She saw Talaysen wince out of the corner of her eye, and she didn't blame him. No fiddler could know every tune; she was taking a terrible risk with this-
But it was a calculated risk, taken out of experience. If he'd been a bright man, she wouldn't have tried this; he might purposefully pick something really obscure, hoping to baffle her.
But he wasn't bright; he was, in fact, the very opposite. So he did what any stupid man would do; he blurted the first thing that came into his mind. Which was, as she had gambled, "Shepherd's Hey"; one of the half-dozen fiddle-tunes every fiddler wishes he would never have to play again, and which someone in every audience asks for.
She played it, thinking very hard about getting him to release them, and listening with that inner ear for the first notes of the magic. . . .
He started tapping his toe halfway through the first repetition; a good sign, but not quite what she was looking for. But his eyes unfocused a bit, which meant she might be getting through to him-
Or that he was so dense he could be entranced, like a sheep, by perfectly ordinary music.
Three times through. Three times was what had worked with the elves; three times had coaxed pennies from otherwise tight fists.
Two repetitions-into the third-and-
There. Just an echo, a faint sigh of melody, but it was there. She was afraid to play the tune again, though; repeating it a fourth time might break the magic.
"Pick something else," she called out to him, breaking into his reverie.
He stared at her with his mouth hanging open for a moment, then stammered, " 'Foxhunter.' "
Another one of the tunes she had learned to hate while she was still at the Hungry Bear. She sighed; if her feelings got in the way of the music, this might turn out to be a bad idea instead of a good one. But the magic was still with her, and stronger as she brought the "Hey" around into the first notes of "Foxhunter." His eyes glazed over again, and she began to get the sense of the inner melody, stronger, and just a little off the variant she played. She strove to bring them closer, but hadn't quite-not before she'd played "Foxhunter" three times as well.
But this was a subtle, slippery magic that she was trying to work. She had to get inside him somehow, and control the way he thought about them; this called for something quieter. Maybe that was why she hadn't quite managed to touch the magic-tune yet. . . .
This time she didn't ask him to pick something. She slowed the final bars of "Foxhunter," dragged them out and sent the tune into a minor key, and turned the lively jig into something else entirely different; a mournful rendition of "Captive Heart."
That did it! The hidden melody strengthened suddenly; grew so clear, in fact, that she glanced at Talaysen and was unsurprised to see a look of concentration on his face, as if he could hear it too.
Once, twice-and on the third repetition, something dropped into place, and her tune and the magic one united, just as the sun touched the horizon.
She played it to the end, then took her bow from the strings and waited to see what, if anything, the result of her playing was going to be.
The captain shook himself, as if he was waking from a long sleep. "I must-how-I think-" He shook himself again, then drew his knife and cut Talaysen's bonds, offering him a hand to pull the Master to his feet. "I don't know what I was thinking of," the captain said, vaguely. "Thinking two minstrels like you were spies. Stupid, of course. These past couple of weeks, they've been hard on us. We're looking for spies behind every bush, it seems."
"No harm done, captain," Talaysen said heartily, as Rune put up her fiddle as quickly as she could, and slung her pack on her back. She dragged his over to his feet, and he followed her example, still talking. "No harm done at all. Good thinking, really, after all, how could you know? I'm sure your Sire is very pleased to have a captain like you."
When Talaysen stopped for a moment to get his pack in place, Rune took over, pulling on his elbow to get him moving towards the edge of camp and the road. "Of course, how could you know? But we obviously are musicians and you don't need to detain us, now, do you? Of course not. We'll just be on our way. Thank you. No, you needn't send anyone after us, we'll be fine-we know exactly where we need to go, we'll be off your Sire's land before you know it-"
She got Talaysen moving and waved good-bye; Talaysen let her take the lead and wisely kept quiet. The other men-at-arms, seeing that their captain was letting the former captives go, were content to leave things the way they were. One or two of them even waved back as Rune and Talaysen made all the speed they could without (hopefully) seeming to do so.
It wasn't until they were on the open road again that Rune heaved a sigh of relief, and slowed her pace.
"All right, confess," Talaysen said, moving up beside her and speaking quietly out of the corner of his mouth. "I saw what happened, and I thought I heard something-"
"How much do you know about magic?" Rune asked, interrupting him, and gazing anxiously at the darkening sky.
"Not much, only the little Ardis tells me, and what's in songs, of course." He hitched his pack a little higher on his shoulders. "You're telling me that you're a mage?"
She shook her head slightly, then realized he might not be able to see the gesture in the gathering gloom. "I'm not-I mean, I don't know if I am or not. I know what happened with the elves, but I thought that was just because the elves were easier to affect with music than humans. Now-I don't know. I hear something when I'm doing-whatever it is. And this time I think you heard it too."
"Ardis told me every mage has his own way of sensing magic," Talaysen said thoughtfully. "Some see it as a web of light, some as color-patterns, some feel it, some taste or smell it. Maybe a mage who was also a musician would hear it as music-"
He faltered, and she added what she thought he was going to say. "But you heard it too. Didn't you? You heard what I was trying to follow."
"I heard something," he replied, carefully. "Whether it was the same thing you heard or not, I don't know."
"Well, whatever is going on-when I really need something to happen, I think about it, hard, and listen inside for a melody at the same time. When I find it, I try to match it, but since it's a variation on what I've playing, it takes a little bit of time to do that, to figure out what the pattern is going to be. And it seems like I have to play things in repeats of three to get it to work. It's the moment that I match with that variation that I seem to be able to influence people."
"But what about with the elves?" he asked. "You weren't doing any variations then-"
"I don't know, I'm only guessing," she replied, looking to the west through the trees, and wondering how long they had before the sun set. "But what I was playing was all Gypsy music or music already associated with the elves, like the 'Faerie Reel.' Maybe they're more susceptible to music, or maybe the music itself was already the right tune to be magic. Next Midsummer Faire we are going to have to talk to your cousin about all this-I don't like doing things and not knowing how or why they work. Or what they might do if they don't work the way I think they will."