Lark and Wren (56 page)

The elf laughed aloud. "Safe enough, e'en by accident," he said. "With polite invitations tendered to you once you are within it to play for a brief evening. Your fame has traveled from Hill to Hill, and I think you should expect such invitations in the future. There will be many who wish to see the mortal Bards that could subdue King Meraiel. And more who will wish to hear your side of the tale."

And with no warning and only those parting words, he swirled his cloak about his shoulders and stepped into the shadows, to melt into them and vanish completely. As Talaysen had not seen him arrive, so he had no idea how the elf left-although he
thought
he heard a faint whisper of music as the shadows swallowed him.

Peregrine sighed, and shook his head. "Melodramatic, as ever," he commented. "Trust an elf to make a great show of simple leave-taking."

Talaysen chuckled, and relaxed a bit more. "Was that what you wished to show me and speak to me about?" he asked. "I must admit, that alone was worth being here for." He glanced over his shoulder at the now-empty shadows at the tail of the wagon. "I haven't said anything to the others, but the fact is, I've been uneasy about camping outside of settled lands ever since that particular incident occurred. This little trinket"-he tapped the bracelet-"takes a tremendous load off my mind."

Peregrine sobered. "In part, but only in part. I must speak to you of magic; of the usage and taming. Some of what I tell you, you may not understand for years-but it is all important, and I must ask you to pay close attention and grave it deeply in your excellent memory. If all goes as we wish, I may be able to continue to teach you for years to come. But if Fate rules against us, this may be all the instruction you will ever receive. I would give you as much as you can hold, planning for that."

Talaysen nodded, and quickly put himself into the little half-trance he used when he memorized lyrics in a foreign tongue. Everything he heard would be remembered, regardless of whether or not he understood it.

"Good." Peregrine took a deep breath, and held his hands out. A soft blue glow played over them, and Talaysen heard a faint, flute-like song, somewhere deep inside of him. "This is the way of the inner path, the hidden power. The way of magic. And now-it begins. . . ."

Rune watched Gwyna out of the corner of her eye, and grinned. There was
no
doubt about it; Gypsy Robin was well and truly smitten with their new charge, even though she might not know it yet.

She didn't act a great deal differently; in fact, it wasn't likely that anyone else noticed. But she paid no attention to anyone else in the camp, and when over the course of the evening several young men came up to her and whispered invitations in her ear, she declined them all with a shake of the head. That was not normal. Gwyna had a reputation as a lusty lover that rivaled any of the male Free Bards, and Rune had never heard of her declining all invitations for dalliance before. And especially not when several of those she declined had been her lovers in the past.

But she didn't leave the firelit circle with anyone, not even for an hour. And she stayed with Jonny, who smiled much and said little.

He was doing very well, now that he had begun to relax. The Gypsies paid no heed to his stutter, which was putting him at ease. He had begun to laugh at the jokes, and look up from his knees occasionally.

Gwyna was praising his melodic ability just now, which made him blush. Over the past two days, he had set melodies to several of Robin's lyrics that were easily the equal of any of the younger Free Bards' efforts. "Oh, but it's true," she said, to his mumbled disclaimer. "The words come easily to me, but melody? Never. You have the hardest part, Jonny."

"B-but I c-cannot find w-words," he replied earnestly. "I am j-just n-not cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-oh d-d-
damn
!" His face twisted up, and Rune started to get to her feet, afraid that such a blatant exposure of his stutter would send him fleeing to solitude.

But he stayed, as the silence deepened, and the Gypsies held their breaths, sensing how precarious his moment of courage was. He stared at his fists which were balled up on his knees, and Rune hoped that it was not because he was about to go silent again.

Finally he looked up from his clenched fists, and managed a feeble smile. "D-d-damn it," he repeated. "S-s-stupid s-s-stutter. Cle-cle-cle-I s-s-sound l-l-like a
k-k-kestrel
."

A relieved laugh answered his feeble joke, and Giorgio, one of the largest of the clan, slapped him lightly on the back, with a care to his thin body and small stature. "Then you have named yourself, my friend!" he boomed. " 'Master Kestrel' you shall be! And never disparage the kestrel, for he is bolder for his size than even the goshawk, brave enough to take on enemies that would make a meal of him if they could, brave enough even to attack the human who comes too near his nest!"

