Elfsong - Elaine Cunningham [80]
Wyn looked closer. His lips moved in a silent oath, and his eyes widened in awe. "Youare Ingrival, are you not?" he asked the hermit in a tone of great respect.
"It may be that I am. I remember not my name," came the sad response.
"What's going on, Wyn?" Danilo asked softly.
"The Morninglark is an ancient elven harp, an artifact crafted in the early days of Myth Drannor," the elf said in an aside. "It is considered too powerful to be played by any but the most skilled spellsingers. For centuries it has been safe in the possession of Ingrival, a famous musician. He went into seclusion and has not been heard from for many years. The harp was thought to be lost."
Wyn turned to Elaith, who had been standing by listening impassively. "This is what you seek, isn't it? The Morninglark?" he demanded in an accusing voice.
"What is that to you?"
"The harp is sacred to the People. It is not a treasure, and it is not a tool. Its power is not to be used for gain!"
"My motives are not your concern," Elaith said with icy finality.
"But your actions are." Shaking with indignation, Wyn faced down the moon elf. "You knew, or at least suspected, the identity of this elf. He is exiled not by choice, but by misfortune. That you would abandon anyone-especially a fellow elf-to a life of solitude and madness! That is vile enough, but you turned away from a hero of the People!"
The minstrel spun away from Elaith and spoke to Danilo. "We must take this unfortunate elf with us to Water-deep. The priests at the pantheon temple will care for him, and perhaps bring him a measure of healing. They are holy elves, and they take in the infirm and the outcast."
From the corner of his eye, Danilo saw Elaith recoil at Wyn's words. For an instant the rogue elf looked deeply stricken, then his usual expression of mocking humor came down over his pained face like a curtain. Danilo tucked this strange reaction away for future reflection, and he nodded his approval of Wyn's plan.
"You are welcome in our midst friend elf," the Harper said to the one Wyn had called Ingrival. "As it turns out, the patriarch of the elven temple owes me a favor, but I'm sure the good priest would accept you for your own sake."
The hermit's face lit up beneath its crust of dirt. Then he let out a shriek of pure terror and dove into a thicket of bushes.
Danilo was the first to see the gigantic shadow approach, cast long by the slanting rays of early morning. Instinctively he ducked, then twisted to look up into the sky. Circling high above the abandoned village was an enormous winged creature. Although it looked like a harmless-if huge-lark, it was clearly a bird of prey, for it carried a deer in its talons as easily as a hawk would a field mouse.
"What now?" Elaith muttered as he readied an arrow.
"Hold your fire," Danilo commanded. He took the lute strap off his shoulder and quickly checked the instrument's tuning. "Whatever that thing is, it's too big to be brought down like that."
He began to play the introduction to the song that had lulled the dragon, hoping it would have the same effect on this creature. Wyn took his lyre and joined in with the musical spell. From far above, the magic-bearing melody bounced back to them, echoed by a trilling, avian voice. The eerie sound raised the hair on the back of Danilo's neck and sent a shiver of fear down his back. Nevertheless, he continued to sing.
As if drawn by the music, the enormous creature dove down into the clearing and landed on the sagging roof of the abandoned farmhouse. Leaving its torn prey draped over a gable, the monstrous songbird swooped into the garden and landed a few paces from the spellsingers.
Roughly the size of a war-horse, the beast had the form and the distinctive gray-and-white-speckled feathers of a mockinglark, a morning lark who imitated the song of other birds. But this creature also had the lethal talons