Songs of the Earth (9 page)

He turned onto his back and folded his arm behind his head.
Above him, stars glittered like holes in the curtains of heaven. He counted the constellations he knew, from east to west: the Pilgrim, rising now – by midwinter he would be gone; the Chariot; Amarada on her throne; the Huntsman and his Three Hounds; Slaine’s Sword with the Pole Star on the cross-hilts, bright as a diamond. The first moon, Miriel, fat and golden, hung low on the shoulder of the Archen Mountains. Behind her, the tail of the Dragon was just visible above the luminous peaks as he chased the remains of the day.

‘Can’t sleep?’ Alderan asked from the far side of the fire.

‘I can’t hear the magic. It feels like something’s missing.’

‘That’s a strange kind of a lullaby.’

‘I’ve been hearing it for so long, I’ve got used to it being there. It’s gone away before, but that felt different. Like it was sleeping. Now I can’t hear it at all and that feels … wrong, even though it shouldn’t.’

‘Wrong?’

‘I don’t know how to describe it. Every sermon I’ve ever heard warned me against sin. Every prayer I’ve ever learned was meant to steer me away from it. But when I heard the music it felt so good, so right, I didn’t fight it. I opened myself to it even though I knew it would cast me out of the Goddess’ grace for ever.’ He fingered his breastbone through his shirt, where the tiny silver St Agostin medallion had once rested on its chain, before the marshals snatched it away. Not even the Knights’ patron saint had kept him in the light.

‘You were a child then.’

‘I was old enough to know the difference between sin and virtue,’ said Gair, ‘and I did it anyway.’

‘Because you were curious?’

‘At first, and then I couldn’t help myself. Even though I knew it was forbidden, I had to let the music in. It was … glorious.’

‘So what happened back there on the road? When you set my
poor horse at a pack of Suvaeon Knights and gave me a fright to take five years off my life?’

‘I just had to get away. The magic was breaking free and I felt as if I had to do something with it or I would burst. I’m sorry about the horse.’

‘Don’t worry about it, he came to no harm. Does it often happen like that? Where the magic seems to take over?’

‘Sometimes.’ Talking in the dark was easier, like confession. ‘More often than not, lately, although it wasn’t like that at first. Each time I’m scared I won’t be able to control it. That something awful is going to happen.’

‘More awful than eternal damnation?’

‘I meant something that might hurt other people.’ It wasn’t as if he could make it any worse for himself.

Across the fire, Alderan’s pipe-bowl glowed as he drew on it. ‘That is a danger faced by all who can touch the songs of the earth,’ the old man said slowly. ‘With guidance and strength of will, you can learn to control it. In time, you could ride your gift as a bird rides the wind.’

‘But how? Who is going to guide me, show me how to master it?’ A long moment of silence. ‘Alderan?’

‘There are people who could teach you,’ he said at last. ‘If you could find them, and if they were willing.’

‘Who?’

‘They call themselves Guardians of the Veil. There’re few of them left now, thanks to the Church, but there are some. They could help you.’

A jolt of excitement ran through Gair and he sat up. To never again be alone with the magic, to never have to fear what it might become – could it be possible?

‘Where can I find the Guardians? Do you know?’ he asked, but Alderan shook his head almost before the words were out of Gair’s mouth.

‘I couldn’t say. They keep themselves quietly, for fear of
attracting the wrong kind of attention. The Inquisition may be long gone, but there are still many in the Church who have the means and the will to do them harm.’

So he would be as alone as he had ever been. The brief hope that had kindled in Gair’s heart dwindled to an ember, not extinguished, not entirely, but neither was it enough to keep him warm at night. He leaned back on his elbow as the breeze sighed over him. Overhead, the stars wheeled infinitesimally closer to dawn.

‘I don’t understand how you know so much, Alderan,’ he said. ‘I can do things that I’ve only read about in storybooks, children’s tales, yet you talk about it as if it’s something normal.’

