He straightened again, dropped the pen, reached randomly for beginnings from the piles around him.
“Does Bone Plain exist?” a recent paper inquired simply and succinctly. An older book introduced its argument murkily but more sonorously: “On the farthest horizon we can glimpse, back through time to the dawn of the five kingdoms, the place where history and poetry meet on Bone Plain.” Phelan snapped it shut, picked up another book, a thin, limp volume bound in fine leather. It began: “For centuries poets, bards, and scholars have run through rivers of ink arguing exactly which of the standing stones of Belden are also the standing stones of poetry enclosing the Three Trials of Bone Plain.”
He closed that one, put it back on its pile, and dropped his brow onto the stack, hoping without hope that the words he searched for would somehow seep through flaking parchment and antique leather into his brain. The library, oak floors carpeted with lozenges of light from the windows, tall mahogany bookcases, the priceless collection of scrolls and first editions donated by Jonah Cle installed under glass on various stands, was relentlessly sunny and dead quiet. Everyone else in the world had something better to do on that bright spring day than agonize over ancient history. Maybe his father was right, he thought resignedly. Everything had been said. There was nothing more to say, which was why he could not find a single word to add to the subject.
He got up finally, examined his father’s collection. Jonah had evidently considered the subject so tiresome that he gave away everything that had fallen into his hands. Phelan found, among other things, the earliest version of the tale written on parchment instead of stone, as well as an essay about Nairn by an obscure scholar who seemed to think that the bard, after failing the trials, was still wandering the earth a thousand years later. Phelan summoned the archivist from the depths of the library. The archivist, who would have thrown himself bodily across the doorway to keep the priceless manuscripts from leaving, said finally, in the face of Phelan’s desperation, that he could take them out as long as his father didn’t see them.
Of all the places Phelan might run into his father, home was the least likely, so he took them there. No one else was around; the house was silent except for an occasional distant noise from the kitchen. He settled on the sofa with the manuscripts, and began to read.
The written poem was followed by an account of the wonders and tribulations of bards who had dared the trials for the sake of such power over their words, such glory in their world. Very few could be tracked, like Nairn, out of poetry and into history. Most of the unfortunates had been invented to bear the tales of their failures. Despite the dire consequences predicted, the more noble-hearted of the adventurers were given chances to mitigate their fates. They returned home scarred only with the memory, and rewarded with a tale that would be embroidered more colorfully and grow in detail with every telling.
The manuscript itself was so old that Phelan held his breath as he turned the pages, lest a parchment word flake away into the air of a distant century. The scribe or bard who plucked the poem out of common memory and wrote it down saw no reason to add a name or a date or a place of origin. The tale itself was far older, Phelan knew from various scholarly papers on the subject. In itself, it gave no clues to where exactly a bard had to go to find Bone Plain. But Phelan knew that already, having memorized the entire poem by the time he was ten. He had taken the manuscript on the chance that seeing the ancient written words might spark some thought, some recognition, maybe even some impulse to pick up a pen.
It was there, sprawled on a sofa with both manuscripts on his chest, that he glanced up at a faint stir of carpet threads and found his father.
Jonah eyed the priceless manuscripts, grunted in recognition, and dropped into a chair near Phelan’s feet. Phelan could see his face. It looked predictably pale and curdled, but there was a peculiar expression in his eyes, and he seemed, in broad daylight, astonishingly sober.
“Is something wrong?” Phelan asked tentatively. “Did you kill somebody? Accidentally get married again?”
“No.”
“Find a gold mine in one of your digs?”
Jonah shook his head. He shifted, started to say something, stopped and started again. “That supper,” he managed finally. “When is it?”
Phelan stared at him, amazed. “Why do you care? Anyway, how did you know about it? You never pay attention to those things.”
“Don’t give me grief, boy, just tell me.”
“I would if I knew.” He paused, studying his father, found the words finally, for what he saw. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I may have,” Jonah breathed. “I may have, indeed.”
Phelan started to sit, caught the manuscripts sliding off his chest. Jonah raised a brow at them; he said quickly, “I hid them under my school robe; nobody saw me take them.”
“Don’t try to be noble; it only makes you sound unctuous,” Jonah said with so little bite that Phelan frowned. He sat up, still gazing at his father, laying the manuscripts carefully on the sofa beside him.
“Whose ghost?”
Jonah shook his head irritably, but the subject haunting the air between them refused to go away. “A particularly noisome bit of past,” he said finally. He held up a hand as Phelan opened his mouth. “Just leave it. It’s mine; I’ll deal with it.”
“But where did you see it?” Phelan demanded. “Him. Her.”
“Riding through the river park in Lord Grishold’s entourage. I was just stepping into the Arms of Antiquity, after checking some things in the Royal Museum. I looked back and there it was, the ghost behind Grishold, all in black and grinning like the sun. When is that supper again?” he added restively.
“A day or two—Does this mean I won’t have to roam all over the city searching for you?”
“I’ll be there,” Jonah promised, his voice so thin and dry that a dozen questions leaped to life in Phelan’s
