Moonheart (21 page)

A long charmed life he'd led, with adventures that ranged from the land of the faerie folk in their Middle Kingdom, to nights spent in thatch-roofed inns in the company of brigands and thieves; from king's courts to the lonely wildlands. He told her how he won Maelgyn's enmity.

"It was not a fair contest," he explained. "His bards were not true bards— not in the old sense of the word. They did not follow the Way. Theirs was the poetry untouched by the Moonmother— more bound in histories, often false histories, with never a spark of Her fey light in what they recited or sang.

"She was with me that day I sang their tongues mute and cast the skill from their harpers' fingers. I freed my forefather Elphin that day, but the deed came back to haunt me for; when at last I wearied of the road and longed to settle down in the only homeland I knew as my own, Maelgyn had his druids bind me and cast me, my harp and my dog and all, adrift on the sea."

"And here you are."

"Here I am, a foundling once more, cast again upon a shore by the will of Dylan Eil Ton."

"How did you survive the journey?" Sara asked.

"My magics sustained me. I turned inward, focused on the heart of my being— my taw, the inner stillness that is like magic, or more like the silence between the notes than actual music itself."

"Phew!" Sara murmured. "If I hadn't already been through some weird things myself, I'd find it hard to believe you."

Neither of them said much for a while. Sara looked seaward and tried to imagine Taliesin's voyage, but only ended up shaking her head with the wonder of it all.

"What's it like," she asked at last, "this... taw?"

"Do you play an instrument?" Taliesin asked.

"A little bit. Not wholeheartedly. I guess I don't really do anything wholeheartedly."

"Have you ever felt as one with your instrument? That moment when nothing stood between you and what your heart bade you play?"

"A couple of times— I think."

Taliesin smiled. "That is what your taw is like. When you can maintain your contact with it, you have taken a long step along the bard's Way. To learn the inner magic or a thing, always to have your taw close at hand, you must pursue your calling wholeheartedly. It need not be through music. That is the bard's Way. Other Wayfarers have their own methods.

"But for me— the harmony between player and instrument— that was the key to unlocking the primary magic. Magic that stayed in my music and shaped my life. It is like touching the Moon's heart, Sara. There is no other feeling like it. Imagine that celestial ship rising above a forest. That first moment when she lifts from the trees, that moment filled with promise and wildness and potent magics... that is what my life is, following the Way. That is what my taw holds for me."

"You make it sound... perfect." Sara sighed. "I wish I could get in touch with myself like that."

"What makes you think you cannot?" Taliesin pointed to the ring on her finger. "That ring— it is a gifting ring. My master Myrddin gave mine to me. Such a ring does not find its way to the finger of one without the potential to be a Wayfarer."

"Nobody gave it to me. I found it in a box in the back of my uncle's store."

Like a Cracker Jack box, she thought.
"Free Gift Inside!"

But Taliesin shook his head.

"It is still a gift," he said, "no matter how it came to you. Such rings have a kenning— a sense of their wearer's rightness."

"I don't know. I think it's just a fluke that I found it— that I'm here. There's no meaning in all this for me. Take yourself. You're someone important with magic powers and everything."

"Magic is just a side road along the Way."

"It's a pretty wild side road. No. I'd just be kidding myself and I know it. There's something wonderful going on and I'm sure you're a part of it. But me? I think I just lucked into it, that's all."

Taliesin frowned. "That is your friend Kieran speaking."

"He's not my friend."

"Nevertheless, you are merely repeating the words you told me he spoke to you. I know this, Sara: There is no such thing as chance in the workings of the world. While it is true that we make our own decisions, those decisions are there to be made because a greater power than we may ken has placed them there. Over such moments we have no control. But we
do
control the decision of which path we will take. If you step away from this now..."He sighed. "You will never know, will you?"

"Well, what do you think I should do?"

"The choice must be yours."

"Then at least tell me what you think's going on. Why am I here? What is my choice?"

