Cricket's Song

by Michael A. Hooten

  The Pen Bardd came up next. “You will make a fine addition to the Academy,” he said, “but don’t expect it to be easy. I’ll give you two weeks to get your affairs in order and finish recuperating, and then I want you back here. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, master. And thank you.”

  Byrn said, “Would you like to join us at the White owl, sir? I believe there is going to be a celebration there soon.”

  The Pen Bardd smiled. “Maybe next time.”

  Cricket laughed. “With all due respect, master, there should not be a next time.”

  Book 2:

  A Cricket At Court

  Chapter 9: Academy

  Cricket approached the palace nervously. Ewan MacDougall, the Pen Bardd of Glencairck, had told him to report after two weeks of rest and recuperation. His side still ached if he breathed hard, but he felt fine otherwise. He wore clothes fitting for a young noble, which although he could easily afford, made him uncomfortable. He had a journey pack with all of his other worldly belongings hanging lightly at his side. But he also had a new harp, Linnaia, bouncing in her case on his back, which made him smile every time he thought of her.

  At the palace gate, a group of dangerous looking men in green and gold stood guard. All of them wore swords longer than Cricket’s leg, and one of them had a claymore strapped to his back. One of them, with a thick blonde mustache, stopped him. “What is your business here?”

  Cricket cleared his throat. “I have come to join the Academy,” he said.

  “And who has sponsored you?”

  “Ard Righanna Elhonna.”

  The soldier smiled broadly, as did the other guards, going from menacing to friendly in an instant. “Welcome, Cricket of Dun Aillel. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “You know who I am?” Cricket said.

  “We are the Fianna,” the man said. “We not only protect the Ard Righanna, we also keep a tab on everyone and everything important to her.”

  “Forgive my ignorance,” Cricket said. “I meant no offense.”

  “None taken,” the guard replied. “My name is Corscan Mac Coll. If you would follow me, I’ll make sure you get to the right place.”

  Cricket stammered his thanks, but had to scramble to keep up with Corscan. The big soldier led him through a maze of passages that Cricket could not keep straight. He did sense that they had entered the academy at some point, when the people he saw went from mostly servants carrying trays and brooms to mostly students carrying harps and various other instruments.

  Corscan found a man in a six-colored cloak. “Ollave Owen!” he said. “I have Crossain Cricket here, joining the Academy.”

  “Cricket, eh?” Owen was an older man, though his back was still straight. “You’re right on time. I’ll take it from here, Corscan. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Corscan said. “Good luck Cricket!”

  “Thank you!” Cricket called after him, but he had already disappeared around a corner. He turned back to Owen, who had already started walking. Cricket ran to catch up.

  “The academy normally runs five years,” Owen said. “The Pen Bardd has decided that your training as a crossain—and the way you defeated Duncan in musical battle—qualifies you to skip a couple of years. So you’ll be starting in the morning with the Third and Fourth years, who normally get lumped together, since everyone learns at a different pace. Here’s your room.”

  He opened a door into space barely big enough for the bed and wardrobe it contained. “Spend the rest of the day finding your way around, and be in the hall first thing. Ask anyone if you get lost, and try not to get into any trouble, okay?”

  “Yes, master.”

  Owen smiled. “You should call me Ollave. We only call the Pen Bardd master.”

  “Yes, ollave.”

  “God lad. And luck to you.”

  Cricket shut the door and sat on his bed. His room felt cozy after the drafty attic he had lived for two years. He opened the wardrobe and found shelves on the top, and enough space on the bottom for his harp. The small journey pack was quickly unpacked onto the shelves except for his flute, which he tucked into his belt.

  He spent the rest of the day just wandering around, learning the layout of the building. Being nestled within the royal palace as it was, the sudden appearance of nobility and officials happened often and without warning, and soon Cricket learned to do as the other students, and ignore them. His nose led him to the hall, where even in the middle of morning small groups of students talked in small groups or played their harps softly by themselves. He also found a garden with a fish pond, and library with more books than he knew existed, and the Star of the Bards, the amphitheater where he had defeated Duncan. He stood at the top of the seats looking down at the tiny stage that had seemed so large when he had been sitting on it, playing for both his honor and his life. The growling of his stomach brought him out of reverie, and he headed back to the hall.

