Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide Read online

  Not that she or any of her sisters actually knew much of anything about the craft, she thought darkly as she plodded down the path to the lane below. Her mother had taught them the basics at home. It was part of their family life—especially after her mother had delivered a third daughter into the household. Her mother told each of them that when the time was right they would be sent to the Enchanting Academy in Mordale and learn proper wishcraft. But that was before the well was cursed, the wishes were broken, and her mother passed away.

  Caprice reached the lane. Left would take her farther down to the banks of the Wanderwine River and the footbridge that eventually crossed the river to the Mordale road and Eventide. She turned to the right instead and followed the more narrow lane around a low hill and into Wisher’s Hollow.

  Her home was in the shadow of a grand edifice only partly realized. The foundations had been laid for a palatial structure with grand turrets at the corners and cone-peaked roofs. A quarter of the intended building had been fully finished by Meryl Morgan at the insistence of his wife, Brenna, so that they might live there while the rest of the house was completed. Thus the kitchen, pantries, and what would have been servants’ quarters were finished, with the archways to the imagined rooms beyond boarded over. The stone for the walls, the tools, the hods, piles of timber, and frayed bags of sand lay stacked under the blanketing snow. They had seen many such snowfalls down the long and painful years, hiding the memory of their abandoned hopes.

  Thin smoke rose from the chimney, curling over with the chill northern breeze falling down the side of Mount Dervin beyond. A tall, thin figure stood on the porch still calling out her name.

  “Capriiiiiiiiice!”

  “Here!” she replied as loudly as she could, risking the release of one side of her shawl to wave her gloved hand.

  Sobrina, standing on the step, looked in her direction and then turned, reentering the house. Caprice knew that it was all the acknowledgement she would get. She continued down the lane to the finished portion of the house, carefully climbed the short steps onto the porch, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  She stopped momentarily in the mudroom, pulling her shawl from her shoulders and hanging it on a wall peg. She tugged at the shoes on her feet, impatient about unlacing them, and finally managed to get them off. Then she slid her feet into her slippers and donned an apron. She didn’t much care for the apron and would have eschewed wearing it if possible. Her elder sister’s presence nearby made such a choice impossible.

  Caprice entered the kitchen and was struck by a flood of sensations: the wet warmth of cooking and the smell of boiling onions and cabbage. She heard the hiss of the stew as it boiled over the edges of the iron pot suspended above the fire and the faint humming of her sister Melodi as she sat completely lost in the book she was reading in the corner. A long wooden spoon stirred the pot seemingly on its own while Sobrina leaned over the table in the center of the kitchen, her left index finger running down the lines of a recipe in the narrow book while her right hand twisted behind her in the air as without thought she projected her magic to move the spoon in the pot. Everything in the kitchen seemed timed to the gentle, rhythmic creaking of the rocking chair in the inglenook next to the fireplace, where their father sat staring into the flames that never seemed to warm him.

  “How is the well?” Sobrina asked, her eyes never leaving the recipe in the book. Sobrina was thin and taller than her sisters. She had a narrow chin like Caprice’s that her father said favored their mother. Her hair was flaxen and long. It may have been her one vanity, for she combed it faithfully every night, and Caprice knew that it extended well past her narrow waist. But during the day, and on those occasions when she visited the town, she always wore her hair tightly wound into a bun at the nape of her neck, pulled back in such a way that it seemed to pull at her face as well, making it impossible to tell if her stiff smile was genuine. She affected a cold distance with the townspeople, a fortress of ice that kept her inner pain secure and the world at a distance.

  “I’ve stocked it in case anyone happens by in the night,” Caprice answered as she reached back to bind her long, auburn hair. “It was thin wish-gathering in the woods today. I found a fairy nest, though, and that provided enough wishes to supply the well for the night.” She called across the room, “Good evening, Father!”

  Meryl looked up, blinking as though he were returning from a far place. “Oh, good evening, Caprice.”

