Patricia McKillip - The Bards of Bone Plain

“Ask me later. I have a bone to pick with that bard. A salmon bone.”

“Pick it later,” Phelan pleaded, not wanting to chase his father down the street to forestall a brawl. “I need to know what caused the top of the school’s tower to blow apart during the first bardic competition and rain down all over the grounds and nearly kill the school steward.”

Jonah stared at him. Forgetting his query for the moment, he sat down slowly on the only vacant chair left in the place. “What have you been reading, boy?”

“The school steward’s records.”

“Dower Ren wrote all that down?”

“Accounts were rendered for a new roof, for someone to clean up the grounds, and to Salish for healing—”

“Salix.”

“Whoever he was, for taking care of the steward’s scrapes when the roof fell into his chamber.”

“She.”

“Dower Ren was a woman?”

“No, Salix.”

“If it cost money, he wrote it down. Dower Ren did.” He paused, eyeing his father. “You’ve read this, then?”

“No. I had no idea ... It couldn’t possibly have been ... What exactly did he say about the broken tower?”

“Nothing much more. Only accounts rendered for three coffins for the remains of two students who were killed by the stones to be sent home in—”

“Two students.”

“The third was never found. Blown up like the tower, most likely, though the steward doesn’t speculate. He only wrote that since Nairn’s family was unknown, and there was no body to put into the third coffin, said coffin went back to the maker, and accounts already rendered for it were returned.” He paused, studying Jonah speculatively, while a waiter flourished his bar towel at a splash of Zoe’s wine and set a foaming mug down in front of Jonah. “Odd,” Phelan murmured finally. “That’s one thing I did notice.” Jonah, frowning down at his beer without tasting it, raised a brow at his son absently. “He never wrote that Salix was a woman. I had an image of a kindly, crusty village doctor in my head, with a huge hoary beard and hair in his ears. What have you read about those early years?”

“I haven’t.”

“Then how did you know—”

“I don’t. Leave it—”

“I can’t,” Phelan told him recklessly. “I’ve decided to do my paper on Nairn and the mysterious Circle of Days. Do you know anything about that?”

Jonah glowered at him for no particular reason that Phelan could see. He raised his beer finally, downed half of it. “It’s been translated a dozen times,” he answered testily, coming up for air. “Mostly badly.”

“How would you know?” Phelan asked curiously, and his father lurched up, beer dripping over his fingers.

“You are foul company tonight,” he complained. “Not even your mother pesters me with questions like this. I have business with that bard.”

Phelan sighed. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, you won’t.” Again Phelan was weighed into his seat, this time by Jonah’s far heavier hand. “I don’t want you anywhere near him. I’ll deal with him. Somehow.”

“Fine,” Phelan said wearily, hoping that Kelda and his band of disciples had vanished by now into the back streets of Caerau. “You do that. Let me know where you end up when I have to bail you out.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

What was it with everyone that evening? he wondered, watching Jonah wind his way through the merry company, gulping the last of his beer and pushing the mug into an outstretched hand raised in greeting. Kelda at his most annoying, Zoe trailing impulsively after him despite all her reservations, Jonah prickly as a hedgehog and threatening mayhem, everyone hinting of mysteries they particularly did not want Phelan to know ... The night revolved around Lord Grishold’s bard, it seemed, and Phelan stood abruptly, finishing his beer on the way up, yielding to the pull of Kelda’s oddly powerful orbit, into which his father seemed in imminent danger of falling facedown.

He hovered on the top step outside the tavern door, peering over heads to find his father, shifting this way and that at the flow around him. He glimpsed the back of Jonah’s head finally, moving downriver along the road. Then a blur of purple coming up the steps hid Jonah again.

“What are we looking for?”

Phelan blinked. Princess Beatrice, in purple silks trimmed with blue the color of her eyes, her tawny hair in a tumble of curls down her back, had stopped on the step beside him to peer down the street.

“My father,” Phelan explained tersely. “He’s out looking for trouble, in the shape of Lord Grishold’s bard.” He realized he was effectively blocking a very well dressed group of her friends, and shifted quickly. “I’m sorry, Princess.”

She didn’t move. “Kelda. Yes, they seemed to know each other, didn’t they, last night?”

“Did they?” he said, surprised.

“Maybe it was my imagination.”

He gazed at her silently, struck by her perception. “No. You’re right,” he said slowly. “Either they’ve met before, or my father feels a mystifying animosity toward a complete stranger.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said abruptly.

“Princess Beatrice—”

“I like working for your father, and I don’t want to lose my job because of some scandal to which my mother is forced to pay attention.” She turned for a word to her listening friends, who laughed and began to disappear into the Merry Rampion. “Which way did he go?” she asked, following Phelan into the street.

“Downriver. But, Princess, surely you have more diverting plans for the evening than watching my father try to brain someone with a tavern sign—”

“No,” she said with a suck of breath. “Has he really—”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, we were only going on to a breathtakingly boring party where my sister-in-law-to-be will chatter endlessly about swatches and ruches.”

“Is that some weird new kind of hairstyle?”

“You don’t want to know. Isn’t that your father? Just passing the fish-market stalls?”

“Yes,” he said, tautly. “Thank you, Princess. Your presence might actually check some of his more lunatic impulses. But his brain is such a morass when he’s like this, you might find it tedious listening to him.”

“He can’t be more tedious than my brother’s betrothed,” she murmured, hurrying beside him effortlessly it seemed, her high violet heels tapping briskly along the worn cobbles. “He’s going into the fish market ... Would Kelda likely be there?”

“Empty stalls are far quieter than the Merry Rampion ... Kelda was trailing a horde of disciples when he left, whom he promised to instruct in ancient magical arts.”

She slowed, turning a wide-eyed gaze at him. “Magic. How strange ... so that’s what’s in his eyes.”

“Whose?”

“Kelda’s.” Then she flushed quickly, vividly, under a streetlight. Phelan, watching, opened his mouth; she shook her head quickly. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” Phelan suggested softly. “Please, Princess. If you saw something in him, then it might explain what my father sees, or thinks he does.”

“I’m sorry.” She met his eyes again, patting her curls to order, it seemed, in lieu of her thoughts. “He confuses me, Kelda does.”

“You aren’t alone, there,” he breathed grimly, thinking of the wine trembling in Zoe’s glass, his father’s incomprehensible obsession. “What is it about this bard that sets everyone on edge? He’s coming back out of the stalls.”

She turned her head quickly. “Kelda?”

“My father.”

“He’s crossing the street.”

“He’s going into—”

“The Wharf Rat.” Her long fingers closed briefly on his wrist, surprisingly strong. “Phelan—”