Elfsong - Elaine Cunningham [37]
Five
Taskerleigh lay two days' travel behind him, but Danilo had yet to come up with an explanation for his current predicament.
By Dan's reckoning, Elaith Craul-nober would rather wed a troll than travel in his company, yet here they were. Danilo had ruefully dubbed their combined forces "Music and Mayhem," and the name stuck. That was not in his opinion, a good omen.
Theirs was beyond doubt the most uneasy alliance the Harper had ever encountered. The elf held all the prejudices of his race and had no love of dwarves, but to Dan's surprise Elaith treated Wyn Ashgrove no better than he didMorgalla. The elven minstrel was spared the sharp edgeof Elaith's tongue, but he pointedly ignored Wyn's presence among the travelers. Several times, though, Elaith's eyes rested on the gold elf, and the pure hatred in their amber depths chilled Danilo. For his part, Wyn treatedeveryone with the same distant courtesy, and he seemed to take no notice of his fellow elf's bad manners. If there was a common thread weaving together the disparate adventurers, it was Vartain. The riddlemaster seemed to annoy everyone in equal measure.
But Elaith's mercenaries, especially the huge black-bearded man known as Balindar, were quite taken with the dwarf maid. When they learned that Morgalla was a veteran of the Alliance War, the men plied her with eager questions. Waterdeep had not sent an army to help turn back the barbarian invaders, and many sell-swords of the Northlands felt they'd missed out on the greatest, most glorious adventure of their lifetimes. The dwarf was hesitant at first, but she warmed to their interest, and by mid-morning of the second day, she was helping to pass the tedium of travel with one well-told tale after another. Dan listened to snatches of their conversations, enjoying the dwarf's mellow voice and skilled storytelling. He remembered Morgalla's gruff rejection of the title "dwarven bard," but to his ears, she deserved to be accounted so even if there was no music in her soul. And that lack, he doubted. Every night since they'd left Waterdeep, Morgalla had persuaded him to play his lute and sing. Never would she join him, but she listened to every air and ballad with a rapt expression of mingled joy and longing on her broad face.
Danilo glanced over at Elaith, who was riding apart from the others, as alert and wary as the silver fox he resembled. He could not imagine what treasure induced the elf to take to the road. It was widely rumored in Waterdeep that the moon elf was wealthy almost beyond calculation. Elaith often hired mercenary bands and sent them on trips of exploration and adventure, but in recent years he had remained in Waterdeep, making his dark deals and reaping the reward from others' blood and toils. The Harper didn't trust Elaith for a moment, and the sooner he knew the elf's hidden purpose, the better his little band's chances of survival. Danilo reined his bay, a fast and sturdy horse he favored for long trips, over to the elf's fine-boned black steed.
"How does Cleddish?" the Harper asked, nodding toward a mercenary who had been wounded in the harpy attack. Cleddish was one of five men who had been turned into living statues by the harpy charm song. The effect had finally worn off this morning, and Danilo would long remember the man's horrible, keening screams when he awoke. Danilo carried a number of tiny vials containing potions that sped healing or countered poisons, and he'd given one of each to Cleddish. This precaution closed the gashes made by the harpy's filthy talons and would probably stave off putrefaction, but the man had lost a good deal of blood. Danilo suspected that Cleddish had sustained hidden wounds, as well. The mercenary sat his horse with grim, stoic determination, but he had spoken little since the attack, and his face was