Singer in the Snow Read online

  Luke had seen his sister in the Cantoris, her head tilted, her eyes closed as she listened to the music. She was dark like Luke, but petite like her mother. She was impatient to claim two summers, like all Nevyan children, but in truth, she was only six years old, born in the second season of a long winter. He had been thirteen, not quite three summers himself.

  Erlys stood up now, shaking the straw from her loose trousers. As he handed her his empty bowl, Luke noticed she wore new boots, beautifully made, with rich cuffs of caeru fur and thick hide soles. “Another pair of boots?” he asked, without thinking.

  She glanced away, absently smoothing the binding of her hair. “Axl gave them to me,” she said vaguely.

  Luke bit his lip. Being hrussmaster at Tarus was respectable work, and important work, but it was not lucrative. They were plain Housemen, he and Axl. They wore the colored tunics of the lower levels, and lived in a small apartment not far from the stables. Luke could not imagine how Axl managed to bestow so many luxuries on Erlys, and her blithe acceptance of them irritated him. He thought sometimes, though with a pang at his disloyalty, that his mother behaved as if she were as much a child as Gwin, or even more so. She forgot Axl’s slights as easily as she accepted his gifts.

  He bent so his mother could kiss his cheek, and then he turned back to the laboring hruss.

  WHEN THE AFTERNOON was almost gone, Luke went to close the top of the half-door. Temperatures dropped swiftly as daylight faded, and no Nevyan liked looking out into darkness. Every citizen understood from babyhood how deadly the deep cold could be. Luke had exercised the hruss and brought them back to the stables for their feeding. He had spent the entire afternoon cleaning the stable floor. The mare still labored. It seemed he would miss another meal.

  He turned swiftly when he heard the door from the House open. He expected Axl at last, but it was the slight figure of his sister, Gwin, stepping carefully across the straw-strewn floor. Behind her came the junior Cantor of Tarus, timid Josu, the slender cylinder of his filla gleaming in his hand. His eyes darted anxiously here and there, and Luke knew he was searching for the hrussmaster. Axl’s disdain of the Gifted was well-known.

  “Gwinlet?” Luke said, eyebrows raised in question.

  “Hello, Luke,” she piped. She gave him a tentative smile. “I brought help.”

  Luke hurried to bow to the Cantor, feeling clumsy in the presence of this slender, fine-boned young man, whose somber clothes spoke eloquently of the upper levels. “Cantor Josu. I—I don’t—”

  “Your sister tells me that your beast has suffered since yesterday,” Josu said. His voice was light and clear.

  Luke couldn’t think of anything to say. He had never spoken directly to one of the Gifted, and he marveled at Gwin’s ease with them. He was painfully aware of the soiled straw that clung to his boots, that his hands needed washing and his nails were dark with grime. He ducked his head and stepped back to open the loose box.

  The three of them crowded in, and Gwin looked up expectantly at the Cantor.

  Luke stood awkwardly to one side as Cantor Josu stared down at the hruss’s swollen belly. The Singer’s delicate nostrils flared at the scents of manure and sweating animal flesh, the tinge of blood in the air. Only Gwin seemed entirely comfortable.

  Josu cleared his throat. “I have no experience with birthing, Houseman. My senior aids the Housewomen—at least, he did when he was well. But I can try.”

  The mare groaned, and Luke knelt beside her head. He stroked her shaggy neck. The heat of her body almost singed his fingers. “Poor old lady,” he said under his breath. He looked up at the Cantor, wishing he could be articulate, at least at this moment. “Her gut’s gone weak,” he blurted, and then wished he could unspeak the words. It was the truth of the situation, but there must be a better way to express it, especially in the presence of one of Tarus’s Cantors.

  The ways of the Gifted were beyond Luke’s understanding. They spoke to one another with their minds, an ability Luke could not comprehend. Cantors and Cantrixes had power over the very air, over the inner workings of the body.

  Cantor Josu put his filla to his lips, his fingers on the stops. He closed his eyes as he began to play.

  “Aiodu,” Gwin whispered to Luke. He had no idea what she meant.