  While eating his meal, two other students joined him. “Hey, I haven’t seen you before,” said the shorter one, who had a disarming smile and flowing blonde hair held back by a copper fillet. “I’m Bres MacNeth. Where’d you come from?”

  “I’m new here,” Cricket said. “The Ard Righanna sponsored me into the Academy.”

  “Really? Who’s your father? Perhaps I know of him.”

  Cricket felt an unaccountable stab in his heart. “I’m an orphan,” he admitted.

  “But you have four colors in your cloak,” said the other student, a tall, dark boy with a deep voice.

  Cricket shrugged. “I was trained as a crossain before I came here.”

  “You.” Bres had stopped smiling. “Now I know who you are.”

  “Who is he?” his friend asked.

  “Shut up, Scathna,” Bres said. “Well, Cricket, we’ll have some fun together, I think. It ought to be interesting to see if you’re as good as the queen believes, or if you’re just a crossain after all.”

  The two got up and left, the blonde boy’s back stiff while the taller boy followed like a well-heeled dog. Cricket shook his head, wondering why they had taken such a dislike to him.

  He began to understand when he started his classes. Bres and Scathna were in half of them, and they mocked him whenever he asked a question or didn’t know the answer to a question an ollave asked. The other students followed their lead, purposefully alienating him even outside of class, but he didn’t really care; what he was learning more than kept him occupied.

  He learned the different ranks of bards: the ollam, who taught at the Academy and led companies of bards across the land; bards teulu, or household bards, who served in one place for as long as they chose; cerddorion, who formed the bulk of the companies and acted as traveling judges; and the free bards, who wandered where they willed. He learned why there were seven times fifty stories and what their uses were. He learned the twice fifty stories reserved for the ollam, and why only an ollave was allowed to tell them. He learned the Seanchus Mor, the legal code of Glencairck, and the intricacies of the bardic code. The ollam taught him the history of the bards, from Taliesin to the present, although none ever mentioned Declan MacConn. He also began learning magic.

  “Never use magic indiscriminately,” warned Bartholomy, the ollave who taught the lectures. He had a long white beard and tended to punctuate his speech with coughing and clearing his throat. “When you use magic... you tend to alter the world, and you have to be careful... lest the world decides to alter you.” He smiled, revealing his missing teeth. After a fit of coughing, he continued: “Perhaps, as you progress... you will catch glimpses of ghosts and... accugh, accugh... shadows. Do not be alarmed; you are merely seeing... beyond the pale into faerie... or perhaps some other world.” He coughed, bending over double. Alarmed, Cricket started to help him, but the old man straightened up and wiped his mouth. “Again,” he said as though nothing had happened, “the point is that magic alters reality.”

  If Bartholomy rambled and droned in his lectures
, Ollave Emerain got right to the point. “Listen closely,” she said, playing a simple song on her harp. “Did anyone feel that?”

  “I think I did,” Scathna said.

  “What did it feel like?”

  The tall boy squinted and shrugged. “Sort of like a wind, like you were pushing it past me. Sort of.”

  “Very good,” Emerain said. “For most of us, that is exactly how it feels.”

  “But how do we make it ourselves?” asked Cricket.

  “Would you like me to tell you, or show you?” she grinned. At the voices crying for her to show them, she raised her hands. “Well, I will then. But remember what Ollave Bartholomy should have taught you: magic is a matter of manipulating sub-harmonies. Keep that in mind—yes, I know you don’t know what it means—but just listen.”

  She plucked a harp string. “Can you hear the way the sound bends and shifts?”

  “It sounds like it’s out of tune,” Bres said, and everyone laughed nervously.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Emerain replied. “But what if I told you that the note had been perfect until I changed it?”

