Bard's Oath (57 page)

She still didn’t want to talk to anyone.

But the young woman standing at the paddock fence and looking apprehensively at her wore a bard’s torc. Maurynna thought she could guess who she was.

“It’s no bother,” she lied. “You’re my cousin Kella’s harp teacher, Bard Daera, yes? Please come in. Boreal won’t mind.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” To Maurynna’s amusement, instead of going to the gate, Daera scrambled over the fence as nimbly as a sailor and dropped cat-footed to the ground.

“You look worried, Bard Daera. Is it something I can help you with?”

Daera nodded. “It’s about Kella, Dragonlord. Do you know when she’s coming back for lessons? It’s a pleasure teaching her. She makes up for the, um, less enthusiastic students.”

Maurynna remembered the letter from Maylin and sighed. “I’m afraid she won’t be coming back. She’s given up the harp.”

She thought she’d rarely seen anyone so surprised—and dismayed—as the bard.

“What?” Daera gasped. “But Dragonlord—Kella has a real gift! I truly believe she’d get into the School eas— Oh gods … is it because of what happened with Bard Leet? Is that why she went home?”

Maurynna stiffened.
Leet again!
“‘What happened with Bard Leet’?” she repeated, standing away from Boreal. “What do you mean?
What
happened with Bard Leet?”

For a moment Maurynna thought Daera might turn and run; she had the sick expression of someone realizing she’d just kicked over a bucket of worms.

“He—he slapped her hand one day. Hard. Too hard,” she said weakly. She rushed on, “She saw his harp in the garden and thought it was mine, you see, and he thought she was a servant trying to touch his harp. He didn’t know she’s your…”

Maurynna remembered the bruise on Kella’s hand with cold fury. “She told me she’d fallen on it.”

“She was humiliated. She didn’t want anyone to know. He … yelled at her.” Daera looked up at her nervously. “I thought you already knew, that she’d tell
you
at least.”

Maurynna seethed inwardly. Striking a child hard enough to leave a bruise like that—and her cousin, no less! Leet was damned lucky he was a—

“Wait—this happened before Linden, Shima, and I arrived, didn’t it?”

Daera nodded. “Yes. That was the day I got word that my mother was gravely ill. You came after I left.”

Maurynna tugged at a lock of her hair, thinking furiously. Aside from the bruised hand, Kella had been well at the time of their arrival; Maurynna was certain her later illness was not because of that. Besides—she knew her little cousin. Kella would have been plotting revenge, not taking to her bed with a delayed case of the vapors!

And she knew just the person to talk to: Kella’s partner in mischief, Prince Rann.

*   *   *

“But I promised Kella I wouldn’t tell,” Rann said weakly. He looked from one stern face to another and sighed. If only it wasn’t Maurynna Kyrissaean and Bard Daera. At least Aunt Beryl and Uncle Beren weren’t here as well.

“Your Highness,” the Dragonlord said with a sad smile. “Keeping someone’s secret is a good thing—but not when it hurts that person.”

“Prince Rann,
please
tell us what you know,” Daera said. “You know that Kella is truly talented, don’t you? We need to know if what made her so ill is why she gave up the harp.”

Startled, Rann blurted, “Gave up the harp? But she can’t! It’s all Kella dreams about—going to the Bards’ School someday!”

“She’s refused to play since her mysterious ‘illness,’” Maurynna Kyrissaean said. “She even refused the gift of a harp back home in Casna.”

Rann twisted his fingers together in an agony of indecision. Kella would never forgive him. But something had happened that day she’d gone to play Bard Leet’s harp. He knew it. Something bad …

Then Maurynna Kyrissaean spoke the words that freed him from his oath.

“Rann, dear,” she said gently, “would it help if I said ‘Dragonlord’s orders’?”

Fifty-three

Ever since they’d left the
main Wort Hunters’ encampment, they’d had good luck with the weather if nothing else, Pod thought wryly. But now even that was ending. The day had started with the sun rising in a clear sky. Now grey, threatening clouds were moving in. She hoped the rain would hold off.

They had spent the morning and early afternoon exploring and calling Kiga. Pod blamed herself for the woods dog’s continued absence. Her last words to her familiar echoed in her mind: “And don’t come back until you’ve caught something!”

