Patricia McKillip - The Bards of Bone Plain

“I was told you went off somewhere with Phelan Cle. And yet no one can tell me where. No one we know, that is. You vanish into dank holes during the day; I feel very strongly, and so does your father, that you should not begin to disappear at night as well.”

“I’m sorry,” Beatrice said penitently, alarmed for her freedom. “It’s only—Phelan Cle had a slight accident and—”

“I know. The bill for that ‘slight accident’ arrived on Grishold’s breakfast tray earlier this morning.” Beatrice’s eyes widened; her lips tightened over a startled laugh. Her mother’s voice thinned. “The back door and doorframe of an inn, historical though it might be and with period door hinges, in a not entirely reputable quarter of the docks. And his bard blamed for the damage. Your uncle was nearly incoherent. Such details should never have come to his attention. Nor mine. Apparently Jonah Cle offered recompense for all damages, but the innkeeper felt that, in his dissolute state, he wouldn’t remember a thing the next morning, and so he sent his claim to my brother. Why were you anywhere near this sordid little scene? Explain to me again?”

“It wasn’t really—We were—How did you know I was there?”

“The innkeeper recognized you and named you as a witness.”

“Oh.”

Queen Harriet closed her eyes again, briefly. “I will assume he has seen you on certain public occasions. Beyond that, I don’t want to know.”

“Yes, Mother.” She glanced at the antique water clock on the mantelpiece and thought despairingly of the tide. “I really am sorry. Phelan was worried about his father, so I—I went with him to help.”

“Worried with good reason, apparently. Really, Beatrice. You abandoned your friends and went trailing off after the soused Master Cle, who has left a litter of broken things across the entire city of Caerau.”

“He didn’t break the door. It was Kelda, escaping out the back—”

“I really don’t want to know,” her mother said adamantly. “Bards should make music, not scenes, and now we have another incident, so soon after Quennel’s accident with the salmon mousse, and I’m told that the city will very shortly be overrun with bards.”

Beatrice raised her hand, dropped it, resisting a childhood urge to chew on a lock of hair when confused. “It will?”

“It most certainly will if your father can’t persuade Quennel not to retire. It’s absurd of him, of course—Quennel, I mean—he’s perfectly fine now, except for a slight sore throat, and there’s no reason for him to inflict such a competition on us all now.”

The hen scratches, the glint in the young bard’s eye, the powerful flash of light that had come out of the charcoal scribbles on the table merged suddenly in Beatrice’s head. She breathed, illumined, “Kelda.”

The queen regarded her frostily. “Kelda?”

Beatrice wished she could inhale the name back out of the air. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said yet again. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I really will try not to be so impulsive.”

“I was going to say—” Queen Harriet paused, inspired by the sight of her daughter’s outfit, to bring up another subject now that Beatrice was in a placatory mood. “I think,” she began slowly, “that you should give some serious thought to your own future. Your father allows you to indulge your whims because you have similar interests. With him it’s a hobby; with you it’s becoming a career. A rather undignified and completely unnecessary one. You’ve played in the dirt long enough. It’s time you followed the example of your sister, Charlotte. Yes, Lucien, I’m just speaking to your daughter. What is it?”

The king, who had appeared in the doorway, said perplexedly, “I’ve just been handed the most amazing message from your brother.” He broke off, noticing his daughter. “Beatrice! Why are you still here? You’ll miss the ebb tide.”

She escaped with relief, before she accidentally committed herself to children, dogs, and endless country garden parties.

Down in the site, helping Campion coax the line of stones out of the wall of dirt into daylight, she was so absent that Ida, sifting through the earth at her feet, asked sympathetically, “Is it getting worse?”

“Is what?”

“Being in love.”

Beatrice stared down at her. “In love. Oh—” She remembered some distant time, when she had met Kelda’s gaze and had felt it everywhere, all over her body. She flushed, wondering how she could have ever misread the power in his eyes.

“When love is gone, how little of love—” Campion intoned sonorously.

“I was never in love,” Beatrice said crossly. “It was an accident.” Even she had to smile, reluctantly, as they hooted. “A very silly mistake.”

His face was still on her mind, as she had seen it the previous evening. Phelan had opened the lounge door, and Kelda, standing at the table with students watching him, drawing a pattern on the pale wood with a burned splinter of kindling, had raised his head at the interruption. His eyes had seemed scarcely human then. The eyes of a raven, a wild horse, a toad, they seemed to recognize nothing human. He hadn’t touched his harp. The sound had come out of him, or the word he had drawn: a deep string, vibrating until it seemed to shake the floor. And then the streak of light ... When she could see again, the back door hung on its hinges, Phelan lay on the floor, and Jonah Cle had appeared out of nowhere. Everyone else had vanished.

A shadow blocked the sunlight overhead; she started, peered upward, and found Jonah leaning over the site edge, peering back at them.

“Ah, you are here, after all, Princess.”

“Barely,” she told him ruefully, aware of the tools growing quiet around her as everyone listened. “My mother was not happy with me. How is Phelan?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been home. Come up a moment?”

She mused a bit darkly, as she climbed the ladder, about the carelessness of parents. Jonah added, as though he read her mind, “You could ask him.” He helped her off the ladder. He smelled like a brewery, and his eyes squinted painfully at the cheerful sunlight. But he seemed sober enough.

“Then how do you know that Phelan made it home?” she asked patiently, stifling an unaccustomed urge to raise her voice. Jonah had put them together into a cab; Phelan was coherent by then, though he kept his eyes shut. Yes, he promised, he would call a physician; no, the princess should not see him home since the cab would pass the castle first. Yes, he would be fine if he could just fall into bed, only he had something extremely important to tell her if he could remember what it was ... He couldn’t, not before the cab left her at the castle gates. She watched it roll away with a hiss of steam; that was the last she had seen of Phelan.

“Where else would he have gone?” Jonah asked with annoying unconcern, and added, “I searched all night for Kelda. Did you see him this morning at the castle?”

She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t looking, though. Speaking of bards, my mother said something about Quennel wanting to retire, and that the city would soon be overrun by bards. Have you heard anything about that?”

“The bardic competition,” Jonah said grimly. “That’s what brought Kelda here.”

“But he didn’t—Kelda had no idea Quennel would—” She faltered, staring at him. “Are you suggesting that he planned this? He—he used his magic against Quennel?”

“Quennel choked on a word,” Jonah said harshly, and she blinked, as stray, wordlike objects in her head fit together like broken shards.

“The Circle of Days.”

His eyes narrowed at her; she had managed to astonish the jaded Master Cle. “You know about that?”