  The slender thread of music spun patterns as delicate and crystalline as snowflakes. Josu’s fingers lifted and fell on the stops of the little instrument in a graceful dance as mysterious to Luke the stableman as the Gift itself. Gwin stood beside Luke, one small hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, too, her face as intent as the Cantor’s. A prickle of anxiety crept across Luke’s shoulders as he looked at her, a vague unease that had nothing to do with the hruss.

  The mare groaned again, and her sides heaved. Distracted, Luke pressed his hands against her, and felt the ripple of her flanks as the Cantor’s psi helped her to push at her burden. He forgot his anxiety in wonder at it. He exclaimed, “Six Stars! It’s working!” Gwin opened her eyes and looked with shy pride from the Cantor to her brother. Josu went on playing, and the air in the loose box grew brighter, warmed by his efforts.

  A half hour passed before the foal, in a rush of blood and water, was delivered at last. The odors intensified in the overheated stall. Cantor Josu, perspiring and a little pale, leaned against the wall with a handkerchief pressed to his nose while Luke scrubbed the new little beast clean with the rags Gwin brought. A few minutes later they helped the foal to stand on its wobbly legs. Gwin laughed to see it staggering around the loose box, nosing its dam, nosing Luke as if he could provide what it needed. Luke helped the old mare to her feet, and the foal began to suckle.

  Luke straightened, pulling his sweat-soaked tunic away from his body. He stared at his boots as he mumbled, “Thanks.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “Might have lost her.”

  The Singer waved a slender hand, and backed out of the loose box. Gwin started to follow him, but Luke caught her back. “You’re too dirty, Gwinlet,” he whispered.

  In the passageway, Cantor Josu stamped his feet to loosen the bits of straw that stuck to his thin-soled boots. He tucked his filla inside his tunic as he turned toward the House.

  Before he could take a step, the door into the stables banged open. Josu stopped where he was, and his pale face grew paler.

  “Luke?” Axl’s voice was deep, the baritone of a big man. Luke pushed Gwin gently behind him, and stepped to the door of the loose box.

  Axl had handsome, even features and a shock of thick blond hair. His blue eyes, as he stood staring at the Singer, were icy. Courtesy demanded that he wait for the Cantor to speak first, but Luke could feel the edge of his stepfather’s temper in the silence.

  Josu, of course, should have nothing to fear from a mere master of hruss. But Axl’s sharp tongue was famous throughout the House. He complained constantly to the Housekeeper that the quiru did not extend far enough, that the stables were too dark, that the water of the ubanyor was too cold.

  Axl glanced to his right, where Luke stood. The brightness of the air in the stall gave clear evidence of a Singer’s work. Axl couldn’t address Josu, but he snapped at his step-son. “What’s happening here?”

  Luke felt his own temper growing, heating his chest, burning his cheeks, but he restrained it. He had been restraining it for three years, for Erlys’s sake. Now he muttered through stiff lips, “The mare—long labor. Cantor Josu played, and—and the foal is born at last.”

  Axl’s lips quirked. “Couldn’t handle it alone, Luke? A simple foaling?”

  It was a grossly unfair thing to say. Luke knew he was good with hruss. The beasts responded to him, trusted him. But he couldn’t defend himself against Axl. He was not the one who would pay the price of such a conflict. He set his jaw, and kept silent.

  Gwin crowded against the back of his legs, and her little hand stole into his, seeking comfort.

  The young Cantor cleared his throat. “It was a simple thing, Houseman,” he said uneasily. “
A nudge only. Your son spent all of last night with the beast.”

  Axl bowed to the Singer, not quite as deeply as was proper, but elegantly. “I thank you for your help, Cantor,” he said smoothly. “Especially in view of the shortage of the Gift, and your senior’s illness. I’ll certainly mention to the Magister your generosity in spending your afternoon in the stables.” It was more a threat than a compliment.

  Josu swallowed, the muscles of his throat working. He nodded to Axl, and then to Luke, and made his escape from the stables, sidling past the hrussmaster.

  Gwin crept out from behind the shelter of Luke’s legs, keeping her tight grip on his hand.

  Axl’s eyebrows lifted, and he gave the little girl a tight smile that turned Luke’s heart to stone. “You here, too?” he said. “Does Erlys know?”

  “Nothing wrong with Gwin being here,” Luke muttered.

