Mordraud, Book One (55 page)

“
I’ve explained the logic of harmonies to you,” went on Saiden, “not so you can immediately hurl yourself into a quest for resonances. You shouldn’t expect to achieve something that many people who’ve studied far more than you struggle for years to attain. I’ve told you time and again that a resonance is not merely a product of chanting. It appears that you are forgetting, rather than learning.”

“
It’s not easy!” Gwern burst out, exhausted by the frustration. “First you taught me to sing, and now you tell me to do the opposite!”

“
Using your voice to spark some silly little flame is something anybody can learn!” Saiden thundered, getting up and walking round the oval staircase. “If it were merely this, anyone could become a chanter, a resonance seeker. And I’m not exaggerating. Really anyone. I want more! I expect more of you!”

“
But I’m no good at anything!”

“
Then try harder. Now, let’s start again with the arpeggios. But you mustn’t think that music can reveal who knows what secret to you. Don’t envisage fire, or cold. You don’t have to shift your imagination to the chant, you just have to sing.”

Gwern
started again. His voice had improved greatly, despite its still young and unripe state. Saiden made him work hard on specific scales that seemed jarringly off-key to him. They went against Gwern’s customary musical experience. They couldn’t be enhanced with lyrics, and they never led to anything. He resisted through the torment of repeating again and again, without ever achieving anything if not a weary pant. Saiden never took his eyes off him, as usual.

“
You see, Gwern, you have to believe me when I say I know everything about Cambrian chanting. You’d be perfect as a pupil at the Arcane.”

“
Do you really think so?!”

“
Of course. The usual lad who wastes ten years of his life to manipulate a few glowing coloured lights.”

Gw
ern bit his tongue and waited for his master to finish insulting him. Saiden had seemed nice to him, at first. Easy-going. Instead, when he started studying under him, the boy had to change his mind. Saiden knew how to be a real bastard, when he wanted to.

“
You’re getting worked up over nothing.”

“
You keep mocking me, I can’t concentrate.”

“
Of course you can’t. You don’t even know how to keep your emotions under control.”

“
It’s not easy, with you constantly repeating that what I’m doing is no use at all.”

“
No use at all?! Then you really haven’t understood what I’m saying! Do you actually think that to strike a resonance with yourself, you necessarily have to waste a great deal of time singing?! You have to do it in the most natural way!”

Saiden
wasn’t shouting, but it was as if he were. His voice was able to sharpen itself like a knife, and to mellow an instant later. “You must condense! Abstract! You have to
vibrate
with the sound of perfection, and make it yours! You mustn’t expect an accursed scale or a spot-on arpeggio to burst into a storm of fire! Find resonance with yourself before seeking one with the world – and you have to do it
quickly
! Go as far as the point where chanting is no longer of use to you... because you’ve understood where it stems from.”

“
Is there something precise that sets off a resonance?!”

“
Work hard, and perhaps you’ll find that out,” Saiden replied dryly, his eyes glued to the boy’s chest. What was he looking at, Gwern wondered uneasily. What did Saiden contemplate, as he performed those ridiculous endless scales? He wanted to ask him, just like he wanted explanations for many other things his teacher had touched on, without ever going into them in depth. But Gwern swallowed down everything he was about to say, clutching at the last energy he had left. The pride of not giving up. Saiden had to convince himself that Gwern would learn to seek out those wretched resonances. The effort, the anger, the sense of uselessness that he continually felt were an affliction to bear with bowed head. “If I only knew what I was looking for...”

Saiden,
differently to many other times, didn’t rail against him or send him away because of his inertia. Instead, he stood before Gwern, and tapped his finger on the boy’s sternum. As if to attract the attention of a fish trapped in a small aquarium. An unsettling gesture that made him shiver.

Something happened
. It was sudden and silent. Saiden hadn’t chanted, nor had he moved his lips to do so. Yet, his body seemed to convert into a sort of dense liquid. His form and garments were undergoing constant and fluctuating change. A moment before, it was him. The blink of an eye and he seemed to become a woman. Then an old man very like himself – a sort of distant relative. Saiden’s liquid flesh mutated shape so swiftly that Gwern could never quite grasp who he was actually embodying.

“
Try and imagine your body as existing in constant resonance with its surroundings. And that this resonance is due to the fact that your body’s boundaries don’t stop with your experience, but are much... broader.”

“
I don’t understand, for love of the Gods!” Gwern blurted in despair.

Saiden
huffed and lifted a hand. His patience really seemed at its limit, and perhaps he felt the time had come to give his only pupil a helping shove. As if he too were anxious to find something out.

“
Put yours up as well.”

Gwern p
laced his hand opposite. He was about to touch the other hand, but Saiden pulled back.

“
Now, are you and I in contact at the moment? Answer me.”

The obvious answer
was no. What the maestro wanted to hear was clearly the opposite. Gwern preferred to stay on obvious terrain. He didn’t want to be slandered again, not before dinnertime. Supporting his tutor’s idea was pointless if he lacked the reasoning to back up his statement.

“
No, we’re not touching.”

“
This is a conviction of yours, induced by the experience you have of the reality surrounding you,” replied Saiden, his hand raised and taut, his gaze planted on Gwern’s chest. As if he were completely boss-eyed.

“
Our hands are in contact. And this is due to a... force... that we all have. Our bodies mark a very limited horizon, Gwern. Many things invisible to us nevertheless exist. And they all come from the same energy. And it’s precisely from this that chanters draw their inspiration in striking resonances. But the chanting is merely a superfluous passage. You have to learn to
free
...” Saiden’s gaze on the boy’s sternum became that of a hawk. “You have to
unleash
this force.”

