Chapter Six
Isbel, like all Conservatory students, loved to see travelers. No matter who they were, travelers brought with them the essence of the mountains and glaciers and irontree forests of the Continent. For the students, as for most of the people of Nevya, life was bounded by stone walls year in and year out. Only in the brief summers did their world expand to include the sky, the earth, the smell of fresh breezes. Riders coming in from the great outside seemed adventurous and free. For Isbel, the storyteller, they were also mines of information.
When word passed among the students that travelers were riding into the great cobbled courtyard, Maestro Nikei released Isbel from her third-mode exercises so she could join her classmates in the window seat to watch the party dismount.
They were a bedraggled-looking group from Perl, the poorest of the northern Houses. There were three rather small, thin men, and one who was big-shouldered and strong. This one wore his shock of curling blonde hair short, shorn in the manner of those who travel for their livelihood.
That is Theo, one of the students sent. Isbel recognized Jana’s voice, and she remembered that Jana was from Perl. He is a Singer, an itinerant. I have met him.
What is that fur he wears? asked Kevn.
Urbear, Jana sent with a shiver. It was silvery-gray on its surface, with a layer of dark gray showing beneath. Be glad they do not leave the coast.
Who are the others? Isbel asked.
I only know one, the one with gray hair. He is Housekeeper at Perl.
What do you suppose they want?
No one had an answer. The party were now off their hruss and were coming into the hall, shrugging off furs and stamping their cold feet. The young Singers untangled themselves from the window seat and reluctantly went back to their lessons. In the hall, Isbel watched Cathrin greet the travelers and invite them to bathe and eat.
The broad-shouldered itinerant, Theo, looked up and met Isbel’s eyes. He recognized her, no doubt because of her dark tunic, as one of the students. He bowed, and when he straightened he caught her eye and smiled at her. Isbel dimpled and ducked back out of sight, hurrying up the stairs toward the students’ wing.
By the time the House gathered in the great room for the evening meal, all the students knew why the travelers had come. Perl, as Bariken had been a few weeks before, was in need of a Cantor. Cantor Evn, who had only eight summers and should have been able to work for some years yet, had something wrong with his fingers. His junior had been unable to relieve his disability, and unable to play either the filla or the filhata, he was nearly useless.
At the Magister’s table, the students saw Perl’s Housekeeper and Magister Mkel looking at their table. Shivers of excitement went through their ranks.
Cantor Evn must be worried, a second-level student sent. What if he can never play again?
That would be disaster, Kevn sent. No one can sing that way.
So it will be one of us. That was Arn.
I am ready, boasted Kevn
We are all ready, Arn responded, but several of his classmates shook their heads in doubt.
Perhaps they will send Jana, someone put in. It is her home.
Jana’s sending was forlorn. Conservatory is my home, just as it is yours.
There was a long moment of silence. The first- and second-level students looked with wide, respectful eyes at their seniors, who were so close to adulthood and professional life. All the older students knew that the day of their departure was close, whether this year or the next. Now it appeared that someone, besides Sira, would be leaving early.
Isbel looked around at them—tiny Jana with the dark eyes, Kevn tall and thin and craggy, Arn plump and slow-moving, but with quick fingers on the strings of the filhata. There had been thirteen. Now there were twelve. Soon they would be only eleven. They were her family, as were all those at Conservatory. Cathrin had given Isbel more affection than she had received from her own mother.
She lifted her head to gaze around the great room. Theo, the itinerant Singer, was seated at a table with several stablemen, but he was watching the students with a strange expression. Daringly, Isbel opened her mind to see if he would send to them. She heard nothing. Still, his eyes seemed full of longing as he looked from one to the other of the students. Isbel wondered about him. What must it be like, a life spent forever traipsing back and forth between the Houses? Everything about him spoke of the outdoors, of sun and wind and the deep cold. She glanced at Maestro Nikei, at the Magister’s table. He was about the same age, she guessed, but as white and slender and fragile-looking as Maestra Lu.
Isbel forced her attention back to her friends. Perhaps she would have a chance to speak to this Theo before he rode out with the party back to Perl. He must have many stories to tell.
When the evening meal was over, the youngest of the students begged a story. Isbel sat in one of the broad window seats, and the first-level students clustered around her. They were very new, having been at Conservatory only a few months. They still cried for their mothers at night. Isbel and the other third-level students indulged them at every opportunity, prompted by poignant memories of their own misery when they had first arrived.
