Patricia Kennealy-Morrison - Keltiad Tales of Arthur 03 by The Hedge of Mist

Patricia Kennealy-Morrison - Keltiad Tales of Arthur 03 by The Hedge of Mist

Author:The Hedge of Mist [Mist, The Hedge of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-29T13:07:56+00:00


“She thinks about those things because of all this which is on her,” I said, answering Ferdia at last. “If anything can help her through these few days—”

I bade him distracted farewell, and turned my steps away from the palace, past the House of Peers and Senate and Assembly buildings, past the house of the Ban-draoi, to Seren Beirdd, which rose complete now in shining newness on the middle part of the palace plateau, hard by the entrance to the Way of Souls. And tried not to think of where that way led—up to the royal barrowing-ground at Ni-maen.

Star of the Bards was a fair house, for music and for words. Built of the lovely gold-veined creamy granite from the quarries of the Dragon’s Spine, it stood eight-rayed and many-towered around a central grassy court. Cloisters and smaller quadrangles filled out its interior, and at night its lantern windows could be seen from most quarters of the City.

I loved the place—indeed, I had had no light hand in its designing, for who knew better than bards themselves what bards might need by way of working precincts?—and spent more time there than my other duties did strictly allow. But I did not go there now to play musical truant, pleasant thought though that was. Nay: I had business, terrible business, with the head of the Order—business that bore on the two desperate situations in which Keltia now found itself. And I had found help here, before, when I came to Seren Beirdd in need.

Perhaps I should clear up one minor matter, before you in your rightful confusion begin calling hard on me for misleading you: I was not, neither at this time nor any time past or to come, the leader of the Bardic Order. Oh, to be sure, sometimes, often, I was called Chief Bard in popular nomenclature, and Penbardd by those who would honor or flatter; but in strictest truth I held no title in my Order grander than that of ollave. And that was by any way of weighing quite grand enough for anyone.

No more did I covet such rank: To be head of the Order of Bards was like herding cats. It was to be more the chieftain of an unruly fractious clann, to be more jurisconsult or administrator or politician than practicing bard; not my idea of a good time, or even a desirable one. ‘Chief Bard’ was a title used for any ollave in these days—the actual, presiding head of the order was known as the Blue Bard; or Derwydd, meaning Trunk of the Oak; or Cath-Awen even, Head of the Holy Inspiration—and was by no means the codified title given to the chief of the order that it would later become. Just so you know.

Any road, I went in at the hall’s west door, stopping even in my haste and preoccupation to marvel yet again at the wonder of the carvings upon it—a great frieze-fan of saints and kings and gods and bards and



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