a silver with clanging accuracy into the bowl on the bar wench’s tray. ‘Drink to my health,’ he invited Dakar. ‘The change should pay for the spill on the floor, and keep your throat wet through this evening.’
Startled speechless, the Mad Prophet let himself be ushered away and seated with a squish of wet clothing at a trestle off to one side. Oddly uneasy with the way his luck had turned, he sucked a long pull from his tankard, licked foam from his moustache, and grimaced at the lye taste of soap. ‘Surely a ballad?’ he ventured obliquely.
Medlir sat very still, his lank hair now dry and fallen in fronds against his temples. ‘Actually not. I met your master.’
A nasty, tingling chill started in Dakar’s middle and ended in raised hair on his neck. ‘Asandir? Where?’ He twisted on his bench, his eyes edged white like oyster buttons. Then, in stinging suspicion, he said, ‘But of course! You travel with Halliron. ‘The Masterbard’s friendly with the Fellowship.’
‘Should that trouble you?’ Medlir signalled across a slat of shadow to draw the attention of the barmaid.
‘Oh no,’ Dakar said quickly. The girl arrived, annoyed to a hip-switch of skirts that extended to grudging service in replenishing the now emptied tankard. The Mad Prophet grinned at her, raised his drink to Medlir, and added, ‘To your health.’
The door banged open to admit yet another knot of villagers, men in boots stained dark from the byre and cloaks that in dampness exuded an aroma of wet sheep. Matrons carried baskets of dyed fleece for carding, or distaffs and spindles and tablet looms, or nubby old socks to be darned. The unmarried young came dressed to dance. The village’s cramped little tavern quickly became crowded, and the laughter and chat by the fireside mounted to a roar of jocular noise.
Aware that the trestles were filling, Medlir arose in clear-eyed regret. ‘I’m needed. Perhaps later, we can find time to talk.’
Ever and always agreeable to the man who would keep him in beer, the Mad Prophet grinned lopsidedly back. ‘Here’s to later,’ he said; and he drank.
Day progressed into evening. Half sotted, still in his stockings, and wedged like a partridge between a swarthy little gem-cutter with a squint, and a fresh-faced miner’s wife, Dakar roared out a final, bawdy chorus in excruciating, tuneless exuberance. Overcome by wine and good spirits, the woman beside him flung an arm around his shoulders and kissed him. Dakar, beatific, alternately sampled her lips and his tankard, by now refilled enough times that it no longer tasted of washing suds.
The common room had grown from close to stifling, every available table and chair crammed beyond sane capacity. Planks sagged and swayed to the weight of packed bodies. The floor bricks glistened with slopped spirits. The air smelled of sweaty wool and hung thick enough to cut, and the clientele, either standing, sitting, or comatose in its half-unlaced linens, no longer bothered with decorum. Halliron had not played, but his apprentice was skilled, and possessed of an energy that made the trestle planks bounce to the beat of their stamping.
Which should not have surprised, Dakar thought, in a passing break between reels. Halliron had auditioned candidates for apprenticeship lifelong. This man he had chosen in his twilight years had been the sole applicant to match his exacting standards. Medlir applied himself with abandon to the lyranthe, spinning for sheer pleasure the ditties, the drinking songs and the dances that an upland village starved for entertainment in an ice storm could serve him in bottomless demand.
Midnight came and passed. Two casks had been emptied to the dregs, with a third one drained nearly dry. The innkeeper out of clemency finally elbowed to the fore and pressed a plate of stew on the musician. Medlir flashed him a fast smile, bent aside in consultation with his master, and at a nod from the old man, surrendered the lyranthe to Halliron.
The hum of appreciation dropped to sudden, awed silence.
Halliron Masterbard arose and regarded his audience in wry delight. ‘By Ath, you had better make some noise,’ he said, his voice pitched for the sleepy child who slumped in a young matron’s lap. ‘Too much quiet, and the folks near at hand will notice my knuckle joints crack.’
Medlir arranged the stool and the Masterbard sat. He adjusted the lyranthe in blue-veined hands, and tested the strings for tuning. The pitch was perfect; Medlir knew his trade. But the old man fussed at the peg-heads out of performer’s habit.
The stillness swelled and deepened. From the rear of the tavern, a reveller called out, ‘Master singer! Folk passing out of Etarra speak of a battle fought in Deshir some years back against that sorcerer prince who shifts shadows. Do you know aught of that?’
Halliron’s hand snapped off a run, distinct as a volley of arrows.’ ‘Yes.’ He locked eyes for a second with Medlir, who set aside his meal and said something contrite about forgetting to check on the pony. To the rough-clad miner’s request the Masterbard replied, ‘I can play that ballad. No one better. For in fact, I was there.’
A stir swept the room, loud with murmurs. Folk resettled in their seats, while Halliron damped his strings, bent his head, and veiled in a fall of white hair, sat through a motionless moment. He then made the lyranthe his voice. His fingers sighed across strings to spill a falling minor arpeggio, from which melody emerged, close-woven and transparent as a spell. Notes climbed, and spiralled, and blended, drawing the listeners into a fabric of shared tension.
‘You won’t feel too drunk when he reaches the ending of this one,’ Medlir said to Dakar as he passed on his way to the door.
The Mad Prophet was too besotted to respond beyond a grunt, but the gem-cutter beside him ventured comment. ‘How so? Won’t we be stirred by the war’s young hero, that blond-haired prince from the west?’
Medlir’s lips thinned to tightness. ‘What is any war but a massacre?’ Through the drawing beat of the secondary chords, he shrugged off introspective impatience. ‘Even without lyrics or story, Halliron’s melody by itself could wring tears from a statue.’
The balding gem-cutter looked dubious; while Medlir melted into the crowd to resume his course for the stables, Dakar tangled fingers in his beard, fuddled by thought that the eyes of Halliron’s apprentice should be some other colour than grey-hazel.
Then the spangled brilliance of the Masterbard’s instrument was joined by his beautiful voice, haunting and rich and clear-toned; in its thrall every listener was transported to a morning in spring when the mists had lifted over the marshes of the river Tal Quorin. The odds in their favour ten to one, a town garrison had marched on the forest bred clansmen who dared shelter Arithon s’Ffalenn, the renegade Prince of Rathain also called Master of Shadow.
‘What law has sanctioned a war for one life, when no bloodshed was sought at Etarra? Shadow fell in defence, for no man died by command of the prince to be harrowed.’
There came an uneasy shifting of feet, of creaking boards, and flurried whispers that Halliron’s art skilfully reined back short of outrage. For this ballad’s course commemorated no beloved saviour in glittering gold and sapphires, avenging with righteous bolts of light. This spare, driving, tragic account held no bright hero at the ending, but only men ruinously possessed by their hatreds to grasp the first reason to strike down long-standing enemies.
‘Who shall weep, Lord Steiven, Earl of the North, for the refuge that failed to spare your clan? The prince in your care once begged to fare forth, then stayed; his liegemen were fate-cursed to stand.’
Notes
