Magic's Promise

from her worry - He pocketed the toy and headed for the grove of trees at the northern end of the field.

He spotted the faded red wagon at once; there was an old man seated on the back steps of it, bent over something in his hands.

Shavri, bent over a broken doll some child in the House of Healing had brought to her. Looking up at me with a face wet with tears. Me, standing there like an idiot, then finally getting the wits to ask her what was wrong. “1 can't bear it, Van, I can't - Van, I want a baby -” He shoved the memory away, hastily. 'Excuse me,' Vanyel said, after waiting for the carver perched on the back steps of his scarlet traveling - wagon (part workshop, part display, and part home) to finish the wild rose he was carving from a bit of goldenoak. He still hesitated to break the old man's concentration in the middle of such a delicate piece of work, but there wasn't much left of the afternoon. If he was going to find the purported luthier -

But the snow-pated craftsman's concentration had evidently weathered worse than Vanyel's gentle interruption.

'Aye?' he replied, knobby fingers continuing to shape the delicate, gold-sheened petals.

'I'm looking for Master Dawson.'

'You're looking at him, laddybuck.' Now the oldster put down his knife, brushed the shavings from his leather apron, and looked up at Vanyel. His expression was friendly in a shortsighted, preoccupied way, his face round, with cloudy gray-green eyes.

'I understand you have musical instruments for sale?'

The carver's interest sharpened, and his eyes grew less vague. 'Aye,' he said, standing, and pulling his apron over his head. There were a few shavings sticking to the linen of his buff shirt and breeches, and he picked at them absently. 'But - in good conscience I can't offer 'em before Fair-time, milord. Not without Ashkevron permission, any rate.'

Vanyel smiled, feeling as shy as a child, and tilted his head to one side. 'Well, I'm an Ashkevron. Would it be permissible if I made it right with my father?''

The old man looked him over very carefully. 'Aye,' he said, after so long a time Vanyel felt as if he was being given some kind of test. 'Aye, I think 'twould. Come in the wagon, eh?'

Half a candlemark later, with the afternoon sun shining into the crowded wagon and making every varnished surface glow, Vanyel sighed with disappointment. 'I'm sorry, Master Dawson, none of these lutes will do.' He picked one at random off the rack along the wall of the wagon interior, and plucked a string, gently. It resonated - but not enough. He put it back, and locked the clamp that held it in place in the rack. 'Please, don't mistake my meaning, they're beautiful instruments and the carving is fine, but - they’re - they're student's lutes. They're all alike, they have no voice of their own. I was hoping for something a little less ordinary.' He shrugged, hoping the man wouldn't become angered.

Strangely enough, Dawson didn't. He looked thoughtful instead, his face crossed by a fine net of wrinkles when he knitted his brows. 'Huh. Well, you surprise me, young milord - what did you say your name was?'

Vanyel blushed at his own poor manners. 'I didn't, I'm sorry. Vanyel.'

'Vanyel – that - Vanyel Ashkevron - my Holy Stars! The Herald?” the luthier exclaimed, his eyes going dark and round. 'Herald Vanyel? The Shadow -'

'Stalker, Demonsbane, the Hero of Stony Tor, yes,' Vanyel said wearily, sagging against the man's bunk that was on the wall opposite the rack of instruments. The instrument maker's reaction started a headache right behind his eyes. He dropped his head, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. 'Please. I really - get tired of that.'

He felt a hard, callused hand patting his shoulder, and he looked up in surprise into a pair of very sympathetic and kindly eyes. 'I 'magine you do, lad,' the old man said with gruff understanding. 'Sorry to go all goose-girl on you. Just - person don't meet somebody folks sing about every day, an' he sure don't expect to have a hero come strollin' up to him at a Border Harvest Fair. Now - you be Vanyel, I be Rolf. And you'll have a bit of my beer before I send you on your way - hey?''

Vanyel found himself smiling. 'Gladly, Rolf.' He started to pick his way across the wagon to the door at the rear, but the man stopped him with a wave of his hand.

'Not just yet, laddybuck. As I was startin' to tell you, I got a few pieces I don't put out. Keep 'em for Bards. And I got a few more I don't even show to just any Bard - but bein' as you are who you are - an' since they say you got a right fine hand with an instrument -' He opened up a hatch in the floor of the crowded wagon, and began pulling out instruments packed in beautifully wrought padded leather traveling bags. Two lutes, a harp - and three instruments vaguely gittern-shaped, but-much larger.

Rolf began stripping the cases from his treasures with swift and practiced hands, and Vanyel knew that he had found what he was looking for. The lutes-which were the first cases he opened-bore the same relationship to the instruments on the wall as a printed broadside page bears to an elegant and masterfully calligraphed and ornamented proclamation.