He could not go to the one called Retreat, on the shores of the largest lake in the world, for that was where teachers and masters came from the Songhouse, when they needed ease from their labors. His vow of silence would still be in force there.
The other two were open to him, however.
Vigil, far in the south, was an island of sand and rock lapped by the water of a shallow sea. It was beautiful in a fierce way, and the stone city of Vigil that stood on its northernmost tip was a comforting place, an island of green in the wasteland. Once Vigil had been a fortress, in the days when the Songhouse had been a village and the world was wracked by war. Now it was where the failures went.
Hundreds of singers went out from the Songhouse every year, to do service until they were fifteen years old. Only a few in a decade were Songbirds, but singers were also highly prized, and all were welcomed home when they came.
Some singers became so well adapted to the world they served on that they did not want to come home. The seeker sent for them would try to persuade for several days, but if persuasion did not work, there was no force, and the Songhouse paid for their education until they were twenty-two, just as if they had been Deafs.
Some singers came home to the Songhouse and quickly found happiness in teaching, and were good at it, and remained in the Songhouse for the rest of their lives, except for retreats to Retreat. They could become Songmasters, in time, and if they had the ability. And they ruled the Songhouse.
But there were other variations. Not all who came back to Tew were fit to be teachers, and a place had to be found for them. And not all the singers finished their time. There were some who could not bear the outside worlds, who needed the comfort of stone walls and seclusion and rigorous living and routine. There were those who went mad. The price of the music, the leaders of the Songhouse called it, and took tender care of those who had paid most dearly, gaining their voices but losing their minds.
These were the ones who came to Vigil, and Ansset could talk to them, for they would never come back to the Songhouse.
The sea between the Desert of Squint and the Island of Vigil was shallow, rarefy more than two meters deep, with sandbars frequently shifting, so that the passage could almost be made on foot, if the sun were not so dangerously hot and the bottom so unpredictable. As it was, the passage was uncomfortable in a shallow-draft barge, though a canopy kept the voyager in the shade. Ansset was piloted by a young Deaf who spent three months a year here, running the ferry. The Deaf talked eagerly-visitors were few-and Ansset heard in his voice the peace of the place. For all that the land was dry and the water was not deep, there was life here. Fish moved lazily under the water. Birds dove for them and ate them on the wing. Large insects walked along the surface or lived just under it, sucking air from above.
This is where all the life is, the boy said. The fish couldn't live underwater without the insects that live on or just under the surface. The birds couldn't live without diving through to get the fish. And the insects eat the surface plants. All the life exists because there's just that thin layer of water that touches the air. The boy had studied. He had no voice, but he had a mind and a heart, and had found a place for himself out here. If he couldn't live in the water, he would live in the air.
He said as much. You know, the Songhouse couldn't live without sending singers to the outside world.
And Ansset told him, And the outside world, all the outside worlds, I wonder if they could really live without the Songhouse.
The boy laughed. Oh, I think the music's just a luxury, that's what I think. Lovely, but they don't need it.
Ansset kept his disagreement to himself. And wondered a little if maybe the boy was right.
There were only seven people living in Vigil, so there was no lack of room for Ansset. Three of them were Blinds, so that only four were mad.
One of the mads was a girl, not more than twenty, who walked every day from the cool of the towers to the sea, where she would lie naked, her body half in the water, half out. As the tides moved, so would she. And whenever a breeze would blow, she would sing, a plaintive, beautiful melody that was never twice the same, but that seemed never to vary, a song of loneliness and a mind as placid and seemingly empty as the sea. When the wind died, so did her song, so that most of the time she lay in silence.
She talked to no one, and seemed not to notice that anyone existed, except that she ate what was placed before her and never disobeyed the few orders she was given.
Another mad was an old man, who had spent almost all his life in Vigil. He took long excursions from the town, and in fact seemed not to be insane at all. I was cured long ago, he said, but I prefer it here. He was brown from the sun, and collected shellfish from the edge of the water, which formed an important part of the menus at Vigil. The man told the same stories over and over, and, if he was left uninterrupted, he would repeat them one after another to the same person all day and far into the night. Ansset did it once, letting him have his audience. The old man finally fell asleep. He had never varied the stories once. Ansset asked one of the Blinds. No, the Blind answered. None of his stories is true.
And the other two were kept safely in rooms where their madness was seen only by the Blinds who cared for them. Sometimes Ansset could hear them singing, but the songs were always too distant for him to hear well.
Ansset visited Vigil only the once; it was more than he could bear. There were those, he realized, who had paid a higher price than he for their songs, and who had been given less. Alone in the rocky hills behind the towers, he sang, and learned new echoes and new emotions for his song.
And he sang with the girl who lay partly in the sea, and his voice did not silence hers. Once she even looked at him, and smiled, and he felt that his voice might not be so hateful, after all. He sang her the love song, and the next day he left Vigil.
The other retreat was Promontory, and it was by far the largest. Here was where most of the Blinds lived, singers who returned and discovered that they did not really enjoy teaching, that they weren't really good at it. Promontory was a city of people who sang constantly, but spent their lives doing other things than music.
Promontory also coasted on a sea, the huge stone buildings (for the Songhouse children could never be long from stone) towering over a choppy, frigid sea. There were no children there, by age, but the games played in the woods, in the fields, and in the cold water of the bay were all children's games. As Rruk had explained to him before he came to Promontory, They gave up most of their childhood singing for other people's pleasure. Now they can be children all they like.
It was not all play, however. There were huge libraries, with teachers who had learned what the universe had to teach them and were passing their knowledge on down to ever younger Blinds until finally they died, usually happy. They never called themselves Blinds here, of course-here they were just people, as if everyone lived this way. Those who showed exceptional ability at government and administration were brought to the Songhouse to serve; the rest were content most of the time at Promontory.
Ansset wasn't, however. The setting was beautiful and the people were kind, but it was too crowded, and while there was no restriction on his speaking to them, he found that they looked at him oddly because he never sang. Soon enough they knew who he was-his identity was no secret among the Blinds-and while they treated him with deference, there was no hope of friendship. His strange life was unintelligible to most of them, and they left him alone.