Chasing the Bard

by Philippa Ballantine

  And yet she dreamed of him. Sive could not ignore flashes of the hot passion that had ignited between them, spearing into her consciousness, for she ached for that too. It was a waking nightmare. Mordant was driving her mad, and the terrible truth was she liked it. He had trussed her up with her own passionate nature, turning pleasure in the joys of flesh, muscle and sinew against her. They had shared them before, but it had never been like this, for at least back then Sive had been herself; now she was a prisoner to these desires.

  Mordant could not conjure love, but passion was as good for his purposes. He couldn’t claim a heart, but then he didn’t want that.

  The rasping call of Macha snapped Sive back to reality. Raising one arm without thinking, the raven flew to her, jet-black and wickedly curved claws sinking into her mistress’s flesh. Sive welcomed this small pain as a reminder of the greater ones. Looking into the round ebony of Macha’s eye she smiled a fraction. Brigit might not be welcome in Mordant’s hall, but he tolerated the raven. Once the bird had been a proud symbol of Sive’s power. Warriors had looked for the dark winged form over the battlefield as an omen. In fact the raven was better known than her own flawless Fey face, but now she was reduced to a token of Mordant’s magnanimity. He could afford such little gestures. The humiliation was something that she felt extra keenly—never before having been subject to charity.

  “Ah sweet darling,” Sive crooned to Macha, stroking one gentle hand down the bird’s chest, “How were things while I was away?”

  “You shouldn’t have been away at all!” a harsh voice that reminded Sive of nothing more than a dagger rasping across chain mail, hissed from above the Hall’s door.

  Macha cocked her head, and an ear splitting caw cracked the silence. The raven had no love for Mordant’s sprite.

  Sive frowned, and in response the constant mist rumbled, threatening to solidify into thunderheads. She raised her violet eyes to the lintel.

  Wyreck perched on the cross beams, his sly little face lit with a nasty grin, swinging his booted feet against the stone. Wings of basalt black thrummed at his shoulders. He was as perky as any other sprite, yet everything else was their antithesis. For he was Mordant’s creature and had travelled with him to places other sprites could only have nightmares of. He bared his pointed teeth and waited for Sive to squirm. “The Master will be interested to know that you have been jaunting to the human realm while he wasn’t looking.”

  Sive barely controlled the urge to grasp the sprite up and squeeze him into a sludge. Instead she smiled her most intense smile. “I wasn’t aware that Mordant had denied me anything. Why—last time I saw him, he was more than pleased with me.” She ran one coy finger over her collarbone and looked up at the sprite through her raven wing hair. Macha squawked and shifted on her shoulder, eager no doubt to lay her snapping bill around Wreck’s neck. Sive calmed her with a thought and a promise; one day love, one day.

  For now, they would have to put up with the sprite’s sharp looks and hostility. He was very quick to report to Mordant, and that was probably his purpose. He revelled in the power he had over such as Sive, but she would see that he had little joy of it. She would refrain from champing at the bit like some spirited horse. For now, and only now, Mordant had the reins, but that could not last, and then she would be free to follow instincts.

  So she hid her bitter smile, and entered the hall, leaving the little sprite to fume.

  Sive gave no hint she was listening, but when her ears discerned the sound of his wings thrumming into the distance, she smiled. Descending into the hall, being wrapped in its dreary atmosphere, soon took away the edge of triumph. This place was enough to make anyone despair.

  It was not truly ugly inside, as nothing that came within a heartbeat of the Fey world could be, but it reeked of something that was alien to this realm—despair. The smooth walls that led to the interior of the hall were a seamless surface of wood and stone, so cunningly blended that it was impossible to tell where one left off and another began. What sort of magic could marry stone and wood even she could not imagine but it was still another sign of Mordant’s power.

  Sive trailed a hand along the wall. Fey halls were usually crowded, with brownies, or sprites, or the laughter of the Fey themselves. Even the hall she had previously lived in with Brigit and Puck had breathed, had smelt of life and hope. This place was truly dead, and in it she was expiring.

