Mordraud, Book One (52 page)

“
Is that it? Just a question of money?”

“
And power – gold’s best friend.”

“
Well, I’m pleased things have been sorted for the best...” Dunwich shook his head and smacked his lips. “Yet, I’m not sure why, but I don’t feel that it’s properly settled... There’s something about it I don’t like.”

“
Perhaps it’s been too long since you had a nice spell at the front. You’re like me, my boy...”

“
And how?”

“
You enjoy war. And you love being in charge.”

Dunwich
nodded, but didn’t lose his little-convinced expression. “Now the Long Winter project’s also on hold... I don’t know whether to be glad or not.”

“
Are you never happy with things?!” Asaeld burst out, in frustration. “And to think you were the one to suggest it!”

“
Are you going to start on that too?!” But Dunwich saw straight away that Asaeld was making fun of him. They’d already spoken about this many a time, but Dunwich unfailingly fell for his bait. “I only said...”

“
...why don’t we use chanting, dear colleagues?” concluded the commander, mimicking his voice. “And wipe away Eld, like a storm crossing a parched meadow!”

“
It’s not funny. I was talking about giving the Lances and the Arcane more space in the war. The Long Winter is still an insane plan, and it’ll be hard to see it through...”

“
That’s why the Empire needs people like you, Dunwich!” Asaeld cupped an arm around his shoulder and firmly guided him away from the gallows’ spectacle. “Smart young men, and devoted to our
sacred
Emperor
!”

“
Hmm, sacred... Let’s not overdo it... Perhaps you mean unhinged.”

“
In fact, I was joking...” Asaeld muttered, smiling amiably.

“
I really was joking.”

“
Tall, with dark hair, probably stocky. Eyes of an intense green. Talks without an accent from Eld, Cambria or the East. Has, I presume, a baritone voice. You might find him with a very thin and pale boy with light brown hair and bright blue-tinged grey eyes. I’m interested in both. Find out what they’re doing – I want the details. Don’t let yourself be noticed.”

At the bottom of the parchment, a more energetic and angular hand lacking in the care of the first calligraphy had added an askew post-script. Like a quick approval to an order.

“Kill them.”

The note was signed with a stylish ‘D’. Mordraud scrunched the sheet up in his hands and used it to staunch the blood gushing from the wound in his shoulder. The blade had come close, very close, to puncturing a lung. He’d have had a slow death, right on the steps to his home.

“
You, Dunwich... you damned...!”

His first thought when the dagger stabbed into his back was that he deserved it, when it came down to it. That
Adraman had found out about them, and had taken the wise decision to eliminate him. He still had the smell of the man’s wife on his skin, her breath in his throat. His head was a heavy load, weighted down by the wine and the hard stone he’d fallen asleep on. Deanna had already gone when he recovered, and so he crept out before dawn came, terrified at the idea of being stumbled upon by Adrina or the other servants. As he was going out the door, he could think only of Deanna, of a kiss he was sure he’d felt while sleeping.

The assassi
n must have spent the night outside waiting for him. He’d slithered up behind as Mordraud came down the steps, and had struck, but with little accuracy. Maybe sleepiness, or his unsteady steps of a still half-drunken state. In any case, the result was Mordraud hadn’t died under the first blow, not even crying out. He’d turned, wrenching the knife from the man’s hand, looking at him in simple and total bewilderment.

“
Ah! But you’re not... You...” he’d burst out, expecting to find himself face to face with Adraman in person.

The assa
ilant was a tall stout old man, covered by a long grey cape. He looked like any ordinary tramp – the fief was rife in elderly citizens with not even a few coppers or a home, people who’d lost their entire families. However, the knife that came out from the folds of his long cloak was too lovely to be an heirloom. Mordraud clamped his wrist before he could lift the blade, and struck him in the mouth with a head butt. His shoulder was excruciatingly painful, but his biggest concern at that precise moment was to make no sound. If he were to be seen outside Adraman’s house at that time of night, he’d lose his job. The killer was of secondary importance.

“
Who sent you?” he hissed, a breath from the man’s face. “Dunwich did, isn’t that right?!”

The old man
struggled to tear the sword from Mordraud’s grasp, but his grip was like steel. Seized by panic, he nodded, attempting also to speak, but his tongue and teeth had been pulped by the head butt and he merely succeeded in whining a few incoherent words. Mordraud saw a dim light appear in a window of the house opposite. He wasted no time. He took the old man’s head with his free hand, dashing it against the marble corner of the entrance steps. One, two sharp blows. The man flopped down like a sack of potatoes.

