What came next, was that Bard Aiken reached down for his lute, and made sure of the tuning. Once the strings were set to his liking, he began to play, very softly. Mags listened to the wandering notes, thinking about Lena, wondering what her night was holding. Was she feeling happy and warm and safe, surrounded by her friends and family? Or was she feeling anxious, strained, wondering if she could possibly live up to the expectations they had for her? He sometimes thought that her anxiety over doing well would eat her alive.

Aiken spoke over the music, his voice as soft as the notes, but startling Mags nonetheless.

“This is a song I learned from my mentor, who was taught it by his mentor, Bard Stefen, who wrote it,” said Aiken, as his fingers moved from aimless half-melody to the first chords of the song itself.

:Bard Stefen?: he thought, startled. :The famous Bard Stefen?:

:Yes,: Dallen replied simply, which made Mags’ eyes widen. He had read about Herald Vanyel and Bard Stefen, and they had seemed as unreal and impossible as just about everything else he read of. Yet here was someone who had learned this song—written by Stefen—from someone else, who had in his turn learned it from Stefen directly.

Suddenly the tale of Vanyel became real. Just as tales of starvation and poverty had become real to the guests at the dinner table because of his presence.

It was . . . unsettling.

As the song was unsettling, a vivid word picture of another, long-ago Midwinter Eve, when the writer was snowed in, stuck in some remote place, all alone, with only his music and his memories to sustain him through the long, bitter night.

The Bard finished the song, and somewhat to Mags’ surprise, handed the lute to the man sitting next to him.

“I can’t boast of having a song at my fingertips written by Stefen,” said the man, who Mags had not recognized in the dark but who he now saw was the priest, Father Gellet. “But this is what I do have.”

Mags expected something religious, and indeed, it could have been described as a hymn—but it was never meant for choirs. This was a song in a melancholy, minor key, and yet, it was about hope. It began in the depths of this, the longest night of the year. “What if morning never comes?” it asked. But there was a reply.

“When rose the pole star bright, the world was filled with light, and in the killing cold, a song breathed through the night.”

In the song, one by one, all the birds that had been shivering in the chill raised their voices at the sight of that star, singing the hope, the surety, that the gods were good and morning would come again, because it had so been promised.