Singing in the Rain

The convoy of refugees from King's Reach is serenaded by a mysterious bard.

41.

Singing in the Rain

 

The rain was relentless and the day grew darker and drearier by the hour.   The convoy of wagons fought through it for a while until finally word came down the line to stop until the storm passed.   Everyone retreated into the wagons and Aedric told Mutt to go get some rest.   The Goblin grabbed a blanket and curled up into a tight ball near to Carn, who had fallen into a deeper sleep after hours of softly moaning in pain.  

 

Aedric pulled down the flap to keep the blowing rain from coming through from the driver’s seat.   He felt very bad for the horses out in the harsh weather, but they were on the stone pavement of the King’s Highway and the land around them was farmland, with the nearest house probably several miles away. Even if they found a farm, there would be far too many in the convoy to find shelter for all of them.

 

They’d just have to wait it out and hope no enemy was following them in the horrid weather.  The sky grew extremely dark and the rain fell in sheets, which, combined with the wind, made it sound like they were camped out directly under a huge, roaring waterfall.

 

As he slid down into a reclining position, trying to find a comfortable spot in the old wagon, Snoe threw a blanket over him, and then slid down beside him, wrapped up in a blanket of her own.

“I love the rain, but I’m not sure I like it right now.” She said to him in a whisper, but loud enough to be heard over the roar from the elements outside.

 

“This is rather rough.   It’s not exactly been the week I had imagined.”  He laughed at the thought, finding it amusing to think that less than a week ago he was dreaming of killing Duke and Duchess Dullerm, and now he was laying in a damp wagon, shivering next to their daughter and was very glad for her company.

“How’s your skin doing?   Is it still sensitive to every touch?”

“Well, not as bad, I guess.   I’m sure it will take some time.   I hope your father will let me join the other knights in whatever he has planned.”

“I’m sure he will if you’re able.” She replied, but her glowing red eyes had tears in them and a slightly distant look.

“Are you okay?”

“Just thinking.”  She said with a sniffle.

“Your sisters?”

“Yes.   Sirya loved to sit and listen to the rain.  She used to sit and hold Aidan and rock her for hours while it rained.  Aidan may be too young to know what is going on, but somehow I suspect she’ll really miss her sister too.”

 

“I hadn’t heard where your baby sister was during the attack on the palace.”

“Well, remember Mom wanted me to watch her instead of going with you?   When I told her no, she got some of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting to babysit her.   They were hiding in the basement when the fireball set the palace on fire.   Mom of course thought of them, because of Aidan, so we got them out at the first.   I’d say she was the luckiest one of my family; uninjured and too little to really know what happened.   I wish I could forget it all.”

“Snoe, I’m deeply sorry that you have to go through all of this.   Your family has experienced too much grief.”

“Yeah.” She replied, blinking back tears. 

 

Suddenly the sound of a man singing loudly while playing what sounded like a lute, came from somewhere outside in the rain.   Aedric and Snoe looked at each other, and Mutt stirred and sat up as well.

 

“Who’s singing out in the rain?”  He asked sleepily.

“Surely it’s someone in one of the other wagons.”  Aedric replied, but his Elven ears told him that unless the rainy weather was playing tricks on his hearing, the minstrel was standing somewhere off the road to their left.  

 

Aedric crawled over to the flap and pulled it open, only to get a face full of blown rain.   It was raining so hard he couldn’t even see out of the front of the wagon.   It was as if a grey veil had been thrown over them.   The singing seemed to come from somewhere off to their left, up on the embankment to the edge of the King’s Highway.

“Whoever he is, he’s singing out in a raging thunderstorm!”  Aedric told Snoe as she popped her head through the flap to see.   The rain was filling up the driver’s seat of the wagon, and he motioned for the girl to go back into the back, then crawled through as well.

“I’m not going out there to find out in this mess, unless he begins chanting a spell or something.   He’s obviously insane.”

“Shh!”  Mutt motioned to them, “Listen - recognize the song?”

