Pren picked up the melody line just a pace or two inside the door. When Amilee heard it, she did not look up at them, but simply ceased singing and collapsed on the stone floor.
Divad swept the girl up and carried her straight through the chamber and out the opposite door. He cut left to the nearest bedchamber and went in. He laid her gently on the coverlet, while Harnel fetched a pillow for her head.
Amilee’s eyes fluttered open. “Maesteri,” she said with a bruised voice.
“Save your words,” he admonished. “Gods, I’m sorry, my girl.”
He had to hold at bay renewed anger at the League, who had put them in this situation. His growing hatred for them would not help this courageous young woman.
She shook her head in a weak motion. “I didn’t lag,” she whispered.
Divad’s pride in the girl swelled, tightening his throat with emotion. But he managed a low sweet tone, to course gently through her. Help him see, or rather, feel. So that even then, he knew she would not live. If her wound were of the flesh, he could render a song of well-being. But Suffering drew on a different part of a Lieholan’s life. And of that, she had expended too much. It was remarkable that she had anything left. But it was not enough for him to resonate with.
Oh child.
As she lay dying, Divad found strength enough to put away his ill feelings for the League. He sat beside her and took her hand and sang a song of contentment. Slow and low, he poured out his love and admiration for the girl. He watched as the pain in her eyes and brow slowly relaxed.
And before she let go, he leaned in close, so that no one would hear the question he asked of her. When she nodded, she looked grateful and at peace.
Divad resumed his melody and sang until her hand grew cold. It was a dreadful thing to feel the song go out of a person for good. To feel the vacancy, the silence, that replaced what once was the resonance and melody of a life. His voice faltered more than once as he sang into the emptiness she left behind. He would have liked to play his viola for her, but it was still missing its strings.
Four days after Amilee went to her final earth, Divad sat again in the warmth and silence of morning sunlight inside his workshop. Motes danced slowly in the shafts of light, reminding him that even in silence there’s a kind of song that stirs the air. These last few days he’d been preparing gut for his viola. Now, all that remained was to string the instrument.
Gut was best taken from the animal while the body is still warm. It needed to be stripped of fat and placed in cold water. Later, it would be transferred to wine or a solution of lye to help remove any last unwanted matter that still clung to it. Strips were cut to length, twisted together in various numbers to create different pitches, and rubbed with almond or olive oil to prevent them from becoming brittle.
Divad had thoughtfully done all this, and now picked up the first length and began stringing the repaired viola. One by one he fixed the aliquot strings to their bone points, and ran them up through the neck to their pegs. When he’d finished the resonant gut, he did likewise with the playable strings.
Next he tuned the instrument. Never rushing. Turning the peg as he thumbed each string to find the extended tuning for the first song he intended to play on the salvaged viola. The sounds of the tuning were somehow muted in the morning stillness, almost as if the air was resisting the sound.
When the instrument was finally ready, he sat back, regarding the fruits of his labor. The work had been tedious and filled with reminders. Both things were part of the process, something he knew from experience. But he felt satisfied that he had done well, and smiled genuinely for the first time in many days.
In every part, there’d been meaning. That mattered. From the spruce top harvested from a performance tavern bar, to the gut that Amilee had willingly surrendered from her own body. This last element might prove to be the most important, Divad thought. If there was truth to his notion of sonorant residue, then a piece of Lieholan that had sung Suffering might make this incarnation of the viola better than its predecessor. To teach resonance and play for the fallen, he could think of nothing better.
When the moment felt right, he took up the viola, and the bow he’d completed the prior day, and stood in the light of the window. There, he drew the bow across the gut, fingering the first notes of “If I’m Reminded.” He then muted the top strings, and listened intently as the aliquots continued to resonate in the silence that followed.
A long time, he thought, and smiled. A long time since I’ve heard this song. Later, when the resonating strings ceased to hum, he would play it for Amilee. He’d play it finally for Jemma. For now, though, he stood still, allowing the aliquots to ring, and learning something more about resonance.
It was not dawn when I arrived at the line. Midday had come and gone.
It was not the start of battle. They’d been fighting for hours.