It was a command. But it was also a plea. The desire to step into the breach for my people filled me like a rush of warm wind. It’s hard to explain that feeling. The other thing that was true was that Baylet had put the perfect words on the quiet reason inside me that had brought me here: return murder on the bastards. I wasn’t proud of that feeling, but I couldn’t deny it either. And in the end, I didn’t find a thing wrong with it.
I started for the tree line before Baylet kicked his mount into a canter. I did not pause when the twenty Shoarden men fell in around me. I did not pause when I came in sight of the first Sellari scout. I did not pause.
And when a hundred, two hundred of the invaders lined the far meadow, coming on with a steady stride, I recalled the music I’d reviewed that morning in the company of four grim men. A dozen of those songs I knew backward and forward. Three times as many other songs I had full command over: lyric, phrasing, rhythm, and melody. Songs that might suit the kind of destructive influence that filled my heart at that moment.
But as the enemy came within earshot, none of these would do. And when I filled my lungs and opened my mouth, only one song came to me. The fifth movement of Suffering: War.
It was a rough-throat song. As all the line-songs shown to me that morning had been. Maesteri Divad liked to smile and say it was “controlled screaming, cultured hollering.” That made as much sense as anything else. The intent of these songs was destruction, aggression. Rasping the voice gave it a scouring, abrasive sound. It conveyed violent intent.
I filled my mind with anguish for my da. I recalled the words of the Song of Suffering’s War passage. And I let it all burn inside me. Suffering wasn’t meant for this purpose, but I was way past caring about that. I let myself feel indignation and hatred against those who had burned my countrymen.
And then I let it all pour from me in a stream of pounding vocal rhythms that shot out like a succession of iron-gloved punches. I didn’t know what would happen, but I’d studied intention in my Lieholan training. That’s a far cry from saying I’d mastered it. But on this chill morning, mine was clear.
The first few Sellari were ripped off their feet and sent crashing hard upon the frozen earth. I’d later remember the puffs of my own hot breath on the cold air as I shouted out Suffering’s War music, which had been meant for protection. I’d instinctively found the way to make that music a weapon. It was the difference between winning and not losing; between merely drawing breath and gasping it in after a mad dash. It actually taught me a practical lesson on intention in a way my Descant study of the principle never had.
At the far end of the great field, hundreds more Sellari appeared in full dress, rushing forward. The Shoarden tightened their circle around me, taking out runners my song didn’t seem to affect. When I saw that these runners’ ears had been cut off, I realized the Sellari had Shoarden of their own.
The sight of them only deepened my anger. The song itself began to live inside me in a way it never had at Recityv. The feeling was strange. It buoyed me up. But I was simultaneously aware that it was being fueled by some part of me that I wouldn’t get back.
I didn’t care.
I lengthened my stride. The next notes rushed up past my throat into the natural cavities behind my nose and cheeks, becoming a bright, powerful scream that I shrieked into the morning light. Thirty more had flesh ripped from their face and hands. I heard necks pop, and saw heads cock at unnatural angles, and then bodies falling to the hard earth.
Every attack made me stronger. And sicker it seemed. Though strangely, the burn of aggression kept me moving forward, each screamed musical line felling more of the others. I was soon walking over the bodies of Sellari, eager to take them all down.
I never got that far. The ill feeling soon outbalanced the vengeance, and I struggled to even take a breath. Before I knew it, the Shoarden had picked me up and were rushing me back across the great field ahead of the chasing Sellari. I blacked out to the sound of rushing feet pounding over brittle ground.
THREE
HE’D LAID THE BROKEN pieces of the viola out across his worktable like pieces of a puzzle. The sun bathed Descant’s lutherie, a haven where Maesteri Divad spent as much time as he could afford. Putting his hands to use in repairing broken instruments helped him think. Occasionally he crafted something new. But he much preferred mending what was broken. It allowed him to maintain his sense of an object’s intrinsic worth.
As he sat surveying the wreckage, he breathed deeply the scents of birch woodshavings, willow blocks aging nicely against the outer wall, and the Tamber steel of chisels and planes and fine-tipped paring knives. In the sunlight, motes lazed through the stillness, moving ever so slowly.
The viola’s single-piece flat-back had taken too much damage from Belamae’s smashing of the instrument. It would have to be replaced. The same was true of the side pieces. Divad picked up the inside blocks and soundpost, which appeared intact. He stress-tested them, gently trying to snap them with his fingers. They seemed fine, until two of the blocks broke where hairline cracks gave way. Those might