The two Elves tilted their heads and listened, and over the roar of the pouring rain came a familiar nursery tune:

 

 

Redbird, Redbird, says, sitting in a tree,

‘Who’s as smart and beautiful as me?’,

Causes Blue Jay to laugh and squawk,

Ignored by the Eagle and scorned by the Hawk,

 

Redbird, redbird, sitting on a fence,

Decided revenge would make the most sense,

Flew over Blue Jay, dropped a stone on his head,

Blue Jay squawked and fell over dead,

 

Redbird, redbird, flying in the sky,

Sees the Hawk soaring way up high,

He flew to Eagle, said, ‘Don’t you know it’s true,

Hawk thinks he is a better bird than you,

 

Redbird, Redbird watching from his nest,

Hawk and Eagle arguing whose best,

Plucking out their feathers, clawing out their eyes,

Hawk lost all his feathers, so he falls down, then dies,

 

Redbird, redbird, laughing in a tree,

‘Who’s as smart and crafty now as me?,

Eagle hears him bragging and forces him to pay,

Three red feathers to Eagle every day.

 

 

Then the tune abruptly changed to a somber tone, which Aedric recognized after a moment, as a section of the long Dwarven bard tune, “Doom of the Mountain Home”:

 

 

Grim old Derrin, bid his son to go,

Go to the Fae king, in the forest down below,

Say unto Elolmorin, ‘Derrin bids thee well,

Trust not the rebels; send their lot to hell’,

 

Elolmorin, the Fae King, bid Rhelom rise,

‘Say unto thy father, ‘thou speakest to me lies,

Poison are your words, dwarf, betrayer of thou friend,

We support the rebels, until the bitter end’.

 

 

The tune went back again to the nursery rhyme, repeating the same lyrics, and then once again moving to the Dwarven verses.   Then there was silence.   For a very long moment they all sat still, listening for anything, but it became apparent that nothing else was going to be sung. 

 

Aedric again pulled the flap to the driver’s compartment open and the rain still was blowing in, but he went on this time and peered from around the canopy over the driver’s seat in the direction from which the singing had come.

 

In the heavy rain, he could not see anyone or anything on top of the embankment.   He could see several people looking out from the shelter of other wagons, also apparently wondering about the crazy minstrel, but none were brave enough to get drenched to look for him.

 

As the rain soaked him to the core, Aedric too decided to return to the relative dryness of the wagon, and so he climbed back into the back, where Mutt and Snoe sat waiting for him.

 

“No-one was there.” He explained, mumbling thanks to the albino girl for an offered towel to dry his head.

“I’ve heard that tune before.” Snoe said as he dried himself off, “It’s a nursery rhyme - at least the tune was.”

“What about that second part - that didn’t sound familiar to me, though the first one did seem vaguely familiar.”   Mutt asked.

“They both were sung in Faesidhe - the language of my father’s people.”  Aedric told them as he sat back in the wagon.

“I thought it sounded like Faesidhe - my father taught us the language, but we never use it, so I am extremely rusty.   Aedric, is that nursery rhyme common among the Faesidhe?”

 

“No, that is what is strange.   The first tune was a common human nursery rhyme, but the singer sang it in Faesidhe - which I’ve never heard it sang.  Also, he jumbled up two of the birds - the Blue Jay was the main character and the Redbird was the one who had the rock dropped on his head.   Odd that it would be transposed like that.”

“What about the second tune?   Is that Faesidhe too?”  Mutt wondered.

“The song is part of the epic Dwarven saga, ‘Doom of the Mountain Home’.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that!   Thorm sings it sometimes when he is feeling sad.”   Mutt exclaimed, but then realization that the Dwarf was dead hit him and his excitement was snuffed out, “Well, he used to sing it.”

“I’ve heard it sang too, but not like that - it was in Faesidhe too, wasn’t it?!”  Snoe glanced over to Aedric, who nodded.

“Yes, and the Faesidhe don’t sing that song, as it dealt with a time that there was a degree of friendship between humans and the Faesidhe.    The King of ‘the Fae’ in that line, Elolmorin, was my ancestor… as well as yours, Snoe.”

 

“My ancestor?  Really?   A Faesidhe King?”

