During one of the brief intermissions, an overeager percussionist sidled up close to him. To announce himself, he began to beat on the surface of the bar. With one hand he set a beat in four-four, while with the other he tapped increasingly faster polyrhythms: three-four, five-four, six-four, seven-four. He then repeated the entire cycle at double the tempo. It was rather impressive, actually. But when the young man reached out a hand in greeting, he knocked over Divad’s third glass of wheat bitter. The amber liquid washed over the bar, giving the worn lacquer new shine.
Ollie appeared out of nowhere with his rag, and began mopping up the spill. Some of the bitter remained in shallow grooves scored into the bar.
The indentations looked familiar somehow, and Divad sat staring, thoughts coalescing in his mind. All kinds of songs had passed across this bar, ribald tunes, laments, fight and love songs (which he thought shared more in common than most other types), dirges. And those melodies had risen from strings and woodwinds and horns and countless voices.
And all that just since it had become Rafters. What about its years before that? Divad found himself grinning at the idea of countless songs for the dead sung here when it had been a chantry.
It got him thinking about sonorant residue—the idea that exposure to music could create subtle changes in the fabric of physical reality. The notion found its roots in the Alkai philosophies of music. To Divad’s ear, the evidence was something you could hear in old, well-used instruments, and in the music of musicians who’d spent their lives listening, teaching, performing. It got in you, as was said. Not an elegant way to express it, but it got the point across.
Ollie had nearly finished drying the bar, when Divad caught his rag-hand. He tapped the bar. “What’s this made of, my friend?”
Ollie’s brow furrowed. He then produced a paring knife from his apron, bent down behind the bar, and a moment later stood up. In his fingers he held a thick curl of wood, presumably carved from the underside of the bar. He handed it to Divad, while continuing to stare at it with newfound interest.
Divad turned the shaving over in his fingers twice, inspecting the grain. He gave Ollie a quick glance, then put the curl of wood to his nose and breathed in deeply. He knew that scent like he knew the sound of his own voice. He turned his attention back to Ollie, grinning widely in spite of himself.
“I have a proposition for you, my friend.”
FOUR
I SHIVERED, AND sweat dripped from my nose. I sat alone in a tent, huddled under three layers of rough wool blankets. The fire in the middle of the space leapt higher than was probably safe, but I kept adding more wood. I couldn’t seem to get warm. The cold emanated from somewhere inside me. It felt as if I’d drunk a pitcher of iced water too fast, and was now experiencing the chill of it in the pit of my stomach. I’d downed several mugs of hot tea that hadn’t helped a jot.
There wasn’t really any mystery in it, either. I’d tried to repurpose Suffering. It had been an arrogant thing to do. And I was feeling the effects. The worst of it might be that I hadn’t done much good. A few moments of song, a few dead Sellari, and then they’d carried me back from the line. It was embarrassing, really. They’d sent for me at Descant, like some bright hope. And I’d managed only a few passages of song for them.
I was able to let the failure go, though. Selfish to worry about my failing. I needed to figure out what I’d done wrong.
Suffering had nine passages:
Quietus
The Bourne
The Placing
Inveterae
War
Self-Destruction
Vengeance
Quiet Song
Reclamation
My first thought was that I’d chosen the wrong passage to sing. Aligning the right song to the right singer for the right encounter had been a Tilatian art of war since they’d escaped the Bourne. Perhaps I should have asked Baylet to assign me one of the songs I’d reviewed last evening.
But I quickly let go of that argument. I’d sensed that War had been the right air. In truth, there might be many right songs for any one moment on the line. Much of the choice of song had to do with the confidence a Lieholan had in the music. That hadn’t been the problem for me, though. Something else, then.
Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that I’ve never sung with this intention before.