“
So you want me dead, do you? Can’t wait to settle it on the battlefield?!” he barked, after dragging the corpse out of the villa’s grounds, to a narrow rubbish-cluttered alley. Another old man claimed by the night. Nobody would wonder at it or do anything.

‘
If you’ve even touched a single hair on Gwern’s head... I’ll come and get you, right in your lovely Cambrian home.’

He
’d have to hurry. It wasn’t long until the morning assembly at the barracks, and he shouldn’t be found missing. He would be showered with questions that he’d be in no fit state to answer, given his poor aptitude for lying. He’d pretend he’d fallen asleep somewhere in his drunken stupor. Besides, what could a soldier on leave do if not trash himself with wine, he asked.

‘
Certainly not sneak into a general’s house and screw his wife,’ he thought darkly, as he ran towards the dormitories. ‘I’ll get myself sent off to the Rampart tomorrow, even if it means having to stow away in a cart! This
really
has to be the last time! Definitely!’

Mordraud
realised he was even no good at lying to himself.

***

The hard part was not feeling embarrassed.

Gwern
closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. He stretched out his arms, planted his feet firmly on the floor, and began singing a silly but complicated tune at the top of his voice: a melody rich in shifts, grating notes and abrupt changes. He was standing at the top of the stairs. Its curves raced towards the distant floor in a sickening play of bends.

Below
, Saiden was murmuring something. He didn’t even seem to be moving his lips. The tower was on the brink of exploding through the power of his voice. It was as if the staircase, the porphyry cubes housing the rooms, and everything within the space were vibrating in resonance with his chanting.

Gwern
’s task was to overpower it.

Impossib
le, he considered, terrified.

“
Louder!” yelled Saiden. “And even a bit better perhaps!”

Gwern
was practically shouting, without even articulating the notes. He entirely lost his concentration, wondering how Saiden had managed to chant and tell him off at the same time. He even had time to realise just how awful his sounds were. He’d learnt nothing yet. Without finishing the tune he was working on, he slumped to the floor, gasping.

“
Try to at least get to the end of it tomorrow!” Saiden bellowed again, as his chanting faded out soon afterwards. An unexpected effect of the echo, which caused Gwern a painful stab of headache.

Saiden
burst out laughing.

It was b
oggling how the man had initially struck him as nice, mused Gwern glumly.

He
’d been practising for eight long days, but it all seemed like a waste of time. Apart from the first few basic instructions, Saiden had hardly shown himself, except to humiliate him. He always ate alone. Once a day, after sundown. Two glasses of water in the morning, one in the evening. A dry rusk. And nothing more.

‘
He wants to starve me into it!’ reflected Gwern, as he returned to his room in embarrassment. ‘And he’s succeeding...’

Nobody could survive
very long on eating so little. Or rather, survive and sing the whole day at the same time. His throat was always parched, his tongue rough and heavy, and his teeth hurt. He was beginning to hate anything that brought music to mind, and only a fortnight had gone by.

“
What am I going to do?!” whimpered Gwern, tossing himself onto the wooden bench softened only by a thin woollen blanket. “I know nothing of chanting, I know nothing of how a harmony works... I’ll die of thirst before I figure out how to sing that damn tune! That’s if I don’t go and take a jump, out of shame...”

He felt too weak to practise.
And practise what, he thought, depressed. Gwern shut his eyes and fell fast asleep.

The morning wak
e-up routine was always the same. A couple of taps at his metal door, and two glasses of water placed on the narrow bridge connecting his room to the oval staircase. Gwern drank as if on the verge of death, but his throat was too dry to reap any relief. He was about to consume his day’s reserves, but then stopped himself halfway through the second glass, otherwise he wouldn’t have a drop of saliva that afternoon, not even enough to whisper.

