The Bards of Bone Plain

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Nairn swallowed something like an old, dry twist of rootwork in his throat. He backed a step or two until he felt the solid stones, and leaned against them.

  “What are you saying?” His voice gyrated wildly around his question. “Are you saying that it’s true? That old poem you gave us?”

  “What do you think poetry is?” Declan demanded. “Something decorative? A pretty tapestry of words instead of threads? Tales that old stay alive for a reason. I think that, who knows how long ago, this harper challenged himself against the Three Trials of Bone Plain. He lost all three. The poem is very clear about what happens to the failed bard.”

  “No song,” Nairn whispered numbly. “No peace. No poetry.”

  “No end of days.”

  “He has—he—you heard him play. He did not lose that power.”

  “Didn’t he?” Declan stopped pacing finally, amid a rumpled froth of sheepskin. “I think it’s in his harp, that power. Maybe he stole it; maybe he found it somewhere; it was given to him out of pity by a dying bard. I think if he tried to play any other instrument, even a simple pipe, his notes would wither into breath. Harp strings would warp out of tune; reeds would dry and split.”

  “But he can still—you saw him vanish into air!”

  “He’s been around a very long time. Who knows what he’s been able to learn through the centuries?” He shook his head. “Maybe we did not translate the words precisely—they mean other things as well—Who knows?” He paused, gazing heavily at the shaken Nairn. “Suppose he does open the way back to that plain, that tower? What would you do to possess such gifts? If the heart of this land opened itself up and showed you what you could be, offered you all the songs it holds, would you refuse? Or would you do exactly what you’ve done since the day you ran away from that pigsty? You have followed the music. To this plain. To this challenge.” He turned abruptly again, without waiting for Nairn’s answer. “Go down, listen again to that harper, and think about this: What would you do to play like him? If you can’t answer that, he will take everything that I chose for you.”

  Nairn took himself wordlessly out of the tower and down the hill to the plain, which glowed back at the stars with its own constellations of fires. He picked Welkin’s music easily out of the merry confusion of sounds. He circled it warily, again and again, pacing as Declan had, listening from a distance until gradually he came to realize that his circles spiraled more and more into themselves. He orbited the last around the great crowd sitting and listening to Welkin and one of the court bards, who were exchanging songs. There he came to a halt behind the gathering.

  Welkin played a complex accompaniment to a courtly love ballad. Even in the firelight, he seemed something imprecise: a smudge, a shadow, nothing to snag the eye or linger in the memory. The court bard, a tall, sinewy, gold-haired man from one of the richer houses in Waverlea, wore a robe of many colors trimmed with whorls of gold thread that matched the pattern of gold inlay over his harp. He had other instruments with him: a long ebony pipe, a small drum, a triple-mouthed horn. He shifted from one to another easily as he sang: he did not carry all his music in his harp. He played songs Nairn had barely learned, on instruments as pure as any he had ever heard.

  All that the court bard had, he himself could possess, Nairn knew. Wealth and dignity, fine instruments, so much talent he could afford to wear that expression of geniality and encouragement toward stray harpers out of the forgotten corners of the land. He only had to win the competition as well as whatever ancient, dormant challenges Welkin seemed determined to bring to life with his playing.

  A tower, a cauldron, a stone ... What could be so difficult about figuring out what they wanted? They were words in a poem; such words never meant exactly what they seemed. If there were rewards, then the Trials must not be impossible. If they were possible, then why not for Nairn, the Pig-Singer, who had come as far as possible from his past and needed a place to go next?

  The lovely ballad ended to much clapping and inarticulate cries. The court bard smiled, gestured to Welkin, and exchanged his harp for his pipe. Welkin paused, pulling a song out of the ancient barrow of his mind. He seemed to notice, then, the solitary figure standing beyond the crowd. He shifted; a reflection of fire glanced through his eyes like a smile.

  His first note melted through Nairn’s heart with all the sweetness of a love he had never felt; his second brushed Nairn’s lips like a kiss; his third ran down the stubborn sinews at the backs of Nairn’s knees and he sank like a stone to the grass, helpless as a child before such beauty, and as grateful for the gift.

  Words echoed through his memory, then: Declan’s voice.

  It’s in the harp. His power.

  In the harp.

  Nairn blinked, found himself hunched over, nose to petal with a wildflower folded up under the moonlight. He straightened slowly, feeling foolish and still entirely helpless against such art. When he could stand again, he slunk away, went downriver, far from the harper and his wily, dangerous harp, to see what enchantments he could get out of his own instrument. Beyond waking a few toads and causing sundry rustles in the underbrush, he couldn’t claim much.

  The next day, the harper sent him a clearer challenge.

  The first day had whittled away at the contenders: minstrels who sang bawdy ballads on street corners, in taverns, for what coins they could get, novices in the art with lofty ideas of their talents, bards from the manses of wealthy merchants and farmers, where the same songs had been played for decades on instruments handed down through generations. These yielded to the great court bards, to a handful of Declan’s students, and to skilled wanderers like Welkin. Of those who had been winnowed out of the competition, none left; they all stayed on the plain to listen.

