Exile's Song (8 page)

He glanced hesitantly at them, but when Margaret made no sign of derision, or of disbelief he went on. “It makes the same uneasy chord, over and over, and it is quite unnerving to my students. Here—I will show you.”

He laid the harp flat across his knees. His hands were old and a little stiff, but still flexible enough to pluck the strings. She now knew that he was upward of ninety, about the same age as the professor, and it hurt her to see that he could so easily do what Ivor could no longer manage. He pressed the levers at one end, and ran his hand across the strings; but although all the other instruments had quickly responded to his expert touch, this one made only a low droning noise. “See? Nothing but that—which isn’t even a proper harp sound. Here, you try it.

Master Everard stood up and handed the instrument to Margaret. She sat down and studied it. The pale blonde wood was very beautiful, and the swirls in the grain, a little darker, made it more so. She stroked the wood, feeling for joins, and found nothing her sensitive fingers could distinguish. There were inlays of a darker wood in a decorative pattern on the sound box and under the bridge. The smell of the old wood pleased her with a faint familiarity, as with the spices in the stew last night. For a moment she saw the red-haired woman who sometimes haunted her sleep holding a
ryll
like this one. Then she ran her hands across the strings, pressed the levers and was rewarded with a sudden shower of cascading arpeggios, like a spring rain on Thetis.

Margaret forgot the two old men, both staring at her in astonishment. She strummed the strings, thinking of a lullaby she had learned on Zeepangu. They had an instrument not unlike this. Her hands moved involuntarily, almost—she could not help thinking—as if the
ryll
were playing
her,
and it was not the simple song she intended. She had a blurry vision of the silver-haired and silver-eyed man of her old nightmares, seated in a large carved chair, and the feelings she had about the man were, as always, a muddle of fear and excitement. For just a moment she saw the Old Man, with his hair not salt-and-peppered as now, but still all dark. Both his hands extended from embroidered cuffs. It was a flash, and it was gone.

Her throat closed slightly and her eyes stung with tears. Then words forced themselves out from between her lips. She swallowed, trying to push the words away, for they were elusive and not completely like anything else she had ever sung. Then, abruptly, resistance disappeared; she let the words flood out, simply because she could not stop them; the thickness in her throat vanished and she surrendered to the melody as if possessed.

The verses rolled out of her without volition, one after another. Margaret was like a woman entranced—captured by she knew not what.

An indefinite time later, Margaret found herself slumped over the
ryll,
with an overwhelming feeling of disorientation and foreboding, and the image of the silvery man wavering behind her eyes.
I know him; I have walked with him in my dreams, he used to carry me in his arms, he has kissed me and stroked my face. I was small enough to carry then. Who is he? And why am I sure he is old, much older than Daddy. He sang me a lullaby once. Dio caught me crooning it once to my doll and slapped me—and she never did things like that. Not even when I ate up the greenberry tart she had made for our guests.

Margaret felt her muscles tense with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the instrument now resting quietly across her body. She had a sense that she stood on the brink of discovery—though what she might be about to discover she could not guess. Her heart was pounding, and she waited for it to return to its normal rhythm. She wanted to cast the
ryll
onto the polished floor and run up to her room, shut the door, and scream until her throat was raw. It took every ounce of her hard-earned control and self-discipline to remain just where she was, looking to the two men, she supposed, like an ordinary woman. They could not guess the visions that haunted her, nor what the playing had raised in her, like a phalanx of ghosts.

Her mouth was very dry, and seemed to strangle her throat. She was taking very shallow breaths, because she knew if she breathed deeply, she would pass out. Questions swirled in her mind, painful questions that came up whenever she was distressed.
Why did my father always look at me as if the sight was painful? The older I got the worse it became. I was so glad to get away, and I still feel ashamed that I was glad.