Giorgio raised his mug of wine. "To Master Kestrel!" he shouted.

The rest followed his lead. "To Master Kestrel!" they replied, Rune shouting just as loudly as the rest. And when she had drained her mug in the toast, and looked again, Jonny's eyes were shining, and he no longer stared at his hands.

Later, Gwyna even coaxed him out of his seat to dance with her. By then, Gwyna's other suitors had noticed her interest in the young musician, and had turned their attentions elsewhere. Rune couldn't help wondering at that point if Gwyna herself realized what had happened to her. She finally decided that the Gypsy probably hadn't recognized the symptoms of a condition she had caused so often in others. Gwyna had been heart-whole until now, enjoying her companions the way she enjoyed a round of good music or a dance. The oldest game of man and maid had been a sport to her, and nothing more.

I don't think it's a sport anymore, Rune thought, with amusement. I wonder how long it's going to take her to notice that her outlook's changed in the past few days. 

The music, dance, and tale-spinning continued on long into the night, until the stars had swung halfway around in their nightly dance, and the moon had set. At moonset, the Gypsies and Free Bards began to trickle away to tents and wagons; singly, in pairs, and in family groups with sleeping children draped like sacks over their parents' backs. Just as Rune started to yawn and wonder where Talaysen was, he appeared at her side and sat down beside her.

"Where have you been?" she asked-curiously, rather than with any hint of accusation. "You said you were going to talk to Peregrine, and then no one knew where you were. I thought the Earth had swallowed you up."

"It almost did," he replied, rubbing his temple with one hand, as if his head ached.

She saw a gleam of silver in the firelight, and caught at the wrist of that hand. He was wearing a silver bracelet that fit so closely to his wrist that it might have been fitted to him, yet which had no visible catch. "Where did you get that? From Peregrine?" she asked, fascinated by the trinket. "It's really lovely-but I thought you didn't wear jewelry."

"I usually don't. Here." He slipped an identical bracelet over her hand before she could pull away, and she muffled an exclamation as it shrank before her eyes to fit her wrist just as tightly as Talaysen's fit his.

He put his lips to her ear. "A gift from the High King of the Elves. His messenger says that it marks us as under his protection."

She blinked, as a thousand possible meanings for "protection" occurred to her. "Is that good, or bad?" she whispered back. "I don't think I'm interested in another visit under a Hill like the last one."

"According to the messenger, these are supposed to keep visits like that within polite boundaries. By invitation, and of reasonable duration." She lifted an eyebrow at Talaysen, and he shrugged. "Peregrine said that the messenger's word was good, and he's been dealing with elves for longer than we have. I'd be inclined to trust his judgment."

"All right," she replied, still dubious, but willing to take his word for it. "So what else have you been doing, besides collecting bits of jewelry that are likely to get us condemned by the Church as elf-loving heretics?"

He chuckled, and put his arms around her, drawing her close to him so that her back nestled against his chest and they could both watch the dancing. "Nothing much, really. Just learning things that would get us condemned by the Church as renegade mages."

She restrained herself from jumping to her feet with a startled exclamation. "I hope you're going to explain that," she said carefully. "Since I assume it has something to do with that music we've both been playing with."

"Peregrine is a mage. It seems that we are, too. He told me that he'd identified the fact that we've 'come into our power' by something he saw when we showed up at camp. Then he gave me a very quick course in the Bardic use of magic, most of which I haven't sorted out yet." He sighed and his breath stirred her hair. "It's all in my head, though. I expect we'll get it figured out a bit at a time."

"I think I'm relieved," she replied, after a moment to ponder it all and turn the implications over in her mind. "I don't think it's a good idea to go wandering all over the countryside, playing about with magic without even knowing the first thing about it."

"That's almost exactly what Peregrine said, word for word," Talaysen chuckled. "He gave me quite a little lecture on-"

The bracelet tightened painfully around Rune's wrist, and she gasped. Her first thought was that the elven-made object was trying to cut her hand off-but then, it released the pressure on her wrist just as quickly as it had clamped down.

