In Hospital, Palanthas
April, 353
Athelard to his brother Bayard, greetings,
I hear in a letter from our mother that you, too, have chosen the path of a father you do not remember, of the older brother who sends you this. That you have chosen, if indeed it was ever a choice, to take up the calling, to enter, as Mother has written, THE ANCIENT AND HOLY SOLAMNIC ORDERS, NOW THAT THE SIEGE HAS BEEN LIFTED, THE ARMIES OF THE ENEMY DRIVEN BACK ONCE AGAIN FROM OUR LAND AND FROM THOSE THINGS WE ARE HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND BY THE MEASURE AND THE CODE.
As always, Mother's words are graceful, high-sounding. I hear them as I sit by a window that must face west, for I can feel the warmth on my face most deeply when the loudest bird song is passing, when the first crickets of what must be early spring begin that scrape and rattle that brings night to the ear. And since the handwriting in my letter no doubt will surprise you, I must tell you one thing more, that in this room sits a nurse, attentive and kind, who writes down the long words, the longer thoughts from brother to brother. Her voice is soft, muffled. Harder to hear than the sound of the birds or the crickets. I can only imagine she has turned away from me as she writes down what I have to say to you.
She asks me to continue, her voice louder now. As I have said, she is kind. She is attentive.
I wish that when I was younger I had paid more attention to bird song. My nurse has told me that the birds in the evening sing the names of those who will die in the night. I have no itch for prophecy, but I suppose that the song is subtle, that perhaps different birds sing at different times of the day, or that perhaps there is even a language among them — a sort of call and response, some quarrels I might understand had I listened earlier and more intently. It would be good to eavesdrop — something to pass the time in what the surgeons insist on calling THIS HOUSE OF PEACE AND HEALING. But it is the land now that is peaceful and healed, the hospital haunted with battle and pain and uneven memory.
Because that story you have heard about the blind is only true in part, that when sight goes, the other senses… sharpen? Intensify? Bayard, if this world were all poetry and justice and balance, and beauty no accident — if things took place because they were more beautiful or poetic or just — then the myths regarding the blind would be physical law: what war hath taken away, nature restoreth, or a similar poetry. But it is not like that. What you do in the blackness is pay more attention, and if cardinals and finches and larks all sound the same to you, it reminds you only that long ago there were some things you neglected.
But you cannot blame yourself for the oversights of childhood and of study, because any tale that is entirely and unarguably true, whether of blindness or of birds or of battle, or of something purely noble in any of these things, is the wildest tale of all, for none of these are purely understood until we sink into darkness, until we rise on thin and delicate wings, or until we carry a lance while the fire descends.
Our mother says you are «eager» for news of the siege, for accounts of heroism and high adventure, that you practice your swordplay in the parlor, much to her ill ease and at the mortal peril of her heirloom vases and silver. That you sing of "returning souls to Huma's breast" as your sword dances carelessly near cabinet or candle.
The words of the chant are "Return THIS soul to Huma's breast," Bayard. To be spoken over the fallen body of a comrade, not over the phantom draconians you fight amidst Mother's porcelain. The chant is more individual, more personal than you have imagined. But you were not there at the siege.
Do you know that sometimes the darkness seems more penetrable? That it shifts from a uniform blackness to a muddy or even rust-colored brown? Or it seems to shift to those colors I believe I still remember. Then, perhaps, it is only from the monotony of dark that I imagine the colors arising. Perhaps even dead eyes play tricks, as the living eye plays over the white on white of a blizzard and begins out of boredom or dazzlement to see impossible reds and greens in a snowfall.
For the snow, pure white on white and over white, began to fall as we were on the road to the tower, as we heard the footmen grumble about Now SNOW ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, Sir Heros grumbling back to me, NOW GRUMBLING ON TOP OF SNOW, as I set his helmet and sword in front of me on the saddle so that the blanket I had wrapped about my shoulders would cover them, too, would keep them spotless and dry for the battle we knew was coming, inevitable as weather.
It was a mist at first, undecided between snow or rain, though you could guess it would decide as soon as the temperature dropped, the steam rising like mist from the horses, from the breath of the soldiers, until we rode through a fog and I could see no farther than Sir Heros in front of me. I followed his horse and assumed he followed the man in front of him, and he the man in front of him, and somehow I reasoned that whoever led our column had ridden out of the mist by now or at least had the wisdom to know where he was going. And the ground turned to mud beneath us — not that you could see it, but you could hear the hooves of the horses suck and spatter within it. Had I foresight I would have seen this as training for blindness. But foresight in this country was as dim as the horseman ahead of you.
And the footmen sang no songs about Huma's breast, about the kingfisher, crown, sword or rose, or about the high honor of battle, but a new drinking song picked up on the march — a song the knights had hushed before because it was an embarrassment to ladies, a song I suppose they figured was no longer embarrassing because there were no ladies among us. Perhaps you have heard it, the real song of the army: