Chapter the Second of Part the Third

In which the narrative recounts acts from the life of Polnar in Rekkmerr.

Polnar gagged and almost lost his dinner over the stench that struck him when he was pushed and pulled into the temple.

“Blessed Redhand is not pleased by such a display,” one of the Devoted Ones said into his ear.

Polnar wanted to say that if Redhand didn’t want him to get sick, he should have a cleaner house, but he was sure that words of that sort would not be heard kindly. The source of the stench was easy enough to identify. It came from the stone slab at the front of the Temple which was covered with dried-out blood. With a shiver, Polnar hoped it was animal’s blood that decorated that slab. The temple was not large. In front of the stone slab, there was space for several people to stand, if they crowded each other in. Just before the stone slab, there were three steps. Carved into the stone behind the stone slab was the shape of a gigantic human hand.

Polnar and the boy who had accompanied the Devoted Ones were escorted along one side of the temple, up the steps in front of the stone table and then taken to a connecting room to the side. Already Polnar felt suffocated. There were no windows. It was hot. Polnar had never spent time in so confined a space in his life. Inside the room, there was a platform covered with straw and a cloth on top of that. To the side, there was a large jar that Polnar hoped was filled with water. Beside the jar there was a small pan. A servant, wearing a coarse light brown cloth, hastily carried in a platform like the one already there and a second servant lugged in another jar and a small pan. Polnar’s clothing was roughly stripped off of him and a dark gray cloth, identical to the one worn by the other boy, was thrown on him. The redheaded boy folded the cloth around Polnar so that it covered him securely.

“Our dedicated singer is Passenell,” said the Devoted One who had the long beard. “He will teach you the chants you will sing for Righthand.”

Polnar looked at the other boy with misgivings. Never in his life had a seen any human with such pale skin or with red hair and now suddenly he was forced to live in close quarters with just such a person.

“There are a couple of ways to make your sleeping pallet more comfortable,” said Passenell. “Let me show you.”

Startled that so strange-looking a boy would be so friendly, Polnar watched Passenell adjust the pallet and relaxed a bit. For all of his strange looks, he was the only friend he might possibly have in this place and so he was ready to swallow his misgivings and hope for the best.

Polnar hardly slept at all this first night. He feared that the walls would fall in on him and crush him. The scorched air had no room to move. Back in his village, Polnar and his family would have slept outside on such a night where the air had some room to move. In his head, he listened to the lullaby that his mother sang to him when he was little and that she sang to the little ones until the plague killed them all. The song hurt Polnar as much as it comforted him, but he could not get it out of his mind and the lullaby could not put him to sleep. As he tossed and turned on his pallet, Polnar thought of the songs he sang with Petzkah and the others in the ragged group that fled the village. Singing those songs in his head also failed to bring on sleep. As had happened on other nights, closing his eyes brought back the image of the villagers suddenly attacking him for starting the plague and Murmansk striking him on the head. Remembering the boys he met in the back of the wagon in what seemed to be an opening to a different world was more comforting, but Polnar feared that the strange place and the boys in it were gone from his life as much as his family and the musical group he had traveled with. But when he listened to the song that the boy Dunsland sang to heal him, he finally fell asleep.

Polnar was not ready to rise from his sleep when a Dedicated One shook him and Passenell. Polnar assumed it was morning but inside the stone walls of the room there was no telling if the sun had climbed the first hill. Only a candle that was almost burnt out gave any light. Passenell did not speak and so neither did Polnar. Passenell nodded to Polnar to follow him and walked out of the room to the side of the stone table of the temple. A few people had assembled in front of the steps to the table. A man among them clutched a struggling rooster in his hands. The Dedicated Ones stood behind the slab. Judging by the faint light coming in from the open door at the back of the temple, Polnar guessed that the sun had climbed the first hill but probably not the second. Passenell sat down on the top step and nodded to Polnar to sit beside him.

Then Passenell began to sing a melody that was very different from anything Polnar had ever heard in the village. Polnar wondered how he could possibly learn to sing it but the chant Passenell sang was so beautiful that Polnar wished he could sing it himself. As Passenell sang, the man with the rooster brought it to the table and a Dedicated One took it. He slit the bird at its neck and spilled the trickle of blood on to the table. Polnar had seen roosters and many animals killed in the village, but never so deliberately and with so much ceremony. After the rooster was killed, the chant’s beauty was no longer as pure as it was.

After the morning sacrifice, a servant brought a small bowl of food for each of the boys. A Dedicated One followed the servant and ordered Passenell to begin teaching Polnar the chants immediately and that they would be checking the progress of the new temple singer.

