Seasons of Sorcery Page 10

  Regardless of their lower ranking, Brida was in awe of the gathering. Many who couldn’t claim elevated bloodlines possessed fat purses, and their adornment tonight—silks and fine linens, sparkling jewels, and rare perfumes that scented the air—proved lower-born didn’t equate to poverty-stricken.

  She would have been content to stare at the pageantry all evening if she wasn’t here to perform a task. She turned her attention to the steward when he cleared his throat.

  “You may tune your instruments in here. Lord Frantisek has said he will speak with you all. Once he’s finished, you’ll climb to the balcony and begin your performance.” He left them to disappear amid the growing crowd of guests filling the great hall.

  “Best get to it then,” Janen said as he unpacked his fiddle from its case and prepared to rosin his bow. “Once his lordship arrives, we won’t have any more time to tune.”

  As the oldest and most skilled musician in Ancilar, Janen had accepted Lord Frantisek’s invitation on the group’s behalf and immediately selected the other four musicians who would join him in a quintet to perform at the castle. He’d approached Brida last.

  “Are you interested?” he’d asked once she listened to the details such as payment and what was expected.

  His offer had surprised her. She wasn’t the only flautist in the village, nor was she the best, and she told Janen so.

  He’d shrugged. “Onastis is a better flute player, but there’s something about your flute, and the way you play it, Brida, that makes one either weep or laugh, depending on the music. This is what I want played at his lordship’s celebration.”

  She’d agreed, nervous about performing for a crowd of strangers in an unfamiliar environment but grateful for the money she would earn from the event. Every little bit would help her brother and his wife. There were a lot of children to feed.

  She unwrapped her flute from its protective covering of cloth that kept it dry. Made from a bone her father had found on the beach and brought back with him, he’d spent hours of drilling out the chamber and finger holes, carving the designs and sanding the bone smooth before presenting it to Brida. It had been his gift to her on her wedding day, the last one he gave her before his death, and she treasured it above all her other possessions.

  Klen Gazi had no idea what creature the bone had belonged to, only that he thought it might be something which once lived in the Gray instead of drowned in it. Whatever it was, the flute produced ethereal notes that bewitched people when Brida played it. She didn’t fool herself that it was her playing affecting people so much. The flute possessed a magic of its own. She felt it in her fingers and on her lips every time she played.

  Despite its sorcery, it was still a flute, and a cold one never sounded good. Brida joined the other troubadours in tuning their instruments, the sounds they produced a discordant cacophony that both drew people to investigate or flinch and flee to the other side of the hall, away from the noise.

  As the flute warmed beneath her tuning, the shrieking true notes lowered, and the sharp harmonics softened. It was as if the flute were a living creature, settling with her breath and touch. She played a set of scales and then a short sea shanty before settling on a quartet of notes that had haunted her since she first learned of her husband’s death a few years earlier and stood on the shore, contemplating the vast and merciless expanse of the Gray at night.

  A sound had rolled off the water then, rising above the surf’s low thunder, a tuneless song built on the trough of loss and the crest of hope. It arrowed straight through her soul. She had wept then, for Talmai who had drowned in the Gray’s depths, the doomed ship and the men who died alongside him, his eternal companions. Somewhere within the solemn waves, something wept with her.

  No other flute she’d ever played could reproduce those four notes exactly. Only this one, strengthening Brida’s belief in its mysterious power. She played the notes several times in a row, noting from the corner of her eye the way the other players slowed and finally halted their own tuning to listen. Magic, she thought. There was magic here. She stopped when Janen raised a hand to signal enough.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, another more strident voice interrupted him. “Where did you learn to play that?”

  Brida pivoted to face the newcomer. A man, clothed in the finery of monarchs, his hands bedecked in gold rings, strode into the room. Brida’s eyes widened as she backed away to keep him from treading on her feet. He reached for her flute. Only her quick reflexes stopped him from snatching it out of her hands. Janen and the harpist Arpath closed ranks in front of her, creating a living wall to block the stranger.

