Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (16 page)

At the back of the hall, Jarod Klum walked Vestia Walters onto the floor and left her there with the dwarf. “It’s good luck,” he said to her.

Vestia shot a questioning glance at her mother, but Livinia only smiled back and then turned to the troubadours. “The Ladies’ Dance reel . . . now, if you please.”

As the first notes rang through the hall, every young woman of the town—urged quietly by their atoning mothers—rushed in to join the dance.

The heavy footfalls of the dwarf resounded through the hall, his hands reaching up above him and holding hands with the lithe human girls whose form he found artfully beautiful. Their smiles fell like impossible grace upon him, their ribbons flying as he moved with them, a glorious gap-toothed smile beaming from his rapturous face.

From that time onward, if you were so fortunate as to visit Eventide on the night of Spring Revels, you would be astonished to see all the prettiest maidens of the town lining up with delight to take their turns dancing with a dwarf. They all see him with different eyes than a stranger might, for behind his shining eye and the clumsy steps that pound the cobblestones beneath his feet, they see the beauty of song, poetry, and art—and to dance with such handsomeness, any maiden knows, will bring her good fortune in her life.

And the dwarf would be smiling all the while.

The Couples’ Dance was finished. Jarod had dutifully done his turn about the floor with Vestia Walters—who continued to go on and on about her marvelous hat and how much she must have meant to him in order for him to give her such a wonderful gift. He was gracious as his parents had taught him to be and left her at her door as soon as decorum would allow. It was, after all, a very short trip, since Vestia lived above the Cooper’s Hall with her parents.

Jarod turned and stepped into the deserted Charter Square. The early spring moon cast its blue light over the scattered vestiges of the celebration. Spring Revels were over, and with them had flown the great plans of his quest on behalf of his beloved . . .

“Jarod?”

“Caprice?”

She leaned against the low courtyard wall on the west side of Charter Square overlooking Bolly Falls. The pixies in the lamp next to her had since been released so that only the moonlight illuminated her. “I was just waiting for my sisters. They’ve been talking with Merinda over at her shop about a hat for Melodi.”

“Oh, a hat,” Jarod said casually, wondering why it was easier to talk to her now than ever before. He strolled nonchalantly toward her. “You should have gone with them. I hear Merinda is the woman to see about hats.”

Caprice laughed. “No, thank you. I hate hats!”

Jarod smiled as he answered, “Me too. You have no idea how much.”

“I wanted to thank you for getting me a date,” Caprice said.

“The dwarf?” Jarod laughed. “You’re welcome—but I think I could have managed someone better.”

Caprice stood up and faced Jarod. “Yes, I believe you could have.”

“Caprice!”

Jarod winced. He turned to see Melodi and Sobrina crossing the deserted cobblestone square. Sobrina held a lantern in her hand.

“We must be getting home,” Sobrina said with a glance at Jarod. “It’s late and there
are
highwaymen about.”

“May I . . . may I walk you ladies home?” Jarod offered.

Caprice smiled. “Why, Jarod Klum, that is most kind of you—”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Sobrina interrupted. “It’s too many to protect.”

“I’m sure I can handle—”

“No, Jarod,” Caprice said gently. “She means that
you
would be too many for
her
to protect.”

“Caprice, I wish—”

“
Don’t
wish,” Caprice said, touching her hand lightly on his chest. He dared not move, afraid to break the fragile, glorious moment. She stepped quickly away to follow her sisters north past Fall’s Court to the Mordale road. “I’m a wisher of the well . . . I don’t need wishes!”

Jarod watched her vanish into the moonlight with her sisters. He worried for her traveling at night up the Mordale road. Dirk Gallowglass was abroad near Eventide—the notorious highwayman who, upon seeing Caprice, would no doubt swoop down upon her from astride his midnight black horse, sweep her up in his powerful arms, and carry her swooning into the night.

At least, that was what he would do if
he
were Dirk Gallowglass.

The Notorious Stratagem

The Notorious Stratagem

Wherein Jarod tries to be
an infamous rogue and discovers
it’s not nearly as appealing as
the Bard’s stories make it out to be.

