The Sound of Broken Absolutes

by Peter Orullian

  “I’m sorry,” I offered.

  For the first time, he looked up from the graves, giving me a look that passed from puzzlement to understanding to sympathy in a breath. “No, Belamae. We honor your mother and sister this morning.”

  My stomach tightened, and I felt instantly shaky. Baylet put a hand around my shoulders. Some faraway part of me thought again of how the field leader was orchestrating, influencing my decisions. But I’d have wanted to know. And no matter when or where, I’d have felt the same.

  I drifted in a haze for I don’t know how long, while grief pounded at my chest with its insistent rhythms. I couldn’t keep from picturing ma and sa putting a knife to their own flesh. I felt their powerlessness and despair. And the dignity with which they went to their final earth, avoiding rough hands that—if things were left unchanged—would surely come.

  Without realizing it, the words and melodies that had been circling in my mind started to come out. The sixth passage of the Song of Suffering: Self-Destruction, which was sung about the Inveterae condemned to the Bourne, countless of whom had taken their own lives rather than go to that awful place.

  I sang the lament, gathering quiet strength with each phrase.

  I lent it a measure of absolute value.

  And I wondered if in so doing, somewhere ma and sa felt my song, though like Shoarden men, they would never hear it.

  NINE

  THE STREETS OF the Cathedral quarter were just beginning to come alive with the night arts. Confidence men sized up marks; sheet women angled for lonely men with spare coin; performance taverns were opening their windows, using music as a lure to drink and be entertained. More than a few packs of bearded men stood wearing hard looks, spoiling for fights. Through all this, Divad lead his four Lieholan.

  For the better part of two straight days, he and Regent Helaina had argued with League leadership, clarifying the Rule of Impartiality, describing the workings of Descant Cathedral, growing angry. They’d had to involve the Court of Judicature, which helped but also delayed his students’ release. By the time the League set them free, the thuggish treatment they’d received was visible on their faces in dark and purpled spots. They were exhausted, but alive.

  Divad hadn’t had time to put the ordeal into any kind of rational context yet. After a hot bath, warm meal, and night of uninterrupted sleep, he’d need to do that. They turned onto the quarter road that lead to the cathedral’s main entrance. No sooner had they come in direct sight of Descant, than the door was opened and three Lyren began gesturing urgently for them to hurry.

  He broke into a run, his cloak seeming suddenly overlarge and cumbersome. Behind him, the slap of Lieholan shoes on paving stones followed close. He darted through crowds, around wagons and carriages and riders. He climbed the cathedral steps two at a time. One of the Lyren, Waalt, grabbed his arm and began to run with him, guiding him, pulling him along.

  “What is it?” Divad asked, breathless.

  “Luumen fell ill with autumn fever a day ago.” Waalt pulled him faster.

  Divad understood immediately. “How long?”

  “Almost three entire cycles.” Waalt’s voice cracked with desperate worry.

  “Dear merciful gods.”

  Luumen was the more experienced and stronger of the two Lieholan he’d left behind. Ill with fever, she would not have entered the Chamber of Anthems to sing Suffering. Which meant Amilee had been singing Suffering by herself.

  “My last sky,” Divad whispered, and pushed his legs to go faster.

  It took nearly nine hours to sing Suffering’s nine movements. After singing the cycle, the Lieholan was spent, and needed two days’ rest to fully recover. There’d been occasions when one vocalist sang part of a second cycle. But it was rare, and always came at great personal cost to the singer. Amilee had been at it for not just two full turns, but nearly three . . .

  Casting a look backward, he called commands. “Pren, prepare yourself.” Pren’s bruises were the worst, but he was also the strongest Lieholan Descant had since Belamae’s departure. The young man stripped off his robe mid-stride, and began to run vocal scales as he maneuvered up beside Divad. “Asa, fetch a Levate.” Divad didn’t hold much hope that a physic healer could help, but he’d be prepared in any case.