“That is what your father told me.”

“That’s fascinating; I never really thought about being descended from the Faesidhe Kings.   So that would make us distant cousins, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.” The Goblin said, “The odd tunes were both sang in Faesidhe, not their native tongues, and the second one was about your ancestor.”

“It sounds to me like the mysterious bard was trying to tell us something.”   Aedric interjected.

“So you think that message was for us?”   Snoe asked.

“Or for all of us in this convoy.   I’m not sure who it was meant for.   But I think Mutt is on to something here.   I suspect it was sung the way it was for a specific reason.   To make us realize something.”    

“But what?”  Mutt asked.

“Well, let’s analyze it and see if we can figure it out.”  Snoe suggested, and they all leaned back against the wagon to consider it.

“Alright,” Snoe began, “Let’s see; the first part is a children’s nursery rhyme, yet it was sung in Faesidhe.   The redbird and blue jay roles were transposed in the song.”

“Does the song tell of something that actually happened, using childish images?”  Mutt pondered, “Sometimes they do that, you know.”

“It does indeed.” A man’s voice came from the outside of the wagon, just on the other side of the canvas.   The three of them jumped in alarm at the voice.

“Who’s there?”  Aedric challenged, but the man did not respond.   Yet they felt someone climbing up into the driver’s seat.  

A moment later the flap to the back flipped open and a very wet Duke Dullerm crawled through, after scanning the situation in the wagon for an instant.

“Sir Aedric, it is good to see you conscious.” The half-Drow said to him.   The man looked solemn and very weary and it was obvious that the deaths of his daughters and the situation within the Kingdom of Northmarch weighed extremely heavy upon him.  

“Your Grace, I am extremely sorry to have learned of the deaths of your daughters.   I want you to know that I vow before Yesh to serve under your command in any way you see fit to use me.   I have come to terms with my own place in the greater scheme of things, and I want to assist in setting things right again in Northmarch.”

 

Eleazar nodded, smiling slightly for an instant, “Thank you, Sir Aedric, I am very glad for your willingness to serve.   You have behaved most gallantly this past week and served Queen Eioldth bravely and well.”

“I just wish I could have somehow stopped that wizard…” He trailed off, not wanting to mention anything unpleasant.

The Duke just nodded and took a dry piece of linen that Snoe offered him, to dry his face.  

He then smiled sadly at the girl and touched her cheek, “How are you today, sweetheart?”

“I’m alright; sad of course, but alright… I guess.   How’s Mom?”

“Sleeping thanks to Zeatt.   Don’t worry about her, sweetheart, she’s very strong and she’ll recover from this.   We all will.”

Snoe hugged her father, blinking back tears as the Duke turned to Mutt.

“How are you, Mutt?   Carn seems to be sleeping peacefully now; that is good.”

“Yes, Your Grace, he’ll make it, I’m quite sure.   He’ll feel completely lost without his hair, but Yesh willing, that will grow back too.   Did you hear the minstrel’s tune?”

“Everyone in the convoy did, I imagine.   It sounded as if he was right beside our wagon, but everyone in the other wagons said the same thing as well.   It was some sort of magical effect, I imagine.   I was speaking with Aeric and Alis at the rear of the train of wagons when the song began.   I rode up the side from where the sound seemed to be coming from, but I saw nothing.”

“But you heard the song the minstrel sang?”  Snoe asked her father.

“Yes, and I heard the three of you discussing it as I rode by; you are on the right path.  Let me give you a history lesson that will explain it.”

 

 

***

 

Back in Flux, Eioldth’s head was spinning from a combination of an afternoon spent in the closed quarters of Sophia’s office filled with heavy Dart’loxinchu smoke, and a quick crash course on mind-numbing machines such as the computer she was sitting at, while Sophia walked her through several procedures.

“So this… uh, ‘mouse’ controls that little arrowhead on the monitor?”  She asked, wiggling the mouse and watching the pointing device on the screen obey.

“Right then press one of those buttons; those open up programs.   And a program is….?”

“Um… let’s see, you said a computer program was a set of commands given to the computer to complete a task… right?”