  “Need a lot of help with your work, don’t you, son?” Axl said lightly. “From the Gifted and from a slip of a girl.” He strode to the loose box to look in. “Better get this mess cleaned up. Expecting a traveling party tonight.”

  Luke released his sister’s hand, and bent to scrub the filth from her little boots with a handful of straw. “Off to Mama now, Gwinlet,” he murmured. “I have work to do.” Gwin scampered away without a backward look.

  Luke walked back into the stall, a wary eye on his stepfather. Axl behaved one way in Erlys’s presence, and another in her absence. Luke, and even Gwin, moved warily around him. Gwin had learned to control her expression in his presence. She kept her voice small, and she played with her toys only when Axl was away. She struggled to keep her cubbyhole of a room neat enough that he would have nothing to complain of. When Luke thought of Gwin’s attempts to smooth her bedfurs, to tidy her little assortment of brushes and ribbons, his chest grew tight with resentment.

  He gritted his teeth and reached for the pitchfork. Axl, hands on hips, watched him begin his work before he turned away to the tack room.

  Luke scraped the dirty straw out into the corridor and scattered fresh straw between the feet of the old mare and her suckling foal. He loaded the refuse into a wheeled barrow, and pushed it to the outer door. He pulled on his furs before he opened the door, worked the barrow over the stone step, and wheeled it around the back of the stables to empty it into the waste drop.

  Full darkness had not yet settled over the Frozen Sea. In the bay, the fragments from the iceberg glowed crimson in the setting sun. The day had been long, and Luke thought the much-anticipated summer must surely be near. He let the barrow rest and walked to the cliff edge to look down on the rocky, wave-lapped verge.

  Tarus had no beach to speak of. The road approaching the House wound around the bay, skirting the cliffs. The fishermen pulled their kikyu directly up the cliff on a rope pulley, else they would be full of ice at daybreak. Only when the Visitor arrived, bringing the summer, could the kikyu stay in the water at night, bobbing peacefully on the waves, waiting for the fishing parties to go out in the morning.

  Luke yearned for the summer—to be out of doors, to escape the endless labor of the stables and the disdainful eye of his stepfather. He loved working with hruss—their pungent smell, the feel of their shaggy fur, their trusting ways. But he longed to ride as his father had done, escorting hunters or traveling parties, learning the secret ways of the Continent. Luke knew how to build cookfires of softwood, how to locate the elusive caeru dens. His father had promised to teach him how to track the urbear that wandered off the glacier, to show him the landmarks to the passes and trails of the Continent. But his father died before he could fulfill his promise, and when Erlys accepted Axl, Luke’s fortunes changed.

  He sighed, and lifted the handles of the barrow once again. He was, he thought, little more than Axl’s servant. He could not even protect the hruss from his stepfather’s cruelty.

  He glanced above the roofs of the House, beyond the halo of quiru light that enveloped it. Stars had begun to glitter in Nevya’s sky. Time to get indoors, before the cold reached its icy fingers beneath his furs. The summer was not yet here. But soon, he told himself, one morning soon, he would look to the southeastern horizon and see the Visitor’s pale face peeking above the mountains. Then, for a few short weeks, he would know the taste of freedom.

  Two

  MREEN MOUNTED THE dais in Conservatory’s Cantoris, her filhata tucked under her arm, her back tingling under the intense regard of her fellow students, her teachers, and the Housemen and Housewomen. It was her day, the day of her first quirunha, the ritual that would, if successful, proclaim Mreen a full Cantrix, Conservatory-trained and ready to take up the responsibilities of her own Cantoris. Every seat on the long ironwood benches was taken, the bright tunics of the lower levels mingling with the somber ones of the upper House. People without seats stood in the back of the room, before the tall limeglass windows, or leaned against the side walls. Mreen had prepared for the moment, but still, as she turned to look out at the curious faces turned up to the dais, nerves quivered beneath her breastbone. She smoothed her new black tunic over her trousers and took a slow breath.

  She knew why so many people were in attendance. There had never been a Singer such as she. In fact, she could not truly be called a Singer. Though she walked in a perpetual haze of light, her own private, spontaneous quiru that hardly faded even when she slept, she could not sing. Neither could she speak. She was not capable of so much as a whisper. As an infant, her cries and laughter had been silent. As a student, her quiru were powerful and swift, but they were accomplished solely with the filla or, when she reached the third level, the stringed filhata. She had mastered the modes and their uses swiftly and easily. But she could not sing.

