The Robin And The Kestrel bv-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "I find it significant too, my friend," boomed T'fyrr out of the darkness. "What is more, I have been speaking in greater depth with Nightingale, who tells me that the Church has never before preached against the use of magic_but now finds reasons to condemn even such beneficial magic as healing, if they are not performed by a Priest. And I wonder, how long before use of magic is declared a crime_and how long before anyone that the authorities wish to be rid of is called a magician?"

  "A very good question, T'fyrr." Robin's face was grim, and Kestrel felt a cold and empty place in his stomach that the excellent food did nothing to fill. "A very good question. And I am beginning to wonder if the answer to your question can be measured in months."

  "That," Harperus said, "is precisely what I am afraid of."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kestrel thought about the revelations of the day long into the night, and in the morning, while Gwyna took their mud-stained garments to the laundry to try to scrub them clean again, he waited for Harperus to make his appearance.

  It was another clear, cold day, with a bite in the air that warned that winter was not far off. Kestrel's thin fingers chilled quickly, and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat to warm them. The Deliambren came out of his wagon from the door at the front, looked around, and greeted Kestrel with some surprise. "I didn't expect to find you here, still," Harperus told him. "I expected that you and Robin would be on your way as soon as the sun rose. Have some breakfast?"

  He had his hands full of something, and offered Jonny a very odd object indeed; a thin pancake folded around a brightly colored filling. Strange-looking, but Kestrel already knew that Harperus' odd-looking food was very good, and he accepted his second breakfast of the day with alacrity. There had been too many days in the past that he had had no breakfast, no lunch, and no dinner. Old habits said, "Eat when you can," so he did.

  "W-we have ch-chores," Kestrel offered, after first trying a bite and discovering that it was as good as dinner had been last night. "Th-things w-we didn't g-get to. L-laundry, a l-little cl-cleaning. Re-s-stocking. And w-we hadn't d-decided where w-we w-were g-going, yet. S-South, that w-was all w-we knew. W-we needed t-to look at s-some m-maps."

  There was still hot tea left in their wagon; he turned and got mugs well-sweetened with honey for both of them. Harperus accepted his with a nod of thanks. The warm mug felt very good in Kestrel's cold fingers.

  "So. You'll be going out of Rayden, I take it, given the word you gathered yesterday?" Harperus regarded Kestrel shrewdly over a mug of steaming tea. "Obviously, you can't go back to Birnam, so where are you thinking of heading?"

  "D-don't know." He finished Harperus' offering, and dusted off his hands. "Th-this b-business w-with the Ch-Church; I g-got the f-f-feeling you'd heard m-more than you t-told us l-last night."

  "And if I have?" the Deliambren asked levelly.

  Kestrel studied the odd, inhuman face. It was very handsome, the more so as he became accustomed to it; the swaths of silky hair only added to the attraction. There was no sign of aging at all; certainly no sign of the years Robin had claimed for the Deliambren. And there was no sign of any emotion that Kestrel recognized. Harperus' odd-colored eyes studied his, seeming more coppery this morning than yellow.

  "Y-you've b-been w-watching th-things for a l-l-long t-time," he said, finally. "C-collecting inform-m-ma-tion. S-so maybe you kn-know. H-how c-can wh-what the Church is d-doing b-be j-j-justified?"

  "One of the characteristics of organized religion is that no action it takes has to be justified from outside, if it is justified by the religion itself, Kestrel," Harperus said, patiently. "That is a truism for nonhuman as well as human religions. No matter how irrational an action is, if it is done in the name of the religion, that alone serves the organizers."

  Jonny shook his head. "I d-don't understand," he said, plaintively.

  Harperus sighed. "Neither do I. But then, I have never claimed to be religious."

  Both of them wore coats against the chill in the air, and once again, Jonny shoved one of his hands into his pocket and wished that he were somewhere warm that had never heard of the Church. "Wh-when I asked the tr-traders wh-why these th-things were happening, th-they d-didn't know either. And th-they didn't s-seem worried." He tried to make his glance at Harperus an inquiring one, and evidently Harperus read it that way.

  "That seems to be the prevailing attitude." Harperus looked up at the sky, broodingly. "The only human folk who are worried are the Free Bards and the traveling musicians_and they seem concerned only with the immediate effect these sanctions are having on their livelihood. No one seems at all concerned about what could happen next, or the sanctions against nonhumans. To be honest with you, Kestrel, those worry me the most. And not because I am Deliambren, either."

  Jonny had formed some ideas of his own last night, and he wanted to see how they matched with the Deliambrens. "Why?" he asked.

  Harperus smiled thinly. "You pack many questions into a single word, youngster." He leaned back against the side of his vehicle. "I am not concerned for myself and my race, because there is no one in the Twenty Kingdoms who can effectively threaten us, my earlier protestations notwithstanding. We can simply outlive human regimes. We have the capability of closing up the Fortress and outliving this current generation. We have done so before, and are always prepared to do so again. It is simply not our policy to boast of that ability."

