“Like what?”
“Well, this telepathic power you have for one thing. Doesn’t your head get filled up with a lot of noise?”
Kieran shook his head. “You learn to tune it—like a radio. But I’ll admit that there’s nothing nicer than psilence sometimes. That’s silence with a ‘p.’ ”
“Can you read my mind right now? Do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Doesn’t work that way. I can project thoughts—to a receptive mind. The rest of it, the ‘noise’ . . . well, to use the radio analogy again, it’s like being just off the station. You know there’s something there—another person or what have you—but not what it’s actually thinking. Emotions come through the clearest.”
“And what about . . . like when we were in the restaurant? When I could feel everything you were feeling.”
“That was because I was projecting too hard and you have some degree of psychic empathy.”
He held out his hand to her again. “Try touching me again,” he said.
Sara hesitated, then finally stretched out a hand to meet his. She flinched when their skin came into contact, but nothing happened.
“Weird,” she said, drawing back her hand. She bit at her lip, thinking. “Okay. What about this mentor of yours? I’ll go along with his being a . . . a wizard, I suppose. But do you really believe he’s the reincarnation of some long-dead Welsh druid?”
“Not the reincarnation. He’s the same druid. Maelgwn’s druid. His name was Tomasin Hengwr t’Hap then.”
“And he was the one who . . . banished the bard Taliesin?”
Kieran nodded. “Banished him, and was turned into stone for a thousand years for his trouble.”
Since finding the ring, Sara had given up on coincidence. Everything that happened to her since then fit into place too well, like the pieces of some gigantic jigsaw puzzle. It wasn’t a comforting feeling. Neither was hearing the same story that Taliesin had told her from the other side at all comforting. For all that she’d kept her features blank, she was still surprised that Kieran hadn’t sensed her shock at that point in the story. Perhaps magic powers weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Either that, or it was simply that Kieran wasn’t an adept yet and nuances slipped past him. Either way, Kieran made her uneasy.
“Your Thomas Hengwr doesn’t sound like a very nice person,” she said.
“Why? Because he banished Taliesin? The king made him do it.”
Sara frowned. “Bullshit. That’s like the Nazis saying they weren’t guilty because they ‘ver only following orders, ja?’ He’s responsible for what he did. He could have said no.”
“He was different then.”
“How so?”
Kieran felt the first touch of his temper returning. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You haven’t met him. If he was an evil man once, he’s changed. Nom de tout! Do you think he likes to remember those days? There isn’t a kinder or more gentle man alive.”
“You just say that because you’re close to him. That’s the same reason why you’ve accepted his story about Taliesin being some terrible monster out to get him.”
“And I suppose you know better?”
“I . . .” Sara shook her head. This was definitely not the time to tell him about who she’d met by Percé Rock. “I just don’t believe that part of it, that’s all.”
“Look,” Kieran said slowly, trying to keep a rein on his temper. He’d never met anyone who could frustrate him as much as this woman. “Just as Tom changed, so did the harper. It’s as simple as that. Taliesin wants revenge. It’s been festering inside of him for fifteen hundred years or better. Lord dying Jesus! That would change anybody.”
“Okay, okay.” Sara refused to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Well, what do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing!”
For a moment they glared at each other, then Sara looked away again.
“Where do you think your mentor is?” she asked, striving for a level tone of voice.
Kieran sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure he’s . . . alive anymore. When our contact broke, when I came to Ottawa looking for him I thought—well, I thought I’d just find him, you know? Or see that he’d left some word for me. Something. Now I think—now I don’t know what I think.”
“I think we should get out of this place.”
“And just how do you propose we do that?”
“Same way we got here.”
Sara thought about how she’d reached out for Taliesin, that second time. It was just a matter of focusing, wasn’t it? Of concentrating on Tamson House and humming the moonheart tune Taliesin had given her. Then she remembered the moment in Patty’s Place, just before she’d blacked out. There’d been the sound of drums all around them, and those dancing shapes. . . .
“Someone brought us here,” she said. “They fixed your wound and left us that stuff.” She indicated the provisions that their benefactors had provided. “Can’t you get a fix on them? You know. Sort of find them with your thoughts or however it is that you do it?”
“I’ve tried,” Kieran said. “There’s just an . . . emptiness beyond this glade. Like we’re enclosed in a bubble of psilence.”
“I got out,” Sara said. “I went quite a ways. We could try just walking for a while,” she added, “and see what we can find. That depends on you though, I guess. How’re you feeling?”
“Stiff.” Kieran prodded his bandage gently. “But better than I should be—considering how badly I got hit, and how bad I felt earlier. I’m ready to give it a go.”
“You look a bit better. Not so peaked, if you know what I mean.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Sara shrugged. “What can I say?”
She stood up, feeling good as she straightened the fall of Taliesin’s cloak around her shoulders. Picking up her guitar case, she looked down at Kieran. “Well?” she asked.
