The town of Silvercroft Glen was prosperous, relying on both shipping, it being a coastal town, and the inland commerce from across the mountains, it also being along a major trading route leading from the east. Being at such a nexus, it was in the perfect position for the annual summer fair that drew folk from far and wide. While the town itself was large, almost the size of a respectable city, a fair deal of the people flocking to the fair had set up tents in the surrounding land. The beach was full of cookfires and shelters. The gentle hills rolling down to it, also sprouting colorful canvas homesteads. The harbor was full of ships of all sizes, and the city bristling with people of every persuasion.
The sounds and smells and sights were overwhelming. One could not walk a step without being jostled, or seeing an array of colors that bordered on spectacle, or smelling the fabulous aroma of exotic cooking. The entertainment's were varied, from common bards to sinuous snake dancers, to corner plays, to juggles and acrobats. Criers proclaimed more elaborate performances behind the flaps of large tents, street corner hedge witches sold charms and gaudily dressed magicians amazed the crowds with plainly false displays of the arcane. Prostitutes of both genders weeded among the crowds, importuning all manner of gratification.
The bards were in heaven of a sort. The closer they got to Silvercroft Glen, the less they talked about anything else but the fair. One began to tire of hearing of it even before its boundaries were actually reached. Once there, they could hardly contain themselves, the lot of them behaving like unruly rustic children out for a day in the city. The younger ones wanted to hie off immediately, seduced by the atmosphere, but wiser heads prevailed and Crayl managed to convince them to at least stay together until they found lodging and would know how to find each other again. Crayl's inn of choice had no room as well as the two after it. The town was filled to overflowing with visitors and when they finally did find rooms, it was at an exorbitant rate for less than exemplary accommodations. Crayl lingered to haggle with the landlord. Kall merely handed over coin and went to see about Brawaith's stabling.
By the time he returned, the other's had melted into the confusion of the fair and only Lily waited, hiding her own impatience to be off with a smile and a polite inquiry of whether he might like to take a look around the town. A refusal would have devastated her, so stowing his gear in the upstairs room, he accompanied her out into the festive streets.
Kall-Su rather hated crowds and this one was bustling and totally unaware of mannerly personal distances. People careened off of one another, sidled past, brushed against their neighbors, laid hands on complete strangers in passing sometimes merely a friendly clap on the shoulder, sometimes of a more intimate nature. Children and dogs wove through the adult bodies, laughing, chasing each other, causing general mayhem in their play.
Lily laughed as a child, chasing another child, chasing a mongrel dog pushed their way between her and Kall. He glared indignantly, until she grasped his arm and pressed close.
"Its the atmosphere. Everyone's spirit is so gay. Can't you feel it?"
What he felt was trapped and put upon. "Its pandemonium."
"Ah, but pandemonium is not always such a bad thing, my very solemn love. Not if its in the spirit of good will. Haven't you ever gone out into the streets at festival or celebration and just enjoyed yourself?"
"No."
"Oh, that makes me sad." She ran her fingers down his arm to squeeze his hand. "In all your years, you've never merely let go and allowed yourself the freedom to enjoy the moment? Even with such a teacher as Dark Schneider?"
"We are not alike, he and I."
"Oh, that I am well aware of."
"It is not a shortcoming -- to be wary of frivolities." He said defensively.
"Of course not. Who said such a thing?" She looked up at him teasingly. Her light teasing was a thing he was still often caught off guard by. "Oh, look. Thetatrian dancers."
She dragged him towards a cleared street corner where a pair of acrobats performed a rhythmic and sensual dance to the beat of a drum played by a third performer. It was quite the most dexterous display Kall-Su had ever seen. Afterwards she found a trio of female singers that they paused to listen to. Then a performance by a sleight of hand artist who utilized flames and exploding powder in his displays. They bought cider and smoked sausages and as the light faded watched the strings of ornamental lanterns hanging from almost every doorstep being lit.
