It was dusk when Sharra came up to her room with a bag that had been sent by the dressmaker, Berya, and the news that the announcement of Ember’s forthcoming performance had evoked a huge response. Even locals who had previously shunned Anousha and her establishment had sent messengers to reserve places for the evening. Sharra confessed with twinkling eyes that her mother had taken their coin though there had never before been bookings for seats.
‘My mother says this is the moment in which we can prove that this is not a house of ill repute and corruption,’ Sharra said.
Ember gave a sickly smile as the girl departed, knowing that the only reason so many people would attend the performance would be their desire to hear her speculate musically upon recent events on Ramidan. The problem was that she simply did not have the depth of understanding that would be needed for truly insightful songs. However she could not avoid the primary political topics of the day without exciting suspicion. Ironically, the poisoning attempt on Tarsin, and Bleyd’s escape from the citadel cells, would be topics of interest to any audience. She made up her mind to use her performance to draw her listener’s minds away from the idea of ships and Vespi, and to suggest that Bleyd was even now in hiding upon Ramidan, seeking evidence to clear his name. If Faylian was right about there being a search of the citadel by legionnaires, this would give her words authority. She would use the simple powerful music of a Dylan song and set about making up repetitious words to accompany it. She would also sing a song she had heard about the poisoning which was little more than a retelling of the drama casting Tarsin as a hero. Two overtly political songs would have to do. The rest of her repertoire would be made up of tunes from her own world concerning relationships and emotions rather than events and specific people, and she would finish with the song that Alene had been composing during her final days on Ramidan.
The worst thing was that, aside from being anxious that her cobbled together repertoire would expose her as an imposter, she was also quite simply stricken with stage fright! Ironically, although her music was heard all over her own world, she had never played in public. Before the tumour had been diagnosed, she had played and sung for her teachers, of course, and very occasionally for her parents, but since her illness, she had performed only for herself and for death, excepting only the little performance for Sharra that morning.
Ember had tried telling herself that singing in front of people would be no different from singing to Sharra. All she had to do was to pretend that she was alone with the girl. Her voice was too soft of course, but there at least she could make a deliberate feature of that softness. She practised her repertoire for an hour, and at last she was satisfied that she could do no more to prepare herself. It would be fatal to overwork her voice when she had sung so little of late, so she laid aside the a’luwtha and stretched out on the bed. She would rest for half an hour and then begin dressing. She had decided to address the need to keep her eyes covered by simply wearing the fringed scarf as she had worn her veil that day, allowing the fringe to dangle over her eyes and cheekbones. She would tease her hair into a great bell that hid her cheeks, and use heavy paint to accentuate and exaggerate her resemblance to Shenavyre. Anyone noting it would put it down to artifice. As a final precaution, she would be positioned directly before the fire so that it would be hard for anyone to see her face clearly. It would be uncomfortably hot, but fortunately the red dress was light.
Ember realised then that she was still wearing the paint she had applied that morning on the lower half of her face. She went to the little dresser and set about wiping her skin clean with oiled rags from the little box that Sharra had given her. She yearned for a bath but, besides the fact that there was not time, hot water would make her too lethargic. Sharra had promised a bucket of hot water before the performance and that would have to do.
As she cleaned her face, Ember recited over and over the words she had devised for the Dylan song until she was sure that they were fixed in her mind. Then she unwrapped the package that Berya had sent to find a supple full-length grey coat lined in some sort of heavy silken fabric, also grey, a heavily embroidered velvet pouch and three pairs of beaded slippers in different sizes. Opening the pouch, Ember was startled to find a selection of gaudy jewelled pieces obviously intended to be worn with the red dress. There were bracelets set with glimmering red stones edged in dark beading, and two matching ring bands. There was also a beaded diadem, which she would be able to use to fix the fringed scarf securely in place. These would have to be paid for, of course, but careful questioning of Sharra on the way back to the nightshelter had confirmed that it was at least theoretically possible to earn enough in tithes from the audience to pay for the room and board with a decent amount left over. This could be used to pay for the dressmaker.
Ember noticed that there was a chit in the bag. It was from Berya and explained that the jewels had been made to accompany the dress, if she wanted them. She felt obliged to say that the cloak sent had been designed for a woman who had died before she could collect it but if Ember would have it, the price would be low.
A dead woman’s cloak for a dying woman, dark Ember whispered, flickering to life like a black flame.
‘She never wore it …’ Ember snapped, aware of how mad she would sound if anyone could hear her muttering to herself. Nonetheless a chilly premonition flowed through her, and the coat slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
Coward, dark Ember mocked. You will fail tonight because you are a coward.
‘No …’ Ember murmured, but she heard the lack of conviction in her voice.
This night should not matter to one who has performed for death. You degrade us with your fear of performing, and by offering music for coin.
‘This is a matter of survival,’ Ember insisted.
Better to die than to degrade our music in such a way, dark Ember announced, sounding, Ember realised, rather like the soulweaver Faylian. Perhaps that was what had lain behind her instinctive dislike of the woman.
‘Is this any more degrading than letting a group like Hard Goth perform my music?’ Ember asked herself.
