“Rhapsody?” Ashe demanded, his voice rising involuntarily; Achmed stepped on his foot to bring him into a low modulation again. “You have seen her?”
The old man shook his head. “Not since the Council, m’lord.” His eyes widened as realization set in. “She—she is not the woman for whom they are searching?”
The travelers’ eyes met; after a moment Achmed nodded.
“Yes,” Ashe said, trying to keep his voice from betraying him.
Alarm flooded the old man’s features. “No, gods, no. Not again, gods, not again. What happened?”
“Again?” Achmed demanded. “Tell us how you know her.”
Old Barney looked over his shoulder for a moment and, noting that the tavern had returned to its normal business, tuned back and spoke.
“I knew her in the old world,” he said sadly. “She was a favorite patron of my wife, Dee, and mine. She used to study her music in my tavern, taking a back table, writing away on sheets of parchment, never causing a problem. We both loved her. I would not be here speaking with you now if it hadn’t been for her.”
“Why?” asked Ashe.
The barkeep’s eyes blinked in the dark tavern.
“An accident, I’m sure, m’lord. On the last day I saw her in the old world, she handed me a bit o’ music she had graphed, telling me it was my name, and that if I should ever come upon a troubadour, I should get him to play it for me. She was in a hurry at the time, on the run from a dangerous man, so I slipped the paper into my apron pocket and forgot about it. I never saw her in that world again.
“A fortnight or so later, a traveling minstrel did come into the old Hat and Feathers—I kept the establishment name when I built the new one—and, in barter for a pint, I asked him to play the tune Rhapsody had graphed for me. It was a catchy melody, one that fit my mind well, as it should, bein’ my name and all. I had no understanding of Lirin Namers and their powers—she was just a sweet girl in a bad situation, and the tune was pleasing to my ear, so I whisded it every day; got to be an unconscious thing. Drove poor Dee to distraction, may she be restin’ peacefully in the Afterlife.
“The Seren War came and went; my beloved Dee grew old and passed from this world to the next, life went on, day into day, year into year, century into century, and yet I didn’t seem to age past the point I had been on the day she gave the scrap of music to me.
“I didn’t figure that out ’til much later, though. I just thought perhaps I had a Lirin ancestor, or some other long-lived type. Until the day I met up with a Lirin Namer aboard the ship I was leaving Serendair on; he was a pleasant fellow, and addressed me by my name, though I was certain he had never seen me before, and could not have known my profession. ‘How do you come to know my name?’ I asked. He laughed and said, ‘You told me yourself, good man. It is the tune you are whistling.’
“I came to know him on the voyage—we both had refugeed with the First Fleet, and traveled in Merithyn’s convoy of ships—and it was in the course of that time I learned what had accounted for my longevity. In the whistling of my name, over and over, each day, I was in a sense remaking myself, returning myself to the ‘vibrational state,’ whatever that be, I had been the day before.”
His eyes gleamed brighter in the smoky air of the tavern. “Then, arriving here, we all had it, that immortality; some cherished it, others grew to hate it, but they, unlike me, had not already had the stroke of luck to live well past my time before I even left the Island. Had it not been for that last gift of your wife, Lord Gwydion, I would never have come to this place. And while I have seen a great many terrible things, and lived through times when I wished I were in the Afterlife with my Dee, I have to say that on the whole, it has been a gift unparalleled.”
Ashe put his hand over the old man’s; it was trembling, the distended knuckles of the arthritic fingers shaking violently.
“The man who was pursuing my wife that day,” he said quietly, trying to contain the emotion in his own voice, “did you know him?”
Old Barney’s eyes opened even wider, their pale blue irises and white scleras standing out in stark contrast to the dim light of the tavern.
“Michael, the Wind of Death,” he whispered, as if afraid to say the name aloud. “Yes, I knew of him, saw him once or twice in fact. Why?”
“It is he that may have her now, or is at least pursuing her,” Achmed said bluntly. “Most likely he is also the one who is laying waste to the seacoast. He is no longer the Wind of Death, but the Wind of Fire, being die whore of a F’dor spirit.”
“Gods,” Old Barney choked, making a countersign upon his forehead. “No.”
Ashe’s grip tightened on his hand.
“Help us,” he said tersely. “I believe you can. Rhapsody and I saw the Prophetess of Yarim, the Seer of the Future, at die beginning of summer; she uttered a prophecy that may have partially been about you.”
The old man trembled more violently. “Manwyn? Manwyn—named me in a prophecy?”
“I don’t know for certain, but it seems so,” said Ashe. “She told her to beware the Past, that it sought to have her, to harm her, and to aid her. And then she said: ‘Long ago a promise made, long ago a name conveyed, long ago a voice was stayed—three debts to be paid.’”
“I—I don’t know that I have ever been spoken of in a prophecy before,” the elderly barkeep said nervously. “Your—great-aunt frightens me; I witnessed her madness at the Councils long ago. To know that she may have seen me through her sextant is a terrifying thought, m’lord. I am only a simple barkeep, and a very old man.”
“But do you seek to aid my wife?” Ashe asked desperately. “I believe that you might be the past that seeks to do so.”
“Yes, of course,” Barney whispered. “For though she is mad, the Seer’s words are true; a name was conveyed, my name, as I have told you, and I am alive as a result. It is a very great debt I owe her, and I am eager to repay it. I just do not know—”
His voice trailed off suddenly as a thought occurred. His face became serious, the fear dissipating in his eyes.
“Perhaps I do at that,” he said softly.
“Tell us,” Achmed demanded.
“Please, Grandfather,” Ashe added, trying to quell the dragon that was rising, impatient, in his blood.
“You said that it was Michael, the Wind of Death, that pursues her now?”
“Yes.”
Old Barney nodded.
“I know a secret, one that I have shared with no one, not in this life or in the Afterlife,” he said quietly. “I have guarded it all these years. But perhaps in telling you now, I can repay the debt I owe Rhapsody, and aid her as once she aided me. It may be a secret of power in these times.”
“What is it?” Achmed asked, clutching the table board, he had not touched his ale, and was focused on the man as if he wished to feel rather than simply hear his answer.
The old man drew closer as the noise of the dim tavern grew louder in the distance. His words were spoken so softly that both the sovereigns had tc strain to hear him.
“MacQuieth lives,” he said.
45
Silence reigned for a moment in the back of the tavern.
When Achmed and Ashe had recovered their voices, they spoke at the same time, their words tumbling over one another.
“Where? How do you know? MacQuieth Monodiere Nagall? Impossible-he has been dead for fourteen centuries. What—
“Shhh!” Old Barney hissed, his eyes darting furtively around the tavern satisfied after a moment that they had not been overheard, he turned back to the two sovereigns.