Lark and Wren

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Yes, sir!" she replied, with more bravery than she felt. She was afraid of the Guild; of the bullies that the Guild could hire, of the connection the Guild seemed to have with the Church. And the Church was everywhere. If the Church took a mind to get involved, no silly renaming would make her safe.

  She hadn't been so shaken since Westhaven, when those boys had tried to rape her.

  Talaysen seemed to sense her fear. He reached forward and took her good hand in his. "Believe in us, Lady Lark," he said, his voice trembling with intensity. "Believe in us-and believe in yourself. Together we can do anything, so long as we believe it. I know. Trust me."

  She looked into his green eyes, deep as the sea, and as restless, hiding as many things beneath their surface, and revealing some of them to her. There was passion there, that he probably didn't display very often. She found herself smiling, tremulously.

  And nodded, because she couldn't speak.

  He took that at face value; released her hand, and pulled himself up to his feet. "I'll be back," he said gravely, but with a twinkle. "And the apprentice had better be ready to teach when I return." He left the tent with a remarkably light step, and her eyes followed him.

  When she pulled her eyes back to the rest, Rune didn't miss the significant glance that Erdric and Gwyna exchanged, but somehow she didn't resent it. Talaysen, though, might. She remembered all the questions that Sparrow had asked, and the tone of them, and decided to keep her observations to herself. It was more than enough that the greatest living Bard had taken her as his apprentice. Anything else would either happen or not happen.

  A week later, it was Talaysen's turn to mind the tent, that duty shared by Rune's old friend Raven.

  Raven had appeared the previous evening, to be greeted by all of his kin with loud and enthusiastic cries, and then underwent a series of kisses and backslapping greetings with each of the Free Bards.

  Then he was brought to Rune's corner of the tent; she hadn't seen who had come in and had been dying of curiosity to see who it was. Raven was loudly pleased to see her, dismayed to see the fading marks of her beating, and angered by what had happened. It was all Talaysen and the others could do to keep him from charging out then and there, and beating up a few of the Guild Bards in retaliation. The judges in particular; he had the same notion as Talaysen, to break their instruments over their heads.

  They managed to calm him, but after due thought, he judged that it was best he not go playing in the "streets" for a while, so he took his tent-duty early. He played mock-court to Rune, who blushed to think that she'd ever thought he might want to be her lover.

  I didn't know anything then, she realized, as he bowed over her hand, but kept a sharp watch for Nightingale. She knew that once Nightingale appeared, he'd leave her side in a moment. She was not his type; not even in the Gypsy-garb she'd taken to wearing, finding skirts and loose blouses much more suited to handling one-handed than breeches and vests. All of his gallantry was in fun, and designed to keep her distracted and in good humor.

  Oddly enough, Talaysen seemed to take Raven's mock-courtship seriously. He watched them with a faint frown on his face most of the morning. After lunch, he took the younger man aside and had a long talk with him. What they said, Rune had no idea, until Raven returned with a face full of suppressed merriment and his hands full of her lunch and her medicines.

  "I've never in all me life had quite such a not-lecture," he whispered to her, when Talaysen had gone to see about something. "He takes being your Master right seriously, young Rune. I've just been warned that if I intend to break your heart by flirting with you, your Master there will be most unamused. He seems to think a broken heart would interfere more with your learning than yon broken arm. In fact, he offered to trade me a broken head for a broken heart."

  Rune didn't know whether to gape or giggle; she finally did both. Talaysen found them both laughing, as Rune poked fun at Raven's gallantry, and Raven pretended to be crushed. Talaysen immediately relaxed.

  But then he shooed Raven off and sat down beside her himself.

  "It's time we had a real lesson," he said. "If you're going to insist I act like a Master, I'll give you a Master's lessoning." He then began a ruthless interrogation, having Rune go over every song she'd ever written. First he had her sing them until he'd picked them up, then he'd critique them, with more skill-and (which surprised her) he criticized them much harder even than Brother Pell had.