• Chapter 10 •

The Gossip Fairy

If you walked down Cobblestone Street south from Chestnut Court you would see rows of small, cozy homes lining both sides of the street. Each one would be charmingly individual in some detail but on the whole of approximately the same height and construction as the next—all, that is, except one. The uniform row of thatched rooflines would be broken in the middle by one very small house, built specifically to accommodate the short form of Ariela Soliandrus, who tried her best to fit in with her neighbors—despite the fact that she was a fairy.

Her home was a miniature of those around it and completely unsuitable for human occupation. It had been built for her by the Black Guild Brotherhood—the secret guild to which most of the men in the town belonged—largely at the insistence of the women of Cobblestone Street, who had come to accept her with remarkable ease once her value to their ladies’ community had become quite obvious. The house stood on a four-foot foundation of stones and mortar so that the small front porch would be at the same level as those of the homes on either side. This necessitated the construction of a narrow stairway with miniature treads, although Ariela flew everywhere and had never used them. The look of her home was identical to that of the townhomes on either side, with half-beam frame construction and wattle and daub filling the walls between the timbers, forming square and triangular shapes in the walls, each fitted with leaded glass panes and the ubiquitous painted front door. The primary difference lay entirely in its scale, for everything was adjusted in size to Ariela’s fourteen inches of height. Her extravagant green door was a full two feet tall, and the three stories of her home reached a lofty ten feet above the surface of the street if one counted the foundation. Nor were its sideways dimensions out of proportion; hence, it could have no common walls with the neighboring townhomes. It stood apart in the center of her parcel of ground, which was fine by Ariela, as that left more room for her extravagant garden.

Each day, Ariela went out calling. Dressed most impeccably in a silk dress with an ornate brocade bodice, a straw bonnet tied firmly to her head with a scarf, she flitted from home to home among her neighbors, visited with the women of her acquaintance in their gardens, and gave them her advice on the plants . . . as well as the latest news from around the town. Ariela was known somewhat unkindly among the men of Eventide as the Gossip Fairy, and there was no bit of news on which she could not amplify, exaggerate, or speculate wildly. If gossip ever ran through the town like wildfire, you could be sure that Ariela was at the front of it, actively fanning the flames with every beat of her wings.

While the Gossip Fairy had a most vocal opinion regarding the background and secrets of nearly everyone in the town, she was silent about her own past. That Ariela was a River Fairy who had abandoned that wilder existence for a life among the inhabitants of Eventide was obvious, but why a River Fairy would do so had long been a matter of speculation among the women of the town.

Some of the women claimed that she was really the queen of the fairies in disguise, hiding among the villagers of Eventide, and that if her true nature were discovered they would all be murdered in their beds. Others—mostly the younger women—were convinced that Ariela was fleeing from a tragic past where she had fallen passionately into a doomed love affair with a merman . . . or a selkie . . . or a fairy prince. Most of the men were convinced that she had simply been thrown out of her own tribe for causing too much trouble.

Ariela had heard all of their stories about her—and even repeated them to others—without ever confirming her true reasons for being there . . . except, possibly, to the scribe Abel, who noted that Ariela loved her garden above all else and that the roving River Fairies were never in one place long enough to establish one.

She sowed seeds of all kinds around the village, both in the gardens and in the ears of her eager listeners. Unfortunately, the fruits of such seeds were often both unpredictable and dangerous.

For example, when Jarod had his rather fated chance encounter with Vestia Walters . . . well, there were just not enough known facts to make a proper telling, so the Gossip Fairy felt perfectly justified in filling in the unknowns with what she considered the most plausible fabrications. This ability was precisely the aspect that qualified her to be considered an expert on any subject concerning the town or world beyond.

So it was that as spring warmed into a verdant summer, so, too, blossomed the speculation around Vestia Walters and Jarod Klum, and with every telling by the Gossip Fairy another nail was driven into the coffin of Jarod and his hopes for winning Caprice Morgan.

