The Bards of Bone Plain

Chapter Twenty-two

Zoe stood near the bar in the Merry Rampion, singing to a post. It was well past midnight; beyond an open window, the moon spangled the river with its slow descent. The place was packed with musicians, so tightly wound with the imminent competition that only liberal quantities of cold beer kept them from flaring and snapping where they stood. Zoe’s voice had swept them all up into an enthusiastic fervor; they sang with her, banging pewter tankards if they had no other instruments. Even that couldn’t overpower her; she sang, as Quennel had demanded, to crack the icy heart of the moon, which from what she saw of it, was as impervious as the court bard sipping wine in the shadows.

He was the fair-haired, hard-eyed bard of the Duke of Waverlea, and he bristled with a small arsenal of instruments: harp, pipe, flute, hand drums. He alone refused to rouse to her music, much as she tuned her voice to his ears alone, loosed all her skills to make him blink, smile, even tap the table with a fingernail. But he only watched her woodenly, raising his glass to his lips now and then, sometimes glancing at the moon as though he might hear the music it made floating through the night if only Zoe would stop making such a racket.

She gave up on him at last and let the music flow from other hands, turning thirstily to the chilled wine that Chase put in front of her. He, at least, looked vaguely stunned.

“You sent chills down my spine,” he said. “It was like listening to the dead.” She squinted at him; he laughed a little, running fingers through his sunflower hair. “How they might have sung it back then, before city lights and steam trams.” He paused again, then took a kiss from her, gently. “What if you win? I’ll never see you, then.”

“What a thought,” she said in a suck of breath.

“It hadn’t occurred to you?”

“Not in this world.”

“That you’d be all busy with courtly matters and never have a moment with me?”

She stared at him mutely, uncertainly for the briefest of moments, then shook her head adamantly. “Let’s not think about it. We’ll worry about it if and when and after.”

She sang again later, playing someone else’s harp. It was nothing much, just a lullaby as old as the night to bring the crowd back down and coax a few students to bed, where they belonged. No one sang with her then; they just listened to her, motionless, silent, their eyes heavy, as though she were lulling them to sleep on their feet. Her silence, as the song ended, woke them out of a dream; they looked around blankly, rubbing their faces, picking up their instruments. A few straggled out the door, still not talking. Others drifted to the bar for one last beer. The bard from Waverlea played then, very softly, on his flute, echoing Zoe’s lullaby. The sound wove among the crowd, his flute glinting silver like the moon-spangles. He cut it short before the ending and stood up.

He said to Zoe across the silent room, “Be careful. You’ll wake the stones with that voice of yours, and you’ll find yourself in the last place you expect to be.” He smiled at her then, a thin, wry, marveling smile, slid his flute into its case on his belt, and left before she could even find her voice to answer.

She went to bed with Chase and got up again with the sun, bleary and worried about seven different things the moment she opened her eyes.

The first was getting home to wash and change before her class. That simple task was complicated, as she opened the tower door, by the sight of her father and Phelan sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of books between them. The table was otherwise bare; nothing but a teakettle stood on the stove, and even that was cold. They both glanced at her vaguely, breaking off a conversation, but expectantly, as though she had appeared at their wish expressly to cook them breakfast.

She felt a moment’s annoyance and desperation, that they couldn’t anticipate how harried she might be and figure out how to crack an egg for themselves. Phelan looked as hag-ridden as she was, his hair on end from raking it with his fingers, his eyes so remote, she couldn’t begin to guess at his thoughts. Her father had a peculiar expression on his face as well. She wondered for a moment if one or the other had got somebody with child.

Then she summoned some rag end of patience, for she was hungry, too, and pulled a pan off its hook.

“Good morning to you, too.”

Phelan stirred, finally, in his chair. “Sorry.”

“Good morning, lass,” Bayley said absently. “Phelan just brought back more record books.”

“You didn’t offer him coffee? Oh, you haven’t made it yet. No, don’t bother. I’ll do it.” She heard him subside back into his seat, and she sighed soundlessly. She put the kettle on for herself as well and rummaged for bread, eggs, fruit, listening, as a halting conversation started up again behind her.

“You’ve finished your paper, then?”

“Nearly. I’m very close to an ending. There’s only one thing I need to understand. To research.”

“Anything I might have?”

“I don’t think so. I found the name in other sources: letters, court chronicles. A bard called Welkin. He’s not listed as an account rendered or received.”

“Welkin ...” her father mused.

“Do you recognize the name?”

“I’m thinking. Tell me something about him.”

Zoe’s thoughts drifted to the competition, so close now her fingers seemed, even stirring eggs in the hot pan, perpetually chilled with anticipation. Quennel had summoned her to court for a final word of advice, maybe to encourage her to wile out of Kelda what he intended to play. Competing bards, she understood, had devastated one another’s chances by stealing their songs and playing them first. Kelda would only laugh at that, and play whatever it was a dozen times better than anyone else. Nothing would discompose him, she knew by now. He was the bard who could melt the jewels out of Declan’s harp and find the one true note that would break hearts and harp strings together.

“Zoe?”

She was burning the eggs, just thinking about him. She pulled them off the heat and turned to cut bread. Phelan’s eyes caught at her, now disconcertingly attentive. She smiled at him, but he was not deceived.

“Are you in love?” he inquired baldly, and her father’s chair rattled across flagstones as he rose abruptly to get cups down.

“No. Of course not. Who has time? Except for Chase, I mean. I’m just preoccupied. Have you decided what you’ll play first?” He only gazed at her bemusedly, as though she had asked him what he planned to wear for his funeral. “The competition,” she reminded him, astonished that he had forgotten about it, even for a moment.

