by Melanie Rawn
Mikel openly laughed at his sister. She threw him a furious look and, wrapping the rags of her dignity around her, permitted the young man to be made known to her. Tarise took pity on Josselin with nothing resembling altruism; explaining that they were all waiting on Sarra, as usual, she offered to show him the gardens. Rillan—who didn’t know a poppy from a pine tree and didn’t care—announced himself curious about the new flower beds, and went with them.
Taigan turned her back on their exit, studiously examining a tapestry familiar to her since birth. “He’s not properly dressed for a dinner at the Residence.”
“Like that matters!” Mikel chortled.
“We came straight here from Wytte’s,” Collan said blandly.
“Yes,” Taigan said in acid tones, “he has that pampered and polished look.”
Her brother grinned merrily. “Are you in love, or just in lust? Thinking of giving Lady Mirya some competition?”
“I’m thinking of giving you a black eye!”
“I gather,” Sarra said from the doorway, “that our guest has been introduced.” She walked across the Cloister rug, followed by Falundir, who took one look around and began to laugh silently. Sarra settled into a large upholstered chair. “So what do you think of him, besides the obvious?”
Mikel shrugged. “He seems nice enough. Doesn’t talk much, though.”
“Compared to you,” Taigan remarked, “the whole world has taken a vow of silence.”
“Now, now,” Col admonished. “Be nice. And be observant, all right? Your mother and I really want to know what you think of him.”
“Are you going to rescue him from Lady Mirya?” Mikel asked.
“I think he’s got plans of his own in that direction,” Col said. At Sarra’s look of surprise, he went on, “Don’t ask him about it. He can’t do other than deny everything at this point. But don’t scare him by gawping all through dinner, ladies. Either of you,” he added, just to see identical expressions of outrage appear on both faces. Trading grins with his son and Falundir, he finished, “I’ll go call them in to dinner.”
“I’ll help,” Mikel said.
Watching their backs, Sarra observed crossly, “I see he’s learned one of his father’s primary lessons. Always have an escape route!”
This time the elderly Bard laughed right out loud.
Dinner was polite without being overly stiff, mostly due to Sarra’s charm in drawing Josselin from his shyness. He was awed and amazed by the company he kept tonight, especially by the presence of Falundir. Though he answered questions readily enough, he volunteered little. A few details about his current guardian’s farm outside Sleginhold, a reference to places he’d lived before (a remote smallhold on the edge of Sheve Dark, a small village in Tillinshir). But he only shrugged when asked who had fostered him prior to that. Though he wasn’t exactly evasive, it was clear that his past was not a pretty topic for him. Col could understand that. His own memories as an orphan weren’t precisely fond.
After dinner they repaired to the music room. Mikel threatened to bring out the harp Cailet had sent for his last Birthingday; Tarise told him he could only if he promised that the Captal had Warded the thing to sound good even though he didn’t yet know how to play it. He settled in behind the hammered dulcimer he did know how to play, and ran through a two-stick song to check the tuning. When he slid two more felt-tipped sticks between his knuckles, Taigan called him a show-off. But he had inherited his father’s music, and Col watched with pride as the boy’s supple hands brought ringing chords from the forty-six strings as easily as he struck pristine single notes. The dulcimer was a difficult instrument, one Collan had never quite mastered. It took young, clever fingers and total concentration. Mikel played with the casual ease of one born to it. He was similarly adept on lute, mandolin, guitar, and a variety of flutes and pipes. Collan was a fair Minstrel, but Mikel bid fair to become a master.
Father and son then sang a duet that became a trio after the second verse—for Falundir began to hum the high harmony. Since Mikel’s talents had been discovered, the Bard had taken to making music more and more often, pleasure gleaming in his bright blue eyes.
Look: the stars are trembling
Shaking the sky apart
Listen: they weep just like you
With the longing in their hearts
Josselin was so stunned that he was actually hearing the most revered Bard in Generations that he didn’t even join in the applause.
