Castle of Deception bt-1 Read online

  I will not be afraid of him!

  After all, how could he forget how the Dark Elf had comforted him after he’d killed that bandit? Whatever else Naitachal might be, that hadn’t been the act of a cruel being, or an evil one.

  The bardling deliberately moved to the Dark Elf’s side, and received a faint smile in return.

  “That was a marvelously clever thing you did, Kevin, hurling the rock at the sorcerer to break his concentration.”

  “Oh, well. It was the only thing I could think to do.” The bardling couldn’t stop himself from adding in a rush, “Even if I didn’t expect what was going to happen after that.”

  “Don’t shed any tears for him.” Naitachal’s voice was suddenly cold. “I touched his mind during our battle, and it was ... foul. The man had deliberately killed all goodness within himself, all hope of joy, deliberately turned himself into a being almost as empty as those poor dead ones he conjured. So it can be,” he added, almost reluctantly, “with many necromancers.”

  “Not with you! Anyone who could enjoy being silly with those guards the way you did hasn’t given up on life!”

  That earned him a chuckle. “No. I haven’t. Nor will I, Powers willing.” The Dark Elf paused, eyes glinting. “He was strong, though, that stupid, evil man. So strong, with nothing but hatred left within him to drive him, with that hellish staff of his to aid him. Without your help, Kevin, I... don’t think I would have survived.”

  He glanced at the bardling. “But the memory of that fire is still shocking you, isn’t it? Ha, yes, you others, it shocks you all.”

  “Well, hell, yes!” Lydia exclaimed after a moment “I never thought you could—”

  “1 didn’t. Not deliberately.”

  “What do you mean? I saw what I saw!”

  “You don’t understand.” Naitachal hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t know if I can put this so easily into human terms. Look you, our Power was trapped, his and mine, stalemated, each against each. What happens when a dam breaks?”

  Lydia shrugged. “The water bursts free and—Oh.”

  “Exactly. When his sorcery all at once gave way, mine —yes—burst free. Even I didn’t expect it to explode quite so fiercely, though. A pity it did,” Naitachal added grimly. “I meant only to stun the man.”

  “In the name of all the Powers, why?”

  The Dark Elf’s eyes glinted in the gloom. “Why do you think?”

  Kevin straightened. “You don’t believe he was working on his own, do you?”

  “Hardly. Even a necromancer such as that isn’t chaotic enough to attack at random.”

  “Then ... do you think he was in Carlotta’s pay?”

  “Something like that.” The Dark Elf stretched wearily. “But we seem to have drawn the lady’s fangs.”

  At least for now, Kevin thought, and fought down a shudder. “I bet you’re hungry.”

  A hint of returning humor danced in the Dark Elf’s eyes. “Ravenous. As, 1 would think, we all are. It’s been a ... shall we say ... rather strenuous day.”

  “It has indeed.” Eliathanis was rummaging in their packs, coming up with a fair amount of smoked meat and some rather squashed bread. He looked ruefully at his catch. “It’s not going to be an elegant meal.”

  Lydia rubbed sore muscles in her arms. “I’ve had worse. Worse days, too. Though I have to admit, I can’t remember when. Most of the guys I’ve fought,” she added with a wry grin, “had more flesh to ‘em!”

  They rode all the next day, still sore and weary from the battle, nerves tight. But what they rode into was nothing more alarming than a mild, sweet spring day. The land sloped gently up and up towards the mountains, so gradually that the mules climbed it without complaint. A gentle breeze played with hair and clothes, birds darted cheerfully all about them, and there was not the slightest sign of trouble anywhere.

  It was so very uneventful a day that by nightfall Kevin was amazed to find himself almost disappointed.

  What’s the matter with you, you idiot? Do you want to be attacked?

  No, of course he didn’t. What he was feeling, Kevin knew, wasn’t anything so foolish. After all they had gone through so far. this sudden peacefulness simply seemed too ... anticlimactic to be believable.

  Now that was silly. Maybe it was true, maybe Carlotta’s fangs had been drawn. Maybe she couldn’t attack them herself for some arcane reason. Maybe she’d had nothing to do with the attack at all! Ah well, Kevin told himself, he would try to enjoy anticlimax.

  Or an almost anticlimax. The only thing chat was jarringly wrong in all this quiet was the way Lydia, Eliathanis and even Tich’ki still radiated uneasiness every time they glanced Naitachal’s way.

  I Can’t let that go on. If Carlotta does attack us again, we had better be able to present a united front, or she’s going to destroy us!

  But Kevin admitted reluctantly that he just didn’t know what to do about it.

  Sitting by the campfire that night, the bardling sighed, overwhelmed by a surge of guilt that had nothing to do with their quest: what with all the excitement of the past few days, he had pretty much forgotten about his music. Now, imagining Master Aidan’s reproachful stare for his neglect, Kevin took out his lute and tuned it, gently since it hadn’t been played for a while, then tried a few practice scales.

