The morning sun was a brilliant golden-white behind the new leaves, dappling the forest floor with patches of light and diamond flashes where drops of moisture still lay. Between the tree tops, Telyn glimpsed turquoise sky and puffs of white cloud. The air was still cold, and she drew her borrowed cloak closer around her as she followed the stream south with Mithrais, the bluff that contained the Tauron outpost vanishing into the Wood behind them.
Their sodden clothing had mostly dried before the fire, with the exception of their boots and Telyn’s traveling cloak, which had continued to drip water. Instead, she wore the mottled grey-green cloak that Mithrais had found in the trunk. It was lighter in weight than her discarded cloak, although still as warm, and the colors would allow her to blend into the background of the Wood more easily should she need its concealment. Her sword was slung on her back over the cloak in the manner of the Tauron, where it interfered less with traversing the unbroken paths of the forest. There was nothing to be done about the wet boots, and Telyn was not looking forward to the inevitable blisters.
They had shared a brief meal before leaving the outpost, and Mithrais now paused in a grouping of trees, passing her the water skin he had filled at the stream below the bluff. The water still carried the sharp taste of earth and vegetation even though the flooded stream had receded back into its bed.
“Do you remember what the resonance of the Gwaith’orn feels like?” he asked as she drank.
Telyn nodded. “I won’t soon forget.” She gave him back the water skin, and Mithrais, too, drank before recapping the skin and stowing it beneath his cloak.
“Find the memory of that resonance, and hold it in your mind,” Mithrais instructed.
Telyn had no difficulty recalling it; her bardic gifts allowed her to remember music after the first hearing, and she could hear the resonance in her memory as plainly as if it were the chord Mithrais had described. “I have it.”
“Close your eyes. Do you feel it, or do you only remember it?”
Telyn complied, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown as she considered this. “Only remember it. I can’t feel the vibration as I did last night.”
“Open your eyes.” Telyn saw him standing beside one of the larger trees, looking up into its branches. Mithrais touched the trunk with his palm, his expression somber.
“This is one that has become silent.” He beckoned her closer, and Telyn placed her own hands on the tree. There was something there, Telyn was certain, but it was not the mighty chord that the bard had experienced before. The tree was barely warm, and Telyn had the distinct impression that the resonance was there below the surface, sleeping, only waiting for something unknown to burst forth and add its voice to the chord.
“How strange,” she said, and explained what she thought she was sensing to Mithrais, who acknowledged her words with an affirmative nod.
“It’s the same with the others. I’ve spent hours trying to communicate with them to no avail. Nor could my father elicit a response, and he’s one of the most powerful heartspeakers I have ever known.” Mithrais removed his hand from the tree and looked at her expectantly. “Here your second lesson begins. In which direction stands the closest resonant Gwaith’orn?”
Telyn shook her head, bemused. “I have an idea how it’s done, but I don’t know how to start.”
“I’ll show you.” Mithrais stepped closer to Telyn, mating his hand with hers, palm to palm. “Yesterday, you entered my mind without knowing what it was that you did. This time, I want you to feel what it is that I’m doing, and open your mind to me.”
He captured her gaze, triggering the connection between them, but instead of experiencing the intimate rapport of mind and heart with Mithrais, Telyn had a sense of an invisible barrier between them, and became aware of the brush of his thoughts against some formless boundary in her own mind: a wall that moved with liquid resilience against his careful advances.
“That’s your inner defense—think of it as a shield, for that’s what it is. I can’t enter your mind unless you allow it, nor you, mine,” Mithrais told her. “It may help in the beginning to visualize a doorway, or a gate that you must open to me.”
Telyn pictured this in her mind’s eye, imposing a door against the shimmering boundary that surrounded her and allowing it to swing smoothly open. Mithrais’ thoughts flowed gently around her like the wind through the leaves, and she shivered at the strangeness of the phantom touch. He nodded in satisfaction, smiling at her.
Expertly done, he praised, but he did not speak aloud. His quiet voice sounded only in her mind, the sound whispering and curving back on itself like a wave on the sand. Telyn’s eyes widened and she jumped involuntarily, severing the connection between them, the barriers slamming back into place with sound that Telyn could swear echoed through the grove.
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, chagrined. Mithrais merely grinned and reclaimed her hand.
“Don’t worry. It will become second nature, just as the resonance of the Gwaith’orn will decrease in intensity. For the moment, follow my lead.”
Mithrais reinitiated the contact, and Telyn eased smoothly into his thoughts as he opened to her. That much, at least, seemed easy for Telyn. Against the soft rhythm of heartbeat and breath, she could hear the resonance of the Gwaith’orn in his mind, and brought the chord back into her own consciousness.
His voice was barely a whisper. “Let the resonance grow, until there is nothing else in your thoughts.” The chord strengthened, rising in volume and intensity until Telyn felt as if she were standing beside the distant Gwaith’orn again, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Mithrais allowed the memory of the resonance to begin to ebb away, and Telyn followed suit, but the noise in her mind remained. The bard realized that she could narrow and focus on a direction from where it seemed to emanate before it, too, faded.