Passing the doorstep of a tavern they heard a familiar voice and drifted inside. It was Crayl and his old master singing harmony to the obvious fascination of the crowded room.
"Shall we sit down for a while?" Lily asked. He agreed and they found a small, rickety table in the center of the room and perched on stools. A harried girl approached and brought two mugs of brown, foaming ale. It was amazing how attentive the room was to the two singers. Most taverns were a riotous uproar by this time of evening. When they ended the haunting ballad, they struck up a lively tune and soon the room was vibrating with stamping feet and palms slapping tables. The ale ran freely and in mass.
Gods, he thought, seeing the effect a mere change of tempo had upon the room. There is something to their music. He'd been picking up on bits and pieces of it since that first night on the beach. It was subtle. Sometimes nothing more than a feeling of peacefulness or lightened mood. And it did not always happen, but when they put their minds -- or as Lily put it -- their hearts to it, they could sway a man's mood. It was only Crayl and Selephio and Lily out of their bunch that he sensed it from. The others had pleasing voices and deft fingers, but they were mere background noise compared to what their compatriots invoked.
He had almost dismissed it, when it was Lily singing, because she moved him so already, but seeing a room full of boisterous drinkers so effected pricked his curiosity.
Afterwards when Crayl and the old man had finished, Lily beckoned them over. They brought half finished mugs of ale with them, sitting their instruments atop the small table reverently.
"The fairs always boast good crowds." Selephio said gustily, draining his mug. "Coin flies freely."
Crayl grinned and jingled his purse. It sounded full of coin. "If the others have faired half so well, we're off to a prosperous start."
They talked for a while of other minstrels they knew that were here, of the events scheduled for the following days, of ways to spend their earnings. Kall sat listening, noting how the crowd had drifted back to its normal, bolstrous, ever shifting tide of emotional upheaval. Someone started a fight off to the side, but the bar bouncers quickly squashed it, tossing the offenders out into the street. Someone else began loudly and explicitly propositioning one of the barmaids.
He leaned forward, towards the old minstrel. "Is it magic, this power that comes with your music? That you say Lily has and that you and he possess."
Selephio eyed him critically, fingering his beard. There was ale foam in his mustache. "Magic is such a broad term, isn't it?"
"But apt. I see the effects -- so subtle, but there -- but sense nothing recognizable as magic."
"And you would know, wouldn't you?" Selephio said cryptically. "The flavor of magic and all that. Ah, but how sure can you be, wounded as you are?"
Kall looked at Lily, wondering if she'd told the old man about his injures.
As far as he knew she had not told the other bards the extent of his reasons for abandoning Sta-Veron and traipsing about the country side with her. Other than the obvious romantic ones, which as far as he was concerned were more than enough for their inquisitive minds. Lily gave him a look that plainly said she was as surprised as him.
"How do you know -- about that?" he asked cautiously.
Selephio shrugged. "It's a talent of mine, reading people. I read you very well, inquisitive wizard. But its a prerequisite of your kind, curiosity, is it not?"
"As it for yours." Kall replied, not comfortable with this bantering conversation. The old man seemed intent on baiting him.
"Do you go about spreading all your secrets to anyone that asks, wizard?"
"No. Not that it would matter, when so few could use them anyway."
"Ah, so it is for us. What use you knowing -- other than to satiate your curiosity? Perhaps in ten or twenty years when she's as good at it as I, when she's come to learn all the secrets of our trade, she'll tell you. Until then, live with not knowing."
And that, as far as Selephio was concerned was that. He rose, slinging his lute over his shoulder and declared that he was off to find company of a more lissome sort to spend his earnings on. Crayl lingered an uncomfortable moment, enduring Kall's displeased stare as long as possible before going off to find the rest of his troupe.
"I'm sorry." Lily said, looking guilty. "If I knew the answers to your questions, I would tell you. But I don't. I don't know how to explain it."
