The Bards of Bone Plain Read Free Page A

requirement of this school. Nor of the Kings of Belden. You can go looking for the tower if you choose. Or the metaphor. At the moment, I’d prefer you just answer my question.” Frazer only gazed at him, mute and stubborn. Phelan glanced around. “Anyone?”
    â€œThe bard Seeley?” the quiet, country-bred Valerian guessed diffidently.
    â€œGood guess, but no. Prudently, he never tried.” He waited. “No one? You do know this. You have all the history and poetry you need to unravel this mystery. Do so before I see you again. The weave is there, the thread is there. Find and follow.”
    The students rose around him, scattered, all but for Frazer, whom Phelan nearly tripped over as he turned.
    â€œI have another question,” he said doggedly.
    Phelan shrugged lightly, sat back down. The boy’s ambition was formidable and daunting; Phelan, wanting only his breakfast, was grateful he had never been so afflicted.
    â€œIf I can answer.”
    â€œI’ve been at this school for seven years. Since I was eight. You’re almost a master. So you must know this by now. How many years must we complete before we are finally taught the secrets of the bardic arts?”
    Phelan opened his mouth; nothing came out for a moment. “Secrets.”
    â€œYou know,” Frazer insisted. “What’s there. In every ancient tale, between the lines in every ballad. The magic. The power in the words. Behind the words. You must know what I’m talking about. I want it. When am I taught it?”
    Phelan gazed at him with wonder. “I haven’t a clue,” he said finally. “Nobody ever taught me anything like that.”
    â€œI see.” Frazer held his eyes, his face set. “I’m not old enough yet to know.”
    â€œNo, no—”
    â€œYou’ve completed your studies. Everyone says you’re brilliant. You could go anywhere, be welcome at any court. There’s nothing you wouldn’t have been taught. If you can’t tell me yet, you can’t. I’ll wait.”
    He seemed, motionless under the oak, prepared to wait in just that spot until somebody came along and enlightened him. Phelan yielded first, got to his feet. He stood silently, looking down at the young, stubborn, feral face.
    â€œIf such secrets exist,” he said finally, “no one told me. Perhaps, like that tower, you must go looking for them yourself. Maybe only those who realize that such secrets exist are capable of discovering them. I lack the ability to see them. So no one ever taught me such things.”
    Frazer sat rigidly a moment longer. Gradually, his expression eased, through disbelief to a flicker of surprise at both himself and Phelan.
    â€œMaybe,” he conceded uncertainly. He rose, blinking puzzledly at Phelan. “I thought if anyone knew, it would be you.”
    He took himself off finally. Phelan, completely nonplussed, headed to the masters’ refectory to fortify himself against several hours in the library archives, as he tried to find a way to say the same thing everyone else had said, twice a decade for five hundred years, only differently.
    In his head, he could hear Jonah’s derisive comments, even the ones he hadn’t made yet. Phelan ignored them all, as he had so many others, and walked into the oldest building, under the shadow of its broken tower, to seek his breakfast.

Chapter Two
    Across a thousand years of poetry, we have come to know Nairn the Wanderer, the Fool, the Cursed, the Unforgiven intimately through hundreds of poems, ballads, tales. We know his adventures, his loves, his failures, his despair. We have explored his most intimate passions and torments. He is named in any given century; he wears the face, the clothes, the character of those times. Even now, he speaks through our modern voices as he inspires new tales of love and loss, of his endless quest for death. His trials become ours and not ours: we seek