Hadn’t every apprentice at Grey Holt been warned again and again to be careful what they asked their familiars to do? Faithful hearts that they were, the animals would try to walk through fire if their persons asked it of them. Worse yet, she’d “pushed” at Kiga, reinforcing her order with her power as a Beast Healer. She could only hope that he’d come back soon.

As they passed quietly through woods now turned gloomy—even frightening—Kaeliss stopped with a gasp.

“By the Lord and Lady of the Forests!” she cried, and fell to her knees by a patch of red flowers that covered the ground between the trees. “Fiarin wasn’t lying!”

“What are they?” Pod asked as she knelt beside the other young woman. Whatever these were, Kaeliss was well-nigh weeping with joy. Pod studied them.

They were pretty things and looked, she thought, rather like morning glories, but much smaller and with deeply ruffled edges. They were also growing singly, not on a vine. She looked around. “Look—there’s an even bigger patch!” she said, pointing to where the ground was literally carpeted with dark red as far as she could see in the dim woods.

Kaeliss looked. “Oh dear gods—it’s just as Fiarin said! King’s Blood is incredibly rare—the conditions have to be just perfect for it or it won’t grow! You’re lucky if you find a patch of three or four plants, and the chosen of the gods if you find more! I’ve only heard of one place where—”

As Pod stared in astonishment, the color drained from Kaeliss’s face, leaving her a sickly grey. She looked as if she might be ill any moment.

“No,” Kaeliss whispered at last, still staring at the flowers. “No—Fiarin wouldn’t have been planning to bring us there. I know he was jealous of Currin, but we’ve lost so many people here. Fiarin knows—knew…”

“What?” Pod asked roughly after a long silence. “Fiarin knew what? Where are we?”

“Fiarin knew these woods are forbidden. There’s an old evil here. As for where … this was Worton. All this—the old stone walls, the abandoned orchards, the collapsing foundations—all this was … Worton.”

The last word came out in a frightened whisper that Pod barely heard. It also meant nothing to her. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Kaeliss turned slowly to look at her, eyes dull, defeated. “You’ve heard of Gull the Blood Drinker, haven’t you?”

“But that’s just a story … isn’t it?” she asked in a tiny voice. Kaeliss shook her head. Now it was Pod’s turn to feel sick with fright. “Oh gods—you mean this is where…”

“Yes.” Kaeliss began crying. “We’re in the most cursed place in all the Five Kingdoms,” she sobbed, “and I don’t know how to get out!”

Pod had heard the stories of Gull the Blood Drinker. Usually late at night around a bonfire when ghost stories were scariest. And now she remembered from the stories that the town that Gull had lived in had been abandoned. For not even Gull’s death had ended the terror; it was as if the evil in him seeped into the forest even though he’d been buried under a witch spruce. In the end, the few remaining townsfolk had fled their once prosperous village.

How long ago it had happened, she didn’t know. But long enough that the forest had reclaimed the fields. And by all she’d ever heard, a darkness still held these woods. Weighed down by the oppressive heat and thick air, the tales were all too easy to believe.

And Kiga? What had happened to her brother-in-fur? Had whatever haunted these woods taken him? If so, it was her fault. Tears pricked her eyes.

She fought them. Tears wouldn’t help them; they had to get out of here as quickly as they could. She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer to Kerras of the Golden Antlers.

Please don’t let anything happen to Kiga. And please help him to find us again—I can’t wait for him. We must leave this cursed place as fast as we can!

She wiped away the tears on her lashes and shook Kaeliss’s shoulder. “We need to get out of here.
Now.
”

Kaeliss sniffled and wiped her own eyes. “You’re right. We’ll keep walking east. It’s our best chance.” She started to rise, then paused. “But I need to get as much of this as I can. It’s so valuable for so many ailments! And … it will make my name in the Guild, just as Fiarin said…”

She threw herself down and clawed at the dirt, dragging up the flowers and their precious tuberous roots, stuffing them into her sack any which way. “Pod, help me! Master Emberlin needs this!”

When Pod hesitated, Kaeliss pleaded, “Imagine all the lives that could be saved with this much King’s Blood!”

Pod swore, and despite her fear, fell to her knees and dug up the plants as fast as she could. They worked in silence.

A fat root broke and red juice oozed over Kaeliss’s fingers. It looked like blood. “I’ll sort ’em out later,” she muttered under her breath as she worked furiously. “I’ll never see anything like this again.”

