Bard's Oath (Dragonlord)

by Joanne Bertin

  Stunned, Raven went down on one knee before the young Cassorin prince. “Your Highness!” He knew his mouth was hanging open and that he must look like the village idiot, but he didn’t care. He was too busy trying to decide whether he was surprised, baffled, or just plain terrified. If the guard chose this moment to walk in and realized his young sovereign was within easy reach of a murderer, he’d kill Raven first and ask questions afterward.

  “What in the name of all the gods are you doing here, my lord?” Raven sputtered. Please, please don’t let the guard come in now.…

  “I got the idea from something Kella did. Look what I brought you!” Rann reached into the front of his tunic. After a few fumbling moments, he pulled out a chisel. “I know you didn’t kill Tirael, so I had Aralie’s brother steal this from one of the stonemasons working on the new solar. You can use it to dig out the bars from the window and escape!” The boy fairly danced in excitement, he was so delighted with his idea.

  Beyond words now, Raven numbly accepted the tool. He refrained from asking how he’d get down from such a height since he wasn’t a fly to crawl down the walls. He’d not dash Rann’s pleasure that way. The child was plainly thrilled to help him.

  Never mind it was of bloody little use; Rann believed in him. That was what was important.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” Raven managed to get out past the lump in his throat. “You’ve no idea how much your faith and trust mean to me.”

  Nothing else would do but that Raven must start immediately on the Great Plan. “I shan’t be able to stay much longer and I want to make certain it will work.”

  So, as Rann watched, Raven began digging diffidently at the mortar at the base of an iron bar.

  At least falling would be a cleaner death than strangling at the end of a rope.

  He set to the task with a will.

  * * *

  The sun was low in the west as Leet strode eagerly through the castle halls on his way to the gardens, Gull riding in its case on his back. He twitched the carrying strap across his chest to a more comfortable position; he would have to venture farther into the gardens today. Squirrels and such were becoming scarce again. He turned the corner to the great hall. To his dismay, he saw Daera talking with Prince Rann and Otter.

  Leet walked quickly for the archway leading to the garden door, praying that neither of them would see him. Ever since the day of their confrontation in his room, it seemed that Daera’s blue eyes mocked him whenever she saw him. It took the pleasure right out of looking at Otter’s pinched face, somehow. The other man seemed to have aged a good twenty years since coming to Balyaranna.

  Almost there.… Then his luck deserted him. Otter had seen him. The other bard’s trained voice cut easily through the noise in the great hall.

  “Leet! Wait!”

  He gripped the leather strap with both hands, as Otter worked his way through the ever-present crowd to him. “Yes?” he snapped.

  To his surprise, Otter looked embarrassed. “I apologize for not telling you sooner, Leet. I guess I thought a messenger had reached you with the news—this whole thing with Raven has…” The Yerrin bard took a deep breath. “I mentioned it to Daera and she hadn’t heard about Sether, so I daresay you haven’t either.”

  “Sether?” Panic, pure and simple. “Did he say any— I mean, heard what about Sether?”

  Otter gave him a queer look. “He’s dead.”

  Thank the gods—that damned ladder got him at last! Leet crowed inwardly. A weak link gone, then—good! He managed to inject just the right amount of sorrow into his voice. “Accident in the wood barn?”

  “No.” A long pause. “He hanged himself.”

  Leet felt the blood drain from his face. “W-why?”

  “No one knows. Just that something had been bothering him for a couple of years or so. But he never told anyone what.” Once more an odd look filled the other man’s eyes. “Have you any idea why?”

  “Wha-what?” Leet stared at Otter, nearly frantic now. “What the hell do you mean by that? Why would I know?”

  “Because I’d heard that you and Sether had spent a great deal of time talking together these past couple of years or so. I thought that he might have confided in you. You seemed to have become close friends.”

  “You’re wrong!” Leet shrilled. “He wasn’t a friend! And anyone who says I ‘spent a great deal of time’ with him lies!” With that, he spun around and hurried back to his room, past astonished faces that turned to look at him. Gull would have to wait.

