“Hellfire! Where is that made?”
“Out of the city, away from houses so no one else gets hurt when it goes wrong. People die making it-it's very dangerous. Most folks only work a few years making hellfire, then do something else. Even then they get a medal, and some inns grant a hellfire brewer free meals. Lots of poor folk do it-it means they won't ever starve.”
They came to a small courtyard where a crowd gathered beneath a big tree. Music was being played. Sofy and Jaryd went and found a spot on a stone ledge to sit amongst the other listeners. There were three drummers, all Lenay, with hand drums not so dissimilar to the Lenay kind. And there were three serrin musicians, one with a long, woody-sounding pipe, another with a middle-sized, seven-string guitar, and the last seated with a huge, four-string bass.
Sofy found what they played both familiar and utterly strange at the same time. The rhythms were Lenay, yet the serrin had put them to haunting, lilting harmonies and melodies that had never accompanied such rhythms before. The bass guitar played an underlying, repeating pattern, and the two other serrin played competing melodies over the top of it all, sometimes duelling, and sometimes coming together in apparently spontaneous harmonies. The effect was utterly mesmerising, and the rhythm infectious. Even Jaryd, whom Sofy had never known to be the greatest appreciator of music, was soon swaying back and forth and tapping his feet.
“What do they play?” Sofy asked a talmaad warrior seated alongside.
“Nothing I have ever heard before,” the woman admitted with amazement. “The serrin musicians play traditional serrin forms, yet I have never heard them put to such amazing rhythms.”
“I think they've discovered a new musical form,” said Sofy. “Wonderful things happen when your people and ours come together.”
The serrin smiled at her, a flash of turquoise eyes in the lamplight. Serrin had travelled to Lenayin for many centuries, Sofy thought. Strange that it took this great gathering, and a war, to produce such a fusion. The Army of Lenayin had been in Jahnd for many days now. Who knew what new wonders would emerge, should they stay longer?
Then she saw it, what Sasha had seen, and Kessligh well before her, in coming to fight for Saalshen. Koenyg saw that the future of humanity must be Verenthane, and strictly so, for that was what humans had built themselves, and was native to them. What the serrin built and inspired in cities like Jahnd was deadly to that, and must be destroyed if Koenyg's vision was to thrive.
But here was a new possibility, for all humankind. It was not so much a question of what the serrin could do for humans, but rather what they could inspire humans to do for themselves. Serrin were really quite simple beings. They did not build much, and much of what they did build was as individuals, not collectively as humans did. But what serrin had were ideas, forms of thought and wisdom shaped over the centuries, born of minds that knew little of primeval human hatreds and emotions. And where humans came to embrace those ideas, it unleashed something in humans, too. Something creative and dynamic, as humans had always been creative and dynamic in war, bigotry, and death, but now directing that dynamism upon something far more positive.
Saalshen was humanity's well in a dry desert. There was little doubt that humans could fill in the well, if they chose, for it was fragile and its waters finite. Yet if managed with care and love, the well could be sipped from for many generations to come, and make a better future for all. Koenyg thought to make the strictest teachings of the Verenthanes the rock upon which to build the future of Lenayin. Sasha and Kessligh insisted that that foundation was here, in the very place that Koenyg's vision sought to destroy. Jahnd was not perfect. Even Saalshen was not. Spirits knew, Lenayin was not either. But what they could make together, in the spirit of fusion and not annihilation, was worth fighting, and even killing, for.
The music played on, in endless variety. Musicians and drummers sparred back and forth, sometimes reaching a crescendo that brought spontaneous applause and cheers from watching humans, and gasps of delight and expansive hand gestures from the serrin. Sofy watched the crowd, as intrigued by their willing acceptance of this strange new thing as by the music itself.
Suddenly she spotted a young, familiar face. It was Andreyis, Sasha's long-time friend from the ranch in Baerlyn. With him was a striking serrin girl, with pale skin and flaming red hair. They sat intimately, arms about each other, her head on his shoulder as they swayed with the music.
Jaryd followed her gaze. “Her name is Yshel. She was his captor when he was prisoner after Shero Valley.” Sofy looked at him, impressed. Jaryd shrugged. “I came to this war partly because I swore to Sasha I'd look out for him. But he no longer needs looking out for.”
“Sasha will need messengers,” Sofy suggested. “I heard men say. They said it's best to have people who know her well, so there is no possibility of miscommunication.”
“She has Daish, the lad from Tracato.”
“And on this battlefield, how many do you think she'll need?”
Jaryd thought about it. Then nodded. “Interesting,” he admitted. “You know it's no safer a position than the one he'd be leaving?”
Sofy nodded. “But it is prestigious. None of us will be safe. If we are to fall, best we fall with honour.”
“Now you're thinking like a warrior.” Jaryd put his arm about her and they swayed together in time with the rhythm.
Alfriedo Renine wandered the road in the serrin town called Tormae. How his people knew its name, he did not particularly want to know. The Army of Northern Lenayin, as it was now being called by some, had come through here earlier, having ridden the forest road to reach the eastern end of the Dhemerhill Valley. Thankfully, they did not seem to have destroyed anything yet. General Zulmaher walked at his side, in the full armour of a Rhodaani Steel officer. That disconcerted some of the Rhodaani nobility, a few of whom also walked with them.
There were no serrin to be seen. Again, Alfriedo thought that probably a good thing. He turned off the road and walked up a path beneath great stands of trees that he could not identify, and emerged onto the shore of a small lake. Several houses flanked the lake, the nearest with a decking that crept across the water. Gardens surrounded.
“Not a natural lake,” Zulmaher observed, shielding his eyes from the glare of sun on water. “I don't see how any of these water features can be natural.”
A fish jumped in the water. Ducks paddled, and a heron stalked through reedy banks. Alfriedo walked along the bank to the house, and climbed stairs to the decking.
There he found something odd. A wooden chair faced the stairs, flanked by potted flowers. From a roof beam overhead overgrown with vines dangled a small object that glinted brilliantly in the sun. Upon the chair itself was draped a lady's dress.
Alfriedo looked up as Zulmaher came beside him. “What do you think? Some sort of offering?”
Zulmaher frowned, and walked forward to examine the dangling object. It was glass, yet it gleamed like a jewel. There was a sphere, with a gold pin through the middle and circled by metal bands. The metal bands in turn held a smaller jewel, also spherical, or nearly. A diamond. Zulmaher suddenly retreated a step and made a holy sign as he recognised the object.
“What is it?” Alfriedo asked, frowning.
“It is a serrin representation of the world,” said Zulmaher. “The serrin world, spherical. The diamond is the moon.”
“Hand it to me. It is high, I cannot reach.”
“You should not touch it.”
“Hand it to me,” his young lord commanded. “I aim to be a learned man, and I have no regard for your silly superstitions.”
Zulmaher reached, and touching only the suspending cord, removed the object. Alfriedo took it, and examined it closely. The glass sphere was inlaid with many colours, in different kinds of glass. He did not see how it was possible. For humans, it was not. He recognised the shape of one outline-the coastal map of Rhodia itself. This jewel was the world, complete with all known coastlines. Serrin had many ships, he knew, and sailed far. In recent readings he had discovered references to serrin maps of all the world, yet those books he had not found, and all the serrin who might direct him to them had fled from Tracato.