Lark and Wren

him, keeping a sharp watch for trouble.

Weeds grew ankle-high even in the ruts on the road itself, and were waist-high on the verge. Once under the shelter of overhanging trees, she was forced to revise her guess of how long it had been since the road had been used by other than foot traffic. From the look of the road-or rather, path-no one else had come this way since the beginning of the Faire at very best, unless they were foot-travelers like themselves. The weeds were not broken down the way they would be if cart wheels had rolled over them; she was, admittedly, no tracker, but it didn't seem to her that the weeds had been taken down by anything other than the passing of animals in days.

Trouble on a deserted way like this could come in several forms; least likely was in the form of humans, robbers who hunted up and down a seldom-traveled track precisely because they were unlikely to be caught on it and those they robbed were unlikely to be missed. Wild animals or farm animals run feral could give a traveler a bad time; particularly wild cattle and feral pigs. She didn't think that the larger predators would range this close to the Faire site and Kingsford, but that was a possibility that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. There had once been a wild lion loose in the forest near Westhaven and there were always wolves about. But last of all, and most likely, was that it could be that the reason why this road was unused was the same reason the road through Skull Hill Pass was little used. Something really horrible could be on it. Something that had moved in recently, that Talaysen might not know about.

'Where are we going?' she asked Talaysen, not wanting to seem to question his judgment, but also not wanting to find herself facing something like the Ghost. The next uncanny creature might not be a music lover. And she was no hand at all with any kind of weapon.

'What's our next destination, do you mean?' he replied, 'or where are we making for tonight?' He looked back over his shoulder at her to answer, and he didn't seem at all alarmed. Surely he knew about all the signs of danger on a road. . . . Surely he was better at it than her. . . .

'Both,' she said shortly. The track widened a little, and she got up beside him so that he could talk to her without having to crane his neck around.

'Allendale Faire, ultimately,' he told her. 'That's about two weeks from now. The pickings there have been good for me in the past, and no one else wanted to take it this year, so I said we would. Tonight, there's a good camping spot I think we can make by moonrise; there's water, shelter, and high ground there. I've used it before. The track doesn't get any worse than this, so I don't see any problem with pressing on after sunset.'

'After sunset?' she said doubtfully. 'Master Wren, I don't think I'm up to struggling with tent poles in the dark.'

'You won't have to,' he said with a cheerful smile. 'There won't be anyone there but us, and since the weather is fine, there's no need to worry about putting up a tent. With luck, the weather will hold until we reach Allendale in about two weeks.'

Two weeks. That was a long time to walk through forest. She'd slept under the stars without a tent before, but never with company . . . still it wasn't that she was afraid something would happen, it was that she was afraid it wouldn't, without a little privacy to share. And she wasn't certain their provisions would hold out that long. 'Is there anything on this road?' she asked.

'Quite a bit, after tonight. Small villages, a great deal like the one you came from, and about two days apart,' he told her. 'We ought to be able to pick up a few nights' worth of food and lodging for music on the way to Allendale Faire.'

She frowned, not quite understanding why he was so certain of a welcome. 'But they're so close to Kingsford-why would they bother to trade us for music so close to the city-and so close to Faire-time? In winter, now, I could see it-but now?'

He chuckled. 'How often did the people in your village go even as far as the next one for anything? Maybe once or twice a year? The first village is close to a two-day walk from here, and most farmers can't afford to take that much time away from crops this time of the season. Not many people take this road, either, which is why I claimed it for the start of our journey.'

'What if they've had a minstrel through here?' she asked. Then she remembered Westhaven, and shook her head. 'Never mind, even if it was two days ago, we'll still be a novelty, won't we? Even if they have their own musicians. It was that way at the Hungry Bear in my village.'

He laughed. 'Well, with luck, we'll be the first musicians they've seen in a while. With none, they still won't have had a musician down this way for a few days, and what's more'-his grin grew cocky and self-assured-'he won't have been as good as we are, because he won't have been a Free Bard.'

She chuckled and bent her head to keep her eye on her footing.

They walked on in silence; the grass grown over the track muffled their steps, and though their appearance frightened the birds right on the road into silence, farther off in the woods there were plenty of them chirping and singing sleepily in the heat. These woods had none of the brooding, ominous qualities of the ones around Skull Hill, and she began to relax a little. There was nothing at all uncanny that she could sense-and in fact, after all those weeks of throngs of people, and living with people at her elbow all the time, she found the solitude quite comforting.

She was glad of her hat, a wide-brimmed straw affair that she'd bought at the Faire; it was a lot cooler than her leather hat, and let a bit of breeze through to her head when there was any to be had. Though the trees shaded the road a bit, they also sheltered it from what little breeze there was, and the heat beneath the branches was oppressive. Insects buzzed in the knee-high weeds beside the road, a monotonous drone that made her very sleepy. Sweat trickled down her back and the back of her neck; she'd put her hair up under the hat, but she still felt her scalp and neck prickling with heat. At least she was wearing her light breeches; in skirts, even kilted up to her knees, she'd have been fighting her way through the weeds. Grasshoppers sprang away from their track, and an enterprising kestrel followed them for a while. He was quite a sight to see, hovering just ahead of them, then swooping down on a fat 'hopper that they frightened into bumbling flight. He would carry it on ahead and perch, neatly stripping wings and legs, then eating it like a child with a carrot, before coming back for another unfortunate enough to be a little too slow.

'Why Allendale Faire?' she asked, when the silence became too much to bear, and her ears rang from the constant drone of insects.

'It's a decently large local Faire in a town that has quite a few Sires and wealthy merchants living nearby,' he replied absently. 'We need to start thinking about a place to winter-up; I'm not in favor of making the rounds in winter, personally. And you never have; it's a hard life, although it can be very rewarding if you hit a place where the town prospered during the summer and the people all have real coin to spend.'

She thought about trekking through woods like these with snow up to her knees instead of weeds, and shivered. 'I'd rather not,' she said honestly. 'Like I told you when I met you, that isn't the kind of life I would lead by