The Bone Flute (9 page)

Two minutes later she was racing down the hill past sleep–ing houses, while the day's first twilight brightened around her. She arrived at the hollow, panting, just in time to see the roofline of Ennismor fade into the morning sky.

“
That's
what Miranda meant. I must be brain-dead, not to've seen it before! I could have gone in there if only I'd got here sooner!” She stood shivering in the cool of the woods, with dew dripping from the leaves down her neck.

But she really couldn't feel sorry. With the bone flute in hand she'd have to make a quick decision. And there were too many things to think about before she could decide anything.

I have to find that busker, she thought.

A car went by as she stepped out onto Grant Street. It was Sunday morning. That meant no Mark until afternoon. His family always got up early on Sunday and went to church, and then to lunch with one or the other set of grandpar–ents.

She'd just have to find the busker by herself.

The old stone building on the brink of the cliff used to be a grist mill. But the giant waterwheel was gone, the roof fallen. All that was left was a shell: outside walls, empty doorways and windows, some of the inner walls and a floor paved with big, flat flagstones.

They called it the Old Mill Mall now. Camrose liked to come here, when she could afford it. It wasn't a good place if you had no money. They expected you to buy things, not just sit and talk with your friends.

At one end of the mall was a coffee shop with a dozen white iron tables and chairs. Tiny stores selling handmade jewelery and glass and pottery ran along the street side. On the other side you could lean on the wide stone window sills and look down the cliff at the river, or across to Quebec.

The mall was always crowded on a Saturday with people from the market. But this early on a Sunday morning, one old couple sat and listened to a lone piper. Or perhaps they were not listen–ing. They were reading newspapers and not looking at him.

Camrose watched from an arched doorway. The music had led her here and it still pulled at her, but this time it didn't waft her away to anyplace strange. After a few minutes the old couple folded their newspapers, got up and walked off. They went out without dropping any money in the busker's bag.

He went on playing to empty chairs and tables. The tune was full of long notes that died away, like birds crying on distant shores. It sounded like all the homesickness in the world.

The last grieving notes faded. Camrose walked stiffly across the flagstones to where he half-sat, half-stood, propped on one of the iron tables. She bent to drop a handful of coins into his canvas backpack.

He gave her a dark look as he untangled himself from his pipes. “So far have I fallen,” he muttered.

“Sorry, but it's—it's all I have.” She went hot with embar–rassment. “It's the last of my birthday money.”

“Child, it's a king's ransom!” He scooped up the money and dumped his pipes into the backpack. With a grand sweep of his arm that hardly matched his ragged jeans and faded sweatshirt, he waved around at the ruin. “Come, join me, and we'll sit at our ease in this goodly hall, drinking the blood-red wine.”

“Thanks, but—”

“What, you refuse my hospitality?”

“No, but I'm not old enough to drink wine. Besides, they only serve coffee here.” She nodded at the Old Mill Coffee Shop.

“Coffee, then. Black as a sinner's heart, my love,” he said to the girl behind the counter, who gave him a suspicious look.

To Camrose he added, “I've grown to like the stuff, oddly enough. Taste is one of the few pleasures I can still enjoy.”

Camrose accepted an iced mocha latte. The sun was pouring into the stone shell and it was already shaping up to be a sultry day. They took their drinks to a table near the cliff side.

A couple of peanut shells were scattered over the tabletop. Camrose pushed them around with her forefinger. How to begin? “You … um, play the bagpipes.”

“They're uillean pipes, to name them true.”

“Illen pipes,” she repeated, because that was how it struck her ear. “You're awfully good. I mean, it sounds like you've been playing them a long, long time.”

He studied her for a moment. “No, not so very long.”

She sagged. Well, then, this couldn't be Diarmid.

“Only a matter of fifty years or so. I was a true bard once.” He held her eyes and let the moment stretch out. “But the kings I harped for have been dust a thousand years.”

Her heart thumped. “So you're …”

“Yes, I am Diarmid, once a harpist. Now I pipe on the streets for my bread. I suppose it's better than being dead.”

He raised his mug to her and smiled, which changed him for that moment into a shining boy. “Keeper, your health. Long have I sought you, too often lost you. Let this time be the last!”

“I hope so too.” She felt her face glowing, reflecting his smile. But a voice niggled at the back of her brain. Not so fast! Get all the facts. Think before you decide!

“You want proof.” His smile cooled.

“Well, you see, I … It's a big responsibility.”

“Of course. The devil of it is, I have no proof at all. You know the tale, I take it? Yes, well … It leaves a lot out. One thing it doesn't tell is that Rhianna and I were to be married. But on the very eve of our wedding she was stolen away.”

“You mean she was kidnapped?”

“Just so. Her beauty had caught the eye of the Otherworld prince. Such things have happened before. Those people are drawn to the most beautiful among us, perhaps because their own forms and natures lack substance.”

“How d'you mean?”

“They've no true shape. Always changing they are, deceitful to their marrow. You must know: you've met him.”

“Him who?”

“Gwyn, of course.”

“Gwyn.” Gwyn, son of Nuadu, lord of the Otherworld. Sitting at her kitchen table. Sleeping in the bedroom down the hall, if he did sleep. She'd been almost sure, but it was still a shock to hear him named outright.

Diarmid's pale eyes flickered. “Your look is strange. Has he bent you to his will already?”

“No way!”

“Take care he doesn't. You can't trust any of that folk to tell you the least thing truly, not that ice is cold or fire burns, not if they swear by the sun, moon and stars that it's so.”

