Lelia staggered into the inn, and the middle of an argument.
“You ain’t listening!” a tall, powerfully built young man was saying to a petite blonde woman with greasy hair, tunic, and trews. He wasn’t quite yelling, but it was clear he was building up to that point. “There’re no bones on my hearth and none in my scrap pile!”
The girl flushed. “You were cooking a ham just last night—”
“I said I ain’t got any, and even if I did, I don’t know that I’d sell ’em to you! What part of that don’t you conjugate?”
“The p-part where y-you’re lying,” the blonde said in tones that could have frozen spirits of wine, even with her frustrated stammering. “And the w-word is c-c-cogitate, you country o-oaf!”
She spun and stormed toward the door, her warpath bent on bisecting Lelia—until she actually saw the Bard and stopped dead.
“Can I help you?” the young man said.
“A Bard?” whispered the blonde.
“That’s me!” Lelia said cheerfully, mustering what she hoped was a disarming grin and not a grim, half-frozen rictus. “Does your innmaster have room for one? I don’t have much money—”
“Bright Havens!” the man said, rushing over to relieve her of her pack. She kept his big, clumsy hands away from her gittern—no one handled Bloom but her—but gladly gave him the rest.
“If you’re playing, you’re staying!” he went on, and from what she gathered, he was the innmaster—just an awfully young one. “Hellfires, even if you’re not playing, you can still stay—how fares the Queen? The last we heard, there was a hunting accident!”
That’s the official story, yes, Lelia thought as she recounted what she knew—officially—to the innmaster, even as she edged toward a stool by the fire. The savory aroma of fennel sausage and sage nearly swept the strength from her knees.
Lelia sat, taking the opportunity to smile at the openly staring blonde. “And you are?”
The blonde’s nostrils flared. She turned and walked out.
Well, Lelia thought. Nice, friendly locals.
“Ah, I’m sorry, m’lady Bard,” the Innmaster said, hurrying over to a keg and taking a mug off a shelf. “That’s Herda and she’s ...” He shook his head. “Different. You’d do best to just ignore her.”
I would, but the argument you two were having actually sounded interesting. “Village madwoman?”
“Something like that.” The young man grinned, bringing her a brimming cup. “I’m Olli, and I’m the innmaster you’re looking for—you mind ale?”
Lelia raised her brows. “Good sir, you could serve me trough-water and I’d ask for more!”
He chuckled. “My brew’s not that bad! Now, you get warm here, m’lady Bard. I’m going to go get the word out that you’re in town!” He swept a heavy woolen cape down from a wooden peg by the door and hurried out into the dusk before she’d taken so much as a sip.
Lelia appraised the inn silently as she drank. Shabby but clean. It looked like it would hold a fair amount, though nothing like the alehouses in Haven, where more sensible Bards like Maresa made their names.
But it had seemed a grand adventure at first when Lelia decided to do as the Masters did: see, experience, integrate. A chance to find a song and change her scenery, to pursue a different kind of romantic notion—the kind that didn’t end in wine cups and broken hearts.
But blisters were not romantic. Fumbling around with numb fingers for dry firewood was not romantic. Eating snow to stave off hunger—downright prosaic.
“Should have been a Herald,” she muttered, turning her face toward the fire. “Should have saved a few brats from drowning and made one of them blue-eyed horsies Choose me. Then I’d have a convenient mount and I could melt brains with the Truth Spell.” She grinned, drowsing away into a happy fantasy where she could get any story anytime she needed it.
The inn filled with alarming speed. Lelia picked out farmers, housewives, and a few artisans, taking time to move through them and share brief exchanges, getting a feel for what jokes and performances would work with these folk. Her chats revealed that the village wasn’t big enough for a permanent Healer or even a priest, but it saw enough trade that not everyone made their living from the earth.
