Some called it finger notation. On the page, the music appeared to be dissonant, filled with minor seconds. But because the strings were tuned differently, scordatura notation merely indicated finger position, the possible note combinations were unique.
That night I realized what scordatura could teach me about absolute sound, song with absolute value. That’s why Divad had given me this piece of music in the Chamber of Absolutes. Trying to make sense of the notes proved frustrating, until I let myself simply consider where my fingers would rest on the strings, not knowing which note would sound, but trusting that the right one would.
Like scordatura tuning, singing a note with absolute value meant finding the right place inside a thing to resonate with, regardless of the note. If I meant to produce music that could stop Shoarden men, it would have to be of the absolute kind. I needed to figure out how to resonate with some part of them even when they could not hear me. I needed to go beyond my training, and figure out where to play these Sellari, the song of them.
In a real way, I’d be playing them like a scordatura-tuned viola d’amore. And the song that came out of me would resonate inside them as though they were aliquot strings.
I gave a weak but grateful smile, thinking of Maesteri Divad. He’d been trying to help me, even as he’d tried to convince me to stay. Perhaps he’d known I would come here to fight, regardless. But I still had to find that Sellari string to play. And looking back at the captive, I decided how I would do it.
As I approached him, the frozen ground crunched beneath my feet, the sound of it loud in the night. The Sellari couldn’t hear me, so I tossed a small stone at his chest. His slack mouth slowly closed, and his eyes opened. He looked up at me, seeming to gauge whether or not he’d be beaten again. After a moment of silent regard, I allowed myself to become attuned to the figure sitting before me. To hear the song of him.
I began by focusing on his wounds, understanding how physical pain would feel in my own face and neck. Then I recalled the feeling of being restrained and threatened—a particularly worrisome moment I had suffered at the hands of a gang of five street brawlers the year I arrived at Descant. Then I summoned the images of the fallen from this very war, both theirs and ours.
Like a string being drawn across by a long bow, I began to feel the first notes of resonance between us.
In my mind, I identified musical phrases, performing mental turns in a descending Lydian scale to suggest surrender and helplessness and the simplest fear for self. And I let the look in the other’s eyes, the vaguest hope of returning to his own loved ones, sweeten a bitter musical signature that rumbled inside me.
It wasn’t the memories or thoughts themselves that brought us together, but their residue. The combinations of like things produced a kind of vibration we both shared.
I was attuned. I could hear the song of him. But what I had never done, never been taught to do, was sing that absolute value. Though now, I had a model for it. A scordatura model.
Rather than define the note or song I might sing to find a resonance inside him, I concentrated on a sense of him, the emotional fabric that made him who he was. And when that crystallized in my own mind, I opened my mouth and let come whatever most resonated with that sense.
I had never before made or even heard the sound that followed. It began as a low pitch that shifted so subtly that it lived in the space between notes. In those first few moments, the Sellari’s ravaged lips curled into a smug smile; he must have thought he was safe from my song. But mere moments later, his brow tightened, creasing into several deep ridges. Concern rose on his face, his eyes darting from my mouth to my eyes and back.
I modulated a fourth up, then another minor third, singing with a glottal tone like the muggy feel of air thickened with rain. As I did, the Sellari’s lips began to tremble, and a single runnel of blood issued from his nose.
He shook his head in confusion and worry, and pulled at his bonds in panic. I then began a steady pulsing change in pitch, letting each new note come without forethought, landing in a modal set unlike anything I’d ever heard—part Aeolian, part Dorian. But never rushed, and never loud.
When the Sellari looked back at me, abandoning his effort to break his bonds, the fear was so palpable I could feel it. This was the moment of resignation that precedes some final pain or gasp. But this Sellari’s pain was less about the fear of not living another day, and more about what he left behind: days he would never spend in the company of a son and daughter; regret for failing to do something he wished he’d made time for; the forgiving smile of his wife.