Robin let out the breath she had been holding. "I think you're being wise," she said. "It's just a feeling I have, but_well, incest is punishable, too, and the punishments are pretty horrible. It might be worse for Church Priests to know you are related, and sharing a room."
"Better to be safe," Linnet said, with a twitch of her skirts that told Robin that she was not just nervous, she was actually a little afraid, and had been the moment that Gannet mentioned the Church.
And that was not like Linnet.
Not at all.
Something had frightened her, something she hadn't even told her brothers. Threats from some representative of the Church?
Or some Priest deciding he liked her looks and promising trouble if she wouldn't become his mistress. It had happened to Robin, and the trouble had come. Small wonder Linnet would rather leave the country than come under Church scrutiny again. Robin would make the same choice, in her place.
She and Kestrel found several more Gypsies, and two more Free Bards, besides a round dozen wandering players who were not associated with either the Guild or the Free Bards. To all of them she passed the news that any musician was welcome to play wherever he could find work in the Kingdom of Birnam. Some of the ordinary musicians were interested, most were not_but they were folk who had a regular circuit of tiny inns, local dances and festivals, and very small Faires. They had places to play that no Guild musician would touch with a barge-pole, and while the living that they eked out was bare by her standards, it was enough for them.
The Free Bards were, like Linnet, very interested in her news, and had similar tales of finding Guild musicians_or, at least, musicians in Guild badges_playing in the venues where no Guildsman had ever played before.
But it was not until they found another musician who was both a Gypsy and a Free Bard that they had anything like an answer to the question of why this was happening.
The ethereal strains of a harp drew Kestrel across the clearing and into the deeper forest beyond the immediate confines of the Waymeet. Dead leaves crackled underfoot, and the scent of tannin rose at his every step. This was no simple song; this was the kind of wild, strange, dream-haunted melody that some of the Gypsies played_though Robin never would, claiming she had no talent for what she called adastera music. She said it was as much magic as music, and told him it was reputed to have the power to control spirits and souls, to raise ghosts and set them to rest again.
Robin followed him under the deep shadows of the trees, as the bare branches above gave way to thick, long-needled evergreens, a voice joined the harp, singing without words, the two creating harmonies that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. This was music powerful enough to make even Harperus weep! The harpist must be a Gypsy, but who was the singer? It did not sound like any human voice....
The path they followed seemed to lead beside the stream that watered the Waymeet; it led through deep undergrowth, along the bottom of a rock-sided ravine that slowly grew steeper with every twist and turn of the path. The stream wound its way through a tangle of rounded boulders, but its gurgle did not sound at all cheerful, although it was very musical. It held a note of melancholy that was a match for the sadness in the music floating on the breeze ahead of them.
"Nightingale," Robin muttered. "She's the only person I can think of who plays like that! But who is the singer?"
They had their answer a moment later, as the stream and path brought them to a tiny clearing made by the toppling of a single tree that bridged the water. There, beside the tree, was the harpist, seated on a rock with her harp braced on her lap. And standing beside her was T'fyrr.
Not even the birds were foolish enough to make any sound that might disturb these two. The Haspur stood like a statue of gray granite in the twilight shadows of the forest, only his chest moving to show that he was alive, with his eyes closed and his beak open just enough to permit his voice to issue forth. Nightingale's eyes were closed as well, but most of her face was hidden in the curtain of her hair, as she bent over her harp, all of her concentration centered on her hands and the melodies she coaxed from the delicate strings.
Both of them were too deeply engrossed in the music to notice their audience_and Robin and Kestrel stopped dead to keep from breaking their concentration.
The song came to its natural end, a single harp-note that hung in the air like a crystal raindrop; a sigh from T'fyrr that answered it.
For a long, long moment, only silence held sway beneath the branches. Then, finally, a bell-bird sang out its three-note call, and the two musicians sighed and opened their eyes.
T'fyrr caught sight of them first, and clapped his beak shut with a snap.
"T-T'fyrr _" Kestrel said, softly, "th-that was w-w-wonderful."
The bird-man bowed, graciously. "It was an experiment _" he offered. "It was not meant to be heard."
"But since it was..." The Gypsy that Robin had identified as "Nightingale" cocked her head to one side.