Song Magick (13 page)

Coherent thought was difficult, but he broke
the kiss and caught her hand softly, holding it against the
pounding of his heart. “Telyn...we must stop,” he said with great
reluctance.

There was a brief flicker of hurt and
confusion in her eyes, and he groaned raggedly, raising her palm to
his lips in quick comfort. “Don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t the
right time. We must make haste to Cerisild, and once you are safely
there, I promise you...” He eased the shirt back over her shoulder,
careful not to touch her skin.

“I’ve never experienced it before, this fire
that I feel with you.” Telyn blushed, but continued, “It’s almost
beyond my control. But I’m not afraid. It’s as if...” she hesitated
a moment. “It’s as if I’ve always known you. I know that sounds
strange, but I can’t explain it.”

His heart leapt. “Nor have I felt this way
before, Telyn. I had begun to think that perhaps I never would.” He
touched her cheek. “When the time is right, we will explore these
feelings at length.”

Chapter
Nine

The morning sun was a brilliant golden-white
behind the new leaves, dappling the forest floor with patches of
light and diamond flashes where drops of moisture still lay.
Between the tree tops, Telyn glimpsed turquoise sky and puffs of
white cloud. The air was still cold, and she drew her borrowed
cloak closer around her as she followed the stream south with
Mithrais, the bluff that contained the Tauron outpost vanishing
into the Wood behind them.

Their sodden clothing had mostly dried before
the fire, with the exception of their boots and Telyn’s traveling
cloak, which had continued to drip water. Instead, she wore the
mottled grey-green cloak that Mithrais had found in the trunk. It
was lighter in weight than her discarded cloak, although still as
warm, and the colors would allow her to blend into the background
of the Wood more easily should she need its concealment. Her sword
was slung on her back over the cloak in the manner of the Tauron,
where it interfered less with traversing the unbroken paths of the
forest. There was nothing to be done about the wet boots, and Telyn
was not looking forward to the inevitable blisters.

They had shared a brief meal before leaving
the outpost, and Mithrais now paused in a grouping of trees,
passing her the water skin he had filled at the stream below the
bluff. The water still carried the sharp taste of earth and
vegetation even though the flooded stream had receded back into its
bed.

“Do you remember what the resonance of the
Gwaith’orn feels like?” he asked as she drank.

Telyn nodded. “I won’t soon forget.” She gave
him back the water skin, and Mithrais, too, drank before recapping
the skin and stowing it beneath his cloak.

“Find the memory of that resonance, and hold
it in your mind,” Mithrais instructed.

Telyn had no difficulty recalling it; her
bardic gifts allowed her to remember music after the first hearing,
and she could hear the resonance in her memory as plainly as if it
were the chord Mithrais had described. “I have it.”

“Close your eyes. Do you feel it, or do you
only remember it?”

Telyn complied, her eyebrows drawing together
in a frown as she considered this. “Only remember it. I can’t feel
the vibration as I did last night.”

“Open your eyes.” Telyn saw him standing
beside one of the larger trees, looking up into its branches.
Mithrais touched the trunk with his palm, his expression
somber.

“This is one that has become silent.” He
beckoned her closer, and Telyn placed her own hands on the tree.
There was something there, Telyn was certain, but it was not the
mighty chord that the bard had experienced before. The tree was
barely warm, and Telyn had the distinct impression that the
resonance was there below the surface, sleeping, only waiting for
something unknown to burst forth and add its voice to the
chord.

“How strange,” she said, and explained what
she thought she was sensing to Mithrais, who acknowledged her words
with an affirmative nod.

“It’s the same with the others. I’ve spent
hours trying to communicate with them to no avail. Nor could my
father elicit a response, and he’s one of the most powerful
heartspeakers I have ever known.” Mithrais removed his hand from
the tree and looked at her expectantly. “Here your second lesson
begins. In which direction stands the closest resonant
Gwaith’orn?”

Telyn shook her head, bemused. “I have an
idea how it’s done, but I don’t know how to start.”

