Free Bard I by Keith Taylor Page B

was like being towed smoothly through some tideless bog, by a creature who, from behind, looked part man, part toad.
    Beneath the hides and furs, Felimid unobtrusively slid Kincaid from his scabbard. He didn’t, after all, know where Pendor was taking them. The bard’s last host had hung him by the heels above a wolf pit. Pendor’s fierce appearance was nothing against him; he might be benevolent. The woodland boy Kev had found him so. But Felimid didn’t care to take it for granted.
    They followed a dim, narrow, twisting trail, the work of deer and elk through all the years the trees had been growing. These had the mass and presence of ages. Roots thick as Felimid’s body writhed in the ground with movement too slow to be perceived in a lifetime of hurtling human perceptions. Moss grew deep as a bed on weathered boles. Mistletoe flowered yellow, trailing in luxury from hawthorn and linden. High above, scuttling and leaping with a squirrel’s agility, Kev stayed with them. Felimid saw him now and again as a moving shadow in the mist.
    Hours passed; they travelled as in a dream.
    When they reached Pendor’s home, the bard saw only a mass of undergrowth at first. Coming closer. he recognised it as a crude, shapeless hedge of thorns. which enclosed a sort of garden. The thorns were murderous wooden daggers a hand’s length long. An arched gap in the hedge gave the only ingress.
    Pendor’s garden proved as disorderly as the hedge around it. Herbs had been planted at random among flowers and vegetables and bushes. Felimid supposed Pendor knew where everything was. At the center of his garden stood a gigantic oak. He’d built his house in its branches, with a straight, substantial and comfortably wide timber stair leading to the door. The house itself had the look of a workmanlike structure, too-looked, and was, from floor to thatch.
    Tidy it was not. Watrle partitions divided it within. All was musty and cobwebbed. The many shelves held pottery jars containing dried seeds, leaves and roots, sticky ointments, elixirs, juices, oils, and much else. Three crescent-shaped benches built against the circular outer wall were Littered with spoons, bowls, rods, a pestle and mortar, a tiny bronze brazier shaped like an owl. a beech board with a dead frog pinned thereto, lumps of beeswax, knives, scrapers, graters, two books, and a cluster of fresh mistletoe.
    A cage of strong wooden bars lashed together with cord dangled from a beam. Cuboid, about three feet by three by seven, it was the right size to hold a man. Seeing it, Felimid stiffened. He drew Kincaid once more and menaced Pendor’s belly with the point in a flickering instant.
    ‘Tell me, if you will. . . just to indulge my curiosity, see you . . . what is the use of that cage?’
    ‘Sudden are you,’ Pendor observed. He hadn’t flinched. ‘The use of that cage is to hold captives. I live not far from the forest’s edge. There are bands of robbers hereabouts. They haven’t burned me out, as they fear my magic and value my services. They even trust me to a degree. Thus it’s become their custom, when they take a prisoner for ransom, to leave him with me while they dicker for payment. The prisoner’s kin like it better as well. I’m not apt to cut a throat in a fit of ill-temper, you follow? When the ransom is paid, I see the man restored to his folk.’ He shrugged. ‘One does what one can. I profit, but I’ve saved a few lives. Now put up your sword and let me see that foot of your!.’
    The sword slid neatly back into his sheath. With streaming nose and swollen-lidded eyes, Felimid croaked, ‘My manners have fled me altogether. I ask your pardon. I’m less than myself. . . but then, cages offend me and make me mistrustful.’
    To hear him, anybody would have thought his suspicions were quite dispelled.
    ‘That’s sense,’ Pendor grunted. He felt gently of the bard’s booted calf and ankle. Felimid sucked air between his teeth. Pendor, glancing at his