Mikel played on while the others chatted. Rillan had heard of the upcoming trip to Ambrai for Taigan’s new wardrobe, and proposed to extend it to The Waste for a look at Maurgen Hundred’s new crop of foals. He and Collan were discussing the logistics of the journey with Tarise while Sarra talked to Josselin and Taigan rummaged through stacks of music folios for a song that would really challenge her brother’s talents.
All at once Mikel faltered in his playing, the felt-tipped hammers striking any whichway on the dulcimer strings. Taigan jerked upright from examining sheet music. Josselin was on his feet, backing away from Sarra in a panic.
“No—I can’t, please don’t—”
“It’s all right, if you feel you can’t—” Sarra spoke soothingly, as if to a small child.
“You don’t understand, I—” He took a deep breath and calmed down, but his gray eyes were still skittish. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I don’t want to be called into court, or have my name spread all over the broadsheets—I just want to be ordinary.”
Not with that face, my lad, Collan thought, annoyed with Sarra for being so unsubtle about proposing his circumstances as a test case. Rising, he asked loudly if anyone wanted brandy. Serving Sarra first, he gave Josselin a glass at the same time—earning himself betrayed looks from his offspring when he failed to include them.
The atmosphere in the room settled. Mikel went back to his music with Falundir at his side, Taigan joined Col on the sofa near Tarise and Rillan, and Sarra spent the next few minutes reassuring Josselin. But Taigan glanced at the young man rather more often than even his looks could account for, and Mikel was frowning over his dulcimer.
St. Miramili’s rang out Half-Thirteenth, and Josselin again got to his feet, saying he was honored by their attention and had enjoyed the evening more than anything since his arrival in Roseguard, but he really ought to return to Wytte’s. Tarise and Rillan escorted him.
“Too dark to find the way back by himself?” Taigan muttered after they left. “Or too drunk?” This with a resentful glare at Collan.
“Too expensive,” Mikel told her. “Lady Mirya would have us in the law courts if he even stubbed his perfect toe.”
“All right, you two, that’s enough,” Sarra warned. “He can’t help the way he looks.”
Falundir arched both brows at her and brought out his List. With the slim silver pointer he told her something that made her frown, then collected his nightly tribute of kisses on the cheek from her and Taigan, and departed.
“Don’t ask what he said, because I’m not going to tell,” Sarra informed her family. “Now, Collan, what did you find out today?”
The four of them gathered at the blue-marble card table, the twins trying to hide excitement at inclusion in parental counsels. Noting it with an amused glance for Sarra, Col repeated the afternoon’s conversation. He ended with, “So what the hell happened tonight?”
Mikel blinked. “You didn’t feel it?”
“Feel what?” Sarra asked.
The twins looked at each other across the table, and at the same time said, “He’s Mageborn.”
“What?” Collan exclaimed.
“That’s what Falundir told me,” Sarra said with another frown. “I didn’t believe him. And how would you know, anyway?”
Taigan shrugged. “I just know, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on, Teggie,” Mikel said. “Don’t try to make a mystery of it. You felt just wh
at I did, or you wouldn’t’ve reared up like a startled horse. Whatever Mother said to him, he reacted really strong to it. And we reacted to him. It was kind of like with the Malerrisi who wasn’t part of the Minstrelsy—something inside my head felt all tingly and strange—”
“And like when Glenin Feiran tried to kidnap us,” Taigan added, nodding. “I hadn’t thought about it before, but that’s what magic feels like.”
“And Josselin. . . ?” Sarra couldn’t seem to finish.
“Same thing.”
“No, it was different,” Mikel said. “I mean, it was the same but different, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” Col said pointedly. “Explain yourself.”
He started to rake his fingers back through his hair, a habit of childhood; when thwarted by the coif all men wore after the age of fourteen (all but Collan Rosvenir, anyway), he grimaced and yanked the blue silk off his head. A scrape of long fingers through unruly red curls, and he finally said, “The other two felt like they were trying to get inside our minds. I guess they ran up against the Captal’s Wards, huh?”
