Bard I (11 page)

‘Minor conjurings,’ Pendor said. ‘Don’t get excited. If I could do greater things, would I be here?’

Maybe, Felimid thought. Aloud he said, ‘It’s in my mind that you wrong your powers by naming them minor. Changing rubbish into delectable viands is no little thing from where I sit. I’ll not press you. I wondered, just, if you can do as much for the bloody stinking clothes I’ve worn almost to rags. Today’s battle was the finish. I’d as soon not don them again, unless you can improve them so that they’re fit to wear.’

‘Is that all?’ Pendor chuckled. ‘You do take a long time to ask a simple thing. I’ll do it gladly. Meanwhile, suppose you watch the venison.’

The chuckle was not mirrored in his eyes. Felimid had guessed too near the bone. A little more thought, when the bard was less drunken, on a day when he hadn’t fought a savage fight for his life, would surely show him the full extent of what he’d so far overlooked. Regan presented no such danger nor did the forest robbers. They hadn’t Felimid’s kind of mind, or bardic training in degrees and categories of thought.

For Felimid, blithely ignorant, was grinding salt into the cratered, ulcerated sore of Pendor’s deepest fear.

Because he was ignorant, he tended the venison as his host had suggested. At last he ran a wooden skewer into the meat and pronounced it done. The slicing knife confirmed his judgement. Pendor watched, his gaze heavy­lidded, while his hand slowly fondled the wine-jug. His lips almost, but not quite,moved.

The bard didn’t observe it. He was admiring in disbelief his new, clean garments. There was a thick linen shirt, diamond-patterned in blue and dark brown; wool trousers and cloak, the green of linden leaves; a soft leather tunic the darker green of moss, with belt, wallet and cap of the same family; even his boots had been transformed. They were as new. Remembering Felimid’s unconditional praise of them, Pendor hadn’t changed them otherwise.

As he dressed, the bard found phrases of gratitude which smoothly rhymed and scanned. Pendor, remarking that he made much of little, poured a fresh cup of wine for each of them and drank a large draught himself.

Felimid raised his own cup. The wine stung his mouth like pale cool fire. Why, Pendor could grow rich in a score of trades if he chose; brewer, clothier, physician, cook. He . . .

Felimid’s senses dissolved. His head was suddenly full of echoes and distance. He lurched spastically to his feet, groping for the table’s edge, but his fingers had gone clumsy and boneless. He fell untidily to the floor, his cheek striking the table.

‘Just clever enough to be a fool,’ Pendor said wearily.

‘I’ve spent years taking ever-stronger doses of certain drugs and poisons until they don’t affect me. The full contents of yon jug wouldn’t make my head ache. Not that your one relishing swallow will kill you. The paralysis would pass in a while.
Would.
’

Pendor brooded, and poured himself more of the treacherous liquor. Regan lay drugged asleep against pain. What to tell her? Perhaps that Felimid had gone hunting and not returned. The simplest lies were safest. There was danger enough in the Forest of Andred to make such a yarn believable, as Regan of all people had cause to know. She would weep for Felimid, and for her own hopes, but then she could accommodate herself to fact. She would have to.

‘Basket!’ Pendor cried.

The black mare, restlessly waiting to be freed from her hobble, saw Pendor carry Felimid’s helpless shape down the timber steps. She saw him drop the limp figure into Basket, and callously throw two dead corpses atop it. Then Pendor left, Basket moving after him like a drifting boat, a yard above the ground. So. The bard’s reservations about his host had been right, but not nearly strong enough. The black mare fretted at the rope entangling her feet.

She wondered if the bard was dead.

By the time Pendor had made two more journeys into the forest, dusk was lowering and the black mare had yet to free herself. When he returned the third time, he solved the problem for her by calling Rope off as he ploddingly mounted the steps to his tree-house. He had no use for a horse, however beautiful. Nor did he know what Myfanwy was. She might go where she liked. She promptly left the garden, following his threefold trail.

Another was before her. Kev, the feral boy Felimid had rescued from the spider, had been an interested watcher from high in the trees as Pendor performed his treachery, although Kev had no notion what the magician’s actions meant.

Moving through the branches, he kept effortless pace with Basket. He’d often seen that strange object following the thick man who left food for him. Once before, he’d seen it carry the other man who had fought the spider. He’d been hurt, then. Was he hurt again now? Kev hoped not. He liked hearing the bard sing, and play his harp. They were good sounds.

