Kevin met Berak’s inquisitive stare as innocently as he could. Forcing a grin, the bardling said, “Well, it’s been a long day. If you don’t mind, we’ll spend the night here with your people.”
Berak was plainly disappointed not to have learned any deep secrets from his guests, but he bowed from the waist. “Our camp is, of course, your camp. Make yourselves at home.”
As soon as they were alone in the shelter of a wagon, Tich’ki popped out of hiding. “You could have slipped me more food!” she complained to Lydia.
“And have everyone wonder why I was feeding my hair?”
Naitachal ignored them. “What of Berak’s news? That sounded truly ominous to me.”
“Me, too,” Kevin agreed. “This isn’t just some little tourney the count decided to throw, not if he’s calling in all his allies to hear some grand declaration.”
“Exactly.” The Dark Elf frowned. “It just might be that Volmar is gambling on Carlotta’s behalf, staking all, as the saying goes, on one throw of the dice.”
“If that’s true,” Lydia mused, “then losing one Hole bardling—sorry, Kevin—and one spell isn’t going to stop them. They must have had this plan in motion for months.”
“Sure,” the bardling added, “and I’m one very small fly in the ointment—One they think they can afford to remove at their leisure.” He fought down the surge of indignant pride: he was small and insignificant—so far. “This could be just the chance we need to deliver the spell.”
“If we can take these folk into our confidence,” Naitachal said.
“If we dare,” Lydia muttered.
“If we can,” Kevin added quietly, “in good conscience expose them to our own danger.”
“Ah. Well. There is that.”
The bardling glanced at the others. “I think the best thing is for you to split up and go into hiding, first off.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lydia said. “We’re not going to—”
“Please, let me finish. There’s no point in you going into danger because—well, even if this spell works, even if Carlotta is disabled. Count Volmar won’t be. And anyone who’s with me is going to be in big trouble.”
“For a change,” Lydia said drily.
“You'll be in that trouble, too,” Naitachal reminded the bardling. “I’ve already ... lost ... one friend. I don’t want to lose another.”
“I don’t want to be lost, either’ But ...” Kevin shook his head. “To put it bluntly, I’m going to be worried enough as it is. I don’t want to have to worry about anyone else. Particularly not those I care about. Or those who’ve helped us, either.”
“The minstrels.”
“Exactly. I’d like to travel to the castle with them; it does seem to be the obvious way back in. But I really want to keep their involvement in all this to an absolute minimum.” Kevin gave a shaky sigh. “There’s not enough time for anything other than what I think knights call desperation moves. There won’t be any heroes coming out of this.”
“Sounds like you’ve gained some sense at least,” said a sardonic voice. “Maybe even enough to keep you from being killed.”
Kevin nearly sprained his neck twisting about in shock. That voice ... It was only Berak who stood there, and yet ...
“Don’t you think the masquerade has gone far enough?” Naitachal asked the minstrel.
Berak grinned. “You knew what I was right away, didn’t you?”
The Dark Elf grinned in return. “Even as you recognized me.”
Lydia looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”
“Just this.” Berak murmured a quiet Word. And ... it wasn’t so much that his face and form changed as it was that a masking glamour seemed to fall away. Kevin stared. How could he ever have missed how high those cheekbones were» how sharply slanted those eyes? And that hair was surely far too silky to be human hair—
“You’re an elf!” Kevin gasped in alarm. “You’re all elves!”
Berak chuckled, “We’re all elves,” he agreed, “all my troupe.” The minstrel gestured to where they, laughing, had also shed their glamour of humanity.
Tich’ki wriggled out of hiding. “So that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Clever disguises! So obvious, right under the humans’ noses and not one of them ever noticed!”
Berak’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the fairy’s sudden appearance, but all he did was dip his head in polite acknowledgement and say smoothly, “Humans do tend to see what they expect to see.”
Lydia snorted. “No wonder Seritha’s Power was so much more than anything a human could master!”
“Exactly.”
But Kevin was still staring. “1 know you! You’re the group who surrounded me in the forest that night! Yes, and scared the life out of me, too!”
“We were trying to scare the life into you, youngling,” Berak corrected drily. “You were much too cocky then for your own survival.”
“I don’t understand something,” Naitachal cut in. “You are very obviously White Elves, all of you, and yet you never hesitated to help an enemy.”
“A Dark Elf, you mean?” Berak raised a brow. “And are you our enemy?”
“No, of course not. But—” Naitachal gave a small sigh of confusion. “I really don’t understand. What clan are you? What clan can you possibly be that you don’t share the usual prejudice against my kind?”
“No clan at all, or one of our own imagining.”
“And what does that mean?”
Berak smiled. “Simply that we are the bits and tatters of many clans, the outcasts, the ones who couldn’t fit in with all the staid and somber old traditions. We like to laugh, to rove, to sing and play our songs for others, elf or human, and share our joy with them. It amuses us, just as it amuses us to disguise ourselves as humans.”
“My Master knew, though, didn’t he?” Kevin asked. “What and who you really are, I mean.”
“Of course.” The green eyes narrowed slightly. “And it’s past time you started thinking about that Master. We’ve been crying all this time to track you down!” He shook his head. “We woke, and you were gone. We reached Count Volmar’s castle, and you were gone from there, too. We went back to Bracklin, only to learn you had never returned. Master Aidan has been frantic with worry. Why, he even considered going after you and the spell himself, despite his too-sudden age and ill health.”
Ill health? Master Aidan? It was the first Kevin had heard of that. And yet ... with a sudden surge of guilt he remembered all the times he’d thought the old Bard lazy or afraid, remembered how he’d seen his Master’s pallor and shrugged it off as the result of too much of an indoor life. The signs of carefully concealed illness had been there all along. He’d simply failed, in his impatience and arrogance, to notice them.
Wait, now, what else had Berak said? “Too-sudden age?” the bardling asked hesitantly. “I don’t—”
“Think, boy!” Berak snapped. “Aidan was a youngling when he rescued the king, not all that much older than you. Only some thirty years have passed. Even for you short-lived humans that’s not such a vast span.”
“But—but he’s old!” Kevin insisted. “He’s been old ever since I’ve known him!”
“Ai-yi, Kevin! Who do you think created that spell to destroy Carlotta? Bardic Magic is a Powerful, perilous thing: it created the spell, yes, but in the process Aidan was forced to de up his age and health within the thing until he no longer had the strength to do anything about it”