The memory began to waver. Jack clung to it, trying to hear what the men were saying. Iagan seemed defiant as they continued to argue. But Jack knew a portion of Iagan’s dilemma. He knew how music was in the blood of a bard, simmering and pulsing through every vein. How it settled into bones and organs, aching to be released in the only way it could. Through songs and strings and voice.
When the Breccans began to beat Iagan, Jack felt something cold and slippery wend through him. They struck him, again and again, until he collapsed on the side of the road, bleeding into the grass, his harp broken beside him.
Iagan lay there for a while. It began to storm, the wind howling overhead, tearing through his hair. The rain seemed to make him stir finally, and he began to crawl home. It wasn’t his love of music, however, that drove him. It was his anger, a sharp, glittering blade in his heart.
The memory broke.
Jack shivered as his mind and senses adjusted. But his eyes flew open when he heard Adaira speak.
“Kae?”
The spirit looked weakened from sharing the pieces of her past, and she slumped back in the chair. Adaira quickly rose to attend to her, gently dabbing the sweat from her brow.
“Here, sip this if you can.” She lifted the cup of gra to Kae’s lips.
Kae sighed, but she drank. Her color returned gradually, and she looked at Jack, curious to know what he thought about seeing the bard in her memories.
Jack was troubled. He frowned as he stood, anxiously rolling his neck until it cracked. He studied the skeleton on the wall, wondering if it was Iagan’s. Elspeth had said no one knew Iagan’s true ending, but given the Breccans’ animosity toward him that Jack had seen in Kae’s memory, there was a good chance that the bard had met a painful death.
He thought for a while about what else Elspeth had told him about Iagan.
Some legends claim that the mob cut off Iagan’s hands and sliced out his tongue, leaving him to die a slow, soundless death. Other legends say that Iagan surrendered to his fellow clansmen, swearing to never play another note again if they would let him live. Some legends boast that a body was never found, that Iagan must have been drowned with his harp in the loch that surrounded his home.
Jack began to sort through the music on the table. Glancing over the notes, he was stabbed with worry by what he read. This music was sinister, twisted by spite and hunger and fury. Jack leaned closer, reading more of the composition, even though it filled him with uneasiness.
This was a ballad about fire. About Ash.
Jack gathered up the pages. He needed to study this later, to pick apart the music. Going over to the wall of bones and broken harps, he found a shelf holding moldy books and scrolls. He began to sift through them, finding more music. Stray pages, bound journals, all covered in Iagan’s crooked writing.
Jack was skimming a half-composed ballad when a book fell from the shelf, landing by his boot. He paused to glance down at it, then was surprised to see that the handwriting was distinctly different from Iagan’s. He crouched to take up the book. Its first half was missing, and what remained of its spine was dangerously loose. Jack gently leafed through its delicate pages.
More stories I have gathered from the west are as follows . . .
He didn’t realize Adaira stood behind him until he felt her chin on his shoulder, her arms coming around his waist. She read as he did, and within moments she shivered.
“Spirits below,” she whispered.
“What is it, Adaira?”
Her hands fell away from him. Jack turned to look at her fully.
She was staring at the words on the speckled page, a thrilled gleam in her eyes.
“I have the other half of this book.”
Torin had recognized the broken book as soon as it fell from the shelf, landing like an offering at Jack’s feet. Graeme had originally given its counterpart to Torin, thinking the stories would help him solve the mystery of the missing girls. Torin, stubbornly thinking the spirit lore within was nothing more than children’s stories, had given the book to Sidra and Maisie, who eventually gifted it to Adaira just before she left the east.
It was humbling to think of all the hands that broken book had been passed through. Torin knew who had authored it, long ago. Joan Tamerlaine, a laird who had once dreamt of establishing peace between the clans.
He didn’t know why the book had been torn in two, or how its remains had been separated, but Jack and Adaira now had both pieces.
A clatter came from the table.
Kae still sat in the straw-backed chair, but she was watching him, more suspicious now that Adaira and Jack had departed.