Phelan realized that after the third court occasion that Jonah had turned up at sober, on time, and without elaborate machinations on Sophy’s part. He could, Phelan noted, pass intelligent and appropriate comments while seeming to absorb the young bard’s music through the black, implacable gaze he trained on Kelda during every note. Kelda was never at all discomposed by it. Meeting Jonah in a crush, he would exchange a genial remark, generally about the impending bardic contest, which would only render Jonah’s expression even more bleak until, satisfied, Kelda wandered off with a smile to charm a fairer face.
I am watching you, Jonah’s eyes said. I have my eye on you. But to what end, Phelan wasn’t sure; Jonah’s only response to the imminence of Kelda was to reach for the nearest passing drink. So Phelan thought, at any rate until he found himself following Jonah through an abandoned sewer.
It had already been a long day and seemed about to get a great deal longer. Officially, it had begun early enough, at breakfast with Zoe before his class. They found each other that morning in the masters’ refectory, among a scattering of teachers and retired bards who still woke at the dawn song of the birds. Phelan, entering, saw Zoe sitting alone at a table, with the colors of the high stained-glass windows around the hall cascading over her. Red-eyed and disheveled, hunched over her teacup, she looked the way he felt. He pulled out a chair beside her, and she jumped, unaccustomedly nervy. The impending contest, he guessed. It would make anyone skittish as a cat. Unofficially, his day had never begun, just melted into light out of the previous night, when he had followed Jonah to an ancient tavern in south Caerau that stood in a ring of standing stones and had attracted, for most of the night, half the visiting musicians in Caerau.
Which was likely why she took one bleary look at him and burst into laughter.
“The Merry Rampion,” she explained succinctly, reading his mind. “You?”
“I think it was called Dockers Haven,” he answered through a yawn. “It smelled fishy enough.” A server put coffee down in front of him; he dived down, took a deep breath of it. He added, after a scorching swallow, “It was up to the rafters with musicians.”
She nodded. “It’s like that everywhere. I was playing with them half the night.”
“Sizing up the competition?”
She smiled without humor. “Yes. Exactly. Were you?”
“No.”
“Kelda thinks you should compete.”
He took another scalding sip, asked mildly, too tired for drama, “And I should care exactly why what Kelda thinks?”
She held her breath, gazing into her tea, then looked at him a little, genuine smile underscoring her eyes. “I wish you would. It might inspire me. It may not help me play better than Kelda—I’m not sure anything could do that—but you would make me play better than myself.”
He gazed at her; the question that came out surprised him. “Are you afraid?”
She lowered her eyes, reading tea leaves again. “Yes. No. Why should I be? Why wouldn’t I be?” She straightened, shifting her elbows for a plate the server, a student in his other life, put down between them. That morning’s breakfast was thin herb omelets rolled around asparagus, strawberries in cream, biscuits studded with onion and chives. His brow cocked a question at Phelan.
“Please,” Phelan said, and studied Zoe again while he waited. She ate hungrily, ignoring him or avoiding his eyes, he wasn’t sure which. His own breakfast came up promptly, and he lost himself in it for a few bites until he heard her say,
“Will you?”
“What?”
“Play in the competition. To keep me company.” She was watching him now, fork suspended over her plate, her eyes luminous, troubled. He shifted, murmuring inarticulately, reluctant and annoyed that the bard from Grishold could cast his shadow even over private decisions made between them. “If you do,” she added, inspired, “you could write your paper on the competition instead. It will be brilliant—the first formal piece written from the point of view of a musician who played in it. You said you’ve been having trouble with your topic.”
“Not anymore,” he said, and felt her swift surprise. He forked in a mouthful to avert questions, aware of her attention as he chewed.
She only said, after a moment, “Good. Then you’ll be that much less distracted by it. I understand why you’re not interested in the competition. But there are reasons—” Her voice caught, making him stare. She ducked her face, hiding behind her hair, such an unusual impulse that he put his fork down, astonished. “Things,” she went on finally, “that I’m not so certain about, and I want you to see them, too.”