  The Housemen and -women of Conservatory, who knew Mreen’s wishes only if one of the Gifted voiced them for her, had gathered to learn how a quirunha might be with no singing.

  Sunlight glittered blindingly on the snowfields from beyond the windows, and was reflected from the polished ironwood benches and the smooth stone floor. The Magistrix of Conservatory stood near the doors, her arms folded, her tall figure limned in light. Her features did not move as she sent, Are you ready, Mreen?

  Mreen bowed to the assembly as she responded. I am, Magistrix.

  Please begin, then.

  Mreen seated herself on the stool that awaited her and took her filhata across her knees. She stroked the strings, just once, checking her tuning. The bass C rippled out into the Cantoris, vibrating in perfect accord with the layered fifths of the other six strings.

  At a normal quirunha, even a first quirunha as this one was, there would be two Singers on the dais. A senior Cantor or Cantrix would support the student in this all-important ceremony, which was as much a test as a proof that the junior Singer was ready. But they had decided—Magistrix Sira, Maestra Magret, and Mreen herself—that she must perform her quirunha alone. She must prove her worthiness, demonstrate that despite being voiceless, she could serve her people, create the warmth and light that protected them from the deep cold and fulfill the duties of a full Cantrix.

  Mreen bent her head above her instrument and closed her eyes. She plucked the C with deliberation, letting it fill the Cantoris, one solitary note to throb in the bones of its hearers. She placed her forefinger on the string to raise it a half step, and then another. The melody that swelled from her instrument was in the fifth mode, Mu-Lidya, rich and mournful and satisfying. She stated the tune first as monody, and then began to harmonize it with the other strings, letting the chords grow and change. She modulated to Lidya as she had planned, and then to Doryu. She closed her eyes, letting the music carry her, visualizing its form as she always did, seeing the pattern that grew and expanded and then curled in on itself as she changed modes, giving the music a new pattern, a fresh color, another meaning.

  The image of her mother, the mother she had never known, took shape in her mind—laughing Isbel who had gone beyond the stars seventeen years before, Isbel who had died giving bir
th to Mreen, Isbel who should never have conceived a child. Mreen’s heart filled with grief and shame, and she poured all of it into her music. She didn’t hear the gasps from her hearers, didn’t see the billow of light or feel the wave of warmth that swept out from the dais. She floated on the tide of melody, letting it carry her away from her secret sorrow, away from the Cantoris, and most especially away from the curious stares of the Housemembers. She had been born for the Gift. Almost effortlessly, she stretched herself past the walls of Conservatory, beyond the stands of irontrees, reaching, as if to the stars themselves, for her disgraced mother.

  Mreen had no idea how long she played. She modulated to Iridu, a perfectly prepared, perfectly balanced modulation, and restated her melody, embellishing it with little quarter-tone flourishes, her fingertips tingling, her filhata as much a part of her as her own hands.

  Mreen.

  She heard the Magistrix’s sending, but only faintly. Her mind was full of music.

  Mreen.

  Vaguely, she knew she must bring the piece to an end, but she had ideas yet to work out, a trill on the third degree of Iridu, resolving to a flurry of descending notes that would anticipate her cadence . . .

  Cantrix Mreen. You have made your point.

  Mreen drew a sharp breath, suddenly aware of what she was doing. Overdoing. She abandoned the trill and slowed her flying fingers on the strings. Smoothly, as if she had planned just such an abrupt ending, she modulated back to Mu-Lidya, and reached her cadence. She took a slower breath, and allowed the resonance of her final chord to decay in the hall before she opened her eyes.

  No Nevyan ever complained of being too warm. Cold was every Nevyan’s enemy, the ogre that stalked their nightmares, that waited beyond the circles of quiru light to seize them in its deadly grip. But at this moment, it was as if the two suns had shone directly into the Cantoris, warming the air to breathlessness, bringing perspiration to the brows and lips of everyone present. The air sparkled with a reddish glow, kindled by Mreen’s powerful Gift. The dais itself shimmered with light, as it were afire.