The Harp of The Grey Rose by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

The hours dragged by in my prison, interminable and dreary. As soon as the door had closed behind me, I’d rushed for the window and flung the shutter open. Through iron bars, the rough winter wind blasted my cheek, and I knew there was no escape through the window. Even if I broke through the bars, there was still a drop of a hundred feet or better to the courtyard below.

Unrelenting despair gnawed at me. I paced the chamber, throwing myself onto the bed at times. Sleep was far from me, however, and no sooner was I lying down that I’d rise to pace the floor once more. At one point the door opened and three erl guards entered with lowered spears. A brown-tuniced server placed a bowl of barley-meal on the table— I flung it against the wall—and they departed, leaving me to the silence of the four bare walls. At length I knelt by the fire and tried to lose myself in the swirl of its flames.

They flickered and danced merrily and made me long for my harp so that I could play a tune for them. And with the harp, I thought, perhaps I could magic up a tune to cast down the walls of this foul keep, like Minstrel Ravendear had done when Koldeer locked him in the dungeons of Corby Crag. But this was no song of old, no tale where the brave hero was expected to prevail. I’d neither harp nor music—and if my father’s blood left me heir to any magic, it did no more than stir vaguely inside me. I had only myself, locked in this tower, and the endless dance of the flames in the hearth.

Their movement hypnotized me and seemed to spell out the tale of my failure, but with wistful understanding rather than mockery. I imagined Tess’s face amongst the flames, and it seemed that her voice issued from the heart of the fire.

Look for friends along the way, she said, and look for them in strange guises.

I smiled bitterly. There’d been one or two—Hickathrift and the dwarf Calman—but that was all. The folk of Wist-lore meant me only ill.

Tess’s face slipped away into the flames, and others took its place. I saw a childhood memory of my mother, a handsome woman with strong features and gold-green eyes that warmed a little as they looked on me. Over her shoulder I could make out my father’s visage, battle-scarred and proud.

Carjaln, my mother whispered, carjaln. The shadow-death Jot Wistlore. Carjaln. …

I shook my head, bewildered by what she said and troubled at seeing faces I knew only from Tess’s descriptions. She smiled sadly and faded. My father’s features remained a moment longer. Before he vanished, I heard his voice crying: Shield and horn, sword and spear … carjaln… .

The fire paraded a hundred faces before my eyes, both those of folk I knew and those of strangers. I saw Finan and the Trader Haberlin, the villagers of Wran Cheaping, strange grim visages of men who were war-worn and weary, beings that were more beast than man.

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