  “But how?” asked several students at once.

  “With my mind. I imagined the note shifting like a flag in the wind, and I forced the music to comply. Listen again.”

  She plucked the same string, but this time the note swung into a simple melody before it faded. Eyes widened around the room. “That is how you start a sub-harmony,” she said. “You play your notes, and you change them so that another song is being played. And that’s magic.” She indicated the doors around the room. “We will now split up and try it. I will go around and help each of you, but remember: the magic will feel like a wind, and you do it with your mind.”

  Cricket sat in the tiny practice room, plucking one note over and over on his harp, Linnaia. He could almost feel it, like the tension before a thunderstorm, but the note stayed resolutely in tune.

  Emerain came in and listened a moment. “Relax,” she said. “You’ve almost got it, but you’re trying too hard.”

  “I’m sorry, Ollave,” he replied.

  “Don’t be sorry; just do it.”

  Cricket stretched some of the ache out of his neck and plucked the note again. As it hung there, high and pure, he thought suddenly of Scathna’s voice. The note wavered and dipped, dropping into a lower register. Startled, Cricket sat up.

  “Very good,” Emerain said. “Now keep practicing until you can do it without looking like a pole-axed calf.”

  Eyes shining at the first glimpse of a new reality, Cricket said, “Yes, Ollave.”

  “Magic is... very powerful,” Bartholomy said slowly.

  Cricket listened as closely as he could, fighting sleep, hoping to get something from the old ollave’s words.

  “It feeds on emotion... without a strong will, it can escape you. When Gwydion was young... accugh, accugh... when Gwydion was young, before they discovered his potential as a bard... he shook down the walls of Caer Dathyl using bardic magic.” For a moment, the old man’s eyes burned into each of his students’. “Remember, he was untrained, and therefore, uncontrolled.” The intensity vanished in a fit of hacking coughs. Then he stroked his beard for a moment, unconcerned with the fidgeting of his students. “Perhaps the most powerful manifestation of bardic magic... would have to be the three Chords... one causing laughter, one causing sorrow... and one causing sleep... which Amergin discovered and used to defeat Cathbar in the Third Bardic War... Remember, Cathbar was the only bard who ever used magic to intentionally take a life... Defeating the bards, and the entire country, in the Second Bardic War...”

  “Ollave?” Cricket asked. “When will we learn the three Chords?” Snickers rippled through the room, and someone kicked his stool.

  “Eh?” Bartholomy answered sagely. “Well... Cricket.” He coughed and leaned back against the wall. “The Chords are not for just any bard... the Pen Bardd... is the only one deemed fit for the use of such a power.”

  “Crossain,” Bres hissed.

  “Stupid insect,” added Scathna.

  Cricket sat back, confused; if magic was only to be used for simple tricks and illusions, as they were being taught, then what was the point? Taliesin had set up the Academy because bards had a power that the gods wanted to be used for the good of the people, not just to entertain them.

  After the class ended, Bres, Scathna, and several others cornered Cricket in a deserted hallway.

  “You need to start over,” Bres laughed. “You don’t even know about the three Chords.”

  Cricket said nothing.

  “The poor baby has lost his voice,” Bres said.

  “I could find it for him,” Scathna rumbled, towering over Cricket menacingly.

  “No,” the blonde student said. “I don’t think that’s necessary. There are other ways, and other times.” He led his group away, laughing and making plans.

  After that, Cricket found his life difficult. Members of Bres’ clique would bump him after he got his food, making him spill it down his tunic. He found his harp strings broken, and his boots filled with dung. As he studied at night, people would pound on his door as they passed, and in the morning, he would find his door wedged shut. Through it all, Bres smirked and strutted, and made sure that he couldn’t be blamed for anything.

  Beltain marked the beginning of summer just as Samhain marked the beginning of winter, and Taris celebrated with abandon. Released to enjoy the sights and sounds of the five day celebration as spring gave way to warmer weather, the halls of the Academy emptied of students.

