Gwyna was praising his melodic ability just now, which made him blush. Over the past two days, he had set melodies to several of Robin's lyrics that were easily the equal of any of the younger Free Bards' efforts. "Oh, but it's true," she said, to his mumbled disclaimer. "The words come easily to me, but melody? Never. You have the hardest part, Jonny."
"B-but I c-cannot find w-words," he replied earnestly. "I am j-just n-not cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-cle-oh d-d-damn!" His face twisted up, and Rune started to get to her feet, afraid that such a blatant exposure of his stutter would send him fleeing to solitude.
But he stayed, as the silence deepened, and the Gypsies held their breaths, sensing how precarious his moment of courage was. He stared at his fists which were balled up on his knees, and Rune hoped that it was not because he was about to go silent again.
Finally he looked up from his clenched fists, and managed a feeble smile. "D-d-damn it," he repeated. "S-s-stupid s-s-stutter. Cle-cle-cle-I s-s-sound l-l-like a k-k-kestrel."
A relieved laugh answered his feeble joke, and Giorgio, one of the largest of the clan, slapped him lightly on the back, with a care to his thin body and small stature. "Then you have named yourself, my friend!" he boomed. " 'Master Kestrel' you shall be! And never disparage the kestrel, for he is bolder for his size than even the goshawk, brave enough to take on enemies that would make a meal of him if they could, brave enough even to attack the human who comes too near his nest!"
Giorgio raised his mug of wine. "To Master Kestrel!" he shouted.
The rest followed his lead. "To Master Kestrel!" they replied, Rune shouting just as loudly as the rest. And when she had drained her mug in the toast, and looked again, Jonny's eyes were shining, and he no longer stared at his hands.
Later, Gwyna even coaxed him out of his seat to dance with her. By then, Gwyna's other suitors had noticed her interest in the young musician, and had turned their attentions elsewhere. Rune couldn't help wondering at that point if Gwyna herself realized what had happened to her. She finally decided that the Gypsy probably hadn't recognized the symptoms of a condition she had caused so often in others. Gwyna had been heart-whole until now, enjoying her companions the way she enjoyed a round of good music or a dance. The oldest game of man and maid had been a sport to her, and nothing more.
I don't think it's a sport anymore, Rune thought, with amusement. I wonder how long it's going to take her to notice that her outlook's changed in the past few days.
The music, dance, and tale-spinning continued on long into the night, until the stars had swung halfway around in their nightly dance, and the moon had set. At moonset, the Gypsies and Free Bards began to trickle away to tents and wagons; singly, in pairs, and in family groups with sleeping children draped like sacks over their parents' backs. Just as Rune started to yawn and wonder where Talaysen was, he appeared at her side and sat down beside her.
"Where have you been?" she asked-curiously, rather than with any hint of accusation. "You said you were going to talk to Peregrine, and then no one knew where you were. I thought the Earth had swallowed you up."
"It almost did," he replied, rubbing his temple with one hand, as if his head ached.
She saw a gleam of silver in the firelight, and caught at the wrist of that hand. He was wearing a silver bracelet that fit so closely to his wrist that it might have been fitted to him, yet which had no visible catch. "Where did you get that? From Peregrine?" she asked, fascinated by the trinket. "It's really lovely-but I thought you didn't wear jewelry."
"I usually don't. Here." He slipped an identical bracelet over her hand before she could pull away, and she muffled an exclamation as it shrank before her eyes to fit her wrist just as tightly as Talaysen's fit his.
He put his lips to her ear. "A gift from the High King of the Elves. His messenger says that it marks us as under his protection."
She blinked, as a thousand possible meanings for "protection" occurred to her. "Is that good, or bad?" she whispered back. "I don't think I'm interested in another visit under a Hill like the last one."
"According to the messenger, these are supposed to keep visits like that within polite boundaries. By invitation, and of reasonable duration." She lifted an eyebrow at Talaysen, and he shrugged. "Peregrine said that the messenger's word was good, and he's been dealing with elves for longer than we have. I'd be inclined to trust his judgment."
"All right," she replied, still dubious, but willing to take his word for it. "So what else have you been doing, besides collecting bits of jewelry that are likely to get us condemned by the Church as elf-loving heretics?"
He chuckled, and put his arms around her, drawing her close to him so that her back nestled against his chest and they could both watch the dancing. "Nothing much, really. Just learning things that would get us condemned by the Church as renegade mages."
She restrained herself from jumping to her feet with a startled exclamation. "I hope you're going to explain that," she said carefully. "Since I assume it has something to do with that music we've both been playing with."