  Jonny's eyebrows rose. He had not expected Harperus to be so frank....

  "However, the reason that these little, petty annoyances worry me is that they seem to have been formulated, by accident or deliberately, to undermine a great deal of the progress that has been made here in the last few centuries. Progress in cooperation, that is." The Deliambrens expression was a brooding one. "Each little action seems designed to strike in such a way that the group that is acted against is quite certain that the actions against them are far more important than the petty annoyances of other groups." He leaned towards Kestrel, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. "Look at you_the Gypsies think there is no problem at all, because it is only happening in the settled places, and they pay very little heed to anything done in towns. They assume that if trouble spreads, they can simply drive away from it. The Free Bards are more concerned with the restriction on their ability to make a living, and not on the reputation they may be getting thanks to the tales spread by Churchmen _"

  "N-not N-Nightingale," Kestrel protested.

  "True. Not the Nightingale. But she is unique among all the Free Bards and Gypsies I have spoken to." He shook his head. "None of them are at all thinking about what is happening to the nonhumans, because they think their own problems are much greater. I have not heard from the nonhumans themselves_and that alarms me. Are they being harassed? Are they being arrested and taken off into oblivion? Are they being deported? Or is there nothing happening at all? I have heard nothing, and when I hear nothing, I worry more than when I hear rumors. I only know that the few nonhuman traders I know have simply turned over their routes in Rayden to human partners. The human traders frankly see this in terms of less competition and more profit. The nonhumans are gone, and I cannot question them."

  Kestrel blinked. He had not considered the possibility that there might actually be bad things happening to the nonhumans. "Do you th-th-think _"

  "That any of that has happened?" Harperus' grim expression lightened a little. "Not yet, Kestrel," he said gently. "But I greatly fear it may."

  "M-m-me t-t-too." Jonny was serious about that; he had seen too many "insignificant" things turn out to be dangerous, had things that should have been no more than annoyances turn out to be life-threatening.

  "There is a last 'why' that I have not answered," Harperus continued. That is because I do not know. Why is this happening? I honestly have no idea, partly because my people do not think like yours. It would seem to me that the Church is doing very well without all this nonsense. Or it is, if you take the Church's primary goal as being t
he saving of souls and directing people to act in a moral and responsible manner. But if the Church's goal has changed to something else _"

  "Th-then th-that m-may b-be the why." Jonny licked his dry lips, nervously, and ventured his thought on the matter. "M-maybe it isn't j-just a wh-why. M-maybe it's also a who."

  Now it was Harperus' turn to raise his eyebrows. "This might be the work of one person? Perhaps a person in a position of power within the Church? Or_someone who wishes to use these changes as a means of gaining more power for himself?" At Jonny's nod, he pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "An interesting speculation. I will look into this."

  Harperus handed Jonny his mug, then shoved away from the side of the wagon, turned on his heel, and headed back to the door, vanishing inside. Jonny turned and went back to his vehicle, walking slowly and thoughtfully.

  He was not offended by Harperus' abrupt departure; he knew better than to expect human behavior or even what a human would think of as "politeness" out of a nonhuman. In fact, he was rather gratified; it meant that the Deliambren took him and his speculations seriously.

  But Harperus was not the only person who now had that particular speculation to 'look into." Jonny had decided last night that if the Deliambren thought enough of his idea to take it seriously, he would see what he could do to track down the center of all these troubles.

  As he had told Harperus, there often was a who in the middle of something like this, and if you could find him and deal with him, before he had become so protected that it was impossible to get near him, you could actually do something. In fact, you could effectively stop the movement before it had gained its own momentum and had, not one, but many people devoted to keeping it alive. It was like extracting the root of a noxious plant, before it spread so far and had sent up so many shoots it was impossible to eradicate.

  He had learned a great deal about politics in the short time he had been in Birnam, watching the way the people opposed to his uncle's rule had operated. He had probably learned more than anyone else had ever guessed.

  Ordinary people, he had noticed, tended to do what they were told, as long as they were given orders by someone who was a recognized authority. Or, as long as the orders did not affect their own lives very much, they would support the orders through simple inaction. If you made changes gradual, and made them seem reasonable, no one really cared about them.

  And the changes mounted, imperceptibly, until one day people who had been "good neighbors"_which basically meant that they had not disturbed each other and had no serious quarrels with each other_were now deadly enemies. And it all seemed perfectly reasonable by then.

  As long as nothing bad happens to them, people they know, or anyone who agrees with them_"Atrocities" only happened to your own land. "Just retribution" was what happened to other people. A cult or a myth was someone else's religion. Your religion was the right and moral way.

  Or as the Free Bards put it, "One man's music is another mans noise." As long as people were able to listen to what they called music, they didn't care if "noise" was banned....

