The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [61]
The truth was, he had not noticed any of the animals who had died. They had been no more than animals to him then.
Richon took another sip of his sharply flavored drink, very different from the ale from the palace. But he realized he was no longer here for oblivion. He was here to learn of magic, and found himself hoping as he had always refused to hope before.
“Tell me how you use your magic,” he said to the patch-eyed man.
He shrugged. “To call to the birds to get away from my field so as to have more food to harvest come fall. To walk through the forest and call out to the wolves to leave me be. To give the mice one loaf of bread to eat through a month’s time instead of watching them take bites of each loaf as it’s fresh from the oven.”
He turned to Richon, suspicious once more. “You don’t use your magic for such as that?”
Richon shook his head.
The patch-eyed man stood up. “You think you’re better than we are and won’t use your magic on ordinary things?”
“No, no,” Richon said.
But the patch-eyed man put up his fists and threw one at Richon’s face.
Richon flew several feet across the room and fell, crumpling a chair behind him.
He groaned.
The alehouse owner ran toward him, clucking his tongue. “Sir, let me help you up. Shall I find you a room? Do you need a physician?”
Richon was bleeding from a cut on the face.
He was stunned.
He did not know whether to think of it as a prize or an insult that at last he had been treated as a man rather than a king.
The patch-eyed man stood, finished the rest of his drink, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Let’s leave this wretched place,” he said to the drunken man.
“Yes, go, go,” said the alehouse owner, bending over Richon once more.
Richon struggled to his feet. He wanted to call the other two men back. There was so much more they could tell him.
But then the drunken man took a step toward Richon.
“The great magics come latest,” he said. “And are most hidden. But they will out.” He nodded to Richon, then stumbled out.
Suddenly Richon found himself thinking of the royal steward, who had seemed to have no ear for music. He hated the sound of it, and was always complaining about the noise. He had not the power to ban it, but he often chose to absent himself from occasions where music would be playing unavoidably—dances, plays, tales sung by bards.
Yet Richon remembered a woman who had once played the harp at the palace. She had called to the royal steward and played a special song for him. It had not sounded particularly beautiful to Richon, but the royal steward was moved beyond words. It brought tears to his eyes and made him tremble so that he could not even sit on a chair.
“What happened?” Richon had asked, staring at the woman and at his steward.
“He has a sensitive ear for music,” said the woman.
“He hates music,” Richon insisted.
“No,” said the woman. “I have seen his like before. He only hates music that is not perfect. Absolutely perfect. And even of those who play music well, so few can play it perfectly. He has simply never had a chance to hear perfect music before. But now he has.”
Richon watched as the royal steward struggled to regain control of himself. Eventually he had made his way to his own chambers, though Richon had heard nothing from him for the rest of the night and much of the following day.
The woman with her harp had gone the next morning.
At last, when the royal steward had emerged, Richon asked if he should have kept the woman there, to offer more of her unique sounds.
But the royal steward had shaken his head, speaking as if to himself—for he had never been so open with Richon before. “Never again. It unmanned me very nearly,” he said quietly. He motioned to the place where the woman had sat, playing the harp. “She seemed to think it a gift in me that I could feel it so deeply and so rarely. But to me it seems more of a curse.”
Richon had thought he understood then. The royal steward had gone on as he always had, avoiding music whenever he could.
As for the woman with the