Lark and Wren bv-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  It might be wise to see if there was a rebellion brewing; the rebels might be able to protect Sional better than they could. But then again-they might already have their figurehead for revolt, and they might not welcome the intrusion of the "rightful King" into their plans.

  There was a possibility that they could stage Sional's "death" convincingly, enough to get the hounds called off. That was another plan to be discussed and plotted out.

  Gwyna slowly coaxed a few more of his memories out of him over the course of the day. Talaysen slowly built a picture up in his mind of the boy Sional had been, some eight years ago.

  A lonely boy; packed away in what was apparently a drafty, damp "palace" in constant need of repair, with a single, half-deaf servant and his tutor, Master Darian. That surprised him; Guild Bards-and Darian had been a Guild Bard, his credentials were impeccable-were not normally employed as tutors for boys, not even when they were princes. Although he could not be certain, Talaysen framed the notion that Master Darian had been a great friend and admirer of the unhappy Queen, and had volunteered his services in the capacity of tutor when the lady died.

  The obvious romantic notion-that Darian was really Sional's father, and that Queen and prince had been mewed up out of sight because of the scandal-Talaysen discarded after only a few moments of consideration. If it had been true, the King would have gotten rid of the erring spouse and unfortunate offspring-either directly, or discreetly. There were a dozen routes he could have taken, and a dozen princesses who would have brought a great deal of advantage to Birnam as new brides. No, it seemed that Master Darian's relationship with the Queen was the same as Tonno's with Rune: friend and mentor.

  So why had the Queen been put away?

  Most likely was that the King disliked her intensely, but that she was too circumspect to give him a reason to be rid of her.

  But then, why had the prince been discarded with her? In the hopes that he, too, would die, and leave his father free to seek a spouse more to his taste, with the urgency of the succession giving him a reason to urge the wife he wanted on his Councilors?

  It wouldn't have been the first time that particular ploy had been used, particularly not when the first wife was one chosen for the King by his own father.

  Sional, as he had said, had seen very little of his father. He had been in the Crown Palace completely by accident the night that his father had been murdered.

  It would have been comic if the circumstances had not been so dire. He had discovered on a previous visit that there was a greenhouse full of fruit-trees that were forced to bloom and bear out of season. He got very little in the way of luxurious food; it seemed that he, Darian, and the servant were brought whatever was left from meals at the Crown Palace after the servants had taken their shares. He never saw out-of-season fruit, and boy-like, had decided to filch himself a treat. The greenhouse was just under the King's private chambers, and the way into it-if you were an adventurous child-was through the air vents in the glassed-over roof.

  Not only had it been a marvelous adventure, it had been an unrivaled opportunity to spy on his mysterious and aloof father. Double the guilty pleasure for a single act.

  Even better had been to discover that his father was not alone. Master Darian had described the goings-on between men and women in a singularly detached fashion that had left him wondering why anyone bothered. Now he saw why they bothered-and he stayed and stayed-

  So he had been looking in the windows when the assassins surprised his father-and the lady-in bed, just about ready to finish their evening's exertions. The men sent to kill the King had not been expert, and in a panic at the lady's screams, they had also butchered her.

  Terror-stricken, sick, and in shock, he had run straight to Master Darian, his only friend and protector.

  Poor old man, Talaysen thought pityingly. No wonder we thought him half-mad. How did he do it? How did he smuggle a child out of a place crawling with killers, get the boy away, and smuggle him out of the country? He was no hero-he wasn't even young. He was an old, tired man with his best days behind him. One day I am going to have to write a song about him. Bravery and intelligence like that are all too rare . . . and we never even recognized them while he was alive.

  Sional must have been in shock for some time, shock that made him terribly vulnerable to illness. Small wonder he took marsh fever crossing the fens at the Birnam-Rayden border. But that must have been a blessing to Master Darian, for during the boy's illness, he managed to convince him that he was someone else entirely-the boy named "Jonny Brede." And that made it easier to hide him.

  The rest, Talaysen knew-except for one small detail. The reason why Jonny Brede had been unable to hold a job, anywhere.

  The killers, the mysterious murderers, who would appear out of nowhere and try to take his life.

  They'd made their first attempt right after Master Darian had died. He'd had three close calls, not counting the attempt last night, and on numerous occasions he had learned they were looking for him just in time to flee. Small wonder he'd been starving. The place Talaysen had offered must have seemed God-given-for surely if he moved about every few days, no mysterious killer was going to be able to find him!

  Talaysen could hardly imagine the hellish life the boy must have endured. Having no friends for more than a few months, constantly hungry, cold, lonely-with people out of a nightmare one step behind him, and never knowing the reason why.

  Now he knew one difference in Kestrel's demeanor: relief. Now Sional knew why the killers were after him. There was a logical reason. He no longer lived in an irrational nightmare.