“Don't worry, I don't trust him an inch.”

“Good … good. Tell me, will you go to Gilda's house tonight?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say yes, but there was something too eager in his voice. She studied his face.

He smiled sadly. “Don't you trust me?”

Of course I trust you! I'll give you the flute. The words pressed to spill out. But that voice in the back of her mind niggled at her again: Wait. Don't cave in just yet. So she said nothing and felt mean and guilty. He'd been through such a lot.

“I am growing so weary.” Diarmid gazed through the stone arches out over the river and talked on, in a flat, gray voice, as if he were talking to himself. “Weary, not in the body, but in the spirit. So weary. At times I've forgotten about the quest for months, even years, just drifted around the world, piping for my supper, searching … searching … for something … someone … ”

14
The forbidden door

“Y
ou should have waited for me,” Mark said. “It could've been dangerous.”

“Dangerous! Mark, this was Diarmid!”

“And that makes him safe?”

They were sitting side by side, cross-legged, at the end of a granite finger that ran out into the river about half a mile downstream from the Old Mill Mall. It was one of Camrose's favorite places to be when she wanted to think without a lot of people around.

The rock was hot under their skin, but the air blowing across the water was cool. Th e sound and smell and glitter of the river were all around them.

“If you'd only seen him and talked to him, you'd feel sorry for him too,” Camrose said.

“It could all be an act. I wouldn't trust him.”

“And that might be the smartest thing you've ever said!”

The laughing voice came from right behind them. Camrose leaped to her feet. Mark nearly fell over, untwisting his legs like a corkscrew as he tried to stand up.

Terence settled himself on a low boulder a couple of feet back from the end of the ridge. His jacket was draped over one shoulder.

“I wouldn't trust you, either,” Mark said.

Terence ignored him and looked at Camrose, his eyes seri–ous. “Has he sung or played to you? If he has, you may be enspelled.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A bard has certain talents. His music puts him in touch with many powers, and not all are what you would call good. Remember, he made the flute and marked it with his spell.”

“Good point,” Mark said.

“So, I ask, did he sing to you?”

Camrose jammed her hands in her pockets. “He did play the pipes. I mean, it's what he does for a living. But that wasn't for me. It was … for … ”

Yesterday in Market Square. She could still feel the springy carpet of flowers under her feet and smell smoke on the cool air.

“And while you're thinking about that, here's something else to think about. He knew Rhianna could not cross the river again, not as a living woman. He knew it would kill her. But he forced her to return anyway.”

“I don't believe you! He loved her!”

“Did he so?” Terence shrugged. “He was bound and deter–mined no man would have her but himself. Is that love?”

Mark shoved his hair out of his eyes. “You should talk! You're the one who kidnapped her.”

“I?”

“Stop playing around,” Camrose said. “We know who you are.”

He laughed. “All right, then. The truth is, there was no kidnapping. She came willingly, for love of me. What's more, my father made her welcome, and we were married. And then that jealous fool stole her away from me and killed her in doing it. Can you wonder I was in a fury?”

Camrose shook her head. “Why should we believe you?

How could Rhianna have been willing to go to such a horrible place?”

“And what place is that?”

“You know, your place. Your world. The Otherworld. Isn't it a kind of hell?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, my friend!

You're thinking of the Underworld, perhaps. Quite a different place altogether, if those old tales of your people are to be believed.”

“But the story said … ” Camrose groped for the words. “It said, across the river was a land buried under everlasting night.”

“A potent argument against trespass. Dark indeed it seemed to your forefathers. Dim and bleak it loomed beyond the river of time.”

Camrose shivered. “Cold?” Terence asked.

“No, just—”

But he whirled his jacket in the air and settled it around her shoulders before she could raise a hand to push it away. The roar of the river softened to a silver chiming as he spoke.

“It's not all dark in my world, I promise you. There are sweet green meadows where it's always morning and groves dappled with gold where it's always afternoon. And best of all is my father's hall that lies forever open to the stars. Yet never a tempest comes there and never a drop of rain unless we wish it, and we light the shadows with lamps of dawn and moonlight. Can you see it, Camrose?”

She could see it, spread below as if she hovered like an eagle: a vast hall thronged with dancers. Their clothes were like woven jewels and living flowers. Huge trees grew in that hall, and the pale green glow of their leaves mingled with the rose and silver of the lamps.

And there was music too, clearer every moment. A tangle of pipes and strings and a patter of drums that blew cold down her spine and at the same time made her twitch to join in the dance.

With so much to see, the people so strange and beautiful, and the patterns of the dance so intricate that they teased the eye to follow, Camrose did not stop at first to take a good, close look at any one thing.

And yet one thing did catch her eye in passing. She searched back for it and at last found it, a clot of darkness at the far end of the hall, where there were no rose and silver lamps, no glowing trees, no bright dancers.

There the light reached only far enough to pick out two rows of … soldiers, they must be. Tall figures with golden metal wrapped around their chests and arms and legs and golden helmets shaped like the heads of hawks and lions hiding their faces. They were the only still people in all that hall.

One row of seven faced out toward the dancers. The other row of seven faced in toward the darkness. And in that darkness … Camrose strained to see. The shadowy shape at the end of the hall grew clearer.

It was a door. Not a large door, not much taller than the soldiers who guarded it. But it was massive, made of timber slabs bound with plates of some dull metal. Across its two halves lay a bar of the same metal as thick as a young tree trunk. And all the soldiers stood with swords drawn.