  Of her comic songs, he said, "It's all very well to have a set of those for busking during the day, either in cities or at Faires, but there's more to music than parody, and you very well know it. If you're going to be a Bard, you have to live up to the title. You can't confine yourself to something as limited as one style; you can't even be known for just one style. You have to know all of them, and people must be aware that you're versed in all of them."

  Of "Fiddler Girl," he approved of the tune, except that-"It's too limited. You need to expand your bridges into a whole new set of tunes. Make the listener feel what it was like to fiddle all night long, with Death waiting if you slipped! In fact, don't ever play it twice the same. Improvise! Match your fiddle-music to the crowd, play scraps of what you played then, so that they recognize you're recreating the experience, you're not just telling someone else's story."

  And of the lyrics, he was a little kinder, but he felt that they were too difficult to sing for most people. "You and I and most of the Free Bards can manage them-if we're sober, if we aren't having a tongue-tied day-but what about the poor busker in the street? They look as if you just wrote them down with no notion of how hard they'd be to sing."

  When she admitted that was exactly what she'd done, he shook his head at her. "At least recite them first. Nothing's ever carved in stone, Rune. Be willing to change."

  The rest of her serious songs he dismissed as being "good for filling in between difficult numbers. Easy songs with ordinary lyrics." Those were the ones she'd composed according to Brother Pell's rules for his class, and while it hurt a bit to have them dismissed as "ordinary," it didn't hurt as much as it might have. She'd chafed more than a bit at those rules; to have the things she'd done right out of her head given some praise, and the ones she'd done according to the "rules" called "common" wasn't so bad. . . .

  Or at least, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

  Then he set her a task: write him a song, something about elves. "They're always popular," he said. "Try something-where a ruler makes a bargain with an elf, then breaks it. Make the retribution something original. No thunder and lightning, being turned into a toad, or dragged off to hell. None of that nonsense; it's trite."

  She nodded, and set to it as soon as he left. But she could see that he had not lied to her. He was not going to be an easy Master.

  Talaysen left his instruments in the tent, and walked off into the Faire with nothing about him to identify who or what he was. He preferred to leave it that way, given that he was going to visit the cathedral-and that the Bardic Guild tent was pitched right up against the cathedral walls. Of course, there was always the chance that one of his old colleagues would recognize him, but now, at night, that chance was vanishingly slim. They would all be entertaining the high and the wealthy-either their own masters, or someone who had hired them for the night. The few that weren't would be huddled together in self-satisfied smugness-though perhaps that attitude might be marred a little, since he'd begun singing "Fiddler Girl" about the Faire. The real story of the contest was spreading, through the medium of the Free Bards and the gypsies. In another couple of weeks it should be safe enough for Rune to show her face at this Faire.

  He was worried about his young charge, though, because she troubled him. So he was going to talk with an old friend, one who had known him for most of his life, to see if she could help him to sort his thoughts out.

  He skirted the bounds of the Guild tent carefully, even though a confrontation was unlikely. His bones were much older than the last time he'd been beaten
, and they didn't heal as quickly anymore. But the tent was dark; no one holding revels in there, not at the moment. Just as well, really.

  He sought out a special gate in the cathedral wall, and opened it with a key he took from his belt-pouch, locking the gate behind him again once he'd entered. The well-oiled mechanism made hardly a sound, but something alerted the guardian of that gate, who came out of the building to see who had entered the little odd-shaped courtyard.

  "I'd like to see Lady Ardis," Talaysen told the black-clad guard, who nodded soberly, but said nothing. "Could you see if she is available to a visitor?"

  The guard turned and left, still without a word; Talaysen waited patiently in the tiny courtyard, thinking that a musician has many opportunities to learn patience in a lifetime. It seems as if I am always waiting for something. . . .