For just a moment she had the impression that the Old Man had materialized in front of her, slightly transparent, but to her eye, completely visible in the room. He was staring at the stump of his arm the way he did, as if puzzled by the absence of his hand, and drinking. She knew it was a memory, even when the vision lifted its eyes from the arm, and looked right at her, appearing to look right through her. He could remain like that for hours, while she got more and more anxious, wondering what she had ever done to him.

In her heart, Margaret knew she had never done anything, that everything that had gone wrong, that had cost him a hand and something else she had no words for, was not her fault. She had been too little for any faults, except perhaps spilling her milk. She knew the image before her only existed in her mind, that it was memory, nothing more. Still, it felt as if her mind were shattering just a little. She knew she could not let that happen—she had Ivor to think of, to take care of!

Margaret forced herself to stop thinking about her father, or that other man, the one who frightened her. Instead, she gathered what remained of her wits, and said as calmly as she could manage, “Master Everard, I think your harp is haunted. The professor and I have observed a similar phenomenon once before on Ceti Three. There, of course, musical spirit possession is commonplace—an article of religion, as it were.” She retreated into the safety of academic objectivity, quite forgetting that Master Everard had never heard of Ceti Three. “I don’t know where I can have gotten that song. It’s not in Child, is it, Ivor? There are several of a similar sort, to be sure . . .” Seeing the incomprehension on Master Everard’s face, she repeated her question in
casta

“Yes, an old student of mine did a post-doctoral paper on them,” Ivor put in, “The revenge theme in Scottish, Irish, and Norse ballads. You remember her, Maggie. What was her name? Ah, yes—Anna Standish.”

“But
I do
know the song,” Master Everard answered, ignoring Ivor’s comment. “It’s known better in the Hellers than here. It is an old ballad called ‘The Outlaw,’ said to be based on the tale of Rupert Di Asturien, two centuries ago, who killed his whole family in a fit of berserk rage—except for one sister, and it was she who proclaimed him outlaw. Your accent is excellent, but I noticed last night that you spoke our tongue better than many Terranan who have been here for years. When I heard you sing, I would have sworn you had lived here, had I not known better. You used the accent of the Kilghard Hills, where ‘The Outlaw’ is sung around the fireside. Truly, you did. Sung like you had listened to it a hundred times.”

“If you say so. But, as far as I know, I had not heard it before I began playing,” she said. Then Margaret wondered if she should be so certain. The mention of the Kilghard Hills had sent a strange shiver up her spine, a sort of resonance not unlike the music itself. Perhaps the Old Man had mentioned it sometime, in one of his rare bouts of loquacity. Or she had seen mention of it on the disk. That must be it. Relief flooded her body. She wasn’t going mad. Her mind was just playing tricks on her, muddling her memories a little.

Just as Margaret had managed to persuade herself that she was calm and entirely rational, she saw in her mind a range of hills, surrounded by higher mountains, shrouded in mists and snow, and her blood began to thrum—now where did that image come from? It was a very clear picture, almost as good as a holovid, but she was sure she had never seen that place, or a vid of it either. It almost felt as if she had snatched the picture from someone’s mind, and that was plainly impossible. There was an ache in her now, a peculiar longing, a hunger unlike anything she could remember. She wanted to see those hills, as if she had seen them before, and at the same time, she felt there was something there that was frightening. Margaret firmly told herself she was being overimaginative again, and turned her attention back to Ivor and Master Everard.

“ . . .but to play a tune on that particular
ryll
. . .” Master Everard was saying, “I think it must like you; I should give it to you. This is something really beyond my experience.”

“But you said it was historic . . .”

“Yes. It belonged—or is supposed to have belonged—to a woman named Thyra; That is a
chieri
name, and she was popularly believed to be half
chieri.
She died—oh, some twenty years ago, it must have been.”

Something in Margaret pricked up its ears.
Thyra—I know that name, and it . . . there is something very bad about it. Twenty years? That would have been about the time my father left Darkover.
Aloud she asked, “You knew this . . . Thyra?” She found she didn’t even like to say the name aloud, that her throat closed up.