Saiden,
as Gwern had now worked out, didn’t show himself. The boy once again, unwillingly, went back to training, always with that same unpleasant feeling on his skin – of being an imbecile singing in a cell. Not even a hint of progress. Luckily, he’d occasionally tried practising with Sernio, and even if he didn’t know what he was doing, at least he was in tune. His tutor had explained a few things, but Gwern didn’t know how to put his observations into practice. The boy’s trouble was with the low notes, which were impossible for his childlike voice to reach. Not that the high register was any more of a success, he reflected ironically. He scarcely knew what register was – he used the word purely because he liked the sound of it. It conveyed the idea well. Gwern glanced at the half-empty glass, heard his stomach rumble atrociously, and experienced the most unwelcome feeling of not having the time to make it to evening. He’d have to get a move on, drag out voice even where he didn’t have any. With fear gnawing at his guts, he had his first sensible idea after days of uncontrollable despair.

He shouldn
’t sing at the top of his voice.

“
Saiden barely moves his lips,” he whispered, shocked by his own foolishness. “How does he do it?!”

First of all, he had to work out where he was going wrong.
Gwern looked about and searched the room, which took no time at all. It didn’t seem like a bedroom, more like a perfect prison cell. It hadn’t made that impression to begin with. After such a short time, he already detested it.

‘
There’s nothing else... I’ll use this.’

He took the empty glass and, hoping he wasn
’t doing something stupid, smashed it against the wall. He chose the largest and sharpest shard, and scored two crooked grooves into the bench’s soft wood. He added a line that moved above and below these parallel ones, not unlike embroidery. He’d seen something similar in one of Sernio’s books; he’d studied it for days, wondering what that meandering and smooth curve stood for and what it concealed. He tried to recall Saiden’s voice, and broke it up. It was ideal for his purpose – Saiden chanted with great precision, marking every note to perfection.

He could get something good out of a line, if he shaped it through the tones of a voice.
With the two parallel grooves bounding the area in which Gwern felt he could sing more naturally.

Above was the high register, where he was rather poor. Below, the low register. Where he was
really
poor. The area between the two lines was the middle register – his only safe weak zone.

‘
Well, if I really do have to starve to death, then I at least want Saiden to notice an improvement. Let’s start from the top.’

Gwern
spent the entire day working on only the high passages. He had not the slightest idea of how he was supposed to do it: he just did it and that was that. Reasoning on it was not as hard as he’d expected, as if he possessed a particular talent for it. His first attempts were disjointed and jarring rattles lacking in grace. He had merely the two wonky lines to rely on – wobbly supports like poles planted in dust-piles.

‘
No, that’s no good... I need an example... If only Saiden had taught me some damn song!’

He didn
’t manage to repeat the tune Saiden had forced him to practise – it was too detailed. Too technical. He’d need examples more within his grasp to get the most from his study. He’d at least have to learn to copy something first. Gwern slapped his forehead. He did actually know quite a few songs he could apply his ideas to.

The fabulous choruses heard at
Larois’s tavern.

Gwern
shut his eyes, and sang his favourite ditty in falsetto.

“
The path ran straight... through the rows of trees a’watching... The Lance sped on his steed, hands on belly a’thinking... I’m huungry, so huungry... A boar! A wild boar! That is what we need!”

He
’d sung it dozens of times, but never alone. It wasn’t overly complicated. The falsetto was smooth and appealing. He just had to pretend he was a woman sitting at a bar with a beer tankard in her hand.

“
Oh, boar! Oh, wild boar! Don’t get nabbed, don’t get caught!”

If he stayed in the high range,
Gwern realised, with mounting determination, that his childlike voice was perfect. He just had to refrain from pushing too much, and to pay attention to the melody. When it was harsh on the ear, then he was getting something wrong. He placed his trust in taste, not being able to count on theory. And so he finally understood that his trouble was the pressure of having to manage it at all cost. He sang in tune, he’d always known that. What he hadn’t known was that it was a problem that could be solved.

He just had to learn
.

The appointment with the much-feared
evening presentation came in the end. Wan overcast stars glimmered through the huge glass dome of the roof. Beneath him, at an immense distance, Saiden waited with his hands behind his back.

“
Come on, let’s get it over with.”

Gwern
breathed fraughtly a couple of times. All the confidence he’d built up during the laboured day of study instantly crumbled when faced with Saiden. The maestro’s presence struck fear into him on a non-human scale.

The man began chanting in a terrifying voice. He barely moved his
mouth. The staircase shook beneath his feet. Gwern strained himself not to listen to him. He’d found the right volume, where his voice succeeded in moving with greater nimbleness. And at the risk of being thrown out that very night, he decided to pursue his idea. He could hardly hear himself, so booming was Saiden’s sound.