The Eagle and the Nightingales - Mercedes Lackey, ebook
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The Eagle And The Nightingales
Bardic Voices 03
By Mercedes Lackey
copyright 1995
(version 2.0 minor formatting revisions)
Dedicated to
Gail Gallano,
Mother of all Tulsa wildlife rehabbers!
CHAPTER ONE
All the world comes to Kingsford Faire, the Midsummer Faire of Kings....
A Gypsy known only as Nightingale sat on a riverside rock on the edge of the Faire
grounds, with the tune of "Faire of the Kings" running through her head. Not that she
liked that particular piece of doggerel, but it did have one of those annoying tunes that
would stick in one's mind for hours or days.
A light mist hung over the Kanar River, and a meadowlark nearby added his song to
the growing chorus of birds singing from every tree and bush along the riverbank. The
morning air was still, cool, and smelled of river water with a faint addition of smoke.
Sunlight touched the pounded earth that lately had held a small city made of tents and
temporary booths, then gilded the grey stone of the Cathedral and Cloister walls behind
the area that had been home to the Kingsford Faire for the past several weeks.
Nightingale didn't particularly admire the fortress-like cloister, but examining it was
better than looking across the river. She kept her eyes purposefully averted from the
ruins of Kingsford on the opposite bank, although she was still painfully aware of the
devastation that ended only where the river itself began. There was no avoiding the fact
that Kingsford, as she had known it, was no more. That inescapable fact had lent a
heaviness to her heart that was equally inescapable.
This had been a peculiar year for the annual Kingsford Faire, with something like half
of the city of Kingsford itself in ruins and the rest heavily damaged by fire.
I am glad that I was not here, but the suffering lingers
.
Perhaps other people could forget the suffering of those who had been robbed of
homes, livings and loved ones by that fire, but Nightingale couldn't, not even with the
 wooden palisade surrounding the Faire and row after row of tents between her and the
wreckage on the other side of the river. The pain called out to her, even in the midst of
each brightly dawning midsummer day; it had permeated everything she did since she
had arrived and crept into her dreams at night. She would never have used the Sight
here, even if she had needed toshe knew she would only see far too many unquiet
ghosts, with no means at her disposal to settle them.
She had dreams of the fire that had swept through the city last fall, although she had
no way of knowing if her dreams were a true vision of the past or only nightmares
reflective of the stories she heard. She'd had one last night, in fact, a dream of waking to
find herself surrounded by flames that reached for her with a lifelike hunger.
Such a complete disaster as the fire could not be erased over the course of weeks or
months. Even now, with the fire a year past, there were blackened chimneys and beams
standing starkly in the midst of ashes, and a taint of smoke still hung in the air.
The Faire
had
been profitable for just about everyone who came this year, herself
included. Knowing that the folk of Kingsford would be needing every possible article of
daily living, even so many months after the fire, merchants had flocked to the Faire-site
across the river with their wagons piled high, their pack-beasts loaded to the groaning
point. They had prospered, and they had been generous to those who came to entertain.
The Bardic Guild, bane and scourge of the Free Bards for as long as that loosely organized
group had existed, had been remarkable for its reticence during the Faire.
Her polite encounters with Guild Bards had been odd enough that they still stuck in
her mind. Time after time, she had gotten a distant nod of acknowledgement from Bard
and Guild hireling alike, and not the harassment and insults of previous years.
One might
have thought that the Guild did not particularly want attention drawn to it
, she mused.
The Guild simply held its auditions and performances quietly and gave no opposition to
anything that the Free Bards did. There were rumors, never verified, that the Bardic
Guild had a hand in the burning of Kingsford, and that the Church, in the person of a
Justiciar Mage and Priest called Ardis, as a consequence had its eye on them. Nightingale
discarded both rumors; there was no reason to believe the former, and the Church and
the Guild had always operated hand-in-glove in the past and it was unlikely that situation
would change any time in the future. Never mind that Ardis was reputedly the cousin of
the head of the Free Bards, Talaysen, also called Master Wren; there was only so much a
single Priest could do. And one could not change attitudes by fiat.
The meadowlark flitted off, his yellow breast with the black "V" at his throat vivid in
the morning sun.
Well, I endured; nightmares, sorrow hanging like a heavy mist over
the Faire, and all. It will take more than old sorrows and nightmares to keep me from
my music
. Nightingale had suffered too many lean seasons in her short life to allow
personal discomfort to get in the way of her performances. She was, after all, a
professional, however much the poseurs of the Guild might deny that. So she, too, had
passed a profitable term at the Faire, and now at the close of it found herself prosperous
enough to afford a donkey to carry her burdens for her for the first time in her life as a
musician. Heretofore when she traveled she had been forced to rely on the kindness of
fellow Free Bards or Gypsies, who would grant her a corner of their wagons to stow her
goods in. And while the company was welcome, this arrangement forced her to depend on
others, and constrained her to whatever itinerary they chose and not one of her own
choosing. When given the option, she preferred to avoid cities, towns, even larger villages
altogether. Unfortunately, such destinations were usually where her traveling
companions preferred to go.