“What—”
She shook her head quickly; he saw her face again, her fine profile rising against the dark, and then her eyes, nearly black in their intensity. She said softly, her voice trembling, “I would be very grateful if you would play your heart beside me like the most magical instrument in the world. I’m not certain what to expect from this competition, but I think, that at the very least, it will be like nothing anyone could ever predict. Play to win. You’ll need to, against Kelda. You’ll need all that your heart can give.”
A fragment of what he had glimpsed in his research slipped into his mind. He went rigid, recognizing it in what she saw: the oldest competition in Belden, in the five kingdoms, and older even than that.
“I won’t win,” he warned her. “Most likely I’ll get tossed out on the first day.”
“It doesn’t matter. Please. I need you with me.”
He nodded finally, briefly, and felt her fingers brush the back of his hand, cold as any stone.
That had been the beginning of his day.
He taught his class, from which Frazer was markedly absent, probably recovering from a more compelling subject the night before. No one there focused very well on the rigors of memory; the students forgot their verses without compunction and only wanted to talk about the bardic competition, and whether or not Phelan thought there could possibly be a bard in the realm better than Kelda.
He dismissed them with relief and went in pursuit of his father.
He didn’t expect to find Jonah at home asleep in his bed after tumbling into it at dawn. But he checked there first, anyway, and found his mother at the breakfast table, with a pair of half-moons balanced on her elegant nose, sipping her morning coffee and reading his unfinished paper.
He blinked incredulously at her. She didn’t vanish, just tilted her head to look at him over her lenses.
“Oh, it’s you, dear. I don’t suppose you’ve seen your father?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading.”
“That’s my paper.”
“Yes, and it seems quite wonderful to me. I hope you don’t mind too much? Sometimes I actually do try to pay attention to your lives.”
Phelan moved finally from his transfixed stance, joined her at the table. He was still in yesterday’s clothes, he realized, which probably smelled pungently of Dockers Haven.
“It can’t be easy,” he commented, pouring himself coffee. “Reading that, I mean. I didn’t even know you had spectacles.”
“There, you see? The things we don’t know about one another. For instance, where Jonah might be at this moment.”
“I saw him a few hours ago—near dawn, actually—at a tavern along the south river, listening to the musicians play.” He paused, added awkwardly, “He was alone.”
“Except for you, of course,” Sophy said imperturbably.
“Well.”
“He does seem to have something on his mind, though, doesn’t he?” She aimed the half-moons at him, her fair brows raised. “Do you think it’s the bardic competition? You are going to compete, of course, aren’t you?” He nodded wordlessly. “I wonder if he wishes he could. Do you think so? Yesterday—I think it was yesterday. Yes. We served up our annual fish-chowder luncheon on the royal docks for the Relief of Widows and Orphans of the Stirl. It was a great success. He sent me flowers.”
“Who?” Phelan asked, startled.
“Your father.”
“It’s serious, then. Is he going to die?”
“Well, I’m wondering, too. Do you think you could find him again? He’s been far too—well—civilized lately. It worries me.”
Phelan realized that he was gawping at his mother. He closed his mouth, then opened it to ask, “Do you want me to give him a message? Is there someplace he should be?”
“That’s exactly it, isn’t it? He’s always where he should be, these past days. Just keep an eye on him, will you? Discreetly, of course. You might let me know if he’s in any kind of trouble. Beyond the usual, I mean. Do you mind?”
“No,” he answered dazedly. “I believe I can work him into my schedule.”
He took a steam tram down the river road, spent some time wandering through the streets, following the music that seeped out of doorways, blew down piers, drew crowds on street corners. The music gave him a place to look, at least, gave his meanderings a pattern. Mostly, he moved on the assumption that if he kept Jonah in the forefront of his thoughts, Jonah would appear. Which was not at all hard to do, considering his own crack-brained suspicions. Sometimes, though, Sophy tugged at his thoughts, the vision of his unpredictable mother reading his scholarly paper in her dressing gown. And Zoe. What had she persuaded him to do? The last thing in the world he wanted ...
