[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

poultices, and I think I have the stomach for the work. I have little love for
mining, even if it is what my father and his father before him did.
Tradition is just another way of enslaving yourself to someone else's ideas,
after all."
"And you have to go someplace to become a doctor?"
"I've heard there's a good school south of here, in Galarialle. I've always
thought someday I'd find a way to leave here and go there just to see, you
know, if I could convince them to take me as a student."
"But we don't dare go back into Terosalle," Giraud said.
"You don't not as yourselves. But you can be someone else easily enough.
And quite honestly, neither of you is any major threat to anyone." He looked
at Giraud. "The empress's men will give up their hunt for you in a few days
and tell the empress you died in the mountains." He turned to me. "And you're
not important to anyone. The whoremaster will lose a few coins, and your
craftmaster and your foster-mother will harbor a grudge against you for
spoiling their plan... but while you might have once been the daughter of a
High-Court bard, you're nothing but a runaway apprentice now."
Giraud and I looked at each other. I think both of us had seen ourselves as
the subjects of unending hunts and our clever escapes as something that would
cause enormous consternation. And the idea that people wouldn't care that our
absence would not set up a hue and cry from one end of
Terosalle to the other, while in a way comforting, in another way stung quite
a bit. I know I sat there feeling wounded, realizing that even to the three
people from whom I'd escaped, my life meant nothing of any real importance.
"So what are you going to do?" Maydellan Ha asked.
And that was the problem. We didn't know what we were going to do. I got out
the pack the nantatsu had given us, and opened it, and from it pulled the
book. It felt heavier than it looked; I pitied Giraud, who'd been stuck
carrying it up the side of the mountain. "I suppose we'll look through this
and figure it out."
I started thumbing through the pages of the commonplace book. The first dozen
or so entries were written in a crabbed, completely illegible hand.
The handwriting of the next half-dozen was round and smooth and flowing, and I
still couldn't read it. I could figure out a word or two, but the spellings
and some of the letter-forms were different than anything I had ever seen. It
had been a long time since I'd done much reading, though. Maybe, I
thought, I'd partly forgotten how.
The next handful of entries, in a third hand, remained utterly unintelligible
to me, and I realized that no matter how familiar the writing looked, I
couldn't read it. In frustration, I handed the book to Giraud. "I thought I
knew how to read," I told him, humiliated by the admission, "but I've
forgotten."
He glanced at the page to which the book was opened, then frowned. Then his
expression cleared, however, and he began to chuckle. "You haven't forgotten
how to read, Isbetta. This is bardic shortscript. A lot of the bardic
documents are written in it. They can write it faster than regular script, and
it hasn't changed over the past few hundred years, even though regular writing
Page 30
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
has. Here..." He looked down at the page he was studying and ran a finger
along the first line, then the second. "... This one says, 'A Spell for
Becoming
Inconspicuous, to the tune of the chorus for "Fat Lady's Stroll" or other
Three-Beat Dance:
'Here I'll be Now you'll see No one important No one who Makes you think
You ought to stay Here I'll be Don't see me I'm not important You can just
Turn back, just Walk on away.' "
He smiled a little. "The bard who's writing this says it came in very handy
one night when the patrons at a tavern got too rowdy. He substituted it for
the regular chorus of Tat Lady's Stroll' and walked out before they realized
he was gone."
I laughed. "It doesn't seem like it could do anything. It's ugly verse no
imagery, no grace, just that lumping three-beat canter." I started singing it,
imagining as I did the bard and his tavern full of unruly customers... and
both
Giraud and Maydellan Ha turned away from me. They started talking to each
other, completely ignoring me. I thought they would laugh, but neither of them
even smiled. I said, "Well, I thought it was funny. I'm sorry you didn't."
Giraud started reading another of the verses to Ha, and I got angry. "If you
didn't like the song, that's no need to be rude."
They still didn't pay me any attention. Furious now, I punched Giraud in the
arm. "Jackass," I said.
I wasn't prepared for his reaction. He jerked around and jumped and yelped,
pulling back from me. Ha suddenly stared at me, too, and his mouth dropped
open. "Where were you?" he asked.
I realized then they were making fun of me. "Very funny." I crossed my arms
over my chest and glared. "Pretending you didn't know I was here I
get it now. You aren't as funny as you think you are."
Giraud didn't crack a smile. Neither did the dwarf. Instead, they both sat
staring at me like I'd grown two heads and wings.
"You aren't going to pretend you forgot I was here," I said.
Giraud said, "Who's pretending? How did you get here without me seeing you,
and where did you go?"
I looked from him to Ha. "You're playing a game with me."
The dwarf shook his head slowly.
"You honestly didn't know I was here."
Both of them said no.
"That stupid spell actually works?"
"It works when you use it," Giraud said after a pause. "I told you I thought
you could be a bard."
"A bard-to-be in our midst!" Maydellan Ha grinned. "Ho, young bardling,"
he said in a silly voice, "enchant some young women for me, so that they'll
love me."
"Some," I said, smiling slightly. "Not one, but some. Aren't you the greedy
one?" I made light of the moment as Ha was doing, not because I thought what
had happened was funny, but because I was uneasy with the little piece of a
miracle I'd wrought. I wasn't sure how I'd done it, or why the stupid spell
had worked; I'd always thought intent was a huge part of the process of bardic
magic. What was more, from everything my father had told me, I had always
believed a bard needed his lute, or his harp or his darumbie in order to
create resonances. Wasn't that what Da had said? That a bard's voice and his
instrument created resonances? And if that were the case, then why had the
stupid spell done anything? What other than my voice created those resonances?
Giraud had begun to eagerly flip through the pages, studying the writings he
found.
"Listen to this, Izza a spell for the compelling of truth, and one for calling
rain... well, I guess we don't need that one. Pity there isn't one for sending
Page 31
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
away the rain... and... oh, this is marvelous. Some of the bards' regular
writings get out from time to time, you know their histories and their records
of travels and such but I don't know that anyone has ever found one of their
spell records. And there are diary entries in here, too. This is fascinating."
Maydellan Ha said, "The bards guard the secrets of their magic carefully. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]