She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her temples for a moment; not
because she had a headache, but to remind herself to stay calm and bulwarked against
the outside world. She could not help but wish she had chosen not to come to the Faire
 this year, but to stay in one of the lands held by those who were not human, or even pass
a season or two in the halls of an Elven king, perilous as that was for mortals. The Faire
had posed a trial for her ability to keep herself isolated from her own kind, and more than
once she had been tempted to give over her ambitions for a wider reputation as a
musician and simply walk away.
But all that was in the past now; there was a sweet-tempered little donkey tethered
beside her, his panniers loaded with her gear and her two harps strapped over the top of
it all. She had a tent as well, if a small one, and with the donkey she could carry provisions
to see her through to better lodgings instead of being at the mercy of greedy or stingy
innkeepers.
She was all packed up and ready to go, and eager to be on the road and away from the
all-pervasive aura of tragedy that hovered over the city across the river. Only one thing
kept her here, an appointment that she had made last night, and she wished
he
would just
show up so that
"Thank you for waiting, my friend." Talaysen's speaking voice was as pleasant as his
singing voice, and Nightingale gratefully turned her back to the river and the Church's
stronghold to catch his hands in hers in the traditional greeting between Gypsies of the
same clan. Talaysen smiled at her, his grey-green eyes warming, and gave her hands a
firm squeeze before releasing them. Free Bard Talaysen looked prosperous, too, in his
fine leather jerkin, good linen trews, and silk shirt with the knots of many-colored ribbons
on the sleeves that denoted a Free Bard.
He
did not owe his prosperity to the Faire,
however. Talaysen shared the post of Laurel Bard to the King of Birnam with his wife,
Bard Rune, and his clothing reflected his importance. They were the only Free Bards with
any kind of position in all of the Twenty Kingdoms.
Not that he has ever let rank go to his head
, Nightingale reflected, allowing his
pleasure at seeing her to ease the distant ache of Kingsford's sorrow within her.
He has
made Birnam a haven of freedom for all of us
.
"I would wait until the snow fell for your sake, Master Wren," she told him truthfully,
scanning his honest, triangular face for signs of stress and his red hair for more strands of
grey than there had been the last time she saw him. She saw neither, and felt nothing
untoward from him, which eased her worries a little. He had been so adamant in asking
her not to leave after the Faire closedat least until he had a chance to speak with
herthat she had been afraid there was something wrong with him personally. They
were old friends, though only once, briefly, had they ever been lovers.
"Well, it is lucky for us both that you won't have to do that," he replied, and his eye fell
on her little donkey. "So, the rumors of your prosperity were not exaggerated!
Congratulations!"
She raised her eyebrow at that, for there was something more in his voice than simple
pleasure in her good fortune. There was some reason why he was particularly pleased
that she had done well, a reason that had nothing to do with friendship or his unofficial
rank as head of the Free Bards.
"This simplifies matters," he continued. "I have a request to make of you, but it would
have been difficult if you had already arranged to travel with anyone else this winter."
A blackbird winged by, trilling to find them standing in his territory, so near to his
nest. Her other eyebrow rose. "A request?" she said cautiously, a certain sense of
foreboding coming to her. "Of what nature?"
Wren can charm birds out of the trees and honesty out of Elves, and I'd better
remember that if he's asking favors of me
. It was mortally hard to refuse Wren anything.
But I can hold my own with the Elves; it will take more than charm to win me
.
 Talaysen sighed, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like a naughty little
boy who had been caught in the midst of a prankwhich further hardened her suspicions.
"There is something I would like for you to do for meor rather, not for me, but for the
Free Bards. Unfortunately, it will involve a rather longer journey than you normally
make; I expect it will take you from now until the first Harvest Faires to reach your goal
even if you travel without stopping on the way."
She pulled in a quick breath with surprise. "From now until Harvest Faire?" she
repeated, incredulously. "Where in the world do you want me to go? Lyonarie?"
She had thrown out the name of the High King's capital quite by accident, it being the
farthest place from here that
she
could think of, but the widening of his eyes showed her
that her arrow had hit the mark out of all expectation.
A pocket of sudden stillness held them both, and it seemed to her that the air grew
faintly colder around her.
"You want me to go to
Lyonarie?"
she asked, incredulously. "Butwhy? What
possible business have the Free Bards there? And of all people, why me? I am no Court
Bard, I know nothing of Lyonarie,
and
"
And I hate cities, you
know
that
, she thought, numbly.
And you know why !
"Because we need information, not rumor. Because of all people, you are the one I
know that is most likely to learn what we need to know without getting yourself into
trouble over itor inflaming half the city." He nodded at the ruins of Kingsford behind
her, and she winced; there were also rumors that enemies of the Free Bards had set that
fire and that it had gotten out of hand. "You're clever, you're discreet, and we both know
that you are a master of Bardic andother magics."