Taigan said, “It was like he was trying to put up his own Wards, and didn’t know how, and the magic was just bouncing around with nothing to do. But it was definitely magic.”
Collan exhaled a long breath. “Mageborn. I’ll be damned.”
After a time, Sarra shook her head. “Well, this settles the question of marriage, truly told. Josselin will be more use to Cailet as a Mage than he’ll be to me as a legal precedent—or Mirya as a plaything.” She smiled, that same wicked little grin that always appeared when she was smugly satisfied. “She’ll just have to find herself another boy.”
Taigan and Mikel traded looks again. Collan waited for the cutpiece to drop in both minds; not surprising it had taken so long, considering the Wards Cailet had set up in them. Finally, Taigan said for both of them: “Then—we’re both Mageborn. We have magic, too.”
Quite calmly, Sarra said, “Yes. The Captal thought it wisest to protect you from it until I judged you old enough to be trained at Mage Hall.”
“So we’re Warded,” said Mikel. “Not just against people who’d try to spell us, but—”
“—but against our own magic!” Taigan exclaimed.
“Yes,” Sarra repeated. “Taigan, if you’ll remove that expression of betrayal from your face, you may come upstairs with me and help write the letter to the Captal explaining about Josselin Mikleine.”
“Are you going to explain a few things to me?” Taigan asked resentfully.
“Perhaps,” Sarra conceded.
The pair of them left, not entirely in charity with each other. Collan helped Mikel put away the folios and the dulcimer, silently waiting to find out how the boy would react.
At last Mikel asked, “Why did Teggie and I feel it, and not you and Mother?”
“We’re Warded even stiffer than you two—and by a real master. Gorynel Desse.” Knowing this was inadequate—and regretting the slur to Cailet—he went on, “You were right about Josselin’s magic running up against your Wards. That’s the way I understand it, anyway.” He closed the cabinet doors on tidied folios and leaned his shoulder to carved wood, arms folded as he regarded his son. No resentment there, no rebellion against not being told the truth before now. Ah, but that was Mikel: easygoing, accepting, pragmatic. Col wondered where the boy had gotten such qualities—for they certainly hadn’t come from himself or Sarra.
“So what’d you think of Josselin, anyway?”
“He’s all right. Do you think he really wants to become a Mage Guardian? I mean, escaping Mirya Witte isn’t the noblest motivation in the world.”
Collan laughed. “Nobility is for fey tales at bedtime, Mishka. I’d say Josselin Mikleine’s motives are about the most honest I’ve ever run into—always supposing, as you say, that he agrees to go to Mage Hall.”
“How’d the Captal miss him? I thought she could sense a Mageborn at a hundred miles.”
“A hundred paces, maybe. I’ve heard that some people Ward themselves on instinct alone. Maybe Josselin’s one of ’em.”
“Oh.” Mikel hesitated, fingers caressing the wooden case of his dulcimer. “Fa, something’s bothering me about him. Ever since I first saw him, it’s been driving me crazy—who he reminds me of, I mean.”
“You’ve met him before?”
Mikel frowned. “That’s just it—I can’t be sure. I don’t really recall what he looked like—”
“Who?”
“I know he had pale eyes and dark skin, and I’m pretty sure he had a beard, but the rest of his face is all unclear.”
“Who?” Col asked again, though he knew what Mikel would say.
“The Malerrisi. The one who gave us the box.”
9
IN the tumult over the danger to the twins, the Mage who was a Malerrisi, the attack that wasn’t really an attack, the box that wrecked Taigan’s rooms, and the discovery of Josselin Mikleine as a Mageborn, everyone had forgotten the message Savachel Maklyn had been bringing to Collan.
Everyone except Collan.
By the time the poor young man straggled into the Residence, still headsore from a thunk on the skull and limping from his leg wound, the handful of flowers in his satchel was crushed almost beyond recognition. But Col—who supervised Roseguard Grounds less from real interest than from loyalty to Verald Jescarin, who had been their Master—knew the shape of those leaves.
Rue, the Wraithen Ward.
