Where Light Meets Shadow

by Shawna Reppert

  Whether motivated by the promise of mead or simply refreshed by the laughter, the Scathlan did better with the crutches, well enough that Alban could be assured that he would not be utterly helpless in bed when Alban left him for the afternoon.

  Four

  Practicing with the crutches had made Kieran’s ankle throb. Alban told him that the movement had done it and suggested that he rest and elevate the injury once more. The Leas prince helped him get situated on the bed and left.

  Kieran stared out the window, but all he could see from the angle of the bed was blue sky and clouds and, once, the deceptively lazy circling of a hawk. With nothing else to do and with the painkillers dulling his mind, he slept.

  A soft knock on the door woke him. Kieran expected Alban or Toryn. Instead, a Leas woman entered, willowy, with the fair, ethereal beauty of her people. Her dress was the light green of new willow fronds in spring. She carried a cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms, and she stared at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Toryn warned me, but still... You are very like him. Your father, I mean.”

  This Leas had known his father?

  Kieran sat up in the bed and regretted it immediately as the motion dragged on his ankle. “Everyone tells me I’m smaller. Slighter.” Lesser.

  She smiled. “It is true you are not so tall, nor so broad of shoulder. But you have his face. His eyes.” The Leas shook her head as if dispelling an old memory, her smile fond and a bit sad. “Forgive me. I have not introduced myself. I am Eilinora, Alban’s mother.”

  Alban’s mother. The woman for whom the Leas king had jilted Kieran’s queen, starting the war responsible for the deaths of countless Scathlan. Including Kieran’s father.

  She had the nerve to stand before him, speaking of his dead father with familiarity. Kieran felt cold despite the thick quilt and the warmth of the hearth fire. The churning in his stomach had nothing to do with his pain or the residue of the drug Alban had given him.

  She came closer and sat in the chair beside the bed. “I met your father when he was a travelling bard. Kors would have been about the same age you are now. I was quite a bit younger, younger than Alban. It all seems so long ago now.”

  She was not as he had imagined her. He’d pictured her as beautiful, yes, but always a cold, haughty beauty.

  “He came to my father’s hall, dark-haired and exotic, with a voice that could move stone to tears and music that could shape worlds. I demanded to study with him. He and my father indulged me. Winter was coming, and Kors was grateful enough to have a warm hall for the season. My father saw him for the gentleman he was and knew he would not take advantage of my girlish infatuation.

  “And he did not, seeing it for what it was and knowing I was far too young for such things. He turned my affections aside with kindness and tact. I will always cherish that about him, as much as I cherish the music he taught me.”

  She had studied music with his father, a precious gift that had been torn from Kieran before he was old enough for his first real harp.

  “He’s dead, you know,” Kieran said harshly. “Your people killed him.”

  “I know that he died in the war,” she said, responding to his goad not with anger and affront but with gentle sorrow. “So many good people did, Leas and Scathlan both. Perhaps if your father had been less honorable, we would have been married—it is not unheard of to marry so young, though it is uncommon and unwise. I might never have fallen in love with Toryn, and the war might never have happened. But I cannot regret my love, nor the son it got me.”

  “Selfish thoughts, for one who is a queen of her people.”

  She only smiled at his discourtesy. “Perhaps. Some nights I lie awake, thinking that same thought. And still I cannot regret it. You are young yet, Kieran Korsson. Have you ever been in love?”

  He shook his head. In lust, yes. A passing fondness here and there. Brona was his confidant and occasional partner in crime, and he loved her like the sister he’d never had. But he couldn’t imagine being “in love” with her, even if she weren’t his queen’s daughter.

  “Someday you will be. Come talk to me then about my choices.”

  Kieran looked away. For all the ballads he could sing about love that forsook all the world for the sake of the beloved, he wanted no part of a sentiment that led to oathbreaking and kinslaying and the betrayal of one’s people.

  “I didn’t come here to debate ancient rights and wrongs,” she said. “Your father made this for me, but I play very little now and, even when I was in practice, I never had the talent to do it justice.”

  She unwrapped the bundle in her arms. A harp, sister to the one that lay in pieces within the ruined case. The touches of gilt on the carved ornamentation were gold, not silver, and showed less of the wear of long use, but he’d know it for his father’s work even if he hadn’t been told its origins. His fingers flexed, longing to hold it.

  She held it out to him, and his hands reached out to take it of their own accord. He held it close to him, caressing the wood, and then his hands found its strings and called forth a melody.

  It had been tuned recently but inexpertly. He broke off playing and wondered where his tuning key had gotten to. His eyes scanned the room. There, on the little bedside table. They must have emptied his pockets before doing whatever they did with the ruined breeches. He stretched for it, but it was just out of reach. He began to strategize the best way to slide over while disturbing his ankle as little as possible, but the Leas queen stepped up and handed it to him.

  “I’ll leave the two of you alone then,” she said.

  He looked up. Surely he hadn’t understood her. “You’re loaning her to me?”

  She smiled; he could see her son in that smile. “I’m giving her to you.”

  The sudden rush of emotion caught him unaware, tightening his throat. He ducked his face against the instrument to hide the threatening tears.

