Elfsong - Elaine Cunningham [51]
The Harper lifted his eyes from the paper, gazing at the dwarf in pure astonishment. Once again, she had seen more than her eyes could possibly have told her. Danilo handed the sketch to Elaith without comment.
The elf regarded it in silence, his expressionless face as pale as death.
"As you can see," Dan said quietly, "her art has a keener edge than her axe."
"Eh?" piped in Morgalla, clearly miffed at the suggestion. She pulled the maligned weapon from her belt and brandished it "You could shavewith this axe, bard!"
In response, Danilo stroked the nearly invisible red down on her cheek. "So could you, lady dwarf, so could you."
"Hee, hee," she chortled, as pleased as any adolescent human lad contemplating his first beard.
In the shared laughter that rippled through the company, no one but Danilo noticed Elaith slip away from the campfire. Although the Harper had won this round, his gray eyes held not triumph, but puzzlement.
*****
Stars sprinkled the sky above Lady Thione's villa, and in the fully enclosed courtyard, rare, night-blooming flowers scented the warm summer night. A fountain played softly in the center of the courtyard, the secluded arch of a grape arbor suggested a stolen kiss, and the soft-pillowed gazebo invited longer trysts. The music of a harp filled the air. Yet the woman bent over the strings had no room in her heart for romance. The one passion left to her was for justice.
Pain cramped her hands, and Garnet broke off the song with a frustrated oath. Since the day she had acquired the Morninglark harp from the dragon, she had struggled to harness its powers. She was an accomplished mage, and she could wield magic through both spells and song. An artifact such as the elven harp possessed much magic of its own, and she had devised a spell that would grant her up to seven powers. So far, she had been able to gain only four, and those four she wielded with uncertainty. The fault was not in her sorcery, but in her faded musicianship.
Once again she cursed the Harpers for what they had become, for what she had become in their service, and Khelben Arunsun for his part in both. No longer were the Heralds, the far-traveling keepers of history and tradition, part of the Harper organization. They had split away many years ago, not wishing to compromise their neutrality by pursuing the Harpers' increasingly political objectives. Then the barding colleges, once bastions of excellence, had fallen into decline and faded into memory. The Harpers had done little to reverse this course. They were kept busy by Elminster and Khelben, fighting wars and guarding trade routes.
Yes, many Harpers were bards still, but these bards were for the most part fighters and informants who happened to play or sing. The once-honored title of "bard" was given to any dolt who could warble a tavern song. The prestige and power of bardcraft had declined, and many people considered bards to be little more than traveling rogues. Bards, once counselors to kings and queens, were likely to be treated like servants who took their dinner in the kitchen between dance sets. This Garnet could not forgive.
Nor could she forget it, not when her own hands had been stiffened by years of fighting and spellcasting in the name of the Harpers. Her final battle for the Harpers had been in the Harpstar Wars against creatures from another plane. Gravely wounded and left for dead in the confusion of battle, she'd been found and nursed to health by an elderly druid. When Garnet recovered and began once again to sing and play, the druid recognized her gift for spellsong and introduced her to a small band of wood elves. Even though she was a half-elf, the forest elves had taken her in and trained her gift. For almost two hundred years Garnet had lived among them, and as her power increased, so did her determination