  Ugh. His fingers were stiff. But as he kept after them, they finally limbered up and remembered what they were supposed to be doing. Kevin ran through his scales, from the simplest to the most complex and back again several times, till he heard Lydia give a not so subtle yawn. With a grin, the bardling switched over instead to a cheerful little springtime song common to almost all the human lands, “The Maiden’s Garland.”

  As he played, Kevin felt eyes on him—He glanced up and caught Naitachal in the ace of staring at the lute. The slanted blue eyes were, for the moment, unguarded, so full of yearning that a pang of pity shot through the bardling. He remembered Naitachal admitting that the Dark Elves had no music of their own.

  What a horrible thing! What a horrible, lonely thing!

  Naitachal suddenly realized Kevin had noticed him, and turned sharply away, pretending to be fixing some bit of his gear—

  “Oh no, you don’t,” the bardling murmured, and scrambled over to sit beside the Dark Elf. Moved by an impulse he didn’t quite understand, Kevin held out the lute. “Here. Take it.”

  “I—I can’t. I mean, I wouldn’t know how ...”

  “I’ll show you. Take it.”

  Naitachal took the lute as gingerly as though it was a baby. Kevin sighed.

  “Not like that. It’s not that fragile, honest. You hold it like this, here, and here. Right! Now, give it back to me for a minute and I’ll show you something. This is how you get single notes.” He strummed a single string, running his finger up from fret to fret. “See? The pitch gets lower the further my finger gets from the body of the lute. You try it.”

  Warily, Naitachal touched a string. When it twanged, he almost dropped the lute in shock, then gave a rueful grin at his own reaction. But then, to Kevin’s surprise, the Dark Elf ran up and down through the notes without missing a one.

  “You have a good ear! Now, shall we try a chord or two?”

  Naitachal shrugged uneasily. “Whatever you say.”

  Showing the Dark Elf the proper fingering, Kevin strummed the basic chords, then handed the lute back. Naitachal stumbled over the strings the first time, then echoed Kevin flawlessly.

  “Hey, terrific!” the bardling said.

  The Dark Elf grinned, this time in self-conscious delight. And to the bardling’s amazement, Naitachal began to pick out, very slowly and carefully, the melody to “The Maiden’s Garland.”

  “That—that’s wonderful! And you only heard me play it once!” Kevin fought down the faint, irrational little touch of jealousy that didn’t like anyone else being able to play his lute, and added honestly, “Do you know how long it took me to figure out what you’re doing in one tiny lesson—�
�� The bardling stopped, mind racing.

  “Naitachal, listen to me, you can’t stop here.” The words came tumbling out of Kevin in his eagerness. ‘‘I mean it, when this is all over you’ve got to get musical training, you must! No, no, don’t shake your head at me. Music would be such a wonderful comfort for you —and you’ve got talent, true musical talent!”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  But for all his protest, Naitachal didn’t surrender the lute. As though driven by some inner demon, he bent over it once more, playing “The Maiden’s Garland’’ again and yet again, gradually bringing it up to proper speed.

  Suddenly the Dark Elf stopped. With an embarrassed, delighted little laugh, he tried to give the lute back to Kevin. But Kevin was aware of how the others were staring at them in sheer confusion. The terrible necromancer wasn’t supposed to be acting like this!

  Oh yes, this was too good a chance to waste! The bardling waved Naitachal on. The Dark Elf frowned, but obligingly played “The Maiden’s Garland” yet again. And this time Kevin sang the light, silly, happy words along with the music:

  “As I was walking one spring day,

  I saw a maiden fair,

  Come gathering the fragrant may,

  The lilac and the roses-o,

  The daisies and the violets-o,

  To make a pretty posy-o,

  To wear upon her hair.”

  At first Naitachal stumbled, distracted by trying to listen to what Kevin was singing. But all at once he caught the performer’s knack of hearing but not really listening to the words, and played on, smiling faintly.

  As the bardling had hoped, the bouncy, cheerful melody and lyrics quickly reached out to snare the others. First Lydia, hardly aware of what she was doing, started tapping her foot in time to the music. Then Tich’ki began humming along, fairy voice high and sweet as birdsong. Eliathanis fought it for a time, but at last gave up, murmuring the words in his dear, elven tenor.

  “Oh, come on!” Kevin teased. “You all can do better than that!”

  They could. They did. Pushed on by the bardling’s taunts, they laughed and set the echoes ringing with their singing. And Kevin, leading them on, grinned as he sang, watching the walls of suspicion come crumbling down, dissolved by the sheer joy that was music.

  At last, breathless, they had to stop. Eliathanis coughed nervously, made a few abortive movements, then got to his feet and moved to the Dark Elf’s side.

  “I seem to be forever begging your pardon,” he told Naitachal, “but ... I must do it yet again.” The White Elf shook his head. “I’m a warrior, not a magician, but that’s no real excuse. Even so, 1 should have recognized liathama safainias when I saw it.”

  Naitachal glanced at the bewildered Kevin. “That doesn’t translate very well into your human tongue. It means ... mmm ... ‘explosion of pent-up Power’ is as close as I can get, with the implication that the explosion wasn’t the magician’s fault.”