  Macha’s claws dug deep, and an unvoiced croak of alarm thrummed in her chest. Macha had always been there, a gift of the goddess perhaps, and that was the worst of it. For though the bird’s descent into weakness had reversed, it was replaced with an odd lethargy that no number of flights across Fey skies would fix. The possibilities of what that could mean for Sive the Shining weighed on her mind.

  Sive stroked Macha’s chest, and though her fingers registered the plumpness of health, Art sensed a retreat in the bird. Was this to be the fate of the Fey as they turned to Mordant for help: a return to apparent health only to be eaten from within? Was this her fate?

  She would be a fool not to entertain the possibility.

  For once within the hall’s boundaries, the vague draining of power—of her will—began. Where once she had raged and burned fierce, now she found the strength to think.

  Macha’s metallic claws punctured through fine fabric, slashing into Sive’s shoulder, making her jump. She turned her face accusingly to the bird. The dark eye hardly reflected anything in the dim hall, but the raven’s head twitched, and her ear feathers rose in a warning. Pain was Sive’s friend here, protection against the aura of the Hall, and under its application she recalled the plan. While Mordant played across the realms, doing his own foul mysterious deeds, she would put this time to use. The hall must have some of the Fey’s secrets, some hint to the source of his power.

  She had already finished examining the almost empty upper floors, and had been steeling herself to search those below ground, when Puck’s summons had come. Truthfully she hadn’t wanted to venture there as it was the storehouse of the hall’s lethargy. With Macha’s claws clenching and burning in her shoulder, she decided to act now—while she still had the strength to resist.

  Through the deserted corridors Sive strode, fixing her mind on the pain the raven was inflicting, and not on the miasma that surrounded them both.

  Down icy cold stone steps she went, her feet making lonely distinct echoes in the silence. Blue flamed torches sprang to life ahead, giving little in warmth or light. Only one door bound with iron waited at the end of the long corridor. Sive stopped, perplexed for a moment. Iron was not a common substance in the Fey. Mostly it was an uncomfortable metal to her people, but some it burned like flames, and others it could kill stone dead. Mordant, like herself, would be little affected by it—but still it was an odd material for a Fey hall. How could he have even bought it here?

  Macha’s wings flexed and shuttered near her ear, claws stabbing deep, keeping her to the task at hand. The cloud of weariness was invading Sive’s senses even so, and she must move with real haste. Without Macha’s aid it was doubtful she would have made it this far.

  Opening the door with a jerk, Sive half expected Mordant himself to be within, but she was glad to be wrong.

  A broad desk of chiselled slate waited beside a blue flamed hearth for its Master to return—indeed it felt like he might have just stepped out for a minute. It was a small enough room, but lined floor to ceiling with dark wooden shelves, and each shelf bore more books than Sive had ever seen in her long life.

  The written word was not a Fey art, and while some had professed an interest in it, it was skill of little value to the long-lived. After all what was the use of writing things down when they lived on to remember the past? Humans had need of books as they had a candle flame lifespan, and without books all their knowledge was lost. Fey needed no such, they considered it beneath them: human magic for a human realm.

  Yet here was Mordant’s inner sanctum dedicated to them. Sive pulled one
volume out, feeling the caress of the leather against her fingers. They must be very new; the pages smelt dry and crisp, and the lines of writing within were as fresh as though they had just poured from the pen; the words eluded her. Sive had some understanding of the written word, gained from worshipers who had carved her name in the stones, but that had been centuries of mortal time ago, and these words were foreign. She almost threw the book on the floor in disgust.

  Why would Mordant be interested in such things? Perhaps he had found some kind of power in these books—an idea that had never occurred to her

  Sive had to know what this all meant; if books contained secrets, then it was unknown territory to her. The Fey knew nothing of book learning, for the application required was not their strongest suit. If they couldn't master something in the first few heartbeats, then they generally discarded it.