The other part of the message was a piece of paper with an apparently meaningless shape drawn on it and an M in the middle. A piece of a puzzle, indeed. Col spent a frustrating hour at the card table before he finally found the piece that, when placed correctly, called up a certain image on Mikel’s gift from Cailet.
Accordingly, a few days after the twins’ Birthingday—once Mirya Witte had been informed that her boy was going to become a Mage Guardian—he packed his saddlebags, took the best horse in Rillan’s stable, and told Sarra he was setting off with Falundir for Sleginhold.
The Bard was seventy-six years old, with the whitened hair to prove it, though he looked much younger as eunuchs sometimes did. Falundir’s brilliant first career had ended at the age of forty, when First Councillor Anniyas cut out his tongue and sliced the tendons of every finger. Never again would he sing, never again play the fabled lute that was more beloved than any woman could have been, even had he been whole. Gorynel Desse had settled him in a cottage in Sheve Dark, and provided an antidote to bitterness in a young musician recently a slave: Collan. For more than four years they’d lived simply, though not silently. Somehow, despite being crippled, the great Bard had taught Collan the craft. They both knew he would never rise beyond the level of Minstrel. He had an excellent voice and clever fingers, but missing in him was the spark of true genius that made a Bard.
On St. Lirance’s, the first day of 956, Falundir and Desse gave Collan the Name Rosvenir and the eighteen gifts—including the lute—that marked his Birthingday. Then they took from him all memory of his time with the Bard. The next time Collan saw him was the worst trauma of his life—images roiling up, stunning him, negating everything he’d believed about his childhood for the thirteen years of his manhood.
What Falundir had done during those years was yet a mystery. Col assumed that Desse had found him a new home somewhere safe, where he waited as Desse had waited for the Rising to oust Anniyas from power. Now, eighteen years after the First Councillor’s fall, with three operas finished and two more in the works, Falundir’s status as the greatest Bard in ten Generations was assured. He lived accordingly: celebrated wherever he went, avidly sought to judge musical contests, presiding over the Bardic Games every year, commissioned to write commemorative pieces for events of all kinds. He accepted few of these requests, though he had composed an entire song-cycle for his friend Sevy Vasharron’s fiftieth Birthingday concert last year. Falundir was, in
short, at the height of his powers, unmatched in prestige and wealthy into the bargain.
And he was as bored as Collan had been a few years ago, when he’d started the Minstrelsy, and for much the same reason: Taigan and Mikel were growing up. Collan had steadied Taigan’s first steps, but Falundir had shown her how to dance. Collan had guided Mikel’s fingers in his first attempts at playing the lute, but Falundir had taught him how to sing and bought him all manner of other instruments to experiment with. The twins adored him and thought nothing of his inability to speak; from babyhood they held long conversations with him, understanding his language of brief gesture and sparkling green eyes and eloquent dark face. Neither did they regard his hands as crippled; he could hug them, and let them climb all over him when they were little, and when they went someplace together each held onto his useless fingers the same way they took their father’s strong hands.
But the time had passed when Taigan and Mikel needed to cling to anyone’s hand. Falundir knew it as well as Collan did. The Bard had become increasingly involved in the Minstrelsy—cursing his renown and his disabilities that made him too conspicuous for secrecy. This journey to Sleginhold was only his third foray into the field with Collan—who was just about as visible as he. But it was a perfect mission for them to undertake together, for Collan could say he was going to check on the Web’s holdings with Falundir along for the ride.
Accomplished horsemen, they made good time, with Collan talking as incessantly as he used to in Sheve Dark long ago. He told the whole tale of Josselin Mikleine again, murky start to what he hoped would be a satisfactory finish at Mage Hall. He talked about his worries and expectations and plans for his children when they finally went to Cailet. He discussed Sarra’s political aims, Taguare’s tasks as Minister of Education, new ballads by aspiring Bards in Ambrai and old ones Falundir and others had rediscovered in the archives. He spoke about anything, in fact, but his worries about the warning of rue.