  Nairn, Shea, Osprey were still among the contenders on the second day. Other students had played at Declan’s insistence on the first day, for the experience, he told them. He had divided the unwieldy number of would-be bards into three groups on the first day; none of the students had had to play against Welkin.

  On the second day, the three groups had pared themselves, by general consent and Declan’s judgment, into two. Nairn performed in one, Welkin in the other. Competition was fierce; court bards pulled out every instrument they had, challenged others with well-honed skills and intricate songs that ranged through the entire history of the five kingdoms. Nairn countered with songs grown out of the mists and seas and rugged valleys of the Marches that no court had ever heard. Still, he was surprised at the end of the day to find himself standing among the competitors, along with Osprey, a dozen court bards, and Welkin.

  The sun lowered over the plain, filled it with light, and shadows stark as the standing stones, then with its absence. The gathering splintered into its smallest fragments to build fires and eat. Later, as evening deepened, one would begin to play again, then another, and listeners would merge again, eddy around the players, then flow away into another pool. Nairn, reluctant to face the unnerved Declan with his own certainty that Welkin would rout even the court bards, wended his way among the colorful camps, wagons, and pavilions toward the brewer’s tavern.

  Passing a lovely ivory pavilion hung with bright tapestries and crowned with a flowing pennant, he saw what seemed to be the face of memory, and then again not. He slowed uncertainly. The memory, a tall, graceful young woman dressed in airy silks, her pale hair a mass of curls braided with gold thread and glittering with tiny jewels, looked back at him as she stood at the fire outside the pavilion door.

  Again her face stopped his heart. Then she smiled, and it started up again, a bit erratically, like a flutter of wings in his chest. She moved around the fire quickly, leaving the cluster of well-dressed ladies behind her watching curiously, and came eagerly to Nairn’s side.

  He whispered, “Odelet.”

  She laughed at his expression. “You almost didn’t recognize me. Am I changed so much since you saw me chopping up chickens in the kitchens?”

  “Yes,” he said, stil
l breathless. “No. You look—You—What are you doing here?”

  “How could I not come? To hear the finest musicians in all the realm. I had to—” She paused, her full lips quirked, her eyes flicking beyond him at her own memories. “I had to make promises to my father, and take my brother Berwin with me before he would give me permission. But nothing too binding ... We heard you play this afternoon. You melted my brother’s heart. I could tell. You played that court ballad of Estmere, and Berwin had tears in his eyes. I didn’t know you learned such music. He wagered money on you. It is extraordinary how gold finds its way into everything, isn’t it? Even love and music.”

  “Yes,” he said again, resisting the urge to touch her cool ivory cheek, trace her smile with his fingertips. “Declan has been training me,” he explained. “He wants me to win.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes darkened in sudden comprehension. “He wants to send you to King Oroh.”

  “Yes.”

  “How wonderful. Then you might indeed come to play in my father’s court.” She laughed again, a peal of lovely notes, a little breathless herself, suddenly. “Oh. I hope so. I do hope so.”

  He nodded, swallowing. “It is my greatest wish.”

  “I miss those evenings when we talked and played. I miss the smell of the plain, the sounds of the wind blowing the long, long way across it.” Her eyes clung to his a moment, the tender green of new leaves, then flicked over his shoulder. She smiled wryly. “There is Berwin wondering where I’ve gone.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Listening to every song you play tomorrow.” He felt her fingertips, light and warm, an instant on his wrist. “Look for me.”

  “I will,” he promised dazedly. “I will.”

  He watched her rejoin her company. The fire billowed between them, and he moved away slowly, still hearing the music of her voice, her clear thoughts, and he realized that nothing Declan might have said would have rendered the complex, improbable matter suddenly so simple: he would win for her.

  The tavern was full of people, but the only one he saw, as he walked through the doorway, was Welkin.

  He sat on a stool beside the hearth, playing softly, big, callused hands wandering dreamily over the strings. His strange, mismatched, smiling eyes followed Nairn across the room, where a chair waited for him between Osprey and Shea.

  The deep voice, rattling shards of shale, stopped Nairn before he reached it.

  “Play with me.”

  Nairn looked at him silently a moment. Then he laughed. “Why? So you can bring me to my knees again with that harp?”

  Welkin’s eyes narrowed slightly, still smiling. “Best the harp then, as well as the harper,” he suggested. “Break my strings and bring me to my knees.”

  There were whistles from the onlookers, tankards drummed against wood, a cheerful cry from Osprey.

  “I’ll buy the beer.”

  Nairn shrugged, preparing for any humiliation; at least, on the final day, he would know what to expect.

  He took out his harp, sat down on the bench at the other side of the fire, over which a cauldron of bean and pork and onion stew bubbled richly.

  “Supper’s on me,” the brewer told them, pleased at the crowd around his tables, which included several of the court bards, who had no doubt followed Welkin in.

  “Kind of you,” Welkin murmured and touched a string. Then he launched into a song so old and rarely played that Nairn barely remembered it had come out of the Marches: “The Riddle of Cornith and Corneath.”

  Around and around

  The circle of days

  Go sun and moon

  And my twin eyes:

  Guess my name, and you shall take the music of my heart.