  Still it was the only clue Sive had discovered in her husband’s hall, and there could be something to it. Hoping it would go unnoticed by Mordant, Sive tucked one book under her arm. In order to win out over Mordant she needed not only to think like him, but also to know his secrets.

  A quick glance around the rest of the room showed nothing more of interest. The desk was a plain slab of stone, the fireplace a simple curve in the wall, and so the books were all the other contents of it.

  The miasma was beginning to assert itself. Sive was about to flee from the room, when Macha flapped away, landing on the wooden chair behind the desk. Squawking with wings stammering in the cool air, Macha hopped on the chair back. Sive frowned; something had caught the bird’s attention. Curiosity won out over the lethargy. Sive walked behind the desk and saw what the raven had spotted.

  Curled against the leg of the chair, like some fragile ghost, was a veil of whiteness. Not being able to immediately identify it, she picked it up. It was so fine that for a moment her fingers denied she had anything at all. It uncoiled in her grasp, dropping lengthwise from her hands to the floor. It took a long moment for Sive to understand.

  If a snake were to stand as tall as a man, and retained his shape, this might be well what it shed instead of a serpentine form. Sive bit her lip. It had arms and legs and a pale mask of skin that she could now recognize.

  Even this dark goddess of war shuddered, dropping it back to the floor like a rotten fruit. What madness was this that Mordant’s cast skin rested on the cold stone? What sort of creature would require its flesh to do that?

  Nothing Fey, nor anything human could be responsible for this insanity.

  Macha hissed through an open beak, hopping onto her mistress’s shoulder, making her own dark comment on the veil of skin. Sive needed no further urging; on shocked feet she escaped the room. It’s frightening, alien secret was something she could only wish not to have seen.

  5

  Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

  “William!” father’s desperate voice chased after his errant son, but by the time the he'd barked out the words it was already too late. To a young man with the world calling 'from outside the door, a father’s irate voice was no incentive to go back. In Will’s mind it would be well worth a thrashing to have one whole afternoon away from the shop, a little slice of time stolen from the mundane—a little time to breathe and to be himself.

  Will had picked an excellent moment to escape. With his father busy haggling over wool prices with one of the local farmers, the outraged call was all he could manage. Which was a good thing. Certainly there had been nothing more embarrassing for either father or son than the last incident which had degenerated into an uncomfortable public argument out on the street. So this time Will had been more careful, and better prepared.

  Having saddled Robin earlier, when his father had thought he was eating lunch, the boy’s heart lifted at the sight of the pony waiting in the backyard. The faithful steed whinnied and shook his bay head, scenting the adventure already calling to them from the other side of the Avon. His shaggy fetlocks ruffled like a lady’s fine lace when he stamped the ground, and he arched a rather disreputable stout neck like the aristocratic mount he had always thought he was. He certainly had the spirit of one of Sir Richard Lucy’s best-bred stallions—if not the looks. Will grinned and threw himself the short distance up to the pony’s back. In his pocket was some dark bread, a wedge of hard cheese and two small, wizened apples all filched with the best possible of intentions from his mother’s kitchen. In itself that had been an adventure worthy of its own tale. Mother, with her growing brood of children, was becoming harder and harder to outwit.

  “Away my charger!” Feeding off each other’s youthful excitement, pony and rider made their hasty exit. Being not entirely confident that his father might not break off negotiations to fetch after his son, a swift getaway was imperative. With a clatter of hooves and an excited yell, they galloped into the sunshine. Gentles and peasants alike hurried to get out of the way as the young Shakespeare hurtled along Henley Street. He waved merrily to Richard Wheeler leaning on the corner of his shop, his face set in its usual fold of dull anger. Robin barged through a bunch of squawking ducks along Bridge Street, sending them scattering every which way, and causing no little confusion to the good-wife who was trying to round them up and escape the fine she’d have to pay if any of the town council noticed. Will called out his heartfelt apologies as they galloped on. Past the village muck piles, and the houses were almost behind them. Finally rattling and whooping along the great length of Clopton bridge—they reached freedom.