"I remember," Taliesin said, "asking Myrddin that same question once. He looked at me and told me I could do one of two things. Accept the challenge and fulfill my potential, or spend the rest of my days wondering what I had passed by." He shook his head. "I have said too much, I think."

"No. You've said just enough, I'm going to... to take this road and see where it leads me."

"Don't follow blindly," the harper warned. "Fare with your eyes open and a willingness to learn."

"I'll remember."

A kestrel cried overhead and Sara followed its flight with her gaze. When she looked back at Taliesin, she asked:

"How old are you? You don't look more than a young forty, but from all you've said you've done... And then there's that painting of you I have. You look a lot older in it."

Taliesin shrugged. "Time is a strange master and to those of us who walk the Middle Kingdoms— these Otherworlds— it has a tendency to turn in upon itself, twisting forward and backward until it becomes impossible to reckon. I was older when I planned to retire in Gwynedd than I am now. You speak of a painting, but I have never met the man that is in it with me. At least I do not recognize his description nor his garb from what you've told me.

"I have long given up following the workings of time. Myrddin once told me that he lived backwards— that he knew much of what was to come, but little of what had been. At the time I thought it yet another of his riddles. But now I think I understand him better."

Myrddin— who must be Merlin. King Arthur. The Welsh bard Taliesin. Personages out of legend come to life, discussed as though they were flesh and bone, one of them sitting across the fire from her. If this wasn't all just a dream... Sara shook her head.

"What instrument do you play?" Taliesin asked her suddenly. "The harp?"

"No. I wish I did. I just fool around with the guitar some."

"Git-arr?"

"It's a..."

Oh, boy. Here they were back to describing things that the language they were using had no words for.

"You left it behind when you... journeyed here?"

Sara nodded. "In my room. It's shaped like this." She made a figure eight using both her hands. "At least the body is. Then it has a neck that sticks out here." She took a stick and drew a rough shape in the sand. "The strings— there are six of them— are attached to pegs up here and resonate across the soundhole."

"I would like to see it," Taliesin said.

"I'll bring it the next time I come." The next time. She had to smile.

"No," Taliesin said. "Think of it now and I will bring it to you."

"You can do that?"

Taliesin nodded. He reached for his harp and set it on his knee. With a Y-shaped key that hung from his neck he tuned the strings. Trailing his fingers across them, he awoke a scatter of notes that seemed to sparkle in the air between them. Sara shivered with pleasure.

"Picture the instrument," Taliesin said. "Hold its image in your mind."

She drew up an image of her Laskin— the classical guitar with its slotted head, curly maple back and front and rosewood sides, the silver lengths of the three wound strings and the taut gut strings... The more she thought of the instrument, the more she longed to have it in her hands. She always felt like that when she heard someone else playing. Her fingers would get all itchy and—

Her eyes snapped open. There was a weight on her knees and, half fearfully, she looked down at her guitar case. She ran a hand along its smooth surface, then grinned at Taliesin, her eyes shining.

"You did it!" she cried.

Popping the clasps, she set the case down on the sand beside her and took out the guitar.

"I don't know if it'll be in tune..."she began, but it was.

Taliesin set his harp aside and took the guitar in his hands, holding it awkwardly. He plucked a string or two, setting his fingers on the fretboard as he'd seen Sara do while she was testing its tuning, then shook his head and passed it back to her.

"I'm too old to learn a new instrument," he said. He took out a small six-holed bone whistle and laid it on the sand in front of him, then set his harp on his knee again. "The whistle and harp will have to do. But I would like to hear you play."

"I don't really know anything that's... you know... good." Sara was suddenly shy again.

"Try this," Taliesin said. He began a simple air and Sara stumbled along behind him, trying to pick up the tune. Patiently he repeated it until she began to get the knack of it.

"Now we will see," the harper said, "what affinity you have for the bard's Way. It's little enough that I will show you this time, but enough to start you on your journey. This tune will be your key— composed now, this moment, between you and me on this beach, leagues from my homeland and years from yours.