That made sense. But it was also a depressing thought. It could mean I’d be no use to Baylet or our people. Or it could mean I’d wreak no vengeance for my da. The very thought of it brought a new wave of shivers. And in shivering, I happened on a new, entirely unpleasant idea. Maybe in turning Suffering into a song to suit my own need, a need to harm, I’d opened up a darker part of myself. An untested part. Like an unused muscle that, when overworked, tires quickly, making a man sweat and retch.
Could also be that the rough-throat technique itself had been my failing. Twice as hard as pure vocalization if it’s done correctly. But I’d thought it would be second nature to me. Besides toying with it now and again back at Descant, I’d grown up hearing it a fair bit.
Whatever the reason, I’d failed to make Suffering the right kind of song to take to battle. And as I sat shivering, what worried me most of all was that I just wasn’t cut out for this. I took another sip of strong sage tea, and was bending nearer the fire when Baylet ducked into my tent.
“Not a good day,” he said right off.
I swallowed my tea and said nothing.
He sat across the fire from me, knitting his hands together. The scar on his neck caught the firelight in flickers of orange and shadow. “What did you sing?”
“Something from Suffering,” I replied, looking down into my mug. “I thought the power of it would transfer . . .”
“Suffering?! Dear Lords of Song, you’re crazier than your father.” There was a soft chuckle. “I’m going to assume your Maesteri wouldn’t approve.”
“He might laugh, given how well it went.” I wiped the sweat off my face. “And you might wind up disappointed you brought me here.”
Baylet stared at me through the flames. “I already told you. I brought you back as much for you as I did for me.”
“Ah, right. For my da. I imagine he’d be proud, too,” I said with no small measure of sarcasm.
“You have a gift, Belamae, no question about that. But so do a hundred others just like you. I’ve no delusion that one voice will tip the scales in our favor. And you letting your failure color your sense of your father’s pride is foolish. It’s not honest either.” He paused a long moment. “You probably failed because you’re still looking at things for what they are.”
“And what are they?” I asked.
Baylet pinned me with a thoughtful stare. But he never answered my question. The silence that stretched between us became uncomfortable. I shivered the whole time, inching closer to the fire so that my knees had grown hot.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Why Suffering? Was that your plan the whole time?”
I took up a stick and poked at the fire, causing sparks to be scattered up in the heat. “I think it probably was. Not the specific passage. But it’s the one music none of the rest here know.” I pointed vaguely toward the staging area with my stick. “And Suffering . . . there’s a lot about it that makes sense here.”
Baylet listened, never looking away from me. “And yet you told me your training wasn’t complete. What do you know about absolute sound, then?”
The question didn’t seem conversational. He was asking for a reason, and it had to do with more than just today’s disappointment.
“A little,” I answered. “Maesteri Divad tried to show me before I left. But I wasn’t terribly receptive.”
As I said it, I began to wonder if Divad had been coaching me, preparing me, for when I arrived here. Surely he’d known I wouldn’t stay in Recityv. He could judge a stranger’s intention from body language and the first word out his mouth. And he’d known me for four years.
“Absolut
e sound is the last principle of music you must master before you can sing Suffering the way it was intended.” Baylet’s eyes grew distant, staring across the flames. “And at their core, the Mor Refrains are written with the same principle in mind. There’s more to them than that, but you can think of them in that way.” His eyes focused on me. “Which is why we didn’t bring them with us; why we never do.”
I fought to remember what Maesteri Divad had said the last time we’d spoken, argued. Anything to help me pull myself from the music illness that had gotten inside me.
“And I still stand by that,” Baylet said, though his voice didn’t sound convincing. “But you . . . I need to tell you something. Things have changed during your four days—”
“Four days. What are you talking about?”
Baylet gave a weak smile with one corner of his mouth. “You slept straight through the first three. While you did, the Sellari changed their strategy.” His eyes then widened with new understanding. “It makes sense now. They must have realized you’d sung Suffering.”
“What makes sense?” I threw back my blankets, worry getting the better of me.