Kev watched from the trees. Pendor heaved Felimid out at the base of a patriarchal oak, with two corpses across his legs. Then he went away. Kev was mightily puzzled. Did this mean the singing man had died?

Kev dropped to the ground. Wary as a rabbit, he approached the macabre group sprawled among the oak roots. The smell of death was very strong. It came from the two not-men. The singing man smelled alive. His flesh felt warm and elastic, with blood coursing through it. Although his eyes were open and seeing, he didn’t move. He must be hurt.

The woodland boy wondered what to do.

Sweating, incapable of movement, Felimid stared at the shaggy-haired naked creature crouched over him.

Oh, Cairbre and Ogma! If he only had understanding!

Pendor returned twice, with others of the slain hunting band, including its dead leader, the Lord Avraig. By the day’s end, eight bodies Jay around the oak-bole. Then Pendor went away and did not come back again.

The oak’s branches had become black with crows.

Felimid heard their harsh voices. He also glimpsed Kev, driving them away with thrown sticks, and wondered how long the boy would remain interested. When it grew too dark for Kev to throw things. he descended and stood over Felimid personally. The bard was grateful, but hope had left him. Sensation had left his limbs, as well as movement. All he felt was a dull ache in his side where he lay against the oak root.

Though he struggled to move, he could do no more than make inarticulate sounds. roll and blink his eyes.

His blood felt as if it had congealed in all his veins. The helplessness was worse than being bound, worse even than dangling by the heels above King Oisc’s wolf pit. Shedding tears of rage, he wished for Pendor’s neck between his hands.

Would the effect of this accursed poison pass? Pendor had seemed confident that it would not, at least not soon enough to profit the bard at all. Wolves or a sounder of wild pigs were bound to discover him soon. Kev wouldn’t stay to defend him in the face of such terrors. lie could only die. Felimid struggled again with muscles inert as clay. He failed, yet again, to stir hand or foot.

‘Do you live, mortal ma n?’

It was Myfanwy’s voice. The bard loved it; not even the notes of his harp were more exquisitely sweet.

He gurgled in answer. As she drew near, Kev climbed swiftly beyond her reach. She looked at him with eyes like wet black gems.

‘Come down,’ she said, ‘for I mean you no harm. This man you were protecting has need of your help as well as mine. You must lift him to my back and hold him there. Come down, come down.’

With a tongue like a sponge full of water, Felimid managed to say, ‘Kev.’

Myfanwy’s ears twitched. ‘What said you? Is that a word?’

The bard bent great effort toward achieving clarity. One short name, that was all! Spoken with lips and tongue that wobbled imbecilically loose and would not be governed. Again.

‘Kev.’

‘The boy?’ Myfanwy asked. ‘Is this his name?’ Felimid tried to say yes. It proved the worst failure of all, tangling in his throat so that only a grunt emerged. Even so, the goddess’s daughter understood.

‘Kev,’ she said, her voice like silver chimes. ‘Kev, brave one, lost one, come down and help us now or we too may be lost. You have done well. Now you must do better, or all that went before may be for nothing! Kev, you have not much understanding of humans, but you have a treasure all value lightly save those who lack it. You have hands. I need those hands. Come down and lend me the use of them . . .’

She talked on, coaxing, saying his name often. There is power in names. Because the Lord Avraig knew hers, the daughter of Epona had been bound to his service. Although Kev’s name had been casually bestowed, it had none the less been given to him by a magician. It was potent and valuable to him.

Myfanwy charmed him down from his safe branches at last, to stand before her. A longer time passed ere he saw what she wanted of him.

Taking Felimid’s cloak and tunic in her teeth, the mare lifted him to his feet like some limp and dangling puppet. She did this several times, speaking gently to Kev each time she lowered her burden. At last, Kev caught the notion of pushing one of the bard’s legs over her back.

He tumbled off on the far side.

This happened twice more. Then Kev caught the further notion of holding one of the bard’s feet so that he wouldn’t fall. Myfanwy reached back, caught a sleeve of Felimid’s shirt in her teeth and drew his arm forward. With Felimid slumped precariously astride her, his head hanging down beside her sleekly muscled shoulder. Myfanwy began to walk.

By then, the bard’s bruises were extensive, his neck unbroken by happy chance or the beneficence of his gods, and his fine new raiment in nearly as foul a state as his old. That none of the things he wanted to say could be voiced was probably as well.

A couple of miles on by the winding forest trails, Myfanwy halted. By leaning against a tree, she kept Felimid from toppling into the mud. By standing like that until dawn, she warmed him with her flesh and saved him from a possibly mortal chill. His discomfort was strong, but he survived.