“It’s that way!” Telyn said delightedly, pointing to the southeast with her free hand. She felt Mithrais’ surge of pleasure in her accomplishments as he allowed the contact between them to recede and withdrew his thoughts from her, releasing her hand. They began to walk a roughly diagonal path away from the stream in the direction Telyn had indicated.
“Your shields aren’t strong, but you’re surprisingly adept for one who has never been trained in heartspeaking. Have you practiced mental defenses before?” Mithrais inquired.
Telyn shrugged. “No, I was never trained in that art. My efforts went to preventing others from being influenced inadvertently. I seem to have an innate defense against the influence of other bards’ song magic, so there was no real need to learn how to shield myself.”
“Heartspeaking is a gift that most people don’t possess at all, and an increasingly small number of Wood-born Silde. Are either of your parents of the Sildan bloodline?”
“My father is not. My mother...I don’t know much about her, I’m afraid,” Telyn told him. “Her name was Ariel, and that name is as common among the Three Realms as it is among the Silde. She died when I was an infant. Taliesin won’t talk about her. Emrys never knew her.”
“I’m sorry.” Mithrais glanced at her. “Are bardic gifts similar to heartspeaking?”
“None that I knew, until now. As I told you, I can accomplish things that other bards, even Taliesin, cannot. The ability to influence musicians is my own unique talent. Others can direct them, but only I can—” Telyn searched for the words. “Lend them my gifts, I suppose. It’s as if my skills somehow can be borrowed and added to theirs.”
“What else?” Mithrais set a steady traveling pace, and Telyn fell in beside him easily, thinking about his question.
“You heard about the incident where I sang a room full of people to sleep. There aren’t any other bards who can do that. Their craft can exert strong influence over any existing mood, or dispel an unpleasant atmosphere, but they cannot impose a completely new one. I can.” Telyn glanced at him sidelong with a grimace, and continued, “When I’m feeling something intensely, it tends to come out involuntarily in my music.”
“The song of exile,” Mithrais exclaimed, and Telyn affirmed this with an apologetic smile. “I could feel the sorrow in it. It nearly brought me to tears.”
“That song at the encampment was a rare moment of self-indulgence. I was taught to suppress my own feelings of anger, fear, and sorrow. It was a lesson I learned early. My father sent me to Emrys because he was highly skilled in mental disciplines, and Taliesin didn’t have the patience to teach me himself. Lack of control is disastrous with a gift like mine. I think I proved that last year.”
They walked in silence a moment, until Mithrais asked, “You told Lady Ciara that ‘most’ bards can’t force the truth from someone. Was that also a confession?”
Telyn did not answer for a long moment. “I can do it,” she finally admitted soberly. “I don’t like to. Can you imagine, Mithrais, someone being able to compel you to do what they want, against your will? I can do that.”
He now understood to what Riordan had been alluding when he mentioned Telyn’s integrity. “How did you discover this was possible?”
“Out of frustration, when I was young. Emrys was hiding something from me when we visited an estate. I remember that I was angry because he was late arriving to my instruction for the third time that week, and I was burning to know what he had been up to. He said it was none of my concern, and told me to play the lesson he had set for me. While I played, fuming about this in my head, Emrys suddenly started telling me where he’d been.”
Telyn hesitated for a moment before continuing her tale. “He had been in the bed of the lord’s young wife. I was so shocked that I stopped playing, and Emrys realized at once what was happening. The betrayal in his eyes nearly broke my heart.” Telyn colored with remembered shame. “He told me later that the words were dragged from him against his will. It could have cost him his life—and his lover’s—had he been overheard. That incident taught me a valuable lesson about the responsibilities that go along with my gifts. I only did it once more, because Taliesin insisted I show this talent to the King. If Amorion had been possessed of anything but a good heart, I shudder to think of how I might have been forced to exploit this particular talent of mine. He understands how I felt about it.”
“I suspect that my uncle is well acquainted with the potential abuses of power.” Mithrais’ voice carried the same note that had accompanied previous mention of Marithiel. Telyn heard it, and mulled over it as they walked for several minutes, finally giving voice to something that had been at the back of her mind.
“Mithrais—forgive me if this question is insulting, but I feel that I must ask before we arrive in Cerisild. I know you recognized Lord Vuldur’s name last night. Is the palace gossip about Lord Vuldur and Marithiel more than idle speculation?”
Mithrais was silent for a long while, and she was about to apologize when he finally replied, “Telyn, understand that there’s no love lost between my mother and me. She has offered my father little but contempt and barely tolerates my presence, especially since I accepted the wardenship. She demands no more from me than a son’s duty to his mother, which serves us both fairly. There’s nothing you can say about Marithiel that will offend me. What are you asking?”
Telyn took a deep breath. “Were she and Vuldur betrothed before she wed Lord Gwidion?”