Herda’s “welcome” was no indication of her fellow villagers—everyone Lelia met seemed genuinely grateful to see her. Bards and skilled gleemen didn’t travel these roads often, and she and they knew it. She threw herself wholly into her performance, giving them her boisterous best. There was dancing and foot stomping. The wooden shutters shook, and the rafters rained dust.
Six pints, two sets, and three encores later she finally flopped over on the hearthstones, convincing the room that, yes, it was really over this time. Sleepy locals filed out, leaving her alone with the innmaster’s enormous cats, already drawing up plans to colonize her head and belly.
“Time to go, Herda,” she heard Olli say.
“I w-wanted to talk to the B-bard,” the familiar voice of the stammering Herda responded.
“Oh, now you want to talk?” Olli replied with flat stubbornness. “Come by tomorrow morning and talk then.”
“But it’s three miles from here to my home—”
“Herda.” Another voice, one worn with age. “Come along, dear. The Bard’s tired.”
Lelia heard the heavy door thud shut and the bar drop across it, accompanied by Olli’s grunt. Lelia continued emulating a hearth-puddle.
“A fine set tonight, Bard,” the innmaster said cheerfully. She could hear the scrape of the benches across the rush-strewn wooden floor as he put the room to rights again.
She raised her sore and throbbing right hand in a gesture of agreement and thanks.
“How long are you in town for?” he asked.
“Only as long as it takes me to acquire fresh provisions.” She liked phrasing it that way. It made it sound like she’d headed north with all the proper gear from the get-go.
“It’s been a long while since we had a Bard visit,” Olli said. “We’ve seen hard times.”
She raised her head a little. “Oh?”
“Snow fever. Last year. We’re only really recovering from it now.”
“I’m sorry.” She understood now why the innmaster was such a young man.
“Life on the Border. We’re just glad to have you. Bards remind us that there are other lights, other fires burning in the long nights.” He doffed an imaginary hat. “Sleep well, Bard. We’ll see you well fed in t’morning.”
“Thanks, Olli,” she replied. When she was sure the innmaster was abed, Lelia dragged herself up and sifted through the coins that had landed in her boot. She’d earned enough to commission a coat, as well as set some aside for what she liked to think of as the “stormy day” fund, or possibly the “buy an old pony” fund. She was not quite yet at “buy an Ashkevron destrier,” but hope sprang eternal.
She tucked the coins into various places on her persons before curling up on the stones. A cat landed on her side and oozed over her narrow hips. Hope you like sleeping on bones, furfoot.
Lelia herself didn’t care for sleeping on mortared stones, but they were warm, and she was exhausted. She fell asleep to the crackle of the fire and the droning purr of the hearthcats.
“Wine cups and broken hearts?” the Herald asked as Lelia reached for her drink to wet her throat.
“Did I say that?” Lelia asked, alarm in her voice. She scanned the sheaf of papers and grimaced. “Hellfires, I did.” She made a clucking noise. “Sorry, song lyric I’ve been working on. Crept right in, didn’t it? I mean, that was just plain gratuitous. And really not relevant.” She realized she was babbling and shut her mouth.
“How were things worse when you were wandering around Forst Reach?” the Herald asked, clearly confused. “It’s not nearly as cold; there are far more inns and alehouses to sing at. I’d think you’d be happy there. Granted, it was annoying sometimes to find you in the villages on our circuit. Lyle in particular alway
s worried about you.”
“I wasn’t happy,” she said, forcing a smile. “But after what happened the night of my first performance here—” she indicated with a sweep of her hand the otherwise empty common room of the Langenfield Inn “—I too thought that I’d been better off sticking to the Exile’s Road.”
The outhouse door clapped shut behind Lelia, and she started the short, slippery walk across cobblestones icy from the evening’s thaw-and-freeze. The sky was free of clouds, the luminous moon gazing down from her heaven.
Warm fire, Lelia thought muzzily. Blankets. And then breakfast. Her mouth watered. Bright Lady, let there be bacon.
Something cracked behind her—a fallen branch, or a tree splintering under the chill of winter. She glanced back reflexively but could see nothing. She took another step without looking, and suddenly there was no ground, just her body tumbling head over appetite.