His master
’s body went on endlessly remodelling itself, and Gwern had to avert his eyes to avoid vomiting. A slight shaking in his shoulders was the warning signal of an approaching fit. Since he’d been studying with Saiden, his attacks had grown less frequent, but far more dangerous. Without Saiden, he’d have died after the first few days of study.

“
I’ll give you another example. Are you with me?”

“
Hmm, not entirely...” muttered Gwern, restraining a retch.

“
Fine,” returned Saiden as if he hadn’t even listened to his reply. “You’re in your house, you open the door. You see your garden, or the street – it doesn’t matter what. It’s raining. What do you think?”

“
But what sort of question’s that?!”

“
Don’t worry about the question. Just worry about your answer.”

Gwern
swallowed a dry gulp and tottered on feeble legs. “I think it’s raining.”

“
Excellent. Now imagine a group of chanters are singing together too far away for you to hear. They’re shaping harmonies they’ve learnt note for note from other chanters, melodies that can cause rain in a specific area. Bad luck dictates that your house is in the heart of this storm. What do you think?”

“
That, well...” Gwern burbled, vexed. “I think their voices have struck resonance with the skies and...”

“
NO! Curse the Gods, NO!”

Gwern
mumbled an inarticulate apology and placed a hand over his mouth. He was about to churn up the contents of his stomach. Saiden’s liquid form was a relentless punch at the mouth of his belly.

“
You’ll think just the same that it’s raining, won’t you? You won’t even ask yourself whether that rain might be fruit of chanting, otherwise any occurrence around you could simply be traced back to an infinite chain of resonances created by somebody else. Instead, you might think it was the work of the Gods. That’s what they usually teach, isn’t it? So, given that you have to explain that rain in some way, and you don’t know that it’s merely the product of a pack of chanters concealed who knows where, you make an appeal to the Gods. Otherwise, who’d be capable of placing the whole world in resonance, shaping the rains, winds and droughts? Do you believe in the Gods, Gwern?”

For a moment,
Gwern experienced the distinct sensation that those questions were merely traps set by Saiden so he could observe the boy’s reactions. Nonetheless, he did feel something stir inside him. And it was not just the sick.

It was a strange doubt
.

“
The Gods? Hmm, I don’t know... Well, they created the world, so they could also be the source of the resonances...”

“
So you say they created the world?”

“
Well, it’s a common opinion...”

“
And how did they do it?”

“
Hmm, well...” bumbled a puzzled Gwern. His voice died in his throat. Another small sudden doubt. However, Gwern didn’t succeed in dissecting it. He couldn’t even manage to focus on it.

“
So chanters shouldn’t chant, but should offer up prayers. Or do you believe chanting is simply a form of worship for the Gods?”

“
No, I don’t think a divine entity would relish the idea that its creatures could have the power to alter the world it created...”

Saiden s
miled and tapped a finger on his sternum again.

“
Good. Therefore, if, on opening the door, you see it’s raining, what do you think?”

Gwern
fought to curb himself and averted his gaze from Saiden’s liquid body. “I can’t think it’s the result of a resonance, because I can’t hear it... But I can believe it’s the work of the Gods. When I don’t understand something, the Gods are always a good explanation.”

“
But then comes the moment when you hear the men chanting...” Saiden went on, shifting dangerously close. His nausea swelled unchecked.

“
And so I should think these men possess divine powers...”

His statement fell in a
weighted silence, without reverberation. As if there weren’t a drop of air in the room.

“
Do you believe men are Gods?”

Gwern
rejected this idea, embarrassed by its absurdity.

“
Thus, where do the resonances stem from? From men, or Gods? Can you tell me how the Gods were born?”

Gwern
had consumed all his resistance. A fit was imminent. He was visibly weakening by the second. Saiden besieged him with questions that carried on twisting on themselves.

“
Master, I don’t feel... well...”

“
I don’t care,” he retorted. At last, his body stopped mutating. “You have to learn a lesson today, an important lesson! Let’s see if a bit of fresh air will help set your ideas straight.”

Saiden
began ascending the spiral staircase, followed by a slow Gwern.

“
Where are we going?”

“
Outside.”

“
Upstairs?!”

“
Yes. It’s been too long since you looked outside, wouldn’t you say?”

They reached the landings that led to the
rooms stretching into the tower’s void, and went on as far as the huge glass dome. A large framed rectangle was hinged to the metal structure supporting the roof.

“
Open that hatch door and go out. Go on!”

Gwern
shoved the heavy glass slab and a gust of icy air immediately hit him in the face, blinding him. The climate was dreadful: a sort of blizzard of water, ice and snow mixed together. Everything – the woods, the meadows, the mountains – was white. Gwern shrunk to himself in the grey tunic Saiden had provided him with, and looked around in the hope of a mouthful of edible air. It was so cold, just breathing could kill him.

“
What a horrific winter. It’s fearsome! I never saw anything of the kind in Eld... It’s like being in a wilderness in the deep North!”

“
Look carefully,” instructed Saiden, without batting an eyelid for the cold. He was dressed in a pale bluish shirt. It must have been a colour he was very fond of, since he often wore it. His black hair lashed around, whipped by the wind. It seemed too heavy. It snapped as if made of lead. Instead, Gwern was growing numb inside his tunic, seeking out in vain any mild warmth. It was a wholly unnatural cold. As if something invisible were sucking all the heat out of his body.