Each night he had gone to sleep with her frozen at the table: each morning he had awakened to find her asleep in her blankets. When she woke she said nothing, hardly looked at him, just got up, ate, went to the table and began work. Each day he had started to sing and, each time a little sooner, she had stopped working and taken her day-long pose of studied inattention.

  What am I doing to her behind her face?

  Ansset felt restless, felt that he had to move. He delayed (Control) and when he got up he got up slowly (Control) and did not walk back and forth but instead headed directly for a shutter and tried to open it and realized that the very attempt was a sign that his Control was slipping. At the thought he was instantly aware of the walls of rock inside him, the deep and placid lake that grew ever deeper within them. But something was stirring at the bottom of the lake.

  He touched the cold stone wall between the windows and heard the whine of wind outside. Perhaps the first storm of fall was coming. Why had she brought him here? What was she trying to achieve?

  What have I done to her?

  He looked into the lake, looked deep and began to understand what was happening to him. After eleven days in the High Room he was beginning to be afraid. Things were out of his control. He could not leave. He could not force Esste to speak to him, or even to weep or show any sign that she felt anything at all. (Why is it so important that she show a sign of feeling?) And now he was feeling things within the walls of his Control that did not belong there. Fear stirred at the bottom of his calm. Fear, not just of what would happen to him in the High Room, but of what he might have done to Esste. He could not put it into words, but he realized that if something happened to her, something would happen to him. There was a connection. They were linked somehow, he was sure of it. And by raising her fears he had raised his own. They lurked. They waited. They were inside his walls and he did not know how he would be able to control them.

  Speak to me, Esste, he said silently. Speak to me and be angry with me and demand that I change, abuse me or praise me or sing idiotic songs about the cities of Tew but stop this hiding from me!

  She did not look alive or human, her face empty like that, her body motionless. Human beings moved, their faces expressed things.

  I will not break Control.

  “I will not break Control,” he sang softly. But in the moment of singing he knew it was not true, and the fear moved sluggishly within him.

  19

  It was her childish nightmare that held her. A roaring in her ears and a vast invisible globe that grew and grew and rolled toward her to crush her swallow her fill her empty her.

  And the globe reached her, roaring like a storm at sea. She was a little girl holding the blanket up tight to her neck, lying on her back, her eyes wide open seeing and not seeing the ceiling of the Common Room, seeing and not seeing the vast roar that had filled the vast hall. She opened her hands to press against the globe, but it was too heavy and she could not lift her hands against the weight. She closed her hands into fists, but the stuff of the globe could not be shut out so simply, and it squeezed in between her fingers and into her fist so that instead of shutting it out she was holding it in. If she opened her mouth it would enter and fill her. If she closed her eyes it would be able to change without her seeing. And so she lay there hour after hour until sleep overcame her or until she screamed and screamed.

  But no one ever came, because she never made a sound.

  The stone wall emerged from the shadows. It was dark night, and the light through the cracks in the shutters was gone. Ansset was no longer in the middle of the room. She could see him asleep sitting in the corner, his blanket wrapped around him. The wind whistled outside; it was cold. She reached stiff and painful fingers down to the computer and made the room warmer. She was inured to cold, but Ansset was still young. Freezing him to death would accomplish nothing.

  She got up slowly, so that her body could adjust to movement. Her back protested. But the pains of her body were nothing. Today had been worse than ever, not a memory of the past at all, but the terrors of childhood returned with a vengeance. I cannot last another day of this.

  She had said the same thing to herself yesterday; yet she had lasted.

  How am I different from him, she wondered. I, too, am hiding behind my Control. I, too, am unreachable, express nothing to anyone but what I choose to express. Perhaps if I unbent, broke Control just a little, he too would come out and be human again.

  But she knew she would not try the experiment. He would have to open first. If she moved first it would all have been wasted, and he would be stronger and she weaker the next time it was tried. If there was a next time. Twenty-two days. It was the twelfth night, tomorrow would be the twelfth day, they were more than halfway through the time and she had accomplished nothing of importance except that her own strength was flagging and she wondered if she could last another day.

  She walked to her blanket roll, and spread the blankets on the floor and bent over to lie down. But in the bending she glanced at the corner where Ansset was sleeping, and she quickly looked up again and stared and realized that Ansset was not asleep as he had been every other time. His eyes were open. He was watching her.

  Don’t sing! she cried out silently. Let me have peace!

  He did not sing. He just watched. And then, in a controlled, quiet voice that expressed no emotion whatsoever he said, “Can we stop now?”

  Can we stop now? If it hadn’t been for Control she would have laughed hysterically. He asks her for mercy? His voice was still ice; the battle was still going on; but he had asked for it to end, and somehow that made her feel that she had, after all, made some progress. No. She hadn’t made the progress. He had. It was a sign that maybe this would end.

  She slept a little better that night.

  In the morning, a message waited on the computer. Riktors Ashen had sent a regretful note that the emperor had cancelled several of his errands and he would be arriving on Tew a week ahead of schedule. The emperor had been most explicit. The Songhouse had promised him a Songbird. He needed the Songbird now. If the Songbird did not come with Riktors Ashen immediately, Mikal would know that the Songhouse did not intend to keep the promise made by Songmaster Nniv.

