Tirlav plied the tuning wrench again, plucking the string as he listened to the pitch rise. He plucked thirds, then octaves. It was part of his ritual tuning, a habit of ear, muscle, and mind repeated so many times that he needed no conscious thoughts. But his body felt—felt the resistance of the wire beneath his fingertips, the polished rosewood against his forearms.
Now in tune, Tirlav paused and took a drink of pomegranate wine from a carved wooden canteen. Closing his eyes, he set his fingers back on the strings, took a deep breath, and relaxed his muscles.
No thought.
No words.
One who might live for thousands of years had first to learn to think; that was the art of children. Harder was to learn how not to think, to simply experience the sensations of the body and the senses. Such was the path of sanity. Approaching his second century, Tirlav had only just begun to taste the need.
The call of the thrush was slow—slower than normal, at least. The last trill lingered, its note lowered by the barest semi-tone. What was normally an energetic cry in the sunlight of the morning canopy, rejoicing in the perfection of the Embrace, had taken on all the deep green and damp tones of the dense forest after a rainfall. It was sadness, if it had to be summed up. Tirlav listened as the thrush called again, and he wondered at the sorrow. Would it soon succumb to age, or was this the call of a thrush mourning its mate?
More and more, Tirlav recognized such notes as a kind of constant resonance through all of Findeluvié. It clung to every leaf and blade of grass, like dew drops and rain. Even if his people lived on forever, nothing else did. The thrust persisted in its call. Tirlav knew each species by name and call by purpose, if he had cared to think of them. Myriad leaves rustled, a thousand thousand tones. Deep within, the core fibers of the tall trees creaked, and their roots carried vibrations of the sky breezes and spoke them into the deep soil.
It was never about creating a melody; it was about finding one—all melodies existed and had always existed since whatever beginning there was. To say otherwise was like saying that the number three did not exist until it was first counted.
Melodies only needed to be discovered.
With eyes still closed but spirit alive to the world, he set his fingers once more on the strings. He would join the call of the thrush and the song of creation.
“Tirlav.”
And at his name, the music fled. He knew by voice that it was his sister. Opening his eyes, he looked down at her and her attendants, their blue-gray mantles unfluttered by the breeze that did not reach the ground. His sister looked up at him. The Noshian silver woven into the light silks of her dress glinted, too subtle to be gaudy, but too foreign to go unnoticed.
“Eldre,” he said.
“Liel Elnael and Ireli are departing.”
Again.
“So soon?”
“It has been six weeks.”
Tirlav sighed. Eldre would know. It was her task to keep the records of the Aelor heartwood and to educate the young in lore and literature. Somehow, she managed it all without staining her hands in ink.
“How long do I have?”
“We go now to the tir.”
There was no getting out of it—not without disrespecting his father. Tirlav rose. He saw Eldre glance at his plain work-clothes, but she had long ago given up on getting him to dress in fashion more befitting a liel.
“At least you’re clean,” she had once said. . . some time before. Maybe years.
His clothes were the undyed shades of the natural silk of Aelor, brown and ivory. He owned better—clothes for festivals and ornaments for show—but if he was not harping, he was with the cultivators of the eucalyptus, cinnamon, nutmeg, citrus, pomegranates, and berries and vegetables and herbs, for always they tasted sweetest when first harvested in the warm sunlight, or in the cool pre-dawn rains. He enjoyed the labors, the company, and the movement of limb and heart. There was melody in it.
Tirlav gently set his harp down upon the woven net spanning between the branches, letting his fingers linger on the cool wood. He would return shortly; though the stars might shine. There would be different melodies to find, then.
***
Five Vien stood in the greensward near the base of the hill called Tir’Aelor, the home of the Liele of the Aelor heartwood. Liel Elnael was in the center of his heirs—three sons and one daughter, two flanking each side. There were three younger heirs as well, but the oldest of them was not yet seventy-five and lived with their mother in her home heartwood of Lishni. With so many heirs, her duty was done. It had been ten years since she had cohabited with her mate Liel Elnael. Only the High Trees were subjected to arranged marriage, mating by duty and command.
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Tall eucalyptus grew around the tir in neat concentric rings, towering to incredible heights that made the Vien look utterly insignificant. The bark of the trees was bright with varied hues, cultivated over the centuries and a special pride of Tir’Aelor.
“This is your birthright,” Liel Elnael said to his children as they stood in silence. He raised his right hand. The flesh was encased in a strange rime or scale of glistening eltoreth—a Vien word for the growths, alterations, or mutations that afflicted the High Liele. The word meant only: “change.” Over the years, the Change had crept past Elnael’s wrist and up his forearm. The slanting sun-rays caught it, making it shimmer in hues of viridian and silver.
Their father always gathered them thus when he left to join the Synod in the High Tir. It was a piece of formal ritual that Tirlav had known all his life.
“It is coming time for Ireli to join with a mate,” Elnael said. Tirlav glanced at his eldest brother, but there was no reaction there to the words. Ireli kept his expression carefully flat. “Eldre, while we are gone, send a rider to Veroi and have them check the genealogies for a suitable match.”
Eldre placed a hand on her chest and inclined her head. It was one of her duties to attend to the strict genealogical records kept on everyone within the Aelor heartwood, to ensure that no High Tree mated closer than the seventh degree with any other High Tree.
“Reniel,” Elnael continued. “The youth may have three days for the pomegranate harvest and the wine pressing.”
