Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  “Tonight’s lesson is grave indeed.” Bard spoke quietly as the harpsong ended. “You know already that Bard is born only from a twinning; that in the way of things there will be one such birth amongst the Folk in each generation. This allows time for one Bard to pass on the mysteries to the next, as I have done to you. If the cycle were broken, and Bard died before his student was ready, the Singing would be lost, and without it the Folk would perish. The Songs reveal the great pattern that must be followed. They are our true map and pathway: our balance and our lodestar.”

  The girl nodded, saying nothing.

  “Our calling cannot be denied. It is a sacred trust. But...” He faltered. How could her mind encompass the desolation of a life spent without human touch? She was but half grown: barely a woman. “There is a darker side. The Songs must be taken unsullied from their source, and passed on pure and strong to the Folk. Bard must devote every scrap of will, every fibre of spirit, every last corner of mind to that. It will be long; you will bear the burden until your student is ready to take your place. There is no room for other things. So we remain alone; apart. But it is not enough. Bard must be stronger than an ordinary man or woman; strong enough to endure the power of the Singing and not splinter into madness; true enough to form unbreakable link and pure conduit from spirit to man.” His sigh scraped like a blade on ice. “That is why Bard must be twinborn. That is why we have the Choosing.”

  “What is the Choosing?” The girl’s small features were frost-white in the dimness of the stone hut, and her eyes had darkened to shadows. Outside, the wind roared across the thatch; the rope-hung weights knocked against the walls.

  “If you had lived amongst the Folk, you would know a little of this already,” the old man said wearily. “I have kept it from you; it is a mystery darker than any you have yet learned. Now you must know it, and begin to harden your will towards it. You may be lucky; for you the Choosing may come late, when you are practised in the disciplines of the mind. Have you asked yourself what becomes of the twin who is not Bard? How this choice is made?”

  She pondered a moment. “I suppose one seems more apt. Perhaps the other is sent away. I have seen no likeness of myself amongst the Folk.”

  “Indeed not. Your brother died long ago, when you were no more than babes; mine met the same fate in a time before my memory. We hold their strength as well as our own, and are ourselves doubly strong: two in one. Without this, no man or woman has the endurance, the fortitude, the clear head and unsullied spirit a Bard must possess. You could not hear the Songs, you could not draw the voice of power from the harp, or sway the minds of the Folk, without your Otherling.”

  “My Otherling?” she breathed.

  “Your twin; the one who was sacrificed so that you could become Bard.”

  Her eyes were mirrors of darkness. “They killed him?” she whispered.

  The old man nodded, his features calm. He was still Bard; if he felt compassion, he did not let it show. “Soon after birth. It is always thus. A choice is made. The stronger, the more suitable, is preserved. The Otherling dies before he sees a second dawn, and his spirit flows into the brother or sister. That way, Bard becomes strong enough for the Singing. It is necessary, child.”

  “Bard?” Her voice was very faint in the half-dark, and not quite steady. “Who makes the choice? Who performs the—the sacrifice?”

  The old man looked at the girl, and she looked back at him. He needed no words to answer her; she read the truth in his eyes.

  It was as well he told her when he did. Next morning when she arose, shivering, to make up the fire and heat some gruel for the old man’s

  breakfast, she found him calm-faced and cold on his bed. She laid white shells on his eyelids, and touched his shaven head with her fingertips. When a boy passed by, trudging to the outer field with a bucket of oats, she called her message from behind closed shutters. Before nightfall the elders came with a board and took the old man away. Now she was Bard. Later, she stood dry-eyed by the pyre as he burned hot and pungent in the freezing air of the solstice.

  At her first Singing, she told the old man’s life and his passing, and she told a good season to come, for all the harsh winter. Seed could be planted early; mackerel would be plentiful. The sea would take no men this spring, as long as they were careful. When she was done the people made their reverences and departed. Some lived close by in the settlement of Storna, but others had far to travel, across the island to Grimskaill, Settersby or distant Frostrim. They boarded their sledges and whipped on wiry dog or sturdy pony; they strapped bone skates to their boots and made their way by frozen stream and lake path. They would return for the great Singings Bard must give at each season’s turning. At these times new Songs would be given: new wisdom from ancient voices. The Singings had names: Waking, Ripening, Reaping, Sleeping. But she had her own names for them, which she did not tell. Longing, Knowing, Sacrifice, Silence.