“Very good!   Now the main program running on a computer is called its ‘Operating System’ and-“

They were interrupted by a flash of blue light in the office.   Eioldth jumped up in alarm but Sophia just shrugged and dragged on what Eioldth estimated must have been her 50^th Dart’loxinchu cigarette of the afternoon.

 

“It’s just Khord returning.” She told the Elven lady with a slight twinkle in her eye, though she pretended to sigh as if she was dreading the encounter, “You’ll see what I mean; he is very affectionate to me now… hopefully he’ll tone it back with you here.”

About that moment the glow materialized into the tall Drow, dressed in a black cloak and leather armor and holding a Lute that was as dripping wet as he was.

He sighed deeply as he came into being and at about the same time saw Eioldth.

 

“Queen Eioldth!   Hello!  It’s been quite some time!”

He bowed, causing water to drip all over Sophia’s desk.

“Khord!   You’re getting all my papers soaked!   What in the world happened to you?   Did you fall into a lake?”

 

The Drow backed slightly away from the desk, unfastening the drenched cloak as he did, “No, I just returned from playing the lute in a torrential downpour.”

“Yesh have mercy, but I’ve never seen it rain so hard.   I think I probably ruined the lute.”

“Why were you playing a lute in the rain?” Eioldth asked.

“I was on a mission.   You see, Aurei and Eleazar and their supporters are retreating to Westmark, but they had not considered that Redburr could have schemed this whole thing far in advance - which is actually the case.”

“So you went to warn them?”   The Elven lady asked.

 

“I wish I could have, but Yesh won’t allow that. We can’t give any information to them that they couldn’t find out on their own.   So we have to think up crafty ways to help them, while obeying Yesh’s laws.   He is actually rather amused at how we try to circumvent this rule without breaking the law.   Thankfully he allows us to continue to do this.”

 

“So how did you do this?”

“Well, we can quote writings and state common knowledge, as long as they have to put together the correlation .   So I found some appropriate bardic yarns that hopefully they will figure out.”

 

“I think you’re in luck.”  Sophia told him as she typed something into her computer, “I’ve brought up the scrying device on my computer.   Eioldth, gather around and I’ll show you how it works.”

The Elven lady moved her chair closer so she could see the computer screen, which, to her amazement, showed a clear scene of the interior of what looked to be a wagon.  She could see Snoe and Sir Aedric, along with Eleazar.

 

As Eioldth watched, Sophia got up with some effort due to her heavily pregnant form, and waddled over to her husband, “Come on you, let’s find some towels and dry you off before you get all my papers moldy.   Eioldth, just keep watching, we’ll be right back.”  

She led him through a side door to the staff break room and the door was barely closed behind them before she pushed him up against the wall and wrapping her arms tightly around his neck began to hungrily kiss him.

“Sophie!” He said with a grin.

“Shh!   Keep it down, I don’t want Eioldth to hear.”

“Hear what?”

“Well, you have to get out of those wet clothes, and I haven’t seen you all afternoon, you know.  I’ve been… lonely.”   She began unbuckling his sword belt.

“You naughty girl!” Khord was smiling from ear to ear, “She’ll hear us, you know.”

“Not if you keep it down.”

“Neither one of us is very good at that.”

“Well we’re going to have to be, because she’ll be working here until the twins arrive.   We’ll have to keep these rendezvous more clandestine.”

“Or perhaps we should keep our activity at home?”

Sophia just arched her eyebrows, “That would be the wisest thing, but this way is much more exciting!”

“You naughty girl!   Poor Eioldth!”

“Shh!  Come here…”

 

Back in the office, Eioldth was so intrigued by what she saw on the scrying device that she did not even notice how long the two were gone or the series of somewhat muffled noises that came from the other room.   Instead, she had a front row seat to all that was transpiring in the wagon.

 

Reviews

[Elina]

"...shown a clear scene of the interior..." I think "showed" would work better, here.

[Eddie Davis]

Shown and Showed, it all should be so easy to get right, but showed always seems to sound wrong to me... I don't know why.