  The sound of their racing feet filled the cathedral halls. The flames of wall lamps fluttered with their passage. Lyren watched them go by with grave looks in their eyes.

  Moments later, Divad pushed open the heavy oak doors to the Chamber of Anthems. Amilee was on her hands and knees, unable to hold her head up, singing toward the floor. Her voice sounded like corn husks brushed together by summer storm winds. She had almost no volume left. But the perfect acoustics of the rounded chamber lifted the delicate song she could still make, and gave Suffering life.

  Pren picked up the melody line just a pace or two inside the door. When Amilee heard it, she did not look up at them, but simply ceased singing and collapsed on the stone floor.

  Divad swept the girl up and carried her straight through the chamber and out the opposite door. He cut left to the nearest bedchamber and went in. He laid her gently on the coverlet, while Harnel fetched a pillow for her head.

  Amilee’s eyes fluttered open. “Maesteri,” she said with a bruised voice.

  “Save your words,” he admonished. “Gods, I’m sorry, my girl.”

  He had to hold at bay renewed anger at the League, who had put them in this situation. His growing hatred for them would not help this courageous young woman.

  She shook her head in a weak motion. “I didn’t lag,” she whispered.

  Divad’s pride in the girl swelled, tightening his throat with emotion. But he managed a low sweet tone, to course gently through her. Help him see, or rather, feel. So that even then, he knew she would not live. If her wound were of the flesh, he could render a song of well-being. But Suffering drew on a different part of a Lieholan’s life. And of that, she had expended too much. It was remarkable that she had anything left. But it was not enough for him to resonate with.

  Oh child.

  As she lay dying, Divad found strength enough to put away his ill feelings for the League. He sat beside her and took her hand and sang a song of contentment. Slow and low, he poured out his love and admiration for the girl. He watched as the pain in her eyes and brow slowly relaxed.

  And before she let go, he leaned in close, so that no one would hear the question he asked of her. When she nodded, she looked grateful and at peace.

  Divad resumed his melody and sang until her hand grew cold. It was a dreadful thing to feel the song go out of a person for good. To feel the vacancy, the silence, that replaced what once was the resonance and melody of a life. His voice faltered more than once as he sang into the emptiness she left behind. He would have liked to play his viola for her, but it was still missing its strings.

  TEN

  FOUR DAYS AFTER Amilee went to her final earth, Divad sat again in the warmth and silence of morning sunlight inside his workshop. Motes danced slowly in the shafts of light, reminding him that even in silence there’s a kind of song that stirs the air. These last few days he’d been preparing gut for his viola. Now, all that remained was to string the instrument.

  Gut was best taken from the animal while the body is still warm. It needed to be stripped of fat and placed in cold water. Later, it would be transferred to wine or a solution of lye to help remove any last unwanted matter that still clung to it. Strips were cut to length, twisted together in various numbers to create different pitches, and rubbed with almond or olive oil to prevent them from becoming brittle.

  Divad had thoughtfully done all this, and now picked up the first length and began stringing the repaired viola. One by one he fixed the aliquot strings to their bone points, and ran them up through the neck to their pegs. When he’d finished the resonant gut, he did likewise with the playable strings.

  Next he tuned the instrument. Never rushing. Turning the peg as he thumbed each st
ring to find the extended tuning for the first song he intended to play on the salvaged viola. The sounds of the tuning were somehow muted in the morning stillness, almost as if the air was resisting the sound.

  When the instrument was finally ready, he sat back, regarding the fruits of his labor. The work had been tedious and filled with reminders. Both things were part of the process, something he knew from experience. But he felt satisfied that he had done well, and smiled genuinely for the first time in many days.

  In every part, there’d been meaning. That mattered. From the spruce top harvested from a performance tavern bar, to the gut that Amilee had willingly surrendered from her own body. This last element might prove to be the most important, Divad thought. If there was truth to his notion of sonorant residue, then a piece of Lieholan that had sung Suffering might make this incarnation of the viola better than its predecessor. To teach resonance and play for the fallen, he could think of nothing better.