  Kieran should refuse. He should not accept any gift from the Leas not demanded by the laws of hospitality on their side and the reality of need on his.

  His father’s harp.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, holding tight to the harp as though it might yet be taken from him.

  The harp was fractionally smaller than the one that had been his father’s. It felt strange in his arms, though he suspected that once he got used to it this harp would be a better fit. He’d made a harp as part of his apprenticeship, but had given it away, preferring his father’s harp for all that he had to struggle to match his father’s reach.

  He plucked out a simple tune. This instrument was more responsive than his old one, taking less effort to call forth the music. He tried another piece, a more complicated one that took the harp through its full range of notes. Its voice was sweet but less powerful than the one that had broken beneath him. That was a warrior-bard’s harp, a harp worthy of his father, a harp that required a strong voice to match it. Sometimes he had felt little up to the task, though he had received no complaints from the audience, so he matched it well enough.

  This harp, though, made for a smaller musician with a voice more sweet than strong, this was the harp he should have made himself, in the fullness of time and mastery.

  It didn’t make up for the loss of his father’s harp, the harp that had been his companion and his teacher and his joy. But perhaps, in time, he could learn to love this one. A different love, perhaps a lesser love, but love just the same.

  #

  Alban trudged up the stairs with a dinner tray for the Scathlan. He could have had a servant deliver the meal, but the Scathlan was his responsibility until he healed and could be gone from their lands. Limiting Kieran’s contact with other Leas meant less chance of friction between Kieran and his people, who were not thrilled to have a cold-hearted, murdering Scathlan among them.

  Though Kieran hardly fit the image. More accuracy in Father’s comparison of the man to a lost pup, though the Scathlan resented the implication. And when Kieran forgot his hatr
ed and his stiff Scathlan attitude, he had a warm smile and a ready laugh.

  The music reached Alban before he made the last turning of the stair. He knew of his mother’s gift to Kieran, and if the man was a bard his skill should be no surprise, but what he heard was magic. The notes fell liquid as a quicksilver mountain rill, sweet and unbearably sad all at once. Alban’s chest filled with the ache of it.

  Drawn by the harp, he finished climbing up the staircase and paused, leaning against the door, unable to break the spell by opening the door.

  When the music stilled, he softly turned the knob and slipped through the door. If the bard had heard him enter, he made no sign of it, his eyes closed, cheek resting against the harp, face transcendent and beautiful in the lamplight.

  Some scuff or stir of unintended sound must have alerted the Scathlan, or maybe it was just the subconscious awareness of an intruder in the room. Kieran opened his eyes and looked at Alban, and perhaps the spirit of the music was still on him because he didn’t glare as an enemy nor give the wary, closed look of a prisoner. For one moment, the ancient soul of music regarded Alban through Kieran’s eyes and, when it departed, what replaced it was the bright, easy charm of the traveling musician.

  “Do the Leas have no servants, that they must press their prince into the role? Or am I so fearsome a beast that no servant dare approach me? In which case, it is a wonder that they would risk the heir.”

  The words could have been angry or taunting, but his tone was too light and playful to give offense.

  The harp had done wonders.

  Alban opened his mouth to say something about a host’s duty to provide company, a healer’s duty to check on a patient. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” was what came out.

  “Most of me is fine, other than being stiff from lying abed and bored with my own company. The ankle is still broken. I expect it will be for a while yet.”

  “Sadly so. I fear I am not the legendary Nolan, who could heal with a touch.”

  “And I am not Bevin, who could still the winds with a song. So we are on even footing.”

  “I would say you are closer than I.”

  Kieran cocked his head, silently asking for clarification.

  Alban sat beside the bed. “I listened for a while outside the door. You were amazing.”

  “My father, I am told, was better.”

  “Your father had many more years to perfect his craft.”

  “Though not enough,” Kieran said, voice tight with emotion. “Not nearly enough.”

  Oh, mercy of healing. They were back to the war. Yes, they were enemies but, given that they couldn’t be rid of one another until Kieran’s ankle healed, couldn’t they just set it aside for the moment? He braced for another blast of the Scathlan’s icy anger, but Kieran just shook his head sadly and looked out the darkened window.

  “I brought dinner. You should eat.” Alban uncovered the tray.

  “There’s enough there for half a village,” Kieran said.

  “Enough for two, anyway. I thought I would join you.”

  “Breaking bread with the enemy?”

  “The war is over.”

  “Peace was never declared.”

  Alban sighed. “Can we call a private truce between ourselves, then? Just for as long as it takes for you to heal?”

  He expected another argument—Kieran seemed as born to conflict as he was to music. But after a long moment, the Scathlan nodded. “A truce, then. For now.”

  “Thank you.”

  They ate in silence as Alban desperately tried to come up with some topic of conversation that would not renew hostilities.

  “That song I heard you playing. Does it have a name?”

  Kieran smiled. “The Gold on the Water. I wrote it for a stream where I like to sit and think. At a certain time of day, the sun turns the water all silver and gold.”

  “I did not think your kind cared for the sun.” The words were out before Alban thought, and he could have kicked himself. So much for the princely diplomacy he was raised to!

