He lay awake a while longer, pondering what she had said, and at last inquired, “How do you think the villagers will take to having people here with views like ours?”
“So long as we honour the mistress of the water,” came the sleepy answer, “why in the world should they worry?”
Yes indeed. Why should they?
His doubts resolved, the new lord of the manor of Welstock dozed off contentedly beside his lady.
The Fellowship of the Dragon
Patricia A. McKillip
A great cry rose throughout the land: Queen Celandine had lost her harper. She summoned north, south, east, west; we rode for days through mud and rain to meet, the five of us, at Trillium; from there we rode to Carnelaine. The world had come to her great court, for though we lived too far from her to hear her fabled harper play, we heard the rumor that at each full moon she gave him gloves of cloth of gold and filled his mouth with jewels. As we stood in the hall among her shining company, listening to her pleas for help, Justin, who is the riddler among us, whispered, “What is invisible but everywhere, swift as wind but has no feet, and has as many tongues that speak but never has a face?”
“Easy,” I breathed. “Rumor.”
“Rumor, that shy beast, says she valued his hands far more than his harping, and she filled his mouth with more than jewels.”
I was hardly surprised. Celandine is as beautiful close as she is at a distance; she has been so for years, with the aid of a streak of sorcery she inherited through a bit of murkiness, an imprecise history on the distaff side, and she is not one to waste her gifts. She had married honorably, loved faithfully, raised her heirs well. When her husband died a decade ago, she mourned him with the good-hearted efficiency she had brought to marriage and throne. Her hair showed which way the wind was blowing, and the way that silver, ash and gold worked among the court was magical. But when we grew close enough to kneel before her, I saw that the harper was no idle indulgence, but had sung his way into her blood.
“You five,” she said softly, “I trust more than all my court. I rely on you.” Her eyes, green as her name, were grim; I saw the tiny lines of fear and temper beside her mouth. “There are some in this hall who—because I have not been entirely wise or tactful—would sooner see the harper dead than rescue him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She lowered her voice; I could scarcely hear her, though the jealous knights behind me must have stilled their hearts to catch her answer. “I looked in water, in crystal, in mirror: every image is the same. Black Tremptor has him.”
“Oh, fine.”
She bent to kiss me: we are cousins, though sometimes I have been more a wayward daughter, and more often, she a wayward mother. “Find him, Anne,” she said. We five rose as one and left the court.
“What did she say?” Danica asked as we mounted. “Did she say Black Tremptor?”
“Sh!”
“That’s a mountain,” Fleur said.
“It’s a bloody dragon,” Danica said sharply, and I bellowed in a whisper, “Can you refrain from announcing our destination to the entire world?”
Danica wheeled her mount crossly; peacocks, with more haste than grace, swept their fine trains out of her way. Justin looked intrigued by the problem. Christabel, who was nursing a cold, said stoically, “Could be worse.” What could be worse than being reduced to a cinder by an irritated dragon, she didn’t mention. Fleur, who loved good harping, was moved.
“Then we must hurry. Poor man.” She pulled herself up, cantered after Danica. Riding more sedately through the crowded yard, we found them outside the gate, gazing east and west across the grey, billowing sky as if it had streamed out of a dragon’s nostrils.
“Which way?” Fleur asked. Justin, who knew such things, pointed. Christabel blew her nose. We rode.
Of course we circled back through the city and lost the knights who had been following us. We watched them through a tavern window as they galloped purposefully down the wrong crossroad. Danica, whose moods swung between sun and shadow like an autumn day, was being enchanted by Fleur’s description of the object of our quest.
“He is a magnificent harper, and we should spare no pains to rescue him, for there is no one like him in all the world, and Queen Celandine might reward us with gold and honor, but he will reward us forever in a song.”
Christabel waved the fumes of hot spiced wine at her nose. “Does anyone know this harper’s name?”
“Kestral,” I said. “Kestral Hunt. He came to court a year ago, at old Thurlow’s death.”
“And where,” Christabel asked sensibly, “is Black Tremptor?”
We all looked at Justin, who for once looked uncomfortable. “North,” she said. She is a slender, dark-haired, quiet-voiced woman with eyes like the storm outside. She could lay out facts like an open road, or mortar them into a brick wall. Which she was building for us now, I wasn’t sure.
“Justin?”
“Well, north,” she said vaguely, as if that alone explained itself. “It’s fey, beyond the border. Odd things happen. We must be watchful.”
We were silent. The tavern keeper came with our supper. Danica, pouring wine the same pale honey as her hair, looked thoughtful at the warning instead of cross. “What kinds of things?”
“Evidently harpers are stolen by dragons,” I said. “Dragons with some taste in music.”
“Black Tremptor is not musical,” Justin said simply. “But like that, yes. There are so many tales, who knows which of them might be true? And we barely know the harper any better than the northlands.”
“His name,” I said, “and that he plays well.”
“He plays wonderfully,” Fleur breathed. “So they say.”
“And he caught the queen’s eye,” Christabel said, biting into a chicken leg. “So he might look passable. Though with good musicians, that hardly matters.”
“And he went north,” Justin pointed out. “For what?”
“To find a song,” Fleur suggested; it seemed, as gifted as he was, not unlikely.
“Or a harp,” I guessed. “A magical harp.”
Justin nodded. “Guarded by a powerful dragon. It’s possible. Such things happen, north.”
Fleur pushed her dish aside, sank tableward onto her fists. She is straw-thin, with a blacksmith’s appetite; love, I could tell, for this fantasy, made her ignore the last of her parsnips. She has pale, curly hair like a sheep, and a wonderful, caressing voice; her eyes are small, her nose big, her teeth crooked, but her passionate, musical voice has proved Christabel right more times than was good for Fleur’s husband to know. How robust, practical Christabel, who scarcely seemed to notice men or music, understood such things, I wasn’t sure.
“So,” I said. “North.”
And then we strayed into the country called “Remember-when,” for we had known one another as children in the court at Carnelaine, and then as members of the queen’s company, riding ideals headlong into trouble, and now, as long and trusted friends. We got to bed late, enchanted by our memories, and out of bed far too early, wondering obviously why we had left hearth and home, husband, child, cat and goosedown bed for one another’s surly company. Christabel sniffed, Danica snapped, Fleur babbled, I was terse. As always, only Justin was bearable.
We rode north.
The farther we travelled, the wilder the country grew. We moved quickly, slept under trees or in obscure inns, for five armed women riding together are easily remembered, and knights dangerous to the harper as well as solicitous of the queen would have known to track us. Slowly the great, dark crags bordering the queen’s marches came closer and closer to meet us, until we reached, one sunny afternoon, their shadow.