Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide

by Hickman, Tracy

  Percival was a handsome lad who knew it and ensured that everyone else knew it too. He had a strong, cleft chin that was always closely shaven and flaxen hair that was always perfectly coifed. His flashing grey eyes could spot a skirt from a quarter mile, and, truth be told, odds were that it would be moving in his direction as iron to a lodestone. He was always impeccably dressed for any occasion that did not include manual labor and never present at any that required it. He was constantly busy but had never worked an honest hour in his life so far as anyone could recall. Those who were younger than he admired him. Those who were older suspected him. Those who were about his own age fell into two camps: those who were attracted to him . . . and everybody else. He was like a perfectly formed peach on the tree, desirable to look at and tempting, but not anywhere near ripe.

  Father Patrion shook his head. A young man in the middle of the night knocking at his door was never joyful news. Their problems invariably revolved around the courting arts, an area where Father Pantheon had no experience whatsoever on which to draw. Worse, Patrion mused, why was it that young lovers always seem inclined to involve the clergy in elaborate, dramatic, and often problem-filled romantic schemes?

  Father Patrion drew in a deep breath and opened the door.

  Percival rushed in and then flattened himself against the arcade wall, doing his best impression of hiding in the shadows—only there were few shadows in which to hide since he was still within full illumination of the candle.

  He was dressed for the occasion, Father Patrion noted with a thin smile. Percival wore a rakish felt cap with a long feather in it that, Patrion realized, looked remarkably similar to the hat worn by that fool Dragon’s Bard who had been parading about the town this last month or so. Percival was wearing hose—a rather odd choice, given the bitter winter night—and stylish brushed-leather boots with soft soles. His tunic and doublet were made of matching deep plum fabric, and the grey great cape that Percival wore over the entire ensemble was held up with his left arm so as to cover the lower half of his face. The entire outfit looked as though it had been made specifically for the well-dressed skulker. No doubt his doting mother had made a point of producing it especially for the occasion.

  “Brother Percival,” Father Patrion said, suddenly aware that the hairs on the sides of his head were most likely sticking out at the oddest-appearing angles, “It is late and I must soon to bed.”

  Percival nodded, his golden curls bouncing slightly around the sides of his cap. “Yes, but I just have to see you, Father Pantheon—it’s a matter of life and death!”

  Such an easy phrase, Father Patrion thought sadly to himself. How easily the young use it when they have so little knowledge of either.

  “Very well,” Father Patrion said, motioning the youth out into the atrium. His home had been built by the town after the Mordale style popular with the country estates a few years ago. It was actually a small structure but it did feature an atrium garden surrounded by a small arcade. It reminded him strongly of the Cloisters and often made him feel better just to see it and work in its central garden. There was a path that led into the center of the atrium, where a pair of stone benches allowed for conference. “Please sit down.”

  “Oh, I just can’t, Father Pantheon,” Percival continued in a rush. “This is one of the most important nights ever—maybe of my whole life!”

  “Then I’ll sit,” Father Patrion replied, sitting down as slowly as his aching back would allow. “What do you need, Brother?”

  “You’ve got to help me, Father Pantheon,” Percival moaned. He placed one foot on the stone bench and leaned toward the priest. “It’s about a woman.”

  Father Patrion sighed, and then, seeing that Percival had come to a full stop, urged him on. “Of course, go on.”

  “I need to invite this woman to the Couples’ Dance of Spring Revels,” Percival replied.

  Father Patrion rolled his eyes. Spring Revels! What person in the town wasn’t concerned with Spring Revels? All the inhabitants were stuck in their homes, the fields all covered under snow or frost and asleep until spring. There was nothing to do but talk of Spring Revels. In a flash, however, Father Patrion thought he might see a way out of this discussion. “Then you have my blessing, my brother, to go and ask this woman to the Revels. I trust that the blessings of—”

  “No!” Percival continued, “I can’t just ask her like anyone else. It needs to be special, romantic and memorable, so that she’ll see how great I really am. My mother told me the other day—”

  “Your mother?” Father Patrion asked.

