Free Bard I by Keith Taylor Page A

experience and strength;
    his eyes were fierce and bright under heavy brows. His smile showed large teeth, discoloured but strong and sound. Though far from comely, he was an awesome figure, a man of wit, and perhaps wisdom.
    ‘You need not fear me. I am Pendor, an herb-doctor, apothecary, magician, and banished exile.’ He looked about the glade, autumnal in late winter. ‘Do I address a fellow magician in you?’
    ‘I have powers,’ Felimid said, treading softly. ‘I am a bard of the third rank, a noble person, like the triangular branch which is in the wood. As it shelters the stem which is under it, from cold and from heat, in the same way I shelter the art of the two who precede me, and my own art the third. Ah-choo!’
    ‘Mighty credentials,’ Pendor said gravely. ‘Then I’d be impertinent, would I not, to offer you shelter?’
    ‘You’d be a splendid and generous man,’ Felimid answered, ‘and unless you stand well back from your own threshold, I may knock you down leaping across it. But your coming is very timely. How did you find me?’
    ‘I’m a magician, and you have been working magic. I was bound to become aware in the end. But as it happens, I was guided here. Look above you.’
    A lean, naked figure crouched upon an oak branch, several wet leaves plastered to his body.
    ‘I know him!’ Felimid said. ‘I met him yesterday! A friend of yours?’
    ‘Of a sort. I call him Kev. I tended him once when he was injured, and he can come to me for food, always. There is little in the forest he does not see or hear. I would that he could speak, but he’s never learned how, and I have not been able to teach him. He is not a human child.
    ‘Well, he came to my garden yester-eve with his hide in strips and cobwebs upon him. Although he grunted and gestured, I could not get his meaning. At last I followed him here. In due time I’d like to know what befell him and you.’
    ‘It was epic,’ Felimid assured him.
    ‘Then may I have a name to know you by? I’ve given you mine.’
    ‘Excuses. My mind’s clouded. I’m Felimid mac Fal of Erin, and sir, I’m not knowing how we’re to reach your house, for Regan cannot walk at present, and I must hobble.’
    Pendor wiped moisture from his pate with a sleeved forearm. Replacing the badger-skin hat on his head, he half turned toward the trees.
    ‘Basket,’ he said loudly, ‘come serve your master!’
    Something came out of the mist like a shallow boat drifting through air. No. Not a boat. It more resembled a giant’s oval shield, woven of withies, lacking the usual leather covering. The pattern of its weave was intricate, eye-baffling, like the decorative knotwork of Erin. Neither then nor later, examining it closel did Felimid discern even one cut end of wicker. The whole might have been twisted from one large pliant hoop. Its concavity was about a foot deep, piled with furs.
    ‘I rode, coming here,’ Pendor said matter-of-factly.
    ‘You shall ride back.’
    Luck, Felimid thought. What astonishing luck, when our need is greatest. Herb-doctoror apothecary, he said. What luck!
    Felimid the bard was somewhat light-headed.
    Pendor lifted Regan from the hut; placed her in the basket with Felimid. They cuddled together as if in a bed. Pendor, meanwhile, poking about their hut, found the blackberries and hazel nuts, so out of their time in the yearly round. He carried them out, eyes shining. Pendor liked the pleasures of the belly. Some austere magicians felt contempt for a man who would turn the seasons’ order about, merely to get food or increase his comfort. Pendor didn’t share their feeling.
    Under the double weight, Basket sagged nearer the earth. Tapping one end with his rowan staff, the magician said tersely, ·come!’ Then he set off, leading the way at a dogged pace. Basket followed him.
    Regan hardly seemed to know what was happening. In a brief while, she was asleep again. Felimid might have copied her, had the experience been less odd. It