“All the Sellari coming at us now, on all fronts, are like our own Shoarden men. Our songs don’t stop them.” He scrubbed the stubble on his cheeks. “They don’t hear us. We are reduced to steel alone . . . And we’re outmanned five to one.”
I felt a heavy pressure in my chest. “It’s my fault,” I muttered. “For trying to sing Suffering.”
Baylet stood. “Timing is a hell of a thing, Belamae. If you’d had more training at Descant, the Sellari wouldn’t need to hear your song for it to beat them down.” He laughed bitterly. “That’s not a fair thing for me to say. The use of song that way is precisely why the Mor Nation Refrains are held safe. Never sung.”
Baylet then pulled a sword from beneath his own cloak and laid it on the ground. He stared at it for a moment before standing and leaving, not saying another word.
I sat listening to the crackle of fire, and watching the dull gleam of orange flame on the hilt of the blade. If I was no good with Suffering, I was utterly inept with a sword. In fairness, I hadn’t spent any real time cultivating a feel for one. It would be as foreign to me as playing a new instrument.
Like a viola.
New shivers claimed me before I managed to crawl my way to my travel bag. Inside, I found the hollow oak tube I’d carried with me from Recityv. I pulled off the fitted plug on one end and gently removed the score Maesteri Divad had given me the last time we met. I carefully unrolled it, and scanned the music staff.
Scordatura.
Of course it would be this kind of notation for the viola d’amore. As I pored over the melody, I began to realize why Divad had given it to me.
I read and reread it for hours, and jumped when my tent flap was pushed back. Baylet poked his head inside. “The Sellari are pressing their advantage.”
His eyes found the sword where he’d laid it down. I ignored the invitation and shrugged out of my blankets entirely. I stood, felt a bit woozy, but forced myself to follow him into the dark hours of night. As we went, I kept hearing the song my Maesteri had given me.
Scordatura. Mistuned.
FIVE
BEYOND THE WINDOW of Divad’s lutherie, heavy rain fell, causing a distant hum of white noise. Now and then a gust of wind pushed drops against the glass, adding a plinky tep, tep rhythm to the music of the storm. It was late, well past dark hour, as he sat smoothing the piece of old spruce. He moved the rough horsetail back and forth with the grain, adding another rhythm to the music of the rain.
As much as he liked the still, warm moments of morning in his luthier rooms, nighttime, when Descant slept, could be just as enjoyable. And the sound of hand tools applied to wood to shape and refine, simple as it seemed, put him at peace. Perhaps molding an instrument that did not ask questions (as Lieholan incessantly did) had a certain appeal.
Whatever the reason, working with his hands felt good. It reminded him that he lived a unique life, a privileged life. It also reminded him that it had not always been so.
He finished smoothing the piece of Ollie’s bar that would become the viola’s top, and removed it from his bench dog and vise. Using a rasp, he filed the edges to conform perfectly with his original trace, and set to purfling the piece with a thin border. He finished that up, and added more oil to his lamp before setting to the most important part of reproducing the viola soundboard.
Before beginning, he took a deep breath of the spruce-and-maple scent that lingered in the air. This, too, he loved. The smell had a settling effect. Then he bent over the original instrument, which he’d carefully pieced back together with some hide glue. It would never hold together over time, but it gave him a good sense of what the top had looked like before Belamae shattered it.
He ran his hands carefully, lovingly, over every fraction of it, lingering on the original imperfections it had received here and there. Marks, dents, scrapes. He felt these for depth, length, ridges. He needed to understand them entirely.
He repeated the whole process twice more, then placed the new, smooth top back into his bench dog and vise. He picked up a fine-tipped taper punch with a rounded end. Methodically, working from the tail of the original instrument forward, he found the first mar in the wood, ran his fingers over it several more times. Then he turned his attention to the new wood. He’d never found wood inflexible or difficult to work with. For him it was as potter’s clay. Just holding it gave him comfort. Particularly if that wood was on its way to becoming an instrument of some kind. Especially then.