  “Yes, she told me this great story she heard the other day about a man who met a woman in a romantic secret rendezvous—that was the very word she said, rendezvous—and how the man asked the woman in secret and she was so overcome by his romantic-ness that she swooned in his arms. That was the very word—swooned.”

  “That’s fine, Percival, but what has all this got to do with—”

  “You’ll arrange it for me!” Percival crowed, poking his finger firmly into the priest’s chest for emphasis. “You, the honest, trusted cleric of our community, will convey my invitation to this secret rendezvous.”

  “But that’s over a month away,” Father Patrion exclaimed.

  “Sure, but you’ve got to get this message to her right away,” Percival said earnestly. “I mean, what if some other man arranged for you to deliver this message before I did?”

  “Percival, I really don’t think this is anything that I—”

  “What was that!” Percival leaped back with less the grace of a cat than the stumble of a startled puppy.

  There was a banging once again against Father Patrion’s front door.

  The priest frowned.

  “Quick! Hide me!” Percival said to the priest.

  “Hide you? Whatever for?”

  “I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” Percival said sourly. “Someone might think I’m having trouble asking her out myself!”

  The banging on the door resumed.

  “It’s going to be all right.” Father Pantheon held up both his hands, then pointed toward the east side of the atrium. “You see that doorway there? Go in, close the door behind you, and wait for me.”

  “But it’s dark in there,” Percival whined.

  “That’s because it’s night,” Father Patrion answered, shoving the young man toward the doorway. When he was sure Percival was properly out of sight, the priest threw open the latch to the door once more.

  “Good evening, Father, may I see you a moment?”

  Before the astonished Father Patrion could answer, the Dragon’s Bard had slipped past him and into the atrium.

  “You!” the Father exclaimed.

  “Indeed, it is I, the Dragon’s Bard, in your very atrium, good Father Pantheon,” the Bard replied with a flourish of his hat.

  “That’s Father Patrion,” the priest corrected, “and what are you doing here at this time of night?”

  “I have come on behalf of a young man in need of your assistance,” the Bard intoned in his most serious, resonant voice. “It’s about . . . a woman!”

  Father Patrion felt the blood coming into this face. “If you have had a dalliance with any of our good women, the town council will—”

  “It is not for me that I come!” Edvard drew himself up with as much dignity as he could muster. “I am but a servant in this matter of one of your own good men who needs the help of his friends in order to secure the woman he loves!”

  Father Patrion slowly drew his hand down the features of his face. “My good man, I am in no position—”

  “Ah, but you are in the perfect position, and that is the point of my coming here,” Edvard exclaimed. “Only you are in such a position of trust that your message may be believed without question and—”

  “Hold!” Father Patrion thought he could hear some moaning from the eastern room. “Edvard . . . isn’t it?”

  “At your service, good Father Priest!”


  “Edvard, do you see that doorway?”

  “The one to the west, you mean?”

  “Yes, the one that I’m pointing at—await me there and I will be with you directly.”

  “With heartfelt assurance,” the Bard replied.

  Father Patrion smiled and waited until the Bard had closed the door behind him. Then he turned quickly and padded to the east room door, his candle in hand.

  Percival looked enormously relieved as the light entered the room. The room itself was Father Patrion’s study, and Percival was rather out of place in his newly tailored sneaking clothes. One of the chairs had been knocked over as the youth had moved about in the dark, but gratefully nothing more had been disarranged by his blind stumbling.

  “I appear to have a very busy evening, so if you do not mind—”

  “It’s very simple; I’ve worked everything out,” Percival said. He turned and started rearranging the items on the top of Father Patrion’s desk. “This book thing . . . what is it?”

  “That’s my Psalter of Morning Reflections!”

  “Right. This psalter is the Pantheon Church, see? This plate over here is Chestnut Court, and this . . . what is this ribbon?”

  Father Patrion shook his head in despair. “The Sash of Prayer.”