  “How was your day?”

  “Better, I think,” Meryl answered. “I think tomorrow I might just get out and do something about the foundation walls on the expansion. It’s the next step, you know. I think tomorrow would be a good day to take it up again, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Father,” Caprice replied. Meryl had vowed to take up some aspect of finishing the home every day since their mother had died, but somehow each day had gone by without him being able to pick up a hammer or chisel.

  “Melodi, would you get the bowls?” Sobrina asked, though it was not spoken as a question.

  “Oh, gladly,” Melodi answered, glancing up from behind her book. She flicked her wrists four times and, with a whump sound, four ornate bowls appeared on the table, clattering as they settled abruptly onto the surface. The sound made Sobrina jump.

  “Melodi! Pay attention!” Sobrina said as she straightened up. The forgotten spoon, no longer enchanted, slowed with the stew in the pot. “What is that book your nose has been in so long?”

  “This?” Melodi looked up. Melodi would have been considered pretty were she not constantly eclipsed by her sisters. As it was, she had a voluptuous form, an upturned nose and an easy, seemingly perpetual, mischievous smile. The only feature she had inherited from her mother was her raven black hair, which she often coaxed into tight curls.

  It was rare that Sobrina took any interest in her reading, and Melodi delighted in the chance to talk about it. She stood at once and leaned over the table. “It’s absolutely wonderful! It’s called Drakeskeep—the tale of a fortress near a dragon’s lair. There’s this wonderful story about this Lady of the Keep who falls for this ne’er-do-well Bard and her three brothers find out about them and—”

  Sobrina rolled her dark eyes. “Melodi, you know we can’t afford—”

  “Oh, I didn’t buy it!” Melodi countered.

  “I should hope not!” Sobrina sniffed.

  “I found it.”

  Sobrina’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her sister. “Found it?”

  “Yes,” Melodi said as she sat down on one of the four mismatched stools surrounding the table. “I was gathering wishes around the Fae Grotto and went a little too far south through the woods. I found an abandoned camp off the Meade road, and the book was just lying there.”

  “Melodi, nobody just abandons a camp,” Sobrina said in her sternest voice. “That book belongs to someone, and you’ll take it back first thing in the morning.”

  “Very well.” Melodi frowned slightly but there was still a twinkle in her eyes. “I’ll have finished it by then anyway.”

  Caprice took the spoon out of the pot, her enchantment twisting it into a ladle. “How long will the bowls last, Mel?”

  “Half an hour, I think,” she answered, turning the bowl in her hands as she examined it. “I patterned them after a description from the book. Do you like them?”

  “They’re lovely,” Caprice replied as she ladled stew into each of the bowls.

  Melodi beamed.

  Caprice helped their father to the table, then took her place. The bowls would vanish after dinner; anything remaining of their meal would fall into the bucket into which the bowls had been placed. The ladle, too, would disappear, as would the shining forks and knives Melodi had provided. She was the most talented of the three, it was true, but, as Caprice reflected, in the end it would not matter. The enchantments always ended, their small magics were but temporary, and their lives remained as broken as the wishing well they tended.

  The Mor
gans took hands around the table and bowed their heads to thank the gods for the wishes of the day.

  Caprice opened her eyes. Looking into the bowl of stew, all she saw was an empty well of wishes.

  “Caprice?” the Dragon’s Bard repeated. “That’s her name, then?”

  Jarod had once jumped off a cart as a boy. It had been going too fast, and no matter how fast he ran, his feet could not catch up with his body and he finally crashed, sliding across the ground. He had known he was going to fall but he had kept desperately running anyway.

  The rush of words coming out of him gave him the same feeling.

