Lark and Wren

get that way?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Talaysen reflected that it was a good thing that the wagon slept four. They looked to have acquired a second 'apprentice.'

After hearing the young man play, there was no way that Talaysen was going to let him wander off on his own again. Even if he hadn't been determined in that direction, the ladies were. So they packed everything down for travel, and he and the boy went into the back while Gwyna handled the reins and Rune watched and learned.

'Remember, speak slowly,' he told the lad-no, not 'the lad.' The youngster had a name. Jonny Brede. He was going to have to remember that. A personable lad; thin and wiry, with a heart-shaped face and an unruly tangle of wavy brown hair. His eyes were the most attractive feature he had, probably because he tried to do most of his speaking with them rather than expose himself to ridicule. That stutter-the youngster must have gotten a lot of cruel teasing over it. 'Speak very slowly. Take your time. I'm in no hurry, and neither are you, so take all the time you need.'

Strange, lying here at ease on a bed, instead of trudging down the dusty road. Very strange, but obviously much more comfortable. Though he knew why he hadn't done this long ago, and it had nothing to do with money. He knew very little about the care of horses and nothing about harnessing or driving-all of his knowledge was of riding and hunting. That didn't serve to tell him what to do with these stout little draft-beasts. How often should they be rested, for instance? And how on Earth did one manage two sets of reins? What did one do if they didn't want to get between the shafts of the wagon?

Rune and Gwyna took up the bench seat in front, with their backs to the interior, although they could hear everything he and Jonny said. Rune evidently knew enough about mules from her days at the inn that she was a logical candidate for secondary driver. He and Jonny took their ease back in the wagon itself.

'Tell me the earliest thing you remember,' he said, staring at the bottom of a cupboard just over his head. Like the rest of the interior of the wagon, it was of brown wood polished to a high gloss.

Jonny shook his head, his hands knotting and un-knotting in his lap.

'Don't you remember being very small?' Talaysen prompted. 'Do you recall schoolmates? Siblings? Tutors or Priests? A birthday party, perhaps?'

Jonny shook his head even harder. 'N-n-no,' he replied. 'N-n-nothing like that. Jus-just being sick, for a long, l-long time, and m-m-my M-M-Master.'

'Start with that, then,' Talaysen told him. 'Slowly. Don't force the words out. Think of speech as a song; you wouldn't rush the cadence.'

'I was r-r-real sick,' Jonny said thoughtfully. 'Fever; I w-w-was hot all the time. I was seeing things t-t-too. Men f-f-f-fighting, buildings b-b-burning. P-p-people yelling.' He bit his lip. 'Th-th-then I was at K-K-Kingsford, and M-M-Master was taking care of me.'

'Master who?'

'M-M-Master D-D-Darian,' the young man replied promptly.

Interesting. That was a name Talaysen knew, largely because Master Darian's arrival had caused such a fuss. Master Darian wasn't rightly at Kingsford at all; he was from the Guild in Birnam. He should have gone there to retire, not to our kingdom. Talaysen remembered the minor stir that had caused; Master Darian, half-senile, demanding to be allowed to lodge in the great Guildhall at Kingsford, claiming outrageous things. That his life was in danger, that there were assassins looking for him. How had that ended up? There had been something about a usurper-

Yes, he had it now. There had been a palace uprising, with the King of Birnam deposed by his brother, and a lot of the usual civil unrest that followed such a coup. Darian had been one of the King's Bards-a position that did not normally make one a target for assassins. The Guild had decided that old Master Darian might have seen a thing a two that had proved too much for his mind, and voted to permit him to stay instead of forcing him back to a place where he was afraid to go.

Had there been a boy with him, an apprentice? Talaysen couldn't remember-

Wait, there had been, and the boy had been sick with a marsh-fever. That was it. And that was another reason why the Guild had decided to let the Master stay. By the time they'd reached Kingsford, the boy had been in a bad way. It seemed too cruel even to the normally callous Guild Bards to turn them out for the boy to die on the road.

Hmm. If he'd been at Kingsford, one of the mages might have healed him of it. Ardis would know.

He made a mental note to write to her and ask.

'So, you were ill, and when you finally got well, you were in Kingsford. What then?'

'M-M-Master Darian took care of m-m-me, and when he got sick, I t-t-took care of him.' The chin came up, and the big brown eyes looked defiantly into his. 'Th-th-they said he was m-m-mad. He w-w-wasn't. He j-j-just had trouble remembering.'

Yes, and that was why they had permitted him to keep the 'apprentice' even though the boy probably wasn't learning anything from the old man. He took care of his Master, and that had freed up a servant to run attendance on other Masters. As long as he didn't get in the way, the rest of the members of the Guild ignored him. Talaysen recalled now thinking that he ought to do something about the boy himself; teach him, perhaps. But then other things had gotten in the way, and he'd forgotten all about it by the time he left the Guild in a rage.

'Th-th-they left us alone until M-M-Master died. Th-th-then they said I had t-t-t-to l-l-l-leave.' The stutter got worse as he grew more distressed.

'Why?' Talaysen asked.

'B-b-because I d-d-didn't have a M-M-Master any-

m-m-more,' he said, his eyes dark with anguish. 'And

th-th-they s-s-s-said it w-w-wasn't w-w-worth w-w-wasting