“Zoe.”
She opened her own eyes, blinked the sumptuous room around her, the bright tapestries and carpets, the ancient, legendary instruments that Quennel had collected through the decades, each in its special place. She struggled between dreams and memory, straightening in the armchair, and remembered the bard tucked into silk and fur and glowing damask, safe in his bed beside her. She turned to him, smiling; the smile smacked like a fledgling against hard glass, dropped.
He had finally opened his own eyes, but the grooves of the frown between them had only dug deeper.
“Master Quennel. Are you in pain?”
“Did you sing?”
“Without you? Of course not.”
“Then that bard from Grishold who wants my life is in the great hall playing for the king.”
She felt her own brows draw together, but answered gently, “Many bards in this kingdom want your position. This bard will be gone like a spell of nasty weather in a few days, and you will be playing for the king again tomorrow.”
He sought her eyes finally. “You don’t like him, either.”
“Not for a moment.” She hesitated, feeling him want more, his weary gaze drawing at her. “I’m not sure why,” she added finally. “Except that what we see—what he tells us to see—seems false. He is simply not convincing as a country innocent from the lonely tors of Grishold.”
“Have you heard him play tonight?”
“No. I’ve been mostly here with you.”
“Go and listen to him.”
She hesitated, reluctant to leave him. “He must have stopped by now.”
“No. I can hear him.” How, in that ancient wing of the castle, through walls thick with history, Zoe could not imagine. She listened, heard only the endless silence of stone. “Go and come back and tell me if he’s any good.”
Quennel must have been playing the bard’s music in his own head, Zoe guessed as she hurried down the stairways and quiet corridors, passing from rough-hewn walls and flagstones to marble floors and oak wainscoting before she heard the distant, muted din from the hall. As she drew closer, the noise ebbed oddly, like a tide withdrawing, into absolute, astonishing silence.
A harp note broke the silence.
She entered the great hall from the back and found the guests motionless in their chairs, as though some enchantment had been flung over them. The enchanter loosed a mournful cascade of notes, and she stopped, stood unobtrusively in the shadows between the wall sconces. Kelda sat at the Royal Bard’s customary place, on a gilded stool in the center of the broad square formed by the tables. He faced the dais table, where the royal family and the visitors from Grishold seemed to have forgotten the food on their plates. A single wine cup flashed among the statues; as it fell again, clinking against cutlery, Zoe saw Jonah Cle behind it. Nobody else moved.
The bard struck a chord, and she recognized the ancient Grishold ballad he began.
It was a simple, powerful tale of a knight returning to his home in the western mountains after battle and imprisonment to find that all he remembered and loved had vanished. Only the birds in the rafters of his ruined hall were left to give him a message from his wife, to tell him what had happened in a language, like the harping, best understood by the heart.
Zoe felt her eyes burn at the sinuous, melting voice. She blinked away the tears, astonished at herself. On the dais, a couple of the young women were weeping openly, smiling through their tears at the bard. One of the household guards standing behind the king raised a hand to flick away something at the corner of his eye. The knight wandered away finally, exiled to his memories, riding forever into his past.
There was dead silence while the last chord flared like an ember and slowly died.
Then a sloppy, unwieldy wave of noise flooded the hall. Cups flashed, thumped; porcelain and cutlery collided; servants moved again, proffering dishes that had, for a time, been forgotten. It was as though the entire court had been spellbound, Zoe thought. Kelda put down his harp, then everyone could speak again. He accepted their accolades with a smile, enjoying the warmth flowing to him from all over the hall. Finally, he picked up his harp again, began a light, familiar dance that the musicians in the gallery above him knew, and one by one they leaped in after him.
Someone came down from the gallery stairs near Zoe and saw her. She recognized Phelan’s pale head under the lamplight and realized then how tensely she stood, hands gripping her elbows, her whole body harp-string taut, waiting, it seemed, for the descent of the harper’s hand. Phelan came over, leaned against the wall beside her.
“How is Master Quennel?”
“Physically fine, the physician said. Mentally—” She hesitated. “He’s in a powerful stew. About what, I’m not sure. Death, maybe.” She searched Phelan’s eyes, found him unsurprised. “I’ve never seen him so dark. He sent me down here to listen to Kelda. I think—though it makes no sense—that Quennel blames him for the accident.”
Phelan loosed the ghost of a laugh. “So does my father. I have no idea why, either. Have you eaten? There’s a supper laid out in the gallery for the musicians.”
She nodded, her eyes moving again to Kelda. “Maybe I’ll go up there, while he’s down here.”
Phelan regarded her curiously. “You’re avoiding him? He seems harmless enough. Very gifted, as well as very ambitious. A bit crude, suggesting that Quennel might like to retire.”
“I suspect that Quennel thought Kelda was trying to help him retire.”
“Forcing him to choke on a swallow of salmon mousse?”
“A salmon bone.”
“Well.” His mouth crooked. “There is poetic precedence in that. Taste the salmon and understand all things.”
“Including your own death,” she said somberly. “No wonder Quennel is frothing.”
She went up to the gallery, where the musicians were rollicking happily along with whatever Kelda tossed to them. She made a hasty meal of roast beef studded with garlic, leeks braised in cream, strawberry tart. Then she hurried back through the castle, the noisy party receding again behind her, to the bard’s chamber.
He was still awake, still brooding, still not inclined to share his thoughts. He watched as she came to settle in the chair beside him.
“Do you want me to send for some supper?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”
“I’ve swallowed enough for one night,” he said grimly. “Is he good?”
“Yes. He’s beyond good. Some of the things he’s playing are more suitable to a country court than for a formal supper given by the king. But he brought the entire hall to silence—and much of it to tears—with his playing of ‘The Knight Returned to Grenewell Hall.’ His voice could charm a fish into a frying pan.”
He stirred peevishly. “Don’t talk about fish.” Then he was silent for so long that Zoe thought he had fallen asleep. He sighed finally, and spoke, his voice hoarse; she could hear the weariness in it. “I’ll take that sleeping draught now. I’m finished.”
She poured it quickly into his cup, added water and a little wine as the physician had instructed, and watched him drink.
“Shall I stay with you until you fall asleep?”
“No.” He put the cup down and reached for her hand, smiling finally. “Thank you, my dear, for staying with me. Come and see me tomorrow. I want to talk to you then.”
“I will,” she promised, mystified, and sent his servant in to turn down the lamps.
She sensed Kelda at the school before she saw him the next day. Rumors of his playing had wasted no time getting up the hill. The masters’ refectory was full of the invisible bard when Zoe came up for breakfast. His name had somehow melted into the butter for the breakfast toast, insinuated itself under the shells and into the yolks of coddled eggs, so that a single bite transformed itself and fell as “Kelda” from everyone’s lips. The masters were preoccupied with him, their expressions complex as they spoke softly together; wonder vied with envy, even a touch of wariness, in their faces. Small knots of students chirped and twittered together in hallways, and under the oak trees when Zoe passed to teach her singing class. Exclamations, moans, and fervid sighs escaped them with all the mindless, irresistible force of steam spewing out of a kettle spout. He was to visit this class, she heard, and then that, and then at noon, he would play for everyone.