The Bards of Bone Plain (18 page)

 

 

 

She sensed Kelda at the school before she saw him the next day. Rumors of his playing had wasted no time getting up the hill. The masters' refectory was full of the invisible bard when Zoe came up for breakfast. His name had somehow melted into the butter for the breakfast toast, insinuated itself under the shells and into the yolks of coddled eggs, so that a single bite transformed itself and fell as “Kelda” from everyone's lips. The masters were preoccupied with him, their expressions complex as they spoke softly together; wonder vied with envy, even a touch of wariness, in their faces. Small knots of students chirped and twittered together in hallways, and under the oak trees when Zoe passed to teach her singing class. Exclamations, moans, and fervid sighs escaped them with all the mindless, irresistible force of steam spewing out of a kettle spout. He was to visit this class, she heard, and then that, and then at noon, he would play for everyone.

She was pacing around her very young students, enjoying their high sweet voices and adding her own to keep them in time, when she came face-to-face with the bard in her doorway.

He nearly dislodged the note in her throat. Years of discipline kept it tuned, though it came out with more emphasis than she intended. His impeccable ear picked out what, from anyone else, would have been a startled squeak. The glint of a smile in his eye teased her. He waited, his face impassive, until the children finished their song; and then he came into the room, clapping for them.

Some of the masters followed in his wake, and a dozen students, Frazer among them, looking dazed.

“How wonderful all of this is,” the bard marveled. “Declan's school, the standing stones, the oak—the perfect background for passing on the ancient bardic heritage. I envy you.” He spoke so simply that for the moment she believed him. “I plucked my own skills from bush and bramble, from rutted back roads and the echoes within the empty ruins. I tuned my harp to the icy whine out of the back teeth of the wind, and to the oldest voices—”

“Of the standing stones plucked by the fingers of the moon,” Frazer finished breathlessly, and was rewarded by Kelda's sudden, flashing smile.

“Yes! You astonish me. You know those hoary lines?”

“They teach us everything here,” the boy said diffidently, deeply flushed.

“How wonderful,” the bard breathed again, and turned his warmth upon Zoe. “I didn't see you in the hall last night. I was sorry you didn't sing.”

“I was sitting at Master Quennel's bedside.”

“Yes. I'm in awe of the little I heard from you just now. Will you come and listen to me play later?”

“I heard you play last night. ‘Grenewell Hall.' You nearly brought me to tears.”

“Nearly?”

“It seemed magical,” she answered slowly. “For a moment. Whatever brambles and hedgerows taught you to play like that must have been enchanted themselves. Master Quennel, since you didn't ask, was resting quietly when I left him.”

“I didn't need to ask since I was told this morning.” Again his faint smile teased, mocked, challenged. “Will you come and listen anyway? It's an easy matter to raise a tear when emotions are already raw with the sudden illness of a friend. Not so easy in the clear and genial light of day.”

That made her smile, which annoyed her almost as much as her tears had. He saw that, too. There was no hiding from him, she realized, when he held her fixed within his sights.

“I'll come,” she said abruptly, both her curiosity and her hackles raised, but by what exactly she had no clue. He nodded and left her to her transfixed students; she watched Frazer turn into his wake, drift after him as helplessly as a feather on the flood.

At noon, students and masters, their paths braiding along the garden paths as they sought their classes or the libraries or refectories, stopped midpace when harping, strong and mysterious, rippled out of the still, shadowy trees. Zoe, walking out of the tower door, watched absorbed and purposeful moving bodies suddenly forget where they were headed and why. Their heads turned toward the trees. They veered from their chosen paths, seemed to float along the grass as though the music they heard had pulled them beyond time and gravity as well as memory. It seemed to come from the memory of trees, the singing voices of the ghosts of the first oak as they taught the first bard to play.

Zoe followed as mindlessly and as single-mindedly as any around her. They knew secrets, she realized for the first time. Those old oaks sang mysteries. If only she could get close enough, begin to understand their language of sun, rain, wind, night. They knew something she wanted. They knew the first songs of the world, the first word forged out of the lightning trapped in their boughs, shirred free of the fire and glowing among their roots like a fallen star. If she could get close enough to see ... She was scarcely aware of the crowd around her, students and masters emptying the buildings to gather in the grove, all mute, as though they had not yet begun to learn this new language.

She stopped at the edge of the great circle around the singing tree and saw the face of the music.

She blinked, shaken out of a dream, she felt, and waking to a conundrum.