And Talaysen released
her.
He sat up quickly, and scanned the area outside the fire.

"There's someone out there, someone using offensive magic," he said, in a low, urgent voice. "Peregrine told me that these bracelets, being magic, would react to magic."

"Offensive magic?" she repeated. "But what is it? I don't see anything going on-how do we know it's being used against us, or even against the camp?"

He hushed her, absently. "We don't," he said unhelpfully. "But Peregrine will know. We might not be seeing anything because whoever it is may be using something to watch us, or to try and identify someone. Peregrine has all kinds of tricks and traps around this camp-and whoever it is will trip one of them sooner or-"

A cry of anguish from behind them interrupted him, and Rune turned just in time to see a pillar of flame, twice the height of a man, rise up from the shore of the pond.

A moment later she realized that it wasn't a pillar of flame-it was a man, standing bolt upright, transfixed in agony, burning like a pitch-covered torch.

She turned away, her stomach heaving, just in time to hear Peregrine shouting in the Gypsy tongue, of which she only knew a few words.

She couldn't make out what he was saying, but the warning was clear enough. She flattened herself to the ground, instinctively. And just in time, for an arrow sang out of the darkness, buzzing wasp-like past her ear, and
thock
ing into the wood of a wagon just where Jonny had been sitting a moment before. Two more followed it, both obviously aimed at Jonny, before the Gypsies got over their shock and counterattacked.

She had no weapons to hand, and no idea of where the enemy was, so Rune stayed right where she was, as angry Gypsies, men and women both, boiled out of the camp. They headed for the place where the arrows had come from, ignoring the man who was still burning.

He had fallen and was no longer moving; the Gypsies parted about the grisly bonfire as if his presence was inconsequential. They spread out over the area around the pond with torches in one hand and knives at the ready.

But after an agonizingly long time, it still didn't look as if they were finding anything. Rune got slowly to her feet, and made her way over to where Jonny and Gwyna had taken shelter behind a log-seat.

"Are you all right?" she asked Jonny, who nodded, his eyes wide and blank with fear.

"How about you?" she said to Gwyna.

The Gypsy sat up slowly, her mouth set in a grim line. "I've been better, but I'm not hurt," she replied. "What in the name of the Lady was that?"

"I don't know," Rune told her-as movement caught her eye and she saw Peregrine striding towards her, something shiny clutched in one hand, and a long knife in the other. "But I have the feeling we're about to find out. And that we won't like it when we do."

Peregrine sat back against the wooden wall of the wagon, his face impassive. "This was no accident."

Rune snorted, and gave Peregrine one of her most effective glares. "Why heavens, Peregrine, I thought assassins with magic amulets
always
hung around outside of farm Faires, looking for random targets!"

The Gypsy met her look with one of unruffled calm.

"All right," Gwyna said irritably. "We know it wasn't an accident. And I don't think anyone's going to doubt that Jonny was the target. Now
why
? Who's behind this, and why are they picking on a simple musician, a lad with a stutter, who wasn't even a good thief?"

Talaysen shook his head and sighed. All five of them were huddled inside Peregrine's wagon, one of the largest Rune had ever seen, so big it had to be pulled by a team of four horses. The windows had been blocked with wooden shutters, and the only way at them was through the door at the front, guarded by Peregrine's fierce lurcher-hounds.

And still Rune kept feeling her neck crawl, as if there was someone creeping up behind her.

Jonny shivered inside one of Peregrine's blankets, a glass of hot brandy inside of him, his eyes telling them what his tongue couldn't. That he was frightened-that was easy to understand. They were
all
frightened. But Jonny was terrified, so petrified with fear that he balanced on a very thin rope of sanity, with an abyss on either side of him.

Peregrine watched Jonny with an unfathomable expression, and the rest of them watched Peregrine, as the silence thickened. Finally the Gypsy cleared his throat, making them all jump nervously.

"The secret to all of this is-him," he said, stabbing a finger at Jonny. "This is not the first such attack, is it, boy?"