A shiver went down Pod’s spine at the ill-chosen words.
Avert!
she thought, making the sign to ward off evil. She could stand it no longer. After packing a last few roots into her pack, she grabbed the back of Kaeliss’s tunic and heaved the young woman to her feet.

“Come
on,
” she said. “We’ve got to find shelter. It looks like a storm coming on and I want to get as far away from here as we can before it breaks.”

“But—,” Kaeliss protested. She looked longingly at the remaining flowers.

“No! You said yourself, this place is cursed. We’re getting out of here.” Pod caught Kaeliss’s wrist and started walking as fast as she could, nearly dragging the Wort Hunter off her feet before Kaeliss broke her grip and fell in behind her.

She thought she heard something in the woods behind them. She prayed she was wrong.

Snap
.

She walked faster.

*   *   *

Impossible as it seemed, the air grew yet more still and close as they marched on and on. By the time they came to the collapsed remains of yet another stone wall, they were nearly done in; the air was so thick and muggy it was hard to breathe. And so dark.… They clambered over it, then stopped, trying to catch their breath.

“You took the blood of the forest,” a soft voice said behind them.

Both Pod and Kaeliss screamed and spun around.

A man stood before them. His clothes were ragged, his hair and long, straggly beard matted with dirt, twigs, and leaves. His hands were tucked under his armpits and he rocked gently from side to side as if listening to some music only he could hear.

But it was none of these things that filled Pod with fear. No, it was his eyes, set deep in his gaunt face, that frightened her; eyes filled with the madness of a fanatic, their burning gaze locked upon them. Then he smiled, revealing a mouth full of brown, rotting teeth.

It was the kind of smile that a snowcat might smile if it found a helpless mountain sheep, said a scared little voice in the back of Pod’s mind. Her knees shook.
Kiga, where
are
you?

“You took the blood of the forest,” he repeated. His voice was gentle—oh, so gentle!—and all the more frightening for it. “The King’s Blood. And blood must pay for blood.”

“Arlim?” whispered Kaeliss. “Arlim—is that truly you?”

For the first time Pod realized that his tunic was green and yellow under all the dirt; this man was a member of Kaeliss’s guild.

Kaeliss said, her voice shaking, “Arlim—we thought you were dead.”

With that Arlim giggled and dropped his hands; one held a long knife. He turned it this way and that as if admiring the razor edge. Pod sank down, whimpering. Her hands clutched at the ground.

The ragged man looked down at Pod. The smile widened. He cocked his head to one side as if listening to someone. “That is good, isn’t it?” he said softly. His head tilted the other way. “Oh yes, yess, Arlim—not so much blood lost th—”

Pod sprang up and flung a handful of dirt straight into those hateful eyes. The man fell back from them, howling in fury. He rubbed furiously at his eyes. Pod kicked the knife-wielding hand as hard as she could.

The gods were good; the knife flew through the air and landed in a patch of brambles. Then she took a deep breath and slammed the heel of her hand so hard into the man’s chest that he fell backward.

Pod grabbed Kaeliss’s wrist once more. “Run!” she screamed, yanking as hard as she could.
“Run!”

Fifty-four

For the second time in
less than a tenday Linden landed in the large courtyard at the Bards’ School. This time, though, it was daylight and he had an audience. As he Changed back to his human form, Linden singled out a young man in a journeyman’s tunic from the crowd watching from a respectful distance.

“Where would I find Bard Charilon?” he asked.

“In the infirmary, Your Grace, with the Healer from the palace. He fell and twisted his knee badly a short time ago.”

Damnation—Charilon was likely sleeping off the Healing. “I see.” Very well, then; he’d find his other quarry instead. He said, “Leave word for him that Linden Rathan would speak with him later.”

“At once, Dragonlord.” The journeyman turned and jogged off.

It took Linden a wrong turn or two before he reached his goal. Like much else, the Bards’ School had changed since the days he’d spent time here when Otter was a journeyman. But he found it at last, and now stood before the well-remembered tall oak doors that had welcomed generations of bards and apprentices. One stood slightly ajar; he pushed it open.

The cool dimness of the wood barn was a welcome change from the muggy heat. Linden paused on the threshold to let his eyes adjust, then looked around at the wood arranged neatly in the array of large “cubbyholes” that lined the walls on either side of the wide center aisle that stretched in front of him.