Songs of Love & Death

She scrambled up on the debris raft, slipped, fell between pieces of wreckage, and for one nightmare instant was trapped beneath it. Then she saw a slice of daylight and frantically clawed her way up into it. She got her head above water, hooked an arm over a tree trunk, and then just had time to see the bridge bearing down on her. “Damn you El!” she shrieked to the merciless sky. He’d taken everything from her, father—lover, even her precious blue boots. Taking her life would probably be the only act of mercy he ever committed.

Much later, she would wonder if she said those words aloud, or if a god did not need the words spoken to respond to them. The last thing El would do was to give mercy to anyone. By a superhuman effort, she pulled herself up on the floating junk just as the bridge hit it. Timbal saw it turn as it came, saw it crashing toward her, and then saw a blast of white light.

A DRENCHED WOMAN awoke on the bank of a river. Her wet hair was strewn across her face. Her clothes were waterlogged, her skirts tattered. She was barefoot. Blood was thick on her hands. It took her a little while to understand that a cut on her head was still seeping blood. And she could not recall who she was or how she had come to be there.

The sun had come out and a thin light warmed the air. She managed to stand, and then to limp. She followed the river downstream until she saw a bridge, then climbed up the bank, through a shallow edging of forest, and found a road. She followed it, staggering gamely along until a woman driving a donkey cart came by and gave her a ride.

She awoke later in a room at an inn. She gazed around her groggily, then lifted her hands to look at the heavy bandaging that wrapped one of her forearms. Her head was bound also, her hair cut away from one side of her skull. She could not remember who she was or how she had come to the inn. A girl came to her room, bringing her a simple meal on a tray. “You’re Timbal,” the girl told her. “You used to work here, but you left here months ago. Looks like you fell in the river, or maybe got beat up and left to die in the storm. But don’t you worry. You’re safe here, and with friends. The King’s Patrol has been looking for you for quite a while. They found your father’s wagon and team, and the men who killed him. They had to sell off the team and wagon when they couldn’t find you, but the money they got for them has been waiting for you for a while now. So don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of you.”

It was all too much to take in. It took several long days for her to accept the past the innkeeper and his employees assigned to her. It took longer than that before she could cross the room without staggering sideways. Gissel, the pleasant girl who had been tending her, assured her that she had plenty of money to pay for her care, but Timbal soon insisted on coming down and resuming her tasks at the inn. The work seemed familiar and pleasant enough. Bits of her old life came back to her, and she fit them together as best she could. No one could tell her where she had gone after she left the inn’s employ, or how she had come back, and eventually she let that year of her life go. The money from her father’s team and wagon gave her a nice little nest egg, and she was able to add to it with her wages from the inn.

She cut the long hair on one side of her head to match the short curly crop that was rapidly covering the scar where the healer had stitched her scalp closed. Soon she could serve in the tavern again as well as cook in the kitchen. She made friends easily with the regulars and was a favorite with the King’s Patrol when they were in town. Her life, she decided, was good. The only time she became melancholy was when minstrels came to the inn to entertain, and even then, it was only certain old songs that brought tears to her eyes.

Three months after her accident, she was waiting tables on the evening that the good news arrived from upriver at Timberrock Keep. “Lord Just has an heir!” a young teamster announced loudly as he entered. Timbal was shocked at the roar of approval that went up. That night it seemed that everyone in the little town and surrounding farmsteads flocked into the inn to raise a mug to the wonderful tidings. Timbal was kept busy trotting back and forth from the kitchen to the hearth tables, and only learned in snatches of gossip from Gissel why the rejoicing was so raucous. It was no newborn child they celebrated; the people of Lord Just’s holdings had reluctantly given up the hope that their beloved but crippled lord could sire a child. Instead, they had lived in fear that his lands and holdings must be inherited by his cousin Lord Spindrift. All knew how he had already plunged his own inheritance into ruin and taken all his folk with it, enacting taxes no one could possibly pay and running up debts that would never be settled. The prospect of the reckless young noble becoming their lord was now at an end.