  Nairn’s fingers were riffling down the strings; he heard his own voice answering before he had begun to think.

  Beyond, beneath the world I live

  Between the words I lie:

  Find my name in wind and light

  And you shall hold the secrets of my heart.

  “Who are you?” he heard in every lilting line. The one question everyone was asking about Welkin, he was giving back to them in his teasing fashion. He was also revealing something, Nairn realized. The question was there, the answer was there, between the beginning and the end of the ancient lines. All that Nairn needed to win was there. The old doggerel sparked to life. Words said what they meant when they were heeded, which was, in the case of hoary verses older than the standing stones, precisely when they were needed.

  He settled into the music, passing verses flawlessly back at Welkin, who told him something else before the interminable song came to an end, and even the court bards shouted with amazement.

  The fact that they were still playing together after that hour or two or five, that Welkin and his enchanted harp had not blown Nairn out the door and left him too disheartened to bother finishing the competition meant one mysterious thing.

  Nairn had something Welkin needed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Princess Beatrice heard about the Royal Bard’s decision from her mother, who summoned her before she could flee the castle in her dungarees. The tide had turned in the river; the work crew would be waiting near Dockers Bridge for her to pick them up. She had hoped for a word with Master Burley before she left about the hen scratches she had seen the evening before, drawn with charcoal on the lounge table at the inn. But no: work crew, hen scratches, and any thought about Phelan had to wait while she attended the queen in her mauve-appointed morning room.

  As usual, the sight of her daughter in pants and grubby boots caused Queen Harriet to close her eyes and delicately pinch the bridge of her nose. That, as usual, caused her daughter to wonder why, after so many digs, her mother was not inured by now. It was as though she thought she had two daughters named Beatrice and a vague hope that one of them would disappear entirely.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  The queen opened her eyes again and frowned. “You never appeared at Lady Phillipa’s party for Damen and Daphne’s engagement yesterday. It was noticed. You were missed.”

  “They have had so many engagement parties. I didn’t think they’d care.”

  “I was told you went off somewhere with Phelan Cle. And yet no one can tell me where. No one we know, that is. You vanish into dank holes during the day; I feel very strongly, and so does your father, that you should not begin to disappear at night as well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Beatrice said penitently, alarmed for her freedom. “It’s only—Phelan Cle had a slight accident and—”

  “I know. The bill for that ‘slight accident’ arrived on Grishold’s breakfast tray earlier this morning.” Beatrice’s eyes widened; her lips tightened over a startled laugh. Her mother’s voice thinned. “The back door and doorframe of an inn, historical though it might be and with period door hinges, in a not entirely reputable quarter of the docks. And his bard blamed for the damage. Your uncle was nearly incoherent. Such details should never have come to his attention. Nor mine. Apparently Jonah Cle offered recompense for all damages, but the innkeeper felt that, in his dissolute state, he wouldn’t remember a thing the next morning, and so he sent his claim to my brother. Why were you anywhere near this sordid little scene? Explain to me again?”

  “It wasn’t really—We were—How did you know I was there?”

  “The innkeeper recognized you and named you as a witness.”

  “Oh.”

  Queen Harriet closed her eyes again, briefly. “I will assume he has seen you on certain public occasions. Beyond that, I don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, Mother.” She glanced at the antique water clock on the mantelpiece and thought despairingly of the tide. “I really am sorry. Phelan was worried about his father, so I—I went with him to help.”

  “Worried with good reason, apparently. Really, Beatrice. You abandoned your friends and went trailing off after the soused Master Cle, who has left a litter of broken things across the entire city o
f Caerau.”

  “He didn’t break the door. It was Kelda, escaping out the back—”

  “I really don’t want to know,” her mother said adamantly. “Bards should make music, not scenes, and now we have another incident, so soon after Quennel’s accident with the salmon mousse, and I’m told that the city will very shortly be overrun with bards.”

  Beatrice raised her hand, dropped it, resisting a childhood urge to chew on a lock of hair when confused. “It will?”

  “It most certainly will if your father can’t persuade Quennel not to retire. It’s absurd of him, of course—Quennel, I mean—he’s perfectly fine now, except for a slight sore throat, and there’s no reason for him to inflict such a competition on us all now.”

  The hen scratches, the glint in the young bard’s eye, the powerful flash of light that had come out of the charcoal scribbles on the table merged suddenly in Beatrice’s head. She breathed, illumined, “Kelda.”

  The queen regarded her frostily. “Kelda?”

  Beatrice wished she could inhale the name back out of the air. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said yet again. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I really will try not to be so impulsive.”

  “I was going to say—” Queen Harriet paused, inspired by the sight of her daughter’s outfit, to bring up another subject now that Beatrice was in a placatory mood. “I think,” she began slowly, “that you should give some serious thought to your own future. Your father allows you to indulge your whims because you have similar interests. With him it’s a hobby; with you it’s becoming a career. A rather undignified and completely unnecessary one. You’ve played in the dirt long enough. It’s time you followed the example of your sister, Charlotte. Yes, Lucien, I’m just speaking to your daughter. What is it?”