Patricia McKillip - The Bards of Bone Plain

She felt a moment’s annoyance and desperation, that they couldn’t anticipate how harried she might be and figure out how to crack an egg for themselves. Phelan looked as hag-ridden as she was, his hair on end from raking it with his fingers, his eyes so remote, she couldn’t begin to guess at his thoughts. Her father had a peculiar expression on his face as well. She wondered for a moment if one or the other had got somebody with child.

Then she summoned some rag end of patience, for she was hungry, too, and pulled a pan off its hook.

“Good morning to you, too.”

Phelan stirred, finally, in his chair. “Sorry.”

“Good morning, lass,” Bayley said absently. “Phelan just brought back more record books.”

“You didn’t offer him coffee? Oh, you haven’t made it yet. No, don’t bother. I’ll do it.” She heard him subside back into his seat, and she sighed soundlessly. She put the kettle on for herself as well and rummaged for bread, eggs, fruit, listening, as a halting conversation started up again behind her.

“You’ve finished your paper, then?”

“Nearly. I’m very close to an ending. There’s only one thing I need to understand. To research.”

“Anything I might have?”

“I don’t think so. I found the name in other sources: letters, court chronicles. A bard called Welkin. He’s not listed as an account rendered or received.”

“Welkin ...” her father mused.

“Do you recognize the name?”

“I’m thinking. Tell me something about him.”

Zoe’s thoughts drifted to the competition, so close now her fingers seemed, even stirring eggs in the hot pan, perpetually chilled with anticipation. Quennel had summoned her to court for a final word of advice, maybe to encourage her to wile out of Kelda what he intended to play. Competing bards, she understood, had devastated one another’s chances by stealing their songs and playing them first. Kelda would only laugh at that, and play whatever it was a dozen times better than anyone else. Nothing would discompose him, she knew by now. He was the bard who could melt the jewels out of Declan’s harp and find the one true note that would break hearts and harp strings together.

“Zoe?”

She was burning the eggs, just thinking about him. She pulled them off the heat and turned to cut bread. Phelan’s eyes caught at her, now disconcertingly attentive. She smiled at him, but he was not deceived.

“Are you in love?” he inquired baldly, and her father’s chair rattled across flagstones as he rose abruptly to get cups down.

“No. Of course not. Who has time? Except for Chase, I mean. I’m just preoccupied. Have you decided what you’ll play first?” He only gazed at her bemusedly, as though she had asked him what he planned to wear for his funeral. “The competition,” she reminded him, astonished that he had forgotten about it, even for a moment.

“Oh.”

“You are still going to—”

“Yes. I promised you. It’s just—”

“You’re distracted, too,” she guessed, “by your paper.” She buttered the bread, cast another glance at him, and was amazed again, by the sudden burn across his cheekbones. Whatever caused that, it wasn’t his interminable paper. She turned away quickly, wrestled with the eggs in the pan, and gave up, gazing with despair at the speckled black-and-gold mess.

“Never mind,” Bayley said gently.

“I never burn things.”

“We’ll eat them anyway.”

“Sit down,” Phelan said brusquely. “I know where the plates are. You’ll wear yourself out until there’s nothing left of you but your bones and the music coming out of them.”

She smiled again, gratefully, and sank into a chair, slid her hands over her eyes. She smelled tea, opened one eye, and found the teapot and a cup in front of her. She raised the lid, watched the leaves steep, while Phelan and her father moved around her, rattling cutlery, opening cupboard doors.

“Have you found any reference to Welkin beyond those few days of the first competition?”

“No. I’m still searching. As far as I know now, he vanished like Nairn off the plain and out of history, though, from most accounts, he was expected to win.”

“Who are you talking about?” Zoe asked, still gazing at the tea leaves.

“A mysterious stranger at the first bardic competition,” Phelan told her. “Origins unknown, carried nothing but a battered harp, and he had all the court bards in awe of him by the end of the first day. By the end of the third day, he was pitted against Nairn for the title of Royal Bard of Belden. One of them should have won.”

She raised her head, pot forgotten. “The winner was Blasson Purser of Waverlea.”

“Yes.”

“So what happened? Welkin sounds like someone in a story. Was it folklore? Ballad? About Nairn and Welkin?”

“No.”

“They both just vanished? It’s documented?”

He gave a faint laugh then, his face so pale it might have been his own bones she was looking at. “It will be.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Phelan, what are you not telling me?”

“And what are you not telling me?” he challenged her.

She answered quickly, before he brought words to play like “magic” and “secret” and “abandoned sewers” that would have disconcerted her orderly father.

“I’ll tell you when I can,” she promised.

His eyes held hers a moment, gray as old iron; he nodded briefly. “So will I.”

After they finished the unfortunate eggs, she tossed her robe over last night’s outfit and taught her class. Then she finally had the time to wash and change into something suitable for visiting the Royal Bard. She pondered Phelan’s odd paper as she rode the tram downhill and along the river road. It should have been as dry as dust; that had been his original intention, to write it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Instead, it leached the blood from his face and gave him secrets to eat that he would not share even with her. Fair enough: she kept her own secrets from him. From the sound of it, neither of them even understood exactly what they were carrying around locked behind their teeth. It was an exhausting weight to bear, along with the demands of the competition, and having to hide it from Quennel that day was a burden she could have done without.

Fortunately, he was so preoccupied with his own passionate determination and ambitions for her that he didn’t sense the turmoil in her own head. He was completely well by then, and his playing more skillful and vibrant than ever, fueled by the sudden glance death had given him and by the dire figure in the tale he forged daily for himself about Kelda. Zoe wished he would just change his mind, tell everyone to go back home, including Kelda, and keep harping through his waning years, as even the king had urged him to do. But no, he was adamant: Zoe must take his place, or the kingdom would fall.

“I have thought of what you should play and sing in the opening round of the competition,” he said as they sat in private in the musician’s gallery.

“But you told me to play—”

“Yes, I know, but I was wrong. This is the perfect ballad for you.”

“But—”

“Hush,” he said, hands poised on his strings. “Listen.”

Choosing her song for her yet again reminded him of his own experiences during the last bardic competition. He cautioned her about this, offered practical suggestions about that, remembered a story, embellished like a formal ballad with details from years of retelling, about a pair of not very good but extremely competitive musicians, and the tricks—the split reed, the suddenly sagging drum, the missing harp string—with which they undermined one another.

Thus reminded, he turned grave again, warned her to guard against Kelda’s meddling.