Chapter 8
I set into a routine at the choir school that lasted for several days. I use the word “day” advisedly. I had no idea of how time was really passing. There were no clocks anywhere in the chorister’s cottage and the readouts on my digital watch were totally absurd. We were on what is called compressed time, which complicated the matter further. I had no idea of how an “hour” at Saint Percivale’s compared with an “hour” spent at somebody’s Gifted Clan house or how that compared to an “hour” in my world. The reason Master Lesentrange put the choir on compressed time was to get the most out of us before our voices changed, and to get more rehearsal time between services and performances. The advantage for me was that I wasn’t losing as much time for my quest as it seemed. Meanwhile, the pestilenced patients were all on doubly compressed time to buy them more time while they waited for me to fulfill my quest, or for something else to come along, like the spell Masteress Jakelyn was working on.
I wondered if being on compressed time for too long was a good idea and I asked Pollo and his friends about it one day while we were walking along the rocky shore. Lewis was the one who answered me, since he was particularly good at that sort of thing. He said the living in compressed time was okay for a while, but bad in the long run for the same reasons I was wondering about it. If my body lives through two days in, say, the space of one day for other people, my body wears out two days worth instead of one. Over a lot of years, I could age twice as fast as other people from their point of view, but not from mine. Before Master Lesentrange put up the quarantine, everybody could spend time in Gifted Clan houses, with guilds, or in homes in the worlds we came from, and that helped balanced the compressed time spent in the choir. What it all boiled down to was that I’d better finish my quest before too long, or time in the Gifted World would get seriously warped.
I use the terms “Gift” and “Gifted” because those are the terms used in what is also called the Gifted World. Maybe it’s because I was suddenly thrown into this world and so am an outsider of sorts, but I don’t really like the term. I’ve read enough fantasy books to know that terms like “gifted” are used to refer to people with gifts that are considered magical. But in a little world dominated by this kind of giftedness, the term seems oppressive. I’m called a Gifted Singer, not because my voice is any good, but because I can make some things happen when I sing that other people can’t. But it’s obvious that anyone who has a good singing voice and knows how to use it is gifted, and so I don’t like hearing the term denied to people like that. Actually, by the time I’m writing all this, attitudes are changing with some Gifted people in the direction of my own feelings.
On the days following, some of the morning time was spent in teaching me a few basics I would have known almost from the cradle if I’d been raised in the Gifted World, or had entered it in a more orderly fashion. Mirry taught me how to compress even large objects, such as a harp, and get them to stick to the inside of my cape until I needed them, at which point I can reverse the spell and bring them out. This was simple and I learned how to do it without any trouble. Learning the spell for cleaning dishes (and anything else for that matter) was a different proposition. Mastering Creative Crafts through Gifted Singing was something else that eluded me completely. My first attempt to create a three-legged stool resulted in a stool with each leg a different length. It was just like industrial arts class at school where the best I could do was make the most lopsided tray you ever saw in your life. Even when Kenter sang a brief song that got the legs the right length, the stool wasn’t anything I’d want to sit on. One other spell I couldn’t master at all was creating lights. All of the other boys could do it but me.
Denson and several other boys made fun of me when they found out that I couldn’t do so elementary a spell, and Mirry threatened cast a spell that would turn the insides out of anybody who kept on laughing at me. More helpful for me was Pollo explaining to us that people with great talent in one area often are deficient in others. Maybe my cleaning spell is the worst in the choir, but nobody else can do even the simplest healing spell and I had proven my ability to do a lot more than that. Before I came, the boys couldn’t do anything about the scuffs and scrapes they got while playing or shoving each other around except put up with them until they healed naturally. I was able heal a bruise with just one verse of a song. Healing Jorland of a bruise he got was a challenge because of the way I felt about him, but I did it anyway because my vows didn’t allow for exceptions for clods like him.
Charles tutored me in Gifted Writing and that went much better. Kenter made me a fine, sturdy desk to work on. My heart kind of sank when Charles took a feather pen, and a parchment scroll out from his cape and placed them on my desk. The idea of using writing technology from the Middle Ages is traumatic for a kid like me who’s grown up using word processors. But Gifted Writing turned out to be really neat. Charles taught me a simple spell to make the pen form the letters I wanted. In my case, it helped to hum or sing. It’s easier than typing on a keyboard, and I can cross out a whole block of text with a wave of the pen, or move blocks of text. All in all, Gifted Writing is about as good as having a word processor, and that’s how I’m writing this story about my quest.
Then, one morning, Mirry tried to teach me how to make a light. That was a total disaster. Although my cape gives off sparks whenever I do anything magical, I couldn’t get even one spark to appear when it came to trying to create a light. This was a real practical problem, since I couldn’t count on having somebody around when I needed one for reading or writing, or just to see where I was going. Davy, one of the fireballers, was the one who solved that problem for me. When Lewis explained that my problem was with making things appear when nothing was there, I was good at putting things that were already there together or taking them apart, Davy got the idea of making several lights and compacting them into small pellets I could easily carry in my cape. As Davy hoped, I could open a pellet by singing just a few notes and have its light for as long as I needed it, and then close it up. Unfortunately, Denson was around to see Davy’s little success.
