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Sharp’s music stopped, bringing me back to Lord Guerney’s hall. He stood with a gentle smile on his angular face, facing a woman of incomparable beauty. Her hair, gold and bright, was caught up in thick braids which disappeared behind her veil, and he face was round and full. Her eyes were quick and her red lips invited. Her dress, with long sleeves brushing the floor, was the delicate green of forest leaves waking to a new year. In her pale hand, a single white rose bloomed.
Had I a voice, I would have sung in her honor and battled a knight to claim her as my own. But her eyes and her rose went to Sharp, and he kissed her fingers softly.
There were no ladies in Songless Castle. There had been none since my Lord Reinard was four, when his mother died. She had been burned to death in the Bardhall, along with her lover and all the Masters, Journeymen, and Bards-in-training. Any Bard who escaped the flames hunted down and hanged, as well as any that chanced to pass the castle afterwards. In all, twenty-six men died at the hands of the Bard-killer, and the twenty-seventh was ruined. The Christian Church responded to this outrage by putting the castle and its people under interdict., and both church and Bardhall shunned the place. Proper fathers snatched their daughters home, and Songless Castle, silent and hard, earned its name.
How came I to wander into the jaws of the lion? Wallen had never been precise about where he lived. I was too foolish to ask, blinded by the thought of an easy summer of food and wine. Perhaps he thought that the Old Lord would not notice me, or perhaps he felt that with my future crushed, I would have to stay there, his private harpist in a silent castle.
I do not believe that such things are beyond my Lord Reinard, true son the Bardkiller, who never did speak his full name within the Bardhall. Bitterness is a black rose that grows on the grave of a friendship.
Again the music stopped, this time for good. Sharp bowed a final time, then put his pipe and lute away. I rose, unsteady, and my soldiers helped me out of the hall.