"We will call it 'Lorcalon'—'The Moon's Heart'— for that is what you will be in time, Sara. A moonheart. A follower of the Way. Two things this air will bestow upon you. It will be your stepping-stone to your own silences within, your own taw, and it will be a protection against those who would bind you with their magic. For such is the method of mages— they bind you with their eyes, with their thoughts, and make your will theirs.

"Against a strong spell, this will avail you little. But against a normal binding spell, you have but to call up this tune in your mind, and your will remains your own. Play it through. Again with me."

He put aside his harp and took up the tune on his whistle, playing across the turns of the air that Sara drew from her guitar. To Sara it seemed as if her fingers were doing a slow dance along her fretboard. The tune was simple, but its resonances stretched deeply inside her, awaking feelings she never knew were there. The tune became all. Her fingers played it, her ears heard it, her eyes saw dancing notes of gold and green that stepped in time to its rhythm. She smelled the scent of apple blossoms, strong and heady, and her pulse beat to its timing.

"Farewell," she heard Taliesin say as though from a great distance. Again the word seemed to drop into her mind without passing first through her ears. "Your own time calls you. Return to me, when and how you can. I will be waiting."

She wanted to cry: "No! I don't want to go! Not yet!"

But it was too late. She could feel the shore fading around her, heard only the sound of her own music. The sea and the sound of the bone whistle were gone. And then she opened her eyes—

—she was sitting in a glade with tall pines around her, playing Taliesin's air on her guitar. She dropped her hands from the instrument and for a few moments echoes remained, then all was still. A deep surge of disappointment went through her, but then she pushed the ache away. She had things to do in this world.

Humming the tune the harper had given her, she put her guitar back into its case and stood up. She looked around herself, then set off, certain, though she couldn't have said how, of which way to go. Twenty minutes of walking brought her back to the glade where she'd left Kieran. He was sitting up against a tree, staring off into space. When he caught sight of her, his eyes widened and he reached out a hand.

"Sara!" he called. "Before you take off again, I just want to say I'm sorry for the hard time I gave you earlier. I was being a prick. It's just that everything's been so weird lately and I— hey! Where did you get the guitar? And the cloak? Where did you go?"

Because she was feeling in an expansive mood, Sara regarded him with some measure of affection. It was nice that he'd apologized. Maybe there was hope for the lug yet. Fingering her cloak, she sat down near him. She placed her guitar case beside her and wondered where to begin. She didn't want to tell him about Taliesin. That was going to be
her
secret. So what would she tell him? She decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and treat the whole thing mysteriously.

"I was with a friend," she said.

"A friend? Lord dying Jesus! Where did you find a friend here?"

But then he remembered the way he'd behaved to her earlier. He'd just taken what information he could from her and given her nothing in return. Nothing but a hard time.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Can we start again?"

"How so?" She wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"How about if I start with telling you where all this started for me?"

Sara grinned. "That sounds more like it," she said.

"I should've done this right away," Kieran said.

Sara thought of how she'd spent her morning. She could still feel a tingle deep inside— a tingle that was an echo of the tune Taliesin had taught her. "You should have," she said, "but I'm kind of glad that things turned out the way they did."

"What do you mean?"

Sara shook her head, enjoying her secret.

"Nom de tout!"
Kieran muttered, then sighed. "Okay. I guess I deserve that."

He leaned his head back against the tree and stared up into the network of branches above. "I was serving two years in St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary when I first met Thomas Hengwr. That's the other fellow that the horsemen are looking for, you see..."

12:30, Thursday morning.

Lawrence Hogue was in the kitchenette of his apartment making a last cup of tea before he went to bed when the rap came at his door. He shot an irritated glance down the hall, hoping whoever it was— probably Mrs. Simpson from two doors down, reeking of alcohol and looking for tonic water— would simply go away. But a moment later the rapping was repeated, more insistently. Sighing, Hogue set down the copy of this week's
MacLean's
and heaved his bulk from the chair.