  Well, this all might be something the Free Bards could do something about, at least if it was at a controllable stage. Maybe that was another "why"_why the Free Bards had come in for the greater share of trouble so far. They poked fun at pompous authority; they made the strange into the familiar. It was very difficult for a person who had heard Linnet's "Pearls and Posies" to think of Gazners as "cold-blooded" for instance_or Wren's own "Spell-bound Captive" to believe that Elves truly had no souls. The Free Bards opened up the world, just a little, to those who had never been beyond their own village boundaries. Jonny knew that Master Wren had wider ideas for the Free Bards than most of them dreamed at the moment. Wren saw his creation as a means to spread information that others would rather not have public_and perhaps he might even have a greater goal than that. But that was enough for Jonny, at least at the moment.

  So, this whole situation just might be a state of affairs that Free Bards could do something about. It definitely was something they should know about if it turned out there was a single person behind the persecution!

  So_the first thing to do would be to see if he and Robin could track the sermons to their source.

  He thought about that for a moment. There were only two of them, and they could only go in one direction. There was Harperus, who would be "looking into things" as well. But what about asking Nightingale as well? She was the one who had stopped to listen to the preachers in the street. She was the one who had given them the most information. She was already observing. If she was willing to expand that a little_

  He locked up the wagon, and went in search of Nightingale. He would find out what direction she planned to go when she left the Waymeet. They would go in the opposite direction. Perhaps this little group of Free Bards would be able to find some answers to all their questions. And_dare he hope_solutions as well?

  Kestrel sighed, and took up the reins as the first fat drop of rain plopped down on the gravel lane in front of the horses. "An-nother b-beautiful d-day," he said sardonically.

  "It could be worse," Robin replied, and patted his knee. "At least the rain held off long enough for our laundry to dry."

  "And w-we d-did get that n-nice h-hot b-bath," he admitted. Although it had been something more than a mere "bath"_the bathhouse proved to be the kind that had several small rooms, each furnished with a huge tub, fully large enough for two. It had been well worth the money, all things considered.

  "We did. We are clean, the wagon is clean, all our clothing is clean_we just might be presentable enough that they won't throw us out of Westhaven," Robin said, cheerfully.

  The horses stamped, showing their impatience, but Kestrel was not going to let them move out just yet. Not until_

  A sharp whistle behind him told him that Harperus was about to pull out. The Haspur had once again vanished into the depths of the wagon; Kestrel doubted that more than a handful of people had even glimpsed him during the three days they all camped here. It had been T'fyrr who had spoken to Nightingale and obtained her agreement to reverse her planned course and return to Kingsford, to see if the strange Church activities originated there, or elsewhere. "But then I am going to Birnam," she had said firmly. "I must eat, and I cannot eat if I cannot play."

  Kestrel got the feeling that if it hadn't been for T'fyrr, she wouldn't even have agreed to that much.

  Harperus' huge vehicle moved slowly into the lane parallel to theirs. Once they reached the trade road, Kestrel planned to follow him for the short period when they would both be going in the same direction. A few leagues up the road, a minor, seldom-used trade-road branched off this one. This was the road to Westhaven, which just happened to be Rune's old home, and that was the direction he and Robin were going, while Harperus and T'fyrr took the main road.

  It was Robin's notion to spy on Rune's mother, if she was still there. She wanted to be able to tell Rune something about what was going on in her old haunts; she had told Jonny that she thought Rune would feel less guilty over leaving if she knew her mother was all right.

  Personally, Jonny hadn't detected any concern for her mother on Rune's part, but he wasn't a female. There might have been things the two of them said to each other that made Robin think Lady Lark felt guilt over leaving her mother to fend for herself. And one road was as good as another, really_at least, when the road led eventually to Gradford. That particular city had a High Bishop in residence, which made it another logical candidate for information about the Church.

  What was more, so far as he was concerned, there was an abbey, Carthell Abbey, lying on that little-used road that linked Westhaven and Gradford. Priests and the like who lived in isolated abbeys liked to talk to visitors; they might say something to give Kestrel a place to start.

  How Harperus maneuvered that huge wagon so easily, Kestrel had no notion_but he brought it around smartly and was already on the lane leading to the trade-road by the time Kestrel got his mares in motio
n. The rear of the wagon was a blank wall; peculiar sort of construction. Wagons were dark enough that most people cut windows everywhere they could.

  The new axle performed exactly as Oakhart had promised; they jounced along in Harperus' wake, but thanks to the Deliambren, their course wasn't as bumpy as it could have been. Harperus' wagon was much, much heavier than theirs, and his wheels much broader, although the distance between his left and right wheels was about the same as between theirs. That was why Jonny was letting him lead; as long as he kept their wheels in the ruts left by the Deliambren's wagon, their ride was relatively smooth.

  At about noon, they all stopped at the crossroads for a meal; Harperus supplying more of his odd, but tasty food, and Robin offering fresh honey-cakes she had bought at Waymeet.

  "Be careful out there," Robin said, as they made their farewells. "If we see you at Gradford, I don't want to see you in trouble!"