The Robin and the Kestrel (17 page)

"How is it"—it whispered—"that you come here? Not one, but two musicians? Have you not heard of me, of what I am, of what I will do to you?"

Robin felt the pressure of
mane
all around her, as the Ghost tried to fill her with fear and make her flee. But the fear failed to touch her; she sensed only the power, and not the emotion the Ghost sought to use against her. So it did not know she had broken its spell!

Time to enlighten it.

"Of course we have heard of you!" she said, clearly and calmly. "The whole world has heard of you! Listen—"

Her fingers picked out the introduction to "The Skull Hill Ghost." And she began to sing.

 
I sit here on a rock, and curse my stupid, bragging tongue,
Ana curse my pride that would not let me back down from a boast
And wonder where my wits went, when I took that challenge up
And swore that I would go and fiddle for the Skull Hill Ghost!

As she sang, she exerted a little magic of her own; warm and loving magic, Bardic Magic and Gypsy magic and the magic of one true lover for another. She sent it, not at the Ghost, but at Kestrel, all of it aimed at breaking the spell of fear that held Jonny imprisoned in his icy silence as she had been imprisoned a moment before.

The warmth must have reached him, for as she reached the chorus, he shook himself, and suddenly his harp joined the jaunty chords of her gittern as his voice joined hers in harmony.

 
I'll play you high, I'll play you low
For I'm a wizard with my bow
For music is my weapon and my art—
And every note I fling will strike your heart!

That was a change from the original wording of Rune's contest-song; more of a metaphor for the life-and-death battle she had waged to save herself from the Ghost
and
a life of grim poverty than the original chorus had been.

Robin continued in the "Rune" persona, with Kestrel coming in with the Ghost's first line—in a cunning imitation of the Ghost's own voice.

 
"Give me reason why I shouldn't kill you, girl!"

She watched her audience of one as closely as she had ever watched
any
audience; had she seen the spirit start with surprise at hearing his own words?

She responded as Rune.

 
"I've come to fiddle for you, sir—"

Kestrel came in—and again, his voice was not a booming and spectral one, as Wren usually sang the part, but in that deliberate imitation of the Ghost's true disembodied whisper.

 
"—Oh have you so? Then fiddle, girl, and pray you fiddle well.
For if I like your music, then I'll let you live to play—
But if you do not please my ears I'll take you down to Hell!"

The cowl nodded, ever so slightly. And the pressure of
magic
eased off.

Now Robin concentrated on the music, and not the Ghost. She had his attention. Now she must keep it.

The song was a relatively short one, meant for a Faire audience that might not linger to hear an extended ballad. The last verse came up quickly.

 
At last the dawnlight strikes my eyes, I stop and see the sun—
The light begins to chase away the dark and midnight cold—
And then the light strikes something more, I stare in dumb surprise—
For where the Ghost once stood there is a heap of shining gold!

Then she and Kestrel swung into a double repeat of the last chorus, laughing and triumphant.

 
I'll play you high, I'll play you low
For I'm a wizard with my bow
And music is my lifeblood and my art
And every note I sing will tame your heart!

They finished with a flourish worthy of Master Wren himself. The Ghost regarded them from under his hood with a speculation and surprise that Robin
felt,
just as she had felt the fear he had tried to force on her.

"Well," it whispered, the voice now coming from beneath that cowl and not from every shade and shadow in the clearing. "So, the little fiddler girl survived. Did she thrive as well as survive?"

There was more than a little interest in that question. And not a hint of indifference. He remembered Rune, and he wanted to know about her.

"She continues to thrive, sir," Robin said boldly. "Your silver bought her lessons and instruments, and brought her to the Kingsford Faire and the Free Bards. She got a Master from the Free Bards, and then more than a Master, for she wedded him and earned her title of Master and of Elf-Friend as well. They sing for a King now, and wander no more."

"A good King, I am sure," came the return whisper. "She would settle for naught else, the bold child who dared my hill." Then amazingly, something that
sounded
like a hint of chuckle emerged from beneath the cowl. "It is, I know, hard to find a rhyme for 'silver'—and that
'heap of shining gold'
tells me why, on a sudden, a fool or two a year has come to dig holes in my hill when they never did before."

"And they f-f-find?" Jonny asked, boldly.

