The Bone Flute (12 page)

“Plain sight.”

“And when I saw that door?”

Miranda flinched. “Far sight.”

“Powers.” Mark gave Camrose a strange look and stepped away from her. The desk chair caught him behind the knees and he sat down.

Camrose pushed the flute on the coverlet with her foot. “Well, my insight tells me Mark's right. If I could hand those Wyrde the flute, everything would be okay. You could tell they could handle Terence and Diarmid rolled up in one, no problem.”

“But how can we get to them?” Mark asked.

“Maybe the flute would call them.”

Miranda shook herself. “You're asking for trouble. That thing has a will of its own.”

“I'll be careful.” Camrose grabbed the flute and raised it to her mouth again. “Now, how do I do this?”

“I won't help.”

“Cam, I really think you better not.”

“I'm telling it where I want to go.” Camrose shut her eyes and said firmly, “Take me back to the beginning of this story.”

She took a breath, then another, and blew gingerly into the flute. Out came a sour squeak that made Mark grimace, but nothing else happened. “Do I have to play a tune? Miranda?”

Miranda turned her back.

A breeze, cool after the storm, swirled in through the window and over her hands. The flute whined. The room blurred.

When her vision cleared she was standing at the window, looking out. In the yard below the gates were open, and a man was riding in on a path of sunset light, like a hero out of a tale.

18
Rhianna's story

T
he guest rode up from the loch and in through the west gate at sunset. The sun laid down a golden highway through the gate and across the middle of the courtyard, and along that shining path rode Diarmid, fair as the hero of one of his own songs.

The window of Rhianna's room was a perfect place to watch people arriving. Rhianna could see almost the whole front courtyard. Behind the bard on his tall gray horse walked a man leading a mule. Man and mule were equally loaded down.

“Presents for you, lots of them!” Alaric pushed his head under her arm so he could get a bit of window. “And some for me too, maybe.”

“Looks more like bedding. Maybe he doesn't trust ours.” She watched Diarmid, noting every detail. He was both handsome and young, so far as she could tell from here. He moved like a young man, dismounting with ease, and his hair caught the light and swirled like pale fl ame to his shoulders.

Shiny things all over him and his belongings reflected the warm light. His horse's bridle and saddle winked with gold and so did the strap of a big leather bag he lifted from the horse and slung over his shoulder. It was the one thing he carried himself. His harp, no doubt.

“He looks rich,” Alaric said. “The king must really favor him. Did you know he can sing the deer out of the thickets?

It's true! He can lure them out to the hunters' bows, just by singing. Ned said so.”

“That doesn't sound very fair to the deer.”

Alaric laughed, but Rhianna hardly heard him. She was still watching the courtyard. Her father was out there now to welcome the guest. They'd just turned toward the house together when the servant clumsily let slip some strap on the mule and a pack fell to the stones with a crash.

Quicker than you could blink, Diarmid turned back and cuffed the man to the ground. His head hit the paving stones. Rhianna heard the thud.

Her father put out a hand in protest, but Diarmid laughed, a clear sound that rose like a musical scale to Rhianna's window. He took her father's arm and they walked into the house, disappearing from her view. The servant lay still.

A moment later old Ned from the stables ran across the courtyard and knelt beside the fallen man. He helped him sit up. His eyes were open now, but there was blood on his face.

A babble and bustle broke out in the room behind her and her mother rushed in with two maids and an armload of clothes.

“He's here! Alaric, off you go and put on a clean tunic, that one smells of the stable. Rhianna, come away from that window and off with that dress. Quick now! Sara, where's that comb? Child, your hair's a rat's nest! Never mind, tomorrow you'll outshine the queen. I suppose that's what you've been daydreaming about. There now, stop shaking. Wait till you see him. He looks like a prince!”

This time tomorrow, Rhianna would be Diarmid's wife. She bent her head against the pull of the comb and thought of Alaric's tale of the deer. In her mind's eye she saw them flicking their ears and stepping delicately from their thickets, following the lure of a song, never seeing the archers.

That night the old hall looked brighter than it had since they celebrated Alaric's birth. In honor of the guest, candles burned in all the sconces, and the best silver and linen decked the high table. Someone had even taken a long pole and cleared the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. Rhianna wore her second-best dress and her best gold pin, and felt as well decked out as the table, and for the same purpose.

They sat Diarmid at her father's right hand, with Rhianna facing him. “Well, well, well,” he said slowly. “Hair of the true red-gold, eyes like the sea, fairest maid in all the west country. So they say, and I see it's no lie.”

Rhianna's mother beamed. Her father smiled absently, as if he were calculating something. Perhaps, thought Rhianna, he's figuring by how much he can reduce my dowry.

She was glad custom required her to look sweet and say nothing. She could not have spoken a word for all the king's gold, not with Diarmid's eyes on her face. Eyes as gray and cold as a winter sky.

“So far, I'm pleased,” he told Rhianna's father without look–ing at him, a small piece of rudeness that lit a spark of anger inside her. “But is she fit to live at the king's court? I promise, I won't take it lightly if she shames me.”

“Fit?” Her father scratched his beard. “Well, she can sew, and, um … ” He looked helplessly at his wife, who started in briskly, as if she'd only been waiting for this cue.

“She can spin, weave and sew like an angel. She can ride and hawk. She can make elegant conversation. She can read and write. And,” she added triumphantly, “she can play the rebec, the flute, and the lap harp.”

“Wait, back up a bit.” Diarmid waved a hand as if brushing away flies. “Did you say
read and write
?”