  “Yes! She’s the most beautiful . . . I mean . . . if you could just see her . . . not that you should see her . . . but if you did see her you’d know . . . there are other girls . . . women, I mean . . . or girls . . . who I know and they’re fine . . . some of them more than fine . . . but not all . . . but they’re nothing compared to . . . well, just her green eyes alone . . . and her hair, and . . . well, you know . . . well, you don’t know . . . and if you ever laid a hand on her . . . which you wouldn’t because I’d . . .”

  Edvard put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, which somehow managed to make his mouth come to an abrupt halt. The Dragon’s Bard gazed into Jarod’s eyes with all the earnest intensity he could muster. “So, I take it that you’ve explained your feelings to her in just these words, then?” he intoned.

  Jarod and the Bard were sitting facing each other from high-backed benches on opposite sides of a table near the stained-glass window of the Inn. Abel sat behind them, enjoying the company of his pack while he continued to listen to the conversation and write.

  “It’s hopeless,” Jarod said. “I try to talk to her, but every time I do, my mouth opens and no sound comes out. My jaw works up and down, and for all the world I must look like a fish that’s just been pulled out of the river and is flopping around on the stones.”

  “And what does she do?” Edvard asked.

  “She just looks at me with those wonderful, big green eyes and then takes pity on me, I guess, and goes away to relieve me of my suffering,” Jarod moaned. He leaned forward. “I tried writing sonnets, but then I wasn’t sure whether she could read or not. I thought of trying to get someone else to read them to her, but I would be too embarrassed to ask another girl to read them out loud, and if I asked another fellow to do it, she might mistake my sonnets as coming from him, and that would be awful. Then, what if she could read and thought that my sonnets were crude or stupid? I composed a ballad, but how could I possibly sing to her when I can’t even speak two words in her direction?”

  Jarod dropped his head heavily down on the table.

  “She is so wonderful,” Jarod mumbled into the table. “And I’m only Jarod Klum.”

  Jarod felt the jarring of boots swinging up onto the table. He looked up. The Dragon’s Bard was leaning back on his bench with a broad smile on his face.

  “Perhaps I can help,” Edvard said with a twinkle in his eye. “Have you ever considered becoming someone else?”

  • Chapter 3 •

  Farmer Bennis

  How can I be someone else?” Jarod asked, his warm breath billowing out in front of him in the chill air. He glanced at the charred sundial as they passed it in the middle of the square and wondered if its curse were about to extend to him personally.

  “We’re all trying to be someone else,” Edvard mused as they walked back across the bridge to Trader’s Square. “That, my friend, is the very essence of the theatrical experience! The ability to enlarge oneself above the mundane and the ordinary and to become the ideal . . . the stuff of true heroes! I have no small experience in this, Master Jarod. I should be delighted to be of service to you in your conquest of the fair Caprice.”

  Jarod was not altogether sure he understood what the Dragon’s Bard was saying—and what he thought he understood he did not like hearing. “If you lay one finger on her, I swear I’ll—”

  The Dragon’s Bard gripped Jarod by his shoulders, stopping him in mid-stride and turning him around so as to face him. “No! It is for you that we shall create such an air of mystery, such a cloud of desire, such a glorious haze of allurement that your fair Caprice shall be powerless to resist you! You shall woo her as I have said, and win her with both heart and head. Then to her you shall soon be wed . . . and take her to your warm soft bed!”

  Jarod flushed in the bright winter afternoon.

  Abel struggled along behind them, trying to write; his orders apparently included capturing in print every immortal word that fell from the lips of his master. The pack filled with his belongings occasionally slipped off his shoulders, making his writing as awkward as his master’s rhyme.

  Trader’s Square was starting to come to life. There were only a few cart stalls, which their vendors had wheeled across the fitted cobblestones and in which they were now setting up their wares in the bitter cold of the winter afternoon. They would be there with their wares for the warmest hours of the chill day before carting them back home at night. Even now a few of them were issuing halfhearted calls out to those few villagers who were passing through the square. Unbidden, Jarod imagined the highwayman—the dreaded Dirk Gallowglass—riding suddenly into the square with the fearful Caprice Morgan slung across the back of his midnight-colored horse. Jarod would spring to Shaun Slaughter’s cart and turn to confront the rogue, holding a butcher knife firmly in one hand while swinging a string of linked sausage menacingly in the other.