  They said she was a good Bard in those days. She kept aloof, as she should. She’d greet them when she must, and withdraw inside her hut like a ghost-woman. Days and nights she waited at the stones, silent in their long shadows, listening. They said if you dared to speak to her at such a time, she would not hear you, though her eyes were open. All that she could hear was the silence of the Song.

  One long winter a man brought a load of wood and stayed to chop it for her. She watched him from behind the shutters, marvelling at the strength and speed of it. When he was done, he did not simply go away as he should, but used his fist to play a firm little dance-beat on her door. She opened it the merest crack, looked out with her shadowy eyes, her face pale with knowledge.

  “All finished,” said the young man, his grin dimpled and generous, his hair standing on end, fair as ripe barley. “Stacked in the corner to keep dry for you. Cold up here.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, looking into his eyes: merry, kind eyes the colour of rock pools under a summer sky. “Thank you.” The door began slowly to creak shut.

  “Lonely life,” said the young man.

  Bard nodded, and looked again, and closed the door.

  After that he would come up from time to time, not often, but perhaps more often than the natural pattern of things would allow. He would mend leaking thatch, or unblock a drain; she would watch him from behind the door, or through the chinks of a shutter, and thank him. There was never more than a word or two in it, but after a while she found she was looking for him in the crowd whenever she ventured into Storna. She found she was peering from her window when folk passed on the road, in case she might see him go by, and turn his head towards her shutters, and smile just for her. She learned his name: Ekka, a warrior’s name, though a man with such a smile was surely no fighter, for all his strong arms that hewed the iron-hard logs as if cleaving through rounds of fresh cheese.

  She found her attention wandering, and brought it sharply back. Under the stones, sitting cross-legged in silent pose of readiness, she waited for the Songs, and they did not come. Instead of their powerful voices, their ancient, binding truths, all she could hear was a faint fragment of melody, a little tinkling thing like the tunes played by the band of travelling folk who went about the island in summer, entertaining the crowds with tricks and dancing. It was the first time the Songs had ever eluded her, and when she came down to her hut, empty of the wisdom whose telling was her life’s only purpose, she knew the old man’s teaching had been sound. She must shut down those parts of herself that belonged to the spring season: the Longing. Bard must move forward quite alone.

  From that time on her door was closed to him. Once or twice he called through fastened shutters, knowing she was there, and she set her jaw and held her silence. She went out hooded, and kept her eyes on the ground. He could not be totally avoided, for he was a leader in the settlement, with a part to play in the gatherings. Bard taught herself to greet him and feel nothing. She taught herself to look at him as she looked at all the others: as if the space between them were as wide a
nd as unbridgeable as the great bowl of the star-studded sky. She watched him withdraw, the blue eyes darkened, the smile quite gone. Later, she watched him fall in love and marry, and she kept her thoughts in perfect order. Sleep was another matter. Even Bard’s training cannot teach the mastery of dreams.

  Time passed. Ekka’s young wife had a tiny daughter. There were bountiful seasons and harsh ones. In times of trouble, the Songs cannot of themselves make things good. They cannot calm stormy seas, or cure sheep of the murrain, or bring sunshine in place of endless drenching rain. But they do bring wisdom. A warning of bad times enables preparation: the mending of thatch, the strengthening of walls, the shepherding of stock into barns and the conservation of supplies. Such a warning makes it possible to get through the hard times. The Folk kept a careful balance, each decision governed by the pattern she gave them, an ancient pattern in which wind and tide, fire and earth, man and beast were all part of the one great dance. One year the Ripening Song told of raiders in high ships, vessels with names like Dragonflight and Sea Queen and Whalesway. The Folk moved north to Frostrim, driving their stock before them. The raiders came and passed the island by; a shed or two was burned, a boat taken. At Reaping the Folk returned, and Bard sang their safety and a mild winter. Another year the Songs told of death. That season an ague took Storna, and twelve good folk perished, man, woman and babe. Ekka’s wife was gravely ill, and Bard performed a Telling by the bedside. In a Telling one did not exactly ask the ancestors a favour. One simply set out a possible course of events, then hoped. Bard told how Sifri would bear more children: fine, bonny girls like her little daughter there, strong sons, blue-eyed and merry. She told the laughter of these children through the narrow ways of Storna and out across the fields, as they chased one another under the sun of an endless summer day. She finished, pulled the hood up over her shaven head, and left. The next morning Sifri was sitting up and drinking barley broth. By springtime her belly was swollen with child again, her small, sweet features flushed and mysterious with inner life.

