"I thought that we agreed to leave everything not necessary to our survival behind."
Dertvel looked up. "But this very well may be. Lore of the Southern Lamaroc Forests, it is called. It has much to say that could be useful while we travel here."
"If it could find some food I would be grateful."
"There is a chapter here on the identification of edible and inedible berries"
"All right." Abeh scanned his surroundings and found an unfamiliar bush with white fruit shaped peculiarly like a miniture figurine of a bear. "What about this one?"
"Poisonous. I already checked."
"And this?" A prickly plant with berries that looked like bees.
"Poisonous."
Another plant had berries shaped like pink elephants. When Abeh pointed it out to Dertvel, he frowned, turned a few pages in his book, read for a moment, turned a few more pages, and came to a judgement.
"Hallucinogenic."
"Ha. I am traveling in a band of minstrels that has stolen a daughter of the Duke of Lamaroc, and that is being pursued by the Ducal Guard. If this is not a hallucination, I do not want to know what one is. Well then, if your book contains no spell to conjure food out of the air, I shall be forced to wait here and starve until the others return."
Dertval gave him a quizzical look. "I think it may indeed contain such a spell."
"I thought that you did not believe in magic." Abeh smiled; catching Dertval in a contradiction was better sport than catching game.
"I have seen no evidence of magic being worked in the present day. The alteration of certain forms of nature, such as the berries you saw just now, suggest that it existed in the past. What I was speaking of was not magic, and yet a spell of sorts. Have you seen those dark, red beaked birds flitting about? The one that make such a ruckus in the morning?"
Dertval explained that the birds were called bee thrushes, since they resembled bees in their complex social organization. They had a remarkably large repetory of songs, which they used for many purposes: communicating newfound sources of food, warning against predators, showing the positions of nests where a queen would lay its eggs, and so on, for 20 pages of small text in Dertval's book. The songs were remarkably human, and if the book was correct, could achieve the same effect if sung by a pers on in the proper tone as would occur if the birds themselves had sung it. The one that was of interest to Abeh now was the infant bird's call of extreme hunger. He practiced it for a while, but nothing happened, and his attention wandered to another song on the facing page, which was sung to induce the birds to destroy eggs in an area if they were found to be infected. But that was of no consequence, and pangs in his stomach made him put a bit more effort into the song of hunger for a while.
Then Abeh drifted to sleep, still humming the simple melody. He dreamt of food, of eating pasta at a fine inn.
Something was in his mouth.
Not pasta.
He gagged, spewing out the contents of his mouth, and a little of his stomach. He then spat, repetedly, trying to remove the foul taste from his mouth.
Worms.
"Dertval, the spell worked."
"That's wonderful." Dertval looked up from his book and saw the mass of worms and vomit in front of Abeh. "Oh. Oh dear."
"Do you mean to say that you didn't notice anything beyond your book this entire time?" Abeh's voice was at the edge of hysteria.
"Well I-- It was an interesting bit. About the eccentric magician responsible for-- I'm terribly sorry."
Seeing Dertval attempt to explain, Abeh could not help but laugh; his anger subsided, and he looked for his water flask, so he could wash the taste out.
Abeh then explained the incident while Haidar set up a fire to cook dinner. "There's one thing I don't understand. I would think that the birds would be able to tell the difference between their own chicks and myself.''
Brena answered. "Have you perhaps seen their nests? They look very much like a human face. There is one over there, ten yards down the path."
Abeh went to have a look. It was on the ground, hidden by a fallen branch, an assemblage of twigs and grasses that nevertheless looked as though it could be the face of Dertval's eccentric ancient magician, with a red egg poking out of the mouth like a toungue.
He went back to eat dinner. The fish was very good, as were the berries garnishing it, although Abeh could not help but feel that their juicy purple smiles were mocking him.
Several years previous to this, Abeh was wandering across the countryside in quite different circumstances, making a living by singing and playing his lute in town squares well enough to be hired to play in taverns and make enough money to go on to the next town. At one of those taverns he heard a story about a baron whose wife had fallen ill and died, and whose daughter had been badly hurt through the negligence of a nursemaid he had hired shortly thereafter. The baron, in his grief, declared himself unfit to be a father, and had the child rebaptized and adopted as the daughter of his late wife's brother.