With full daylight, he recovered the ability to speak. By midday, he could stand unsupported– barely. He felt like something that had passed through a wildcat’s entrails and been stepped on afterwards. He said so, and much else.

‘All-competent Dagda!’ he swore. ‘The birds had eaten my eyes but for you, Kev–eaten them out of my head where I lay!’ He shuddered. ‘And but for you, Myfanwy, I’d lie there yet. Even supposing I were whole, I’d be too far gone to move. Why, look at me! I hunch and hobble like an old man as it is!’

Wincing, he stretched his limbs.

‘A favor for a favor,’ Myfanwy replied. ‘I came late, I know. The magician’s rope was like a quicksand. Your doubts of him don’t seem to have warded you from his treachery. How did he get the better of you?’

Felimid winced again. ‘By cunning. He gave me some poison or drug to which he’s inured, in wine, and drank of it himself to lull me. Mine the fault that I was fooled. I cannot tell why.’

‘Does he lust for the woman who was with you?’

‘Regan? It’s likely he does. Most would! And yet it hasn’t the feel of a thing so simple. I can’t be telling you what I mean by that, for I know only vaguely my own self. I’m clear on this, though. Whyever he did it, he’ll account to me for it. Not in his own house, for I want to catch him where he cannot call for Rope and be an swered. I’ve seen too well what Rope can do to care to have him against me. Ah, Pendor is wasted as herb-doc­ tor and magician. He truly is. He’d make some lord a remarkable fine hangman.’

A random wind roved through the endless vaulted dim of the forest. It stirred Myfanwy’s mane and tail, making them flow like liquid silver. She nodded; a poor abrupt word for what she did with her lovely head.

‘I do not know this man Pendor,’ she said, ‘but I’ve seen more of magic than even you, and what you say about his powers seems right. Of his reasons for fearing to have their nature known too well, you can judge bet ter than I. You too are a man.’

‘Fear,’ Felimid said. ‘Yes, that’s why he did what he did. I see it now. I’d have done better to see it before I drank his deceitful wine! Still, he’s made a great mistake too. He should have taken the trouble to kill me, not left me to die.’ Felimid’s smile was wicked. ‘I’ll enjoy ex­ plaining that to him.’

‘Lacking a weapon,’ Myfanwy said, ‘you will not ever have the chance, I believe.’

‘Hmm, there’s that.’ Felimid strode about, bending and stretching as he talked, to work the stiffness out of his muscles. ‘My lady, Pendor has my sword, and my harp . . . and be has Regan, the British woman you saw.’ He didn’t feel in the least ridiculous, calling the black mare by such a title of honor. She was a lady. and it made no difference that she ran four-footed.

‘He won’t be telling her what he’s done with me,’

Felimid went on, swiftly laying plans. ‘Injured and drugged asleep, she didn’t see. He has no reason to wish her harm; she doesn’t know what I know. I’ll bide my time and let him heal her. He’ll make a better fist of that than I should, and it’s better that she stay warm and snug until it’s time to leave.’

‘She will think you dead, and grieve greatly,’

Myfanwy said.

The bard waved a negligent hand. ‘No help for it. The more gladdened she’ll be when I appear again. What about me? While Regan sleeps warm and eats hearty,I’ll be seeking my food in the forest again, and this time lacking even a knife. I’ll be fighting Kev for roots and snails before I’m done. I’m not looking forward with eagerness to a nine-night of that, be assured.’

‘You needn’t, my friend. I said I have carried the Lord Avraig between worlds in pursuit of somestrange game.

I can carry you out of this world entirely . . . not to some place where terrible beasts lurk, for I hazard you have had too much of them here . . .’

‘Very, very right, my lady!’

‘Then climb on my back. I’ll take you at once to a land where the sun shines warmly, fish abundant in the streams, birds on the lough and fruit on the branch. Your own clever hands will feed you amply well until it is time to return, and I will munch clover! By my mother Epona, I swear this is no trick, and nothing you will regret.’

The bard didn’t hesitate. His people knew of other worlds, filled with monsters, glorious and splendid men, women beautiful beyond belief, gods, demons, giants, faeries and shape-changers. Once, these beings had entered each other’s worlds and returned as easily as leaping over a hurdle. It happened less often now– the old magic was a thing forgotten, and creatures inhuman kept to the dark forests and other fey places where man seldom ventured.