Nniv's only answer was to glance at the woman and say, Esste. She fell silent. Her humming had been so pervasive that the walls fairly rang with the sudden quiet.
Nniv waited.
I want a Songbird, Mikal said.
Nniv said nothing.
Songmaster Nniv, I conquered a planet called Rain, and on that planet was a man of great wealth, and he had a Songbird. He invited me to hear the child sing.
And at the memory, Mikal could not contain himself. He wept.
His weeping took Esste and Nniv by surprise. This was not Mikal the Terrible. Could not be. For Songbirds, while they impressed everyone, could only be fully appreciated by certain people, people whose deepest places resonated with that most powerful of musics. It was known throughout the galaxy that a Songbird could never go to a person who killed, to a person of greed or gluttony, to a person who loved power. Such people could not really hear a Songbird's music. But there could be no doubt that Mikal had understood the Songbird. Both Nniv and Esste could hear his inadvertent songs too easily to be mistaken.
You have damaged us, Nniv said, his voice full of regret.
Mikal composed himself as best he could. I, damaged you? Even the memory of your Songbird destroys me.
Uplifts you.
Wrecks my self-composure, which is the key to my survival. How have I damaged you?
By proving to us that you do indeed deserve a Songbird. You know what that will do, I'm certain. Everyone knows that the Songhouse does not bend to the powerful where Songbirds are concerned. And yet-we will give you one. I can hear them now: 'Even the Songhouse sells out to Mikal.' Nniv's voice was a raucous and perfectly accurate imitation of the speech of the common man, though of course there was no such creature in the galaxy. Mikal laughed.
You think it's funny? Esste asked, and her voice pierced Mikal deeply and made him wince.
No, he answered.
Nniv sang soothingly, and calmed both Esste and Mikal But, Mikal, you know also that we set no date for delivery. We must find the right Songbird for you, and if we don't find one before you die, there can be no complaint.
Mikal nodded. But hurry. Hurry, if you can.
Esste sang, her voice ringing with confidence, We never hurry. We never hurry. We never hurry. The song was Mikal's dismissal. He left, and found his own way out, guided by the fact that all doors but the right ones were locked against him.
I don't understand, said Nniv to Esste after Mikal had gone.
I do, Esste said.
Nniv whispered his surprise in a steeply rising hiss that echoed from the stone walls and blended with the breeze.
He's a man of great personal force and power, she told him. But he has not been corrupted. He believes he can use his power for good. He longs to do it.
An altruist? Nniv found it difficult to believe.
An altruist. And this, said Esste, is his song. She sang, then, occasionally using words, but more often shaping meaningless syllables with her voice, or singing strange vowels, or even using silence and wind and the shape of her lips to express her understanding of Mikal.
At last her song ended, and Nniv's own voice was heavy with emotion as he sang his reaction. That, too, ended, and Nniv said, If he truly is what you sing him to be, then I love him.
And I, Esste said.
Who will find a Songbird for him, unless it's you?
I will find Mikal's Songbird.
And teach this bird?
And teach.
Then you will have done a life's work.
And Esste, accepting the heavy challenge (and the possible inestimable honor), sang her submission and dedication and left Nniv alone in the High Room, to hear the song of the wind and answer as best he was able.
For seventy-nine years Mikal had no Songbird. In all that time, he conquered the galaxy, and imposed the Discipline of Frey on all mankind, and established Mikal's Peace so that every child born had a reasonable hope of living to adulthood, and appointed a high quality of government for every planet and every district and every province and every city there was.
Still he waited. Every two or three years he sent a messenger to Tew, asking the Songmaster one question: When?
And the answer always came back, Not yet.
And Esste was made old by the years and the weight of her life's work. Many Songbirds were discovered because of her search, but none that would sing properly to Mikal's own song.
Until she found Ansset.
ESSTE
1
There were many ways a child could turn up in the child markets of Doblay-Me. Many children, of course, were genuine orphans, though now that wars had ended with Mikal's Peace orphanhood was a social position much less often achieved. Others had been sold by desperate parents who had to have money-or who had to have a child out of their way and hadn't the heart for murder. More were bastards from worlds and nations where religion or custom forbade birth control. And others slipped in through the cracks.
Ansset was one of these when a seeker from the Song-house found him. He had been kidnapped and the kidnappers had panicked, opting for the quick profit from the baby trade instead of the much riskier business of arranging for ransom and exchange. Who were his parents? They were probably wealthy, or their child wouldn't have been worth kidnapping. They were White, because Ansset was extremely fairskinned and blond. But there were trillions of people answering to that description, and no government agency was quite so foolish as to assume the responsibility of returning him to his family.
So Ansset, whose age was unknowable but who couldn't be more than three years old, was one of a batch of a dozen children that the seeker brought back to Tew. All the children had responded well to a few simple tests- pitch recognition, melody repetition, and emotional response. Well enough, in fact, to be considered potential musical prodigies. And the Songhouse had bought-no, no, people are not bought in the child markets-the Song-house had adopted them all. Whether they became Songbirds or mere singers, masters or teachers, or even if they did not work out musically at all, the Songhouse raised them, provided for them, cared about them for life. In loco parentis, said the law. The Songhouse was mother, father, nurse, siblings, offspring, and, until the children reached a certain level of sophistication, God.
New, sang a hundred young children in the Common Room, as Ansset and his fellow marketed children were ushered in. Ansset did not stand out from the others. True, he was terrified-but so were the rest. And while his nordic skin and hair put him at the extreme end of the racial spectrum, such things were studiously ignored and no one ridiculed him for it, any more than they would have ridiculed an albino.
Routinely he was introduced to the other children; routinely all forgot his name as soon as they heard it; routinely they sang a welcome whose tone and melody were so confused that it did nothing to allay Ansset's fear; routinely Ansset was assigned to Rruk, a five-year-old who knew the ropes.
You can sleep by me tonight, Rruk said, and Ansset dumbly nodded. I'm older Rruk said. In maybe a few months or sometime soon anyway I get a stall. This meant nothing to Ansset. Anyway, don't piss in your bed because we never get the same one two nights in a row. Ansset's three-year-old pride was enough to take umbrage at this. Don't piss in bed. But he didn't sound angry-just afraid.
Good. Some of 'em are so scared they do. It was near bedtime; new children were always brought in near bedtime. Ansset asked no questions. When he saw that other children were undressing, he too undressed. When he saw that they found nightgowns under their blankets, he too found a nightgown and put it on, though he was clumsy at it. Rruk tried to help him, but Ansset shrugged off the offer. Rruk looked momentarily hurt, then sang the love song to him.