The woman smiled warmly. “Don’t I, though. You were such a little boy, almost too small for the lute on your back, clinging to your music teacher’s hand and all wide-eyed with wonder.”
“Mistress Malen was very kind.”
“Well, of course she was! Imagine after all the years of having to teach merchants’ kids without a drop of talent to them coming across someone like you with the true gift for music! No, no, don’t start blushing like that You know it’s true.”
Ada plopped a shirt into her washtub and started scrubbing. “Look you, lad, before she left. Mistress Malen told me all about you: how you were plucking at the strings of your family’s old lute the minute you were old enough to hold it, making up your own little tunes till they didn’t have a choice but to hire her.”
Kevin had to smile. Mistress Malen had been a wonderful first teacher, endlessly patient with her eager pupil. She had also been honest enough to admit his talent was more than she could shape. A little shiver of wonder raced through the bardling as he remembered how she’d shaken her head and told him, “You have the makings of a Bard, boy, a true Bard.”
Ada’s chuckle dragged him back to the present. “So there you were, poor chick, standing in the courtyard of the Blue Swan, fall of wonder, yes, but maybe just a touch scared, too. And no surprise, being apprenticed to Master Aidan like that, a Bard—an^ a hero as well!”
Kevin glanced up at his Master’s room. “You remember how it was, don’t you? When my Master helped King Amber keep his throne, I mean.”
“Bless you, child, how old do you think I am? That was a good thirty years ago! I was a chick myself back then, much younger than you.” She paused thoughtfully. “But I do remember all the celebrating. My, yes! Everyone couldn’t stop chattering about how it had been a Bard, your Bard, who’d used his magical songs o> stop that witch of a would-be usurper.”
“Princess Carlotta.”
“Oh. she might have been a princess, the nasty little creature, but she was a sorceress, all right, dark- hearted as they come! She turned our good king into stone—stone, can you imagine that! And if it hadn’t been for Master Aidan, stone. King Amber would have remained. Bah! Good riddance to her, I say—and all praise to Master Aidan for stopping her.”
Kevin sighed. “That must have been a wonderful time .... “
“Wonderful! Those were the most dangerous days nobody ever wanted! And 1 don’t blame your Master for coming here after it was all over. If anyone ever earned some peace and quiet, it was he!”
That wasn’t what Kevin wanted to hear. At first every day with his Master had seemed wild with excitement After all, with a hero Bard to teach him, why shouldn’t he, too, do great deeds someday! But it hadn’t taken long to learn that his Master had, somewhere over the years, forgotten all about heroism.
“Ada, you’ve lived here in Bracklin all your life, haven’t you?”
“You know it. Never left this town. Never saw any need to.”
“But don’t you ever want to meet new people?”
“I do! Enough travelers come into the inn for that.”
“That’s not what I mean. Don’t you ever get bored? Want to see new places, do new things?”
Ada looked at him as though he’d gone mad. “Why should I want something as foolish as that? I have a nice house, good, steady work. Love you, lad, I think the spring’s gotten into you.” She shooed him away with soapy hands. “Now, get along with you, Kevin. I have work to do.”
The bardling wandered on down Bracklin’s one street to the end. It didn’t take long. He stood looking out over the fields beyond the edge of town, each neatly plowed strip of land exactly like the next, and shuddered. Making his way back towards the Blue Swan, Kevin politely returned the greetings of baker and seamstress and butcher. All of them, he realized, were quite peacefully going about their various tasks just as they did every day. And not a one of them seemed to mind! Suddenly frustrated to the point of screaming, Kevin hurried back into the inn and his room. At least he could learn a new song!
There wasn’t a sound out of his Master’s room. Of course not The old Bard probably had his nose buried in old manuscripts, just as he had whenever he wasn’t playing himself, or giving the bardling a music lesson —just as he had for almost all the time Kevin had studied with him.
I know he’s hunting for something important. But he won’t tell me what it is! And while he hunts through all those dusty books, I’m stuck here in Bracklin with him. Fm not a child anymore! I can’t be content like this!
The bardling snatched up his lute and struck a few savage chords. But he couldn’t play anything with that broken string.
