Mercedes Lackey - The Eagle And The Nightingales

copyright 1995

All the world comes to Kingsford Faire, the Midsummer Faire of Kings....

A Gypsy known only as Nightingale sat on a riverside rock on the edge of the Faire grounds, with the tune of "Faire of the Kings" running through her head. Not that she liked that particular piece of doggerel, but it did have one of those annoying tunes that would stick in one's mind for hours or days.

A light mist hung over the Kanar River, and a meadowlark nearby added his song to the growing chorus of birds singing from every tree and bush along the riverbank. The morning air was still, cool, and smelled of river water with a faint addition of smoke. Sunlight touched the pounded earth that lately had held a small city made of tents and temporary booths, then gilded the grey stone of the Cathedral and Cloister walls behind the area that had been home to the Kingsford Faire for the past several weeks. Nightingale didn't particularly admire the fortress-like cloister, but examining it was better than looking across the river. She kept her eyes purposefully averted from the ruins of Kingsford on the opposite bank, although she was still painfully aware of the devastation that ended only where the river itself began. There was no avoiding the fact that Kingsford, as she had known it, was no more. That inescapable fact had lent a heaviness to her heart that was equally inescapable.

This had been a peculiar year for the annual Kingsford Faire, with something like half of the city of Kingsford itself in ruins and the rest heavily damaged by fire.

I am glad that I was not here, but the suffering lingers.

Perhaps other people could forget the suffering of those who had been robbed of homes, livings and loved ones by that fire, but Nightingale couldn't, not even with the wooden palisade surrounding the Faire and row after row of tents between her and the wreckage on the other side of the river. The pain called out to her, even in the midst of each brightly dawning midsummer day; it had permeated everything she did since she had arrived and crept into her dreams at night. She would never have used the Sight here, even if she had needed to_she knew she would only see far too many unquiet ghosts, with no means at her disposal to settle them.

She had dreams of the fire that had swept through the city last fall, although she had no way of knowing if her dreams were a true vision of the past or only nightmares reflective of the stories she heard. She'd had one last night, in fact, a dream of waking to find herself surrounded by flames that reached for her with a lifelike hunger.

Such a complete disaster as the fire could not be erased over the course of weeks or months. Even now, with the fire a year past, there were blackened chimneys and beams standing starkly in the midst of ashes, and a taint of smoke still hung in the air.

The Faire had been profitable for just about everyone who came this year, herself included. Knowing that the folk of Kingsford would be needing every possible article of daily living, even so many months after the fire, merchants had flocked to the Faire-site across the river with their wagons piled high, their pack-beasts loaded to the groaning point. They had prospered, and they had been generous to those who came to entertain. The Bardic Guild, bane and scourge of the Free Bards for as long as that loosely organized group had existed, had been remarkable for its reticence during the Faire.

Her polite encounters with Guild Bards had been odd enough that they still stuck in her mind. Time after time, she had gotten a distant nod of acknowledgement from Bard and Guild hireling alike, and not the harassment and insults of previous years. One might have thought that the Guild did not particularly want attention drawn to it, she mused. The Guild simply held its auditions and performances quietly and gave no opposition to anything that the Free Bards did. There were rumors, never verified, that the Bardic Guild had a hand in the burning of Kingsford, and that the Church, in the person of a Justiciar Mage and Priest called Ardis, as a consequence had its eye on them. Nightingale discarded both rumors; there was no reason to believe the former, and the Church and the Guild had always operated hand-in-glove in the past and it was unlikely that situation would change any time in the future. Never mind that Ardis was reputedly the cousin of the head of the Free Bards, Talaysen, also called Master Wren; there was only so much a single Priest could do. And one could not change attitudes by fiat.

The meadowlark flitted off, his yellow breast with the black "V" at his throat vivid in the morning sun. Well, I endured; nightmares, sorrow hanging like a heavy mist over the Faire, and all. It will take more than old sorrows and nightmares to keep me from my music. Nightingale had suffered too many lean seasons in her short life to allow personal discomfort to get in the way of her performances. She was, after all, a professional, however much the poseurs of the Guild might deny that. So she, too, had passed a profitable term at the Faire, and now at the close of it found herself prosperous enough to afford a donkey to carry her burdens for her for the first time in her life as a musician. Heretofore when she traveled she had been forced to rely on the kindness of fellow Free Bards or Gypsies, who would grant her a corner of their wagons to stow her goods in. And while the company was welcome, this arrangement forced her to depend on others, and constrained her to whatever itinerary they chose and not one of her own choosing. When given the option, she preferred to avoid cities, towns, even larger villages altogether. Unfortunately, such destinations were usually where her traveling companions preferred to go.

She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her temples for a moment; not because she had a headache, but to remind herself to stay calm and bulwarked against the outside world. She could not help but wish she had chosen not to come to the Faire this year, but to stay in one of the lands held by those who were not human, or even pass a season or two in the halls of an Elven king, perilous as that was for mortals. The Faire had posed a trial for her ability to keep herself isolated from her own kind, and more than once she had been tempted to give over her ambitions for a wider reputation as a musician and simply walk away.

But all that was in the past now; there was a sweet-tempered little donkey tethered beside her, his panniers loaded with her gear and her two harps strapped over the top of it all. She had a tent as well, if a small one, and with the donkey she could carry provisions to see her through to better lodgings instead of being at the mercy of greedy or stingy innkeepers.

She was all packed up and ready to go, and eager to be on the road and away from the all-pervasive aura of tragedy that hovered over the city across the river. Only one thing kept her here, an appointment that she had made last night, and she wished he would just show up so that_

"Thank you for waiting, my friend." Talaysen's speaking voice was as pleasant as his singing voice, and Nightingale gratefully turned her back to the river and the Church's stronghold to catch his hands in hers in the traditional greeting between Gypsies of the same clan. Talaysen smiled at her, his grey-green eyes warming, and gave her hands a firm squeeze before releasing them. Free Bard Talaysen looked prosperous, too, in his fine leather jerkin, good linen trews, and silk shirt with the knots of many-colored ribbons on the sleeves that denoted a Free Bard.