“I’ll show you.” Mithrais stepped closer to
Telyn, mating his hand with hers, palm to palm. “Yesterday, you
entered my mind without knowing what it was that you did. This
time, I want you to feel what it is that I’m doing, and open your
mind to me.”

He captured her gaze, triggering the
connection between them, but instead of experiencing the intimate
rapport of mind and heart with Mithrais, Telyn had a sense of an
invisible barrier between them, and became aware of the brush of
his thoughts against some formless boundary in her own mind: a wall
that moved with liquid resilience against his careful advances.

“That’s your inner defense—think of it as a
shield, for that’s what it is. I can’t enter your mind unless you
allow it, nor you, mine,” Mithrais told her. “It may help in the
beginning to visualize a doorway, or a gate that you must open to
me.”

Telyn pictured this in her mind’s eye,
imposing a door against the shimmering boundary that surrounded her
and allowing it to swing smoothly open. Mithrais’ thoughts flowed
gently around her like the wind through the leaves, and she
shivered at the strangeness of the phantom touch. He nodded in
satisfaction, smiling at her.

Expertly done
, he praised, but he did
not speak aloud. His quiet voice sounded only in her mind, the
sound whispering and curving back on itself like a wave on the
sand. Telyn’s eyes widened and she jumped involuntarily, severing
the connection between them, the barriers slamming back into place
with sound that Telyn could swear echoed through the grove.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, chagrined.
Mithrais merely grinned and reclaimed her hand.

“Don’t worry. It will become second nature,
just as the resonance of the Gwaith’orn will decrease in intensity.
For the moment, follow my lead.”

Mithrais reinitiated the contact, and Telyn
eased smoothly into his thoughts as he opened to her. That much, at
least, seemed easy for Telyn. Against the soft rhythm of heartbeat
and breath, she could hear the resonance of the Gwaith’orn in his
mind, and brought the chord back into her own consciousness.

His voice was barely a whisper. “Let the
resonance grow, until there is nothing else in your thoughts.” The
chord strengthened, rising in volume and intensity until Telyn felt
as if she were standing beside the distant Gwaith’orn again, the
hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Mithrais allowed the
memory of the resonance to begin to ebb away, and Telyn followed
suit, but the noise in her mind remained. The bard realized that
she could narrow and focus on a direction from where it seemed to
emanate before it, too, faded.

“It’s that way!” Telyn said delightedly,
pointing to the southeast with her free hand. She felt Mithrais’
surge of pleasure in her accomplishments as he allowed the contact
between them to recede and withdrew his thoughts from her,
releasing her hand. They began to walk a roughly diagonal path away
from the stream in the direction Telyn had indicated.

“Your shields aren’t strong, but you’re
surprisingly adept for one who has never been trained in
heartspeaking. Have you practiced mental defenses before?” Mithrais
inquired.

Telyn shrugged. “No, I was never trained in
that art. My efforts went to preventing others from being
influenced inadvertently. I seem to have an innate defense against
the influence of other bards’ song magic, so there was no real need
to learn how to shield myself.”

“Heartspeaking is a gift that most people
don’t possess at all, and an increasingly small number of Wood-born
Silde. Are either of your parents of the Sildan bloodline?”

“My father is not. My mother...I don’t know
much about her, I’m afraid,” Telyn told him. “Her name was Ariel,
and that name is as common among the Three Realms as it is among
the Silde. She died when I was an infant. Taliesin won’t talk about
her. Emrys never knew her.”

“I’m sorry.” Mithrais glanced at her. “Are
bardic gifts similar to heartspeaking?”

“None that I knew, until now. As I told you,
I can accomplish things that other bards, even Taliesin, cannot.
The ability to influence musicians is my own unique talent. Others
can direct them, but only I can—” Telyn searched for the words.
“Lend them my gifts, I suppose. It’s as if my skills somehow can be
borrowed and added to theirs.”

“What else?” Mithrais set a steady traveling
pace, and Telyn fell in beside him easily, thinking about his
question.

“You heard about the incident where I sang a
room full of people to sleep. There aren’t any other bards who can
do that. Their craft can exert strong influence over any existing
mood, or dispel an unpleasant atmosphere, but they cannot impose a
completely new one. I can.” Telyn glanced at him sidelong with a
grimace, and continued, “When I’m feeling something intensely, it
tends to come out involuntarily in my music.”