"I know." He could hardly blame her because his questions went unanswered.
There was nothing to do about it, save force the curiosity down to a point where it didn't nag at him. There were a multitude of other things to distract the mind. They drifted out of town and into the sea of tents along the shore. Gypsies had set up camps here and their erotic music swayed sensuously through the air. Lily was eager to walk among the various groups, looking for familiar faces. She had learned some of her more sultry dances from the time she had spent as a slave to a gypsy band. Lanterns and torches guttered on poles stuck in the sand or hanging from wagons. The gypsies had everything imaginable for sale out of wagons, on blankets spread in the sand, hanging from about their necks as they wove among the browsers.
An old gypsy woman sitting in the back of a wagon called out to passerby, promising accurate fortunes. Lily claimed to recognize her. Not from the group she had been with, but from one her own band had crossed paths with on several occasions.
"Elberta?" Lily ventured closer and the gap toothed old hag peered down at her. Her eyes were such narrow slits in the wrinkles of her face that Kall doubted she could see much beyond her beak of a nose.
"Who's there that calls me by name?" the old woman demanded.
"Its Lily. I met you when I was a girl traveling with Old Elijah's band."
"You're still a girl." The old woman snorted. "But, I seem to recall a pretty voice to go with your pretty face. I remember you. You would never let me tell your future."
Lily lowered her head a little, embarrassed. "I was a slave. Slaves have no future."
"But you're not now. Its gone. Gone. Gone. All the years of servitude washed away with hardly a thought, huh?"
Lily glanced back at Kall with a raised brow. He shrugged having no use for so called fortune tellers and the like.
"Shall I tell your future now, girl?" the old woman cackled, holding out her hand for Lily's. Hesitantly, Lily let the woman draw her to the edge of the wagon, where the canvas flaps and roof afforded a bit of privacy. What was said was for the ears of the client and no other. After a few minutes Lily stepped back out, a little ashen faced, her eyes big as saucers. She stared a moment at Kall, then shifted her eyes away.
"What did she say?" Kall asked despite himself. These types of charlatans often predicted dire things to impress their customers.
"Nothing." Lily said.
"And you?" Old Elberta called out, beckoning to Kall. "Do you want your future told?"
"I make my own." He said coldly and the old woman chuckled.
"And what prophet told you that, boy?"
Something in the way she said it, made him pause, a chill running across his skin. She crooked a finger at him and reluctantly he stepped forward. She took his hand, her skin papery and dry. Her eyes sealed shut. Her breathing went shallow and for a moment it almost looked as if she had fallen into a doze. Then with a whistled breath she whispered.
All the trials before will be as nothing. When the Black March comes so will come a new era. There is no ice in the desert, so protect the storm.
She hissed suddenly and snatched her hand back from his. Her old eyes glared daggers at him. "What are you?"
He blinked at her, confused. She shook her finger at him accusingly, then scrambled back into the shadows of the wagon, pulling the canvas flap closed after her.
He went back to Lily and she forced a smile for him. "You look as shaken as I was." She said, but didn't ask him what was said. He mulled it over silently. He would have taken it as gibberish, save for the mention of ice. It was not a casual term to use in reference to a desert and in connection with him.
They were foot sore by the time they returned to their inn. They sampled enough exotic foods from venders that neither was inclined to sit down for supper. The other minstrels were still out, so they acquired a bottle of wine and retreated upstairs to their room, content to spend the remainder of the evening without the intrusion of other living souls. He had known Lily for perhaps six months, had been sleeping with her for half that time and she still managed to surprise him on a nightly basis. He thought she would always hold an awe for him. She would always have some unrevealed terrain for him to discover. He was content to understand her bit by bit.
After they had gone through half the bottle of wine and made languid love, they lay entwined on sweat dampened sheets. He told her what the old fortune teller had said, wanting her opinion on whether he read more into mere words than were really there.
