Soul Bound

1         Soul Bound

1.1       Finding her Feet

1.1.2     An Immersive Experience

1.1.2.11  Emina

{Wellington, I’m finished cooking. Where do you want me?}

{Kafana, join me in the front receiving room. I spoke with Fra Mattheus at length. He is delighted with the idea of a holy play and helped out with the details. Tomsk and Alderney are just polishing it now, and adding some special effects. Thanks to him, both you and I are now invited guests at the feast. You’ll be at the high table with the nobility, and I’ll be below the salt as an unspecified merchant. Don’t worry about playing the violin, music during the meal itself isn’t the custom here - they prefer to talk. We’re keeping you as a surprise for just before the desert course, so save up your mana and mingle until then.}

Careful to keep her gown clean, she made her way over. For the noble men, knee length flowing capes, tight breaches, and flared tunics were the main silhouette. Fabrics were intricately embroidered and brightly dyed, often in panels or stripes. For the noble women, tunics and breaches were replaced by multi-layered gowns, with wide shouldered bodices and wide hipped skirts. Both genders freely displayed their wealth as rings and sewn on gems or pearls. Some wore hats (chiefly older more conservative types) but most didn’t. She’d thought the gown Mariella had supplied her with was ostentatious. It turned out to be rather on the plain side. Despite that, it was still the most beautiful and flattering garment she’d ever worn.

Allies and retainers of House Landi were wearing gold with brown. Members of the House itself used the formal crest of a brown boar on a gold background. Silver with red or dark blue, and green with gold were also in evidence among the guests, but she’d no idea which Houses they represented. Wellington would probably know. She wandered over to him.

{Anyone in particular I should be aware of among the guests?}

{The tall man in the mask with the bird-like beak is a doctor. Camillo advised me that he’s very knowledgeable, but rather temperamental - it is easy to get on his wrong side, and he’s slow to forgive. Expect flirting, but assume any wife who is absent will have a magical way of keeping track of her husband. Don’t cast magic on any of them, or impugn anyone’s honour.} Wellington replied.

A messenger from Tomsk entered shortly and whispered in the steward’s ear. The steward banged his staff three times and announced that the entertainment was ready, if the guests would kindly make their way into the feasting hall.

Each guest was announced by name as they entered, and made their bow to the Lord and Lady of the house who were seated at the long table near the wall opposite the entrance. Tables with 15 guests each were placed near the other two sides, so that all guests faced inwards towards the space at the centre, where Alderney had set up a slightly raised octagonal mat. At each corner there was a drum painted a different colour. 7 drummers were quietly keeping up a rolling anticipatory beat. The 8th drum was white and had no drummer.

When the guests were seated and had been served wine, Alderney activated the lighting effect she’d arranged beforehand with Camillo’s help. Servants around the hall put out most of the torches, and a spotlight from above illuminated the stage. Tomsk spoke from the darkness, projecting his words clearly as he narrated the abbreviated version of the creation mythos they’d devised. Masked dancers with rune marked tabards came on and illustrated key moments of the story with their movements, the drums changing tempo and emotion to match each scene. Particularly beautiful was the dance of life between Dro and Zer that was portrayed by the sibling acrobats, but each deity had their characteristic movements, with some light, some heavy, some vigorous, some graceful. Noteworthy were the stately orderly Cov and the chaotic but beautiful Bel, which Alderney had carefully picked their two most trained dancers for.

In the final clash between the deities, there was a 4 versus 4 confrontation, followed by a loud smashing noise, the spotlight going out, and then the servants lighting the torches again, revealing the stage empty of actors and all the drums overturned. All but one. The yellow drum of Cov.

After that the meal started, and at some point servants tidied away the drums, leaving the stage clear. Lelia’s prodigious management skills demonstrated themselves as course after course was delivered without a hitch. Appetisers. Soup. Fresh fish. Game pies. Complicated roasts. Fruit. Cheeses. Finally, when only the desert course remained unserved, the steward stepped forwards again to bang his staff twice.

This time, Lady Sienna herself stood up, and gestured for Kafana to step onto the stage.

