him that the king had shifted his position slightly. He still did not look up. 'But you were weary, and careless with cold and troubles,' the king said. His tone changed, silken and sweet. 'You had no real intention to trespass.'
Now he looked up; the elf lounged in his throne in a pose of complete relaxation that did not fool Talaysen a bit. All the Bard need do would be to make a single move towards a weapon of any kind at all, and he would be dead before the motion had been completed. If the king didn't strike him down with magic, the courtiers would, with the weapons they doubtless had hidden on their persons. The softest and most languid of them were likely the warriors.
'No, Sire,' he replied. 'We had no intention of trespass, though we were careless. It was an honest mistake.'
'Still-' The elf regarded him with half-closed eyes that did not hide a cold glitter. 'Letting you go would set a bad example.'
He felt his hands moving towards his instrument; he tried to stop them, but his body was no longer his to control. He picked up his lute, and stripped the case from it, then tuned it.
'I think we shall resolve your problems and ours with a single stroke,' the elf said, sitting up on the throne and steepling his hands in front of his chin. 'I think we shall keep you here, as our servant, to pay for your carelessness. We have minstrels, but we have no Bards. You will do nicely.' He waved his hand languidly. 'You may play for us now.'
Rune awoke to a thrill of alarm, a feeling that there was something wrong. She sat straight up in her bed-and a faint scrape of movement made her look, not towards the door, but to the back of the cottage, where it was built into the hillside.
She was just in time to see the glitter of an amber eye, the flash of a pointed ear, and the soles of Talaysen's boots vanishing into the hillside as he stumbled through a crack in the rock wall at the rear of the cottage. Then the 'door' in the hill snapped shut.
Leaving her alone, staring at the perfectly blank rock wall.
That broke her paralysis. She sprang to her feet and rushed the wall, screaming at the top of her lungs, kicking it, pounding it with hands and feet until she was exhausted and dropped to the ground, panting.
Elves. That was what she'd seen. Elves. And they had taken Talaysen. She had seen the signs and she hadn't paid any attention. She should have known-
The mushrooms, the ash-tree-the bushes that tried to keep us out-
They were all there; the Fairie-circle, the guardian ash, the tree-warriors-all of them in the songs she'd learned, all of them plain for any fool to see, if the fool happened to be thinking.
Too late to weep and wail about it now. There must be something she could do-
There had to be a way to open that door from this side. She felt all over the wall, pressing and turning every rocky projection in hopes of finding a catch to release it, or a trigger to make it open.
Nothing.
It must be a magic door.
She pulled out her knife, knowing the elves' legendary aversion to iron and steel, and picked at anything she found, hoping to force the door open the way she had forced the trees to let them by. But the magic in the stone was sterner stuff than the magic in the trees, and although the wall trembled once or twice beneath her hand, it still refused to yield.
Thinking that the ash tree might be something more than just a tree, she first threatened it with her dagger, then stabbed it. But the tree was just a tree, and nothing happened at all, other than a shower of droplets that rained down on her through the hole in the roof as the branches shook.
Elves . . . elves . . . what do I know about elves? God, there has to be a way to get at them, to get Talaysen out! What do I have to use against them?
Not much. And not a lot of information about them. Nothing more than was in a half-dozen songs or so. She paced the floor, her eyes stinging with tears that she scrubbed away, refusing to give in, trying to think. What did she know that could be used against them?
The Gypsies deal with them all the time-
How did the Gypsies manage to work with them? She'd heard the Gypsies spoken of as 'elf-touched' time and time again . . . as if they had somehow won some of their abilities from the secretive race. What could the Gypsies have that gave them such power over the elvenkin?
Gypsies, elves-
She stopped, in mid-stride, balancing on one foot, as she realized the secret. It was in one of the songs the Gypsy called Nightingale had taught her.
Music. They can be ruled by music. They can't resist it. That's what the song implied, anyway.
She dashed to her packs and fumbled out her fiddle. Elves traditionally used the harp, but the fiddle was her instrument of choice, and she wasn't going to take a chance with anything other than her best weapon. She tuned the lovely instrument with fingers that shook; placed it under her chin, and stood up slowly to face the rock wall.
Then she began to play.
She played every Gypsy song she knew; improvised on the themes, then played them all over again. The wailing melodies sang out over the sound of the storm getting worse overhead. She ignored the distant growl of thunder, and the occasional flicker of lightning against the rock in front of her. She concentrated all of her being on the music, the hidden door, and how much she wanted that door to open.
Let me in. Let me in. Let me in to be with him. Let me in so I can get him free!
She narrowed her eyes to concentrate better. She thought she felt something-or rather, heard something, only it was as if she had an extra ear somewhere deep inside, that was listening to something echo her playing.
Echo? No, it wasn't an echo, this was a different melody. Not by much-but different enough that she noticed it. Was she somehow hearing the music-key to the spell holding the door closed, resonating to the tune she was playing?
She didn't stop to think about it; obeying her instinctive feelings, she left the melody-line she was playing and strove to follow the one she heard with that inner ear. She felt a tingle along her arms, the same tingle she had felt when Gwyna had been transformed back to her proper form.
Not quite a match . . . she tried harder, speeded up a little, trying to anticipate the next notes. Closer . . . closer . . .
As she suddenly snapped into synch with that ghostly melody, the door in the wall cracked open-then gaped wide.
She found herself in a tunnel that led deep into the hillside, a tunnel that was floored with darkness, and had walls and a ceiling of swirling, colored mist. If she had doubted before, this was the end of doubts; only elves would build something like this.
The door remained open behind her. She could only hope it would stay that way and not snap shut to block her exit.
If she got a chance to make one.
She clutched her fiddle in her hand and ran lightly down the tunnel; it twisted and turned like a rabbit's run, but at length she saw light at the end. More than that, she heard music, and with her ears, not whatever she'd used to listen before. Music she knew; Talaysen's lute. But not his voice; he was not singing, and that lack shouted wrongness at her. There was a stiffness to his playing as if he was being constrained by something, forced to play against his will.
She ran harder, and burst through a veil of bright-colored mist at the very end of the tunnel. She stumbled onto a field of grass as smooth and close-clipped as a carpet, under a sky of stone bejeweled with tiny, artificial stars and a featureless moon of silver. Small wonder the songs spoke of elven 'halls'; for all that they aped the outdoors, this was an artifice and would never look like a real greensward.
The elves gathered beneath that artificial moon in the decorous figures of a pavane stopped and turned to stare in blank surprise at her. Talaysen stood between them and her-and his expression was of surprise warring with fear.
She knew she daren't give them a moment to get over their surprise; if they did, they'd attack her, and if they attacked her, they'd kill her. The songs made that perfectly clear as well.