“Davy, you know the rules against compromising a boy’s self-sufficiency,” said Denson.
Everybody in the workshop stiffened. That made me afraid I might have to attempt another healing chant for Davy, one that might fail this time. I jumped up to stand by him, since it was my fault he was in trouble. Next thing I knew, all of the boys were standing between Denson and Davy and me, with Mirry directly in front of me. That left Denson and his three friends isolated. Not a good situation, and one not lost on Denson.
“For a member of a clan-transcendent guild, you’re pretty good at pitting everybody against one clan,” said Denson.
“If you were to agree that one boy can make lights for another boy just as much as it’s okay for one boy to heal the injuries of others,” I said, “then we’d all be on the same side of things.”
I looked straight at Jorland as I said that. Jorland looked down at his feet. Denson tried to look cool and not as lost for words as I knew he was. I don’t know what would have happened if we weren’t saved by the bell. Midday sandwiches came just in time. The standoff melted and we went into the dining hall. Charles twisted his hand in my direction to express his approval of what I’d said. I had won that round, but I was smart enough to see the wheels turning in Denson’s head, and I knew he was going to do something devastating sooner or later.
It was Maranissa who was handing out sandwiches that day. As usual, she did an extra trick to make my sandwich tastier than the others. After what had just happened, I felt the need to do something for her. What I did was slip one of my light pellets out of my cape and drop it in her hand.
“Just another light in your life,” I whispered to her.
To my surprise, she looked more grateful than I thought the token gift deserved.
“That is most kind and generous, Nathaniel,” she said as she pocketed the light.
In general, the meals were amazingly good in their simplicity: porridge in the morning, sandwiches at midday, stew for supper, and cookies in the evening. Each day, the recipe was different and I felt awfully well-fed.
Tomko made good on his promise to teach me how to throw and catch a fireball. Actually, it was Bursen who did most of the teaching as he was better at coaching beginners like me. I had to unlearn almost everything I’d learned about throwing or catching balls in my world. With the fireball, everything depended on casting little spells to control the movement of the ball. If you’re playing a serious game, then you throw the ball and try to control its movement so that the other guy can’t catch it, and if the ball is being thrown to you, you try to reel it in, sometimes with a lot of struggling. It turns out there are lots of games you can play with a fireball. One of them is kind of like soccer except for the ways you manipulate the ball with spells as much as with your feet. I told the boys about baseball and they decided to try it. All we needed was for Kenter to create a bat and we were in business. With the use of spells and counterspells, we only needed three or four fielders on a team, so it worked out better than scrub baseball back home. Tomko, Bursen, Kenter, Davy and Stanley were the boys most devoted to playing games of fireball, although others joined us from time to time. Davy, the wiry thin boy who created my light-maker, was especially good at throwing the fireball, and he showed me how to do it. Stanley was the one who gave us a running commentary on every game that had us all in stitches. In general, Stanley was always laughing at every joke, especially his own.
Mirry became my shadow with a vengeance. He hardly ever left my side, no matter what I did. With Mirry, I got Denny and Peter and Rusentel, the other drummer. Mirry even stuck with me when I played Fireball with Tomko and his friends, although he’d never played it much before. Pollo and his studious friends, Lewis and Meredith, played bakalog when they weren’t discussing the philosophy of music, and they taught me how to play the game with them. It was a simple game but you needed a complicated strategy to win, sort of like chess. You could have two, three or four people play it, and you could have partners play on each side. Mirry often joined us, and he usually wanted to be partners with me when he did. Often Denny would look on, but he wasn’t asked to play. Seeing the way Denny’s face fell at those times, I asked if he could be a second partner. The raised eyebrows I got told me this was not according to the rules, but Pollo said it was okay, and that settled it. Mirry taught me how to play some games with etheric images. They were kind of like computer games and they were a lot of fun. Denny almost always sat right with us when we played these games. Often the easiest thing to do was let him take turns playing with us. Charles spent a lot of time reading, and he lent me one book after another from his private stash, so I got to read some pretty exciting stories, including some stories you won’t find in even the best bookstores in the America I know.
It seemed, though, that each day more recreation time got converted to practice time with Pollo, as he was determined to cram ten years worth of musical learning in just a few days. It was hard work, but it was worth it. Pollo was an amazingly good teacher for a kid just a couple of years older than me. Lewis and Meredith were constantly looking up obscure modes and chants for me to learn in preparation for learning the healing chant that would stop the pestilence. Boring as my lessons with Master Galleon were, I was learning the fundamentals of singing, and since things like breath control and singing on pitch were important for what I needed to do, those skills were also worth learning.
“Master Lesentrange,” I asked one morning after rehearsal in the church, “can you start teaching me the healing chant for the windmere willow’s blossom?”
Master Lesentrange gave me a look that made me think he was hoping I’d forgotten all about it.
“Nathaniel,” said Master Lesentrange, “I think it will be better for you and everybody concerned if you forget about your healing quest. You have no need to worry about the smothering pestilence. This church and your cottage are in the best-protected space there is. You are perfectly safe here. You are free to enjoy the great music you are learning without fear of the pestilence. You do like the music you are singing with us, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” I answered, “but I was asked to make a healing quest.”