With one child on her lap and others leaning against her, their little hands on her arms, in her hair, tugging on her tunic, Isbel told them the story of how the Spirit created the thirteen Houses. Because the story was one of the legends, she chanted it aloud on three scale degrees of Mu-Lidya. She sang the old, old words without embellishment.
THE SPIRIT OF STARS, THE GREAT SOWER OF SEEDS,
LOOKED DOWN AT THE EMPTY WORLD AND LAMENTED ITS BARRENNESS.
SO THE SPIRIT REACHED OUT ITS GREAT HAND
TO GATHER THIRTEEN STARS FROM THE ABUNDANT SKY.
THEY SPARKLED IN ITS PALM.
THE SPIRIT BREATHED ON THE BURNING STARS TO COOL THEIR FIRE,
THEN IT THREW THEM ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
AT MANRUS THEY FELL, AND AT ARREN,
AT PERL AND ISENHOPE, AMRIC AND CONSERVATORY.
AT LAMDON, BARIKEN, SOREN, AND CLARE,
AND TARUS AND TREVI AND FILUS.
The children sighed, each having waited to hear the name of his or her own House as Isbel chanted it. One put her cheek in Isbel’s hand, and Isbel cupped it as she sang. Feeling other eyes on her, she looked up to find the itinerant Singer watching from a distance.
THE STARS TOOK ROOT, AND THE HOUSES GREW,
AND THE SPIRIT BREATHED ON THEM A SECOND TIME,
TO FILL THEM WITH NEW LIFE.
THE PEOPLE CAME, AND CAERU AND HRUSS.
FERREL AND URBEAR, WEZEL AND TKIR.
THE SPIRIT LOOKED DOWN AND SAW THE EMPTINESS FILLED,
AND WAS CONTENT WITH ITS CREATION.
BUT THE PEOPLE CRIED OUT TO THE SPIRIT
THAT THE WORLD WAS COLD, AND THEIR SEEDS WOULD NOT GROW.
THE SPIRIT OF STARS GREW SAD THAT ITS PEOPLE WERE DYING.
A THIRD TIME THE SPIRIT BREATHED,
AND FROM ITS OWN FIRE CREATED THE GIFT,
THE SPARK THAT WOULD WARM THE WORLD.
That is us, sent one sleepy child.
Isbel ceased her chant for a moment. You are quite right, Corin. That is us.
Go on, please, sent several others. One girl was already asleep on Isbel’s shoulder.
THE SPIRIT OF STARS, THE SOWER OF SEEDS,
LOOKED DOWN ON THE WORLD WITH ITS HOUSES AND SINGERS
AND SMILED TO SEE IT.
WHEN THE SPIRIT SMILED, THE SUMMER CAME,
THE LAST AND GREATEST OF THE GIFTS.
Several children joined in the last lines, the prayer that ended every quirunha.
SMILE ON US, O SPIRIT OF STARS,
SEND US THE SUMMER TO WARM THE WORLD
UNTIL THE SUNS WILL SHINE ALWAYS TOGETHER.
There was a silence when the song was ended. The Housemen and women who cared for the young ones came forward to gather up the sleepy children.
The Singer Theo waited until they had all left the great room, and he and Isbel were alone. “That was beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He looked about to say something else, but several House members came in to set the long tables with bowls and spoons for the morning meal. Isbel bowed, her mind open for the Singer to continue his thoughts, but he only bowed in return. She knew no other way to invite his friendship. She went off to her bed, leaving him in the great room watching the preparations.
Magister Mkel and Maestra Lu had to decide quickly, and the students knew it. They waited only two days before they learned that Arn would become Cantor at Perl. Although by the common reckoning, all the third-levels were the same age, measured in years Arn was the oldest of them, just short of twenty. His ceremony and departure were scheduled three weeks hence. His classmates congratulated him, touching his hands, encouraging him, understanding his anxiety despite his avowed confidence. Cantor Evn would remain at Perl to smooth the transition, since except for his stiffening, painful fingers, he was healthy.
In the ubanyix that night, the third-level girls stayed so long they had to warm the water twice. They gathered at one end of the ironwood tub, treasuring their moments of leisure.
Even Arn will grow thin at Perl, sent Olna, who was plump and fair. Everyone laughed.
No. He will make them improve the kitchens, Ana sent.