  “Where did you get that flute?” He almost snarled the words, face bloodless with shock, mouth thinned with rage. “Where did you learn those notes?”

  Behind Janen’s and Arpath’s shoulders, Brida gaped, clutching her flute even tighter. Stunned by the unwarranted attack, she struggled to give a coherent reply.

  Another, deeper voice joined the fray. “Ospodine, I didn’t invite you here to assault the musicians.” Andras Frantisek, new lord and tenant of Castle Banat, stood behind the man he called Ospodine, his own sun-kissed features set in grim lines. “What are you doing here?” His tone warned he wouldn’t suffer any blather.

  Ospodine half turned to answer, still glaring at Brida. “I want to know where she learned to play the song and where she got the flute.” His words were accusatory, and in them, she heard the unspoken charge of “thief.”

  Her indignation overrode her initial surprise. She pushed her way past Janen and Arpath, careful to keep the flute out of reach. Ignoring her accuser, she sought out his lordship’s gaze. “My lord, the flute was given to me by my father on my wedding day nearly a decade ago. He fashioned it himself from a bone he found on the beach.” Uncaring that she, a village woman of no standing and little import, challenged one of his lordship’s guests, she glared at the scowling Ospodine and said “The flute is mine and has always been mine.” It was no business of his when and where she’d heard the four-note tune.

  Lord Frantisek watched her for a moment, silent, before he raised an eyebrow at Ospodine. “I believe you have your answer, friend. No reason to linger now. Allow me to escort you back to the other guests.” Again the implied warning that if Ospodine didn’t leave of his own accord, things wouldn’t go well for him.

  The other man’s features, made memorable by his strangely pale eyes, stiffened into lines of contempt before smoothing out to an expressionless mask. He nodded to Brida and bowed to Lord Frantisek. “My apologies for the disturbance, my lord. The flute and its music seemed familiar and startled me. I beg your forgiveness.” At Frantisek’s head tilt of acknowledgement, Ospodine melted back into the swirling crowd of guests, a dark figure that made Brida think of smoke and water entwined.

  Janen bowed, and Brida and the others followed suit. “Thank you for the honor of your invitation, my lord,” he said.

  His lordship’s mouth quirked at the corners, his gaze taking in the instruments in their hands, settling for just a moment longer on Brida’s flute before moving on. “The gratitude is mine, especially with the promise of foul weather later. You’re welcome to stay overnight if the road is too dangerous to travel home. You’ll have to sleep in the kitchens or possibly the stables as we’re packed to the rafters with guests, but it’ll be dry and safe from lightning.”

  Brida hoped the weather would hold. This was her first time at Castle Banat, and while she was awed by the structure and its rich trappings, she didn’t fancy spending a night under the same roof as the hostile Ospodine.

  After a few more pleasantries exchanged between them, his lordship left them to tend to his hosting duties. The steward returned to lead them upstairs to the balcony where stools had been placed in preparation for their arrival. Brida claimed one placed where she could look over the balcony without standing up. The view from above turned the great hall into a sea of flickering lamplight, glitterin
g jewels, and colorful skirts as guests mingled, conversed, and laughed.

  Janen moved his seat to face the other four. “Let’s start with something slow and soft. Background as they talk and eat. We’ll play something livelier if and when they choose to dance.”

  He struck up the first chord to the first song, and Brida and her companions joined in. They played through the evening, until the candles melted low, the oil lamps burned dry, and the guests emptied the casks of wine manned by a pair of servants who refilled cups as fast as people drained them.

  During the brief respites between sets, Brida dabbed at her perspiring brow and wet her lips from the cup of water a servant had brought her while she played. She was tired and on edge, the weight of one man’s relentless scrutiny heavy on her skin as she played.

  What about those notes had elicited such aggression from a complete stranger? Ospodine had glared at her as if he’d just discovered the thief who’d stolen all the silver from his house. Brida bristled inwardly, even as her fingers danced down the length of the flute and her breath teased music from the hollow bone.