Reniel placed a hand on his chest and bowed.
Elnael’s gaze briefly passed over Tirlav but did not rest there.
“May Findel’s Blessing be with you,” his father said to them all, then turned with Ireli and left as they all placed hands on their chests and bowed again. Tirlav did not expect any duties from his father, and so the omission did not surprise him.
He turned to leave.
“Tirlav,” Eldre said.
“My sister?”
“There is a missive from the human.”
“I see,” Tirlav replied. “Do you have it with you?”
“I am kept in too many labors to act as courier,” she said.
“You would have it no other way, Eldre.”
She produced a wooden tenae from her robe and held it out to him with three fingers. No doubt, she had placed the letter into the vien document case herself to avoid touching the human writing.
“You do not know me as well as you think,” she said as he left. Tirlav smiled at that. If she had ever been her own pupil in calligraphy, she might know herself better than she did.
Tirlav took the parcel from his sister, allowing a slight grimace to cross his face. It was a performance both for her sake and for his; he did not wish her to know how much he looked forward to the correspondence.
“It will be good for your mind to learn the Noshian tongue and manner of writ,” his father had told him years before. “There may come a day when I could more easily spare you than your siblings if we must send a representative there. Learn from this archivist what you can. He professes an interest in the natural history of our land and people, and I am told he is an official of note.”
“How many letters will it be?” Tirlav had asked.
“How many could it be? The humans do not even live a century.”
It had been many letters. Though the man had sought a correspondence with the Liel of Aelor, himself, Coir of Drennos had settled for a lesser Son of Aelor. Mortality aside, Coir had proven himself a keen interlocutor and an enthusiastic correspondent.
The human had helped Tirlav learn the script and language of the humans. It had a percussive quality, a hard edge and coarse efficiency that spurred ideas in his own mind. They had expressions and ideas that hardly occurred to the Vien in their own tongue. There was a vigor to its music that did not exist in Vienwé.
Coir preferred for Tirlav to write letters in Vien, but he promised to respond in the human tongue with a translation. Attempting to read discourse in the human’s native tongue was a challenge and a spark to Tirlav’s own mind.
He didn’t open the letter until he had settled himself in a shaded arbor. Fruiting vines bore delicate white and pink leaves. It was his favorite spot to read letters, close to Tir-Aelor but far enough that it was unlikely any member of the High Tree would stumble upon him. He opened the tenae and slid out the waxed canvas the Noshian used to guard correspondence as it crossed the sea. Taking the letter from within, he unrolled the fine Vien papers.
The barbarian humans used the actual skins of animals to produce parchment rather. They did not know the fashioning of fine plant pulp paper. After inquiring of Coir about the strange paper, he was repulsed when he found out that the letters were written on the skin of beasts. He had sent Coir a supply of Vien paper, but sadly, a subsequent letter had been soaked in the passage and ruined. The pulp paper did not hold up as well to the elements. From then on, Coir had sent the letters upon Vien paper within waxed canvas, and Tirlav returned the same. Tirlav had even sent a supply of the wooden tenae tubes in which the Vien stored documents.
The roll of parchments was pleasingly thick, and Tirlav settled in to read the Noshian epistle. It proved to be a lengthy discussion of a strange group of religious servants. Coir had written in a previous letter that there was a vienu who actually served among them, and the news had intrigued Tirlav.
“[. . . ] In response to your inquiry about the Voiceless Sisters, there is much that could be said. The true name of their order is The Sacred Order of the Sisters of the Departing of Drennos, but that is used only in formality. Their history is long in Drennos, stretching back centuries. For our people, this is like the days of Findel and Vah to you. There are two primary creeds or doctrines in Drennos now, the Old Traditions as they are called, and the Erthrusian way, which itself is nearly two hundred years old. Both traditions deem it defiling to be in the presence of the bodies of the Departed, but both also hold that an unwitnessed death dooms the spirit to wander. Though it visits our kind so frequently, our people fear looking upon the face of Death. The Voiceless Sisters serve a special and sanctified purpose in both creeds. They take oaths of silence, and they serve the Departing. It is their whole and sole purpose, distinct from our physicians, whose medicine is the most advanced of all the human lands. Yet plagues still come, and illness befalls. Of the vienu, I can say little. She is counted among the number of the Voiceless Sisters, and she is not permitted by the Order to speak to me. I have tried. I even made the Vien embassy aware of her, but to no avail. I know from records the date of her arrival, but I know nothing of her story or an explanation for her presence, despite my efforts. [. . .]”
The letter continued on in the human’s tiny, cramped hand. Did Tirlav need to send him more paper? Was he trying to use as little as he could? The penmanship was always crude, but this was more minuscule than usual. Tirlav blinked a few times to refresh his eyes. Coir had previously written about the Old Traditions and the Erthrusian Way, but his knowledge of the practices of the Voiceless Sisters was extensive. He detailed the construction of the Order’s buildings—the humans built with baked mud blocks, stone, and wood—the manner of their training, and the use of phytotherapies and herblore.
There was the thrush again, the same one. Tirlav raised his eyes from the letter. What a marvelous thing, to read of distant lands, and yet remain within the cool arbors of Findel’s Embrace.
The Dwarves of Ice-Cloak series and , but it is not necessary to have read those to enjoy this story. Maps are available at the bottom of the first chapter.
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