‘But it is normal. It’s the most normal and natural thing in the world. The Song is part of the very fabric of creation. People have simply forgotten how to hear it.’

The red eye of the pipe sputtered and went dim. Alderan knocked it out on the heel of his boot, then scraped out the dottle with his belt-knife and repacked the bowl.

‘I’ve made something of a study of the Song,’ he said. ‘It’s a hobby of mine. It’s quite well documented, if you look in the right books – the ones the Church did not destroy, at any rate.’ He kindled a gorse-twig in the fire’s coals and puffed his pipe back into life. ‘Did you know that one of the greatest libraries in the Empire is locked away in the vaults below the Sacristy, never to see the light of day? Thousands upon thousands of books, lost to all knowledge save the keepers of the Index.’

‘Aren’t they heretical?’

‘What is heresy but an alternative point of view? Books are meant to be shared, Gair. They should be open to all, not put away out of sight because they might, heaven forfend, encourage free thought.’

Gair frowned. ‘But the Index was created to keep us from sin.’

‘And what sin was that?’ the old man retorted. ‘The sin of philosophy, of astronomy, of medicine? No, the Index was drawn up to control knowledge and keep people in ignorance, keep them
believing that the ague came about from an imbalance in the bodily humours, rather than from digging the latrine too close to the well.’

‘That’s not what I was taught.’

‘And the Church taught you what it wanted you to know.’ Alderan harrumphed and sucked fiercely on his pipe. ‘You’ve been led around with blinkers on, lad. Trust me, you’re better off out of that place. The Church still has the dead hand of the Inquisition on its shoulder.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know your history, yes? How the Empire was founded? A dozen petty dukedoms squabbling amongst themselves, too suspicious of each other to stand together but none of them strong enough to stand alone when the Nimrothi clans came down through the passes. It took the Church to forge them into something that could halt Gwlach’s advance.’

‘The Grand Rede declared a crisis of the faith. They had to fight together or face excommunication.’

‘And afterwards, of course, Mother Church had the Emperor in her pocket. He ruled only at the whim of the lectors. Anyone who challenged the Church’s sway or spoke the wrong word in the right ear found black robes at their door come the morning.’

‘That’s not how the Master of Novices tells it.’

The old man snorted. ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? The Church keeps too many secrets.’ Alderan stretched his legs out towards the fire and crossed his ankles. ‘We live now in an age of reason, with clocks and manufactories and broadsheets to tell us the news. But because of the legacy of the Inquisition, we have lost something extremely precious. We have almost no one left who can hear the songs of the earth.’

‘Except me.’

‘And the others like you, yes. I’ve met several in my travels, all over the Empire. Most were like you, misunderstood, confused, lost. I tried to help where I could.’

‘Is that why you helped me get out of Dremen?’ Gair looked across the fire at the other man’s shadowy form. ‘Who are you, Alderan? You know almost as much medicine as Brother Infirmarer, and more about this gift of mine than I do. What is it? Where does it come from? What am I going to do now, with my life? With this?’ He held up his branded hand.

‘So many questions, I hardly know where to start!’ The old man chuckled. ‘Well, what I am is a scholar, a collector of books, the older and rarer the better. There is much to be learned from the past that deserves not to be forgotten. As for where you can go, that’s up to you. There are places where that scar won’t be such an issue.’

‘Where? The first lector who sees it will have me in irons.’

When Alderan had cleaned and dressed the burn again after supper the shape of the witchmark had been clearly visible, even with the swelling and the blisters. When they were gone there would be a scar that would be hard to hide.

‘Not necessarily. I know one or two who have a more flexible interpretation of the Book of Eador.’

‘It’s doctrine, Alderan. ‘‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”’ In his head Gair heard Elder Goran say those very words. The law was as black and white as the tiled floor of the Rede Hall. Panic stirred again.

‘Doesn’t that rather depend on your definition of witchcraft? I said before that I didn’t think you were a witch. I don’t think you have it in you to do that kind of harm.’

