Standing sideways, Jocelyn watched Silver struggle up the last few steps to stand beside her on the crest of the hill. Soft midsummer wind blew tendrils of ash-blonde hair across the younger woman’s white face, obscuring the light freckles on her nose. Silver was pretty enough to draw a crowd anywhere; between the silver eyes she drew her nickname from, her alabaster skin, and her slender height, she looked more like a fairy-tale princess than a young Bard fresh to her Scarlets.
Might as well be nice to the girl—it wasn’t her fault her beauty was so like Dawn’s, not any more that it was her fault the powers-that-be in Bardic had decided Jocelyn needed a partner. She didn’t, of course. She’d been just fine on her own the last five years. She sighed. “We’ll take a break here.” She gestured toward a convenient tumble of white-and-gray rocks, then dug into her pack and pulled out two red apples, handing one to Silver.
Silver settled on the sheep-cropped grass, took the apple daintily, and bit into it. “Thank you.”
Ashamed of her curtness, Jocelyn stepped into her pleasant performance voice. “No problem.” She picked out a flat rock, sat down, and took a bite of her own apple. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything you’d like to know?” Maybe Silver wanted to know about their trip—they were going to walk a circuit all the way to the border and back, and would be expected to perform, and listen for news, starting in just a few days. This was, after all, Silver’s first long journey away from Haven.
Silver nodded and finished her apple in thoughtful silence. Then she turned toward Jocelyn, a small mischievous gleam in her eye. “I want to hear the story behind Dawn of Sorrows.”
Jocelyn sat back against the sun-warmed granite rock and crossed one long leg over the other. This was why she hadn’t wanted to travel with anyone. “I don’t tell that story.”
Silver laughed nervously. “You’re famous for ‘Dawn of Sorrows.’ But no one knows the real story, just the song. I thought—” she looked away, as if suddenly shy, “—I thought maybe you’d be willing to tell me. I know the song tells the story, but there must be more details. I want to write a song that matters some day.”
Jocelyn bit back a suggestion that no one should want to write a song like “Dawn of Sorrows.” She finished her apple. She didn’t have to answer Silver, not right away. She was the elder by seven years, after all. She threw her apple core into the woods for the ants, then captured the most unruly bits of her own red hair with her left hand and looked down. From this distance and height, the people working the ripening fields looked like brightly colored moving dots. But she remembered looking down on another town. . . .
Despite the day’s warmth, she shivered.
She’d managed not to talk about Dawn for at least five years, and not to sing the song herself for almost as long. It was impossible, of course, not to hear it. “Dawn of Sorrows” was one of those songs that took on its own life and became part of the repertoire of nearly every minstrel and bard. Some days, she wished she’d never written it. She hadn’t written anything else since.
Maybe she should talk about it, maybe that would teach Silver that adventure wasn’t always easy, that sometimes it tore you right up. Jocelyn sighed. Bard Dennis had assigned her to travel with Silver for a full season. She’d have to talk to the girl eventually.
Jocelyn had pushed Silver by setting a hard pace, and the girl had kept up. She’d asked for silence and Silver had let her have a polite and respectful quiet. She didn’t deserve to have her first question rebuffed.
Jocelyn took a sip of water and settled back. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little touchy. I’ll start by telling you Dawn’s story . . . her story from before I met her.”
Silver sighed, a smile edging her pale pink lips, anticipation brightening her eyes. She pillowed her head on her scarlet cloak and closed her eyes, relaxed and still, as if she listened with her whole body.
Jocelyn nodded in silent approval—the Bardic Gift was akin to empathy, and when Silver focused her energy on listening as hard as Jocelyn focused hers on storytelling, they’d both feel Jocelyn’s emotions. She whispered, almost to herself, “I hope you’re ready to hear the story.”
Silver opened her eyes and regarded Jocelyn gravely. “Try me.”
“Dawn lived in Johnson’s Ford, a border town near Hardorn. I call it a town just because it had a name, but it was really just a handful of houses. Maybe thirty people or forty. Not a bad place, not really, but like other border towns: raiders and bandits swooped down from time to time, bellies grumbled and old people died when the winters were hard, and the granaries never overflowed. Other small towns nearby traded with them, but they didn’t get much news or many minstrels or Bards. So the people of Johnson’s Ford didn’t understand the big things shaping up in Valdemar, like Elspeth becoming the first Herald-Mage since Vanyel.”
Jocelyn paused, watching a lone hawk circle lazily just above her eye level. If only she could fly alone like that today. “No, Johnson’s Ford mostly worried about surviving the storms that plagued Valdemar that year. Oh, the impending war with Hardorn had grazed the town, rattling nerves and stealing young men. But Johnson’s Ford was far from anything strategic except the ford itself. . . .” Jocelyn let her voice trail off. She was taking too long, making the story hard to get into. She closed her eyes and focused her breath deep in her belly, letting her loss and pain creep up so it would fill her, her story, with true emotion. Her breath quickened.
Silver opened her eyes, as if curious about the long pause, but she closed them again, content to wait.
Jocelyn swallowed. “The year before Elspeth’s return, a pack of black wolves that had been twisted by Ancar’s mages came through town, and Dawn’s husband, Drake, and two other men died defending their homes. A nasty death, as quick and as unexpected in Dawn’s life as a lightning strike. She kept living in the little two-room house that Drake died for, alone except for their daughter, eight-year-old Lisle. Oh, Dawn was pretty enough that she did get a few offers from other men, but she turned them all down, for she had been truly in love with Drake.
“Dawn had no other family in Johnson’s Ford. Lisle became her anchor, her ground. They were inseparable. They worked side by side, minding the sheep in the morning and weeding the fields in the afternoon. Neither had the Bardic Gift, but either could have been minstrels, and they sang together when they worked and sometimes they sang for town gatherings.”
Silver’s eyes were bright with curiosity. “So what did Dawn look like?”
Jocelyn cocked her head, studying the other woman. “A little like you.” She arched an eyebrow, shook her head. “But not so light, or so thin. Her eyes weren’t silver, they were dark and warm, like walnut. . . .” She shook her head again.
Silver frowned, puzzled. “So she’d already lost her husband, before you even met her?”
“Yes.” Jocelyn paused. “So the first stanza of her song happened before I met her. That’s the only part of the song I didn’t see.” She took a deep breath and threaded her fingers through her hair.
“I took my journeyman trip alone, and for a purpose. Selenay had given word that Valdemar was her people and not her places. She sent Heralds out to tell the people along Hardorn’s border to leave, but there weren’t enough Heralds available, so some Bards were selected as well. Our goal was to take Selenay’s message to every single person near Hardorn.” She glanced at Silver, caught her pale eyes with her own. “We were to use our Gift to convince them, if we had to. You know, that business about it being okay to use your Gift on the business of the crown.”