But Kieran was looking behind her. Following his gaze, Sara turned and slowly set her guitar down. Standing between two pines was a silvery-grey wolf the size of a large German shepherd. A very large German shepherd, she amended. It regarded them with amber eyes that discomfortingly seemed to reflect far more intelligence than an animal should have. Sara, trying to keep one eye on the wolf, looked around for something to use as a weapon, though if the wolf attacked she wasn’t sure what she’d actually do with a weapon. She settled on the clay jug and was edging towards it, when Kieran spoke.
“I don’t think it means to harm us.”
“Oh, no?”
Kieran was shaking his head, but Sara wasn’t looking in his direction. She’d reached the jug and slowly bent to pick it up, expecting the huge beast to come lunging at her any second.
“It’s just here to make sure we don’t leave,” Kieran guessed.
“Then where was it when I took off before?”
“I’m not sure. . . .”
“Well,” Sara said, swallowing. She didn’t feel nearly as brave as she was acting. “We can test your theory easily enough, I guess. You stay put.”
“Sara! Don’t do anything stupid.”
She turned to regard him icily. “Don’t you tell me what to do, Kieran Foy.”
Hefting the jug, she started for the forest, crossing the glade as far from where the wolf stood as she could. It made no move to follow her, did nothing, in fact, except sit on its haunches and watch.
“Now you get up,” Sara called back.
No sooner did Kieran start to rise to his feet than the wolf stood as well, taking a few paces forward. A low warning growl rumbled deep in its chest and the guard hairs around its neck bristled. Sara froze. Not until Kieran lowered himself down once more did the wolf relax.
“Looks like it’s you he wants,” Sara said, far more lightly than she felt.
Her pulse was drumming. She wanted to take to her heels and run as far and as fast as she could. She glanced at Kieran, thinking, We
’re not even on the same side. Because there were sides drawn up: those who stood with Taliesin and those who stood with Kieran’s mentor, Thomas Hengwr. Which was all well and good, except she wanted no part in some centuries-old war. On the other hand, just as Kieran was beholden to his mentor, so had she claimed Taliesin as her own, making her beholden to him. But all she wanted to do was learn the magics and musics that the bard had to offer. Not become a soldier in some struggle that didn’t concern her.
For long moments she considered, then sighed, tossed the jug onto the grass and returned to sit by her guitar case.
“I thought you were going to leave,” Kieran said.
“I was.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Sara shrugged. It wasn’t something she was prepared to go into right now, so she ignored the question. She turned so that she could watch Kieran’s guard. The wolf, seemingly satisfied that his charge was no longer intent on leaving, faded back into the forest. But though it was no longer in sight, its presence remained.
“Well, now what?” Sara asked.
“It looks like we wait.”
“For what?”
“For whatever’s going to happen. I don’t know, Sara.”
Sara nodded. She felt irritated, now that the initial fear had subsided. They waited. Fine. For what?
Frowning, she reached for her guitar case and snapped open its clasps. She had to get her mind off of everything for a moment.
“It’s funny,” Kieran said as she was taking the Laskin from its case.
“What is?”
“Well, you are, I suppose. I get the feeling that you know far more about what’s going on than you let on.”
“I should be so lucky.”
Kieran cleared his throat, but he didn’t say anything else. Picking up her guitar, she removed herself to the far side of the glade, sitting down at an equal distance from where Kieran sat and where the wolf had vanished. She pulled out her tobacco, rolled a cigarette, then remembered that she didn’t even have a match on her. She shot a glance over to Kieran.
“Have you got a light?” she asked.
“Have you got a smoke? I lost my tobacco pouch somewhere along the way.”
Moments later, they were both puffing away. I should give these things up, Sara thought as she took in a long drag. Sticking the smoking butt into the wedge that her bass E string made between the nut and its tuning peg she started to play. Whether it was the cigarette, or the music, or some combination of the two, she started to relax almost immediately. Closing her eyes, she took up the tune that Taliesin had taught her.
“Lorcalon,” she murmured to herself as her fingers found the notes.
A stepping-stone, he’d called it. To her own inner silences. Her taw. Kieran had talked a little about that as well and while she still wasn’t clear on what it meant exactly, the more she played the piece, the closer she felt to some immense place of quiet strength. Got to be careful, she thought, that I don’t let it take me away.
She smiled, wondering what Kieran would think if she just upped and vanished. Probably wouldn’t surprise him at all. Then again, it wouldn’t be that good an idea to let on what she had done. At least not now. He might not be aware of it, but there was a truce between them for the moment. Sooner or later they would be clearly standing on opposite sides of this struggle. Until then it seemed best to let him think she was just what he thought she was now: a persnickity little ninnyhammer who’d just happened to stumble into the middle of it all.
And who says you’re not? she asked herself. Good question. She’d have to give that a good think someday. But not right now. Right now belonged to the music and the stillness it found inside her.
Noon came and went. The sun held itself directly overhead for the passage of one long breath and then began its descent towards evening. Sara had put her guitar away and the two of them tried some of the little cakes that had been left for them by their unknown hosts. They proved to be chewy and somewhat dry and Sara ended up regretting that she’d tossed the water jug aside so casually. When she’d gone to retrieve it, it was empty.