“I did,” Rhianna's mother said proudly.

“What nonsense!” He laughed his musical laugh. “Whatever possessed you to waste such learning on a girl?” Then he frowned. “And she plays, you say?”

“Like an archangel,” said Rhianna's mother, a little defiantly now, but still proud.

“All right, let's hear her. Go get her … hmm … her flute. Let her play for me.”

Play? Rhianna nearly choked. Me play for the king's bard?

He smiled back at her, his eyes still cold.

Rhianna's mother sent a servant, an old gray-haired man who hobbled from side to side as he walked, to get the flute. Rhianna couldn't remember ever having seen him before. Perhaps he'd come from one of the farms.

While she was still lulling her mind with these thoughts, the better to keep her courage, the flute lit down in her hands and the old man backed away to the wall. Rhianna took a deep breath, then another, to still her shaking hands. She raised the flute to her lips.

One quavering note, a second sweeter one and a third, strong and true, and she was up and away. The music lifted her on wings and all fear left her. The quick notes chased each other laughing under the high ceiling, and except for Rhianna's playing the hall was silent.

When the last note died into the candlelight, she knew she had never played so well. She looked at Diarmid, hoping to see him warmed and softened.

But his eyes were colder than December seas. “No.” He shook his head. “It won't do.”

Rhianna's father looked bewildered. “I don't understand,”

her mother said.

“Of course you don't,” Diarmid said. The contempt in his voice lit another spark of anger in Rhianna. “I can't have my own wife showing me up! Can't you hear the jokes? ‘The best bard in all the land—except for his wife.' No, there'll be one musician in my household and one only.”

“What … ?” Rhianna forgot herself and spoke. “What are you telling me?”

“I'm telling you there'll be no more music from you. Is that understood, my lady Rhianna?”

She shook her head slowly. He might as well have told her there'd be no more air to breathe, no sun to shine tomorrow. Then she knew, all at one blow, what he meant to take from her.

“I know this. I'll never marry you, never!”

She was standing, her bench overturned behind her, and her mother was clucking over her, and her father was shouting, and Alaric was looking from her to Diarmid with tears in his eyes.

In the midst of the uproar came a breath of silence and the whisper of the lame old servant, soft in her ear, “Take heart.” It was a brave kindness. She was careful not to look at him.

Diarmid said nothing. He sat and sipped his wine and smiled. When the noise died down he lifted his cup to Rhianna. “I'm still pleased with my bargain. She's headstrong, but I know ways of dealing with that. In a year you won't know the child, I promise.” Rhianna's father looked relieved.

Her mother threw an arm around her and walked her to the door. “Go to your room, calm yourself. Yes, I know it's hard, giving up your music. But in a year or two you'll be too busy with babes to spare a thought for anything else.”

At midnight Rhianna lay with her eyes wide open. She saw nothing ahead but a darkness darker than the shadows in this room, a darkness that filled tomorrow and next year and all the years of her life.

When the keep was quiet she rose from her bed, dressed and gathered her belongings into a bag.

I'll bring only what I need, she thought. An extra cloak for warmth, a tinderbox, my two gold pins to sell, my flute. I'll live free; I'll marry no man. I'll travel to some great town and lose myself there amongst the people. I'll play the flute for my living, and Diarmid can whistle for me—for all the good it will do him!

She busied herself with these hopeful plans to keep herself from faltering. Down the stairs she crept, and across the great hall, a place of mouse-stirred shadows now, and out into the courtyard. There she stopped, because the gate was closed. Beside it her father's men drowsed but did not sleep. It was the one way out.

At a step behind her she stood still as stone, and thought, I'm done. But no, it was the old servant. Moonlight silvered his hair. “There is another way,” he whispered.

“Why would you help me?”

“For pity.”

“But you'll be punished.”

“Not I. I'll go with you. I know a secret door.”

He led her past the stable, where Ned snored in a heap of hay, past the smithy where the smith's boy slept curled up beside the embers. Rhianna stumbled and a stone flew up and rang the anvil like a bell, and her heart sank. But the boy slept on.

The old man laughed softly in the dark. Rhianna felt the feathery touch of fear, but she thought of Diarmid and got her courage back.

They came to a little wooden door in the outer wall of the keep. To Rhianna, who had lived in the keep all her life and knew every stone of it, the door was a fearful thing, for she knew it had not been there before.

“The way out,” he said. She looked into his eyes and saw only kindness.

“Who are you?”

He smiled and shook his head.

Rhianna put her hand to the latch and the door swung open. On the other side lay the rocky slopes down to the shore of the loch, and the jetty with its barge and the loch itself, black and silver under the moon.

The door closed behind her. She looked back and it was gone, the wall unbroken. Then she looked at the lame old servant and he was gone too. In his place stood a tall man in black and silver, black of hair and white of face, with eyes that might be blue in daylight.

“Rhianna of the Island Keep, fairest maid in all the west country,” he said. “Truly, it was no lie.”

“You tricked me!”

“Will you call for help? Will you run back to Diarmid?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “Please, help me to reach a town.”

“I'll do better than that, my lady. For I am a prince in my own country. And in that land there is no weeping, and no dying, and never a cruel word. And you shall have a harp of starlight to play, and a flute of moonlight … forever and ever, my Rhianna.”

His words brushed over her like the wings of doves, binding her to his will. She said no word more but walked down to the barge and sat beside him. No man worked the pole, yet the barge moved steadily across the loch. The shores of Rhianna's home moved away, farther and farther, until they were lost in a silver blur.