No Jonah in the cheerful morning light. On impulse, he walked across Dockers Bridge to look for his father down a hole. Or maybe asleep on a midden full of the previous century’s rubbish. Perhaps the princess would know.
Beatrice came up to talk to him, already grimy and sweating in the warmth. She took her straw hat off, fanned herself. He watched curly tendrils of gold, escaped from her ruthless pins, flutter around her face.
“He was here earlier,” she told Phelan. “He wanted to know if I’d seen Kelda before I left the castle this morning. Of course I hadn’t—I try not to see anyone when I’m dressed like this. That’s all your father said, really. He went off, and I went back down to dust my mantelpiece. I have no idea where he might have gone.” She paused, her cobalt eyes querying him through the mask of grit. “I’ve seen the way he looks at Kelda lately, during gatherings at court.”
“Yes,” Phelan answered tightly. “I think there’s something between them in their past, despite everything Kelda says. I’m trying to keep an eye on my father. I’m trying to understand.”
She put her hat back on, studied him under the shadow. “It makes no sense,” she breathed. “None of it. Kelda—he shouldn’t know what he knows. He couldn’t be as young as he says if he has a past with Jonah in it.”
“I don’t think he is.” Phelan slid one hand over his own face, to keep from telling her what he did think. He felt the sweat gathering at his hairline.
“If I see your father again, should I tell him that you’re looking for him?”
“No. He’d only try to hide from me.”
“Because you’d both be in danger, then.” Her mouth pinched a moment, then she loosed a breath gustily. “I do so want to help you look. If I get into trouble again, my mother will send me to my sister Charlotte’s home in the country to be influenced by children and apple orchards and cows. It would be maddening.”
He smiled, envisioning her among the apple blossoms in sedate country clothes, moodily tossing sticks to the dogs.
“A terrifying prospect,” he agreed. “But think how well you would learn to understand the Circle of Days.”
She thought about that, clamping her hat on her head to keep it from flying into the Stirl. “I suppose that’s where it began, isn’t it ... The language of endlessly repeating days ... Was the magic there from the beginning? Have we just forgotten it?”
“Kelda didn’t forget.” He shivered suddenly, there under the full noonday sun, as he glimpsed again strands of an impossible tale. The princess in her dungarees, coated like a sweetmeat with the dusting of centuries, watched him gravely.
“Tell me if I can help,” she said abruptly. “I can survive Charlotte and her circle of days.”
Can you? he wondered. Can any of us? He nodded wordlessly and turned toward the bridge again. He looked back once, found her still watching him. She gave him a little sidelong smile and turned. He watched her disappear step by step down the ladder into the earth.
He went back across the bridge.
The crowds had grown thick with musicians carrying their instruments, visitors come to listen to the legendary contest, everyone drawn in the midday maelstrom toward food and drink and company. He heard his own name called from an open tavern door; friends waved him in. He joined them, wanting food and some cheerful, mindless conversation. The tavern was so packed that musicians ate standing with their instruments dangling out windows over the water. No one talked of anything but the competition: what they would play or sing first, what bards of which great courts had been seen already in Caerau, what odds were being given where and by whom on who might take Quennel’s place. Kelda was the odds-on favorite, of course. But he was, after all, just a country bard out of Grishold, and who knew what amazements from other distant courts might be even now wending their ways to the city?
“Are you competing?” someone asked Phelan, and he remembered, with surprise, that he was. Pressed, he admitted to little preparation and less ambition to win; it would be something to tell his children when they started wondering if he had ever done anything remotely interesting with his life. He lingered there over his beer, listening to various musicians, caught again in the web of excitement, speculation, and song spun over the entire city.