  * * *

  Rann waited with Daera, watching the two older bards talking. He thought he could tell just when Bard Otter told Bard Leet the news that had made Daera so unhappy. Bard Leet’s face went white and he looked like his eyes would pop out of his head.

  He decided it was time to ask the question that had been bothering him ever since Kella came back from Bard Leet’s room that day. That day she’d stopped being herself. He hadn’t been able to find out before now; Bard Leet certainly wasn’t the one to ask.

  “Daera? Is a bard’s harp, well, enchanted?”

  “Do you mean does the harp play itself rather than the bard playing it?”

  “No. Can a harp do things to people?”

  That startled Daera out of her sad mood, he could see. She looked down at him, puzzled. “What do you mean, Your Highness? How so?”

  Rann chewed on his lip, not quite certain how to put it without giving everything away. “If you didn’t want me to touch your harp and I did anyway because you weren’t there to stop me, would something bad happen to me?”

  The question, as Kella would say, clearly “fair boggled” the young bard. “Of course not, Your Highness! A harp is just a harp even if we bards talk about the ‘soul’ of one. Wood and wire and tuning pegs—that’s all a harp is. Um—why do you ask?”

  “Oh,” Rann said vaguely. “No reason.… There’s one of my tutors. I have to go now.” And he scurried off in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  When Otter rejoined Daera, he found her standing arms akimbo, staring after the rapidly retreating prince, a look of complete bafflement on her face.

  “That,” she said, “was one of the oddest questions I’ve ever been asked!”

  “And what was that?” inquired Otter.

  “Can a harp hurt someone who isn’t supposed to play it,” she answered, shaking her head. “Magically hurt someone, that is.”

  That was an odd question. “Must be the day for strange things,” he murmured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leet had the oddest reaction when I told him about Sether.”

  She snickered. “Speaking of reactions, I wish you could have seen his face when I told him Kella is talented. He was still whining about the ‘merchant’s brat’ who’d nearly touched his harp. I’m just surprised Maurynna Kyrissaean has never ripped into him for what he did, the pompous ass.”

  “And what was that? Refusing to teach Kella because she’s a commoner?”

  “Worse.”

  And Otter listened, appalled, as Daera told him about the encounter in the garden.

  * * *

  He couldn’t believe it. Sether had hanged himself? Why? Had Widow Theras thrown him over for another man?

  Leet paced his room, wringing his hands. He glanced at the silk-shrouded figure of Gull on the small table by the bed. Or was it because of …

  He twisted his fingers into his hair. He had no idea why Sether had killed himself and no way to find out. Had he pushed Sether too hard? Had the Wood Master finally snapped under his threats?

  He couldn’t very well go to Otter now, pretending to be concerned about Sether, and fish for whatever information the other bard might not even know he had. He’d closed off that route. Leet cursed his earlier panic. What should he do?

  Leave. Go back to Bylith. Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d begin packing right now and set off in the morning.

  As he reached for Gull, the harp
rocked. The silk covering rippled and slid down. Without meaning to, Leet grabbed the harp’s pillar, clutching it like a lifeline.

  The strings hummed. Words formed in his mind. Leave now? We haven’t seen that whelp of Otter’s blood hanged yet! Think of the look on Otter’s cursed face as his grandnephew jerks and twitches on the end of a rope, fighting to breathe. The cursed face that Jaida preferred to yours … Make him pay.

  Calm washed over Leet. Calm, and … desire. Nay, a craving. No, that would not be a thing to miss. Not at all. He would stay. Leet smiled and stroked the harp’s pillar.

  Only a few more days … And now I want my blood.

  Moving like one bemused, Leet slipped the harp once more into its leather case and slung it over his shoulder. Time to go to the garden, he thought dreamily.

  And perhaps we should get rid of the boy—the one who knows Osric.

  Fifty-one

  Where in the name of the gods had all their time gone? Maurynna wondered in despair. They now had only four days left. “Has anyone found out anything that might help?” she pleaded as she looked around at the others seated at the table.

  Linden, Shima, and Otter all shook their heads. They looked as hopeless as she felt.

