Azure bonds - Kate Novak [49]
Alias even tolerated the halfling's prattle and went so far as to try teaching the bard a ballad she claimed to have learned from a Harper.
"Not a Harper!" Olive gasped, obviously impressed.
Alias nodded.
"I don't understand," Akabar said. "What is so special about playing the harp?"
Olive shook her head and sighed.
"Up north," Alias explained, "one who plays the harp is a harpist. A Harper is something rather different."
"What then?" the mage asked.
"Well, they're usually bards or rangers, though sometimes they ask other adventurers to join them. They…" Alias hesitated. It would sound so banal to say it aloud. "They work for good things," she answered quickly and then launched into the ballad for Olive.
Akabar mused over Alias's words. He now recalled having heard a story or two about these Harper people, but he had not paid much attention. They were supposed to be a mysterious, powerful bunch, but Alias's reaction interested him more. The woman had seemed flustered when giving her explanation.
He listened now to her singing. Her voice was better than the bard's. It had a clear, lilting quality. The song she sang was better than any of Olive's, too. Like the song she'd sung about the tears of Selune, two nights ago in The Hidden Lady, the lyrics were haunting. They told of the Fall of Myth Drannor, the splendid elven city, now a ruin in the woods.
The song caused Akabar to begin speculating on Alias's lost past. Only now his speculations were even wilder than Olive's had been. Suppose she was more than just a mercenary. Certainly evil things were after her. Had she, to put it in her own words, "worked for good things" so well that she was considered a threat? Had she been enchanted with those fell runes on her arm so that she would do some evil and thereby destroy her reputation?
"You know," Olive said after she'd managed to pluck out the melody to Alias's song on her yarting, "I've often wondered how one gets to be a Harper. Do you volunteer for a position, or do you have to be asked?"
Alias shrugged. "I've no idea." Inwardly she smiled, trying to picture the powerful and righteous Harpers accepting the help of a greedy, arrogant pickpocket of a halfling with pretensions to bardhood. Alias felt too good at the moment however, to destroy Olive's grandiose illusions.
They skirted the countryside about the city of Immersea. ancestral home of the Wyvernspurs, and made camp at dusk beside the road. Rain drizzled the entire next day, and they traveled mostly in silence.
They reached Arabel by nightfall. The inns were crowded with merchants and adventurers all taking advantage of the city's shelter. Alias's group had to settle for a remote inn by the city wall, but they were grateful to have shelter from the rain.
Alias found the noise and light and driving rain strangely comforting. The violence of the elements made her own inner turmoil seem mild in comparison. Her rage at being branded and used faded somewhat, humbled by the anger of the sky.
The next morning dawned bright and clear.
"I estimate it will take us two rides to reach Vulash," Alias said before they set out.
"Not possible," Akabar disagreed. "The distance is much greater than that."
"Two rides if the weather holds good and no disasters hit us."
"It will take at least twenty days," Akabar said.
"Isn't that what I just said?" Alias snapped.
"Not at all. You said it would be only two rides. An impossibility, even for a very strong horse."
Olive started giggling. "He thinks you mean a ride, not a ride."
"Huh?" both mage and warrior asked at once.
"A ride up north," Olive explained to Akabar, "is ten days."
"No man can ride for more than two or three days without becoming exhausted," Akabar insisted.
"Forget it," Alias said. "Twenty days. We're going to spend the next six camping at night. I don't want to risk any trouble from the soldiers at Castle Crag, the north Cormyrian outpost," she explained to Akabar. "We'll skirt around it."
She outlined