He’d made his excuses and come down early to make certain that all was ready. Now it was; the seats were filling with bodies and the air with the murmur of thousands of voices.
Not since his first performance, at the age of six, had he felt such a trembling in his limbs and such profound unrest in his belly.
He looked down at his musicians.
“I know you can do it,” he told them. “I have faith in all of you. I only hope to deserve yours.”
Edwyn raised the bow of his croth in salute, but most of them spared him only a quick glance, for they were furiously studying their music which was almost—but not quite—what they had been rehearsing.
The praifec had monitored his rehearsals, of course, and approved them, because Leoff had rewritten the work to the churchman’s ridiculous specifications. The instrumental pieces were played as introduction to what the vocalists would sing, and then the vocals were done unaccompanied. He had added the material the praifec wanted, and cut parts he had written.
But despite all that, this would not be the praifec’s performance. Tonight, the instruments and the players would sing together, and the modes and triads and chords would all be altered. And if what Leoff believed was true, after the first notes sounded, the praifec would be helpless to stop him.
He gazed up at the royal box. The regent was there, of course, and most of the people who had been at his table. But there were two others. One was striking and unmistakable—Queen Muriele. He still thought of her that way despite the recent revision of her title. She wore a gown of black esken trimmed in seal-skin, and no crown or diadem ornamented her head.
The other was a woman with soft chestnut hair, someone Leoff fancied he had seen at court once or twice. The two were surrounded by a block of the regent’s black-clad guards.
“I thank the saints, Your Majesty,” he said under his breath, “that you should hear this.” He hoped she did not despise him for helping her enemies vilify her.
The regent, Robert Dare, raised his hand to indicate that he was ready.
Leoff made sure the musicians had his attention then set his fingers to the hammarharp and sounded a single note. The lead flageolet took it up, and then the bass vithuls, and finally all the instruments as they adjusted their tuning. When that was done, silence fell again.
Fingers shaking, Leoff once more stretched his fingers toward the keyboard.
“It is meant to be Broogh,” Muriele whispered to Alis as the musicians began tuning their instruments.
“A very pretty stage,” Alis noticed.
It was. It depicted a town square, overlooked by the bell tower in the rear, and a tavern on the left, with a shingle that read Paeter’s Fatem. The tavern was cleverly cut away so that one could see the façade, but also the inside of it. A new, small stage had been built some four yards or so above The World to represent an upper bedroom in the building.
On the right side of the stage stood the famed bridge the town was named for, crossing a convincing canal along which dried flowers had been placed, dyed to resemble living ones. Behind all that, painted on canvas, were the long green fields and malends of Newland.
As Muriele watched, a young man came out and sat upon the edge of the fountain in the square. He was dressed in the subdued wools of a landwaerden and orange sash of a windsmith, suggesting he’d recently been confirmed as one by the guild.
The musicians had stopped tuning now.
“Damned lot of vithuls and croths,” the Duke of Shale muttered, somewhere behind her. “I can’t see why all that is needed. Should make a dreadful racket.”
As Muriele watched, the tiny figure of Leoff raised his hands above the hammarharp and brought them down.
And such a sound rose as Muriele had never imagined, a swelling thunder of music with high clear notes ringing to the stars and low drone of bass like the deepest, most secret motions of the sea. It broke straight into her soul and enthroned itself. It was as if the most important thing in the world had been said.
Yet despite the immense beauty and power of that chord, it was somehow incomplete—aching for resolution—and she knew she could not rest, never turn her eyes away, could never know peace until she heard it made perfect.
“No,” she thought she heard the praifec say. But then she only heard the music.
Leoff grinned fiercely as the first chord filled the half-bowl of the Candle Grove and spilled out into the night, a chord that no one had played in over a thousand years, the chord Mery had rediscovered for him in the shepherd’s song.
That for your wishes, Praifec, he thought.
Because now that he heard it, he knew no one, not the praifec, not the Fratrex Prismo himself, could stop him before it was done.
The boy rose from where he sat at the fountain, and his voice suddenly soared with the instruments, as one with them. The language was Almannish, not the king’s tongue, which jarred just for an instant and then felt completely right.
“Ih kann was is scaon,” he sang.
His name was Gilmer, and he sang of life, joy, and Lihta Rungsdautar, whom he loved. And as he did so a girl appeared from the tavern, young and beautiful. Muriele knew when she saw her that this was Lihta, for she had “tresses like sun on golden wheat” that the boy had just been describing. And then she, too, began to sing, another melody entirely, though it wound perfectly around his. They were as yet unaware of each other, but their songs danced together—for Lihta was as much in love with him as he with her. Indeed, this was the day they were to be wed, as Muriele learned when they finally did see one another and their duet became unison. The music quickened into a lively whervel, and they began dancing.
As the two lovers stopped singing an older man came onstage, who turned out to be Lihta’s father, a boatwright, and he sang a song both comic and truly melancholy.
“I’m losing a daughter and gaining a debt,” it began, and then out came his wife, chastising him for his stinginess, and they, too, sang a duet, just as the young couple began to repeat their song, and suddenly four voices were lifted in an intricate harmony that somehow opened like a book all the ages of love, from first blush through complex maturity to final embrace. Muriele relived her own marriage in a single moment that left her breathless and shaking.
The aethil of the town joined them next, and townspeople arrived for a prenuptial feast and suddenly an entire chorus was joyfully serenading. It was utterly charming, and yet, even as that first act ended—with the sound of distant trumpets, and the aethil wondering aloud who else might that be coming to the feast—Muriele still longed for the resolution of the first chord.
The music faded, but it did not die, as the players left the stage. A simple melody began, echoing the joyous one of the banquet, but now in a plaintive key, a vaguely frightening key. As it grew in volume, a palpable sense of unease moved from listener to listener. It made Muriele want to check her feet, to make sure no spiders were climbing her stockings.
It made her very much aware of Robert.
The second act began immediately with the arrival of Sir Remismund fram Wulthaurp, the music of his coming so dark and violent—with a skirling of pipes and menacing runs in the deep strings—that she clutched at the arms of her chair.
She noticed with a strange delight that the player presenting Wulthaurp looked a great deal like her brother-in-law, Robert.
The story unfolded relentlessly as the wedding banquet became a scene of dread. The props of stage—which before had been transparent as such—now seemed utterly real, as if the Candle Grove really hovered over the empty shell of Broogh, as if they were spying on the town’s ghosts, reenacting their tragedy.