“I give you… Madame Kafana.”

Kafana took her time, walking to almost the far side of the stage, where she could make eye contact with everybody and the acoustics were good.

“I thank you for welcoming a stranger among you. I am going to sing you a song from my homeland. It is a simple song, about a poet who is unlucky in love. The sound of the song reminds me of where I am from, and the yearning of the poet matches the love in my heart for my home. It brings tears to my eyes, and I hope it makes you sad too, for only when we sense what it would be to lose something, do we truly value it.”

She looked out at her audience, about to visualise an effect for a spell, and then paused and looked down at her feet. It felt wrong to her. Yes, she could do anything she wanted to them. Manipulate them, rob them, possibly even slay them; but should she? Was that really who she was? The type of person this character ‘Madame Kafana’ was? Did she want to be the sort of person who used others for her own ends, just to get a quest reward in a game? No. She was a singer; that meant something to her, something more than just “a person who sings songs”. Win or lose, let her words and music and heart speak for her, stand on their own merits.

She raised her head, centered herself, and sang her heart out. No focus, no thought of runes, just pure genuine feeling, conveyed via a voice trained daily over 2 decades full of professional public performances.

Last night when I came back from the warm hammam

I passed by the old imam's garden.

And there in the garden, in the shadow of a jasmine

Emina stood with an ewer in her hand.

Sinoć kad se vraćah iz topla hamama,

prođoh pokraj bašče staroga imama.

Kad tamo u bašči, u hladu jasmina

s ibrikom u ruci stajaše Emina.

Oh, ain't she stunning! Swear on my imam,

She wouldn't be ashamed if she were at the sultan.

And when she strolls about and moves her shoulders,

A script from a hojja won't help me no more?

Ja kakva je pusta! Tako mi imana,

stid je ne bi bilo da je kod sultana.

Pa još kada šeće i plećima kreće,

ni hodžin mi zapis više pomoć' neće!

I called a salaam upon her. But I swear on my ghost,

Beautiful Emina won't even hear about it,

But she pulled out water into the silver ewer,

And she went down the garden to water guelder roses.

Ja joj nazvah selam. Al' moga mi dina,

ne šće ni da čuje lijepa Emina,

već u srebrn ibrik zahvatila vode,

pa niz bašču đule zaljevati ode.

Wind blew from the branches, and down the stunning back

It untwined her thick braids.

The hair started smelling, like blue hyacinths,

And to me a storm started inside my head.

S grana vjetar puhnu, pa niz pleći puste

rasplete joj njene pletenice guste.

Zamirisa kosa, k'o zumbuli plavi,

a meni se krenu bururet u glavi!

I almost fell down, swear on my ghost,

But the beautiful Emina didn't approach me.

She only looked at me once harshly,

Neither does she care, sordid, for that I had dropped dead for her!

Malo ne posrnuh, mojega mi dina,

al' meni ne dođe lijepa Emina.

Samo me je jednom pogledala mrko,

niti haje, alčak, što za njome crko'!

The old poet died, Emina died

The jasmine garden stayed empty.

The ewer got broken, the flowers withered

The song about Emina never will die.

Umro stari pjesnik, umrla Emina

Ostala je pusta bašča od jasmina.

Salomljen je ibrik, uvelo je cvijeće

Pjesma o Emini nikad umrijet neće.

The audience paid rapt attention as she sang, not forced to but drawn in by the beauty of the music itself, the minor tones and the church-like resonance from the walls. They listened not to the words, but to the emotion behind them, and were touched as they too started to think of loss and what they valued.

At the end, Tomsk stood up and started clapping. His stooges, intentionally planted around the room, stood and copied him. The audience began to join in, giving her a standing ovation. Alderney added a piercing two fingered whistle, and Wellington in his guise as a merchant added a more restrained “Bravo!”.

Kafana stepped forwards, ready to take her bow, and wished with all her might that the people in her audience would remember this night, would remember this experience of empathy, and be a little kinder to strangers in the future.

[WARNING: Mana 0/300.]

[Status “Mana Shock” acquired.]

She collapsed, her last conscious thought: “What have I done?”