Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 1 - Rajheem

Rajheem had the feeling someone was watching him.  He kept his head low, his fingers poised over the strings of his lute.  Through the curtain of his black hair, he checked one end of the alleyway, and then the other.

Nothing.  Revelers filled both of the main streets, skipping and whirling in drunken delight.  They danced, they laughed, and they drank, bodies a blur of brown and black.  The alleyway was a little less secluded than Rajheem normally liked, but he trusted that the city guard was as inebriated as the rest of the celebrants.  The marriage of General Farahd to Anestan, princess and sole heir to the First House, marked the end of a two-year long war.

Rajheem relaxed and let his fingers fall against the strings.  He’d had that feeling lately, of being watched.  It had become so insistent that he’d begun to consider, with some seriousness, the chanters’ claims that music addled the brains.  He shook his head and opened his mouth to sing.  He should know better by now. 

The notes slipped from his mouth, and relief filled him, like taking a long draught of water after a day of thirst.  A few people ventured into the alleyway.  If those who dared to listen dropped a few more copper rinhams into the metal pot at his feet than they normally did, well, he was not one to complain.  Singing earned him more coin than his job as drummer to a chanter’s choir, not that much coin was to be had as an outskirter.

“A minstrel!” cried out a boisterous voice to his left.  Rajheem fumbled over the lines of his song.  He strummed a few more chords, then gave up.

The man who approached was Talian, pale face bright by torchlight.  Two other men followed behind, stumbling in their friend’s footsteps.  “Damned hard to find music in Hajinn,” mumbled the man.  His face crinkled.  “Why is that?”

“It is forbidden,” Rajhem said.  He pressed the fingers of his left hand against the frets of his lute and played a few minor chords.  It was a little dramatic, but he knew from experience that foreigners loved theatrics.  “An unspoken taboo.”  Unmentioned, he thought.  It was as if the very whisper of music were a tainted thing.

The Talian smiled, then reached for the coin purse at his side and missed.  One of the men behind him laughed.  “Your chanters are pleasant enough to the ears, but after some time away from home, one longs for a tune.”  His hands found his purse and he dug out a silver rinham.  “What do you say, boy?  Play me something sweet and I’ll make it worth your while.”

Rajheem scanned the streets again.  The Talian merchant was loud, and the guards often kept tabs on drunken foreigners.  No flash of red or gold met his eyes.  Rajheem's gaze flicked over the merchant, taking in the well-kept clothes and silken purse.  “Two silver rinhams, and I’ll sing you a song so sweet, you’ll weep with joy.”

The man laughed, his belly shaking beneath his shirt.  Too loud.  Rajheem was tempted to get up and leave, but the merchant pulled out another silver coin.  “The first is for a song.  And if you make me weep, you’ll have earned the second.”

You’ve lost already, Rajheem thought.  It was easier to make a drunk man cry than a sober one.  He tapped the calluses on his right hand against the body of the lute to get the beat.  Then he took in a breath and began to sing.  It was a Talian lullaby, meant to lull a restless child to sleep.  He sung it in Talian, as Bahavis had taught him, and though he did not know the meaning of each word, he knew the meaning of the song.  His voice flowed from note to note, slipping with a lazy quality over the runs.  He held the long, low notes, made them caressing as a loving touch.  The simple chords on the lute he strummed softly, so that they were barely heard.

The rosy-cheeked smile faded from the merchant's face, replaced by wistful longing. Close, but not close enough.  Rajheem pushed harder, pressed his heart against each note, his tenor rising above the din in the background to drift like honey into his listeners’ ears.  The merchant’s lip trembled.  Rajheem threw himself into the song—he was a man singing to his only child with his last breaths, he was a woman singing to sleep her dying lover, he was a boy sitting alone in an alleyway, wishing he’d had someone to sing him lullabies as a babe.