Patricia McKillip - The Bards of Bone Plain

Zoe smiled, answered as softly, “We could sing it now, together. The hall is empty; the guards will never tell.”

They tuned their harps, began the centuries-old ballad, with its unhappy ending most likely as close to the truth of the matter as a bard ever got.

They hadn’t yet reached it themselves when the great hall began an eerie counterpoint of its own: voices, a great many steps, some slowing, others tapping away in a spiderweb of directions, laughter, exclamations, all tangled together and becoming noisier. Quennel, looking both annoyed and perplexed, finally laid his hands flat on his strings, signaling silence. Zoe set her harp down reluctantly, regretting the unsung ending. She followed Quennel into the gallery, where they could look over the oak balustrade down into the hall.

“He’s early,” Quennel murmured with surprise.

A formidable bald man in brocade and black leather was kissing the queen, whose voice was raised in surprise as well. Courtiers hurried across the hall to join her; pages were running out to summon others; the duke’s wife and their entourage crowded in behind him, while footmen slipped behind them and out to see to the luggage. Zoe hung over the rail, watching the colorful crowd, the gathering of the king’s children hurrying through this door, that, to greet their uncle. The cacophony reached a lively crescendo before she saw the face in the crush watching her.

A young, big, restive man with dark eyes, his long hair black and gleaming like a racehorse, had tossed his head back to scan the gallery. He heard us, Zoe thought with astonishment. All that noise around him, and he looked for the hidden musicians.

“Who—” she began, and stopped herself, knowing who, of course, he must be, even before she spotted his harp.

The duke’s bard smiled at her as though he had heard, through the tumult, even that fragment of a question. Her hands tightened a little on the wood. She amended her first impression.

“Who is that kelpie?”

She realized, at Quennel’s dry chuckle, that she had spoken aloud, and, from the glint in the midnight eyes, the sudden flash of teeth, that the kelpie had heard her as well.

Neither history nor poetry adequately explains why Nairn decided to stay at Declan’s school. Aside from any ambiguous feelings about Declan, which are examined with great enthusiasm in ballads but rarely documented, the choice was unexpected. Most likely, Nairn had never been to a school in his life. They were few and far between in the Marches and of rare interest to a crofter’s son. Nairn was born to wander; he learned his craft on the road, and though he had roamed widely before reaching Stirl Plain, he still had much of Belden to lure him onward, new instruments to discover and learn, much music, in both taverns and courts, he had never heard.

And yet, on Stirl Plain, he stopped and stayed.

As a teacher or a student, no one is certain. Ballads tend to focus on the relationship between Nairn and Declan. The school itself becomes a backdrop for their competitions, their feuds, their friendship. They are thrall to the whims of changing story; truth becomes whatever suits the tale. They challenge one another to lengthy bardic riddle-games; they fall in love with the same woman (this apparently despite the difference in their ages); Nairn seeks revenge for Declan’s loyalty to the king who conquered the Marches. If there is any truth to these incidents, history remains mute. The most coherent documented references to Nairn at this time are in the household records of the school.

For the scant year in question, they are noted daily by the first school steward. He began his records in the spring before Nairn joined the school, perhaps watching, as he wrote in his high tower room, the building going up around the tower beneath him that grew to look, by summer’s end, much as it does today.

“Accounts rendered this day to Hewn Flout, cobbler, for six pair of sandals for various students and masters, and for patching Nairn’s boots.”

“Accounts rendered this day to Lyth Holme for a breeding sow, chosen by Nairn.”

“Accounts received this day by cloth merchant, Han Speller, his daughter and his servant for lodgings and for stable, and for one crockery washbasin broken by said daughter against a door Nairn closed behind him.”

And so on, prosaic entries rarely referencing even an echo of the tumultuous ballads, all signed: “by my hand Dower Ren, Steward.”

He would have walked away from Declan’s school without one last glance at his unfinished stew, but for that one unexpected thunderbolt: Lord Deste’s daughter. He had sung a thousand times a thousand tales and ballads about love and never felt it once. It was, he realized starkly the longer he lingered, like singing about fire without ever experiencing its warmth and wonders, its pain, its absolute necessity. He had strewn the word as freely as wildflowers along his path through the world, tossing it here, there, like a small, pleasing gift that cost nothing and would be forgotten even before it withered. He had never before come up against his own absolute ignorance of it.

Declan tended to dwell on the question of Nairn’s ignorance as well, though he seemed to be complaining about something entirely different, when Nairn bothered to pay attention to him. Mostly he did not. He did whatever he was asked: he carried stones, shaped wood for beams and rafters, shared songs of the Marches with the other students, learned their songs, learned to read, without thinking about much of anything but the long-fingered, green-eyed beauty in the kitchen. Why Declan wanted him to learn his letters eluded him. His memory was faultless and inexhaustible. If the words were already in his head, why bother learning to write them? But he did what he was told, only for the privilege, twice or thrice a day, of putting himself next to Odelet, receiving a plate, a cup from her hands, and taking the memory of her expression, her low, sweet, voice, whatever words she spoke, away with him to contemplate during the rest of the busy, meaningless day.

Declan snagged his attention once, when he told Nairn not to show his writing or speak of it to anyone. It seemed a suspicious request since the purpose of writing was to be seen, shared. But turn the request every which way and on its head as he did, Nairn made no sense of it.

“You’re far too old to be learning to read and write,” Declan told him briskly when he finally asked. “But it must be done, so do it quickly and quietly, and no one you care about will laugh at you. I have asked a few of the others to learn, too,” he added. “They will keep it secret as well, as I require.”

It seemed easy enough to master. A few straight twiggy ink scratches turned this way and that fashioned a word that meant “shirt” or “egg” or “eye” depending on the pattern. They had other meanings as well, Declan told him, but did not say what, only that the meaning at its simplest contained its power.