"Rocks. And, sometimes, me." Again the chuckle, but this time it chilled and had no humor in it. Once again, she sensed the power coiled serpent like behind him, a power that quickened to anger at very little provocation. So before he had time to be angered at the song, at them, she spoke.

"Sir, we came to ask a bargain of our own. Not gold or silver or even gems—"

She was the entire focus of the Ghost's gaze now; the antithesis of the tropical sun, it fell upon her and froze her in a silence of centuries. Or tried. It was at that moment the Ghost must have realized she was not caught in his web of terror, for the spirit straightened a little in what looked very like surprise. "What—bargain?" it said at last.

"We will tell you anything you care to ask, in as much detail as you wish, if we know the answers," she said, faintly, from beneath the weight of that gaze. "We will sing and play for you until dawn, as Rune did. Information and entertainment, and in return—"

The frigid pressure of his regard deepened. "In return—what? Besides your lives, of course. You have not—yet—earned those."

She tried to answer, and could not. For a moment she struggled in panic, knowing that if she did not answer, he could and would use that as the only "excuse" he needed to take her, Kestrel—

"F-free p-passage f-for G-G-G-Gypsies and F-F-Free B-B-B-Bards," Kestrel stammered, forcing the words out for her, fighting his stutter as she fought the Ghost's compulsion. The Ghost's cowl moved marginally as his gaze transferred to Kestrel and the pressure holding her snapped.

"Exactly," she said, quickly, into the ominous silence. "Free and unmolested passage across your Pass at any time of the day or night for Gypsies and Free Bards. Including us, of course. That's all." She remembered now something else that Rune had said—that the Ghost had heard her tale of being harassed and plagued, and then had said that he and she might have more in common than she guessed. "We're something less than popular with the Church right now," she added, and had the reward of seeing the cowl snap back to point at her. "And with the Bardic Guild. We sing a little too much of the truth, and we don't hide what we know for the sake of convenience. We might need—"

"An escape route?" the Ghost hissed, and nodded. "Yes. I can see that."

He stood wrapped in weighty, chilling silence for a long time. She studied him, trying to determine what his race was—or had been. He matched nothing she had ever seen or heard of. Too tall for a Deliambren, a Gazner, or a Prilchard. No place under that robe for the wings of a Haspur—

"I am—astonished," the Ghost whispered at last. "To dare me and my power simply to assure your friends of an escape route in case of danger—to dare
me!"
He did not breathe, but he paused for as long as it would take someone to take a deep breath. "Yes. I will make that bargain. With a single exception."

Exceptions? Why would he have to have exceptions?
Her eyes narrowed with speculation and suspicion.

The Ghost returned her gaze, but this time without the pressure of his magic behind it. "I must have the exception," he said, simply. "I am—bound to a task, as I am bound to this place."

Now she sensed the full scope of the terrible power of his anger; once, long ago, she had been in the presence of a dreadful weapon of what the Deliambrens called
interstellar
warfare. This
interstellar
thing was something they could not explain to her, but she had sensed, nevertheless, the shattering potential for destruction encased within the metal pod-skin of the object they showed her. The Ghost's anger felt like that; like the moment before the storm is about to break, when the earthquake is about to strike, when some force too large for a mere human to comprehend is about to be unleashed.

And yet, it was not directed at
her.

No—no, his anger is for those who have hound him here. May their gods help them if he ever does get free!

"If your Gypsies and Free Bards are not
sent
here from Carthell Abbey, they may pass," he continued, in his ice-rimed whisper. "But if they are
sent,
I have no choice. I—am bound to slay anyone who is sent from the Abbey. Any other, I shall let pass, freely. This is the bargain; take it, or not. Fear not for yourselves; I shall let you pass without your music if you choose not to take it."

She looked at Kestrel out of the corner of her eye; he nodded slightly. It was the best they were likely to get; the Ghost was giving a pledge within the limits of his ability to fulfill it. Kestrel sensed that as well as she did.

"Done," she said. "I won't hold you to something you can't promise."

The Ghost nodded, ever so slightly, but the atmosphere suddenly warmed considerably, physically as well as emotionally. Although he did not "sit," she felt a relaxation about him, and the chill breeze that had swept through the clearing vanished, to be replaced by a breeze as comfortable as any of early fall, with a hint in it of false summer.

"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.