Kemeny nodded. "I know what we need to do."
Once the two men were awake and, more importantly, alert enough to pay attention to them, Weslyn and Kemeny told them what they had decided. "Draegon, you and I are going to take the road to Morena. Then we go south. Maybe to Estria and eventually to Abem. We're going to make sure the everyone knows that Cheyne is back."
"And I'm going with you, Roark," Kemeny said, her posture and the authority in her voice making her seem much taller than she was, "whether you like it or not."
The two men were so startled that neither spoke; they simply stared incredulously at the two women. Weslyn tried to imitate the pose Kemeny had adopted, fixing an intimidating look on Draegon as he tried to find his voice.
His reaction was satisfactory. "I suppose..." he shot a quick glance at Roark, who didn't return it, "...we have no choice... but I don't see why we really need to split up. I mean, Roark can declare himself while we're all with him." He stopped for a second, obviously thinking. "Although I guess it would spread the news faster if we split up. Still, I'd rather we stayed together."
"Go with Weslyn, Draegon," Roark said softly. "Please."
The bard slowly turned his head to look at Roark in disbelief. "You swore to watch me..."
"Sonsedhor's been found. You're free of your oath. Go."
"DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" Kemeny's shout startled them all, and as one they turned to look at her. Her eyes had grown wide and glassy, partly rolled back into her head. Her mouth had dropped open, forming a silent scream. The whole of her was shaking uncontrollably. "Don't leave me, please, not alone. I don't want to be alone, please! Not like this!"
The three others all stared at Joanna as she had what seemed to be a seizure. Her mouth formed words, but only creaks and strained grunts came out. She finally managed to get out a shout, "Where am I?!" before the fit stopped, as abruptly as it began.
Her screaming stopped. One moment Kemeny was shouting pleas and shaking, the next she was standing, still with that authoritative, self-pleased look on her face. Weslyn and the two men exchanged worried looks. Sneaking a glance into Kemeny's eyes, Weslyn saw nothing, no evidence that she knew anything strange had happened.
"Are you alright?" Draegon asked her.
She looked confused. "I'm fine, why? Don't change the subject, singer."
He arched an eyebrow at her but didn't reply.
Weslyn leaned over to Kemeny and whispered in her ear. "I think we should change plans. I'll go with Roark, you go with Draegon."
"Why?" she whispered back. "I thought you wanted to go with Draegon because you... well, because you said you two shared 'some deep feelings' the other night."
"Well, look, something just happened that was... a little strange." She looked over her shoulder at the two men. They gave no sign of hearing them and made no move to get closer and eavesdrop. "You kind of went crazy."
"Crazy?"
"And I don't know that Roark would be well-suited to protect you if something like that happened again. But Draegon will. And Roark wouldn't hurt me. I'm not worried."
Kemeny's expression finally went fearful. "If you're sure..."
"I am. Just... keep Draegon busy while I do something, okay?"
They immediately began dividing up the camp supplies and packed their packs. But while Kemeny kept the two men at task after task– men should really be doing the bulk of the physical labor, after all– Weslyn secreted herself on the other side of the horses and wrote out a note to Draegon. While his back was turned, she slipped both the note and a purse of money into the leather case for his hand dulcimer. It fit in there comfortably, but he was sure to find it right away when he opened it next.
As she came back into sight– the men hadn't even seemed to miss her, which was exactly what she wanted– she couldn't help but notice that Draegon was a bit too sweaty to account for the work he'd been doing. He also looked pale.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He looked surprised to see her suddenly in front of him and forced a smile. "Oh, it's nothing."
"Really," she said, gently laying a hand on his arm. "You know you can tell me."
He sighed. "I'm just worried, with us actually proclaiming Roark... what if I run across Keffinen?"
She gave him a soft smile but had already made up her mind not to tell him about the purse she'd secreted in his dulcimer case. If he came across the menagerie owner, and if the greedy man demanded his seventy-five gold marks, that purse held more than enough. Just in case. She couldn't bear the thought of him being behind bars.
