Song Magick (3 page)

“Those bloody wardens will kill me either
way, won’t they?” the man finally spat, defiance mixed with terror.
“I won’t tell you anything unless you promise to let me go.”

“By the code of the Tauron, I should have
killed you already,” was Aric’s cold reply, and Mithrais silenced
him with a gesture.

“I’ve had enough of death for one night.”
Telyn knelt beside the man. “But I have a keen interest in
continuing to live, myself. How do I know you won’t try to kill me
again? There must be a fine price on my head—or my hand, as it
happens.” She stared unhappily at the honor marks on her wrist a
moment, then back at the bound man. “Obviously, it’s tempting
enough to make greedy men risk the Tauron’s arrows.”

“There isn’t enough gold to get me into the
Wood again,” the man said fervently. “I just hired on a few days
ago. They knew you’d be coming this way. Said that they wanted you
dead before you got to the town.”

“‘
They’—do you mean them?” Telyn
indicated the dead men.

“Yes.” One look at the still bodies was
enough, and the man babbled, “Faine, the one with the sword—he said
that he and Rolf were hired in Belthil, but they had been trying to
find you for months. They finally split up to look, and Rolf heard
you were at Osland over the winter. By the time Faine got there,
you were already gone, but Rolf knew where you were headed for the
spring fires. Faine said we were lucky to find you first.”

“First?” Mithrais said sharply, and Telyn
went cold with the implications of the word. “There are more
looking for her? How many?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.” The man
licked sweat off his upper lip, his eyes never leaving Mithrais,
who stood and exchanged a wordless glance with Aric. The warden
nodded, raising the deep hood over his flame-bright hair, and
slipped into the trees to vanish without a sound.

“Do they know where I will be?” Telyn
pressed.

“I don’t know,” the man repeated. “Faine was
close-mouthed. Didn’t want anybody else horning in on his kill.” He
began to struggle in panic. “I told you all I know! You have to let
me go. I swear I won’t come after you again. Please don’t let him
kill me!”

Telyn stood and walked away from the man even
as he continued to plead with her and struggle against his bonds.
She stood at the edge of the clearing, her arms wrapped around
herself. Mithrais watched her for a moment, and then silenced the
man with a look before he joined Telyn.

“What shall I do with him?” Mithrais asked
her gently.

“He’s a cowardly little toad. I believe that
he’ll just run.” Telyn’s voice was flat. “Let him go.”

Mithrais nodded and returned to the captive,
who stared at him with wide, glazed eyes. He whimpered when
Mithrais drew a slender dagger from his belt. The Tauron warden
knelt beside him, holding the man’s gaze with his eerily wolfish
eyes.

“Remember that you owe her your life.” The
man went limp with relief, but gasped as the point of Mithrais’
knife kissed the pulse at the side of his neck, and the warden
leaned in to whisper: “You have until dawn to be outside the trees.
If you ever set one foot inside the Wood again, we will know. We
will
find you. Do you understand?”

The man nodded fearfully. Mithrais withdrew
the dagger from his throat, and the man jumped as ropes parted at
his wrists and ankles. He leaped up, babbling his thanks, and Telyn
watched him flee in the direction opposite the one Aric had gone.
He kept looking back nervously as if he expected Mithrais to loose
an arrow into his back. Telyn thought bitterly that she might not
stop the warden had he decided to do it.

“I will have some explaining to do when Aric
returns.” Mithrais stood behind her again. “You showed him more
mercy than he deserves.”

“I know.”

“Lady Bard, I must ask you something.” She
turned to face him, and his pale eyes were compelling, his
expression grave.

“You say you haven’t been at court for some
time, when your honor marks declare you bound to the royal
household. You’re very young to be traveling alone, although I see
you’re quite capable of protecting yourself. But why are you so
many leagues from Belthil?” He paused. “And why would it give
motive to a hired blade to track you for the better part of a
year?”

Telyn hugged herself tightly, despair
crushing her spirit. The details of the night that had changed her
life forever haunted her dreams more often than she cared to admit,
and tonight’s events had brought them far too close. She felt the
warden’s eyes upon her as he waited for her to speak, but could not
look at him. She chose to answer him honestly.