That, we allowed out of indifference, and indifference is appropriate in one who has accepted the darkest truth. It would not be so bad if you were to perform tonight with that same lofty indifference. But you will make music out of cowardice and fail because fear will suck all power from what you would offer, dark Ember sneered.
Ember felt her confidence crumble.
You know that I am right, dark Ember said triumphantly. Your only hope is to allow me to perform. I would not do so out of fear, but in honour of My Lord Death. Let go and you will feel no more fear.
‘I will not give way to you,’ Ember said, and heard the quiver in her voice.
If I had the power to crush you and your pathetic hopes from my mind, I would exercise it, dark Ember sneered. That I do not is evidence that I do not have the power to assume absolute control. Therefore give way and let me take us through this night.
‘No,’ Ember said. ‘I won’t give you control but I will merge with you this one last time.’
She felt dark Ember recoil. Desecrate and corrupt my mind with your foul hopes? Never!
‘Then I will perform alone,’ Ember said.
A surge of alien fury flooded through her, and Ember wondered again if she had gone mad. Then all at once, she felt the old grey indifference seep into her, and realised she had won. Dark Ember was entering her, suppressing her emotions. Her fears withered, to be replaced by a bleak serenity and the knowledge that dark Ember’s icy fatalism would see them safely through the performance because it swamped and smothered the jibbering stage fright she was experiencing.
Ember washed her arms and face in the bowl of water brought up by Sharra, patted her face dry and, rather than exaggerating her resemblance to Shenavyre as she had intended, she applied a patterning of browns and golds, with fine slashes of black and blue. She did not accentuate mouth or eyes or any part of her face that would
focus on her humanity, but concentrated on producing a mask of flame in which eyes and mouth would be barely discernable.
This done, she drew on the red dress, being careful with the seams. The bracelets were too big so she pushed them above her elbow over the top of the sleeves, and the rings would only fit on her thumbs, so she wore one and left her strumming hand free. After sliding her feet into the slippers, Ember combed her hair out and then laid the scarf atop it, carefully arranging the fringing over her eyes before fitting the beaded diadem over it. Now there was only the a’luwtha to tune and she had left this till last so she could make sure that none of her finery hampered her.
She was running calmly through the fingering of the songs, making minor alterations, when Sharra knocked at the door. ‘Songmaker, my mother says you … Oh!’
She stared at Ember, who asked coolly, ‘Is something wrong?’
Sharra smiled nervously. ‘You look magnificent, but … not quite human.’
‘It is not my desire that those hearing me sing will think of me but of my songs. Your mother will object to the design?’ dark Ember asked.
‘No! No of course not. She would never question how a songmaker chose to look. It is just that I was surprised. You seem so … so different dressed like that …’
‘My mind is on my performance,’ dark Ember said.
The public room was even fuller than on the afternoon that Ember had arrived, but a nerve-wracking hush fell over the noisy room as Ember negotiated the narrow path that had been left from the bottom of the stairs to the hearth. Fear flowed through her and she was terrified that she might vomit.
Withdraw, dark Ember hissed inside her mind. You weaken me with your cowardice!
For a moment, Ember wanted to do what her alter ego suggested and retreat into the recesses of her own mind to be free of those eyes and of fear clawing at her like a beast that would tear its way out of her chest if she did not release it. But she forced herself to withdraw only until her fear no longer affected her body, although she was still aware of all that she felt.
Dark Ember propped the a’luwtha against the high-backed chair which had been placed directly in front of the blazing fire. It was draped in black fur and alongside stood a small table upon which had been placed an enormous clear bowl of water filled with scarlet flowers, and a large goblet of water. Dark Ember took up the goblet and drank. If anything, the silence deepened. She set it down and took up the a’luwtha, positioning it carefully before lifting her eyes for the first time to survey the audience.
‘I hope you will find my offering worthy,’ dark Ember used the ritual words she had heard spoken by songmakers before a performance on Ramidan. There was no response from the audience but a waiting silence.
Dark Ember strummed the a’luwtha, and began with a tune about the twin Keltan moons, Onyx and Aden. Tareed had described it as a lesser song staged early in a performance to allow an audience to accustom itself to the songmaker’s appearance and voice, so that they would better appreciate her songmaking. The acoustics in the room were superb and she realised that she need not have worried about the weakness of her voice. The watchers gradually relaxed, and Ember decided that she had passed the first hurdle safely. They accepted that she was a songmaker.
I do not care about them, dark Ember sneered. I care only for the music.
Dark Ember finished the song and moved into one about a man wanting to find his deepest love. There was a ripple of appreciation as the song ended, but again, dark Ember left no time for a full response for she moved smoothly and seamlessly to another song and then another. Now she was playing songs that dark Ember had composed on their own world rather than the ones Ember had intended to perform. They were sonorous tunes filled with words about dark winds and mortality and sickness. Ember was aware now, as she had not been when she composed the music, how full of despair it was. There was only the occasional word that referred to her own world which needed changing, and dark Ember did so flawlessly. But even as dark Ember performed, Ember within her understood with a shock that there was something else in her music, which she had not noticed before: a thread of brightness that she had somehow written without being aware of it.