When he walked back into the street finally, startled at the angle of light and shadow over the cobbles, he saw his father.
Jonah was walking upriver quickly and purposefully; he hadn’t seen Phelan. Phelan followed his undeviating path a long way, trying not to trip over instrument cases lying open on the side-walks, or careen into too many pedestrians. The crowds thinned past the docks. Jonah was easier to keep in sight, though if he glanced back, there were fewer bodies for Phelan to hide behind. He didn’t. Closer to the castle, where there were still random knots around visiting minstrels, and he could feel the cooler edge of the late-afternoon breezes flowing off the water, he saw his father finally veer from his determinedly straight path, go over the embankment, and down out of view.
Phelan quickened his pace, eased cautiously across the tree-lined embankment, and peered upriver from behind a trunk. Jonah was down on the tidal mudflats, leaving footprints in the muck. He veered again, as Phelan watched, toward a large pipe half-overgrown with brush, left from a time before sluices, canals, and newer water systems had shifted the shape of the ancient riverbed.
He vanished into the pipe.
Phelan groaned softly and slogged down to follow his father into the dark.
Chapter Twenty
It’s at this point that Nairn’s footprints through history vanish again. What we can see, rising like tussocks across an indeterminate expanse of bog water, is the Circle of Days. The secret face, half-hidden within a hood, the three parallel lines, the middle one longer at both ends than the outer pair, in the ancient word for “bread” signals to those who recognize it from an astonishing array of unlikely places. Stamped into the hilt of a sword. An etching on the frontispiece of a book. Rosy cameos carved on both sides of a lady’s locket. Painted on the sign of a tavern calling itself The Wanderer. Another such sign hanging over a bakery. The oldest, most recently unearthed: a metal disk with the hooded face on one side, the cryptic lines on the other.
Whose face is it?
Who wore the disk?
What did it signify to the wearer?
Did Nairn look for those solid tussocks of something familiar and constant through the centuries, rooted as they were in his own past, and as long-lived? It seems likely. Within his own endless circle of days, little else was as immutable as this signal out of his youth. The original face might have been his. He mig
ht have discovered such a conclave during his travels, after he spoke to Argot Renne. Perhaps he revealed his history to those in it, and, even better, told them what he had learned of the secret powers they sought. Perhaps he founded such a group, trying to revive whatever powers he might have had, that had exhausted themselves or been taken away from him on Bone Plain. Perhaps, for a while, members of that occult group wore the disks to identify themselves.
Or perhaps the face belonged to Declan, who died still searching for a bard with equal gifts in magic and music to send to King Oroh.
Perhaps Nairn himself left all such signals throughout history, in the various guises he might have taken—bookmaker, baker, warrior, lover, tavern keeper—like a cry across the timeless twilight in which he lived, where all that he knew, anything he loved, he must watch flow endlessly away from him toward night.
In the Circle of Days, we glimpse the path of the Wanderer, still unforgiven by the intractable powers of the land he roamed. And we begin to wonder, in pity and fear: unforgiven for what act that set him on his lonely trek through history?
What could possibly be that unforgivable?
What exactly happened in that tower?
Beyond the world he knew, he wandered,
The Unforgiven,
So far that he heard each word, each sound
Torn from its deep roots in history
Ratchet through the exacting grind of time,
Wear down to a new, fine gloss.
That long he wandered:
Through his dying and reviving language.
FROM “SONG FOR THE UNFORGIVEN” BY E. M. NIGHT
On his first journey beyond Stirl Plain, where he had lived, in one shape or another, for over three hundred years, Nairn left his mark all over Belden.
As he had in his youth, he wandered, not in search of music this time, but in search of the Circle of Days. Within that source of power, he might revive his own shadowy, flickering powers that permitted him to mask his age and turn into a stone when he craved forgetfulness. But little else: he could not tune his harp to magic. He couldn’t tune it to the simplest scale, either; he wondered if, rekindling his magic might fine-tune his ears again as well.
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