“Princess Beatrice,” he said, looking so innocently amazed, she could have kissed him. “You’ve stepped out of an old fairy tale.”
“Let me guess,” she heard herself babble breathlessly, just to keep her startled eyes off the bard. “The one about the maiden who cleans hearths by day and dances with the prince by moonlight.”
He nodded, smiling. “She rises from the ashes, phoenixlike, under the fires of the moon. I suppose that tale would be apt, though ash bins were farthest from my mind.”
She felt the bard’s dark gaze drawing at her as Phelan spoke; somehow, in that crush, she heard his indrawn breath, gathering words to speak, to force her to look at him. But another voice blundered into his, deep and jovial, trained to command attention and overwhelm the competition.
“Ah, good. Here you are, Master Kelda. I would like you to meet Zoe Wren, whose voice you will hear tonight. She is a young bard from the school, nearly finished with her studies there. We are, of course, also eagerly anticipating your own performance.”
The impervious Royal Bard Quennel, his white hair tufted like a skylark’s crest, beamed upon the gathering. Zoe, in flowing, twilight-colored silks, greeted the princess first with her usual courtesy, then shifted her sharp, lovely eyes to the bard. She seemed oddly impervious to his charms.
“Master Kelda,” she said briskly in her strong, sweet voice. “I do look forward to your playing. I expect you will work magic in the great hall.”
That caused Jonah Cle to snort in his wine for some reason. Kelda regarded Zoe with interest, as though she were an unfamiliar species. “I have heard your voice,” he remarked. “Very clearly, when we all arrived. It was, as Master Quennel says, astonishing.”
She smiled cheerfully. “Yes, I suppose it was.”
A platter of tiny glazed tarts shaped like scallop shells carrying an oyster beside a black pearl of roe presented itself and was ignored, except by Beatrice, who nibbled when she was unnerved by undercurrents, and by Quennel, who swallowed the briny mouthful whole and engulfed them all again in his pleasure.
“Tell us, Master Kelda, do you travel often beyond Grishold? I don’t believe we have seen you before in King Lucien’s court. Nor, indeed, in his father’s, though you might have been a student then. I have been here in this court so long I lose track of the years.”
Kelda shook his head, causing Jonah to emit another peculiar noise. “I travel rarely. And I have never been in the ancient school on the hill.”
“You must go, then!”
“Yes, tomorrow. The masters have invited me, and Lord Grishold will not need me. But surely, Master Quennel, you have played for three kings in this court: King Lucien’s grandfather as well.”
“Ah, yes—I became Royal Bard just before he died. I’m surprised that you remembered. I did not.”
“We listen greedily in Grishold for news of Caerau. It takes the chill out of the long winter evenings. I’m in awe of your stamina. Your musicianship. You have been in this position for so long that surely you are tempted, now and then, to yield such strenuous duties to a younger bard?”
“Never,” Quennel said complacently. “I have the voice and fingers of a far younger man, and a memory rigorously trained in the school on the hill. I forget that I am old when I play.”
“You make us all forget,” Phelan murmured, glancing askance at the visiting bard and the turn he had given the pleasantries. That brought him Kelda’s attention.
“You are also at the school, I believe?”
“I am,” Phelan answered, sounding like Jonah at his most arid. “But I have no ambitions and no interest at all in trying to fill Quennel’s boots. He is a very great bard, an example to us all, and I can only wish him to keep playing for the Peverell kings as long as he himself wishes.”
“Which would be,” Quennel added, smiling, “until I draw my final breath between lines and leave one last verse unsung to haunt these old stones forever.”
“Admirable,” Kelda said with enthusiasm, and stopped a tray of toast points bearing minute molds of salmon, with capers for eyes. “We can all learn from your example.”
“You see,” Quennel began affably, and paused to pop a salmon into his mouth before he continued. He swallowed, paused again, swallowed again. Beatrice, working on her own fish, saw his face flush the hue of well-cooked salmon, then of uncooked beef. She nearly inhaled her own bite. Jonah said something sharply to Quennel, who was beginning to sag oddly against the startled Zoe. She struggled to hold him upright. As he slid, Jonah threw out his arm; it struck the old man hard below his ribs. The wine in Jonah’s hand splashed all over Quennel, and the salmon flew out of him like the final word on the subject before he slumped to the floor at their feet.
Chapter Ten
Given the mysterious nature and gifts of the bard who honored King Oroh’s court and sat at his right hand at councils, the king had handed Declan a conundrum. Declan had replaced himself, the first time, with someone he already knew and trusted, a skilled musician, presumably with the kinds of talents Oroh expected. This bard had also traveled in the king’s company from their native land. The court chronicler’s notes on the matter indicate that the bard’s sudden and completely unexpected death was indeed a stunning loss for the king. In his own land, the bard might have been easily replaced. In the new Kingdom of Belden, bards were trained far differently, and what King Oroh had come to expect in his Royal Bard simply did not exist. “The young bard left no one in this wild country to replace him,” the chronicler wrote. “King Oroh has no choice but to summon Declan back to him if he can find no other of such necessary skills.”
What exactly were these “necessary skills”?
Either they were kept secret, or alluded to between the lines, or everyone so easily recognized them that there was no need for explanation. Any of these are possible, since nobody ever explained why a gifted bard native to any of the five lost kingdoms would not have suited Oroh as easily. References are made to Declan’s unusual powers, both in historical records and in ballads. But in records, the references are brief, subtle, and sometimes barely there.
“The mist that flowed that third day over the adversary [at the Battle of the Welde] Declan raised with his skills, and thus was the King of the Marches brought low.”
Is Oroh’s chronicler actually telling us that Declan raised a fog that blinded only King Anstan’s army?
If so, such gifts that died with Oroh’s latest bard must have been extremely difficult to replace. Indeed, the terse passage casts a glance askew at all of King Oroh’s victories, and explains, in some occult fashion, his swift, triumphant usurping of the powers of five kings. He anchored his fleet in the foggy waters of the Stirl in early spring; by the next spring he declared himself King of Belden.
The modern historian can only suspend disbelief and conclude that the king, requesting that Declan find a successor to a bard with like powers, must have been well aware of the extremely hard nut he handed to the aging bard to crack.