  “Master Jarod?” Edvard again put a restraining arm on the young man’s shoulder.

  Jarod was so preoccupied with his envisioned heroics that he had nearly run into a lamppost in the square. He turned quickly to face the Dragon’s Bard. “All right! I do need your help. What do I do?”

  “I should be delighted, as I said, to assist you in winning the heart of your fairest of all damsels.” Edvard’s voice had that lyrical quality that so often endears one to the foolish and irritates those who have been taken in by it before. His carefully trimmed beard quivered with excitement before his countenance fell into sorrow and despair. “Alas, as you so well know, I am a prisoner of this good village—under the warrantless charge brought against me by the otherwise good ladies of this same Cobblestone Street on which we stand. How can I possibly help you if I am locked up in the depths of your most secure and punishingly chill dungeons? I do not mind for myself, you understand, but what of my poor assistant?”

  Abel looked up with a skeptical eye. Of the two of them, he was by far the more suitably dressed for the weather.

  “Fine!” Jarod said as they reached the northern wall of the countinghouse. “I’ll talk to my father. He’s on the village council and . . . well, maybe we can work something out . . . but you keep your promise!”

  Jarod and the Dragon’s Bard turned the corner of the building together in such earnest conversation that they did not see the enormous creature standing in front of the countinghouse door before running squarely into its blanketed flanks.

  “Begging your pardon, Master Jarod, but you should pay more attention to where we are—by the heavens!” Edvard exclaimed as he backed hastily away several steps.

  Edvard’s upward gaze was met by the deep-set stare of an enormous centaur that more than filled the Bard’s vision. The beast was large even among others of his kind—more like a draft horse or warhorse in size as compared to the much lighter thoroughbreds or show hunters. His arms were larger than Jarod’s thighs. He wore a padded coat over his doublet and a thick but well-worn caparison that extended from the base of his torso back over his flanks. His wide head was topped by a beaten leather hat with a brim whose original color and shape could only be guessed.

  His hair was long, as most centaurs wore it, but it had gone grey, and even under his hat it was evident that his hairline had receded so far as to leave his forehead a wide beach at low tide. His face was broad and strong, but wrinkles had disturbed and softened the original angular lines. His chin was co
vered in pronounced grey stubble.

  The centaur had been engaged in conversation with a thin, haggard-looking man, but the latter was both literally and figuratively overshadowed by the gigantic being.

  “Our apologies, Farmer Bennis,” Jarod called up, his breath forming momentary clouds in the frosty, still air.

  “Good day, Master Jarod,” the centaur replied in a deep, resonant voice, though his eyes remained on the Dragon’s Bard. “I don’t believe that I am acquainted with your companions . . .”

  “I know you.” Edvard blinked. “I’m just sure of it.”

  Jarod glanced at the Dragon’s Bard and shrugged. “This is Edvard the Just. He’s some kind of bard and that’s . . . uh . . . well, that’s his apprentice. Xander asked me to take them over to the Inn for lunch before locking them up, since he had to go . . .”

  “They’re prisoners, Jarod?” The haggard-looking man was Ward Klum. He wore a round cap with a silver tassel that signified his office as a Master in the Counting Guild. The elder Klum made a habit of holding his head in such a way that the brim of his cap remained completely level with the ground. He wore a long black coat that uncomfortably reminded Jarod of a shroud. A tall man with a hooked nose, he looked out from beneath his thick, bushy eyebrows at the accounts apprentice with all the painful wariness that only a father can bestow upon his son. “Did you enter their names in the arrest ledger?”

  “No, sir, you see, I—”

  “But that’s the very first thing you should do when they’re presented for arrest!”

  “Yes, sir, but—”