  When the moment felt right, he took up the viola, and the bow he’d completed the prior day, and stood in the light of the window. There, he drew the bow across the gut, fingering the first notes of “If I’m Reminded.” He then muted the top strings, and listened intently as the aliquots continued to resonate in the silence that followed.

  A long time, he thought, and smiled. A long time since I’ve heard this song. Later, when the resonating strings ceased to hum, he would play it for Amilee. He’d play it finally for Jemma. For now, though, he stood still, allowing the aliquots to ring, and learning something more about resonance.

  ELEVEN

  IT WAS NOT DAWN when I arrived at the line. Midday had come and gone.

  It was not the start of battle. They’d been fighting for hours.

  It was not ceremonious. I simply found the front of the line and started to sing.

  I sang the song of them. And almost without thinking, I blended the absolute value of the Sellari with a passage of Suffering—Vengeance.

  Before my training at Descant, my experience with the word, even the idea of vengeance, came mostly from pageant wagon plays. Now I realized they’d treated the notion rather too simplistically. And I thought I understood why. Either the players didn’t themselves really know. Or, if they knew, they believed most folks would be better off remaining ignorant on the topic. For that, I wouldn’t blame them.

  Then later, under the tutelage of the Maesteri, as I learned Suffering, my understanding of vengeance grew by half. But it was still a clean thing, theoretical. It remained a nearer cousin to the pageants, where vengeance sounded like melodrama, performed by a player wielding a wooden blade, wearing a silly mask, and moving in exaggerated motions. If it had a sound, it was that of a recalcitrant child screaming, “I’ll get you back.”

  My Sellari song of vengeance was nothing like this. It was blind and messy. It pulsed with hatred. It knew nothing of justice or balance or making something even. And if my other recent songs had been rough-throat, this sounded as though I’d just gargled with crushed stone. I half expected my throat to start bleeding.

  So I walked into their midst, unhurried, letting the song out. It was like playing a great chord, strumming a thousand strings. Ten thousand. Some men simply fell. Others began losing blood from every orifice. The flesh of many sloughed from the bone. Wails of anguish filled the air. There came the sound of countless bodies thumping onto cold ground. Some made a few retreating steps before the song got inside them.

  Bright red blood spilled across the vast field.

  It was a terrible song. And it was also mine. Since at his core it was resonance.

  The property of resonance in sounding systems serves as a metaphor for love. One system can be set in motion by the vibrations of another. Two things, people or strings, trembling alike for one another.

  That was one of the first Predicates of Resonance. The awful, practical knowledge I added to it was this: there were many resonances that could cause a man to tremble; love was but one of them.

  With each note, my song grew stronger, feeding off itself, swelling as a wave traveling a broad ocean. I had no idea which of my enemies actually heard me sing, but it didn’t really matter. Even if it wasn’t heard, this song was felt.

  When I finally stopped, I had no idea how long I’d been singing. It might have been a few long moments. It might have been hours. An eerie silence fell across the vast field. Not a single Sellari stood between my countrymen and the far tree line.

  But there came no feeling of relief or triumph. The desire for vengeance still surged inside me. That’s when I learned the hardest truth about vengeance: it had no logical end, served no real purpose, except perhaps to delay grief. Vengeance was just an inversion of loss; or maybe its cowardly cousin.

  But it did have consequences.

  Though I’d survived its singing, the song had done something to me. I knew it when the first Mor congratulated me. I didn’t feel happy that this fellow would return to his family. Instead, I wondered and worried whether I’d saved a Mor who would bugger his son or beat his wife or ignore a daughter who only sought his approval. The cynicism ran deep, painful. It sickened me. And I instinctively knew that the only relief I’d find for this new pessimism was to continue singing the song.

  Dear absent gods, give me someone to hate.