  This was, at least, a pleasant place to wait. Unlike the courtyards of most Church buildings, this one, though paved, boasted greenery in the form of plants spilling from tiers of wooden boxes, and trees growing from huge ceramic pots. Lanterns hanging from the wall of the cloister provided soft yellow light. Against the wall of the courtyard, a tiny waterfall trickled down a set of stacked rocks, providing a breath of moisture and the restful sounds of falling water.

  At least, it did when the Faire wasn't camped on the other side of the wall. Music, crowd-noise, and laughter spilled over the walls, ruffling the serenity of the place.

  He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned. A tall, scarlet-clad woman whose close-cropped blond hair held about the same amount of gray as his, held out her hands to him. "Gwydain!" she exclaimed. "I wondered when you'd get around to visiting me!"

  He strode towards her, and clasped both her hands in his. "I was busy, and so were you, my dear cousin. I truly intended to pay my respects when the trials were over. Then my latest little songbird got herself into a brawl with the Guild, and I had to extract her from the mess my lack of foresight put her in."

  "Her?" One winglike brow rose sharply, and Ardis showed her interest. "I heard something of that. Was she badly hurt?"

  "Bruised all over, and a broken arm-" he began.

  "Which is disaster for a musician," she completed. "Can you bring her here? I can certainly treat her. That is what you wanted, isn't it?"

  "Well, yes," he admitted, with a smile. "If that won't bring you any problems."

  She sniffed disdainfully. "The Church treats its Justiciars well. It treats its mages even better. Rank does bring privileges; if I wish to treat a ragtag street-singer's broken arm, no one will nay-say me. But there will be a price-" she continued, taking her hand away from his, and holding up a single finger in warning.

  "Name it," Talaysen replied with relief. With the mage-healing Lady Ardis could work, Rune's arm would be healed in half the time it would normally take; well enough, certainly, to permit her to play by the end of the Faire. More importantly, well enough so that when he and she went on the road together, it wouldn't cause her problems.

  "You shouldn't be so quick to answer my demands," the lady replied, but with a serious look instead of the smile Talaysen expected. "This could be dangerous."

  "So?" He shrugged. "I won't belittle your perception of danger, and I won't pretend to be a hero, but if I'd been afraid of a little danger, I would still be with the Guild."

  "So you would." She studied his face for a moment. "There's a dark-mage among the Brotherhood, and I don't know who it is. I only know it's a 'he,' since there are only two female mages, and I know it isn't a Justiciar."

  Talaysen whistled between his teeth in surprise and consternation. "That's not welcome news. What is it you want me to do?"

  She freed her other hand, and walked slowly over to one of the planters, rubbing her wrists as she walked. He followed, and she turned abruptly. "It isn't quite true that I don't know who it is. I have a guess. And if my guess is correct, he'll take advantage of the general licentiousness of the Faire to sate some of his desires. What I want is for you to watch and wait, and see if there are rumors of a Priest gone bad, one who uses methods outside the ordinary to enforce his will."

  Talaysen nodded, slowly. "It's true that a Bard hears everything-"

  She laughed, shortly. "And everyone tells a Bard everything they know. A Free Bard, anyway. If you hear anything, bring it to me. If you can somehow contrive to bring him before me in my official capacity, that would be even better. I can be certain that the other two Justiciars with me would be mages and uncorrupted."

  "I'll try," he promised, and gestured for her to seat herself. She took the invitation, and perched on a bench between two pots of fragrant honeysuckle.

  "So, what else do you need of me, cousin?" she asked, a look of shrewd speculation creeping over her even features. "It has to do with this little songster, doesn't it?"

  "Not so little," he replied, with a bit of embarrassment. "She's quite old enough to be wedded with children, by country standards. She's very attractive, Ardis. And that's the problem. I promised to give her a Master's teaching to an apprentice, and I find her very attractive."

  "So?" A lifted shoulder told him Ardis didn't think that was much of a problem.

  "So that's not ethical, dammit!" he snapped. "This girl is my student; if I took advantage of that situation, I'd be-dishonorable. And besides, I'm twice her age, easily."

