Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [3]
Another lost her voice, and all attempts to heal her failed."
"She killed herself later," Morala interrupted with a trace of anger.
"Yes," Elminster admitted, then hastily added, "but that was after the time of which I speak. When Nameless summoned help for his wounded apprentice, he freely admitted how she had sustained her injuries. The other Harpers were appalled that he had risked his own apprentices in so dangerous a task, all for the sake of his obsession with his music. They summoned him to judgment and found him guilty of slaying one apprentice and injuring another. They determined a punishment to fit his crime.
"His music and his name were to be banished from the Realms. To keep him from thwarting them in this goal, and also to keep him from trying his reckless experiment again, the Harpers removed the bard's own name from his memory and banished him from the Realms, exiling him to a border region of the positive plane of life, where, due to the nature of that re gion, he would live in good health and relative immortality. He was condemned, however, to live in complete solitude." Elminster paused again.
Nameless's tune switched to a plaintive minor key as Morala, Orcsbane, and Kyre sat contemplating their fellow Harper's crime and his punishment. It almost seemed as if Nameless was aware of what point in his story Elminster had reached. Morala glanced suspiciously at the sage, but he seemed not to notice the tune at all.
Actually Elminster's attention at the moment was attracted to a fluttering shadow behind the tribunal. The sage made no sound or movement to call attention to the small figure he spotted skulking along the courtroom wall. It was only the halfling, Olive Ruskettle. Elminster could see no harm in her unauthorized presence. After all, she knew Nameless's story already. The sage made a mental note, though, to chide Lord Mourn-grym about the quality of the tower guard. In the courtroom, the halfling was nearly impossible to spot, adept as she was at hiding in the shadows, but she should not have been able to pass through the tower's front gate in broad daylight unchallenged by the guards.
Unaware she had been observed by the sharp-eyed sage, the halfling sneaked out of the courtroom and down the corridor toward the prisoner's cell.
If ye have plans to visit thy friend Nameless, ye little sneak thief, ve are in for a surprise, Elminster thought, suppressing a grin. He focused his attention again on the judges. "Two hundred years have passed since the exile of the Nameless Bard-"
"Excuse me, Elminster," Kyre interrupted, "but are we to continue calling this man Nameless throughout this hearing? Surely we can be trusted with his name. It would simplify things, would it not?"
"No!" Morala objected. "It is we who made him Nameless. Nameless he will remain."
Elminster sighed at the old priestess's vehemence. "It is the purpose of this tribunal to decide not only whether or not to free Nameless, but whether or not Nameless's name should be restored to the Realms. Morala and I have both taken an oath not to reveal the name unless the Harpers decide otherwise. So we must continue to refer to him as Nameless, at least until the aid of this trial."
"I see," Kyre replied, nodding her head slightly. "Excuse my interruption."
Elminster nodded and once again began the second half of his tale. "Nameless remained in exile for two centuries. Then certain evil powers deliberately sought him out and freed him from his place of exile."
The tune coming from the bard's prison ceased abruptly. Morala's lips curled ever so slightly in satisfaction while Elminster stroked his beard thoughtfully, wondering just what Nameless was up to now.
*****
In his prison cell, Nameless lowered the chordal horn and glared at his cell door. Something was jiggling in the lock. Elminster had given the guards specific instructions