She threw her arm out, but she knew instinctively that the angle was off. She landed seconds before it seemed she should have, every dram of breath driven out of her. The snap of the little bones in her left hand was not unlike the crackle of the fire-devoured logs in the inn’s hearth. The pain that followed was certainly fiery, a white-hot shock that whipped up a frenzy of realizations, starting with something is not right, followed by is it broken? and finally oh, gods, no.
She screamed, as much in despair as agony.
“The worst part,” Lelia said to the Herald, “was that it could have been so easily avoided.”
“But it kept you here.”
“Yes.”
“That turned out to be a good thing in the end, right?”
She frowned, not wanting to answer. “Olli heard my screams. He found me in the snow—”
Lelia flatly refused to cry. She sat in the inn with clenched teeth as Olli hovered and a gray-haired woman poked at her hand.
“Broken,” the woman said. Her worn voice seemed familiar. Her disheveled hair bespoke an unexpected rousing from bed.
“Oh?” Lelia replied in a tight voice.
“Mm-hm.” The woman raised her eyes. “Healing Temple is a week away.”
“Is that so?” Lelia replied, feeling alternately faint and nauseated.
“In good weather.”
“Ah.”
“Healer just left here, in fact.”
“Mmhm.”
“Won’t be due back for another month or more.”
Lelia pressed her eyes shut. “I see.”
“You—”
“Stop.” Lelia raised her good hand. “Just a moment.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay.” She opened her eyes. “Can you set it?”
The old woman nodded.
“I mean, really, truly, can you do this? Not—I did it once with a goat and well, Havens, I think I got it right because the goat sure never complained, tee hee.” The old woman’s brow lifted, but Lelia drove on regardless. “Really, honestly, truly, can you set this right?”
The old woman pursed her lips, then nodded again.
“You are certain?”
A third nod.
“Okay.” Lelia thrust out her good hand. “Hi. I’m Lelia, what’s your name?”
The old woman took her hand and shook. “Artel.”
“Right.” Lelia looked her makeshift Healer square in the eye and held the faded blue gaze as firmly as she gripped her hand. “Artel, I believe you.” She released the crone’s weathered grip. “Now set my hand.”
“I am not too proud to admit that I passed out,” Lelia said, not looking up from her growing pile of papers.
“Of course.”
“But I did so with immense heroism.”
“Naturally.”
“Some of the greatest heroes I know have passed out at least once.”
“Carry on, O Brave One.”
Lelia woke up on a pallet between a row of barrels and canvas sacks of grain.
“Hellfires, Lyle,” she said to the air. “What now?”
“Fall three times, stand up four?” She could even hear her brother’s warm, friendly voice saying it. She wished she could also imagine him helping her up, but no such luck. The best she could do was a mental image of him kneeling by her side, smiling encouragingly.
She sat, then stood, her arm pressed tightly to her chest to keep from inadvertently using it. She suspected that she was in a storage room at the inn, and confirmed her deduction as she passed through a hallway leading to the common room.
“Ah, there she is!” Olli leaned on his broom amidst a heap of rushes. “Gave us quite a fright, little sparrow.” In a gentler tone, he asked, “How d’ya fare?”
“My hand’s broken,” Lelia replied blankly.
He winced and made no reply.
She looked behind her at the hallway she’d emerged from. She thought about slogging through the snow to the Healing Temple. She thought about trying to build a fire with one hand, or what would happen if she fell again, or unwrapping food, assuming she even had food to unwrap.
She thought about bandits and could not contain a shiver.
She gathered her wits, turning to regard the innmaster. “How much would it cost me to stay here and convalesce?”
Olli rubbed his chin. “Your voice still works, yeah?”
“Clearly.”
“So then, you can still sing.” His wildly unkempt brows rose. “And maybe help a little with the picking up?”
“So long as the picking up in question only requires one hand.”