‘Then what am I?’

‘You’re a young man who can make of himself whatever he chooses to be,’ Alderan said. ‘You’re fit and healthy and good with a sword – they’d have sent you to the scriptorium if you weren’t – so there’re plenty of places you could make a living where that hand won’t occasion anything more than a raised eyebrow. You could be a merchant’s guard, or serve in the retinue of some landowner. The Imperial Army. You could even become a mercenary. It’s an
uncertain sort of existence, but I hear it pays well. Kasrin of the Glaive is supposed to live like a prince.’

It sounded straightforward, the way Alderan told it, but Gair could see only obstacles. No money, no family to fall back on – hells, he didn’t even have his own horse. ‘I wish it was that easy.’

Alderan sat quietly for some time. Then he took the pipe from between his teeth and blew a long stream of smoke up into the night sky. ‘You could come back to the west, with me,’ he said. ‘I have a school on Penglas, in the Western Isles. You could study, maybe go on to be a teacher yourself, or learn a trade. You’d be free to come and go as you please. It would take you away from here, at the very least. I can’t help but feel that the longer we spend in Dremenir the more likely we are to run up against Goran’s men again, jurisdiction or no.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but with respect, I don’t know you. You’ve gone out of your way to help me out of the city, but I couldn’t ask you to do any more for me.’

‘Nonsense. It’s my duty as a good Eadorian to extend the hand of friendship to those less fortunate than myself and from where I’m sitting you still fall under that heading. I’d be glad to have you along, if only for the company. On a journey of a thousand miles, you quickly come to realise that horses are not great conversationalists.’

‘A thousand miles? For old books?’

‘I like to travel.’ A flash of teeth around the pipe-stem. ‘Besides, the rarer volumes are scattered across the twelve provinces and beyond. I’ve a hankering to visit Sardauk again next year. They have a fine library in Marsalis and their university is older than the Empire itself. For some reason the desert produces most excellent scholars – all that sand and heat concentrates the mind.’

Gair watched the ghostly shape of an owl drift overhead in pursuit of its supper. Alderan had done nothing but good by him since he had woken up in the inn and his suggestion of going out
to the Isles appealed far more than the alternatives. He’d always loved reading, adventures, histories, even the epic poems of the Nordmen when the mood took him. The Motherhouse’s library had inclined towards the more ecclesiastical texts, but some of the early monks had taken great pains to record the history of the lands from the Founding onwards and there had been plenty to divert him.

‘What would I do, out there? In the Isles?’

‘Whatever you like. You could follow your own course.’

‘And what I am doesn’t matter to you? The magic, I mean?’

‘Not in the least. You and the others I’ve met have been almost without exception honest, decent folk who’re better Eadorians than many of the lectors I’ve known, including our dear friend the Elder. I tread lightly around Churchmen, as I said, and there’re only a few I’d choose to call friends.’

‘Is your parish lector one of them?’

Alderan laughed heartily. ‘He is indeed. A very fine fellow, who sends me a bottle of good Tylan goldwine every Eventide and doesn’t frown at me if I don’t go to confession. For the record, Gair, based on our short acquaintance, you would be welcome in my house.’

Welcome was a word he had heard all too infrequently. He had been sent out of Leah by the people who should have known him best and put out of the Motherhouse by those who should have forgiven him for his sins. The one person who had extended a sincere hand was the one he knew the least. He’d had his fill of being turned away. ‘How long will it take to get there?’

‘The rest of the summer, I’m afraid, but we can take a boat most of the way and spare our arses the saddle. Should I take it you’ve decided to come with me?’

‘I like books.’

‘I see. Well, there’s a good few miles to Mesarild yet and you’ve already had quite a day. Try to get some sleep.’

Gair pulled his blanket up round his shoulders.
West
. A new
start, some kind of a life of his own, instead of one chosen for him. That could only be good, couldn’t it? He closed his eyes. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had anywhere else to go.