  “Well, now it’s the West Wanderwine,” Percival continued without pause. “This inkwell is the Cursed Sundial, and that blotter is Jep Walters’s place on the south side of Charter Square. Here’s all you have to do—”

  “All I have to do?”

  “It couldn’t be more perfect,” Percival went on. “You go to Vestia Walters—that’s Jep’s daughter—and deliver a message to her. She’s to meet me in the deep shadows of the Pantheon Church right after the Ladies’ Dance. There in the darkness I will deliver to her the feelings of my heart—along with one really expensive present my mother picked out—and then, HUZZAH! We’re off to the Couples’ Dance, with Vestia completely smitten with my charm and grace.”

  Father Patrion shook his head. “Tell me, Percival, just where did you get an idea so—”

  “From my mother,” Percival answered quickly.

  “Your . . . your mother?”

  “Absolutely!” Percival beamed. “She heard this story the other day from the Dragon’s Bard about a young princess who desperately wanted to be loved but her beauty was so great that no one in the town could speak with her but there was this handsome prince who really wanted to court her but couldn’t figure out a way to do it and so the young woman was told by the local priest to console herself by the light of the moon under the shadow of a gigantic oak tree that—”

  “Percival, I don’t need the whole story,” Father Patrion said, holding up a staying hand.

  “Of course, I’ve adapted it myself,” Percival basked in his own cleverness. “I mean, I figured out to substitute your church for the oak, which is much better suited for lurking and skulking, and, of course, I’m not actually a prince but then Vestia is no princess either—”

  “Well, that may depend on who you ask,” Patrion muttered to himself, but then he spoke up again. “So, all you want is for me to tell Vestia Walters to meet you after the Ladies’ Dance in the church.”

  “No!” Percival said, slamming his hand down hard on the desk and scattering the map of the town he had just built. “You cannot tell her it’s me! That’s the mystery part that will draw her heart into the church!”

  “And presumably the rest of her with it,” Father Patrion chuckled.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you worry,” Father Patrion answered through a yawn. “I’ll deliver your message for you. Now, go home before your father figures out you’re running about in the night looking like Dirk Gallowglass.”

  Percival grinned as Father Patrion took his candle in hand. They both left the room and entered the arcade around the atrium. Father Patrion watched with a weary smile as Percival moved with exaggerated stealth among the columns before letting himself out the massive front doors.

  Father Patrion chuckled into the darkness of the atrium and was about to turn back toward his bedchamber at the back of the house when he suddenly remembered that he still had company. His eyes were stinging and longed to close for the night, but he could hardly leave such a rogue cooling his boots inside his own house. The priest stepped across the atrium and opened the door.

  This room was a guest room set aside for any visiting Masterpriests who may happen to call upon him from Mordale. That there had never been any visiting Masterpriests had not deterred Father Patrion’s hope, so the room was always kept ready for visitors who never came.

  The Dragon’s Bard was lying on the bed, and it galled Father Patrion that the first person to lie there had been this cad. “What do you want?”

  The Bard leaped to his feet at once. “I come on most earnest behalf of a most earnest suitor—who begs your assistance in a matter of the heart.”

  “Oh, no,” Father Patrion said, shaking his tired head.

  “Oh, yes!” Edvard exclaimed. “I come on behalf of Jarod Klum. He begs your most august self to convey a message to a woman of honor for whom he has all the most honorable intentions. If you were to undertake this task for him, he would be grateful beyond his ability to convey.”

  Father Patrion realized that he was about to repeat the same conversation he had just had with the earnest young Percival—but apparently taking a great deal longer in the words. He wondered if he might shorten the process and finally get to bed. “You mean like the story.”

  “‘Beauty and the Silent’?” Edvard’s face broke into an appreciative grin. “You have heard my story, then? Well, I am flattered indeed!”

  “I suppose your Jarod wishes to remain anonymous?”

  “It is essential!”

  “And he wants this woman to meet him after the Ladies’ Dance?”

  Edvard was astonished. “You are a man of the gods indeed if you possess such a gift of prophecy! That would be the perfect time!”

  “And you want this delivered to Vestia Walters to be met in my Pantheon Church?”