“You know that true bards can affect the
emotions of others with their song magic, as you felt earlier, but
my gift is...different. It’s stronger. It’s more unpredictable in
its effects. I played for the court at the spring rites last year,
for the first time since I came of age. Afterwards, I was alone in
the music room putting away my instruments, and I heard someone
enter. It was one of the young lords. He was drunk, and he said my
song magic had...inflamed him. When I refused him, he struck me and
forced himself on me. I fought back, and in the struggle, I wounded
him gravely with his own dagger.” She lifted haunted eyes to meet
his at last. “I killed him.”

Mithrais stared at her, and Telyn turned away
from the horror in his expression, unable to bear it—but it was not
for the reason Telyn feared.

“Surely you were not dismissed for defending
yourself against a rapist,” he said quietly. “Magic or not, there
are offenses which cannot be excused. I can’t imagine the King
would have ignored this.”

“The King truly had no other choice than to
send me away,” she told him. “The boy’s father is a very powerful
lord, and he demanded vengeance. King Amorion forbade it, but he
knew I was no longer safe in Belthil. I left that night.”

“Did no one defend you?” Mithrais’ voice held
outrage.

Here at last was the crux of the matter that
had so wounded her. “Taliesin couldn’t even bring himself to speak
to me until I came to say farewell.” Tears finally overflowed to
trace slow tracks down her face, and she wiped them away
impatiently. “He told me that I had brought about the end of our
family’s honor with my carelessness. I didn’t stay to hear
more.”

“Your family?” Mithrais asked carefully, and
she nodded.

“The Royal Bard is my father.” Telyn saw his
eyes widen. “The title would have passed to me in time, but no
longer.”

Mithrais joined her at the edge of the circle
where firelight and darkness merged. “What will you do now?”

“Go to Rothvori. That hasn’t changed. I
refuse to live in fear.” Telyn turned and managed a smile in spite
of the chill in her heart. “Thank you, Mithrais. You saved my life
tonight. I don’t understand how you knew to come back at just the
right moment.”

He paused a moment before answering, “I am
only grateful that we were still near enough to aid you.”

A yawn shook her involuntarily, and Telyn
swayed. Mithrais steadied her with warm hands on her shoulders. She
stiffened a moment, but the panic did not come; there was only a
strange comfort in his touch, soothing and somehow familiar.

“Sleep now. You’re exhausted. Aric is
conducting a reconnaissance to make certain no others are lurking
about. We’ll stay here and keep watch tonight, and in the morning I
will escort you to Rothvori.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

His eyes reflected silver in the moonlight.
“It’s my duty as Westwarden to see you safely out of the Wood after
having been attacked. Until I know that you’re out of danger, my
place is at your side.”

A stubborn flare of indignant pride rose
inside Telyn, and she moved past him and away from the distraction
of his touch. “I told you, I can take care of myself.”

“So I have seen, but your enemy knows your
strengths as well. Lady Bard, who is it that sends paid assassins?
If the King forbade revenge, he should know of this.”

Telyn shook her head in negation. “I don’t
want to think about it tonight.” Another yawn convulsed her. “Good
night, Mithrais.”

She heard the resignation in his sigh. “Rest
well. We shall be here.”

As she returned to the wagon, a repeat of the
disconcerting, visceral drumbeat that Telyn had felt earlier that
night abruptly passed over the bard’s skin, leaving gooseflesh in
its wake. The sensation was much stronger than before, and Telyn
gasped involuntarily. She half-turned in the direction from which
it had come, knowing she would see nothing, but compelled all the
same.

“You felt that.” Mithrais’ soft statement
held an edge of surprise, and Telyn stared at him. His expression
registered no concern, only an intense interest.

“All day long. What is it?” she asked, and
the warden sighed as if searching for the right words.

“The pulse of the Wood,” he said finally, a
small, enigmatic smile lifting his lips. “It is nothing to fear.
You have my word. Good night.”