  Such an escape was not unfamiliar to the citizens of Stratford. And although a good many of them whispered under their breaths about the goings on in the Shakespeare home, and deplored the changes wrought in its eldest son, most could understand it. Will had been an exceptional student at the grammar school, and when his father had been a rising star in the town council, it was expected that he too would make a great leap, and attend university. However the family’s depleted fortunes now denied the boy a chance at that bright future.

  As Will rode down the lazy curve of the Avon he smiled in triumph, for clenched in one hand was his prize for the week; several small scraps of parchment, with only the remains of orders written on one side. In one pocket was a thick stick of charcoal, but more importantly in his head was another idea he could hardly wait to get down into the physical world.

  Will rode Robin until they reached his favorited spot. Here the river rolled against the green banks, its sounds muted to gentle rhythmic slaps. Beneath the sounds of the river there were the whispers of the wind playing in the reeds, and in the hair of the willows bending their hands down into the river. Sliding off Robin, who was already taking grateful mouthfuls of the grass, Will spread his cloak out on the bank, and let a huge sigh of relief escape him. He felt like it was his first real breath of the day. Unlacing his boots and stripping them off his feet, he curled his toes in the moist grass, feeling the wetness soothe his soles. Leaning his arms on his bent knees, he allowed himself to gaze over the river. The shop was a fine enough business, and there was a certain beauty in creating the soft gloves, or making a profit with a consignment of wool, but he had found the last years very hard.

  The family fortunes had been slipping for quite a while, his father being unable to afford town levies, or to pay his subscription for militia upkeep, or contribute his share of poor relief. That was bad enough, but then last year, affairs had taken a sharp downturn.

  The reason was all too simple, and all too humiliating. John Shakespeare had been illegally dealing in wool—and to be sure he was not the only wool brogger in Stratford. It was a trade that could bring a handsome profit, but it was also one that relied on credit. So when the Privy Council had clamped down on the practice three years earlier, John was badly affected. He’d bought wool on credit from Walter Masshem, and not being able to sell it was crippling. Family debts were piling up even as Will lay there in the grass.

  John Shakespeare had taken enormous satisfaction in his role as
Stratford’s burgess and town beer taster. He’d risen to the top of Stratford society swiftly, and though the downward turn was not as sudden, it still reeked of bitter humiliation.

  So for all the personal hardship felt so keenly by Will, he knew that it was hardest on his father. The gentle man had become more snappish and withdrawn as circumstance forced him to sell parcel after parcel of the land he had bought over the years. Worse still was when he’d had to sell part of his wife’s dowry. For a proud man it was a hard thing. Knowing though didn’t make it any easier on a young man—especially one who’d placed his sights on a university.

  All this conspired against Will and his family, and he had to work with his father in the shop. Though he tried to put a brave face on it, such afternoons as today were his only way of staying sane. The stench of the whittawering, and the interminable placation and lies that they had to lavish every customer, wore his spirit down, until he could feel it seeping it out his boot soles and wasting in the dark floor of the shop.

  Will picked grass from around his feet. He usually managed to keep the disappointment hidden, but today it had overflowed. Overhearing Lord Lucy recalling with his wife how their son had enjoyed his time at Oxford stirred little fingers of jealousy in him.

  Will smiled. It was this emotion that had caught in his brain, and he had a mind to start a little poem on it. Spreading out his hard won scraps, Will put his make shift pen to use. The idea was elusive, but he knew that if he could just find the right words, he could nail it down—and it would be his.

  But finding peace even this far from home was going to prove difficult. Will tried to ignore it, but the sounds of girlish laughter carried from downstream. He huddled further into the long grass and hoped its owner would pass by. For a moment it looked like he might be lucky, but when they were above him on the bank, he heard a sound that made his heart sink.