  By the time the steward called a halt to their playing, their quintet was exhausted. Janen stood to follow the steward down the stairs. “Pack up,” he instructed the group. “I’ll be back with our pay.”

  Rejuvenated by the prospect of returning home and falling into her own bed, Brida put away her flute, tying it under her skirts as a precaution. Better it not be seen should she be unlucky enough to cross paths with Ospodine a second time this night.

  Janen returned to distribute the payment they’d received, and Brida kissed the small purse of money she held before tucking it into her bodice. Despite her encounter with one of Lord Frantisek’s unpleasant guests and the prospect of a wet ride home, she was glad she came. She’d made enough to repair the leak in her roof and help her brother’s family with their ever-depleted larder, at least until the seaweed harvest started in earnest, and they could sell what they gathered to the farmers of adjacent towns.

  A quick peek outside assured them that while the moonlit squall line in the distance still threatened, the troupe had a little longer before the line made landfall. At Odon Imre’s impatient gesturing, the five settled into the dray for the trip back down the bluff. Imre’s mare, Voreg stamped her hoof, splattering mud, as if to echo Odon’s silent encouragement that they hurry it along. Soon they rolled out of the bailey and through the barbican, leaving behind the dark castle.

  Brida turned for a last look at the majestic keep, searching for the source that created a prickling itch between her shoulder blades, the same sensation she’d experienced all evening under Ospodine’s unwavering stare. Only stone stared back at her, along with a pair of guttering torches. Still, she shivered and turned away, certain down to her bones the nobleman watched her leavetaking from somewhere in the castle.

  “It won’t be worth going to bed if I have to be back up before the sun’s rise,” Haniss groused, breaking into Brida’s thoughts.

  Like the Imres, Haniss and her husband owned a pair of the big draught horses that trawled the Gray for shrimp during summer. With the arrival of autumn, rakes replaced nets, and they put the horses to work harvesting the seaweed that choked the shallows and shrouded the rocks in the aftermath of storms. Heavy clouds and distant lightning hanging over the Gray earlier in the evening prophesied a tempest guaranteed to hurl a rich bounty of seaweed onto the beaches by morning.

  Brida patted her shoulder. “I’ll meet you on the beach. I may even beat you there.” She yawned. “Norinn told me Laylam plans to sleep in his boots, in the stables, with the dog beside him so all he has to do is hitch the horse to the cart and be on the road as soon as the storm has passed. I’ve volunteered to accompany him while Norinn gets the children ready.”

  Haniss laughed. “No one will ever accuse your brother of being a lay-about, that’s for certain.”

  The sky was the color of cold ink by the time Odon Imre let Brida off at her front door. She was his last passenger, and she waved from her doorway until the dray turned a corner and disappeared from her sight. She yawned repeatedly now, and her eyelids felt scratchy, but she didn’t dare lie down. If she did, she’d slip so far into slumber, she’d miss her brother’s arrival, and he’d go on without her. She’d never hear the end of it from him or Norinn later.

  She changed out of her clothes into her oldest frock, tucked her flute back into its customary cabinet, and hid her money purse beneath a floorboard under her bed. Afterwards, she made herself a pot of tea. She stood at her window as she drank the entire pot, watching as the storm swept in, first on a wind that bowed trees, then the lightning that flared across the sky, followed by thunder loud enough to rattle the windows. The sky finally opened, dumping a solid wall of rain onto Ancilar. Even from this distance, Brida heard the roar of the surf as it beat against the shore.

  The buckets she’d placed on the floor under the roof leak in her bedroom and the parlor filled up fast. She exchanged them for empty ones and tossed the contents of the first out her back door. Rain blew into the kitchen before she managed to close the door against the wet, and she spent the next several minutes mopping up her floor.

  The storm’s fury lasted beyond dawn, finally lessening to a drizzle by mid morning. Sleepy, damp, and grumpy, Brida groaned at the sound of wagon wheels rolling up to her door. She opened it and leaned against the jamb to pull on her muddy boots.

