A third man looked on, carefully appraising, but in a different way. The fellow looked up for a moment, as though framing a question. When he stared at me, his gaze was focused, the way Maesteri Divad’s became when he watched for truthful answers and understanding. “Do you want a sword?”
I stared back, somewhat puzzled. “That’s not why you sent for me.”
The last man at the table did not speak, but instead invited me forward with a nod. As I drew close, I saw what the four had been studying. Not terrain or position maps. Not inventory manifests. Not even letters of command and inquiry sent from the seat of the Tilatian king.
Across the table were spread innumerable scores. These leaders of war were sifting sheet music to prepare for the day’s battle. In my few years away from home, I’d learned this was uncommon. The Tilatians might be the only people to do it, in fact. And even among my own kind, it hadn’t been done in more than three generations.
Coming a step closer, and as I looked into the faces of the men around the table, it wasn’t the carefree good humor of conservatory instructors that I saw. Lord knows I’d come across a cartload of those in my travels as a student from Descant Cathedral. No, these were sober-minded men, reviewing the language of song written for an unfortunate purpose. The tent held the cheerless feel of an overcast winter sky.
Sullen, I thought. Bitter maybe. But sullen for sure.
“Nine of ten bear steel into battle. There’s no shame in that.” The field leader sniffed, refocusing on a score laid out in front of him. “But you’re right. That’s not why we ask you here. Sit down.”
I pulled forward a thin barrel and sat next to the captain, as he set before me a stack of music. “What?”
“I’m Baylet. This is Holis, Shem, and Palandas. These,” he gently tapped the scores piled loosely before me, “are airs we send to the line. Tell us which one you’ll use.”
A chair creaked as Holis, the man with one eye, leaned forward, turning a bit sideways to have a good view of the stack.
“We’ve already selected morale songs to encourage those who carry steel,” Baylet added. “Holis has a good eye for that.”
The men exchanged scant looks of mirth, as if the joke were as tired as the men themselves.
“Shem’s put aside for later a song of comfort and well-being. Something he wrote himself.”
“Calimbaer,” I muttered, recalling the class of Mor song that accompanied medical treatment.
Baylet looked across at Shem. “He’s also found a good sotto voce for Contentment.”
I knew that class of song, too. Two classes really. Sotto voce, an incredibly difficult technique to master, in which singing happened almost under the breath. But Contentment…it was a type of song sung to one who is beyond help, one who can only be given a spot of peace before going to his final earth.
Holis and Shem produced the music Baylet had spoken of, and dropped it on top of the pile before me. I fanned them out and began to scan. The morale song read like a blaze of horns—written for four voices with two soaring lines above a strong set of rhythmic chants beneath. I could hear the mettle and resolve in my mind as I tracked the chord progressions.
Shem’s Calimbaer was an elegant piece composed of few notes, each with long sustain. The movement was languid and would be rendered in a thick legato.
But it was the sotto voce piece that really got to me. I sat poring over the note selection, which made brilliant use of the Lydian and Lochrian modes, the composition effortlessly transitioning between the two. It had me taking deep relaxing breaths. Parts of the melody, even just scanning them, instantly evoked simple, forgotten memories. In those moments, I recalled the marble bench on which I sat the first time I kissed a woman. How cool it had been to the touch, contrasted with the heat in my mouth. I then remembered kneeling in my mother’s garden, dutifully clearing the weeds, when I spontaneously created my first real song, or at least the first one I could still recall. And last to my mind came the memory of lying awake, scared, in my first alone-bed, until I heard the comforting, safe sounds of adult voices talking in the outer room.
Baylet swept those selections aside and tapped the original stack again. “Mors who have influence in their voice.” He gave me a pointed look. “Mors like you. Have each been sent to different lines so that only the Sellari will hear their song. And suffer by it.”
The field leader then began to hum a deep pitch, a full octave lower than any note I could reach. The sound of it filled the tent. He gently lifted the topmost score, written on a pressed parchment, and placed it in my hand. When he stopped singing the single note, the silence that followed felt wide and empty, like the bare-limb stretches of late autumn.