  That prayer seemed to find an answer. Two hundred strides away, at the long tree line of poplar, hundreds of fresh Sellari emerged, striding purposefully toward us. In their midst, four Anglan draft horses pulled a broad flatbed wagon bearing a spherical object two strides in diameter.

  I felt an eager smile creep onto my face, and I began to close the distance between myself and this new crop. To their credit, the second-wave Sellari came on bravely, as though they hadn’t seen how I’d sung down those whose bodies I now trod on in my haste. I wanted to be closer this time. I wanted to watch them suffer as they went down.

  Sea-crossing bastards killed my father. Forced ma and sa to . . . Inveterae filth, I will shatter the bones inside you. No, that is too good an end. I will find the point of resonance in your shank-given race and will make it your misery, show you the end of your women and children, their slow despair. I will break your hearts before tearing away your flesh.

  With that, I rushed forward. I could hear the sound of running steps trying to keep pace with me—the Shoarden men assigned to keep me safe. But I cared none for that. When I was five solid strides from the Sellari, so that I could see the lines in their faces, I began to sing the shout-song again. I lent it a new intention, infusing it with the menace of hopelessness, like the sound of a screaming parent when she finds her child dead by her own hand. I knew such a sound from many years ago—that memory came back with a vengeance of its own.

  I watched, eager to see the look in their eyes as they felt that deep ache before I broke their bodies.

  But nothing happened. None paused or flinched or grimaced. They just kept coming on in the face of my song.

  I was nearly upon them when I realized why.

  This new brigade was dressed like Sellari, carried the same slender arcing sword. They’d even painted the same black band around their eyes. But they weren’t Sellari. They strode with the swagger of mercenaries who lived for the opportunity to kill. Their grip and motion with their blades made it clearer still. They were not tense or overeager. A frightening casual readiness marked them. These were Holadai, fortune-swords. My Sellari song was useless against them.

  More than that, each next note became more painful to sing. I tried to modulate the song, switch modalities, shift its intention, but nothing helped. And I watched in a kind of stupor as one of the Holadai reared back and threw a heavy hammer at me. I saw it come, and knew the aim was true. But stunned by the deception of this mercenary force, I couldn’t move. The iron hammer hit me hard in the chest, where I felt ribs crack.

  It knocked the wind from my lungs and drove me to my knees. Two pair of boots came into view, swords swinging casually. I saw them rise up out of
my field of vision, and sensed they’d soon end my pain.

  Then a flurry of footsteps rushed in around me. The clash of steel rang sharply against the sky. A Mor fell dead beside me, as did a Holadai. Then a spray of something warm and sticky caught me in the face. I fought to take a breath, but still could not. Around me more of my countrymen fell hard to the cold ground, as Holadai grunted and fought through their own wounds.

  When at last I gasped a painful stuttering breath, I took in the coppery smell of blood. I grew blind with rage, and pushed myself to my feet. I fixed my eyes on this new enemy and summoned a different song. When I let it go, the air shivered with the harsh sound of it. The rasping noise tore at everything, shrieking through the minds and bodies of the Holadai.

  As they began to drop, new forms took their place. My song caught in my throat to see that these replacements were a mix of Sellari and Holadai Shoarden. They wore menacing grins as they rushed toward me.

  Fine trickery, you damned wharf-whores!

  A stabbing pain fired in my thigh. I looked down to see an arrow protruding from my trousers. Around me, my Shoarden men were falling in alarming numbers. Frustration mounted inside me. I staggered backward a few paces. Another arrow caught me in the shoulder. This one I reached up and ripped out, feeling its barbs pull at my flesh.

  The number of Sellari and Holadai became overwhelming. I didn’t know how to help myself or my countrymen. But I had to do something. On instinct, I started to sing. At the end of it, get the sound out, I remembered Divad saying—the lesson an old one.

  I began with a dire shout-song, a rough-throat cry I simply made up as I went. Then every third beat I switched, singing the song of the Sellari. I sang faster, the two songs beginning to come in a strange syncopation. And each time I changed, different men screamed, different bodies dropped.