  “Shall we go over what we know once again?” asked Shima. “There must be something that we’re missing.”

  Linden sighed. “To bed, everyone. We’re too tired to think straight. We’d likely not notice a clue if it was chewing on our ankles. Maybe the morning will bring better news.”

  * * *

  Ever since the death of Summer Lightning, Stablemaster Tuerin had slept fitfully. Now he woke—the gods only knew why—and stared into the darkness above. At least the cursed fair would be over in a few days! He wondered what ill fate had brought down so much disaster upon—

  What was that? Tuerin listened intently. Something at the far end of the loft where the boys slept … He raised his head cautiously to look.

  Though the shutters were open to the night air, only a little moonlight shone through the window. But there was enough to show him a dark silhouette; it pulled something from under its pallet and crept to the opening for the ladder.

  There was something about the way the stealthy figure moved.… Frightened, Tuerin surged up from his own pallet and threw himself at the dark form. His hand closed on a handful of breeches just as the dark figure let itself fall headfirst into the opening.

  “Robie, you fool boy!” he yelled, terrified for his son. “What are you doing?”

  Tuerin hung grimly on to his son with one hand. He jammed the fingers of the other into a gap in the floorboards to anchor himself; Robie’s weight threatened to pull him over. Pandemonium broke out in the darkness around him as the stable hands awoke. At last someone had the wits to find flint and steel and light the oil lamp.

  Hands reached out, grabbed Robie, hauled him up. Tuerin yanked his fingers from between the floorboards, cursing at the crop of slivers he reaped.

  By all the gods, he’d take a belt to that fool boy’s backside. Tuerin opened his mouth to blister his son’s ears for him.

  Then Robie rolled limply onto his back. A sack fell from his fingers. And Tuerin’s heart turned to ice at the emptiness in his son’s eyes.

  * * *

  “Conor! Conor! Wake up!”

  Conor struggled out of a deep sleep. “Wha-what? Whassmatter?” he croaked, peering blearily around the dimly lit tent.

  Light flared, searing his eyes. Conor cursed and squinched them shut. When he opened them again, he saw Krev standing before him holding up a lantern.

  “Sorry,” Krev apologized. “Should have warned you I was going to turn the wick up.”

  Conor looked through the open door of the tent. It was still dark out! What the hell was Krev doing waking him up now? He wasn’t on duty tonight.

  Before he could rip into Krev—who looked annoyingly wide-eyed and alert, much to Conor’s disgust—the young apprentice said, “Master Edlunn wants to see you right now! They know who poisoned Summer Lightning!”

  * * *

  Blanket wrapped around his shoulders against the dawn’s chill, Raven scraped patiently at the mortar around the base of one of the iron bars of the window. He hummed as he worked. The last chunk of mortar broke away. He caught it before it fell out the window. Jiggling the bar to make certain that, yes, he could get it out any time he wanted, Raven replaced the chunk he’d caught and all the others he’d saved. From a distance the two bars he’d loosened looked secure.

  One more, and there would be enough room for him to squeeze out. New fantasies of daring rescues filled his mind. He began humming again as he set to work once more.

  Then, with a curse, he threw down the chisel. Damn it all, there was that cursed tune again! The one that filled his nightmares. The one that wouldn’t let him sleep.

  The one that he was certain that he’d heard the night he killed Lord Tirael. Raven clutched the blanket around himself, shuddering at the fragments of memory the song brought back.

  Red streaked the eastern sky before he could bring himself to pick up the chisel once more. It was a fool’s task, but it gave him something to do. There might not be a rescue, but he’d cheat the hangman’s noose one way or another.

  * * *

  Conor presented himself at the castle as early as he dared. The guards at the gate eyed the brown-and-green of his tunic with respect, and Trouble, who popped her head out of his hood, with amusement.

  Still, they crossed their pikes to bar his entrance. “Your name and business, sir?” one asked politely.

  “I am Conor of Red Dale, a Beast Healer from the chapterhouse of Grey Holt. I’ve come to see Linden Rathan if he is awake. It may be of great importance to him.”