  “I thought you’d be ready by now,” her brother said, a frown creasing lines in his brow. “We’re hours past when I planned to pick you up.”

  Brida climbed into the driver’s seat beside him. “Don’t start. I’ve been up all night playing for his lordship’s fancy guests and all morning battling roof leaks.” She reached behind her to pet the head of his favorite dog where it sat behind them in the wagon. Laylam had raised Moot since she was pup, and while the dog practically worshipped Laylam, she often visited Brida for treats, affection and a quiet place to sleep before the fire.

  Laylam twitched the reins. “Walk on,” he instructed the horse, and the animal pulled the cart through Ancilar toward the beach, joining an ever-growing line of other carts and wagons as villagers emerged from their houses to harvest the Gray’s bounty.

  “I’ll fix the roof for you after we harvest,” Laylam said around the pipe stem held between his teeth.

  Brida eyed him, concerned. “You don’t have time for it, and I made enough last night to hire someone in Ancilar to do it.”

  His perpetual frown deepened. “You’re my sister. We help each other. I would have patched it sooner if you’d told me it had gotten that bad.”

  “You do enough already. I can handle this. You have family to care for.” She refused to acknowledge what they both knew. She feared the label of burdensome widowed relative more than a leaky roof.

  Laylam’s frown turned into a full-fledged glare. “You are family, Brida, and if you aren’t careful, you’ll choke on all that stupid pride. I’ll come by later. You can feed me supper if it makes you feel better. Norinn won’t mind.”

  Brida didn’t pursue the argument any further. While she might suffer from too much pride, Laylam could put a mule to shame with his stubbornness. They completed the journey to the beach in silence, at least until they got their first look at the storm’s aftermath. Laylam halted the wagon, rose from his seat and gave a celebratory whoop that startled his horse, set Moot to barking, and was echoed by the other villagers who rolled up on either side of him.

  For as far as the eye could see, a carpet of seaweed in variegated shades of green to black covered the sand calf-deep, and spilled over the clusters of rocky outcroppings that tumbled from the meadows of salt grass to the foaming surf. More of it swayed in the shallow surf, so thick one could stand on it.

  “Thank the gods,” Brida breathed in a reverent voice. The first heavy storm had delivered a plenitude. If fate and deities remained generous, they’d have more then one good seaweed harvest like this one.
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  The shallows still churned in places, and gulls swarmed the sand, feasting on dead fish that had been thrown onto the land by an angry tide. That tide had pulled far back now, leaving scatterings of shells in its wake. Children who had accompanied their parents to the shore raced back and forth, gathering up cockles, conches, wings, and drill tips before tossing them back into the water in a game to see who threw the farthest.

  Brida climbed down from the driver seat after her brother to join the other villagers gathered in a group to divvy up sections of the beach. Each family was assigned a spot to harvest, that lot marked by a stone set at the allotment’s edge.

  Once they were assigned their allotments, the siblings met at the back of their wagon where Brida unloaded a sickle and pair of baskets with straps sewn to them. Moot abandoned them on arrival. She leapt off the wagon and raced away, barking with excitement as she plunged into the knot of children gathered by the water’s edge.

  The wind still howled off the Gray, whipping Brida’s skirts around her legs and nearly tearing the baskets out of her hands. She had to shout in order for Laylam to hear her.

  “I’m off to the tidal pools!” She pointed to her allotment. Rock formations edged parts of the beach had been carved out by the sea’s endless wash. The tidal pools nestled in their shelters were too hard for the horses to navigate with the cage-like rakes dragging behind them, so the seaweed piled there was cut and gathered by hand. Laylam nodded and waved her away as he unloaded his rake from the wagon and unhooked the horse from its traces.

  Moot left the children to join Brida, bounding ahead only to double back and run circles around her, snapping at the fluttering hem of Brida’s skirts. The dog’s ears suddenly swiveled forward, and she stopped, nose raised in the air as she sniffed something more interesting than salt, seaweed, and dead fish. A curious whine escaped her mouth before she bolted for the tidal pools where Brida planned to harvest.