"She was always rumored to have the gift." There was a frown in Lily's voice. "But that's a vague fortune, if it can even be considered a fortune at all. Sounds more like a prophesy from one of the mad wanderers."
"Prophesy." He gnawed at his lip. Something about the old woman and her words just made his hair stand up on end. Fortune telling or prophesy or gibberish, he'd rather forget it entirely.
Lily's head was a dark shape on his shoulder. Absently he stroked her hair. Eventually her breathing told him she'd fallen asleep. He felt far from it himself.
It was almost dawn before he did drift off, and when he awoke again, it was full day and the place Lily had rested was long cold. Her lute was gone, so he assumed she was out to ply her trade.
He went down to find breakfast and passed Allun coming in on the arm of a strange young man in the garb of a dancer or acrobat. They both seemed a little giddy. Allun grinned at him and nodded, leading his new friend upstairs. Kall lifted a dubious brow at the notion of retreating to the bedroom at such an hour, but one supposed during the fair, when folk kept unusual hours to begin with, anything was acceptable.
The innkeeper served him a breakfast of thick sliced ham and honey cakes layered with fruit preserves. Hot, apple and cinnamon tea served to clear away the vestiges of wine that still clung to his head. He took the mug out with him to the stables to see that Brawaith was being properly cared for. The horse had a measure of oats in his pale and fresh water. Kall remembered to bring an apple with him and received Brawaith's express approval as blunt equine teeth snatched the fruit from his fingers.
He had heard that there were horse races along the beach and that more than any of the other entertainment's interested him. So he sat out towards the sound of the ocean, finding the temporary corals that had been set up to house the array of animals brought by wagoneers, herders and horse traders. Some of it was even good horse flesh. None so good as Brawaith, but then he'd spent the better part of half a century improving on the northern blood line.
He spent the afternoon watching the races along a straight stretch of beach. When he finally tired of it the sun was beginning to droop towards the horizon, casting the sky over the ocean in a ruddy, orange light.
He walked through the usual crowded commotion of the fair, pressed by people on all sides. A young boy barreled into him, bounced off looking over his shoulder as an older lad rushed towards him, hands outstretched. The younger one shifted around behind Kall, using him as a shield as the older one darted this way and that trying to grab him.
Kall-Su barely had time to blink in offense before they were off, chasing each other into the crowd. He truly, truly hated crowds. As he was reaffirming that in his mind a vender beside him casually remarked. "Better check your purse."
Kall looked down, hardly having suspected that they might be cut purses and found that sure enough the strings to his purse had been neatly severed. With a hiss of indrawn breath he scanned the evening crowd for the bobbing heads of the boys.
He thought he saw the older one running down the street half a block down. He started after him, shouldering his way through the throng of people and trying to keep an eye on the boy at the same time. What he wouldn't give for the ability to use a flight spell. He could have caught the thieves so easily if he weren't so damned damaged. Frustration hammered at him.
But luck was with him, regardless. They weren't expecting pursuit. The older boy was ambling along, the younger one a few yards ahead of him, probably sizing up another target. Kall-Su slipped forward and clamped a hand down on the older lad's shoulder. With a yelp the boy whirled, staring up at him with wide startled eyes.
Kall glared down at him, wishing he'd brought his sword so that he might seem more threatening. "My purse." He demanded.
"Help." The boy squealed. "Help me."
People turned to look. Kall's eyes widened in surprise at the caterwauling. The boy's hand whipped out and something bit into Kall's wrist. He yelped, snatching the hand holding the boy back. The damned little thief had plunged a tiny stiletto into his wrist, just missing the vein. Blood dripped down his palm. The boy fled into the crowd, chasing on the heels of his younger compatriot.
He cursed, furious and no small bit shocked. Reflexively he mouthed the words to a spell. Not a terribly powerful one, just a small summoning spell to call forth an ice beast to hunt the little bastards down. He didn't even think about the consequences, just poured his will into the spell and felt something give unexpectedly. The air went cold, the wind suddenly began to pick up, making clothes flutter and canvas tents flap. Something responded to his bidding, but he hardly noticed because his head felt as if someone had plunged a red hot poker into it.
