LEOFF STARED at the blank parchment, terrified.
It was not the sort of thing that usually frightened him.
Since childhood he had been able to hear music in his head: not just music he had experienced but music he imagined. Not only melodies but harmony lines, counterpoint, chords. He could compose a sinfonia for fifty instruments and hear each individual voice. Writing it down was an afterthought, a convenience, a way to share his music with the less fortunate.
But now he feared the music lurking in his skull. Every time he tried to think about the forbidden modes he had rediscovered while he was Robert's captive, he felt ill. How could he find an antidote when he couldn't face the disease?
"I saw my mother last night," a soft voice behind him said.
Startled, he turned to find Mery watching him from a few paces away.
"Did you?" he asked. Mery's mother was dead, of course, but one saw the dead now and then.
"In the well," she confirmed. "The old well in the back garden."
"You shouldn't be playing around there," he said. "It's dangerous."
"I wasn't playing," the girl said softly.
Of course you weren't, he thought sadly. You never play anymore.
Not that she ever had, much, but there once had been something of a little girl about her.
"Did your mother say anything?"
"She said she was sorry," Mery said. "She said she's been forgetting things."
"She must have loved you very much to come see you," he said.
"It's easier for them now," she said. "The music makes it easier."
"The music we made together? For Prince Robert?"
She nodded. "But they're singing it now, over there."
"The dead?"
"They sing and sing and don't even know they're doing it."
Leoff rubbed his mess of a hand against his forehead. "They're singing it," he muttered. "What is happening?"
"Why does it make you sad that the ghosts are singing?"
"It doesn't," he said gently. "Not in and of itself. But the song is bad, I think." He held up his hands. "Do you remember when I could play hammarharp with these?"
"Yes," she said. "The praifec had your hands broken."
"Right," Leoff said, shying from the memory of that pain. "And for a long time they didn't heal, but now they have. Something in the world is broken: The thing that separates life from death. Our song made it worse, and I think their song-what you hear them singing-is keeping it worse. Preventing things from healing."
"Your hands didn't heal right," she said. "You still can't play hammarharp."
"That's true," he conceded.
"What if the world heals, but not right?"
"I don't know," Leoff sighed.
She looked at the blank paper. "Is that what you're trying to do? Make music that will heal things?"
"Yes," he said.
"Will it heal me?"
"I hope so."
She walked over and leaned against him. "I'm sad, Leoff," she confided. "I'm always sad."
"I know," he replied.
"I wish I could help you, but every time I try to play something, I hurt people."
"I know."
"I sing for the ghosts, though, and sometimes play for them very quietly, when no one is around. Like at the well."
"Does that make you happy?"
"No. But it makes me feel a better kind of sad."
Rain had washed Haundwarpen that morning and left it smelling new, as if its cobbles and bricks had been laid that morning. It was a neat little town anyway, but today it almost looked like something that had been painted, so fresh were the yellow and rust trims on the houses, the blue sky held in street puddles, the copper roof of the clock tower. Artwair's estate was only a short walk from town, and Leoff enjoyed going there, especially with Areana, who despite having grown up five leagues away in Wistbirm, seemed to know everyone. He liked to watch her haggle for fruit, fish, and meat and knew by the curve and tautness of her neck when she was about to settle.
He enjoyed the details of the place, the door knockers in the shapes of fish and flowers and especially hands, the weather vanes on the rooftops, some shaped like banners, others like cranes or dragons, but especially hands.
And he loved the Rauthhat, the lively beer hall in the center of town. It was always alive with both locals and travelers, and there was usually a minstrel or two trying to get by to learn new melodies from.
He needed the quiet of the estate, but he needed this, too-life. Especially after his talk with Mery that morning.
So the three of them found an empty table at the Rauthhat, and Jen, the barmaid with red hair and a wide grin, brought them the brown beer the place served, mussels cooked in wine and butter, and some thick, crusty bread to sop up the liquid with. Not surprisingly, Leoff felt a little more cheerful. Areana sparkled like a jewel as she said her hellos, and Mery at least ate some of the mussels and sipped at the wine.
But that went only so far, and even in the Rauthhat things were a bit subdued. No one was talking about it, but everyone knew there was an army from Hansa just a few leagues away. Haundwarpen had a garrisoned keep and respectable walls, but determined armies had taken them before.
But for this night at least, Leoff joined everyone in the place in pretending nothing bad was afoot, and he let himself develop a bit of a glow. That all ended quite healthily in the arms of his young wife that night, when, as they lay damp and sleepy in the sheets, she kissed his ear and whispered, "I'm with child."
He cried with happiness and fear, and they fell asleep holding each other.
The next day found him staring at the blank sheet again, with-finally-the glimmer of an idea.
What if he could give the dead something else to sing?
A number of questions came around at that. Why were they singing the deadly music he had written? Would they sing anything using the forbidden modes?
Was Mery lying or deluded? That was an important one.
The old music had progressed in stages, coaxing and finally seducing the living toward death. Those who had died seemed to have expired by some act of sheer will, their hearts stopping because they-with all the strength and purpose in them-wanted their hearts to stop.
He remembered wanting it, too. He had almost surrendered everything.
Was it possible to write a backward progression? One that would make the dead yearn toward life? And if so, would that be the right thing to do? He pictured hordes of corpses rising, walking to the Rauthhat for beer, seeking the beds of their widows and widowers…
But at least he was thinking now.
He made beginnings, musical vignettes and fancies on the themes of life and death. He wrote melodies and countermelodies stripped of the modal accompaniments that would give them real power, able now to sense something of what they might do in his head.
It was with a start that he realized it was after midday and someone was calling-no, screaming-for him.
He flung open his door and hurried out of the house. Areana was running toward him across the clover, her long lace-trimmed blue skirt billowing. Her face was red from crying, and she was so hysterical, hiccups kept any sense from her words. But she was pointing, and he finally made it out: "Mery."
The girl was lying in the well, facedown. His first thought was that it wasn't Mery at all but just a little doll someone had dropped down there.
When the servants fished her out, he couldn't pretend that any longer. She wasn't breathing, and water poured from her mouth and nose.
The next few bells were a blur. He held Areana and tried to say comforting things while the servants changed the girl, cleaned her up, and put her on her bed.
"She was so unhappy," Areana said when things starting coming back into focus. "Do you think…"
"I don't know," he said. "She told me yesterday that she heard the dead singing at the well, that she saw her mother. I told her not to go there anymore, but I should have-I should have stopped her."
"It's not your fault."
"It's all my fault," he replied. "If I had never written that cursed music. If I had watched her more carefully…"
"You loved her," Areana said. "You gave her more than anyone else in her life. You showed her a little of what she was capable of."
He just shook his head, and she took him by the temples and kissed his forehead.
"Why are you crying?" Mery asked. She was standing in the doorway in the fresh dress they had put on her. Her hair was still wet.