"It's getting pretty late... almost noon," Roark said, still not looking anyone directly in the eye. "We should get moving. All of us."
Weslyn stood on her tiptoes and kissed Draegon gently on the lips. "We'll find each other. Soon."
"Meet me in Necras?" he asked, his green eyes hopeful.
She smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Someone had turned the TV in the common room to an educational channel, and a nature show about undersea life was on. Huge schools of pale, silvery fish glinted in the sunlight that filtered through the shallows of the water. It was impressive how they swam in a cluster and seemed to move as one. Vale's eyes were locked on the images, but his mind was racing.
The plain could definitely be called "the middle of nowhere." The Mother had told Jaidyn to go out in the open, and here he was. He had followed instructions, and... nothing. He had already been out here for two days, waiting. She had said help would find him. Well, where was this help?
Had the Mother lied to him? Of course not, he chided himself. The Mother was the epitome of goodness, the mother of every living thing: animal, plant, and person alike. Why would she lie to someone who would so blindly follow her, was so devoted to her that he didn't question her?
He was still surprised that the Mother had appeared to him, and in the form of a man. Then again, she is a goddess; she can do whatever she wants. She could have fixed everything in a second had she wanted to. So why didn't she? Probably some cock-and-bull reason– wanting him to earn it himself, right the wrongs of humans only by pointing other humans in the right direction– something like that. If he had her powers, he would definitely make sure things always went the way he wanted.
The Mother had actually appeared to him; there was a part of his mind that kept dwelling on that point alone. The Mother had appeared in bodily form– if as a man– to him. That sealed it in his mind: he was the true Cheyne Firdin rebirth. He was the one destined for greatness, not this as-yet-unnamed fellow all the rumors spoke of. The Mother was had spoken to him personally, had told him help was coming, was sending someone to right the wrongs done to him. She had even called him "my reborn king" which had to mean a throne was coming his way.
Had Cheyne been a king once? He tried to remember, searched for something to tell him the answer, but he only kept coming to memories of Lexan. She would get rid of them. She hadn't said so outright, but she had said she would help him. She knew about them; she would do something. He kept telling himself that over and over as memories of Lexan tried again and again to force their way to the forefront of his thoughts. He kept fighting them back.
"No! I don't want you! It's Cheyne I want! I'm Cheyne!" He screamed at the thoughts of Lexan that kept barging in where they weren't wanted. He scratched at his head, at his temples, trying to dig them out. "Save me, Mother! Save me from these cursed memories!"
"You... the one," came an unfamiliar man's voice.
When Jaidyn looked up, he was surrounded by men and women, all dressed in skins and with hair ranging from pale buttery yellow to gold. Keidenelle. He was completely surrounded by them. There was an ungainly pair of wagons outside the circle they made around him; each wagon held more of the savages. Each man and woman of them carried some sort of weapon, be it a blade, a wooden staff, or a bow.
He fell to his knees, darting his eyes from one savage to the next, trying to watch them all at once and waiting for t
hem to attack. "Please, I'm unarmed! Don't hurt me, please!"
They gave no sign that they understood, only looked down on him with eyes that were boldly colored green or blue or violet. It was like looking into a strange sea of jewels. One man, with a mop of hair the color of a canary and eyes so blue they made the sky seem plain, squatted in front of Jaidyn and pointed a long, tan finger at him. "You... our master..." His finger inched forward until it touched Jaidyn's forehead, where the black speck of light had burned him.
His eyes widened. These were the Mother's followers? The savage Keidenelle? Part of him groaned inwardly, but part of him rejoiced. The sliver of his mind that he associated with Lexan was positively delighted. There was fear attached to the Keidenelle. What an army they could make!
Trying to hide the trembling of his knees, he got to his feet and looked the man in those frighteningly blue eyes. "I am your master," he said.