He cried out, crumbling to his knees, clutching his hair. He tasted blood at the back of his throat, felt it running down his lip from his nose. He felt blood inside of his head -- or thought he did. Running down scabbed over channels that he had just ripped asunder. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He heard screams from somewhere distant in the crowd and wondered vaguely if he had managed to summon his ice beast after all. With vindictiveness born of pain he hoped it ripped the little thief apart. Someone put their hands on him and he shook them off, trying to gain his feet and failing. He had to accept the help. He staggered, equilibrium off. Faces were a blur. Sounds were a grating irritant that made his head throb all the more.
He needed to close his eyes and hope the raw pain would fade. But he couldn't orient enough to recall the way to the inn. He swayed. Someone caught him around the waist and he stiffened to throw off the offender.
"Stop it. What the hell happened to you?"
He focused on a familiar face. Red hair, perpetual superior expression. Dell who reminded him entirely too much of Schneider.
Kall shook his head, refusing to explain. "Nothing. Just help me back to the inn."
"Oh, of course, your majesty." Dell snapped, but he kept his hand under Kall's arm as he steered him through the crowd towards sanctuary.
Lily wasn't there. He didn't know whether he was relieved or devastated. He managed the stairs on his own, ignoring Dell's frown when he thrust off his hands and refused to speak of what happened or of the blood running down his hand. In his and Lily's room he fell back onto the bed, throwing an arm over his eyes to shut out the dim light of evening coming through the window.
Tears leaked past his lashes. What damage had he wrought? It felt almost as gratingly raw as it had the day Angelo had destroyed the pathways that channeled his magic. Yoko had said time might heal what could be healed, if he left well enough alone.
Don't force anything, Kall. It might do more damage than good. She had said and Schneider had stood behind her looking solemn and worried, which had scared him more than Yoko's predictions.
When he shut his eyes it felt as if he were at sea, rocking back and forth, sick and dreading his next breath. He wanted to die. He wanted the motion to cease. He'd gladly plunge himself into the cool, darkness of the water and sink to the bottom for eternity to stop the motion.
Fingers pulled at his hand, turning it over. He blinked hazily up at Lily, who held his bloodied hand carefully in hers. She was frowning, not looking happy at all. He was rather surprised to see the displeasure aimed at him.
"What happened?" she demanded. She laid his hand down and went to rummage in her pack. Came back with cloth and the wash basin half filled with water. She sat on the edge of the bed and gingerly began to clean the blood from his skin. Her frown deepened considerably when she saw the puncture wound on his wrist.
"Someone stole my purse." He murmured. His head felt strange. The pain was still there, but it was distant, discordant in its rhythm.
Oh, Kall-Su." She sighed. She wrapped his wrist and sat there staring down at him. Her eyes were dark shadows, the light from the lantern she had brought with her casting her form in silhouette.
"I -- cast a spell." He admitted. "I didn't think. Gods, Lily, it hurt. It still hurts."
She put her fingers lightly on his face, bent down and brushed the whisper of a kiss across his forehead. The longer he was awake, the more insistent the raw seepage of pain became.
"I'm so sorry." She murmured.
She shifted, moving to the corner of the bed where she could put her back against the wall and beckoned him closer. He lay against her warmth with a sigh, her fingers slowly stroking his hair the only comfort in an otherwise miserable situation. He was afraid to close his eyes and go back to sleep for fear of plunging back into the dream of waves and sea sickness.
She began humming a wordless tune. Melodious and soothing, he let himself be drawn into it. It chased away the harsh edges of hurt. Balm to the raw abrasion, as if she strove with all her heart to put healing into her simple melody. He shut his eyes as relief slowly washed over him and wondered if that wasn't exactly what she were doing.