The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [207]
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.
I know what beauty is
The wind from the west
The far-going green
The curlew’s song
And her,
And her . . .
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 they 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,