and my companions from thieves and then escorted us back here to the market so that no harm could befall us on the way.”
To the Bard’s credit, he managed this with a straight face.
“Did they now?” the father asked with a great, booming laugh.
His laughter did nothing to dim the Arrows’ matching expressions of defiance.
“We did save them, Father—”
“Without us, they would have been taken by wolves—”
“Without us, they would be dead, burned, bitten, stabbed—”
The stall owner whistled sharply, and the Arrows fell silent. He held out his hand to Madoc. “I’m Bjorn. Thank you for returning my lost demons.”
Madoc smiled. “It was a pleasure.”
“Can I offer you a reward?”
The Bard shook his head. “You’re the one who should be rewarded. Raising these lively little archers must be no easy feat.”
Bjorn laughed again. “Truth, Bard. Truth.”
The three Arrows jumped on top of the stall counter and waved farewell as we walked away.
“I hope we meet them again someday,” I said, watching them over my shoulder.
Stefan nodded. “We will if the gods are kind.”
Gyda chuckled. “Little rascals.”
Ink lowered her hood, and her red curls glowed in the firelight. “In a few years, they will make excellent Quicks.”
“Children like that are why I return to roam Vorseland every spring,” Madoc said. “Fierce, brave, and mischievous—Vorse to the blood and to the bone.”
We moved down a side path strung with garlands of wildflowers. Half-naked men and women frolicked beside us, holding torches high above their heads. They were dressed as Elsh forest sprites, their skin painted blue with woad, their clothing woven of bark and vines.
One leaned in close to me as I passed, her blue braids pressing into my cheek. “Let him go,” she whispered. “Free your heart and find another, my love.”
“What did she say to you?” Gyda asked after the dancers had passed.
“She told me to release Viggo and take another lover.”
Gyda wove her arm through mine. “Good advice, no doubt.”
I nodded. “Easier said than done.”
I’d felt close to Viggo when he and I were living in his hut. I often convinced myself he was merely off in the hills with the sheep and would return at any moment. But since taking to the road …
The shepherd was drifting away from me.
I had an intuition that the longer I wandered with these Bards, the more Viggo would disappear from my memory … until suddenly he would vanish entirely, as if he’d never lived.
I worried the same would happen with Morgunn. The days would pass, and she would fade from my thoughts, fade from my heart, even as I drew closer to Lake Le Fay, even as I pursued her captors and tried to rescue her.
We stopped to watch four women dance on a low wooden stage. They were dressed as ravens, long, dark cloaks, black masks with black pointed beaks. A young girl stood in the corner, beating out a hypnotic rhythm on a drum that was twice her size.
The women danced like fire—nimble, flickering flames, arms raised, lithe bodies coiling together under a sky of butter-yellow stars.
“It’s a dance of death,” Stefan whispered as one of them knelt, head back, throat exposed.
Another dancer joined them. She climbed onto the shoulders of the tallest dancer while a third retrieved an ax from a corner of the stage.
“I recognize this. It’s the story of Frey and the Boneless Mercies,” I said.
Madoc leaned toward me, lips to my ear. “Watch the ending closely.”
The final steps depicted the Mercies’ battle with Logafell. It was a dance of the Seventh Degree, ax blades flashing. It was a dance of pain, a Boneless Mercy falling into a crumpled mass of long hair and dark cloak on a corner of the stage.
The drumbeats swelled. The young girl struck the drum with two mallets now, louder … louder …
One of the raven-cloaked dancers threw a dagger, and the giant fell. The two dancers landed hard on the stage with a thud that made my heart shake.
The drum went silent. No one in the audience spoke or moved for several long moments after the performance finished.
“It was glorious,” I said to the performers when they took their bows at last. I placed two klines on the stage, my heart full.
The Bards kept one hand on their daggers as we strolled down another row of stalls. Stefan and Ink were growing more and more relaxed, lulled by the endless wonder and beauty of the Night Wild, as well as the trance sage. Madoc remained alert, eyes scanning the crowd.
He