“Tell me what they said.”
“‘On a plain of bone, in a ring of stone ...’ ” He went through it effortlessly, his eyes still shut, seeing again image after image guiding him to the strange, bitter end. “‘... No end of days nor memory.’ ” He opened his eyes, finally beginning to feel the heat, and looked at Declan. “What was that? What did I do?”
The bard looked as strangely pleased as he had when Nairn had coaxed the jewels from his harp. “You found the magic in the words; they spoke to the magic in you. That’s the beginning of power. You were born with the great gift for it, but you had no use for it until you met me. No one here could explain it to you. The bards of the land forgot their magic long ago.”
Nairn was silent, still gazing at him. He had no idea what such words meant before that night; now, he knew enough to begin to feel his way into them, as into unknown waters, find their depths, their hidden currents, their dangers.
“It was always in you,” Declan added. “Born in you. You just had no use for it before. In this land, the bards have forgotten their magic.”
“It’s not that obvious,” Nairn commented, still clinging like a lover to the warmth, as close as he could get to the boundary between desire and danger. “Looking for magic in the simple language of your Circle of Days. ‘Fish,’ ‘Thread,’ ‘Eye.’ ” He heard the words he spoke and shivered suddenly despite the flames. “What made you look there?”
“The poem itself. It promises such marvels to the bard who understands its riddles, its trials, and such sorrow beyond measure to those who fail to understand.”
Nairn was silent. He turned away from the fire to ask the bard with wonder, “How could you read it? You were a stranger, faced with an ancient language carved in stone that no one else spoke.”
He glimpsed the ghost of the bard’s smile, the flick of fire in his eyes. “I saw the power within the words before I even knew what they meant. The way you did, tonight. They made me feel them before they revealed themselves as the simple, ordinary language of daily life. I searched, as King Oroh moved across the five kingdoms, for those who understood that language. I found no one. Until I met you in the Marches, I thought the ancient knowledge had vanished completely from this land.”
“The Circle of Days,” Nairn whispered, seeing such days on the plain, the simplicity of stone, root, spear. “I wonder how they used their power, the ones who spoke the words.”
“I wonder, too,” Declan said softly. “We can only keep studying them; perhaps they’ll tell us that. They are your doorway into King Oroh’s court. Learn them. Work with them. Test them and yourself. But you must also face another test before you can be called Royal Bard of Belden. There is also the matter of music.” Nairn looked at him puzzledly. “The Royal Bard must also be the greatest musician in the realm. How would you fare against the court bards of Belden?”
“I have no idea,” he answered, startled. “I never met one. Will I?”
“By tradition, in my land, the king’s bard is chosen from a great meeting of bards who compete with both their music and their powers to win the position. I cannot do less for King Oroh in Belden. I have heard the music in courts throughout this land. Will you let me teach you?”
Nairn could only stare at him, stunned by the thought of such a contest. One thing to be best at what no one else knew, he thought; another for the master of the bladder-pipe and the marching drum to challenge the court bards of the five kingdoms. Declan came to stand beside him at the hearth. He lifted a hand; poised above Nairn’s shoulder, it hesitated, finally settled. Nairn, looking down at the flames again, did not shake it off. The bard was offering him more than he had ever dreamed, he realized dazedly; he had only to accept it.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Teach me. How else can I learn what else I don’t know?”
Declan smiled, a true smile for once, with neither bitterness nor reserve in it. “The court music will be the easy part,” he promised. “I have all the instruments they use.”
“When—”
“Soon, but not before you are ready.” His hand tightened briefly, then turned Nairn gently toward the door. “Get some sleep.”
Nairn stopped at the threshold, looked at him again. “Were you waiting for me tonight?”
“You kept me awake. Of course I was waiting.”
Thus began Nairn’s brief and disastrous exploration of the most ancient bardic arts.
The circle of his own days lost their boundaries then, became fluid, unpredictable. When he wasn’t learning exacting courtly music from Declan, he drifted like a dreamer or a drunkard, enchanted by every spoken word, every silent named thing around him, without paying attention to who had spoken, or what responsibility he might take for the things he saw: the dwindling pile of wood beside the fire, the candle guttering, drowning its wick in its wax, drawing the sudden dark behind it. He saw “wood,” “fire,” “dark” as separate, powerful entities; what they meant to him changed with every glimpse of them. He had no idea how the other students in the circle had fared with the task Declan had given them. They spoke around him; he might have been hearing their voices underwater, so intently did he separate their words from any human origin. Only that mattered: the word, spoken, and the image, the burning rose of power that blossomed at the sound.
He heard Muire’s voice occasionally; it held another kind of power.
“I miss you in the kitchen,” she said one morning when he came down for breakfast. “You used to scatter words like little gifts in odd places. You used to see what I needed done almost before I did.”
He mumbled something absently around a bite of bread and butter, swallowed, and saw her face with unexpected clarity, instead of an indistinguishable blur in the background of his thoughts. It looked wistful, uncertain, words he hadn’t learned yet from the “Circle of Days.”
“I’m finding my way into something,” he said a trifle incoherently. “I’ll come back one of these days, I think.”
She nodded. “That’s what Salix told me. She asked about you.”
Salix. She had words, he remembered, all over her jars and boxes, sewn into cloth bags full of dried things. Already Muire’s face was fading; the unknown words glowing in his head, brighter than all the old, familiar words surrounding him.
“Salix.” He tore another piece from the loaf, shambled off with it. “I’ll go and see her.”
He did so, wandering out the door with his breakfast in one hand, his cloak in the other. He hardly noticed the steady fall of snow the clouds were sifting out of themselves, and how he slid on the fresh layers as he walked down the hill. He entered Salix’s cottage without knocking, prowled silently around, examining the collection of twigs she left like a secret path he was compelled to follow, all the while a tall, white-haired figure stood just beyond his attention, stirring and stirring her cauldron over the fire.
“What are you doing?” he heard, and then himself, just as distantly:
“Taking your words.”
“Nairn,” she said, and he blinked. Another world fell into place around him: the old healer’s cottage, with her weavings on the floor, across the backs of chairs, her tidy shelves full of all her makings, neatly stored and labeled.
He looked at her and blinked again, feeling as though she had shaken him awake. So she had, he realized; she had said the word that meant him.
She gave him a smile that was somewhere between exasperated and amused. “Muire said you had become entirely impossible. ‘Distracted’ was the word she used. ‘Witless’ was maybe what she thought. Do you need a potion?”
“A potion?”
“Is there anything,” she said slowly and clearly, “I can make for you?”