The savages surrounding him made strange noises that sounded negative to him. The man shook his head and pointed again. "Your master, our master. Knew you come. Great servant. We follow."
Well, at least they would follow him. That was good enough. "I am Jaidyn," he said, striking himself importantly on the chest.
"Alaykichihaahoush," the Keidenelle man, who Jaidyn took for some sort of a leader, said, imitating Jaidyn's chest strike.
"That's uh... some name," Jaidyn said sheepishly. "Um...... I'll call you Alay. Alay," he repeated, pointing at him to emphasize that he was to answer to the nickname.
Alay seemed to understand. He turned to the wagons and shouted something Jaidyn didn't understand. The others began gathering and the men driving the wagons spurred the horses to move. The rest of the band began following the wagons.
"Come," Alay said, motioning for Jaidyn to follow. He did so gladly. What a way to proclaim himself! He couldn't wait to get to a city and proclaim himself Cheyne reborn. He had conquered the Keidenelle!
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
As if they had disappeared from the face of the planet, Ryan and Joanna stopped talking to Lydia and Emery, who ignored them right back.
It had been some years since Draegon had last ventured into Morena, but his memories were surprisingly accurate. The Gaernin people were, for lack of a better word, snooty. Many of them either turned their noses up at him or simply didn't look at him, pretending he didn't exist. They didn't want to see a man who so closely resembled a Keidenelle savage, so they just didn't see him at all. There was a reason he had been so long away from here; no matter how good a singer and storyteller he was, no one paid him any attention.
At least people listened to Kemeny when she talked. They spend their evenings going from inn to inn, Kemeny drinking and gossiping with whoever would listen– which was pretty much everyone. The people of Morena were notorious gossipers. Out of necessity, Draegon stayed in the background, sometimes as far from Kemeny as possible, so that she wouldn't be ignored because of her association with him. Occasionally, an open-minded innkeeper would let him play the flute or the drum and tell a story, but that was it.
Ryan sat at the piano in the common room but did not play. He sang softly, however, strange sad tunes that seemed made up on the spot but had the repetitions and form of completed pieces, almost like folk songs. None of the songs had tunes Becca recognized, and the words... the stories told by some of the songs, were nothing she recognized, either.
There was a lot of gossip flying around concerning the Search, even before Kemeny tried to start spreading the news of Roark. There were two tales that were most prominent.
The first was that some insane man was going around claiming to be Cheyne reborn, claiming that his plain sword was the great legendary Sonsedhor. But he went around killing people left and right and was, in all actuality, a servant of the Dark One. He was a bloodthirsty demon of a man, frightening to look at. No one they heard the story from had actually seen him, but they each knew someone who knew someone who had been there when the false Cheyne came and killed someone nearby.
The second most prominent rumor– one that made the Gaernin swell up with self-importance even more than usual– was that the real Cheyne had shown up and was, in fact, a young lordling from their own city. His name was Jaidyn Huntley. Even before he left on the Search, he had exhibited the memories of Cheyne, but still had yet to openly declare himself. The only person he told his secret to was another lordling, Zanthys Advissen, the heir to one of the Morena High Seats. He was the one with proof that Jaidyn was Cheyne reborn; he claimed to have seen Sonsedhor with his own eyes.
Kemeny stated the obvious when she said they should talk to Zanthys. But Draegon knew it wouldn't be easy for commoners– and foreign commoners, for that matter– to get in to see the heir of one of the High Seats. They would need to be invited into his presence.
"Well, nobles like that are always having feasts, aren't they? And entertainers? Who's to say they won't want a bard sometime soon?"
"First of all," Draegon replied over a glass of wine, "there's no guarantee that I would be chosen should they want a bard. Second, even the commoners here don't want a..." he made a face, "......don't want me performing for them. Nobles will be even less inclined to hire me."
"If we dyed your hair, you wouldn't look so... like that," she said. "And I've heard you play. You're one of the best dulcimer players I've ever heard, and your voice isn't bad to listen to, either. Let me dye your hair and I swear you'll be hired to play for them within two weeks."