“You are a Gifted Singer and that is all that counts,” said Master Lesentrange. “Many people will experience happiness because of your voice. The Guild of Gifted Healers has no appreciation for music. Your voice will be wasted on them. You are a fast learner and the choir is already sounding better than it did because of you. In a couple of years, you will likely be the master chorister and you will be on your way to a great career as a Gifted Singer.”
With those words, Master Lesentrange gently whisked me out of the church. As usual, Mirry and Denny were waiting for me, so I didn’t have to walk through the cloudy and windy weather that always prevailed in the etheric space by myself. Pollo said that cloudy, cold and windy is the easiest weather to maintain in an etheric space and that’s why it’s the way it is. What Master Lesentrange had just said was tempting. Except maybe for a couple of camping trips I’d taken with my dad, I’d never been happier than I was living with the choir and learning so much about music. Becoming the master chorister would be quite a turnaround from being such a nonentity at my middle school back home. The smothering pestilence was so far away from where I was that I could forget it easily enough. I looked up at the eagles patrolling our protected space. If they ever got tired of flying in circles, it never showed. Mirry and Denny took me back into the cottage and then through a convoluted route to a practice room where Pollo met me. Mirry played the radical chord of the willow mode, and suddenly I could no longer forget the reason I had come to this place. Just as I was determined to deliver every prescription entrusted to me, I was determined to fulfill my healing quest or die trying.
The one break in the routine was on Sunday, although they called it Mass Day at Saint Percivale’s. We didn’t just rehearse service music; we sang it for real. Some men came to sing with us, and that made the music all the richer. I got shivers up and down my spine several times from the stuff we were singing. It made me wonder why I’d never heard music that good in my own church. A priest came to celebrate mass and quite a few Gifted People came to worship with us. Because of the quarantine against the strangling pestilence, not only the congregation but even the men in the choir and the priest were present in etheric images rather than in person. It was kind of weird singing with men who were only half-there, but it was a lot better than not having them at all.
With me being a Protestant, the service was strange to me, even if it was done just the way it’s done in my world. The readings from the Bible sounded right, though. I looked through the Bible they used later, and it looked like the same Bible I knew except the translation was different. I’ve been to some Bible camps so you can’t fool me about that. I’ve learned since that several worlds have at least the Catholic Church, although church history is different in different worlds, which makes sense.
After the service, Pollo and several other boys talked to parents or friends who had come. I looked for Dad, but he wasn’t there. That put a lump in my throat, and it got me worried about him. It wasn’t like him not to come see me when I was doing something, even when it’s a bit part in a grade-school play. I started looking for anybody at all who was in a purple cape, hoping I might at least get advice from somebody in my guild, and send a message to my dad. But when I started looking, I saw red and yellow and green and gray and tan capes, but not one purple one. I felt isolated and alone as everybody else seemed to have somebody to talk to. I shuffled over in Mirry’s direction, thinking he might want to introduce me to his orange-caped mother, but when it became evident that Mirry was getting yelled at for existing, I shuffled away. Pollo was in a deep and serious conversation with three or four people in blue capes, so I stayed away from them. I headed towards Charles until I realized, to my shock, that his parents were wearing red capes. That had me leaving the church on the spot for the clouds and cold rain outside. After a bit of walking, I came to my senses and remembered that as a member of a guild-transcendent guild, I should not have written off the parents of such a good friend because of their clan.
The next morning, when Mirry and Denny took me to my lesson with Pollo, the atmosphere was more serious than ever. Charles was sitting there this time as well with his nose buried in a book.
“Has Master Lesentrange, by any stretch of hope, offered to teach you the chant for the windmere willow’s blossom?” asked Pollo. “Didn’t think so,” he said in answer to his own question when he saw the answer written all over my face. “Your singing is much too good now to make denial of your need the least bit reasonable.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wish I could have talked to somebody from my Guild yesterday.”
“Are you saying that nobody from the Guild of Gifted Healers came to the church for Mass Day?” asked Pollo, looking more concerned than ever.
“They did not,” I replied.
Pollo frowned so deeply, I thought it was going to be frozen on his face was frozen for the rest of his life.
“Then the situation is worse than I thought,” said Pollo.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Until yesterday’s Mass Day,” Pollo replied, “many members of the Guild of Gifted Healers have come to worship at Saint Percivale’s. Your Guild, Nathaniel, has the greatest number of devout members of any. If none of them came last Mass Day, that can only mean that the quarantine has been strengthened to the point that no members of the Guild of Gifted Healers are allowed to come, not even through etheric images.”
“Do you think that Nathaniel will have to do something other than wait for Master Lesentrange to teach him the chant?” asked Mirry, smiling as if he relished the challenge of doing something daring.
Pollo nodded solemnly.
“What do you mean?” I asked with a rising feeling of alarm.
“The time has come for us to go after the healing chant you need,” said Mirry.
“But how are we going to do that if we can’t get out?” I asked.
“There is one wormhole left,” said Charles, looking straight at me.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The Archives of Gifted Lore,” Charles answered.