  Now he lives in a rational one.

  Somehow, that made him angrier than anything else. Talaysen made himself a small promise. If and when they found Sional's uncle in a position of vulnerability, he was going to give the man a little taste of what he'd been dealing out to Sional all these years. Just a little.

  But it would be a very sharp taste. . . .

  They moved out by night, with Gypsies spread all over the downs on either side of the road to make sure they weren't spied upon, in company with three other wagons of the same general shape and size. The other three turned back at moonrise; Gwyna kept the ponies moving on, to the north. Across the downs and past the fens on the other side was the border with Birnam. It could be crossed two ways-by the causeway, or, if you were desperate, through the fens on paths only the march-dwellers knew. Talaysen guessed that the latter was the way Master Darian and Sional must have arrived. They would take the causeway. There was no reason not to-and every reason to be as open as possible.

  Birnam itself could cause them any number of problems. None of them, other than Sional, had ever been there. The few Gypsies who had could give no real details about the place, and in any event, they hadn't been much past the border area. The fens were too tedious to cross, and in bad seasons, the causeway flooded. Once you crossed the fens, Birnam had no large faires; most commerce took place at weekly Markets instead. Goods moved through the auspices of the Trader's Guild. The Free Bards were not yet numerous enough to expand outside this kingdom, so Talaysen had no idea of what the lot of the traveling musician was like within Birnam.

  Not terribly helpful, he thought sleepily, taking his turn at the reins while Gwyna dozed inside. Somehow young Kestrel was sound asleep-but perhaps, like a soldier, the young man had learned to take sleep when and where he could get it.

  He and Rune were to drive while the moon was up, giving the mules light enough to see the road. Since it was a straight track across the downs, bounded on either side by hedgerows, there was small chance they'd get lost. The worst that could happen would be that the mules would stop, pull the wagon over to the side of the road, and proceed to gorge themselves or sleep in their harness until someone woke up and got them back on the job.

  Even if something frightened them, they likely wouldn't bolt-or so Gwyna claimed, saying that was the reason the Gypsies preferred mules over horses as draft animals. She cl
aimed that when startled, they would probably stand stock still and wait for whatever it was that frightened them to show itself to be either aggressive and dangerous, or not a threat after all.

  "And if they do bolt," she'd told him, "Let them have their heads. If they run, they've either been hurt badly by something you can't see, or they've seen something they already know is dangerous. They probably have a better idea of what's safe to do when there's real danger than you do. Let them follow their instincts."

  As if he could do anything else! If they took it into their stolid heads to run off, he wasn't even sure he'd be able to hang onto the reins.

  Rune climbed out of the back to sit beside him on the driver's bench. After a moment, she began massaging his shoulders, and he sighed with pleasure.

  "I've been thinking," she said. "About magic."

  "So have I," he replied. "I know we don't know everything. I know Peregrine doesn't know everything, however much he likes to pretend that he does."

  "Exactly." She nodded her head vigorously. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her, and smiled.

  "Can I say something gauche and male?" he asked. "I think you look wonderful. The dress, your hair down, no leather hat hiding your face-"

  "Oh, that's gauche and male, all right," she grinned. "But I like the compliment. I have to admit, sometimes I get a little tired of breeches and loose tunics. A pretty dress-well-Gwyna will probably tell you I was preening like a popinjay when we were going through the outfits the other women offered me and picking out the new clothing."

  He cautiously took his attention from the road for a moment to steal a kiss. She stole one back.

  "Now, about magic-" she said. He sighed.

  There was no getting her mind off business when she was determined. "All right. About magic."

  "For every offense in everything else, there's always a defense. I can't believe that there's no defenses against this seeking-talisman those killers are using." She braced herself against the swaying of the wagon over an uneven stretch of road, and waited for his response.

  "I've been thinking the same thing," he said. "That was why I managed to talk Peregrine out of the one he took from the dead man. I was hoping we could find a way to fool it if we studied it long enough."

  He transferred the reins cautiously to his left hand, and fished the talisman out of his breeches pocket. "Here," he said, handing it to her, and taking proper control of the reins again.

  She examined it as best she could by the illumination of the three-quarter moon. It wasn't very impressive by either sun or moonlight; there wasn't much there but a small copper disk with a thin lens of glass cemented over it, suspended from a copper chain. She peered at it.

  "Is there something under that glass?" she asked.

  She had better eyes than he did. "Peregrine says it's a single strand of hair. He says that places where magic is used more openly tend to be very careful about things like nail-clippings and hair. We'd probably better assume that Birnam is one of those places. They'd probably been keeping every strand of hair he lost since he was a baby, and when they knew he was alive, they started making talismans to find him."