  At Reaping that year, Bard stood beneath the watchstone and heard the Song, and felt her heart grow cold, for all the discipline she laid on herself. One did not ask the ancestors, Are you sure? Before the first frost Sifri gave birth to twins, a pair of boys each the image of the other. They were named, though neither would keep his name for long: Halli and Gelli. It was time for the Choosing.

  She came down the hill, each step a thudding heartbeat. The Folk watched silent and solemn-eyed as if she herself were the sacrifice. Outside the Choosing place, the elders waited. Sifri and Ekka stood hand in hand, faces ash-white with grief and pride. They would lose both sons today, though one they might keep for a little while. The small girl stood at Sifri’s skirts, thumb in mouth. Bard nodded gravely, acknowledging their courage; and then she went in.

  The noise was deafening. Her own hut was always quiet. No hearthside cat or watchful dog disturbed her days, no servant muttered greetings, no child yelled fit to split her head apart as these two did. But wait. Only one babe screamed thus, one lusty child turned his face red with wailing and beat his tiny fists helplessly in air, seeking the comfort of touch, the return to warmth and love. This babe struggled; the other was quiet, so quiet one might have thought him already dead. She moved closer. The crying set her teeth on edge; it made her own eyes water. The children were in rush baskets, the lids set each to the side. Between them a stool had been set, and on it lay a dagger, its hilt an ornate masterpiece of gilded wire and small red gems, its blade sturdy, sharp, purpose-made. The children were naked, washed clean of the residue of birth. Perhaps they were cold. Perhaps that was why one screamed so. Soon one would be warm again, and the other colder still. It would only take a moment. Grasp, thrust, turn the eyes away. It would be over quickly, so quickly. There was no doubt which must be chosen: the stronger, the more fit. The fighter.

  She moved forward again. The screams went on. This lad would have a powerful voice for the Singing. As for the other...she looked down. There in the woven basket, still as some small woodland creature discovered by a sudden predator, he lay gazing up at her. His round eyes were the colour of rock pools under a summer sky. His hair was a fuzz of pure gold. He smiled, and a dimple showed in his infant cheek. He was the image of his father. She turned to the other, her heart lurching, her hands shaking so violently she could surely scarcely lift the knife, let alone use it. As if in recognition of the moment, the first twin fell suddenly quiet, though his small chest still heaved from the effort of his outcry. His face was blotched with crying. His hands clutched the air, eager for life.

  Now that the sobbing was hushed, sounds filtered in from outside: the creak of cart wheels, children’s voices, the lilt of a whistle. Her mind showed her the travelling folk passing by, motley in their ragged cavalcade, their faces painted in bizarre patterns of red and black and white, their hair knotted and plaited, feathered and ribboned. Even their children looked like a flock of exotic birds. The whistle played a small arch of melody, and ceased abruptly. Someone had told them this was no time for music. And her decision was made. With steady hand, now, Bard reached down and grasped the knife.

  There was a form of ritual to be observed, a pattern for the right doing of things. She came out of the small hut, basket in arms. The rush lid now covered the still form that lay within. Atop this lay the knife, its iron blade gaudy with fresh blood. The mother, the father, they did not ask to look or touch. This was not the way of it. The Otherling was gone to shadow; become a part of the great Song which would one day sound from his brother’s lips.