"Peregrine is a mage. It seems that we are, too. He told me that he'd identified the fact that we've 'come into our power' by something he saw when we showed up at camp. Then he gave me a very quick course in the Bardic use of magic, most of which I haven't sorted out yet." He sighed and his breath stirred her hair. "It's all in my head, though. I expect we'll get it figured out a bit at a time."
"I think I'm relieved," she replied, after a moment to ponder it all and turn the implications over in her mind. "I don't think it's a good idea to go wandering all over the countryside, playing about with magic without even knowing the first thing about it."
"That's almost exactly what Peregrine said, word for word," Talaysen chuckled. "He gave me quite a little lecture on-"
The bracelet tightened painfully around Rune's wrist, and she gasped. Her first thought was that the elven-made object was trying to cut her hand off-but then, it released the pressure on her wrist just as quickly as it had clamped down.
And Talaysen released her. He sat up quickly, and scanned the area outside the fire.
"There's someone out there, someone using offensive magic," he said, in a low, urgent voice. "Peregrine told me that these bracelets, being magic, would react to magic."
"Offensive magic?" she repeated. "But what is it? I don't see anything going on-how do we know it's being used against us, or even against the camp?"
He hushed her, absently. "We don't," he said unhelpfully. "But Peregrine will know. We might not be seeing anything because whoever it is may be using something to watch us, or to try and identify someone. Peregrine has all kinds of tricks and traps around this camp-and whoever it is will trip one of them sooner or-"
A cry of anguish from behind them interrupted him, and Rune turned just in time to see a pillar of flame, twice the height of a man, rise up from the shore of the pond.
A moment later she realized that it wasn't a pillar of flame-it was a man, standing bolt upright, transfixed in agony, burning like a pitch-covered torch.
She turned away, her stomach heaving, just in time to hear Peregrine shouting in the Gypsy tongue, of which she only knew a few words.
She couldn't make out what he was saying, but the warning was clear enough. She flattened herself to the ground, instinctively. And just in time, for an arrow sang out of the darkness, buzzing wasp-like past her ear, and thocking into the wood of a wagon just where Jonny had been sitting a moment before. Two more followed it, both obviously aimed at Jonny, before the Gypsies got over their shock and counterattacked.
She had no weapons to hand, and no idea of where the enemy was, so Rune stayed right where she was, as angry Gypsies, men and women both, boiled out of the camp. They headed for the place where the arrows had come from, ignoring the man who was still burning.
He had fallen and was no longer moving; the Gypsies parted about the grisly bonfire as if his presence was inconsequential. They spread out over the area around the pond with torches in one hand and knives at the ready.
But after an agonizingly long time, it still didn't look as if they were finding anything. Rune got slowly to her feet, and made her way over to where Jonny and Gwyna had taken shelter behind a log-seat.
"Are you all right?" she asked Jonny, who nodded, his eyes wide and blank with fear.
"How about you?" she said to Gwyna.
The Gypsy sat up slowly, her mouth set in a grim line. "I've been better, but I'm not hurt," she replied. "What in the name of the Lady was that?"
"I don't know," Rune told her-as movement caught her eye and she saw Peregrine striding towards her, something shiny clutched in one hand, and a long knife in the other. "But I have the feeling we're about to find out. And that we won't like it when we do."
Peregrine sat back against the wooden wall of the wagon, his face impassive. "This was no accident."
Rune snorted, and gave Peregrine one of her most effective glares. "Why heavens, Peregrine, I thought assassins with magic amulets always hung around outside of farm Faires, looking for random targets!"
The Gypsy met her look with one of unruffled calm.
"All right," Gwyna said irritably. "We know it wasn't an accident. And I don't think anyone's going to doubt that Jonny was the target. Now why? Who's behind this, and why are they picking on a simple musician, a lad with a stutter, who wasn't even a good thief?"
Talaysen shook his head and sighed. All five of them were huddled inside Peregrine's wagon, one of the largest Rune had ever seen, so big it had to be pulled by a team of four horses. The windows had been blocked with wooden shutters, and the only way at them was through the door at the front, guarded by Peregrine's fierce lurcher-hounds.
And still Rune kept feeling her neck crawl, as if there was someone creeping up behind her.
Jonny shivered inside one of Peregrine's blankets, a glass of hot brandy inside of him, his eyes telling them what his tongue couldn't. That he was frightened-that was easy to understand. They were all frightened. But Jonny was terrified, so petrified with fear that he balanced on a very thin rope of sanity, with an abyss on either side of him.
Peregrine watched Jonny with an unfathomable expression, and the rest of them watched Peregrine, as the silence thickened. Finally the Gypsy cleared his throat, making them all jump nervously.
"The secret to all of this is-him," he said, stabbing a finger at Jonny. "This is not the first such attack, is it, boy?"
Jonny started, and shrank back-but as Peregrine stared at him, he shook his head, slowly.