Mithrais began walking again. “I believe my mother had planned to wed him, although she never received the King’s consent. He chose another marriage for her, one that could finally unite our people irrevocably. To Marithiel’s credit, she saw the importance of this and agreed to the marriage, although she didn’t go quietly.”
“There is more to that particular rumor,” Telyn said softly, and Mithrais hesitated before he answered her gravely.
“It’s possible that Gilmarion is not my father’s son. Any fool who can count the passage of the months knows that. Even if it is true, it doesn’t matter. He is Marithiel’s son, my father’s heir, and my brother.”
There was nothing more to say on the subject, and Telyn considered it closed, but for one nagging doubt. “I am afraid that Marithiel will not be pleased by my presence, given the circumstances of my exile from the royal household. I’m certain the entire court knows why, the way gossip travels in Belthil.” She faltered. “What if she won’t allow me to stay?”
Mithrais turned to face her again, taking her hand and stroking the intricate patterns on Telyn’s wrist with a thumb rough and callused from years of drawing a bow. “You need only tell my father the entire story,” he said firmly, but his eyes were gentle. “King Amorion considers you innocent of murder. No one else need know who has set a price on your head until my uncle has dealt with this. It’s still Gwidion’s house and his law, regardless of who presides over the table or rides out to inspect the city. He will welcome you.” A small smile grew at the corners of his mouth. “If Marithiel becomes too unbearable, I’ll declare you a Tauron initiate, and we’ll continue your lessons in some isolated corner of the Wood. Would that content you?”
“I think I might be content wherever you are,” Telyn said quietly. Mithrais touched her cheek, an expression of such hopeful tenderness in his eyes that she caught her breath, her pulse beginning to race. His lips touched hers, softly at first, then with increasing fire as Telyn responded, her arms going around him and drawing him closer. Again, it was Mithrais who broke the kiss with a shaking laugh.
“I feared this,” he murmured against her forehead as he held her in the brightening Wood. “How can I see you safely to Cerisild when I think of nothing but the taste of your lips, and the scent of your skin?”
“I would perform a song of courage to strengthen our resolve, but alas, my pipes are back in Rothvori,” Telyn lamented weakly, and Mithrais laughed aloud, releasing her and motioning for her to take the lead.
“Come, initiate. Lead me to the tree folk,” he commanded. Telyn snapped to attention and fired off a mock salute, fist to heart.
“Yes, my lord.”
Telyn was very pleased with herself when, within a scant half hour, they stood at the foot of the resonant tree. She had only made one false start after listening again for the resonance, which Mithrais immediately corrected, explaining that in the deep Wood, the Gwaith’orn were more numerous and their vibrations overlapped, like concentric circles of ripples in a pond during rain. By holding the resonance in her mind, Telyn was able to discern between the individual Gwaith’orn, separate notes in the metaphorical chord.
She was becoming acclimated to the sensation that marked the pulses of resonance that brushed her frequently as she searched for the Gwaith’orn. When they reached it at last, she touched the tree briefly to be sure she had the right one. The powerful vibration was still overwhelming, and she drew back quickly.
“I have noticed that they never seem to be alone,” Telyn remarked, leaning against the trunk of a neighboring rowan as Mithrais prepared to consult the Gwaith’orn. “Do they always have a circle of ladies in waiting?”
“The ‘ladies’, as you call them, serve a purpose. Do you see?” Mithrais indicated the intermingling branches above, and the tangle of roots below. “The resonance is conducted through the roots and the treetops, and can be carried a greater distance when there are passive trees nearby. When they stand alone, they are more difficult to find solely by vibration, but they are the largest trees in the Wood.”
Mithrais placed his hands against the tree, lapsing into an attitude of stillness and concentration. From her place against the rowan’s trunk, Telyn felt the pulse of vibration leave the grove.
The resonance returned to the grove within moments, and Telyn waited expectantly to hear what Mithrais had discovered. The line of his body tensed, and when the Silde finally turned to her, the expression on his face grim, she knew immediately what he would say.
“Where is he?” she asked, ice flooding down her spine.
“The Gwaith’orn sensed him entering the Wood just after dawn. My wardens are heading this way to intercept The Dragon even now. He is perhaps two hours behind us, and traveling quickly.”
“You’re certain it’s him?” Telyn asked, already knowing the answer.
“The Gwaith’orn are certain. They remember him, as do I. He carries violence with him like a resonance of his own.” Mithrais’ green eyes were shadowed with unpleasant memory.
“Let’s be off, then. Which way?” Telyn forced herself to sound confident.
“His path suggests he’s tracking us, rather than making a straight line for Cerisild. We’ll meet the nearest wardens, and rather than intercept him immediately, perhaps they can leave a false trail that will delay him. The Gwaith’orn will help us stay one step ahead.”
“He may be more suspicious after Riordan’s diversion,” Telyn said flatly.
Mithrais eyes’ glittered with an icy light. “He will not be easy to trap, but the Tauron have a score to settle with him.”
Telyn touched the pommel of her dagger, thinking of her shattered harp on the stones of Riordan’s hall.
“So do I,” she said.