Thunderer Read Online Free PDF Page B

so long as he stood with stronger singers. When the Choir sang at twilight, in the hall in the central spire, chanting their measured adoration of the Voice, he was permitted to stand in the outer circles, where the less gifted students listened in silence.
    Sourly he cultivated other talents.
    The Choirmen were masters of many delicate arts. One school within the Choir specialized in clockwork, in workrooms in the south spire. They built precise clocks, and clever toys. A wind-up man walking; a dancer curling into a dying fall, then uncoiling up again; racing horses with tricky hooves that never quite touched the painted grass. There was a big Headman from the plains who had been a friend to Gad, who had sent two sons and a daughter to the Choir, but who had never himself been able to come to the mountains. They made a diorama of Gad for him, with little tin figures on tracks orbiting the Choristry through intricate carved streets. The plains demanded music boxes, too, and they got them, though the Choirmen found their noise tinny and false.
    In the Choristry’s gardens and greenhouses, another school cultivated herbs, medicines, and spices. Other Choirmen brewed beers and rum and liquors in the tunnels. Others made musical instruments, most of which they kept for themselves; the plainspeople had little use for the finer instruments. Arjun threw himself into composition. Every student composed music as an occasional exercise—it was a way to come closer to the Voice’s song—but Arjun did it constantly, obsessively. By the time he was fourteen, his desk in the library was stuffed with densely scrawled notebooks. He made the other students perform his compositions. His pieces became increasingly difficult and angular. They had such strong and pure voices. He lacked their grace. It got awkward and painful.
             
    T hey elevated him from the outer circle of the students into the second circle. He was now, they told him, a closer echo of the Voice; and with time he would become closer and closer until he reverberated with it perfectly. He was allowed small parts in the song, on the less significant days of the calendar. They added
Atyava
to his name, and moved his quarters to the east spire.

    I n Father Julah’s office high in the east spire, Arjun discovered a rare gift for languages.
    He had gone there to discuss a problem with a piece he was composing. Fingers steepled, head lowered, black-bearded Julah listened patiently to the precocious child’s problem. When Arjun was done, Julah thought for a while and dug through his shelves.
    “Here. Father Nayaren’s
Principles.
It used to be a basic part of the regular syllabus when I was your age. Keep it. I want you to read his second chapter. And—aha!”
    Julah held up a book bound in deep red leather, stamped on front and back with a thin snaking dragon in gold foil. He opened it at a random page and held it up to Arjun. Instead of any letters Arjun recognized, it had rows—no, columns—of intricate designs. Like diagrams of one of Father Anias’s clockwork engines; like musical notes, or the tangled roots of herbs.
    “It’s Akashic. I do not know the author. The book purports to have been written by the Petal Rain Dragon of the Heavenly Parliament, though I rather expect a human hand had to hold the pen for him. The let-us-say
difficulty
with which he deals is not dissimilar to yours. You can’t read it, of course, but I can, though not as well as I’d like. I’ll read to you. ‘
Gakusei
’—that’s ‘students’—‘listen…’”
    Arjun came back the next day, and the next, to listen to Julah read. It went slowly because Arjun wanted to know the Akashic for every word Julah spoke. And when that book was finished, Arjun found other Akashic books. He found dictionaries and grammatologies, and began to teach himself the language.
    Over the centuries, the old building had amassed a huge and startlingly diverse library, scattered among the