The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [75]
"Burned for firewood already, is my guess. His houselady hated having his room sit idle while he traveled. I heard she went up there and broke one, just for spite, whenever he went away."
"He never found an enchanted one, did he?" Heads turned, and the speaker added almost delightedly, in the lowered, excited tones of one who dispenses a juicy secret, "That's what he was hot for, all his days: to find a magical harp."
"There's not an endless supply of such things," the pipe-smoking bard said sourly. "He'd have been better off never to have known magic existed."
"Seeing as how magic slew him, that's a safe enough declaration," another bard agreed, "but who among us can honestly claim not to know magic exists? Simpletons and madmen, that's who; and simpletons and madmen can't make good music."
"I know," one of the older bards grunted. "I've heard you sing."
There were chuckles and whistles of apprehension at that, and not a few rude gestures back and forth, before someone asked, "How exactly did they die?"
"Torn apart by something like a horse-sized dragon," a bard who'd been silent until now put in. "Something spellborn, sent out to slay by the Dark Three."
"Just how would they create something like that?" Flaeros heard himself asking. "Are wizards born knowing how to shape the winds and the forces of growing things, or…"
Heads turned to look at him, and Flaeros suddenly felt like an outsider again. He sat trying to look unconcerned while something cringed and died inside him. The silence lengthened until someone muttered, "What do they teach young bardlings today? Which end of a hunting horn to blow?"
"Easy, easy," an older voice said. "We all had to start learning somewhere-why shouldn't he learn here? Lad, hearken: mages work spells by draining things. Sometimes, if they want to curse someone more than they want to go on living, it's themselves. More often it's a foe, or slaves, or beasts… and sometimes it's things that already have magic cast on them."
"And it's not so mighty nor as reliable as the great mages would have you think," another voice put in. "You can be sure Baron Silvertree wouldn't be offering one hundred trade wagons full of gold for anything if magic could find him his daughter."
"Yet he has three of the mightiest mages Aglirta's yet seen to work it," an older bard said sourly. "Magic works best for things that can also be done by trickery-and I wonder why that is?"
"Hear that: he speaks of magic and wants answers. Now there's a simpleton and fool!"
"Enough," the pipe-smoking bard said loudly. "So the Lady of Jewels gets herself kidnapped-I hear she planned it all and hired a band of deadly swordslayers to rush in and seize her!-and we'd all love that much coin, every one of us here, to save us right now from ever having to travel and sing again."
"One hundred trade wagons full of gold offered by the baron for the Lady Embra Silvertree's safe recovery and restoration to him," someone murmured. "Wonder how much more she'd pay to be kept out of his reach, from now on?"
"I wonder how many folk up and down the Vale are foolish enough to try to find her and claim it… and think the baron'd ever allow them to live long enough to spend it!"
There were many nods and murmurs of rueful agreement to this, and amid them someone murmured, "First light," and pointed upward.
Flaeros hadn't even noticed the skylight in the ceiling. The first rosy fingers of dawn were touching the dying clouds of the night, high above the glass. The bards fell silent for a time to watch it grow brighter, and Maershee silently slipped into the room with fresh glasses and bottles for all. When she left again, it seemed to stir a dozen voices to talking. One of them said gloomily, "Plotting sorceress she may be, but I doubt the Lady Silvertree arranged her own kidnapping. If her father catches her, many floggings are the least she can expect to suffer!"
"You think a rival baron's behind this?" the