  The Scathlan’s face hardened. “Just because we love the earth and are wise enough to shelter in her arms does not make us twisted creatures that cannot abide the sun.”

  “No, of course not,” Alban agreed hastily.

  Though the tales his cousins told him to frighten him as a child had implied as much. Alban’s parents had set the story straight when he was older. It was important that he knew the world and its history as it truly was to be a good prince. Once, the Scathlan and the Leas had lived together as one people.

  He floundered for a way to bring the conversation back to a more civil track. “So that song, then, is your own composition? It’s quite beautiful.”

  The Scathlan narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Did he not think Alban sincere in his compliment? Surely he must know how stunning his talent was?

  “Is that the sort of thing you played in the mortal taverns?”

  Kieran gave a short laugh. “No, not hardly. Well, sometimes. If I have a sense that someone in the room might appreciate it. Then I’ll play it, even if most of the audience wonder when I’ll finish and get back to the real entertainment. Mortals like their songs quick and lively and cheerful, for the most part.” He set aside his food to pick up his harp for a quick snatch of a song with a rhythm like a frolicking horse, singing a light verse about the joys of haying.

  Even in so simple and uninspired a song, Kieran’s voice hurt Alban with its beauty.

  Kieran stilled the strings and flashed a brilliant smile. “Fortunately, I am a quick study, and the first few places I stopped were kind enough not to throw me out on my ear until I found the way of the mortals’ music.”

  “But how is that helping you? On your quest for new songs, I mean. Surely you will not be playing mortal songs in your court.”

  Kieran put hands to strings once more. Alban recognized the simple mortal tune running over and under the ornamentation, giving it a certain liveliness unusual to elven music, but the presentation, the ornamentation, made it as complicated and as devastatingly emotional a song as The Gold on the Water.

  “That’s brilliant! How long did it take you to do that?”

  “That? Oh, I did that just now for demonstration. Though it might be worth remembering and doing something more with.”

  The Scathlan’s casual response stunned him. The thought that what he had just heard might disappear forever like the light of a particular summer’s day pained him. “Absolutely, you must remember it!”

  “You like it that well?”

  “I do. I can’t fathom how you can just call up music like that. It is quite beyond my imagination.”

  “As your gift for healing is to me.”

  “My father is the one who set your ankle.”

  “Yet you eased the pain at cost to yourself.”

  “Just a temporary wearying. No cost at all in light of the pain it saved you.”

  “Yet—and you must appreciate how hard it is for me to say this to a Leas—I am grateful for it. And in your debt.”

  “My people do not think kindness necessitates payment.”

  “And my people do not believe in leaving a debt unpaid.”

  “Play for me then. A trade of skills. After you have finished eating.”

  Five

  The dream came again that night to Kieran, the one he thought he’d escaped when he left his homelands.

  Trapped in a small, dark prison, unable to move and too cold to feel, an endless wail pierced his soul and echoed in his skull until he thought he would never hear anything else again.

  He woke abruptly, bolting upright in the bed, sweating despite the coolness of the night. The fire Alban had built up for him in the hearth had burned down to coals, and the bedposts cast shadows like spears, darker shadows against the dimly lit walls. His pulse pounded loud in his ears.

  He had not had the dream so vividly since he’d left home. The cessation might have been because of his distance f
rom his dreaming queen, but he hoped that the peace had come because he was seeking some way to help his people. Maybe somehow, on some level, the queen knew of his efforts. Maybe they comforted her.

  Ever since the queen fell into her long sleep, her dreams had shadowed her people’s sleep. Most Scathlan felt only minor effects—the occasional morning where they woke up vaguely melancholy from a dream they could not quite remember. For the more sensitive, the ones with some bardic talent, the dreams came dark, vivid, and often. The dreams drove some mad. Kieran’s teacher had leaped to his death from a high cliff.

  The dreams left Kieran sane, thank the Grace, but aching with sorrow for his poor, broken queen.

  He was still awake when the sun rose that morning, awake and longing for home.

  He missed his homeland—“dark” the Leas named it because the Scathlan lived primarily underground. But it was a place of light, torches reflecting off the crystalline flow of cavern walls and, wherever the walls were plain rock, bright murals showed the halcyon days of his people. In the very oldest of those caverns, murals from long before the division of their people showed dark-haired and pale-haired elves hunting and feasting and even dancing together.

  Some of the Scathlan, the queen’s chief councilor among them, wanted the older murals destroyed out of respect for their betrayed queen. As a bard and a keeper of history, Kieran sided with those who wanted the murals preserved for their age and their beauty, despite the reminder of the Leas who populated his nightmares. His voice carried little weight, but Brona’s did. At his impassioned pleading, she spoke up to save the murals, and the people rallied around their poor, brave princess to save the murals that she said reminded her of happier times.

  He reached for his harp and cradled it in his arms, caressing the strings until his fingers found a tune that recalled all the beauty of dancing torchlight and the glittering walls that harkened to days of laughter and dancing, a tune that segued, as it often did, into one he wrote in honor of his queen. Not the cold living statue she was now, but the mother Brona remembered.