The Robin And The Kestrel

'I should have given this small comfort to the fiddler girl, had I recognized her bravery and honesty,' the Ghost whispered, as Jonny took her hand for a brief, congratulatory squeeze. 'But she was the first I had ever seen who deserved that consideration, so perhaps it is not surprising I did not recognize this until after she was gone. So_tell me first of her, in more detail. And of her song....'

She almost smiled at that, and caught herself just in time. So, he likes being famous as well as any living being! Well, I think I can oblige him.

She told him Rune's history, or at least as much of it as she knew, from the moment that Rune had left Skull Hill. How she had put his money to proper use, investing it in instruments and lessons, how she had gone to Kingsford Faire to take part in the trials for the Bardic Guild_

How her song of the 'Skull Hill Ghost' had won her acclaim and the highest points in the trials_

How the Guild had treated her when they learned she was a girl and not a boy.

That made him angry again; interesting how she could sense his moods now, as if he had let down some sort of wall, or she had become more sensitive. She pitied the next Guildsman, Bard or Minstrel, that might pass this way by accident! He would take out his anger at what they had done to 'his' fiddler girl on any of the Guild that came into his hands.

She went hastily on to describe how the Free Bards had rescued her, and what had happened to her then. He asked her detailed questions about Talaysen, Master Wren_and about King Rolend and her position in Birnam. She sensed his satisfaction in the rewarming of the emotional atmosphere.

'Good,' he whispered at last. 'Very good. I am pleased. Despite her enemies, she has triumphed. Despite fools, she has prospered.' He nodded, and the crickets began to sing again, down the hill at first, then up around the clearing. He turned his cowl towards Kestrel. 'Now music,' he continued. 'You, harper. Something with life in it. Warmth. The sun.'

Kestrel nodded without speaking, and set his hands to the strings of his harp. As always, he was lost in his music within the first few bars, and as always, he invoked Bardic Magic without any appearance of effort. Robin wondered if he realized what he was doing; the Magic that he called was mild, harmless, and did nothing more than invoke a mood. In this case, in performing a sweet child's song about a mountain meadow, he enhanced it with a mood of sunny innocence.

The Ghost either did not notice, or else since it was not threatening, he simply ignored it. Probably the latter; Robin had the feeling he noticed everything.

As Jonny played, she paid careful attention to the flow and flux of powers about them all. About halfway through the song, she knew that there was a pattern to those flows... and near the end, she knew what it was.

She had a suspicion when he agreed to the bargain that the Ghost would take power from them, through the music, through the Bardic Magic he hoped they would invoke. And it looked as if she was half right; but only half. He was not stealing their power, nor pulling it in. It was as if they were campfires, and he was basking in the warmth they produced. Taking nothing, only enjoying what flowed to him naturally.

But she sensed something else as well. This benign enjoyment was the reverse side of something much, much darker. That was the side that his victims saw, the icy chill to the warmth... as he stole their life-force along with their life.

He chose a Gypsy love song from Robin next; she hid a grin, because she had the feeling he was hoping she'd sing something at and for Kestrel. Well, he would get that_but not just yet. Instead, she sang a song of a night of celebration and tangled lovers who could not make up their minds over who was going to pair off with who, until in the end, everyone ended up sleeping alone, for that night at least! She got the definite impression that her audacity pleased him, and that the song itself amused him.

'Tell me what this quarrel is that the Church has with your kind,' he whispered, as soon as she had finished. 'How did you come to this conclusion, and what are you doing to remedy it? All that you know, tell.'

She found herself recounting what Nightingale had told them, what she and Kestrel had seen, and Harperus' speculations. He listened silently to all of this, not prompting her by so much as a single word, as she concluded with what she and Jonny were doing_heading to Gradford on the chance that the source of the problem lay in that direction, while Nightingale went in the opposite direction. The anger was back again, but this time she could not imagine what had invoked it. She was only glad that it hadn't been any of their doing.

'I think'_the Ghost began, after a cricket-filled silence_'your searches are like to bear more fruit than hers.'

But before she could follow up that astonishing bit of information with a question of her own, he had already demanded a ballad 'with free wind in it' from Kestrel.

He obliged with one of the Gypsy horse-trainers' racing songs, and by the time he had finished she knew without asking that question_how he knew that Gradford was the direction they must go_that the Ghost would only give them what he chose to in the way of information. It would be enigmatic, they would probably only understand what he meant after they discovered answers for themselves. And he was much too dangerous to play games with, verbal or otherwise.