Patricia McKillip - The Bards of Bone Plain

Of all the places Phelan might run into his father, home was the least likely, so he took them there. No one else was around; the house was silent except for an occasional distant noise from the kitchen. He settled on the sofa with the manuscripts, and began to read.

The written poem was followed by an account of the wonders and tribulations of bards who had dared the trials for the sake of such power over their words, such glory in their world. Very few could be tracked, like Nairn, out of poetry and into history. Most of the unfortunates had been invented to bear the tales of their failures. Despite the dire consequences predicted, the more noble-hearted of the adventurers were given chances to mitigate their fates. They returned home scarred only with the memory, and rewarded with a tale that would be embroidered more colorfully and grow in detail with every telling.

The manuscript itself was so old that Phelan held his breath as he turned the pages, lest a parchment word flake away into the air of a distant century. The scribe or bard who plucked the poem out of common memory and wrote it down saw no reason to add a name or a date or a place of origin. The tale itself was far older, Phelan knew from various scholarly papers on the subject. In itself, it gave no clues to where exactly a bard had to go to find Bone Plain. But Phelan knew that already, having memorized the entire poem by the time he was ten. He had taken the manuscript on the chance that seeing the ancient written words might spark some thought, some recognition, maybe even some impulse to pick up a pen.

It was there, sprawled on a sofa with both manuscripts on his chest, that he glanced up at a faint stir of carpet threads and found his father.

Jonah eyed the priceless manuscripts, grunted in recognition, and dropped into a chair near Phelan’s feet. Phelan could see his face. It looked predictably pale and curdled, but there was a peculiar expression in his eyes, and he seemed, in broad daylight, astonishingly sober.

“Is something wrong?” Phelan asked tentatively. “Did you kill somebody? Accidentally get married again?”

“No.”

“Find a gold mine in one of your digs?”

Jonah shook his head. He shifted, started to say something, stopped and started again. “That supper,” he managed finally. “When is it?”

Phelan stared at him, amazed. “Why do you care? Anyway, how did you know about it? You never pay attention to those things.”

“Don’t give me grief, boy, just tell me.”

“I would if I knew.” He paused, studying his father, found the words finally, for what he saw. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I may have,” Jonah breathed. “I may have, indeed.”

Phelan started to sit, caught the manuscripts sliding off his chest. Jonah raised a brow at them; he said quickly, “I hid them under my school robe; nobody saw me take them.”

“Don’t try to be noble; it only makes you sound unctuous,” Jonah said with so little bite that Phelan frowned. He sat up, still gazing at his father, laying the manuscripts carefully on the sofa beside him.

“Whose ghost?”

Jonah shook his head irritably, but the subject haunting the air between them refused to go away. “A particularly noisome bit of past,” he said finally. He held up a hand as Phelan opened his mouth. “Just leave it. It’s mine; I’ll deal with it.”

“But where did you see it?” Phelan demanded. “Him. Her.”

“Riding through the river park in Lord Grishold’s entourage. I was just stepping into the Arms of Antiquity, after checking some things in the Royal Museum. I looked back and there it was, the ghost behind Grishold, all in black and grinning like the sun. When is that supper again?” he added restively.

“A day or two—Does this mean I won’t have to roam all over the city searching for you?”

“I’ll be there,” Jonah promised, his voice so thin and dry that a dozen questions leaped to life in Phelan’s brain, all clamoring together. He gazed, fascinated, at his father, suddenly looking forward to what had sounded like a long and tedious evening. Jonah, forestalling his curiosity, shifted the subject adroitly, reaching for the manuscripts. “Are these of any help?”

“They may be,” Phelan answered with no great hope. “I’ve read nearly everything else.”

“I told you—”

“I know, I know.”

“Your heart’s not in it,” Jonah said, carefully turning pages. “How can you find Bone Plain when nothing in you wants anything to do with it?”

“It’s only a paper,” Phelan said with unaccustomed sharpness. “Of course, I don’t want to go there. That’s got nothing to do with anything. It’s what I want to leave that’s everything to me.” Jonah sniffed but otherwise refrained from comment. “Anyway, I haven’t read the piece about Nairn, yet. It might inspire an idea.”

“It’s hard to imagine that damp squib inspiring anything,” his father muttered. He sat back, brooding at the work in question but did not open it. Phelan watched him, wondering, as always, in what torturous labyrinths of Jonah’s brain his father continually lost himself. Jonah rose abruptly under Phelan’s scrutiny, gave a wrench to a sturdy bell rope.

“Where is Sagan? I sent him to the cellar an eon ago.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” the butler said, gliding like a phantom across the carpet, his hair and the tray upon which the bottle stood glowing silver in the sunlight. “I had to search the racks for this one.”

“Thank you, Sagan.” He glanced a question at Phelan, who shook his head.

“I’m working,” he said shortly, and stretched out on the sofa to read about Nairn while his father and the dusty amber bottle vanished somewhere into the depths of the house.

“Nairn,” the essayist had begun without preamble some three or four centuries earlier, “the Wandering Bard to whom the solace of death had been long forbidden by his abject and unforgiven failure at the Three Trials of Bone Plain, was seen at the Bardic School at Caerau, as was cited in the school records by Argot Renne thusly: ‘This day: Accounts paid to Colley Dale for three wheels of cheese, five crocks of butter, and ten gallons of milk. Accounts paid to Merlee Craven for nine wool blankets and two lambs. Accounts settled by one guest, a stranger, who paid for his supper by his dishwashing afterwards. Though he carried a harp, he would not play it, claiming that the last thing we needed in this place was another harper. Nor would he give his name. But considering this steward’s daughter’s description of the boulder inside the ring of stones on the hill turning abruptly into a man carrying a harp, and considering the craggy agelessness of his face, the unremitting dark of his eyes, and that he knew my name, Renne, though he had been stone all our lives, and considering above all, his astonishing question concerning the existence of the ancient Circle of Days, the secret conclave that vanished from history centuries before, I believe him to be the bard in search of his death: Nairn. By my hand, Argot Renne, School Steward.’ This being,” the essayist continued dryly, “by far the wordiest entry of any of the stewards heretofore on record.”