“So I don’t know what to do,” Jarod concluded, lifting up the sluice gate to Farmer Bennis’s south field as he saw the water approaching down the ditch from the north. “Vestia Walters thinks I’m interested in her and somehow staked out a claim on me when I wasn’t looking.”

“I thought that Percival fellow from the town was chasing her?” Edvard said casually. He was sitting on the rail fence, leaning into the post next to him as he nibbled at the end of a long stalk of green wheat.

“He was,” Jarod sighed. “He got his nose broken back on the night of Spring Revels. It shifted his nose to one side, which ruined both his looks and Vestia’s opinion of him. No one ever found out how he broke it . . . he always changes the subject whenever it’s brought up.”

The Dragon’s Bard frowned. “The nose looked straight the last time I saw him.”

“That’s the strangest part,” Jarod said, looking up into the bright sky. “It had just started to heal when it broke again—only this time he was right in the middle of Trader’s Square with Jon Zwegan and Merlin Thatcher. They were just walking across the square when Percival cried out and fell to the ground, his nose broken again. This second time it healed straight and looks as though he had never broken it at all—but he had to go through the pain twice, the swelling in his face and the bruises under his eyes. He looks fine now, but Vestia still won’t have anything to do with him.”

“Bad wishcraft that,” Farmer Bennis said as he removed his hat and wiped his brow. “Put the nose right but in a bent way. That’s a broken wish for you.”

“Well, whoever wished it didn’t do me any favor,” Jarod groused. “Vestia couldn’t stand to be around him, so now the town thinks she and I are a couple and Caprice doesn’t seem to even know I exist.”

“I’m sure she does,” Bennis advised. The massive centaur was trotting along next to the approaching water, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his enormous brimmed hat shading his eyes. He held the handle of a long shovel in one hand, resting it back over his left shoulder. “The Morgans are having troubles of their own, Jarod. It’s been hard enough on them these years since their wishing well was broken—and losing their mother in the bargain—but it’s been especially difficult these last two months.”

“That foolishness about a wishing well in Butterfield?” piped in the Dragon’s Bard from the fence. “It was nothing but a ruse by an itinerant charlatan preying on the innocence of the unsuspecting and easily persuaded!”

“An expert opinion, indeed,” Bennis nodded.

“But they caught the man in the act,” Jarod said. “Ran him out of Butterfield.”

“Yes, but not until two months had gone by for the Morgans without any wishers at all,” Bennis concluded. “Their position was not good to begin with, but now they’re in serious trouble—Abel! Please turn the water in there!”

The scribe, standing next to the ditch with his own shovel in hand, nodded and quickly pushed the spade down into the path of the water, turning it into the channeled furrows of the field.

“This were far easier when the wishcraft was working,” Farmer Bennis said as he carefully walked along the northern edge of the field, checking the water as it slowly moved down the channels between the rising stalks of grain.

Jarod shook his head as he knelt next to the sluice gate, holding the wooden dam in his hand. “I know it’s been hard for her family, but I just wish she would see that I’m here. But I’m no different than anyone else—just another face in the village.”

The Dragon’s Bard sat up suddenly on the fence, his face brightening. “Of course! That’s it!”

Jarod glanced up warily.

“You need to stand out, be distinctive . . . dashing, daring . . . mysterious . . .”

Jarod started shaking his head. “Wait a moment! I don’t want—”

“I’ve got it!” the Bard shouted. “A brilliant idea!”

“No!” Jarod yelped.

“You just need to be noticed!” Edvard pushed himself off of the fence, his hands flourishing in the air as he spoke. “To stand out from the crowd—”

“No, not again!” Jarod jumped up so quickly that his boots slipped on the wet bank of the ditch. He slid into the water, then regained his footing as he stepped out toward the Dragon’s Bard. “The last time you tried to make me into someone I wasn’t—”

“But that’s not what I’m talking about, my boy!” The Bard laughed heartily, clasping his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m not talking about changing who you are—just who everyone thinks you are! Perception is everything, the very key to being noticed! The repentant sinner is ever more quickly noticed than the saint! The scoundrel with the heart of gold ever so much more attractive to romantic young women than the honest farmer with a stable income—get it? Stable income, eh?”