  “Go to your child,” Bard told them softly. “Comfort him well. In three years bring him to me, and I will teach him.”

  “Thank you,” said Ekka, blue eyes deep and solemn.

  “Thank you,” said Sifri, her voice a very thread of grief, and the two of them went into the hut. Their son’s voice called them; now that it was over, he had set to yelling again with double vigour.

  Bard bore the little basket up to her own hut, where it lay quiet, encircled by candles, until dusk fell. Her hand was bleeding. She tore a strip of linen from an old shift and bound it around palm and fingers, using her teeth to pull the knot tight. Later, the elders came for the basket and put it on the pyre, and they burned the Otherling with due ceremony. It did not take long, for he was quite small.

  It seemed she had chosen well. Halli was apt. He grew sturdy and strong, broad shouldered and fair haired like his father, and with a fierce determination to master all he must know. By day she might show a new pattern on the bones, a more challenging mode of harpsong. At night she would lie awake to the endless repetitions, the long struggle for perfection. She need not use discipline; her student’s own discipline was more rigorous than any she might devise.

  For him patience was a far harder lesson, and without patience there can be no listening. At twelve he underwent the trials and showed himself strong enough. That did not surprise her; it was what came after that made her belly tighten with unease, her mind cloud with misgiving.

  They stood beneath the watchstone in summer dawn, Bard and student.

  “You know what must be done,” she said.

  There was a shallow depression below the great monolith, a hollow grave-like in its proportions, lined with soft grasses as if to encourage sleep. At summer solstice this place of listening caught the sun, and was a vessel of gold light on the green hill. At midwinter the shadow of the watchstone stretched out across the circle, shrouding the small hollow in profound, mysterious darkness.

  Today there were clouds. Halli sat cross-legged, silent. Even so had she waited once, while the old Bard stood by the stones as still and patient as if he were himself one of these guardians of ancient truth; as if the lichens, pyre-red, sun-gold, corn-yellow, might in time grow up across his grey-cloaked form and make a gentle cap for his close-shaven skull. Even so had she waited, and emptied her mind of thought, and willed her breathing slow and slower. Then the Song had come
to her, pure and certain, welling in the heart, sounding in the spirit, flooding the receptive mind with truth. It was the voice of the ancestors, ringing forth from the stones themselves, from the deep earth where they stood rooted firm, from the wind and the light and the unfathomable depth of the sky. She still held it within her somewhere: that first transcendent moment of joy.

  Time passed. It could be long, a day and a night, maybe more. She knew the boy’s strength. He would sit there immobile as long as he must, to hear it. And yet, as the sky darkened to rose and violet and pigeon grey, she wondered. He was apt, anyone could see that. Clever, quick, dedicated. Why was it so long? Inside her, memory stirred and shivered.

  At dawn she spoke softly, breaking into his trance, bidding him cease. Another time, she told him. Next time. Halli was angry: with her, with the ancestors, with himself.

  “You must learn patience,” Bard said.

  He clamoured to try again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Not yet, she said. If the ancestors would not speak, it was not time. His eyes narrowed with resentment, his mouth twisted with frustration.

  “You must learn calm,” Bard said.

  He played the bones like a dance of death. He sounded the pipe in a piercing wail of need. His fingers dragged notes of aching emptiness from the small harp. She made him wait.

  The season passed. At Reaping the travelling folk came through Storna with juggling and dances, with coloured streamers and performing dogs. A whistle tune floated up the hill, clean and innocent on the easterly breeze: a tune wrought untutored and free, yet exquisite in its form and feeling. The melody made its way in at her window and tugged at Bard’s memory. Behind a closed door Halli played his own pipe, his music intricate, tangled on itself. She heard the two tunes meet and mingle, and she put her hands over her ears and used a technique long practised to shut out unwelcome thoughts. When she emerged from her trance, all was quiet. At last her student slept, his sturdy form relaxed as a child’s, his strong features wan with exhaustion. The pipe had slipped from his fingers to the earthen floor. She laid the blanket over him.