  Except for Cricket. He spent the time alone to catch up on his studies and his sleep, sitting in the empty practice rooms with Linnaia or his flute, feeling the comfort of his music. He found that with a chance to concentrate, the magic also flowed easier, and he wove it into ghostly shapes that hung in the air for a moment before dissolving: Asael and Leann, Harper and Aillel. He sighed and went back to his assigned studies, which included voice projection and amplification, but not visual illusions.

  When classes started, he felt calmer and more secured. The warm weather encouraged Bres and the others to pursue other interests besides torturing Cricket, and he kept a low profile, deliberately down playing his growing skills so as not to attract their attention. He listened carefully to Bartholomy, deciphering the old man’s words with dogged patience. He also practiced his magic more, retreating to quiet, unknown places to escape attention. When he could, he visited his friends Byrn and Wylla, owners of the White Owl Inn, spending an evening playing for fun and relaxation, remembering why he had wanted to learn from Harper in the first place.

  As the summer progressed, he could feel when Emerain gathered the magic around her, and noticed it happening in Bres and several of the others as well. He also found that he could turn around the illusions they had been taught, so that instead of making himself more authoritative when he played, he made himself less noticeable. And when the Harvest Fair came around just before Samhain, he reveled in the empty halls of Academy again, using the two weeks to figure out how to do something similar with the voice magnification magic so that he could block out all sound when he chose.

  After Samhain, the lessons became more advanced and complex, and Cricket found himself hard pressed to keep up. Although the Pen Bardd had felt that the young crossain was up with the fourth year students, Cricket constantly found gaps in his knowledge that he had to struggle to fill, and his excursions to the White Owl became rare. With the winter weather, Bres and the others also remembered him, and he had to dodge their machinations as well.

  Late one night, a month after mid-winter, Cricket returned to his room to find everything missing. He stood in the middle of the floor, not knowing whether to laugh or cry; he had money to replace everything that had been stolen, but in the meantime, he had nothing but stone to sleep on, and he felt stupid with exhaustion. He clutched Linnaia to his chest, and walked out of the Academy, out of Taris, and across the moonlit plain
on Temair.

  He came to himself somewhere in the Forest of Uislign. He looked around at the bright snow and dark trees like someone coming out of a dream. He shivered and wrapped his cloak tighter around him.

  Fear crept up his spine along with a numbness that started in his toes and began to spread up his legs. He didn’t know how to find his way back in the dark, and he didn’t know how far away dawn might be.

  A rushing of wings filled the air. Cricket looked around, but the dark remained impenetrable. He felt a weight on each shoulder, and a presence near each ear, but he couldn’t see anything.

  On an impulse, he pulled Linnaia out of her case and tuned her. Playing a song of summer dances, Cricket wove the sub-harmonies into a new magic, something complex that he could feel more than understand. Around him, the snow began to glow brighter, and then to melt away, and a warm breeze tugged at the hem of his cloak. He watched in amazement as the ground appeared, a dark brown soil rich with dormant life. The glow remained, growing brighter, and the trees began to put forth tiny transparent leaves; pale green shoots pushed their way out of the ground, uncurling into deep green ferns.

  Startled, Cricket stopped playing, but the magic remained, turning the small glade into a summer bower. His heavy cloak felt uncomfortable and hot on his shoulders, and the trees around him bowed inward, limbs thick with leaves. He reached out gingerly, touching a soft fern, then feeling a sharp pain as his feet began to thaw.

  The magic began to fade like a mist in the sun; a cold wind cut through the glade, making Cricket shiver. He began playing again quickly to try and keep the winter at bay with the summer he had created. He felt wings flapping around his ears again and he thought he saw two dark birds fly into the darkness of Uislign, but he shook his head, and they were gone.

  He played until dawn, when he could see the dim path that he had made on his way in. He left the grove reluctantly, trudging back through the snow to the Academy. His feet hurt and his throat burned by the time he got to his first class, and Ollave Owen, who was teaching, took one look at him and sent him to the infirmary.