  For a moment he feared they would send him on his way. Then one turned and called one of the messenger lads to him. Moments later the boy sprinted away.

  Conor waited in an agony of apprehension. What if they weren’t awake yet? Worse, what if Linden refused to see him? His soultwin certainly couldn’t be happy with a certain Beast Healer for his testimony against her best friend.

  He well-nigh melted with relief when the boy ran back with word that the Dragonlords would see him.

  * * *

  “A boy poisoned Summer Lightning?” Linden asked with equal amounts of dismay and astonishment. “The stablemaster’s own son? Conor—are you certain of this?”

  The thought chilled Linden. Not only that a boy would do such a cruel thing, but that no allowance would be made for his age. He knew the boy Robie would be punished as severely as an adult. Shaking his head, he went to the window and looked out onto the new day. That a boy would do such a thing …

  Behind him Maurynna said, “But that’s awful! Why did the boy do it? Did he hate the horse or have some grudge against Lord Lenslee?”

  “No. Quite the opposite. From all I’ve heard the boy thought Summer Lightning was the sun and the moon and the stars. He wept bitterly when the horse died, his father said.”

  Shima shook his head sadly. “The man must be brokenhearted.”

  “He is. But he’s a man of honor. I think that even if the rest of the stable hands hadn’t been there when Robie was found with the sack of yellowfool, he would have come to us to have his suspicions confirmed. But that’s not why I came here. It was something that I remembered.”

  Linden turned at the rising excitement in Conor’s voice. “Go on.”

  “When Summer Lightning died, Master Edlunn and I went to examine his stall that night. We found Robie there, cleaning it despite orders to leave it untouched. It seemed then, in his anguish over the horse’s death, he sleepwalked. Or so I and everyone else thought at the time.

  “Especially since he said something that made no sense at the time. Indeed, it seemed so useless that I forgot it until now. As he came out of his ‘dream,’ Robie muttered something about ‘Where did Osric go? I heard him playing.’”

  That caught Linden’s attention. “‘Pl
aying’? As in an instrument?”

  Now Maurynna sat up straight, all trace of antagonism gone. “Music?”

  “Music,” Conor confirmed triumphantly.

  “That’s three times now,” Maurynna said, ticking the count off on her fingers. “Raven heard music—and killed Tirael. Conor heard music—and turned aside for it. Young Robie heard music—and disobeyed orders.”

  “Once is chance,” Linden said softly, drawing on long-ago memories. “Twice is coincidence. Three times—look to your sword.”

  Maurynna tapped a fourth finger. “I wonder if Tirael heard music the night he died,” she said quietly. “But who is this Osric? Was he at Sevrynel’s that night? If so, I don’t remember seeing him.”

  “Robie said he was a minstrel who stayed one night in a stable at Lord Portis’s manor before coming to the fair,” Conor offered. “An older man, he said.”

  Trembling with excitement, Maurynna said, “We need to find him!”

  But Linden was already striding for the door to the antechamber. Throwing it open, he said curtly to the page cooling his heels there, “Aelfar, go to Bard Otter’s room. Tell him we need him here now.”

  The lad jumped down from his chair. “At once, Your Grace!” he said, and was through the outer door as if shot from a catapult.

  A short while later, Aelfar was back. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but he’s not there. His servant said that he went early to break his fast with his grandnephew.”

  Damnation, but he wouldn’t cut short their time together. He could ask about Osric as soon as Otter returned. “Then send someone to Lord Portis’s stable and have the boy Robie brought to us.”

  Aelfar bowed and ran from the suite again.

  “There are some things here I don’t understand,” said Shima, frowning. “I’ve heard it said that true bards like Leet or Otter have a certain magic. It’s how they can capture their listeners’ imaginations, their hearts, how they make the songs ‘real’ to their audiences.

  “This is a thing I can understand; it makes me think of the singing magic known by all the peoples of my land. It is said humans learned it from the waterdragons in the long ago, the time before history, the time before even the oldest stories. But you don’t have waterdragons here in the north, and I’d always understood bards’ magic to be different from—and not as powerful as—the magic I grew up with.