He sighed. "Fine."
The herb she washed his hair with turned his pale buttery head into a cap of chestnut brown. When she finally let him look in a mirror, he almost didn't recognize himself. "You know, this might actually work," he said, turning his head one way and the other. "Not that I'll want to keep it like this permanently, but it's definitely interesting."
He played at a different inn every night after that, always the flute so the patrons could dance. On occasion, he picked up the drum and used it to punctuate a story, but he never opened his dulcimer. He was saving that for the nobles. Word spread of him quickly, with people often asking where the Dragon Bard was playing so they could be at whichever inn or tavern he was performing. He had to admit, he liked the title they gave him, even though it stemmed from a simple mispronunciation of his name that spread like a rumor through the city. That kind of notoriety was sure to get him noticed by the nobles.
Every third night, Kemeny washed his hair with the herb again. By the third time, he was definitely getting sick of it. "Once we get done here, I'm never changing my hair color again," he commented as she rubbed the herb on his scalp. She pulled a lock of his hair, making him yelp.
In the cafeteria, another patient happened to drop her napkin in front of Ryan. He snatched it up.
After eleven days of playing inn after inn every night, the keeper of the inn they were staying at presented him with a sealed envelope.
"Is that what I think it is?" Kemeny asked as he broke the seal of the envelope.
He scanned over the folded page inside and nodded. "We're in."
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Kemeny followed Draegon to the great manor house where he was to be performing for a dinner party thrown by one of the High Lords of Gaern. They were greeted by a servant who led them to a small anteroom so Draegon could prepare himself. He opened his dulcimer case.
"What's this?" he asked.
There was a folded parchment and a small washleather purse nestled in the case next to the instrument. Draegon warily lifted the parchment and read it. His emerald eyes began to tear up. "Weslyn..." He plucked the purse from the case and undid the drawstring, upending it over his other hand. Gold coins spilled into his palm. "She's given me the money to pay my debt to Keffinen."
She took the parchment from him and read it. "She loves you," she said.
"I can read!" he protested, half chuckling, half-fighting against sobs. "I love her, too."
Neither of them said anything else as he tucke
d the gold back into the dulcimer case and proceeded to tune the instrument. It wasn't long before another servant came to bring him into the hall where the nobles were socializing.
The room was full of noblemen and women dressed in their finest silks. The coats and gowns were dully colored, mostly blacks, greys, and browns, but colorful embroidery covered most of them from ankles to neck. Even the few small children– closely watched by nurses– were decked out in so much embroidery the colors of the silks were hard to determine. It was easy to pick out the High Lords themselves– they had the most gold and silver in their embroidery and the most hangers-on around them. But which of the young men was Zanthys Advissen, the one they were looking for? Kemeny stayed close to Draegon, not wanting to stand out in her woolen clothes, but she still got good looks at everyone she could, trying to figure out which one was their man.
No one made a move to announce the arrival of the evening's entertainment, but Draegon didn't seem bothered by it. He strummed a chord on his dulcimer and immediately broke into a half-sung, half-spoken tale of Cheyne Firdin. It was one of the most traditional tales of him, one of the first linking him to Sonsedhor, when he had instead gone by the name of Masty Boroksen. He sang the verses of the forging of Sonsedhor and the first kill Masty made with it, a greed-driven noble miser who kept his commoners in poverty, keeping them as chattel rather than as liege men.
There was no applause at the end of the tale, though many eyes and ears were tuned to his voice and instrument. He continued with another righteous tale of Cheyne, when he had gone by that name. He followed that with the last sad song of Cheyne's saga, his disappearance. She noticed tears in some of the women's eyes as he held the last note in a clear voice. Kemeny swore she could hear the crying of the world in his tone.
"If my lords would permit," he said after giving the silent room time to collect themselves, "I would now like to perform a piece of my own creation, never before heard."