“The song of exile,” Mithrais exclaimed, and
Telyn affirmed this with an apologetic smile. “I could feel the
sorrow in it. It nearly brought me to tears.”

“That song at the encampment was a rare
moment of self-indulgence. I was taught to suppress my own feelings
of anger, fear, and sorrow. It was a lesson I learned early. My
father sent me to Emrys because he was highly skilled in mental
disciplines, and Taliesin didn’t have the patience to teach me
himself. Lack of control is disastrous with a gift like mine. I
think I proved that last year.”

They walked in silence a moment, until
Mithrais asked, “You told Lady Ciara that ‘most’ bards can’t force
the truth from someone. Was that also a confession?”

Telyn did not answer for a long moment. “I
can do it,” she finally admitted soberly. “I don’t like to. Can you
imagine, Mithrais, someone being able to compel you to do what they
want, against your will? I can do that.”

He now understood to what Riordan had been
alluding when he mentioned Telyn’s integrity. “How did you discover
this was possible?”

“Out of frustration, when I was young. Emrys
was hiding something from me when we visited an estate. I remember
that I was angry because he was late arriving to my instruction for
the third time that week, and I was burning to know what he had
been up to. He said it was none of my concern, and told me to play
the lesson he had set for me. While I played, fuming about this in
my head, Emrys suddenly started telling me where he’d been.”

Telyn hesitated for a moment before
continuing her tale. “He had been in the bed of the lord’s young
wife. I was so shocked that I stopped playing, and Emrys realized
at once what was happening. The betrayal in his eyes nearly broke
my heart.” Telyn colored with remembered shame. “He told me later
that the words were dragged from him against his will. It could
have cost him his life—and his lover’s—had he been overheard. That
incident taught me a valuable lesson about the responsibilities
that go along with my gifts. I only did it once more, because
Taliesin insisted I show this talent to the King. If Amorion had
been possessed of anything but a good heart, I shudder to think of
how I might have been forced to exploit this particular talent of
mine. He understands how I felt about it.”

“I suspect that my uncle is well acquainted
with the potential abuses of power.” Mithrais’ voice carried the
same note that had accompanied previous mention of Marithiel. Telyn
heard it, and mulled over it as they walked for several minutes,
finally giving voice to something that had been at the back of her
mind.

“Mithrais—forgive me if this question is
insulting, but I feel that I must ask before we arrive in Cerisild.
I know you recognized Lord Vuldur’s name last night. Is the palace
gossip about Lord Vuldur and Marithiel more than idle
speculation?”

Mithrais was silent for a long while, and she
was about to apologize when he finally replied, “Telyn, understand
that there’s no love lost between my mother and me. She has offered
my father little but contempt and barely tolerates my presence,
especially since I accepted the wardenship. She demands no more
from me than a son’s duty to his mother, which serves us both
fairly. There’s nothing you can say about Marithiel that will
offend me. What are you asking?”

Telyn took a deep breath. “Were she and
Vuldur betrothed before she wed Lord Gwidion?”

Mithrais began walking again. “I believe my
mother had planned to wed him, although she never received the
King’s consent. He chose another marriage for her, one that could
finally unite our people irrevocably. To Marithiel’s credit, she
saw the importance of this and agreed to the marriage, although she
didn’t go quietly.”

“There is more to that particular rumor,”
Telyn said softly, and Mithrais hesitated before he answered her
gravely.

“It’s possible that Gilmarion is not my
father’s son. Any fool who can count the passage of the months
knows that. Even if it is true, it doesn’t matter. He is
Marithiel’s son, my father’s heir, and my brother.”

There was nothing more to say on the subject,
and Telyn considered it closed, but for one nagging doubt. “I am
afraid that Marithiel will not be pleased by my presence, given the
circumstances of my exile from the royal household. I’m certain the
entire court knows why, the way gossip travels in Belthil.” She
faltered. “What if she won’t allow me to stay?”