“Well,” Rune blushed, “I did exaggerate a bit at the end. ’Twasn’t gold, it was silver. But silver won’t rhyme. And it was that silver that got me here—bought me my second instrument, paid for lessoning, kept me fed while I was learning. I’d be just another tavern-musician, otherwise—”
“Like me, you are too polite to say?” the minstrel smiled, then the smile faded. “There are worse things, child, than to be a free musician. I don’t think there’s much doubt your Gift will get you past the trials—but you might not find the Guild to be all you think it to be.”
Rune shook her head stubbornly, wondering briefly why she’d told this stranger so much, and why she so badly wanted his good opinion. “Only a Guild Minstrel would be able to earn a place in a noble’s train. Only a Guild Bard would have the chance to sing for royalty. I’m sorry to contradict you, sir, but I’ve had my taste of wandering, singing my songs out only to know they’ll be forgotten in the next drink, wondering where my next meal is coming from. I’ll never get a secure life except through the Guild, and I’ll never see my songs live beyond me without their patronage.”
He sighed. “I hope you never regret your decision, child. But if you should—or if you need help, ever—well, just ask for Talaysen. I’ll stand your friend.”
With those surprising words, he rose soundlessly, as gracefully as a bird in flight, and slipped out of the tent. Just before he passed out of sight among the press of people, Rune saw him pull his lute around and begin to strum it. She managed to hear the first few notes of a love-song, the words rising golden and glorious from his throat, before the crowd hid him from view and the babble of voices obscured the music.
Rune was waiting impatiently outside the Guild tent the next morning, long before there was anyone there to take her name for the trials. It was, as the Fair-ward had said, hard to miss; purple in the main, with pennons and edgings of silver and gilt. Almost—too much; almost gaudy. She was joined shortly by three more striplings, one well-dressed and confident, two sweating and nervous. More trickled in as the sun rose higher, until there was a line of twenty or thirty waiting when the Guild Registrar, an old and sour-looking scribe, raised the tent-flap to let them file inside. He wasn’t wearing Guild colors, but rather a robe of dusty brown velvet; a hireling therefore.
He took his time, sharpening his quill until Rune was ready to scream with impatience, before looking her up and down and asking her name.
“Rune, child of Lista Jesaril, tavernkeeper.” That sounded a trifle better than her mother’s real position, serving wench.
“From whence?”
“Karthar, East and North—below Galzar Pass.”
“Primary instrument?”
“Fiddle.”
“Secondary?”
“Lute.”
He raised an eyebrow; the usual order was lute, primary; fiddle, secondary. For that matter, fiddle wasn’t all that common even as a secondary instrument.
“And you will perform—?”
“First day, primary, ‘Lament Of The Maiden Esme.’ Second day, secondary, ‘The Unkind Lover.’ Third day, original, ‘The Skull Hill Ghost.’ ” An awful title, but she could hardly use the real name of “Fiddler Girl.” “Accompanied on primary, fiddle.”
“Take your place.”
She sat on the backless wooden bench trying to keep herself calm. Before her was the raised wooden platform on which they would all perform; to either side of it were the backless benches like the one she warmed, for the aspirants to the Guild. The back of the tent made the third side, and the fourth faced the row of well-padded chairs for the Guild judges. Although she was first here, it was inevitable that they would let others have the preferred first few slots; there would be those with fathers already in the Guild, or those who had coins for bribes. Still, she shouldn’t have to wait too long—rising with the dawn would give her that much of an edge, at least.
She got to play by midmorning. The “Lament” was perfect for fiddle, the words were simple and few, and the wailing melody gave her lots of scope for improvisation. The row of Guild judges, solemn in their tunics or robes of purple, white silk shirts trimmed with gold or silver ribbon depending on whether they were Minstrels or Bards, were a formidable audience. Their faces were much alike: well-fed and very conscious of their own importance; you could see it in their eyes. As they sat below the platform and took unobtrusive notes, they seemed at least mildly impressed. Even more heartening, several of the boys yet to perform looked satisfyingly worried when she’d finished.
She packed up her fiddle and betook herself briskly out—to find herself a corner of Temple Wall to lean against as her knees sagged when the excitement that had sustained her wore off. It was several long moments before she could get her legs to bear her weight and her hands to stop shaking. It was then that she realized that she hadn’t eaten since the night before—and that she was suddenly ravenous. Before she’d played, the very thought of food had been revolting.
The same cookshop tent as before seemed like a reasonable proposition. She paid for her breakfast with some of the windfall-coppers of the night before; this morning the tent was crowded and she was lucky to get a scant corner of a bench to herself. She ate hurriedly and joined the strollers through the Fair.
Once or twice she thought she glimpsed the red hair of Talaysen, but if it was he, he was gone by the time she reached the spot where she had thought he’d been. There were plenty of other street-singers, though. She thought wistfully of the harvest of coin she’d garnered the night before as she noted that none of them seemed to be lacking for patronage. But now that she was a duly registered entrant in the trials, it would be going against custom, if not the rules, to set herself up among them.
So instead she strolled, and listened, and made mental notes for further songs. There was many a tale she overheard that would have worked well in song-form; many a glimpse of silk-bedecked lady, strangely sad or hectically gay, or velvet-clad lord, sly and foxlike or bold and pompous, that brought snatches of rhyme to mind. By early evening her head was crammed full—and it was time to see how the Guild had ranked the aspirants of the morning.
The list was posted outside the closed tent-flaps, and Rune wasn’t the only one interested in the outcome of the first day’s trials. It took a bit of time to work her way in to look, but when she did—
By the Three! There she was, “Rune of Karthar”— listed third.
She all but floated back to her river-side tree-roost.
The second day of the trials was worse than the first; the aspirants performed in order, lowest ranking to highest. That meant that Rune had to spend most of the day sitting on the hard wooden bench, clutching the neck of her lute in nervous fingers, listening to contestant after contestant and sure that each one was much better on his secondary instrument than she was. She’d only had a year of training on it, after all. Still, the song she’d chosen was picked deliberately to play up her voice and de-emphasize her lute-strumming. It was going to be pretty difficult for any of these others to match her high contralto, (a truly cunning imitation of a boy’s soprano) since most of them had passed puberty.
At long last her turn came. She swallowed her nervousness as best she could, took the platform, and began.