“We got more to eat before the drought got to bad,” Passenell remarked.

Polnar did not know what to say, and so he said nothing. He knew well enough that only hunger made the mush attractive at all.

“The boy who taught me the chants was beaten for every mistake I made, and I will be beaten for your mistakes” Passenell said to Polnar once they had eaten.

“I will try not to make mistakes, but the chant you sang sounded not easy.”

“Aye, the chants are not easy but they can be learned. Even I learned them. The Dedicated Singer who taught me beat me double for his beatings afterwards.”

“So, are you going to beat me double for my mistakes?” Polnar asked.

Passenell’s attempt to sound threatening collapsed.

“I will decide what I will do after I am beaten for your mistakes. The Devoted Ones say that Redhand himself sang these chants. How they expect mortal boys like us to sing like gods is past my understanding of it. Perhaps that is how they say it is right to beat a child when they feel like the doing of it.”

Passenell began then to teach Polnar the morning chant bit by bit. By learning small pieces at a time, the music was less intimidating than the whole chant sounded when Polnar heard Passenell sing it. Another thing that made the chants less formidable than they seemed at first was their repetitive character. Learning one line of a chant served for learning the music of many more lines of it.

“The melody for ‘and Righthand saw his enemies arrayed against him’ is the same for ‘and Righthand arrayed his friends against Lefthand,’” said Polnar.

“Hmm. You have the right of it. I could have saved my skin and the skin of the Dedicated Singer before me by hearing what you hear.”

With practice, Polnar found that he could absorb the chants and sing long sections of them without missing either notes or words. Polnar practiced every day by the candles in the room, seeing the sun only during the morning and evening sacrifices, and then only the rays the sun sent through the back door of the temple.

When the Dedicated Ones came to the Dedicated Singer’s Room to hear Polnar sing the morning chant, Polnar was feeling quite confident until he saw the faces of the Dedicated Ones. One of the men carried a heavy rod and he had the same look that a woman in Polnar’s village had when she knew she was going to catch the children out at something and punish them for it.

“Sing the sacred chant taught you by the Dedicated Singer,” ordered the bearded Dedicated One.

Polnar instinctively looked away from the Dedicated Ones and faced the blank wall. Then he sang the chant. He concentrated on one line at a time and that way he was not too overwhelmed by the whole of it and he made it to the end. The Dedicated One with the rod gave Passenell a hard blow behind the shoulder. Polnar winced at the blow he would receive in turn, even as he tried to guess where he had gone wrong.

“Your singing was wrong on the words: ‘and Righthand threw his fiery ball into the faces of his enemies,’” said the Dedicated One with the rod in his hand. “Sing it, Passenell.”

Passenell sang the line. Polnar listened carefully but could not hear a difference in what Passenell sang and what he had just sung.

“Sing it, Polnar,” the bearded Dedicated One ordered.

Polnar sang the line again, confident that he had it right. The Dedicated Ones nodded solemnly. The man with the rod looked disappointed.

“You must learn quickly, Polnar,” said the bearded Dedicated One. “If the drought continues, we will need to hold a Great Sacrifice soon and you are the one who will have to sing it.”

The Dedicated Ones strode out of the room. Polnar faced Passenell.

“Do I receive two blows from you?” he asked.

“No,” said Passenell. “You had the right singing of it. As I said, the man needs to beat a boy and feel righteous at the doing of it.”

As the days passed, Polnar learned the chants so well that he was sure he could sing them in his sleep. The better he knew the chants, the more he liked the music. The melodies gave Polnar the feeling that something growing out of the earth and reaching for the sky. This was a feeling that made Polnar weep at the thought of his lost village as he could imagine his song rising out of the earth and forming a village just like the one he lived in until the plague destroyed it. Polnar then asked himself if the drought would have destroyed the village if the plague had not already done it. It seemed that there was always something about that could destroy a village or a town.

The story told by the music had its interest for Polnar, but he was not sure he understood what the story meant, and he was not sure he wanted to know. The story was both like and unlike some of the stories told and sung in his village. In the chants, Righthand and Lefthand are brothers and they are enemies. Because they are enemies, they are constantly fighting wars against each other. Both brothers have an army of followers that they lead in battle. In one battle, Lefthand creates a ball of light and throws it at Righthand. Righthand’s head is smashed and he is carried off the battlefield. Righthand’s sister then comes with a white flower. She puts the flower to Righthand’s nostrils. He breathes the scent of the flower and he comes back to life. Then Righthand creates a bright ball of fire and sends his army to attack the army of Lefthand. Righthand throws the ball of fire at Lefthand and Lefthand is consumed by the fire so that no life can rise from his ashes. Righthand spreads out the ashes and fashions the earth. Then Righthand and his army cut all of Lefthand’s army into pieces and out of them, they fashion the creatures of the earth.