He grinned. “Mugs and plates, bread and bowls. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Olli, I am forever in your debt.”
He snorted. “I’ll be in your debt, before it’s over. A Bard—even a broken one—is going to make me money.”
“Well, when you put it that way—how much are you going to pay me?”
His eyes twinkled. “How does a room in the back sound?”
She made a show of thinking about it. “Sounds glorious.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“That, too.”
“Being a Bard without an instrument,” Lelia said, setting the quill down and flexing her fingers, “really makes you rethink your repertoire.”
The Herald said nothing.
“I did a lot of duets, changing my voice for the different roles.” She cocked her head. “Conversations with myself seem to be a specialty, now that I think about it.”
He chuckled.
“I decided not to look at it as a restriction so much as a chance to explore other avenues. I used to have to play an instrument to really get my Bardic Gift going.”
“Now?”
“Just talking a certain way lets me use it.”
“Interesting.”
“Attendance slacked off after the first three nights, but Olli said it was still more business than usual.” She eyed the pages of writing she’d already done. “Herda came nearly every night.”
“But never said anything?”
She shook her head. “She lurked. I got the feeling she wanted to talk, and a few times I initiated, but she’d always scurry off. At first I was relieved—she was weird, you know—but after a while, I got curious.” She felt her mouth stretch in a grim smile. “You know that I met the Ashkevron Bard?”
“Really? Or did you just imagine it?”
“No, I really, truly did.” She traced one of the knife marks in the table. “At an inn in Forst Reach. After he assured me there was no chance in hell I was going to inherit his position—” The Herald coughed delicately, and Lelia grinned. “—he gave me some useful advice. He told me any idiot could write a song about a hero. It takes real skill to dig the stories out of the commonfolk. They all have stories, he said; you just need to ask the right questions and then frame the answers.”
“So . . . ?”
“I started asking questions.”
“She can talk to wolves, and chickens squawk in terror when she walks by!”
“I hear there’s a colddrake in her stable.
She drinks its blood, and that’s why she doesn’t need a coat in the cold!”
“Her family died from fever, but she keeps their bodies under the floorboards, so now her house is haunted, and they eat those bones she keeps stealing!”
Lelia propped her head up in her good hand, regarding the three scamps with some amusement. She’d made friends with the children of the village, and Jarsi, Bowder, and Aric were three of her best informants. They’d do anything for a song—literally.
Questions about Herda, unfortunately, had yielded nothing but childish speculation.
From what Lelia had gleaned, Herda really was the village madwoman. She lived out in the woods, in a cabin once shared by her family until they’d perished of snow fever. She foraged for a living: mushrooms, medicinal roots, rare minerals, exotic barks, and so on. She also had a thing for creatures of all sorts, especially abandoned ones: wounded rodents, broken-winged birds. She loved—or perhaps the proper word was related to—animals more than people. There were even rumors of wolf cubs that had been tended to by the wild-eyed Herda.
That, Lelia suspected, was why she’d been pestering Olli for bones. Whatever menagerie she tended, she had to feed them.
No one shunned Herda, per se, but no one invited her over for tea and jam tarts, either. The kindest emotion Lelia had seen directed at the girl was pity. She was considered impoverished, even by local standards. No one sat next to her when she watched Lelia’s performances.
“Wolves and monsters and ghosts, eh?” Lelia arched a brow at the boys. “And you’re all three reliable eyewitnesses, I take it?”
“My cousin saw the colddrake!” said Aric. “She, uh, ran before it could eat her.”
“I saw the ghosts!” said Jarsi.
“So you’re saying you did see them?” Lelia asked.
“Yeah.” Jarsi squirmed. “Kind of. It was dark. I saw something! I ran before it could suck out my eyeballs.” He looked nervously at his two friends, both clearly skeptical. “What? That’s what ghosts do!”
“Wolves,” Bowder, the eldest boy, muttered. “I’m telling you, she talks to wolves. You ask her! She won’t deny it! She just ...”
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