Trial of Intentions (48 page)

She wasn't quite sure how to ask, but she needed to know. “I saw your song. I saw—I heard—how you reshaped Suffering … for war.”

Belamae lowered his hands to his lap, his eyes becoming distant and apologetic.

“We started our resonance with your mother, didn't we?” He paused, staring at her now with some sympathy. “I will restore your memory, so that you might have more of the parents you've lost. But later, after our day's lesson. Right now, we have music to make.”

She quickly sat beside him, resting a hand over his fingers before he could start to play. “You showed my mother how to use Suffering as a weapon. In case she needed to protect us.”

He reversed their hands, firmly clasping hers between his own. “I loved your mother. As much as her father did, I loved her. I couldn't bear the thought of what might happen.…” He cleared his throat. “It was a mistake, though. My own mistake. When I was your age, I took Suffering and went back to my own country to answer war's call. I misused the Song. And when I'd returned and started to train Leiholan … I had a moment of weakness. I shared what I'd learned with Vocencia.” He gave her a steady, unquestioning look. “I won't make that mistake again.” And that was the end of it.

And yet, she could still hear part of his Suffering song. It wasn't a sound she could forget. Nor would she want to.

He visibly shook off the heavy effects of their conversation. “You and I, though, we still need to get to attunement. To resonance. Here, let me show you.”

Belamae pointed toward a fiddle a few strides away whose neck and body lay shattered after yesterday's lesson. He began to sing, and the broken instrument rattled and rose into the air. It held there a few moments. Then he ended his song, and the fiddle fell back to the floor with a soft crunch and atonal bark.

“All I did there was sing the resonance of this room, the air, the wood and gut and bone of the instrument. I influenced what I needed to, to move it, raise it. The material the fiddle was made of responded to these vibrations. Now, observe.”

He began to sing again. This time, the fiddle shuddered, rose, and slowly the fragments of wood began to draw themselves together again. Over the course of a few moments, the fiddle re-formed itself, appearing just as it had been. The strings pulled taut and began to hum. Belamae then softly ended his song, and the instrument fell again into its shattered pieces on the floor.

“Can you tell me the difference?” he asked.

Wendra couldn't take her eyes off the fiddle, but she knew. “You sang the fiddle's song,” she said. “You found resonance with more than the fiddle's materials. You found resonance with the
idea
of the fiddle. Its own vibrations.”

When she finally returned her gaze to the old man, he was smiling. “Precisely so. The oldest laws, Wendra, are that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed or made new. By finding the vibrations that exist in the combination of wood and strings, all the things that give it”—he smiled—“its fiddle-ness, I restored it to itself, if only briefly.”

Wendra nodded, excited. “But why didn't you leave it whole?”

“Oh, that's just me. I enjoy instrument repair the old way. I'll show you my lutherie sometime.” He waved a hand for them to move on. “Now I want you to remember our goal is Suffering. That song has its name because the Leiholan who sings it must give voice to an awful series of historical events—the entire story of those who were placed inside the Bourne. There's languor and war in parts. And plenty of real suffering. You'll need to sing that. Resonate with it. Like I did with that fiddle there.”

It awed her, thrilled her, and gave her a sense of dread she couldn't explain, just like the first hunting knife given her by her da. She'd been happy and proud and excited, and then realized what that knife was for.

“But here's what you must know, Wendra.” Belamae held up a finger of warning, his countenance darkening. “Every time you sing in resonance with something, or someone, your own vibration changes, ever so slightly.”

This time, she understood perfectly the lesson, even before he said it.

“It is the nature of song. The nature of Suffering. It's always changing—”

“Is that why Soluna died?” The words were out before she could think better of them.

He regarded her a long moment. “I don't think so,” he finally said. “And before you ask, I don't
know
why she died. Except that Suffering's demands grow. They always have.”

“I meant no disrespect.”

He smiled the smile of a patient teacher. “I know. The point is that song is never stagnant. And so the effects of attunement, of resonating with a fiddle or me … or anything, will not only cause the change in what you sing to, but will shape your own life's song. By degrees, of course. But that's why I worry for you. Because just as you can do this to restore, you can do it to destroy.”

Wendra thought about the battle on the Soliel. “I've already done that.”

“No. You haven't.” He shook his head once. “Oh, you're filled with dark vibrations, sure enough. And we'll work on that. But what you've done is more like raising the broken parts of a fiddle. You've yet to find the resonance of a thing and truly sing it.”

With some reticence, she asked, “If I sing the resonance of another person, what will happen?”

“That will depend on your intent. We'll have a whole lesson on intent soon enough.” Then he nodded the way her da used to when he needed to explain something undesirable. “For now, understand this: Once you're attuned, and can identify the resonant vibration of a thing, it's possible to sing in tune or
out of tune
with that vibration. We call the former harmony. We call the latter dissonance. The effect can alter the very nature of the thing you're singing to or about … can end it entirely.”

The way Belamae used the word “entirely” left a feeling of cold dread in the pit of her stomach. Then his eyebrows went up again as he emphasized his next words.

“And every time you tear down or destroy,
your
life's vibrations are altered in a way that make
you
more dissonant; while each time your song lifts or inspires, the vibration of the song that is you becomes a more powerful melody.”

She nodded understanding, thinking about all the times she'd wrought song to tear down.

Belamae offered her a reassuring smile. “I tell you this so that you see the responsibility you bear with this Leiholan gift.”

“Is it too late to give it back?” She raised her brows with the questioning jest.

Belamae laughed hard from his belly. His laugh was cut short by a pained expression and a series of hard coughs. He took a moment to compose himself. “Just so,” he finally said. “Now, becoming attuned is the great first step. It will make your song stronger. Give you more control.” He paused a long moment. “Even if you decide not to stay with us at Descant. Which is something, my girl, I hope you are no longer considering. We very much need you here.”

