Cart and Cwidder (The Dalemark Quartet 1) - Page 30

“Go ahead,” said Brid.

Kialan took up Dagner’s cwidder and tuned it without needing to be given a note. Moril and Brid looked at one another. Neither of them could do that. And from the moment Kialan started to play, they knew they were listening to a gifted person very much out of practice. If he did not sing as well as he played, it was merely because he was the age when his voice still moved troublesomely from low to high. Moril vividly remembered the trouble Dagner had had at the same age.

What Kialan sang was a song of the Adon’s, one that Clennen never sang in the South.

“Unbounded truth is not a thing

Cramped to time and bound in place—”

“Ooh!” said Brid, looking nervously round.

“No one about. Shut up!” said Moril.

Kialan did that part meticulously in the right old style. But then he gave Moril a bit of a wink and dropped into the same kind of different fingering Moril had used in Neathd

ale. The song seemed to come alive.

“Truth strangely changes space,

By right of its reality.

It moves the hills containing me

Wider than the world, or small

As in a nut. Truth is free

And laws are stones, or not at all,

And men without it nothing.”

“Oh, I liked that!” said Moril.

“I took a leaf out of your book,” Kialan said, rather apologetically. “I don’t like the old style either, and I don’t see why old things should be sacred. Wow! I’m out of practice, though! Do you think I’ll be any use to you?”

“You know you will,” said Brid. “You big fraud. If you’re that good, why on earth didn’t you say so before? Father would have put you in the show, instead of making you walk through all the towns.”

“I know he would!” Kialan said feelingly. “He’d have dressed me in scarlet and flaunted me. I didn’t quite like to say anything at first—you were all so excellent—and as soon as I realized what your father was like, I’d have died rather than tell him. It was frightening enough walking.”

The upshot of this was that Olob quietly pulled the gleaming cart onto the green of the village a mile or so on, and three people stood up to sing and play. Moril and Kialan were nervous, Brid, as usual, as confident as a queen. Moril did one or two of Dagner’s songs, but mostly they sang ballads, since those were Brid’s specialty and Kialan’s voice was not equal to anything more difficult. A scattering of people listened and clapped. Someone asked for an encore, and Brid gave them “Cow-Calling.” They got a little money, enough to buy eggs, milk, and butter, and a woman gave Brid a basket of somewhat withered apples. It was not a raving success, but it was no failure either.

“We can do it!” said Brid.

Moril smiled, and strummed his cwidder as they took to the road again. Every so often he played a tune in earnest, and Kialan would come in, too, on Dagner’s cwidder. Kialan was getting more in practice every moment. They experimented, and tried for effects and new settings. Moril had seldom enjoyed making music so much. He almost wished the distance to Hannart were twice as long.

10

They had a sort of cheese omelet for lunch, sitting on a point of green land between two brisk streams. Kialan would have it that what they were eating was scrambled eggs. Brid disagreed. Moril did not join in the argument because he was listening to the sound of the water. It made him think of the North. The sound of water running was never far away in the North. He was dreamily considering whether one could make a tune that captured the noise when Brid shook him sharply and told him they were moving.

“You didn’t have to do that!” said Kialan.

“Why not? You know how maddening he is when he goes into a dream,” Brid retorted.

“Yes, but it’s just his way,” said Kialan. “He’s about six times as awake as most people, really. I bet he heard every word we said—didn’t you, Moril?”

“I suppose I did,” Moril said, in some surprise.

“Can I drive this next stretch?” Kialan asked.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones The Dalemark Quartet Fantasy
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