  A week early. Three days from now.

  She ate breakfast with Ansset, silently, and wondered if there was any hope of finishing this now.

  Sitting for her day’s work at the table, Esste steeled herself for Ansset to sit in the middle of the floor and start to destroy her with a song. Today it did not happen. Today Ansset walked around aimlessly, stroking the rock, sitting down and standing up again almost immediately, trying the door, trying the shutters. He hummed as he did, but the humming expressed almost nothing, a hint of impatience, and under that an even fainter hint of fear, but he was not trying to manipulate her with his voice. At first she was relieved beyond expression, but soon, as she began to pursue the work that had gone undone for three days, she began to worry about Ansset again. Now that he was giving her a rest from fearing for herself, she could care about him.

  The strain was beginning to show in his face. His eyes were not empty. They darted back and forth, unable to rest on one object for long. And he was biting his cheek occasionally. Control was breaking down. Why now? What had happened to him?

  I have to watch him now, very carefully. I’m playing with fire, playing along the rim of his destruction, I must know the moment when I can speak to him. He must not be allowed to pass into despair.

  Three days.

  In the afternoon Ansset’s aimless humming turned into speech. At first Esste could hardly hear him and wondered if he was even talking to her. But soon the words became clearer and, she noticed, he was exactly filling the High Room with his voice and speaking no louder. The voice was still under Control: it expressed, but only what he wanted it to express.

  “Please please please,” said the controlled careful meticulous voice, “please please please I’ve had enough can I please go or will you please say something to me I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish I don’t understand any of this but please I can’t stand it anymore please please please . . . .”

  Ansset’s voice droned on and he didn’t look at Esste, looked instead at the walls and the windows and the floor and his own hand, which did not tremble when he looked at it but wavered ever so slightly when he did not. She had not seen him move a muscle when he sang in years. This movement was not voluntary, but it was movement, and the very involuntariness of it spoke of terrible things going on inside Ansset’s mind. She wanted to reach out and comfort him and stop the muscles from trembling. She did not, however. She stayed at the computer and worked as she listened to his voice drone on.

  “I’m sorry I made you afraid I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry please can this be over I’m afraid of you I’m afraid of this room let me hear your voice Esste Esste Esste please . . . .”

  His voice finally faded into silence again and he sat by the door, his face pressed into the heavy wood.

  20

  I have begged and she hasn’t answered. The whales are swimming deep inside me and she doesn’t help. I need help. All the monsters in the world are inside me instead of outside me I’ve been tricked and trapped and they are inside my walls not outside my walls inside with me and she won’t help me. When I stop thinking about a muscle it shakes. When I stop thinking about a fear it leaps at me. I’m drowning but the lake keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and I don’t know how to get out the walls go up forever and I can’t climb over and I can’t break through and she won’t talk to me.

  Ansset pressed his face into the wood of the door until it hurt terribly, and the pain helped.

  He remembered. He remembered singing. He could hear all the voices. He heard the other children in chamber. He heard the voices in his class of Breezes and his class of Bells and his class of Groans. Voices at meals. Voices in the toilet. The voices of the strangers in Step and Bog. Rruk’s voice as she helped him learn how things were done in the Songhouse. All the voices sang at once to him but there was only one voice that he could not recognize, that he could not hear clearly, a dim and distant voice that he did not understand.

  But it was not a Songhouse voice. It was coarse and crude and the song was meaningless and empty. But it was not empty, it was full. It was not meaningless, for he knew that if he could once hear the song, really hear it through the din of the other voices that it would help him, that the song would mean something to him. And as for coarseness and crudeness, the song he tried to hear did not jar on him at all. It made him feel as comfortable as sleep, as comfortable as eating, as the satisfaction of all the miserable desires. He strained to hear, he pressed his face into the wood, but the voice would not come clear.

  Not for hours, and he rubbed his face back and forth against the wood, and threw himself to the stone floor, so the pain would drive all the other voices out of his mind, would let him hear the one voice he searched for, because that voice would save him from the terror that swam every moment closer to the surface where he watched and waited helplessly.

  21

  The vigil lasted all night. Esste watched as Ansset drove the splinters of the door into his nose and brow and cheeks until blood flowed. She watched as he tried to grip and tear the stone until his nails broke. She watched as he slammed his face into the rock walls until he bled and she feared he would cause permanent damage. It seemed he would never sleep. And in between the self-mutilation he would, in a wooden, controlled voice, his body held as rigid as he could hold it for all the trembling, say, “Now please. Now please. Help me.” There was Control, but that was all. No music. His songs were gone.

  Just for the moment, she told herself. Just for now. His songs, his good songs, will come back if I just wait for this to run its course, like a fever that has to break.