  Edvard was about to answer, but his mouth just hung open for a moment before he spoke. “Ah . . . no.”

  “No, you don’t want the message delivered?” Father Patrion rubbed his eyes.

  “I do want a message delivered—but it is intended for Caprice Morgan,” Edvard said. “And it isn’t in your silly church—she’s to meet him in Chestnut Court under the great tree there!”

  “Why in Chestnut Court?”

  “Because there was no suitable oak available!”

  Father Patrion growled from deep in his throat. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s very simple,” Edvard said. “Let’s go over it again . . .”

  By the time Edvard left his company, Father Patrion felt sure he had the whole thing straight and promised himself to write it all down first thing after he awoke in the rapidly approaching morning. Suddenly aware that there was a flaw in that plan, Father Patrion took a quill and ink in hand, his eyes barely open slits as he wrote down both messages, fell into bed, and let his troubles melt into comforting darkness of sleep.

  When he awoke, the notes were there still by his bedside, and he was relieved that he had written them down. He remembered his mother having once told him that the dullest quill is better than the sharpest memory, and he took comfort in the barely legible words scratched onto the two parchment pages.

  He rolled up both messages and sighed in relief. His memory might be bad and, he had to admit, he vaguely remembered the instructions differently . . .

  . . . But certainly he would not have written the details down wrong.

  • Chapter 7 •

  Pixie Hats

  Pixies are a fearsome menace.

  That knowledge comes both from experience and with the sure authority of Xander Lamplighter, the Constable Pro Tempore of Eventide, who will explain the dire threat to any who mentions a pixie in his presence. The
y look innocent enough, he will readily concede, with their tiny stature and their opalescent, translucent wings. Their lithe forms have a ready grace that larger folk envy, and they seem to have perpetual smiles on their eternally young faces.

  But if you were to look closer behind that smile—and Xander cautions you fervently to never get that close—you would see mischievous, wanton, and malicious thoughts brewing constantly in their miniature brains.

  Xander’s arrival in Eventide was—as Ariela Soliandrus, the town’s Gossip Fairy, often put it—the most fortuitous of events. Eventide, having never before in its history had a problem with a pixie infestation, had been suddenly overrun by the malicious creatures, who were causing havoc all about the town at the close of each day. Pigs’ bladders filled with the most horrific-smelling solutions, stolen from Lucius’s tannery south of town, rained down on unsuspecting ladies on Cobblestone Street, bursting against their heads and drenching them in smells that no amount of applied powders or perfumes would eradicate for several days. Jep Walters was stuck in one of his own barrels while a nasty group of pixies made a game of chasing Livinia—one of the town’s most distinguished ladies—about her husband’s cooper shop and tallying scores over which of them could get her to screech the loudest. Joaquim Taylor’s entire stock of linens was ruined when the pixies painted patterns on each bolt with paint stolen from Mordechai Charon’s stockroom. Deniva Kolyan’s bakery was completely covered in a sticky paste of wheat flour. Town councils were held, speeches were made, and plans were agreed upon, but nothing, it seemed, would abate the escalating spree of the pixies. There was even talk of trying a broken wish from the wishing well, but no one was certain how a broken wish would react with a pixie. Sunset became a time of fear, for it heralded the coming of the pixies once more.

  No one questioned their good fortune when Xander happened to arrive five days into the plague, walking down the road from Meade with the intention of plying his lamplighting skills in Eventide. He inquired as to why the townsfolk were so upset and, upon being informed of the infestation, humbly offered his services as an expert pixie catcher, should the town be willing to provide him with a bounty of fifty gold pieces, discounted from sixty-five. Xander was a large, somewhat overweight man, and there were many at the time who questioned how such an individual might catch the spry and elusive pixies. However, as Ward Klum offered to keep the fee in trust until Xander proved himself, the bargain was struck. The exhausted and discouraged citizens of Eventide managed to collect the bounty and lock it safely in the charge of the countinghouse. That night the townspeople gathered in trepidation at their doors, the flame of hope flickering feebly in their hearts.