Telyn looked away as Mithrais began to drag
the body of the assassin out of the circle of firelight. She did
not really want to know what he was going to do with the corpse,
and climbed quickly into the back of the wagon.

She collapsed into the nest of blankets in
the load bed and lay there a moment, her mind whirling with chaotic
images of blades and blood, and the face of an anguished father
kneeling over the body of his son. Telyn jerked physically away
from that last mental picture and turned over onto her stomach,
where sleep claimed her at last.

Chapter
Three

“You let him go?”

Aric’s voice rose in strident disbelief.
Mithrais raised a finger to his lips in caution, pointing to the
wagon where the bard slept, and the flame-haired warden dropped his
voice to an accusatory whisper.

“He was a bounty hunter, Mithrais! How could
you allow him to just walk out of the Wood?”

“Actually, he ran,” Mithrais said with irony.
He had known Aric would question this decision; as his lieutenant,
Aric was right to do so, but the Westwarden held firm. “He won’t
come back, nor do I think he has the courage to try that line of
work again. It was her wish to spare his life.”

“That’s all well and good, but how will we
explain this to the Elders?” Aric grumbled unhappily. “The Code is
very clear on this, and you of all people know the laws Lord
Gwidion passed in regard to that kind of scum.”

“I helped him write those particular laws,
and I don’t have to remind you why.” Mithrais glanced at Aric, who
nodded and nudged the remaining body beside the fire with the toe
of his boot, his face guarded.

The horrific scene they had stumbled upon
still haunted them both. It had been the grisly work of a
particularly vicious bounty hunter known as The Dragon, who had
slipped through the nets of the Tauron and vanished like one of the
Wood’s rumored ghosts. For Aric, who had been profoundly disturbed
by the experience, that memory was never far away, and he enforced
the new laws with a grim satisfaction.

Mithrais’ flame-haired friend and partner
cleared his throat, and noted with grudging admiration, “I can’t
believe she held off three attackers as long as she did. What if
the one you released does come back?”

“We’ll be here. But the Gwaith’orn no longer
perceive that man as a threat, or they would have told you.”

“But they still perceive
her
as
something unusual.” Aric’s gaze returned to the wagon with a nod.
“I think the Gwaith’orn were preoccupied with her, and that’s why
it took them so long to sense the threat. But why has she caught
their attention?”

“I’m not sure. Bards have passed through
before with little notice, but this one is different.” Mithrais
paused. “She feels the resonance, Aric. I’m almost certain she is a
heartspeaker.”

“You don’t think she knows about them, do
you?” Aric’s voice was low and urgent, his eyes flicking to the
wagon. “She isn’t Wood-born, Mithrais.”

“It doesn’t seem to make a difference. They
just tried to summon her.” Mithrais sighed, and his own eyes rested
on the wagon. “There are other wills at work here. This was no
chance meeting. They want us to protect her.”

“I agree,” Aric relented. “The question that
remains is, why?” He grabbed the collar of the dead man’s tunic and
began to drag the body away into the dark, leaving Mithrais to
guard the small campsite. The Westwarden stared into the fire, his
own thoughts preoccupied with the bard, and how her tawny eyes had
bespelled him as easily as her song magic.

* * * *

Telyn woke at dawn, unable to keep out the
chorus of birdsong. The feathered heralds of spring knew what time
it was, and their only thoughts were of mate, nest, and eggs. They
didn’t care if exhausted bards hadn’t had enough sleep.

She flung her arm over her eyes, burrowing
deeper into the blankets and delaying the inevitable return to full
consciousness. She knew there was a reason she would rather stay
asleep, but her foggy mind was unable to make a connection to it
just yet.

Her dreams had been strange and disjointed.
She had seen herself standing just outside the Wood, which rang
with disembodied voices. In another, someone inside the trees
called to her, but she was somehow barred from entering the forest
and wandered the edges looking for a way through the bramble. The
images had left Telyn ill-rested and irritable.

She sat up slowly, working her neck to get
the kinks out. Her shoulders and arms were unusually stiff and
sore, as if she had been back in training with the soldiers...and
that thought suddenly brought awareness and memory flooding
back.

She was being hunted.