Part 1 (2/2)

But the bard's song is ending, and the magicker is picking up his doves. It is his turn to perform.

Still he pauses, one hand on the curtain, drawn back to permit him to pa.s.s, and he turns back to the jester, who stands, still stunned. The light glitters in the facets of the steel rings on that hand. ”Yes,” he says, and his voice is level and conversational, as if enquiring after the b.u.t.ter. ”I suppose we all must, after all.” And then he walks into the mirrored ballroom, and the curtains fall shut behind him, and the jester is alone.

The masque would persist till sunrise, as is the nature of such revels, but the King retires when the clock strikes three, and the white lord some few moments before him. The jester and the magicker have already made their way up the servant's stair to their own small room, and there, warmed by a brazier, they wait for the bard. The jester sits perfectly, awesomely still, willing her breath to stop, willing her heart to beat more softly. At last, at last, there is silence: her bells swing, perhaps, but they do not jangle or rustle or tinkle. She sits with her head c.o.c.ked slightly, as if listening for something. Earlier, she had told the magicker what she had overheard.

And then the chamber door opens, and the bard comes in, and sets his cloth-wrapped harp against the wall. The jester turns her head, and a dozen bells chime sweetly. ”Jester,” the bard says, ”Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head to an astounding, silvery dissonance. ”For a moment,” she says, ”just for a moment, I thought I heard someone calling my name.” She sighs and tugs her braid. ”I felt that I knew something that I ought to know. But the feeling has pa.s.sed, now.”

”There is a harp,” the bard says, ”Hanging in the throne room.” He settles back, against the wall. ”And a sword hanging beside it, among all the trophies and banners.”

The magicker looks up for the first time. ”And?”

”And I feel I ought to know them, from somewhere.”

The jester starts, eyes wide as if shocked. ”What does it look like?”

”Which? The harp or the sword?”

”The harp!”

The bard sighs, takes a piece of bread with cheese from off a tray. ”It is red wood, strung with silver wire.” He shrugs. ”It is silver. I cannot touch it, after all.”

She leaps to her feet. ”I must see it! I must!”

The bard chews and swallows, but is not slow in getting to his feet. The jester reaches her hand out to the magicker, who declines it and stands on his own, brus.h.i.+ng crumbs from his lap as he does. He slides his sword in its scabbard into his belt, and the three exit the door in a single, silent file. The mage watches the back of the jester's head as she follows the bard down the stairs, and something nags at him, stirred by the sight of her braids. Beneath his skin he feels the s.h.i.+ft of power, of magic being cast, but dimly, m.u.f.fled and distant. Better born with no talent at all, he thinks, than with such a small one. Like the minor poet who knows the meanness of his gift, I am doomed to a lifetime of frustration: to be able to comprehend beauty, but not create it. His fingers itch at the thought, feeling swollen and engorged.

The throne room is still torchlit, although there are no revelers here. Strains of music still drift across the courtyard from the great hall, though, and the bard's feet shuffle a bit in an ursine dance as he crosses the hall. ”There.”

He gestures up at the harp, which is hung just at eye level, just across from the throne. It is a lovely thing, the wood red as holly berries, the wire of true silver. The jester looks at it in delight. ”Oh, it is yours, it is yours!” she cries, not knowing how she knows this, knowing it is true.

”How can it be?” the magicker asks. ”It is silver.

The jester shakes her head, and the bells clash, and she looks crestfallen. ”I do not know. And I do not know my name.”

”You have only to name a thing,” says the bard, ”To comprehend it.”

The magicker smiles. ”Of course. That is the nature of...” His voice trails off, and he stares away, as if after his beloved. ”.. .the nature of magic...”

His head snaps around, and he grasps the jester hard by the arm. ”Sit there, on the steps of the dais,” he commands her. ”No, better, on the throne.”

She steps back from him, tugging against his grip. ”I cannot sit on the throne.”

”Do it,” he orders, and she follows his pull to perch, reluctantly, on the edge of the giant chair. The magicker reaches into his pocket, and draws forth a knife, small and sharp. It is the one he shaves with.

Carefully, quickly, he cuts the bells from her costume, and breaks them one by one under his heel. And then, from the same pocket, he brings forth a comb of bright silver, and he touches it to the end of her plait.

She starts up. ”Do not!”

He shows her the comb. ”I have never seen you with your hair unbound, lady,” he tells her. ”Humor me.”

Trembling, she takes the seat again. Something almost soul-deep in her rebels at the thought. Something deeper, however, welcomes it. ”Do,” she whispers, and clenches her fingers on the gilded wood.

It is a tedious task, freeing the intricate plaits from the strands of chains and bells. Somehow, they have not matted in, but they are tightly and complexly woven. He is surprised by the color, the texture of the unleashed ma.s.s of her hair.

It is like water as it rolls down her shoulders and over her thighs to pool on the floor. It is soft and thick, wavy from being bound, of a thousand shades of grey and white and argent and alabaster. It is a river, a thunderstorm, a sea, running, quick and silver, in rivulets and brooks and breakers over everything.

For the jester, it is as if each chain he slides from her tresses is a chain off her heart and her mind. ”I feel,” she declares, ”as if I am just about to remember something terribly important.”

As the magicker slips the last chain out of her moon-colored hair, his rings become caught in the strands. He tugs them loose, but not before the jester catches and holds his hands. ”Why do you always wear those?”

He frowns. ”I must.”

She is insistent. ”Why? Who told you?”

He steps back, drops the chain to the floor with a rattle of metal. ”I do not know,” he confesses. He pulls his hands from hers, leaving the silver comb in her grasp. ”Someone.”

”Some strange taste of magics on this.” It is the bard's voice. He has turned, at last, from the harp on the wall.

”Aye,” says the magicker. ”A compulsion. But to help or to harm?”

She nods, and bites her lip to taste the blood. ”If you do not know, can it be for good? All the more reason, I think, to be rid of them.”

He wants to explain that magic does not always work that way, that sometimes the recipient of a spell must know nothing of it for the spell to be truly effective. ”There is a great sorcery being wrought within these walls tonight,” he offers. The bard looks over at him and nods.

”I feel it, aye.”

The magicker looks back at the jester, and silently holds out his hands, fingers spread wide. He looks away. ”Take them,” he tells her.

One by one, she wrestles them free. They are tight, and have worn grooves in the flesh of his fingers. One by one, she drops them to the cold stone floor.

The magicker feels a sudden easing, as though the rings had bound his chest, and not his fingers. He looks into the jester's eyes, and feels something there, some flicker of recognition. ”Name?” she asks him, and he shakes his head.

”You?”

”Not yet,” she answers. As one, they look to the bard. ”If we were bound.

The magicker presses his lips together. ”He must be too. And the white lord?”

She shakes her head, and no bells ring. ”Remember what he said to the King?” She looks down at the backs of her hands, the s.h.i.+ne of the silver comb in the right one. ”Is there a way to tell what binds him?”

”Not without his name,” the magicker answers. The jester casts about the throne room, as if looking for a solution. Then she looks up, startled, into the eyes of the mage. ”Daithi,” she tells him, and the bard turns suddenly toward her.

<script>