When he felt ready, he began to score the new spruce top in the same place, and to the same depth and form as the broken viola. He worked slowly, applying a little pressure, compared the new mark to the old, then applied more pressure. He repeated this process until they seemed to him identical. Then he found the next imperfection, and worked that one.
He wanted everything as close to the original as possible, because he knew that all things affected the sound an instrument made.
The soundboard would vibrate when played. It transferred more sound than the strings alone. That was its whole purpose. It was key to the tonality of the instrument. And it all began with the wood itself. Spruce was stiff and light, growing slowly in alpine climes. It produced a lovely timbre. The age of the wood mattered. The manner of that aging mattered. The thickness of the soundboard also mattered. The walnut oil, as well. For Divad, there was also sonorant residue—the songs the wood had already heard. It was like a good chili. You never finished making it. You simply kept adding beans and peppers and corn and loin cuts. And the richness of the blend deepened as days went by. Good chili pots were never empty.
And past all that, an instrument received its share of wounds. Sometimes they were the result of careless hands, dropping something on the instrument or mishandling it in some way. Other times, the anger of a musician would have him lashing out. This almost always came from impatience with his own facility or technique. Still, it was often taken out on the instrument. More wounds. And then, of course, time takes its own toll. The smallest imperfection in the wood or the luthier’s assembly of the instrument would result in changes that affect its sound, if only in the smallest degree.
And with more time, all those practically inaudible changes would accrete to something audible, giving each instrument its own voice, a rich blend of resonances that could never be duplicated.
Divad meant to reproduce this viola in as much detail as humanly possible. To get back its voice. It mattered. And later into the night, when he fingered a long deep scar in the original instrument’s wood, he began to remember why.
They stood on the west side of Descant in the shade of mid-evening. A pleasant after-rain freshness filled the air.
“What is it?” Divad asked, knowing very well what she proffered. He’d been at Descant only a year, but in that year his life had gotten busy. He hadn’t been home in months. Whenever she came, her
gift was the same.
Into his hand, Jemma dropped a pomegranate, its skin dry and pocked. Around it a note had been wrapped after the fashion of his father, who sold damaged fruit on the edge of the merchant district, where street carts were permitted. His and Jemma’s gifts on their name days and any other special occasion had been the same—father’s best piece of fruit with a handnote as wrapping.
“Will you visit soon?” Jemma now used both hands to keep her cowl carefully in place.
Divad opened the note, which basically asked the same question, along with words of fatherly pride over Divad’s being one of the select few admitted to Descant.
“I’ll try,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like, though. There’s so much to learn. Any time away puts me behind.”
Jemma nodded inside her cowl. “Mother misses your laughter after supper. Especially since the harvest came in light.”
That caught Divad’s attention, if only for a moment. “Father’s still selling what the merchant houses won’t though, right? The older produce. The houses haven’t taken that business back in, have they?”
“No,” she replied, “but they may as well. There’s not much left by the time it reaches father’s carts. And what of it there is, he has to sell at less than half, it’s so picked over.”
“And you? You’re well?” he asked.
She simply stared ahead. She stepped toward him and gave him a light hug with one arm, then turned to go. He said goodbye, and caught a brief glimpse of her face in the light of a clothier shop as she stepped past him. He should have stopped her to ask about the discoloration—or was it a shadow?—but she gave him little time and he was eager to get back to his study. If the pomegranate wasn’t completely desiccated, it would make a fine treat to accompany the memorization of the mixolydian mode.
Divad’s fingers began to tremble with the memory. He put the taper punch down, flexed his hands several times, then shook them to get the blood flowing. He sat back and drew several deep breaths. While waiting for his tool-hand to feel normal again after so long pinching the iron, he reached out with this other hand and again traced the scar in the viola’s face.
The Sound of Broken Absolutes Page 4