A Song of Ruin and Rage by Makenzie Marshall

Author:Makenzie Marshall [Marshall, Makenzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

TALI

The Bardic Guildhall, Arbyth, Warden-Realm of Goronnwg

Five Days Before The Meet

The building stood before her, stark and old and grim-grey. She had seen it before, had even been inside with her father on multiple occasions—but standing outside it with her dead father’s lute strapped to her back and the echoes of Inspired Song humming in her throat, knowing the men inside held the course of her future in their string-calloused fingers, she felt terrified. The fear trembled up from the root of her being, branching out and shivering through her every vein.

The journey to Goronnwg had been quick. Two days of languid travel, sitting warm inside a carriage. She’d never travelled so comfortably. The nervousness set in as soon as the wheels carved out their first ruts in the dirt. The entire journey, she stared out the window, pressing her nose against the cool glass and watching fields and trees and horses slip past. She did not sing. She wanted to save her voice for the Council. But she could feel the Inspired Song waiting there, at the base of her throat, like a flexed muscle itching to be used.

In the carriage, her anxiety had made her impatient. Now, standing outside the Bardic Council’s ancient building with its rough-cut stone pillars and obsidian pavilions, she hesitated, suddenly unable to move.

A cacophony of competing noises drifted out from the building. As well as serving as the headquarters and meeting hall of the Bardic Council, the Guildhall also served as a space for creation and socialisation, for research and lyrical battles. The Council lived in the Guildhall, no longer serving iarlls, thains, braniarlls, or maers, no longer sycophants for paying patrons. They trained fledgling bards, gave them status, and taught them the intricacies of metre and rhyme, the pluck and thrum of lute-playing. The Guildhall’s three-storey library was vast, stocked full of legends and heraldry and the exemplary craft of long-dead ancestor bards. There, gifted young musicians and poets gathered to learn the art and trade of bardcraft. It was where Talhern himself had studied and learned, long before his tunes were whistled all through the kingdom, long before his name was synonymous with the highest accolades of bardic art. To Tali—and, she supposed, all the aspiring bards who passed beneath the Guildhall’s marble arches with songs humming on their tongues and hope flickering in their chests—the place was formidable.

Uncertainly, she stepped forward and wrapped her trembling hands around the doorhandle. It was brass, veined with gold leaf, moulded intricately into the shape of a musical note. Tugging hard, she heaved open one of the heavy polished-wood doors, parting it enough to slip through. Inside the vestibule, the lighting was dimmed, lit with low-burning candles dripping wax. Four archways branched out from the central hallway, each one overfilling with competing tunes and the low hum of chatter. For a moment, she aimlessly paced through the room, unsure where to go or who to talk to—there was no steward or secretary waiting for guests to appear.

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