  Morning came and Ansset was still awake. He had stopped thrashing, and Esste went to the machines for food. She set it in front of him, but he did not eat. She reached a piece of it to his mouth, but instead of taking the food he bit her, he set his teeth into her fingers with all his strength. The pain was excruciating, but Esste’s Control was not even tested by this—physical pain, at her age, was the least of her weaknesses. She waited patiently, saying nothing. Blood from her fingers drooled out of Ansset’s mouth for minutes as both silently looked at each other. And it was Ansset who made the first sound, a moan that sounded like the slow breaking of rock, a song that spoke only of agony and self-hatred. Slowly he released his bite on her fingers. Pain rushed up her arm.

  Ansset’s eyes went blank. He did not see her.

  Esste went to the machine and covered her fingers with salve. She was exhausted after a night of no sleep, and Ansset’s savage bite had disturbed her far more than the mere pain. I will stop. This has gone too far, she decided. Her hand shook, despite Control, despite the calm she tried to enforce on herself. I can’t do this anymore, she said silently.

  But for twelve days she had been silent, and sound did not come easily to her throat. Came with such difficulty, in fact, that as she looked at Ansset’s blank face she could not make any sound come. Instead she lay down on her blanket, unused that night, and slept.

  She awoke to the sound of wind howling through the High Room. It was cold, icy even under the blanket. It took only a few moments for her to realize what that meant. She leaped up from the floor. It was afternoon, but dark with wind and clouds. The clouds were so low that mist trailed into the High Room with every gust of wind, and the ground was invisible. Every shutter of every window was open, some of them banging against the stone walls outside.

  He has jumped from the tower. The thought screamed in her mind, and she gasped aloud.

  Her gasp was answered by a moan. She whirled and saw Ansset lying on the table, curled up with the thumb and little finger of his right hand in his mouth, the other fingers pressed into his forehead and eyes like an infant’s involuntary pose. The relief that swept over her forced her to lean on the table taking her breath in great gasps. Any illusion of Control was gone now. Ansset had won, forcing her to break before her task was completed.

  The cold forced her to take action again. She went to the windows and closed them all, leaning out over the sills to catch the handles of the shutters and pull them closed. The mist was so dense that it seemed to swallow up her hand as she reached into it. But inside she was singing. Ansset had not jumped.

  The windows closed, she returned to the table, and only now realized that Ansset was asleep. He trembled with cold and, probably, exhaustion, but he had not seen her panic, her relief, had not heard her gasp. Her first thought was gratitude, but she realized that it might have been good for him to see that fear for his safety could overcome even Esste’s iron reserve. It is as it is, she told herself, and looked in his left hand for the key to the shutters, found it, and went around arid locked them all, then replaced the key on the chain which had fallen to the floor after he took it from her neck in her sleep.

  She went to the computer and turned up the heat in the High Room. Instantly the stones under her feet grew warm.

  Then she took her blanket and Ansset’s and covered the boy where he lay on the table. He stirred slightly, moaned and whimpered, but did not awaken.

  22

  Ansset’s face was stiff when he awoke. He was not cold anymore. His head ached, and where the splinters had been driven into his face the stinging was a constant undercurrent. But he felt something cool touching his face, and wherever it touched the stinging went away. He opened his eyes just a little. Esste leaned over him dabbing salve on his face. For the moment Ansset forgot everything bad and carefully said to her, “I didn’t jump. They told me to jump and I didn’t.”

  She said nothing. She said nothing at all, nothing at all, and her silence was a blow that knocked him back in on himself, and his struggle returned. The water was rushing up to meet him, a vast whirlpool sweeping higher and higher and Ansset was at the top and there was nowhere higher that he could go to escape it. He looked inside himself and there was no escape and as the water touched him, swept his feet out from under him, bore him in fast, dizzying circles around and around, he screamed. His scream was a voice that filled the High Room and echoed from the walls and shattered the stillness of the mist outside.

  He was no longer in the High Room. He was being sucked down into the maelstrom. The water closed over his head. Spinning faster and faster he plunged deeper and deeper toward the mouths of the waiting terrors below. One after another they swallowed him up. He felt himself being swallowed, the massive peristalsis driving him into gullet after gullet, hot warm places where he could not breathe.

  And he was walking into a room. Walking and walking but getting no farther into the room than he had been before. And all alone, no other sound, he heard the song he had been searching for. Heard the song and saw the singer, but could not hear and could not see, not really, because the singer had no face that he could recognize, and the song, no matter how carefully he listened, kept escaping the moment after he heard it. He could not hear the melody in his memory, only in the moment, and as he looked at an eye the other eye vanished, and when he looked for the mouth the eye he had seen before disappeared from sight.

  He was no longer walking, though he had no memory of reaching the woman who lay on the bed. He reached out. He was touching her face. He was stroking her face so very gently, tracing the features, the eyes, the mouth, and the voice sang, “Bi-lo-bye. Bi-lo-bye,” but the moment he understood the words he lost them. Lost them, and the mist came and swallowed up the face. He clutched for it, held it, held it tight; she could not disappear from him in the mist which was all white invisible faces that swallowed her up. This time he held on tightly and he would not let go, nothing could pull him away.