 

“Gods forbid,” Master Everard said. His old face looked distressed now. “I was always a loyal subject to Danvan Hastur, may the gods rest him. He came to power when I was a young man, and I . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about. A very sad page in our history. Many folk died then, and more lived and suffered, because—eh, well,
domma
. You wouldn’t know about it, and you are not likely to be interested. I dare say the poor lady had her reasons, to have done what she did. My son, Erald, could tell it better; he has spent almost all of his creative life writing a song cycle about those times.”

Nothing he said conveyed any useful information to Margaret, but she was much too polite to say so. “A song cycle—how wonderful!”

Everard chuckled without merriment. “Hardly that! My son won the distinction, at twenty-eight, of having one of his songs proscribed, though whether it was a political or artistic judgment I would not care to guess.” From the pained expression on his face, she suspected he had some very strong feelings about the matter, ones he kept to himself “Still, even I find ‘Sharra’s Song’ a very disturbing piece.”

“Where is he now?” Margaret could feel the pleasant buzz of curiosity stirring in her mind, and had a great desire to speak to Erald, to quiz him mercilessly. This was something she could get her hands on—a new song cycle, but written in a conventional mode, most likely. Even if it only made a footnote in her publication, it was a find, a real find. Proscribed. How interesting! She tried to persuade herself she was being a scholar, not a snoop, and failed. After a moment she gave up the attempt as foolish. This was personal, but she was afraid to admit it, even to herself. Some secret was wrapped up in the
ryll
and this woman, Thyra, and the composition called “Sharra’s Song.” She knew it was going to nag at her until she unraveled it.

“Oh, he’s away in the Hellers.” Everard shook his head. “My mother said to me, ‘Don’t marry a tanner’s girl,’ and perhaps she was right. We had three children, and only Erald has any musical gift. The two girls are all but tone deaf, and the grandchildren nearly so. Ah, it doesn’t bear thinking about. My grandson is a good enough craftsman of instruments, but, truly, he hasn’t a single song in him. So, Rodrigo MacAran will be craft master after me, and he is a great artist, for all he’s difficult to work with. But only because he wants the best, not because he is mean, you know. Erald will never settle down, you see.”

He gave a sigh, a small, regretful noise of unfulfilled dreams for his son. “What were we talking about? Oh, yes, that
ryll.
You’re welcome to get anything you can out of that one, but don’t take it near the Hastur harp.” He pointed across the room. “The last time I did, it snapped six strings.” The Master did not seem to think there was anything too strange about either a
ryll
which had a song in it, nor a harp that snapped strings, and Margaret wondered if he were teasing her. He appeared to be quite serious. And he clearly wanted to change the subject.

Margaret swallowed her disappointment. Erald, she knew, was off on a tour. The lads had told her that the previous evening. Well, perhaps he would return to Thendara soon, or she and Ivor would meet him when they went out into the countryside to do their own research. “Sharra’s Song” would have to keep.

Then she noticed she was cold all over, that her arms beneath the slick fabric of her uniform were covered in gooseflesh. The nameless dread which had haunted her since she had found out she was coming to Darkover returned. But, why? That word bothered her. It reminded her of something she feared. She would have asked more, but she was too tense now, too frightened. Instead, she swallowed, her mouth dry and her lips hurting.

Everard moved away and continued speaking. “Master Ivor, you wanted to know about the fiols, didn’t you? Here they are. The fiol, this is a bowed instrument, though it can be plucked as well, for certain effects . . . .” Margaret replaced the
ryll
on the wall. She knew it had given her all it had to give, for the present. As she hung it up, it gave a little sound, a soft rush of notes so quiet she could barely hear it. Margaret laid her hand along the sound box, and promised herself that she would come back to the mysterious instrument someday, and wrest its secrets from it. Then she felt a little foolish.

She followed the men to the display of fiols ranged along the wall. She allowed her attention to wander, knowing her recorder would pick up everything, and that Ivor would not hesitate to demand her attention if he needed it.