She looked back at him. And said nothing. She did want to learn all there was to know about being Leiholan. And she wanted to learn and sing Suffering. But few hours passed when she didn't think about the people captured and sold into the Bourne. Like she and Penit had nearly been. She couldn't stop feeling as though she should do something about that. That she
could
. And maybe more so after some time spent here with Belamae. Perhaps learn more about
his
song, the one she'd found in him during their moments of resonation.

Belamae then nudged her to stand up. “It's time for another practical lesson.”

Wendra stood, feeling unsure. “You think I'm ready for this.”

Without another word, he led her from the room and on a long, silent walk through Descant. They passed countless doors behind which music instruction and performance of such vigor and variety was taking place that she wanted to stop, ask a hundred questions. Down stairs, across atriums, through tunnel-like corridors they went. She'd be lost on her own. Eventually, they came to a door, one in a private-quarters area she hadn't visited before, though she knew this to be where Leiholan lived.

He gave her a single, searching look before ducking into this private chamber and motioning her inside. A man roughly the age of thirty lay in his bed, sleeping fitfully. At his side sat an older woman, cooling his skin with a rag dipped in a water basin on the bed table. On the far side of the room Telaya sat writing in a ledger; she looked up at Belamae and Wendra, open disapproval on her face.

Belamae drew near the bed. “How is he, Luela?”

The older woman kept at her task of cooling his forehead and cheeks with her rag. “He's in no mortal danger. But I haven't been able to use the sickness to ferret a cause for what happened in Suffering. He's got a fever I can't break with willow or balsa root. He sleeps, and can't be roused.”

Belamae nodded, then motioned Wendra to his side. “This is Dalyn. One of our newest Leiholan. Though don't mistake new for weak.” He paused, putting a hand on the man's chest. “Still, he fell sick while singing Suffering this morning.”

Her stomach dropped. “You want me to try and take away the sickness, don't you?”

“That's the wrong way to think about it.” He showed her his patient smile. “I want you to resonate with him and the idea of health. Draw on your own sense of well-being.”

“What if it … goes
wrong
?”

“I'll be here.” He placed his free hand on her shoulder. “But if you're to sing Suffering, I need you attuned. And not just for dissonant effect. Do you understand?”

“The practical lesson is to restore rather than tear down,” she said. “Something besides
my
song.”

He shook his head. “It's
all
your song, Wendra. You've just chosen a particular refrain most of the time. Sing something new today. Something Dalyn.” His smile brightened, and he moved aside, gently nudging her closer.

Wendra sat at the man's bedside.
I can't do this.
She cleared her mind. If she was going to fail, it wasn't going to be because of doubt. For several moments she studied his face, searching for an entry melody. Finding nothing, she started as she often did when singing something new—she sang her song box melody.

The box had been a gift from her mother. Its melody had been how she healed herself that first time in the caves beneath the Sedagin plain. And several phrases into the song, she found a new course. She imagined the pressure of Suffering. She imagined Soluna, the Leiholan who'd died under that pressure. And note by note, her melody grew. It started to come in bold phrases, the way fight songs do. She lent strength and volume to it, not caring that it sounded too loud for the little room. What she sang wasn't the simple restoration of health. It was a challenge to sickness, a declaration of wholeness inviolate.

She inclined, singing loud into Dalyn's face. She thought for a moment she could feel the sickness pushing back, wrestling with her for purchase over Dalyn. She sang louder. She invoked the roughness of her song. Dysphonia, Belamae called it. She got up onto the bed, nearer this sick Leiholan, and shouted down her song not a finger's breadth from his nose and mouth. She was challenging this godsdamned sickness. This sickness in Suffering that put him down! She called with her shout-song for Dalyn's strength to return.

And a moment later his eyes fluttered open, a broad smile lighting his eyes and mouth. It was as though he'd heard every screamed note and was thankful as all hell. He reached up and took her in a bearish embrace. There was certainly no lingering weakness in his arms.

When he let her go, he turned to Belamae, his wry grin a mark of approval. “Leiholan?”

Belamae didn't seem to hear him. “Fight song. I'll be damned. You made even health a battle.”

She shrugged. “Seems to have worked.”

He laughed hard at that. “Used your mother's song as a start, too.” His eyes lit when he mentioned Vocencia. “Come. One last thing for you and me.”

They said good-byes. Telaya gave an appropriate level of thanks, a cool reserve still in her voice and expression. Then, in the hall, Belamae took Wendra by the arm.

“Now it's time for you to remember your mother … entirely. Vocencia, more than any Leiholan I ever taught, understood what I'm trying to teach you.”

Wendra had forgotten about having her memory restored. Hearing her mother's name again brought another rush of sadness for stolen memories. The Maesteri didn't wait for a better time or place. He guided her to a seat in the hallway, and promptly began to sing. It was a soft, slow air, sung with tenderness and a pang of loss, but also of glad remembrance.

She found herself swept away, the present moment lost, and a kind of emptiness filling her mind. Then, slowly, like a flower blooming in the rays of daybreak, images drew into focus, and bittersweet feelings consumed her.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The Uses of Youth

There's more to be learned from what an adversary won't do, than what he will.

—Maxim from
Exposing Indicative Behavior,
a recovered text from the east of Mal'Tara, now in the possession of League leadership

T
he mealhouse had been cleared for Roth's meeting with the envoy from Estem Salo. He wanted privacy for the discussion that would follow. Helaina was having him watched by her Emerit guard, so meeting in a public place where his own men could secure the doors and windows was the safest course. When he finally entered the hall and saw the very young woman, he did something he rarely did. In taking her hand, he placed his left palm over their clasped fingers. It was a rare sign of warmth and familiarity that would put the young politician at ease.