Trial of Intentions (90 page)

Wendra looked back, but said nothing.

Telaya picked up a couple of the sheets of music and looked them over. “There was a time, Wendra, when thought and sound were taught as the same thing. Did you know that?”

Wendra shook her head.

“Not many people do. It's an old philosophy.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“Because we need to find new ways of doing old things. And maybe the answer is here somewhere.” Telaya shook the sheet in her hand, then waved out at the great archival dome. “Particularly if those blessed with the gifts we need are uncertain of how best to use them.”

Wendra caught sight of words carved into the shelving behind Telaya:
Descant,
then labels organized by epochal age. Telaya was studying the music of the cathedral itself. She had a sudden thought. “You're here because of Soluna. She died singing Suffering. And you're here looking for the reason. Or for a way to prevent it from happening again. Or both.”

Telaya stared back at her, confirming nothing.

“Because the Song is changing,” Wendra added. “Right?”

“All songs change over time,” said Telaya.

She stared back at the expert musician, and had a new thought. “Maybe Suffering
needs
to change. And maybe we're just not evolving fast enough to compensate for whatever pressures are shaping the Veil.” Something felt right about that. “So maybe,” she finished, “that's what you're doing here so late.”

Telaya didn't acknowledge this, seeming to stay focused on something she wanted to share. She held the transcribed music sheets out to her. Wendra gently took them.

“You may find these helpful,” Telaya said.

“What are they?”

She humphed out a quiet laugh through her nose. “Two pieces. This one,” she tapped the topmost sheet of music, “is a Telling for Descant. In case, should you leave, you need to return in a hurry. The other … is your mother's song.”

Wendra pulled the second piece up close to look at it. “She wrote this?”

“No, it is the song
of
your mother.” Telaya was smiling when Wendra lowered the music to be sure it wasn't a joke. “Belamae wrote this. It's the sound of who your mother was. Singing it … it's more than memory. I thought you should have it.”

Stunned, Wendra looked at the music a moment, then up at Telaya.

“Vocencia left Descant. She left for the right reasons. It does happen.” Telaya gave Wendra a thoughtful look. “When you hear that, you'll understand.”

Wendra stared at Telaya a long moment. “Thank you.”

The woman seemed uncomfortable receiving thanks, and quickly moved on. “And you're right. I'm here partly because of Soluna.”

Wendra stared back, concerned.

Telaya pulled several music scores up from a satchel at her feet and laid them out across the lectern. She also went to the shelves behind her and pulled several more sheets of neatly notated music. She laid them all out together.

“Before Soluna died, we had Leiholan falling ill for days. Progressively so.” She began organizing symphonies, choral arrangements, and other musical scores. “And you've seen what's happened over the last several days in the Chamber of Anthems.”

Wendra nodded. “I assumed it was because the Song was changing.”

“As we've said, all songs do. But after Soluna died, I started to research other times in Descant history when the Leiholan have struggled inordinately with Suffering.” She tapped a symphony written in a Divadian mode. “I thought maybe I could identify some patterns.”

“And have you?” Wendra felt her pulse quicken.

“What I've found is that at certain times, composers seem to write more nocturnes, more requiems, and more musical odes to the vault of heaven.” Telaya began to talk faster, grouping the scores together. “It's as if there's something about celestial movement that has a direct bearing on the music that's written during specific periods in history. And these are the periods when Leiholan struggle, and even die. Sometimes it's a single day. Sometimes twenty or more days.”

Wendra stared at the groupings of compositions on the lectern. “And Soluna died on the night of the last lunar eclipse,” Wendra added.

Telaya looked at her, seeming impressed but also puzzled. “How did you know that?”

Wendra shook her head. “Doesn't matter.”

“I think it does,” Telaya said. She pointed up at the window high above them in the vaulted ceiling of the music archive. “We're about to have a somewhat rare second lunar eclipse. Of Ardua, tonight.”

Wendra looked up and saw a wine-colored moon high in the night sky. Panic gripped her chest.
Like the moon on the Soliel when the Quiet came!

Telaya put a hand on her shoulder. “I've asked for two Leiholan to be standing ready tonight should our singer go down. Particularly with everything that's been happening the last few days to those singing Suffering.”

Wendra shook her head, wishing this weren't true. Believing that failure tonight might let another Quiet army slip into the Eastlands.

“I've got to go.” She turned and raced down the long, sweeping ramp. Toward the Chamber of Anthems.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Uncommon Understanding

Some say Mikal's brews were different on account of his apples. How a Wynstout man got hold of Su'Winde yellows, I'll never know. But I'll say this, he never turned a tasty yield until he started toting that spigot around on his belt. I half believe that spout gave Mikal's brew its edge.

—One of sixty-three accounts of unusually fast overland portage collected by House Storalaith for the League of Civility

B
raethen entered Recityv's famed Library of Common Understanding. It was late, and the library was empty. Vendanj had suggested the basement for what Braethen sought—more information on the Blade of Seasons. Braethen had promised he'd be only an hour.

Crossing the atrium, he stopped and looked up. Eight stories above, through a glass pyramid that dominated the ceiling, he saw distant, distorted points of light—stars far away in the heavens. He would have liked to talk with his father just then. He longed for the simple, quiet evenings he'd spent with his da, doing nothing more than reading on their open rear porch.

He smiled at the thought, then moved to the outer perimeter of the main floor, and started around. There were many doors. But the rooms behind them held little more than water buckets, brooms, dirty rags, and once a selection of books awaiting repair.

Halfway around the main story a second time, he spied an inconspicuous doorway he hadn't noticed before. It lay tucked partway behind a tall standing bookshelf. Drawing it cautiously open, he found a set of stairs. He struck alight a handlamp set on a table just inside the stairwell. And with a single, clean whit of dread, he went into the bowels of the library.

