Wil.”
She spoke it because it was true.
And because he wasn’t really there.
“The world hates a heartbroken Bard,” she said, the same thing the Ashkevron Bard had told her when he advised her to go south, go north, go anywhere that would take her away from what she couldn’t have.
“You can’t vie with a Herald’s first love,” he’d said. “The Kingdom needs him. You can’t compete with that.”
“Kingdom’s got far more acreage than me,” Lelia had replied miserably. It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t feel like it.
The comfort of a stranger’s ear had been too tempting, and she’d spent so many months of her journeyman days doggedly trying to cross paths with Herald Wil. She’d ended up telling the Ashkevron Bard all about her little obsession with her brother’s instructor. On Companion-back he and Lyle always outpaced her, but the Heralds often were mired in the local politics, giving her time to be at the next village when they got there.
The elder Bard had shaken his head. “You need to find a song. Find
Lelia thought,
She took a deep breath and seized the quill again. “So, Wil, what
The Herald who was not really there replied without hesitation. “How’d a colddrake get this far south?”
Lelia nodded, filling the last page of the report. “Aa-and—was it just this colddrake, or can Herda’s trick be reproduced? Is anyone mad enough to try?”
The front door of the inn opened, and Olli walked in with an armful of wood. “Talking to someone?” he asked.
Lelia looked up at him and smiled. “Just me.” She plucked a page out of the collection and tossed it in the fire. “Making sure I answer the right questions. It’s a little game I play.”
“You talk to yourself?”
“All the time. Here.” She rolled up the notes and handed them to the innmaster. “Give this to whatever Herald shows up. Tell ’em that it’s an official Bardic record of the events. I signed it and everything.”
“Great.” Olli took the scroll, and then watched as she hoisted her pack. “I—we’ll miss you.”
“I know.” She hugged him tightly. “I am forever in your debt, Drakeslayer.”
He blushed. “Take care, m’lady Bard.”
“Will do, innmaster.” She winked and strolled out, heading north.
Artel found Olli sitting by the fire and poking the coals.
“Your sparrow has flown, I take it?” she asked.
He nodded.
Artel looked about the gloomy common room. “Time to get things ready for the evening, eh?”
He replaced the poker in the stand. “I almost had myself convinced she’d stay.”
She smacked his shoulder. “She’s a Bard, you besotted fool! You keep someone like that here, and everything good about her dies. Her first love will always be the road.”
Olli grimaced. “Where I can’t follow.”
Artel rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. “Bright Lady, lad, get yourself on top of a woman already, and forget the one that never paid notice to you!”
She stormed out. The innmaster roused not much later, rolling his stiff shoulders. He built up the fire and then went to pulling out tables and benches, placing plates and bowls of honey.
The fire burned merrily all the long night.
Live On
Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Canada with her partner Fiona Patton and five, no six, no seven ... and a lot of cats as well as an elderly chihuahua who mostly ignores her. The recent adaptation of the five Vicki Nelson books to television (
) finally allowed her to use her degree in radio and television arts some twenty-five years after the fact. Her twenty-fourth and most recent novel,
, came out from DAW in hardcover in June 2008, and she is currently working on
, a stand-alone contemporary fantasy. In her spare time she practices the guitar and tries to avoid some of the trickier versions of a Gm7.
“Are you the young man who wrote that report about Appleby?”
Heralds didn’t tend to grow old. Even in times of peace, they lived lives that lowered the odds of them dying in bed to slightly less than negligible. It seemed that the elderly Herald who’d appeared at Jors’ side was the exception to prove the rule. His shoulders were hunched forward, his eyes were red rimmed and moist, he stood with his weight supported on a polished cane, and above the scarf he wore in spite of the heat of a sunny, late spring day, age had pleated his face into a hundred wrinkles.
“Are you deaf, boy? I said, are you the young man who wrote that report about Appleby! Are you Herald Jors?”
Age had roughened his voice but not lessened his volume.
People were beginning to gather, and Jors could see a trio of Companions heading in across the field to see what all the noise was about. “I am. I’m Jors.”
“Who taught you to write reports? Never mind. You leave too much out. That report about Appleby? All apples.”
“That’s pretty much all there is in Appleby.”
“What? There’s no people? No dogs? No cats? No buildings? No apple trees for pity’s sake?”
“Of course there are and ...”
“Of course there are,” the elderly Herald snorted. “Why didn’t you mention them, then, eh? You mentioned the apples, why not the apple trees?”
Jors smiled and spread his hands. “They didn’t do much.”
The rheumy eyes narrowed. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. I’ve had my Whites longer than your father’s been alive, maybe even your father’s father, and there has been a distinct disintegration, no, dispersing, no,
Since he seemed to be waiting for Jors to respond, the younger man ventured a reasonably sincere “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Do it right the next time. Honestly,” he muttered, turning and making his way toward the stables. “What are they teaching them when they’re in their Grays?”
Jors watched him go, watched him correcting a lateral drift every six steps or so, and wondered if he should have offered his arm.
“I see you’ve met Herald Tamis.”
He turned to see Erica, one of his yearmates, leaning on the fence, one arm stretched out over the top rail so she could scratch up under Raya, her Companion’s mane. “He doesn’t like the way I write reports.”
“As near as I can tell, he doesn’t like the way anyone writes reports.” She put a quaver into her voice. “It’s all business now, I tell you. No stories.” Then her expression changed. “Raya says we shouldn’t mock him.”
“I wasn’t.”
She smacked his shoulder with her free hand. “You would have.”
“Who is he?” Jors asked, climbing up onto the top rail so he could pay a similar attention to his own Companion. Who seemed to be sulking.
