The Barrow Lands Bards



  The Barrow Lands Bards

  Mel. White

  Copyright 2011

  All Rights Reserved

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  You might also enjoy reading the graphic novel I did with the late Robert Lynn Asprin. Fans have asked over the past 20 years if there’d be a fourth volume, and I’m pleased to announce that there will be after I finish serializing the first three. I have an inker and colorist picked for the project.

  Meanwhile, you can enjoy the merry lunacy over at Radio Comix:

  https://www.radiocomix.com/duncan-and-mallory/

  The Barrow Lands

  Somewhere between Here and There in a place where we haven’t been before is a place called the Barrow Lands. It’s not quite Valhalla – there’s less quaffing and less war and more Ordinary Life in this place and if you die there, you vanish from the Barrow Lands.

  The Barrow Lands exist on a fragile fractal border of unities, where other places sometimes intrude and where it’s easy for a dreamer to fall again into another universe and keep on falling through the endless fractal chains of universes – perhaps forever.

  The oldest of the inhabitants have shaggy hair and blue-painted skin and speak a soft slurred language that no one else quite understands. They live inside large sod houses ringed by wooden henges and almost all of them avoid contact with others who come into the Barrow Lands. But sometimes one of the high Druids or high Bards of this ancient race wanders out from the nest and goes to the great city of Cithelna, where the Collegium of All Things may be found. They teach those with talent for tale spinning or music how to be bards and bardlets and once in a very rare while they teach another Druid.

  Sometimes things from other places end up in the Barrow Lands. Occasionally the Druids will summon something from elsewhere, but more often what comes into the Barrow Lands are the dreamers from other realms who never seemed to belong anywhere or anytime. Most often they stumble into a den of something that really wants an easy lunch, but occasionally they make their way to a city and become part of the Border Lands.

  And once in a while the land is shaken by strange powers and magic, for this is also the realm where the old gods go when the last of their true worshippers die.

 

  Bard to the Bone

  "But you're a PIG!"

  I arched an eyebrow at the velvet-clad human who stood before me looking outraged and possibly confused. They're a funny lot, those humans -- they accept talking wolves, cats, ducks, and unicorns but if you give them something different like a talking elephant or a musical pig, their brains seem to shut down and they start yammering in outrage.

  "I'm a bard," I said firmly.

  "But the old saying... 'you can't teach a...'"

  "...Pig to sing," I finished for him. "Yes. I know -- I know."

  "It's just not done!" His companion, a knee-high Cat, peered around his legs.

  I stared at the human. He seemed to think that during my childhood and youth, I somehow had missed the fact that I had trotters and floppy ears and a large snout. "Look," I said calmly, "You're obviously new to the Beletseri Lands, Prince... ahh..."

  "Vorlofsky," the Cat put in and bowed, sweeping the ground with the plume of his hat. The prince straightened and tried to look important. Of course he'd be a prince disguised as a doorman -- here in the Barrow Lands we had a constant flow of human questers from all the ages and all the multiverses. Even the old witch of the Amber Forests had a steady stream of royalty fetching her water and chopping her wood.

  "Vorlofsky," I said. "However, prince, this is not the land of your birth. This is the Barrow Lands; the land of faerie and myth. You've seen things here that you would never see at home and you have a talking Cat as your servant. I take it that he wasn't your servant in the land of your birth?"

  "Uh... no."

  "Well, there you go. Just because some old saying holds true in YOUR land doesn't mean it's an unchangeable law everywhere else."

  He looked indignant at that, as though the very idea of the universe not assembling itself to please humans was somehow blasphemous.

  "So," I continued, "I'm a musician and professional storyteller. You need musicians and storytellers for your feast tonight. That would be me."

  "So you say." The prince probably hadn't won any prizes for wit and intelligence in his homeland.

  I slipped my small harp out of the case. "Here... let me show you," I said and quickly plucked a chord. He looked down at the broad thick nails of my hands, and while he was staring at them, I rolled a few arpeggios and began softly singing “Aengus' Lament.”

  The Cat looked up, mouth agape. The prince stared at me, mouth agape. It didn't do much for either of their appearances. I gave them just a taste -- it never works to give away the whole thing -- stopping just at his question to the sorcerer. They stood like stones through the whole short performance, open-mouthed.

  I broke the spell with a question. "So, can I perform for the court tonight?"

  "Uhm... sure." The prince tried to look unimpressed, but he wasn't fooling anyone. What's your name?" he asked as he fumbled in his belt pouch and carefully extracted a well-chewed pencil and a sheet of parchment.

  "Josefina Javelina," I answered.

  "Look more like a Berkshire than a javelina," The Cat snorted.

  I eyed his shabby tabby fur. "We all can't be born Siamese with royal names and lineage," I said sweetly, "When I became a Bard, I took a new name. It's tradition. Like the great King Panochon, our host."

  "That isn't his name?" the prince blinked.

  "Oh no. He was Jack Sleepyshins, the son of the Lake Widderley widow. After he killed the thunder giant and the fire giant and took this castle from the stone giant here, he changed his name to something a bit more appropriate. It's a tradition here in the Barrow Lands when we rise above humble beginnings. Your Cat friend here did the same thing." That last was a guess, but from the rather guilty start that the Cat gave, my guess was right on the mark.

  The prince eyed his companion suspiciously "You never said." He gave the Cat a hard stare.

  "Oh. Well. But look, it's almost time for the feast to start," the Cat said, changing the subject quickly. "So... Josefina Javelina. Very nice. Very bardic. Good act for the dessert course, don't you think?"

  The Prince chewed on the end of his pencil and stared at the paper. "And, of course, it has an unusual spelling," I said, coming to the Prince's rescue. "It's Ho-sa-feen-ah Hav-uh-leee-nah," I said, spelling it phonetically. I started wondering how Vorlofsky spelled his own name and just how badly he mangled it when he wrote it.

  He finished with a flourish, adding an "i" with a loopy circle as a dot to my name. "You will sing at the eighth hour," Vorlofsky said, in the manner of someone granting a great boon.

  I glanced at the list of mostly misspelled names -- Morgan the Gray, Bonnan Adal, and Wrosche the Watcher -- who was referred to as "Wrosche the Wretched" behind his back. They all specialized in mournfully dire ballads full of dark predictions. This was going to be an easy gig -- the crowd would be more than ready for something light and perky after four hours of doom and gloom. I set my harp back in her case and smiled.

  "Brunton will show you to your room," the prince said, peering down his nose at me.

  "This way," said the Cat, and trotted down the hall. I picked up my harp and my rucksack and followed.

  Dinner was anothe
r of those tiresome staged affairs that so impressed the royalty of the Lands Beyond. Everyone wore velvet and lace, and thirteen migrant princes served various functions from door guard to serving boy to wine bearer. We bards were seated on the lower level, "beneath the salt" and were given a light meal and a little wine to stave off hunger until we performed. We could sing three songs and could keep any coins thrown our way during the performance.

  As I'd expected, Morgan the Gray's performance during the appetizers put the crowd in a solemn mood with a depressingly long song about a dying lover and poisons and an unfaithful spouse. Bonnan Adal followed him and managed to darken the mood further with the old standard "Hangman's Future", and the crowd seemed ready to fling themselves off the nearest cliff after Worsche the Wretched tried to finish them off with the dire... and interminable... "Ending Saga", a collection of 700 rhymed quatrains about the horrible things we could expect in the very near future. It featured fires, floods, plagues, rains of suspicious goo, comets, cupids, and thunderbolts