"Perhaps not a master," she demurred, "and my talents are as much a hazard as a
benefit" But he wasn't about to be deflected.
"I know I can trust you, and that I can trust you to be sensible," he continued. "Those
are traits this task will need as much as mastery of magic."
"Which is why you are not entrusting this to Peregrine?" she asked. "You could trust
him, but he is not always sensible, especially when he sees an injustice."
"He does not do well in cities, any more than you do," Talaysen pointed out. "And he
won't abide in them unless he must under direct threat to himself or his clan."
And because I have a large sense of duty, I will endure them if I must
, she thought
with misgiving.
I had better have a very good reasonother than that Wren wants me
to, however
.
"What could possibly be so pressing as to send me across half the Twenty Kingdoms?"
she replied, favoring him with a frown. "And there, of all places. Peregrine may not like
cities, but neither do I, and I have better reason than he to avoid them." Her frown
deepened. "I'm not minded to risk another witch-hunt because I seem to know a little too
much for someone's comfortor just because I am a Gypsy."
"Not in Lyonarie" he began, but she interrupted him.
"So you
say
, but no one had word of what was chancing in Gradford until Robin stirred
the nest and the wasps came flying out to sting," she retorted. Talaysen did not wince this
time; instead he looked ever more determined. "And I ask again, what is so pressing as to
send me there?"
Now Talaysen's changeable eyes grew troubled, and the signs of stress that had not
been there before appeared, faintly etched into his brow and the corners of his generous
mouth. "King Rolend is concerned, and as Laurel Bard and leader of the Free Bards he
often asks me for
my
opinion. High King Theovere has beenneglectful."
 Now Nightingale snorted. "This is hardly news; his neglect has been growing since
before Lady Lark joined us. And so just what is it that I am supposed to do? March up to
the High King and charge him with neglecting his duty?"
Talaysen smiled, faintly. "Scarcely, though I suspect
you
could and would do just that
if it suited you. No, what Rolend and I both want is the reason why Theovere has become
this way. He wasn't always like thishe
was
a very good ruler and kept the power neatly
balanced among the Twenty Kings, the Guilds and the Church. He's mature, but not all
that
old, and there has been no suggestion that he has become senile, and he hasn't been
illand besides, his father lived thirty years more than he has already, and
he
was
vigorous and alert to the last."
She shook her head, though, rather than agreeing to take on Talaysen's little
wild-goose hunt with no more prompting than that. "I won't promise," she said, as the
dim sense of foreboding only increased with Talaysen's explanations. "I will think about it,
but I won't promise. All I
will
say is that I will take my travels in the direction of
Lyonarie." As Master Wren's face reflected his disappointment, she hardened her heart.
"I won't promise because I have no way of knowing if I can actually reach Lyonarie," she
pointed out. "I'm afoot, remember? You and Rune came here in a fine wagon with a pair
of horses to pull you and the babytravel is harder when you walk, not ride.
You
ought
to remember that. A hundred things could delay me, and I won't promise what I am not
sure I can deliver."
"But if you reach Lyonarie?" Talaysen persisted, and she wondered at his insistence.
Surely heand the King of Birnamhad more and better sources of information than one
lone Gypsy!
"If I decide to go that far and if I reach Lyonarie any time before the next Kingsford
Faire, I will reconsider," she said at last. "I will see what I can do. More, I won't promise."
He wasn't satisfied, but he accepted that, she saw it in his face.
"You still haven't answered the other question," she continued, suspiciously. "Why
choose me?"
His answer was not one calculated to quell her growing unease, nor warm the prickle
of chill prescience that threaded her back.
"Much as I hate to admit this," said Talaysen, wielder of Bardic Magics and friend to
the High King of the Elves, "I was warned that this situation was more hazardous than we
knew, and told to send you and only you, in a dream."
Three weeks from the day she had left Talaysen beside the river, Nightingale guided
her little donkey in among the sheltering branches of a black pine as twilight thickened
and the crickets and frogs of early evening started up their songs. Black pines were often
called "shelter-pines," for their trunks were bare to a height of many feet, and their huge,
heavy branches bent down to touch the ground around them like the sides of a tent. The
ground beneath those branches was bare except for a thick carpet of dead needles.
Nightingale held a heavy, resin-scented branch aside with one hand, while she led the
donkey beneath it; her hair was wet, for she had bathed in a stream earlier that
afternoon, and the still, cool darkness beneath the branches made her shiver.
It wasn't just the cool air or the dark that made her shiver. Not all the warm sunlight
on the road nor the cheerful greetings of her fellow travelers had been able to ease the
chill Talaysen's words had placed within her heart.
He was warned to send me to Lyonarie in a dream
, she thought, for the hundredth
time that day, as she unloaded her donkey and placed the panniers and wrapped bundles
on the ground beside him.
What kind of a dreamand who else was in it? Wren can be
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