Mark of the Black Arrow Read Online Free PDF

value.” He shook his head. “Are you going to take all my time with questions, or would you like to hear the story?”
    Her face grew solemn. “One more question, Da.”
    “Come out with it.”
    “Does he use magic to win this time?”
    “No, dear, he uses strength, and cunning.”
    Her face fell.
    Her father winked. “And maybe just a
little
magic.”
    *  *  *
    A tiny glimmer of candlelight spilling through a cracked shutter was the only thing that marked the small chapel from the deep gloom of the woods around it. It crouched in the green shroud of Sherwood as if playing a hiding game. Midday, and yet this deep in Sherwood it was near dark, everything shadowed by the boughs of the trees above.
    It lent the very air a sense of otherworldliness, as if the forest had always existed and always would, locked outside of time itself. The footpath to the small circular building had become overgrown to the point that any visitor had to pay close attention to his step, or be tripped by root or bramble.
    The low light gleamed off the lithe man’s clothing, picking out the brighter threads of his tunic, trousers, and cloak. In the forest he felt connected to the world of the ancient Celt, the epitome of every bard that ever strode beneath the boughs of holy trees and crossed the mythical ground. Here it was still Avalon, still the Isle of the Mighty, a giant sacred grove that once housed the druids and the bards of old.
    It made him tingle down to his bones.
    His hand moved to his shoulder, to the ancient yew harp that rode there, strapped securely in place. The instrument faced out in its harness, laying in the curve of his chest and arm, ready always to play, able to be protected by him while also letting the harp absorb the world around him, adding to her magic. Slender fingers brushed the strings, calloused tips raising humming notes from the gold, the silver, and the brass. It wasn’t a song, just a snatch of sound, a tiny run of notes that spilled out of the instrument that he’d been handed down. The sound danced in the space around him.
    The harp itself hailed back to the time of the druid, long before Christ came to England. A bard of his line had carved it from a yew tree born in this very forest. Now it was his to carry, his to use in the tradition of all who came before.
    Storyteller.
    Minstrel.
    History keeper.
    Lawgiver.
    Myth spinner.
    Bard.
    There were other storytellers who roamed the land, but none of them had his connection to the ancients, none of them could wield the magic of song as he could. It weighed heavily on him sometimes that, unless he sired children or took an apprentice, when he was gone it would all be lost.
    His mind began weaving a song as he walked closer to the chapel. As he stepped on the tiny flatstone threshold, the door opened. The man who stood there was short, thick, and covered in the brown wool of a monk’s robe—he looked like a tree shorn of limb and left to only trunk.
    A smile cracked the monk’s round face. “My dear friend,” he said, motioning the bard inside.
    Stepping through the door frame, Alan-a-Dale turned to see the monk lean outside and look left, then right before coming back in, shutting the plank door, and throwing a thick iron bolt to lock them in. He turned and opened his arms.
    “It’s so very good to see you,” he said as Alan grasped his forearms in a brotherly greeting. “I trust you did not encounter any of the fey folk on your way here?”
    Alan wasn’t certain if the monk was in earnest or jesting. Sherwood Forest was rumored to be home to fey: goblins, ghosts, and other such creatures in which some believed strongly, while others scoffed.
    Well, scoffed at the fey at any rate
.
    He had yet to meet a person who didn’t think the forest was haunted, even if they didn’t believe in faeries.
    “None chose to make themselves known to me on this day,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I should have been glad of the company, though.