The bard was singing, not the trees. The bard was Kelda, who had watched an old man choke on a bite of salmon. All around her, entranced faces still seemed caught in the dream; transfixed bodies scarcely breathed. The bard, engrossed in his expert playing, dreamed as well, drawing his listeners ever more deeply into his wonderful vision.

“He's good,” someone murmured beside her. “I'll give him that. Zoe, do you know where I can find your father?”

She closed her eyes, opened them again, finally shaken fully awake and astonished at herself. She turned her head, met Phelan's preoccupied eyes.

“Didn't you hear that?” she whispered.

“Of course I did. I followed you out here.”

“I mean—the trees singing. Didn't you hear the oak sing?”

He shook his head. “I must have missed that part.” He was silent a moment, peering at her; then he smiled. “You look bewitched. Even your hair seems full of elflocks. He's been having that effect. Frazer looks even more spell-raddled than you. Do you know where—”

“No.” Then she pulled her thoughts together. “My father's not in the tower? He's usually still there at noon.” Phelan shook his head. “Then I don't know where—Why? Is it important?”

“Yes, but only to me. He suggested I search some of the old stewards' records for my paper.”

She shrugged, her mind straying again to the peculiarity in the oak grove. “Just take them,” she suggested. “He wouldn't care. Most of them are covered with cobwebs and dust.”

“Are you sure?”

The bard, she saw suddenly, was looking at them across the crowd spilling out from under the grove. She couldn't read his expression, but she could guess at it. He had unraveled his heart for them, spun it into gold and woven gold into a web. The two flies buzzing obliviously on the outermost strand of it would cause the bard dissatisfaction greater than his pleasure in all the trapped and motionless morsels within the shining threads.

“Yes,” she whispered quickly, and turned her back on the bard, followed Phelan into the clear and genial light of day. “I'm going to see Quennel,” she told him when they were out of earshot. “He asked me to visit him today. I'll let my father know you've borrowed his books. If he even notices.”

“Thank you.”

She mused equally over Kelda and Phelan on her way to the castle. About what she had heard, and what Phelan had not. She had been as transfixed, as spellbound as anyone, she admitted. Anyone except Phelan, who had blundered through such beauty as though his ears were corked like kegs. He had heard the notes, but he had missed the music. Why?

She had neglected to change her clothes, so determined she had been to get out of the broad range of Kelda's attention. Something was askew with him, brilliant as he was, something amiss. Her student's robe and her familiar face eased her way into the castle; she was escorted to Quennel's chambers and promptly admitted.

His color was better, she saw immediately. Not so his mood. He smiled when he saw her; his pleasure was genuine but brief, before the frown turned the smile upside down. He was still in bed, she saw with surprise, covered with silk and eyelet lace, with a cap on his willful hair.

“My throat is raw,” he said disgruntledly. “I can't sing tonight.”

“You could play,” she urged him, inspired. “I'll sing for you.”

The thought brought out his smile again. It faded more slowly as he looked at her silently, his reddened eyes unblinking, an expression in them she couldn't fathom.

“I need you to do something for me,” he said finally, when she thought he might be drifting off to sleep again.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Anything.”

“I have been thinking about this yesterday evening, and most of the night, and this morning. You understand that I've given it my most careful attention.”

“Yes.”

“So don't argue with me. I am going to relinquish my position as Royal Bard of King Lucien's court.” She opened her mouth; nothing came out but a rush of air. “I would wait until Lord Grishold leaves,” he added distastefully, “if I had any hope that his bard would actually leave with him.”

“You're going to retire? Because of a mouthful of salmon?”

“So why wait?”

“But—” She started to sit on air, looked around hastily to pull a chair into place. She sat, leaned forward, her hands folded tightly among the bed linens, her eyes wide, studying his face as though the answer lurked within his bones. “But why? There's no need. You are still vigorous, your voice as tuned and resonant as ever, your ear as fine, your fingers—”

“My ear, my voice, my fingers are all telling me that as well,” he said so dryly his voice rasped. “But I saw my fate in that mouthful of fish. This is what I must do. I will announce my impending retirement but continue to play as Royal Bard until the moment a new bard is chosen.”

“There will be a competition,” she whispered, feeling even her lips go cold. “Between bards from all over the realm for the highest position. They will come to Caerau to compete, and I will be here to see it.”

“You will compete in it,” he told her grimly, and she felt the full weight of his determination, anger, and despair. “And you will win.” She stared at him, breathless, mute. “You will win,” he said again, harshly. “You will find the roots and wellsprings of this land within you, and sing them until the moon herself weeps. Because if you don't, that bard from Grishold, who is no bard but something ancient, dark, and dangerous, will sing in my place to the king, and I don't know what will befall this land when he has finished his song.”