  Ardis shook her head. "I can't advise you, Gwydain. I agree with you that pushing yourself on the girl would not be ethical, but what if she's attracted to you? If she's as old as you say, she's old enough to know her own mind."

  "It's still not ethical," he replied stubbornly. "And I'm still twice her age."

  "Very well," she sighed. "If it isn't ethical, then be the same noble sufferer you've always been and keep your attraction hidden behind a mask of fatherly regard. If you keep pushing her away, likely she'll grow tired of trying and take her affections elsewhere. The young are very short of patience for the most part." She stood, and smoothed down the skirt of her robes with her hand. "The fact that you're twice her age doesn't signify; you know very well I was betrothed to a man three times my age at twelve, and if my father hadn't found it more convenient to send me to the Church, I'd likely be married to him now."

  He tightened his jaw; her light tone told him she was mocking him, and that wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear, either. She wasn't providing him with an answer.

  "I'm not going to give you an answer, Gwydain," she said, echoing his very thought, in that uncanny way she had. "I'm not going to give you an excuse to do something stupid again. How someone as clever as you are can be so dense when it comes to matters of the heart-"

  She pursed her lips in exasperation. "Never mind. Bring your little bird here tomorrow afternoon; I'll heal up her arm for you. After that, what you do with each other is up to you."

  He bowed over her hand, since the audience was obviously at an end, and took a polite leave of her-

  He sensed that she was amused with him, and it rankled-but he also sensed that part of her tormenting him was on account of her little problem.

  Little! he thought, locking the gate behind him and setting off back through the Faire. A dark-mage in the Kingsford Brotherhood-that's not such a little thing. What is it about the Church that it spawns both the saint and the devil?

  Then he shrugged. It wasn't that the Church spawned either; it was that the Church held both, and permitted both to run free unless and until they were reined in by another hand. To his mind, the venial were the more numerous, but then, he had been a cynic for many years now.

  One of his problems was solved, at least. Rune would be cared for. If one of the Gypsies like Nighthawk had been available, he'd have sent the girl to her rather than subject her to his cousin and her acidic wit, but none of those with the healing touch had put in an appearance yet, and he dared not wait much longer.

  He had hoped that Ardis would confirm his own assertions; that the child was much too young, and that he had no business being
attracted to her. Instead she'd implied that he was being over-sensitive.

  Still one of the things she'd said had merit. If he continued acting in a fatherly manner, she would never guess how he felt, and in the way of the young, would turn to someone more suitable. Young Heron, for instance, or Swift.

  He clamped a firm lid down on the uneasy feelings of-was it jealousy?-that thought caused. Better, much better, to suffer a little and save both of them no end of grief.

  Yes, he told himself with determination, as he wound through the press of people around a dancers' tent. Much, much better.

  Rune hardly knew what to say when Talaysen ordered her to her feet the next afternoon-she had been feeling rather sick, and had a pounding head, and she suspected it was from too much of the medicine she'd been taking. But if she didn't take it, she was still sick with pain, her head still ached, and so did her arm. She simply couldn't win.

  "Master Wren," she pleaded, when he held out his hand to help her to her feet, "I really don't feel well-I-"

  "That's precisely why I want you to come with me," he replied, with a brisk nod. "I want someone else to have a look at your arm and head. Come along now; it isn't far."

  She gave in with a sigh; she was not up to the heat and the jostling crowds, even if most of the fairgoers would be at the trials-concert this afternoon. But Talaysen looked determined, and she had the sinking feeling that even if she protested that she couldn't walk, he'd conjure a dog cart or something to carry her.

  She got clumsily to her feet and followed him out of the tent and down to the Faire. The sun beat down on her head like a hammer on an anvil, making her eyes water and her ears ring. She was paying so much attention to where she was putting her feet that she had no idea where he was leading her.

  No idea until he stopped and she looked up, to find herself pinned between the Guild tent and the wall of the Kingsford Cathedral Cloister.