving ribcage, that sent tears streaming down his cheeks.

  He could not even kill himself.

  Orial was carrying a tray of linaments along the Sanatorium corridor when she caught sight of Amaru Khassian. Pale and unsteady on his feet, the composer was being ushered into a treatment cubicle. The cubicle next to the one where she was to treat her first client of the day.

  His eyes, in that one brief glimpse, seemed so bleak, so riven with despair, that she stopped still in mid-corridor, shocked.

  The patient she was helping to treat was an elderly dowager whose knees were misshapen with rheumatism. She, unlike some of Dr Magelonne’s more crotchety older patients, was indulgent with Orial’s relative lack of experience and seemed delighted to have the opportunity to gossip about a minor society scandal at last week’s Guildhall Ball.

  ‘And the Mareschale must be at least as old as I am…’

  Orial nodded and smiled as she worked, hardly noticing what was being said, remembering to look alternately surprised or shocked as each of the juicy details was related. At first she hardly noticed the music. It was distant, a faint trace of something she had heard long ago, perhaps, just a lingering fragment of melody, tantalising in its evanescence. Her fingers worked the hot mud which was to be applied into a manageable shape… and the music became more insistent.

  ‘Disgraceful at her age… she could at least have tried to be discreet – ouch! Does the poultice have to be quite so hot, my dear?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Orial peeled it off again and tested the temperature of the mud with her elbow. What was that music? Where had she heard it before? It was quite unlike the usual Sulien repertoire, the charming little dance strains whose snatches she sometimes caught floating from the Upper Rooms, the cotillions, caprioles and badineries. This was something far darker, its leaps tormented by a bizarre intensity, the notes twisted into an utterance of a complexity she had never before experienced. It compelled and repelled at the same time.

  ‘I said, it’s gone quite cold!’

  ‘Oh!’ Startled, Orial looked up. How long had she been daydreaming? She hastily felt the poultice and discovered that it had indeed lost all its heat. The dowager glared up at her from rheumy eyes, glittering with indignation.

  ‘I’ll fetch some fresh mud.’ Orial took up the bucket and hurried out of the cubicle.

  Next door, Khassian pressed his lips together in grim concentration as Sister Crespine worked on his thumbs. The pain came in bursts: a dull, grinding ache suddenly shot through by jagged stabs of light.

  He wou
ld not cry out.

  Instead he carried on mentally orchestrating the final duet from the opera, the duet that had kept him from sleeping most of the night. Mental discipline. Concentrate on the music. Then the pain recedes to a tolerable level…

  Final irony. That the way to improve the ending which had eluded him in Bel’Esstar should present itself to him now, when he was unable to transcribe it. Now it had become an apotheosis, imbued with a dark yet profound sense of bitter triumph, a hymn to the endurance of the human spirit in adversity. He knew it was good. He knew –

  From outside in the corridor he heard a voice, low and sweet, singing. Singing the very notes he had been composing since before dawn!

  ‘Bel’Mhir!’ he whispered, sitting up.

  ‘Did I hurt you, Illustre?’ Sister Crespine said, surprised.

  ‘No, no.’ He was already off the couch, making for the door, following the sound of the voice.

  ‘But where are you –’

  ‘The singing. The singer.’ His voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘I have to know who it is.’ Without thinking, he thrust his hand forward to tug back the curtain. The fingers missed their grip, clumsily jarring against the tiled archway. Pain shot like lightning from finger-tips to shoulder; he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting for self-control.

  Sister Crespine briskly whisked the curtain open a moment, glanced up the corridor, then shut it again.

  ‘You probably heard Demselle Magelonne. She’s working in the adjoining cubicle.’

  ‘Magelonne?’ A wave of sickness queased through his body. ‘The doctor’s daughter?’