"_Oh have you so?
Then fiddle, girl, and pray you fiddle well,
For if I like your music, then I'll let you live to play_
But if you do not please my ears I'll take you down to Hell!"
The cowl nodded, ever so slightly. And the pressure of magic eased off.
Now Robin concentrated on the music, and not the Ghost. She had his attention. Now she must keep it.
The song was a relatively short one, meant for a Faire audience that might not linger to hear an extended ballad. The last verse came up quickly.
At last the dawnlight strikes my eyes, I stop and see the sun_
The light begins to chase away the dark and midnight cold_
And then the light strikes something more, I stare in dumb surprise_
For where the Ghost once stood there is a heap of shining gold!
Then she and Kestrel swung into a double repeat of the last chorus, laughing and triumphant.
I'll play you high, I'll play you low
For I'm a wizard with my bow
And music is my lifeblood and my art
And every note I sing will tame your heart!
They finished with a flourish worthy of Master Wren himself. The Ghost regarded them from under his hood with a speculation and surprise that Robin felt, just as she had felt the fear he had tried to force on her.
"Well," it whispered, the voice now coming from beneath that cowl and not from every shade and shadow in the clearing. "So, the little fiddler girl survived. Did she thrive as well as survive?"
There was more than a little interest in that question. And not a hint of indifference. He remembered Rune, and he wanted to know about her.
"She continues to thrive, sir," Robin said boldly. "Your silver bought her lessons and instruments, and brought her to the Kingsford Faire and the Free Bards. She got a Master from the Free Bards, and then more than a Master, for she wedded him and earned her title of Master and of Elf-Friend as well. They sing for a King now, and wander no more."
"A good King, I am sure," came the return whisper. "She would settle for naught else, the bold child who dared my hill." Then amazingly, something that sounded like a hint of chuckle emerged from beneath the cowl. "It is, I trow, hard to find a rhyme for 'silver'_and that 'heap of shining gold' tells me why, on a sudden, a fool or two a year has come to dig holes in my hill when they never did before."
"And they f-f-find?" Jonny asked, boldly.
"Rocks. And, sometimes, me." Again the chuckle, but this time it chilled and had no humor in it. Once again, she sensed the power coiled serpentlike behind him, a power that quickened to anger at very little provocation. So before he had time to be angered at the song, at them, she spoke.
"Sir, we came to ask a bargain of our own. Not gold or silver or even gems _"
She was the entire focus of the Ghost's gaze now; the antithesis of the tropical sun, it fell upon her and froze her in a silence of centuries. Or tried. It was at that moment the Ghost must have realized she was not caught in his web of terror, for the spirit straightened a little in what looked very like surprise. "What_bargain?" it said at last.