Even the rough stone staircase was lined with books. Thin ledges had been carved directly into the stone walls, and dusty tomes sat patiently waiting for a reader. The selection seemed random, and made Braethen's descent slow, as he was forced to read every spine, looking for a title relevant to his search.

He judged he'd descended fifty strides of the slowly winding steps before the staircase opened into a subterranean level of more book stacks. Braethen had expected it to be cold and dank, but the walls had been paneled up with heavily oiled oak, sealing the cold of the earth out and the warmth of books in. The air hung still and silent. If there were secrets to be had, this certainly felt like the place to find them.

As he began to browse the first volumes, he came upon very old books by Shenflear with titles he'd never heard of, small handbooks by Celysias the poet, again with titles unknown to him. He realized he was browsing work and words carefully preserved in a place where they'd be protected from fire or other kinds of negligence.

Of the secrets and silences preserved in this vault of the earth, however, he couldn't see anything that might help him. It could be that the wisdom he sought
did
exist somewhere in one of the books. But he didn't have time to peruse every volume.

As he walked the perimeter of the deep floor, he let his eyes pass randomly across their spines, holding his small handlamp before him as he went. He had a sense that if he let himself relax, he'd notice the right detail. Something that
felt
right.

Just before turning at one corner, his eye caught something high up on a shelf. Graven into the wood at the top of one bookcase against the far wall were two words. It took Braethen a few moments to shift his thinking into the Falett tongue in which the words were written—a language he knew somewhat well from his studies with his father's favorite author, Macam.

They read:
UNCOMMON UNDERSTANDING.

He paused, considering the preposition further. In Dimnian,
un
could mean “through” or “past.” In Kuren dialects, it often meant “beyond.”

It can't be that simple, can it?

Braethen crept close, reading the spine of every book in the stack beneath the foreign words. Though he knew few of the authors, the titles and subjects indicated nothing uncommon that Braethen could see. However, one book seemed rather out of place, a very thin volume set on the top shelf and almost unnoticeable for being pushed back between two thick tomes.

He reached up and retrieved the little book. Opening it, he found but a single page written on in what his father would call a “bad hand”—almost illegible—and with but a single phrase:
Put me back, down.

A strange pamphlet. One page. One sentence. It wasn't even poetic. And the cover had a strange feel. Almost slick. He held it up in the lamplight, and decided it was a lightweight metal of some kind. Though it was so soiled it was hard to tell.

Did it mean anything? He read the line several more times before it struck him. The placement of the comma. The words already read like a command, but pausing where the author had placed that simple bit of punctuation … Braethen knelt and hunkered close to the bottommost shelf, running his hand along the volumes. And looking more carefully this time, found a very small slot where a thin book might fit.
Put me back
. And so he would.
Down,
on this bottom shelf.

As he slid the small volume onto the shelf, it began to feel as though it were being pulled. Just before coming flush with the rest of the spines, it snapped into place, like a link in a chain of lodestones. And as it settled, a sound like a tumbler rolling back grumbled behind the shelf.

A moment later, the bookcase before him swung open as though admitting a caller.

Braethen stepped through and raised his oil handlamp into a hidden room. The same oak paneling lined the walls, though the air here was slightly colder and carried the stale scent of upholstery. There was but one long bookcase in the room, covering the entire rear wall. And several tables sat around, so small that each would accommodate but a single reader, encouraging private study.

He moved deeper inside.

Leading with his lamp, he crossed to the solitary bookcase and read book spines as quickly as he could. Many were incomprehensible to him, written in languages he didn't know. But many others were written in languages that
were
known to him—Maerdian, Kamasal, Balensi. And halfway across he stopped, his heart pounding. His fingers traced the title of a book that he realized, without having to open it, was the object of his midnight search:
The Thousand-Fold Steel.

With a trembling hand, he took down the volume. Then he turned and found the closest table. There he sat, placed the book before him, and slowly drew back the cover to the first page. The text had been written in an old tongue, but not one foreign to him—a Kamasal root. With some initial difficulty, Braethen managed to read a guide of topics: Origin, History, Purpose, Dangers, Uses …

There he stopped, his dread deepening. He read across to the page number corresponding to that topic:
Uses
. Part of him thought he already knew some of what he would find in these pages about the Blade of Seasons. This very day the sword had made certain impossible things … possible.

Before Braethen could turn another page, he heard something far behind and above him—like the door to the stairs that descended into these subterranean book stacks.
Did I leave the door open?

He waited, listening, and heard nothing further. To be safe, he got up, checked to be sure the room's door could be opened from the inside, and quietly closed it. He then promptly returned to his book. This time, without delay, he turned the pages until he found the heading he desired, and began to read:

The Thousand-Fold Steel hath many names, and at least as many intentions. It is known by most as the Blade of Seasons. Though this name might be least instructive, as it is a weapon last of all. At least, as men define that word. It may be refolded and recast into whatever shape a tinker or smith sees fit to put it. This being true, it has held the forms of a rod, a rake, a hoe, a mace, a shovel, a spigot, a barrel band, and more. Regardless the form, the metal will yet possess its fundamental quality—to be a focus of thought, to give its bearer a window through which to view, even become acquainted with, those things he chooses to think upon.

In this way, it is the tool of a teacher, not unlike the book or rule. It is hoped that reminders of where men have been, and the things they should have done, can instruct their present actions. But for the bearer of the ThousandFold, the power of this steel brick is that its fundamental quality is not bounded. Linear qualities lay no claim to it. Think on time and place, how straight they seem. And yet “ThousandFold,” as the Dimnis say, “pays not a jot for linearity.”