If this tale had moved Abeh a little, it was at a time when he could be moved great distances by a mere tale, and soon he began directing his travels toward the city that was the seat of the baron's power. There he stayed for some time, and befriended a middle-aged harpist named Dertval, who introduced him to Brodiell, the Baron of Naiarre.
A month earlier, Brodiell, now Abeh's patron, called him to his private audience chamber. Abeh immediately feared something was wrong, because there had never been any need for formality between them before; despite Brodiell's status as a noble and Abeh's as a musician, they had always treated each other as friends. His suspicions were confirmed when Brodiell confided to him that he had heard news of the ill treatment of his god-daughter at the court in Lamaroc. Although Brodiell had almost never spoken about it, Abeh knew that this god-daughter was in fact the daughter who figured in the tale that brought him there.
So it was arranged that Abeh, Dertval, and a young flute player named Haidar, who had joined the troupe a year before, would go to Lamaroc, where they would play at the feast to be given for Brena of Lamaroc's fifteenth birthday, as a gift from her god-father.
Abeh had hoped for the rumors to be false, but as he played he noticed that the situation was not quite right. The celebration was small, too small for the fifteenth birthday of any girl, let alone that of a young noble lady.
As the night wore on, Abeh noticed that Brena's "father," the Duke, was shamelessly drunk. Although Abeh was concentrating on his playing he heard the Duke insulting Brena, and not long therafter the Duke left, staggering. And although most of the others were dancing, Brena was sitting alone, her attention seemingly given only to the music, and the musicians. Later, when they had finished the last song of the night, and most of the guests had left, Brena came up to them.
"You were wonderful," she said, and Abeh saw that there were tears on her face. That they were not wonderful, Abeh was quite aware; they were tired from traveling and it could not be helped. But Brena looked as though she had hardly ever seen music performed. "Thank you so much."
"It is our job, my lady." It was Haidar who answered, and Haidar, who, Abeh now realized, had been at the center of Brena's attention for much of the night.
"Not just for that."
"What, then?" Brena and Haidar looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and Brena started crying.
"Because this is the first night in a month that my father hasn't hurt me."
The first was that Haidar would find a job capable of supporting a family; the logistics of a marriage between noble and commoner would be terrible, but if it was what they wanted, no one would stop them, as long as they stayed far away from Lamaro c. In a couple of years Dertval would probably become too old to play regularly, and only Abeh would be left, alone. In his youth solitude seemed a fair price for freedom, but it did not seem so now.
The second was that Brena might discover musical talent within herself. Then she might join the group, and all would be well, at least for Abeh, at least for a while.
In the meantime he had a very cruel gift to give to his patron. Soon he would have his daughter back, but it would not be a joyous reunion for him. He would blame himself for the harm that had come to her, and it would bring up memories of the accident for which he already blamed himself. That she was not his now, that she was Haidar's, and he had missed her entire childhood, would be a bee sting for a crying face. On top of all of this, there would have to be delicate negotiations, if such were possible, between himself and Lamaroc in order to avoid starting a feud that could last for generations.
Suddenly, Dertval put a hand on Abeh's shoulder and motioned for silence. Very slowly, he pointed through a row of trees in front of them. Behind the trees was a camp. It was the Duke's guard. They appeared to still be asleep, but they would be able to track the group very easily now that they had stumbled this close. Abeh then remembered the other song he had seen in the book, the one that instructed the birds to destroy their eggs. If they took the faces of the sleeping soldiers to be their ne sts, they might annoy them long enough to distract them from finding Abeh's group's trail. Quietly, he told Dertval of his plan. He pulled the book from the top of Dertval's pack, and turned to the page with the song, a melody that repeated itself in a higher octave.
It was impossible. The range of the song was far too great for him or any one person to sing. But perhaps it did not need to be one person. He told Brana to repeat, on his mark, what he was about to sing. He then began the song, a sad but almost violent melody, his voice imitating the birds'. He pointed to Brena for her to continue.
Brena sang high and clear, and though it blended in with the other songs the birds were singing that morning, Abeh was afraid for a moment that its vicious beauty would alert the soldiers to their presence.