Read Songmaster for Free Online Page A

Ansset can do, he is worth all the praise he has been given, she thought. Why, the boy is full of love, even for me. Even for me. And she looked up into his eyes and saw—
    Nothing.
    He regarded her as placidly as he had before. Control. He had let out the Song, and that was all. There was nothing human about him when he wasn’t singing. He knew what she wanted to hear, he had given it to her and that was all he needed to do.
    “Do they wind you up?” she said to the blank face.
    “Wind me up?”
    “You may be a singer,” she said angrily, “but you aren’t human!”
    He began to sing again, the tones already soothing, but Kya-Kya leaped to her feet, backed away. “Not again! You can’t trick me again! Sing to the stones and make them cry, but I won’t have you fooling me again!” She fled the room, slamming shut the door on his song, on his empty face. The child was a monster, not real at all, and she hated him.
    She also remembered his song and loved him and longed to return to his stall to hear him sing forever.
    That very day she pleaded with Esste to let her go early. To let her leave before she ever had to hear Ansset sing again. Esste looked confused, asked for explanation. Kya-Kya only insisted again that if she wasn’t allowed to go, she’d kill herself.
    “You can go tomorrow, then,” the new Songmaster in the High Room said.
    “Before the funeral?”
    “Why before the funeral?”
    “Because he’ll sing then, won’t he?”
    Esste nodded. “His song will be beautiful.”
    “I know,” Kya-Kya said, and her eyes filled with tears at the memory. “But it won’t be a human being singing it. Good-bye.”
    “We’ll miss you,” Esste said softly, and the words were tender.
    Kya-Kya had been leaving, but she turned to look Esste in the eye. “Oh you sound so sweet. I can see where Ansset learned it. A machine teaching a machine.”
    “You misunderstand,” said Esste. “It is pain teaching pain. What else do you think the Control is for?”
    But Kya-Kya was gone. She saw neither Esste nor Ansset again before the tram took her and her luggage and her first month’s money away from the Songhouse. “I’m free,” she said softly when she passed the gate leading to Tew and the farms opened before her.
    You’re a liar, you’re a liar, answered the rhythm of the engines.

 

7

     
    A machine teaching a machine. The words left a sour memory that stayed with Esste through all the funeral arrangements. A machine. Well, true enough in a way, and completely untrue in another. The machines were the people who had no Control, whose voice spoke all their secrets and none of their intentions. But I am in control of myself, which no machine can ever be.
    But she also understood what Kya-Kya meant. Indeed, she already knew it, and it frightened her how completely Ansset had learned Control, and how young. She watched him as he sang at Nniv’s funeral. He was not the only singer, but he was the youngest, and the honor was tremendous, almost unprecedented. There was a stir when he stepped up to sing. But when he was through singing, no one had any doubt that the honor was deserved. Only the new ones, the Groans and a few of the Bells were crying—it would not be right at a Songmaster’s funeral to try to get anyone to break Control. But the song was grief and love and longing together, the respect of all those present, not just for Nniv, who was dead, but for the Songhouse, which he had helped keep alive. Oh, Ansset, you’re a master, thought Esste, but she also noticed things that most did not notice. How his face was impassive before and after he sang; how he stood rigidly, his body focused on making the exact tone. He manipulates us, Esste thought, manipulates us but not half so perfectly as he manipulates himself. She noticed how he sensed every stir, every glance in the audience and fed upon it and gave it back a hundred-fold. He is a magnifying mirror, Esste thought. You are a magnifying mirror