  “Exactly!” Eliathanis cut in. “Naitachal, we’ve fought enough foes together—and each other as well—for me to know something of who and what you are.”

  “A Dark Elf,” Naitachal said drily. “A necromancer.”

  “Bah, forget that!” The White Elf waved a dismissive hand. “You had no choice in either.” He paused, and Kevin could see his fair skin reddening even in the dim light. “Prejudice isn’t a logical thing,” Eliathanis began anew, “but it’s damnably difficult to forget—As I’ve been proving so far.”

  “We are as we are.”

  “Don’t mock me. This is difficult enough to say as it is. Naitachal, I... well ... look you, I admit I’ve had things fairly easy all my life. I was raised with love and Light. I never had a moment’s doubt about who I was or about the career I chose—But you—1 can only guess at the struggle you had to be you, to be your own free soul.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Ah ... I don’t know. Maybe that the you you’re creating is a being of whom you should be proud. Maybe that no matter what my people think of yours, or yours of mine, I know you, Naitachal, are not, you cannot be, my enemy. Agreed?”

  The Dark Elf’s teeth flashed in a sudden smile. “Agreed.”

  “Great,” came Lydia’s wry voice from the darkness. “Now can we all kiss and make up, and get some sleep?”

  That created such a silly picture in Kevin’s mind that he started to chuckle. The bardling was still chuckling as he settled down for the night, but mixed in with the humor was sheer relief.

  Peace at last, he thought, and added a silent Thank-you to whatever Spirit of Music might be listening—

  Chapter XVII

  By the second day of peaceful riding through peaceful fields and forest, climbing ever higher into the mountains, with nothing to be seen but countryside, Kevin felt his tight nerves beginning to unwind. He started to relax in the saddle, enjoying the quiet beauty of the scene around him, almost daring to hope:

  Maybe Carlotta really hadn’t had anything to do with the necromancer’s attack. Maybe she wasn’t after them after all.

  The rest of the party were obviously feeling just as relaxed as he. Naitachal and Tich’ki were busily murmuring together as they rode; from what scraps the bardling could make out, they were trying to figure out a way to combine fairy magic with the Dark Elf’s own to trace the missing Charina and enjoying the challenge. Lydia and Eliathanis were trading war stories, arguing good-naturedly over the comparative merits of sword and bow. Kevin smiled, and let his mind wander over various bits of music, puzzling out how he would transcribe this piece for lute or add counterpoint to that piece. It would be nice to show off some new musical skills once they were back in the casde.

  All at once the inanity of his thoughts hit him like a blow. Kevin sat bolt upright. What in the name of all the Powers did everyone think they were doing?

  “This is ridiculous!”

  “Kevin?”

  “Look at us! We’re all acting as though we’d been out for a—a pleasant little ride in the country, without a care in the world!”

  “Well, yes,” Lydia admitted. “But—”

  “But we know Carlotta is alive. We know she had something to do with Charina’s disappearance. What do you think we’re going to find when we get back to Count Volmar, eh? Look you, all of you, we’re talking about a sorceress who thought nothing of trying to murder her own brother! She’s not going to stick at getting rid of nothings like us!”

  “Nothings!” Tich’ki said indignantly.

  Kevin ignored her, glaring at the others. “Think about it. For all we know, Carlotta’s already figured out where we’re going. Ha, for all we know, she already has agents in place in the castle!”

  “Oh, you’re not saying the count’s in her employ!” Lydia protested. “He paid us to go on our hunt, for Powers’ sake!”

  “I’m not saying anything. Except that we don’t know what we’re going to be facing. So let’s not be so—so—”

  “So fat and lazy,” Lydia drawled. She straightened in the saddle, adjusting the angle other quiver. “You have a point, kid. Much as I hate to admit it, you do have a point.”

  Tich’ki came fluttering down to land, panting, on Lydia’s saddle. “All right, I scouted ahead as best I could.”

  “And ...?”

  She shrugged. “And all I could see was a perfectly normal casde full of perfectly ordinary humans. From what I could overhear, no one seemed to be talking about anything interesting.”

  “But you can’t be sure,” Kevin prodded—

  “No, I can’t be sure!” Tich’ki snapped. “I’m a fairy, not one of your heavy, earthbound breed! I don’t know how you think!”

  Kevin sighed. “Never mind—Just sic and get your strength back.” He looked at the others. “I guess all we can do is go on.”

  They rode up the steep road to the castle in renewed tension, all of them wondering just how accurate Tich’ki’s report might be. Could a fairy’s
judgment be trusted? Was this to be a refuge—or a trap?

  “You’re on your own,” Tich’ki told them. “Once in that castle was enough. I’m not going to risk being trampled underfoot by some hulking human. See you later!”

  She took wing, darting off without another word.

  “Eh well, here we are,” Lydia said, staring up at the watchtowers guarding the main gates.

  Here they were, indeed. Kevin licked suddenly dry lips and called out their names to the tower guards. There was a brief pause, during which he had far too much time to wonder if they’d have time to get away if someone threw spears down at them. Or boiling oil. The gates creaked open ....