“Do you think the chant of Righthand cutting his enemies into pieces has anything to do with the way they cut up the animals sacrificed here?” Polnar asked Passenell

“I had not the thought of it,” said Passenell. “The Dedicated Ones explain nothing. I tried asking questions like the question you ask me and I was beaten for it.”

In the rhythm of each day, there was a sacrifice every morning as soon as dawn began to cast its light on the earth. As on Polnar’s first morning after his capture, it was usually a rooster that was sacrificed in the morning, although occasionally it was another type of bird. In the evening, when the sun was taking its light away from the earth, there was another sacrifice This time, the victim was an animal; sometimes a sheep or a goat, sometimes a cow or an ox. The meat of the sacrificial victims was eaten, with Polnar and Passenell receiving portions along with vegetables and grains offered to Righthand by people throughout the day. As the drought grew worse, the animals were thinner and the vegetables and grains fewer.

“Do you come from around here?” Polnar asked Passenell one day when they were resting from their singing.

“No, I came from up above the furry trees,” Passenell replied.

“How did you end up here?”

“It happened the day after I sang for the village. Strangers were among us. We gave them food and shelter, for they were strangers. In the middle of the night, they snatched me from my family hut and carried me off and put me here.”

“And they captured me right in this town,” said Polnar.

“I had the seeing of that myself,” said Passenell.

Polnar went on to tell Passenell about life in his village and how the plague struck and killed many of the people and how his fellow villagers attacked him after blaming him for the plague and would have killed him if Murmansk had not rescued him and taken him away with a few other survivors of the plague. Then he told Passenell about how they decided to become traveling musicians.

“I had the seeing and the hearing of that,” said Passenell. “As with me, your singing was too good for your well being.”

He wanted to tell Passenell about the strange room he entered at the back of the wagon and the boys he met there and the singing they did, but he doubted that Passenell would believe him.

As Polnar learned the chants, he began to share the duties of singing them with Passenell. Usually, a few people wandered in for the morning sacrifice and stood near the front, close to the stone table. Although there was room for everybody, it was common for at least one person to edge somebody away from where he or she was standing and try to stand in the place of that other person. During the evening sacrifice, the temple was usually at least half-full and sometimes completely full. At that time, the jostling between people tended to be far worse and one time, there was almost as big a war between two groups of people as there was in the chant about Righthand and Lefthand. Polnar also noticed that some of the worshipers showed no interest in Polnar’s chanting or even in the sacrifice taking place while others seemed to be listening carefully and with devotion. At times, the seriousness of a listener made Polnar feel like a false person. The listener believed in the chant while the singer did not. Polnar could only comfort himself by recalling that he had never been ordered to believe in the chants; he had only been ordered to sing them.

It was after an evening sacrifice that Polnar thought he had sung well when the Dedicated Ones followed the boys into their room and the dedicated One with the rod struck Polnar a few times.

“Righthand will never open the clouds if you can’t sing the chants right,” said the bearded Dedicated One.

“What did I sing wrong?” Polnar asked Passenell after the Dedicated Ones left the room.

“I believe you had the right of it,” said Passenell. “I think they have to blame somebody for the drought continuing and they blamed you tonight.”

Polnar opened his mouth to say something about how unfair that was when a rumble of thunder rolled overhead and under the ground.

“Perhaps you have sung the clouds open and the rain will end to the drought,” Passenell suggested.

“I hope a storm makes it less hot,” said Polnar.

“It won’t,” said Passenell. “Hot air inside this temple stays hot.”

Another roll of thunder shook the temple. Polnar sat up, ready to run out if he saw any signs that the temple might collapse on top of him. A crack ran down the wall. Polnar looked up anxiously. So far, the roof was holding up. The crack on the wall widened until it became a wide, dark opening. Inside the opening there were a few lights that could have been made by candles. Then the boys heard the faint sound of music. A singer began singing a song filled with sadness that seemed to express Polnar’s longing for his village, his family, his traveling group and the friends he made in the strange room. And then Polnar realized that he was looking into that very room!

“Come on!” Polnar prompted Passenell. “I have friends there. I want you to meet them, too.”

Proceed to Chapter the Third of Part the Third

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