But how could that be? She was so taken aback that she affected dark Ember, who stopped playing and drank some water. But she could not stop the thoughts. Surely I was not capable of creating such a thread when I wrote those songs, she thought incredulously. And yet it was there, and unmistakable.
Hissing inwardly at her to desist, dark Ember set down the goblet again and took up the a’luwtha, but before she could play anything, a man rose from the audience and bowed deeply. ‘Songmaker Gola, though I had not heard your name before this night and frankly doubted that you were a songmaker at all, I admit freely that I have never heard such a gifted voice nor such wondrously pure music. Yet you kill us with lovely grief. Please, play this time of laughter and joy, that we may laugh with you, as well as weep.’ Others around him clapped their hands and agreed that they wanted to hear something happy.
‘Happy?’ dark Ember demanded so scornfully that the man flinched. Alarmed at what she might say, Ember forced herself forward and took control. Dark Ember fought her coldly but Ember was stronger. Hope made her stronger, she thought in a moment of exultation.
False hope. Cowardly hope, snarled dark Ember.
Ember repositioned the a’luwtha and managed to say softly, ‘It is hard to sing of happiness in these troubled times.’
Dark Ember suddenly relinquished control. Have the moment then. I will not play for these buffoons who prefer mere happiness to the magnificence of death and the dignity of indifference.
And suddenly Ember was alone in her mind, the a’luwtha heavy in her hands. There was nothing but to continue. All at once she knew what to sing. She licked her lips and the acoustics of the public room carried her voice, still cool because it must not be too abruptly different, as she added, ‘But I will sing to you of the desire for happiness, which is called hope.’
Ember sang then, and she was amazed to find the familiar muscular joy of creating music flowed through her as it always had, transporting her in spite of her audience. The song she sang was a hauntingly lovely Irish ballad that described flashes of light in the midst of a storm, and told of weary sea folk sighting the lights of the home port, of a beast finding its strayed calf. Hope is that slight, and that subtle, she thought, and inwardly shivered at the knowledge that it was a subtle thing she offered to oppose the sombre beauty of the songs that dark Ember had sung with such conviction.
Ember wondered if she had made a mistake in playing the song, which she had originally intended to be her first. This thought, during the final wordless musical phrase, brought her out of herself enough for her to become really aware of her audience for the first time. And to discover that she had been wrong in thinking they would not understand, for the eyes of the man who had asked for a brighter song glowed, as did the faces of many in the audience.
And in that final moment of the song, she experienced what it meant to perform in front of an audience. For the force of their regard, which she had found so terrifying, was being offered to her in some strange fashion. Offered to her music. Fascinated, Ember sang the last verse again, and this time she did not remove herself from the audience. Instead, she drew that collective intensity into her; into the music. She felt it as a malleable silken flow that wove itself effortlessly into her song. The words were the ones she had sung already, but they were transformed by what she had done. They were no longer simply evoking the fragile beauty of hope. They were, she realised, an expression of the need of humans for hope.
When she finished, Ember was shaking, not with fear but with the intensity of the experience. There was a profound silence, then the audience began to applaud and hammer their heels on the ground. Ember was forced to lower her head, for her eyes were wet with tears and that sobered her, because tears would affect the face paint and draw attention to the woman behind it. So she c
ut the applause short by beginning to play again. This time it was the Dylan tune a well-known song about injustice from her own world, which she had altered to allude to Bleyd’s imprisonment. The implication she meant to offer in the final words was that he had escaped only because there was no other way for him to seek justice.
‘Some day a storming will come,
‘Righteous and filled with anger,
‘And the shadows that hide the truth,
Will then be driven back.’
She sang the chorus again, seeing suddenly that the words could also be interpreted as a reference to the Unykorn trapped by trickery, who was supposed to fly free when at last the Unraveller came to release him. She had not intended the allusion, but music had a way of absorbing the world, even against the wishes of its creator. And perhaps it was not so dangerous to offer such an image on Vespi, especially in a nighthall whose hostess had all but declared herself for Darkfall.
Even so, caution dictated that her next song was a light ballad from her own world about a man who couldn’t make his mind up between two sisters. It was not necessary to change the words, and there was much laughter. Because she was so open to the audience, Ember could feel that the laughter contained compassion, and it struck her with wonder that, somehow, her music had made it impossible for the listeners to be merely amused, after having been so moved. It seemed that an audience, too, could be played, and instinct warned that it could not be held too long in the same emotional key.
So she played three very different songs, making her audience laugh again and then weep and then sigh with longing. She was astonished both at the power of the music over them, and the power they gave to the music. When at last she could sing no more, she took a deep breath and rose, not too surprised to feel her legs trembling beneath her, this time out of simple exhaustion.
‘I hope my offering has pleased you,’ she said and the room exploded into a thunder of banging and foot stamping so loud that the residents streets away must feel justified anew in opposing the nightshelter. Ember heard someone call out to ask what sept she hailed from and the need for caution reasserted itself. The voice was easily ignored amidst the clamour, but she must not linger. Fortunately Sharra’s mother Anousha came forging through the throng to her, red faced and beaming.