  Talaysen had no idea how the thing had been made, but the fact that it had survived the fire intact was remarkable enough. It didn't look at all damaged, in spite of the fact that it had been the actual focus of Peregrine's defenses, the point from which the fire sprang. A distinct disadvantage of having a magical object; unless you also had a magical defense-which Peregrine called a Shield-your object could actually call an offensive spell to it, simply by existing.

  Once they'd figured out how to outwit this thing, Talaysen planned to sink it in a deep well.

  "Does it still work?" she asked.

  "Try it for yourself," he told her. "Hold it in your hand and tell yourself that you want to find Sional."

  She obeyed-and frowned. "It still works, all right. Nasty thing." She rubbed the hand that had been holding it against her skirt, although there was nothing physically there to rub off. Talaysen had done exactly the same thing after Peregrine had shown him the trick of working it.

  "I haven't been able to figure out how it works," he confessed. "Though I have to admit, I haven't done as much with it as I might have if it didn't feel so-slimy."

  She agreed, grimacing distastefully. "Still-I grew up working in an inn. I emptied chamber pots, cleaned up after sick drunks, mucked out the stables. It won't be the first time I've had to do something nasty, and so far, this doesn't make me feel any worse than one of those jobs. I'll see what I can do with it."

  She was quiet for a very long time, her brow furrowed, her eyes half-closed. After a while he began to "hear," with that strange inner ear, little snatches of melody and dissonance.

  When she finally spoke, he wasn't ready for it, and he jumped, startled.

  "Sorry," she apologized. "I guess I should have moved or something first."

  "It's all right," he assured her. "I was sort of dozing anyway, and I shouldn't have been. Have you gotten anything figured out?"

  "Well, I think I know why Peregrine said nothing could be done about it," she replied thoughtfully. "This doesn't work like our magic-in fact, I'd be willing to believe that it wasn't made by a human at all."

  "Huh." That made sense. Especially if you were doing something that you didn't want countered. There were pockets of strange races scattered all over the Twenty Kingdoms; it wouldn't be unheard of to find other races that worked magic. And unless you found another mage of the same race, your odds against countering what had been done might be high.

  "That could be why it feels-and sounds-so unpleasant," he offered. "It's not operating by laws of melody that we understand, or even feel comfortable with. I've been told that there are some things living off by themselves in the swamps in the south that can make you sick by humming at you."

  She nodded vigorously. "You know, that's really what's going on here; it isn't that it really feels bad, it's that it makes you feel bad. I had a chance to talk to a Mintak about music once; he said he couldn't stand human sopranos and a lot of human instruments because they were too shrill for him. And I couldn't hear half of the notes of a Mintak folk-song he sang for me."

  He bent his head down so he could scratch the bridge of his nose. One of the mules looked back at him, annoyed at getting a rein-signal it didn't understand.

  "Maybe what we need to do is figure out the logic, the pattern in it-then and try and disrupt or block that pattern with something we can stand?" he offered.

  "I don't know," she replied, dubiously. "That could be like trying to catch a Mintak with a minnow-net. Or a minnow in a snare. But I suppose that's the best we can do right now. You want to try?"

  He took the charm with distaste. "I don't want to, but I will. Besides, maybe some of this stuff Peregrine stuck in my head will help."

  "Maybe," she replied. "It couldn't hurt, anyway, as long as you remember we aren't playing by human rules anymore."

  "I don't think I could forget," he said, and bent with grim determination to his task.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rune's stomach heaved. "You know," she said conversationally to Kestrel, as they neared the border-post at the edge of the fens, "if I didn't like you so much, I think I'd have left you back in the mud with that copper charm and saved myself this."

  Heat pressed her down and humidity made her head ache. The ever-present reek of the marsh permeated everything. Gnats and midges buzzed in annoying clouds around her head, but thanks to the thick, sticky herb-juice the Gypsies had given them, neither landed nor bit. But the juice itself had a bitter, unpleasant smell, and that added to her misery. The sun glared down through a thick heat-haze, making the road shimmer and dance.

  After much trial and error, she and Talaysen had worked out the counter to the magic of the talisman. Comprised of notes they felt more than heard, it only made them slightly ill to work. Just enough that Rune refused to eat anything this morning, since th
ey were going to have to cross the border before noon. She hadn't wanted anything in her stomach, and right now she was chewing a sprig of mint in the vain hope that it would settle her rebellious insides.

  Sional grimaced. "I'd d-do it m-myself, but I'm not g-good enough yet." He held out his hands and shrugged. "I w-wish I w-was."

  "Oh, don't worry about it," she replied, closing her eyes to subdue another surge of nausea. "Besides, if I'd dumped you in the mud, Robin would have gone back after you, and then we'd have gotten to smell fen-stink until we cleaned you up."

  As she opened her eyes, she saw him flush and turn away, and smiled in spite of her roiling stomach. Robin was in love with Kestrel, and he was returning her feelings with interest. How long it would last, she had no idea.