“Oh.”

“You are still going to—”

“Yes. I promised you. It’s just—”

“You’re distracted, too,” she guessed, “by your paper.” She buttered the bread, cast another glance at him, and was amazed again, by the sudden burn across his cheekbones. Whatever caused that, it wasn’t his interminable paper. She turned away quickly, wrestled with the eggs in the pan, and gave up, gazing with despair at the speckled black-and-gold mess.

“Never mind,” Bayley said gently.

“I never burn things.”

“We’ll eat them anyway.”

“Sit down,” Phelan said brusquely. “I know where the plates are. You’ll wear yourself out until there’s nothing left of you but your bones and the music coming out of them.”

She smiled again, gratefully, and sank into a chair, slid her hands over her eyes. She smelled tea, opened one eye, and found the teapot and a cup in front of her. She raised the lid, watched the leaves steep, while Phelan and her father moved around her, rattling cutlery, opening cupboard doors.

“Have you found any reference to Welkin beyond those few days of the first competition?”

“No. I’m still searching. As far as I know now, he vanished like Nairn off the plain and out of history, though, from most accounts, he was expected to win.”

“Who are you talking about?” Zoe asked, still gazing at the tea leaves.

“A mysterious stranger at the first bardic competition,” Phelan told her. “Origins unknown, carried nothing but a battered harp, and he had all the court bards in awe of him by the end of the first day. By the end of the third day, he was pitted against Nairn for the title of Royal Bard of Belden. One of them should have won.”

She raised her head, pot forgotten. “The winner was Blasson Purser of Waverlea.”

“Yes.”

“So what happened? Welkin sounds like someone in a story. Was it folklore? Ballad? About Nairn and Welkin?”

“No.”

“They both just vanished? It’s documented?”

He gave a faint laugh then, his face so pale it might have been his own bones she was looking at. “It will be.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Phelan, what are you not telling me?”

“And what are you not telling me?” he challenged her.

She answered quickly, before he brought words to play like “magic” and “secret” and “abandoned sewers” that would have disconcerted her orderly father.

“I’ll tell you when I can,” she promised.

His eyes held hers a moment, gray as old iron; he nodded briefly. “So will I.”

After they finished the unfortunate eggs, she tossed her robe over last night’s outfit and taught her class. Then she finally had the time to wash and change into something suitable for visiting the Royal Bard. She pondered Phelan’s odd paper as she rode the tram downhill and along the river road. It should have been as dry as dust; that had been his original intention, to write it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Instead, it leached the blood from his face and gave him secrets to eat that he would not share even with her. Fair enough: she kept her own secrets from him. From the sound of it, neither of them even understood exactly what they were carrying around locked behind their teeth. It was an exhausting weight to bear, along with the demands of the competition, and having to hide it from Quennel that day was a burden she could have done without.

Fortunately, he was so preoccupied with his own passionate determination and ambitions for her that he didn’t sense the turmoil in her own head. He was completely well by then, and his playing more skillful and vibrant than ever, fueled by the sudden glance death had given him and by the dire figure in the tale he forged daily for himself about Kelda. Zoe wished he would just change his mind, tell everyone to go back home, including Kelda, and keep harping through his waning years, as even the king had urged him to do. But no, he was adamant: Zoe must take his place, or the kingdom would fall.

“I have thought of what you should play and sing in the opening round of the competition,” he said as they sat in private in the musician’s gallery.

“But you told me to play—”

“Yes, I know, but I was wrong. This is the perfect ballad for you.”

“But—”

“Hush,” he said, hands poised on his strings. “Listen.”

Choosing her song for her yet again reminded him of his own experiences during the last bardic competition. He cautioned her about this, offered practical suggestions about that, remembered a story, embellished like a formal ballad with details from years of retelling, about a pair of not very good but extremely competitive musicians, and the tricks—the split reed, the suddenly sagging drum, the missing harp string—with which they undermined one another.

Thus reminded, he turned grave again, warned her to guard against Kelda’s meddling.

“Kelda doesn’t need to play tricks,” she told him bluntly. “All he has to do is play.”

He shook his head, unconvinced; his Kelda was capable of anything. Which was exactly true, she knew, but not in ways that Quennel could imagine even at his bleakest.

He finally let her go. At the bottom of the gallery stairs, she found Kelda waiting for her.

He had probably heard every word, she thought wearily, judging by the amusement in his eyes.

“A final lesson?” he asked lightly, indifferent to his voice carrying up over the gallery balustrade. She walked out of the great hall without answering, forcing him to follow, get out of earshot. In a silent corridor, she turned to face him.

“I don’t know what you are.” Her voice shook despite all her training. “Your powers are astonishing and terrible. Your playing melts my heart. That’s what I know. And I know that when we compete, all the lies you hide yourself behind will vanish; only the music and the power will be left. I will give you back the very best I have. But I think it will be only a trifle, a handful of wildflowers, a shiny copper or two, compared to the terror and the treasures that will come out of you. That will be as it will be. So. There’s no need to wear that face with me now. It’s just another lie. Grant me that much, before you change at last into something I won’t begin to recognize.”

She turned again without waiting for him to answer, made her way to the main doors, listening, all the while, for all he did not say.

The new dawn broke with a ray of light and a shout of trumpets across the plain, summoning the bards from inns and mansions, from school and court, from tents, skiff bottoms, and tavern floors, to gather under the golden eye of the midsummer sun and play until only the best of them stood alone: all the rest were silent.