I am afraid they are beyond help, Jana sent, somewhat disloyally. They chuckled, and then a silence grew among them.
Soon we will all be saying goodbye, Isbel sent, unnecessarily.
There were nods, and their young shoulders seemed to bow with the great responsibility each of them bore. One by one, they climbed out of the bath and dried themselves, and helped each other to rebind their hair.
Isbel was the last to leave. As she pulled the door of the ubanyix closed behind her she saw Theo, the itinerant Singer, coming down the corridor from the ubanyor. His blonde hair was damp, and a bit of metal on a thong around his neck shone in the quiru light.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening, Singer,” she responded. She kept her mind open, but he sent nothing, though they walked side by side down the long hallway to the stairs. She glanced sideways at him, appreciating the bright blue of his eyes and the vigorous curl of his short hair.
He caught her glance and smiled. “I’m Theo.”
She smiled back. “I am Isbel.” They walked a few more steps. “Why do you speak aloud so much?” she asked, bluntly, as a curious child might.
Theo laughed, the resonating laugh of a Singer. It made Isbel laugh, too.
“My talents are different from those of Conservatory-trained Singers,” Theo said. He was still smiling, but Isbel was sensitive, and she heard pain in his voice.
She wondered why that was, but she said only, “Oh. I did not know.”
He shrugged. “It’s a big Continent. There’s much to know.”
Isbel said impulsively, “Would you like to see our gardens?”
He bowed. “A pleasure, Isbel. If it’s not too late for you?”
She shook her head, and led the way down the lower corridor to the back of the House, where the seedlings and plants of the nursery filled a huge, steamy space with a thick glass roof. The smell of rich earth and melted snow-water met them even before she opened the door.
“We are especially proud of our gardens,” she told Theo. They strolled down a path between flats of plants just starting to grow. A gardener stepped out between them and bowed deeply to Isbel. She bowed in return.
“We have more fruit trees even than Lamdon.” She pointed to the southeast corner where small trees in raised boxes stood against the outer wall. The kitchens were on the other side of the same wall, so that no breath of the deep cold should penetrate into the gardens and harm the fragile trees or their fruit.
There were benches here and there, and Isbel chose one. They sat, the itinerant keeping a careful distance. “It’s wonderful here,” he said. “I rarely see this part of the Houses I visit.”
“What House are you from?”
“No House.” Sensitive Isbel heard pain in his voice again.
She said gently, “How is that possible, Singer? Who on Nevya has no House?”
He chuckled. “The son of two itinerant Singers has no House.”
“But other itinerant Singers have Houses,” she protested. “I know a story about one, Tarik v’Manrus. Every Nevyan should have a House.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Isbel. But not everyone does.”
“I never knew that.”
“So there are some things they don’t teach you at Conservatory!” Theo laughed. He lifted the thong that held the bit of metal around his neck and showed it to her. It was strangely marked, and she could not read it.
“This belonged to my mother, and her father before that,” he told her. “We come from a line of Singers past remembering. Healers, cutters, itinerants. Perhaps this makes up, in some way, for having no House.”
“I have only seen metal once before,” Isbel said. “Do you earn great amounts of it?”
Theo laughed again. “There is no great amount of it on the whole Continent! I earn enough to keep me supplied. A few bits for each traveler, a few more for healing. It’s enough.”
Isbel felt suddenly weary. She was unused to so much speaking aloud, and the quiet of the nursery gardens made her aware of how late it must be.
Theo seemed to sense her feeling. “It’s very late,” he said quietly. “You should surely be in your bed by now.”
She nodded to him. Evidently his Gift was intact, though apparently he could not send. “You are right, Singer. I must go up.” They rose and walked back through the gardens, down the deserted corridor to the stairwell for the students’ wing.
“Will you wait here at Conservatory for Arn?” Isbel asked before turning to the stairs.
“No. Magister Mkel has arranged a party for me to Arren.”
Isbel’s eyes widened. “So far,” she breathed. “All the way to the Southern Timberlands.”
He grinned at her. His eyes were ice-blue, like a cloudless sky above a snowfield. “It’s my specialty,” he said. “I know the southern Houses better than anyone.”
“Sometime you must tell me about them.” Isbel stifled a yawn with her hand.
He bowed. “With pleasure. Sometime when you’re awake!”
She dimpled, and bowed too. Experimentally, as she started up the steps, she sent, Good night, Singer. But although he waited politely as she climbed the stairs, he made no response.