Mercedes Lackey: Castle of Deception

Bard’s Tale, Book 4

Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman

V2. Lots of scanning errors, many fixed. Spell-checked.

‘Roong.’

The lute string snapped, whipping across Kevin’s hand. He yelped, just barely managing not to drop the lute. Instead, he placed the instrument gently down on his cot, then brought his stinging hand to his mouth. Blast it all, that had hurt! Of course it had. He knew better by now than to try tightening a string too far. After all, he’d been a bardling, an apprentice Bard, for what seemed like all his nearly sixteen years.

The welt finally stopped smarting. Kevin got to his feet with an impatient sigh. He didn’t really mind practicing; it was something every musician had to do every day, even his Master. He didn’t even mind being stuck in his cramped little room. Or at least he wouldn’t mind practicing and being cooped up in this stupid room in this stupid inn if only he knew this was all leading somewhere!

If something doesn’t happen soon, something exciting ...

Picking his way across the piles of clothes and music scrolls uttering the floor, the bardling stared out the one window, down to the Blue Swan’s cobblestone courtyard. A merchant was climbing onto his fine bay horse, his traveling robes rich purple in the springtime sunlight. With him rode his bodyguard, two men and a woman in plain leather armor, straight-backed and alert as falcons, hands never straying too far from the swords at their sides. Kevin sighed in envy. They were probably nothing more heroic than common mercenaries, and the journey they were taking was probably nothing more exciting than a ride to the next town, but at least they were going—somewhere, they were doing something! While he—

“Blast it!” the bardling swore under his breath.

He couldn’t stand being stuck here a moment longer. Clattering down the inn’s wooden staircase, Kevin hurried across the common room—empty at this early hour—and headed out into the courtyard. But then he stopped short on the cobblestones. What was he hoping to see? The merchant and his party were already out of sight, riding down the old North Road that ran just outside the inn’s gateway, and there probably weren’t going to be any more travelers today. Discouraged, the bardling turned and went back through the inn to the back entrance, stepping out into town.

Ha. Some town.

Bracklin was little more than a collection of a dozen small, thatched-roof houses clustered behind the inn. A neat, pretty, orderly place, one where nothing different had ever happened and nothing ever would.

And people here actually like it that—way!

Kevin leaned back against the inn’s half-timbered side, the wall chilly on his back, the sun warm on his face. There had never been a day he could remember when he hadn’t dreamed of being a Bard, of singing wonderful songs and traveling to wonderful places, maybe even working the rare, powerful Bardic Magic, healing people with his music or even banishing demons. How could those dreams have turned into something so unbearably dull?

“Morning, Kevin,” a woman’s cheerful voice called from across the unpaved street—

The bardling started. “Uh, good morning, Ada.”

“That’s just like you bard-folk, always off in a world all your own.”

Ada was a round, chubby, middle-aged hen of a woman. Right now her brown hair was tucked up out of her way in an untidy bun, and the sleeves other plain white blouse were pushed back above the elbows as she filled a washtub full of soapy water. “Come for Master Aidan’s clothes, have you? Told you they couldn’t be ready till this afternoon. Had to spend all day yesterday washing the travel dust off the robes of His Nibs.” Ada’s jerk of the head took in the departed merchant and his party. “Eh, won’t bad-mouth the fellow; paid me down to the last coin, with extra added.” Her bright black eyes studied Kevin. “What’s with you, lad?”

—Nothing.”

“Oh, don’t give me ‘nothing.’ What is it?”

Kevin sighed. “Ada, you remember when I first came here.”

The woman smiled warmly. “Don’t I, though. You were such a little boy, almost too small for the lute on your back, clinging to your music teacher’s hand and all wide-eyed with wonder.”

“Mistress Malen was very kind.”

“Well, of course she was! Imagine after all the years of having to teach merchants’ kids without a drop of talent to them coming across someone like you with the true gift for music! No, no, don’t start blushing like that You know it’s true.”

Ada plopped a shirt into her washtub and started scrubbing. “Look you, lad, before she left. Mistress Malen told me all about you: how you were plucking at the strings of your family’s old lute the minute you were old enough to hold it, making up your own little tunes till they didn’t have a choice but to hire her.”

Kevin had to smile. Mistress Malen had been a wonderful first teacher, endlessly patient with her eager pupil. She had also been honest enough to admit his talent was more than she could shape. A little shiver of wonder raced through the bardling as he remembered how she’d shaken her head and told him, “You have the makings of a Bard, boy, a true Bard.”

Ada’s chuckle dragged him back to the present. “So there you were, poor chick, standing in the courtyard of the Blue Swan, fall of wonder, yes, but maybe just a touch scared, too. And no surprise, being apprenticed to Master Aidan like that, a Bard—an^ a hero as well!”

Kevin glanced up at his Master’s room. “You remember how it was, don’t you? When my Master helped King Amber keep his throne, I mean.”

“Bless you, child, how old do you think I am? That was a good thirty years ago! I was a chick myself back then, much younger than you.” She paused thoughtfully. “But I do remember all the celebrating. My, yes! Everyone couldn’t stop chattering about how it had been a Bard, your Bard, who’d used his magical songs o> stop that witch of a would-be usurper.”

“Princess Carlotta.”

“Oh. she might have been a princess, the nasty little creature, but she was a sorceress, all right, dark-hearted as they come! She turned our good king into stone—stone, can you imagine that! And if it hadn’t been for Master Aidan, stone. King Amber would have remained. Bah! Good riddance to her, I say—and all praise to Master Aidan for stopping her.”

Kevin sighed. “That must have been a wonderful time .... “

“Wonderful! Those were the most dangerous days nobody ever wanted! And 1 don’t blame your Master for coming here after it was all over. If anyone ever earned some peace and quiet, it was he!”

That wasn’t what Kevin wanted to hear. At first every day with his Master had seemed wild with excitement After all, with a hero Bard to teach him, why shouldn’t he, too, do great deeds someday! But it hadn’t taken long to learn that his Master had, somewhere over the years, forgotten all about heroism.

“Ada, you’ve lived here in Bracklin all your life, haven’t you?”

“You know it. Never left this town. Never saw any need to.”

“But don’t you ever want to meet new people?”

“I do! Enough travelers come into the inn for that.”

“That’s not what I mean. Don’t you ever get bored? Want to see new places, do new things?”

Ada looked at him as though he’d gone mad. “Why should I want something as foolish as that? I have a nice house, good, steady work. Love you, lad, I think the spring’s gotten into you.” She shooed him away with soapy hands. “Now, get along with you, Kevin. I have work to do.”