Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [97]
Nearby, a waterfall trilled across rocks with a musical tinkle. The sound was so delightful that he would have halted Avalon to listen if he held his own reins. He felt his throat choke with sorrow, and tears sprang to his eyes, as the soul-soothing sound faded into the distance.
Now he heard the wind rustling through leafy branches with a pleasant sigh. The branches whispered with a seductive tone, and birds trilled a calling song. They crossed a bridge, hoofs clattering on the wooden beams like the chiming of a massive bell.
The sound arose so rich and throaty that the prince forcibly pulled back on the stallion’s mane, for he could not bear to ride on. Someone tugged firmly upon the reins, however, and he was carried unwillingly forward.
Weeping unashamedly, he tore at the blindfold frantically, but the heavy cloth was wrapped tightly around his face. In anguish, he turned his head to savor the last, hypnotic sounds arising from the bridge.
Suddenly he heard, again, the musical chimes of a waterfall. This one sounded larger than the other, and its notes carried more force and a wider gamut of tones. If such a thing were possible, the prince thought, these sounds were even more beautiful than the other.
He made up his mind. Never again would he know happiness in the mundane world. His future lay here, in Synnoria, whether or not the beauty of the place would drive him mad. He swung a leg across Avalon’s back and started to drop to the unseen ground below.
A jangling noise struck him in the face like a bucket of icewater, stopping him just before he let go of the horse’s reins. Dissonance crashed into his ears again, and still a third time.
“No!” he cried. “I can’t hear the waterfall!”
But the jarring notes continued – the strings of a harp, plucked without tuning or harmony. Dimly, the prince heard other voices raised in protest, but the chords kept coming. Painful to the ear, absent of any musical worth, they only served to mask the sounds of the lovely waterfall.
The prince recognized the sound, if not the tone, of Keren’s harp. “Stop!” he ordered. “Stop that instrument!”
Futilely, he shouted at the bard, railing against Keren until his voice grew hoarse. And all the time, Keren played the harp loudly and constantly, so that he and his companions could not enjoy the sounds of the waterfall, and the trees, and all of the things that made Synnoria so… Seductive.
Suddenly the prince stopped shouting and felt very foolish. His resentment toward the bard quickly changed to gratitude, for he knew that without the timely sounds of the nearby harp, he would have leaped from the saddle, determined to spend the rest of his life listening to the distant harmonies in Synnoria. The prince could still hear the waterfall in the background, but the sound now arose only as minor accompaniment to the music of the bard’s harp.
Keren soon ceased the tuneless strumming and began to play a little ditty, quite profane, about an amorous barmaid. The tune displayed none of the mastery and craft that the prince had heard on other occasions, but it was such a simple and catchy melody that Tristan could not get it out of his mind.
For the rest of the day, the bard strummed his harp and sang the simple little song. The others joined in, occasionally, as his voice began to crack and waver.
Yet the chords he struck from his harp never wavered in their clarity. Tristan felt no regret when cool walls again pressed in from either side and they entered a region of deep shadows. He knew. That the seduction of Synnoria now lay behind them.
Finally Brigit called a halt, and the sisters removed the blindfolds. Once again they found themselves in a narrow canyon, surrounded by sheer rock walls. Canthus jumped against Tristan, licking his face as the prince dismounted. With a squawk, Sable settled to the limb of a scraggy tree that somehow grew