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began playing an old lullaby. Jadus had been a better player, but Kris was surprisingly good for an amateur, and much better than Talia. He made an incredibly beautiful picture, with the golden wood gleaming against his black tunic, and his raven head bent in concentration over the strings. He was almost as much a pleasure to watch as to listen to.
    “Any requests?” he asked when he’d finished.
    “ ‘Sun and Shadow,’“ several people called out at once.
    “All right,” Dirk replied, “But I want a volunteer to sing Shadowdancer. The last time I did it, I was hoarse for a month.”
    “I could,” Talia heard herself saying, to her surprise.
    “You?” Dirk seemed both pleased and equally surprised. “You’re full of amazing things, aren’t you?” He made room beside himself; and Talia picked her way across the crowded floor, to sit shyly in the shadow he cast in the firelight.
    “Sun and Shadow” told of the meeting of two of the earliest Heralds, Rothas Sunsinger and Lythe Shadowdancer; long before they were ever Chosen and while their lives still remained tangled by strange curses. It was a duet for male and female voice, though Dirk had often sung it all himself. It was one of those odd songs that either made you hold your breath or bored you to tears, depending on how it was sung. Dirk wondered which it would be tonight.
    As Talia began her verse in answer to his, Dirk stopped wondering. There was no doubt who’d trained her—the deft phrasing that made the most of her delicate, slightly breathy voice showed Jadus’ touch as clearly as the harp he’d left her. But she sang with something more than just her mind and voice, something the finest training couldn’t impart. This was going to be one of the magic times.
    Dirk surrendered himself to the song, little guessing that he was surpassing his own best this night as well. Kris knew, as he accompanied them—and he wished there was a way to capture the moment for all time.
    The spontaneous applause that shook the rafters starded both Dirk and Talia out of the spell the music had wrapped them in. Dirk smiled with more than usual warmth at the tiny female half-hiding in his shadow, and felt his smile returned.
    “Well, we’ve paid our forfeit,” Kris said, cutting short the demands for more. “It’s somebody else’s turn now.”
    “That’s not fair,” a voice from the back complained, “How could any of us possibly follow that?”
    Someone did, of course, by changing the mood rather than ruining it by trying to sustain it. A tall, bony fellow borrowed Talia’s pipe to play a lively jig, while two men and a woman bounded into the center to dance to it. That seemed to decide everyone on a dancing-set; Talia reclaimed her pipe to join Kris, someone with a gittern, and Jeri on tambour in a series of very lively round dances of the village festival variety. As these were both strenuous and of an accelerated tempo, those who had felt lively enough to dance were soon exhausted and ready to become an audience again.
    Those who didn’t feel up to entertaining paid their “entrance fee” in food and drink; Talia saw a good many small casks of wine, cider, and ale ranged along the walls, and with them, baskets of fruit, sausages, or bread and cheese. Stray mugs and odd cups were always accumulating in the tackshed, especially during the hot summer months when Heralds and students were likely to need a draught of cool water from the well that supplied the Companions’ needs at this end of the Field. These handy receptacles were filled and refilled and passed from hand to hand with a gay disregard for the possibility of colds or fever being passed with the drink. Like Talia, most of the Heralds had brought cushions from their quarters; these and their saddles and packs were piled into comfortable lounges that might be shared or not. A few murmurs from some of the darker corners made Talia hastily avert her eyes and close her ears, and she recalled