BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

Author's Note and apology:

I intended for this to be updated five times a week, or at least more often than VG Cats. (VG Cats is a sometmes rude but ofttimes hilarious webcomic that parodies gaming, movies, and pop culture.) However, this is a crunch week. I am trying to prepare my panels at Millennicon 23 , and finish polishing my WIP, Bastard in the Promised Land, before handing it out ot readers. I'm in "the zone." However, I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in this story to go to Dead Fish Press (see icon on right) and download, for free, the first three chapters of By Blade and Cloth. If you like what you read, you can buy the entire book (180,000 words, so you'll get your pennies' worth) at Dead Fish Press.

Thank you for reading, and Gerard and Elise will be back next week!

Chapter 5.3

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I started with scales, but as my mind shook free, the marching notes drifted into short melodies and chords. With the spin-dice as an accompaniment, I began to weave a tune, a net for memories. Unburdened by bitterness, I lived again those summers where Sharp and I wandered together, collecting experiences and stories, leaning of life. We slept in fields beneath the stars, and in barns while it rained. We traded songs and stories for meals in road-side taverns. Once again I smelled the wood smoke and roasting meat, heard the thunk of mugs and the rattle of dice, and saw the crowd dancing to my tunes. Sharp would grin at me, a perpetually dirty face with bright eyes, then sneak our secret tune into his melodies whenever a particularly attractive girl walked by.

We’d made a pact never to play that tune without the presence of the other, and I had not even thought of it for almost ten years. I wondered if he had also forgotten it.
From the world of memories I stepped into the spirit world, which reflects our own in the same way that a glass-still pond reflects the sky. I saw Lord Reinard, standing alone, waiting for his bride. He looked across a pond to where a woman seemed to stand, but his way was blocked by Lord Guerney. I looked at the woman, and realized that she had no form, no features. Perhaps she was pregnant, or perhaps it was just the way her veils drifted around her figure. I could not see for certain.

Indeed, I realized. Unless I knew for certain, I could report nothing to my lord. Nothing that would convince him to leave this ill-fated union alone.

So, how to see the hidden woman? She kept herself within the ladies’ tower. If I hid myself in skirts, perhaps I could enter – but with my strong chin and deep-set eyes, I doubted I would keep the disguise for long. And with it, certain useful parts of my anatomy.

I now saw a Silent Monk before me, his hands moving in a complicated pattern. What was he saying? I didn’t know those gestures. I leaned forward, the better to concentrate, as he started again, then he seemed to say –

Technical troubles

Due to technical troubles, my attention is elsewhere today.

Sorry.

Helen

Chapter 5.2

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When I pulled out my harp that morning, I saw it in a way that I had seen for almost ten years. I caressed the wood, battered with age, and stroked the strings.

Most Bards do not have a harp of their own, and even fewer Bards-in-training. When they first come to the Bardhall, they are usually entrusted with a tambourine. After a few years they may earn the right to hold a lute or a horn. They might buy tin pipes or clay flutes in the market, and they learn to make drums. Harps, and other noble instruments, either stay in the Bardhall or are bought by Journeymen with enough gold to spare.

I had my own harp, which was not normal, but my path to the Bardhall had not been normal, either.

Before I could remember, I was apprenticed to a harpist and harp-maker in the village of Jerden. I learned to judge and shape wood, to make strings, and to repair broken pieces. I looked forward to taking the shop from his old hands, and keeping him as well as he had kept me, which was generously. But one spring, when I was eleven, he announced that I was to play for the Masters of the Bardhall in Slatten. Though old to be a Bard-in-training, I was accepted on the strength of my playing.

I then asked the old harpist why he had given me up. He handed me his harp, looked me in the eye, and told me that his life was almost ended. Indeed, he never returned to Jerden – and neither did I.

My harp, once his harp, made not by his father but by his grandfather, still held the spirit of the tree within it. I stroked my hands over the smooth, shaped wood, and wondered: How different could the flesh of a man and the wood of a tree be, if both were filled with life? Was it worse to make a flute from the bone of man than to carve a harp from the trunk of a tree? How was one wrong and the other right?

I questioned as I touched the strings, and so set my feet on a path I had not walked for many years.