They didn’t talk much. Once Sara mentioned something that had been troubling her: that Jamie would be worrying about her. Kieran replied with something Tom had told him once.
“Time doesn’t pass the same here,” he said. “We could spend a week and find we were only gone a few minutes.”
Sara nodded. She remembered spending the entire morning with Taliesin on the beach and coming back to find it only around ten o’clock or so in the glade. Then she thought of Rip Van Winkle.
“Doesn’t it sometimes work the other way as well?” she asked.
What if she got back to Ottawa and a hundred years had passed?
Kieran nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Just before it got fully dark, they tried leaving once more. The only success they had to show for their efforts was the return of the silvery-grey wolf. It faced back into the woods once they settled down again.
“Why doesn’t someone come?” Sara cried, but Kieran had no answer for that either.
Eventually they slept and Sara dreamed of her harper, but this time she was like a ghost and could only view him from a distance. He was wandering up and down the beach near the Rock, as though searching for something . . . or someone, she thought. Maybe he was waiting for her. She called to him, and his head lifted and he looked about, but he never saw her. Humming the moonheart tune, she tried to go to him physically once more, but all that happened was that she woke up and it was morning in the glade.
They spent a quiet day and discovered that, barring their disagreeing views on Taliesin, they had a fair amount in common. Given different circumstances, Sara thought, she might have gone for him, but every time that thought came up, she saw Taliesin’s features in her mind’s eye and remembered her dream last night of him walking the coastline, searching. And now she was sure he’d been searching for her. She tried to will herself back to him again to no avail. She wanted to ask Kieran how exactly that sort of thing worked, but that would have entailed explaining where and why she was going, and she couldn’t do that.
The minutes became hours and the day drifted on. Later in the afternoon, Sara took her guitar across the glade once more and played the moonheart tune some more—not trying to go anywhere anymore, just looking for some peace and that quiet that rose up inside her when she woke the notes from her instrument. After a while she put her guitar away again and, feeling like she was mentally wrapped in a cocoon as close and warm as Taliesin’s cloak, dozed in the shade of one of the tall pines.
Her eyes snapped open when Kieran suddenly sat up, and she looked around, searching for what had disturbed him. She crossed the glade as quietly as she could to sit beside him.
“What is it?” she asked.
Staring into the forest, Kieran shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “All of a sudden, everything seems different.”
Sara suddenly sensed it too. There was a stillness in the air that was startling only by its sudden presence. It was as though the forest was waiting for something, or someone.
“Nom de tout!” Kieran murmured.
She came out of the forest like a ghost, a tall Indian woman riding a great bull moose, a pair of silver-furred wolves padding along either side. The bull stood a good seven feet at the shoulders, with an antler spread of five and a half feet from tip to tip. Its coat was a dark brown and its bell, the fold of skin that hung down from its throat, was darker still. Though the animal weighed close to a ton, it stepped out from amongst the trees with as delicate and soft a step as its small African cousin the roebuck.
The woman sat behind the hunch of the bull’s front shoulders and regarded Sara and Kieran appraisingly as they scrambled to their feet. Her hair hung in two long black braids on either side of her face that were entwined with beadwork and lacing. She wore a sleeveless dress of doeskin, its collar a twin to the one the shaman wore in Aled Evans’s painting,
with the same intricate pattern of colored beads and dentalium shells. And her eyes, too, were like the shaman’s—a sudden blue against the deep coppery hue of her skin.
“God, she’s beautiful,” Sara said.
Kieran made no reply. Sara felt a charge building up in the air, like static electricity, only finer. Magical tension, she realized, not really sure how she knew.
The tableau held for a few minutes longer, then the woman slid gracefully from the back of her mount and approached them. In her bare feet, she still topped Kieran’s height by a few inches. The moose stayed where she’d left it, but the wolves followed on her heels, sitting on their haunches when she paused a half dozen feet from where Sara and Kieran stood waiting. She raised her right hand, palm outward, in the time-honored gesture that meant, “I come in peace; see I bear no weapon.” Sara almost expected her to say “How,” like in some bad B-grade western, but when the woman spoke, her voice was clear and melodious.
“Which of you is the craftson of Toma’heng’ar?” she asked.
Sara shot a glance at Kieran. She understood whatever language it was that the woman was speaking, thanks, no doubt, to the expediency of having a bard give her the gift of tongues, but she wasn’t sure if it would be intelligible to him. Kieran, however, seemed to have no trouble understanding her.
“I am,” he said. “My name is Kieran Foy.”
“And your companion?”
“Sara Ken—” Sara started to reply, then remembered what Taliesin had told her about giving names freely. “Don’t pay me any mind,” she added. “I’m just baggage on this trip. Kieran, here, is the magic man.”
The woman inclined her head to them. “My name is Ha’kan’ta,” she said. “I give you greeting, Kieranfoy and Saraken.”
“Was it you that had us brought here?” Kieran asked.
“Not I. You are the guests of the quin’on’a.” At their puzzled expressions, she explained. “They are the spirits-of-the-wild. The manitous. Surely your craftfather spoke of them to you?”