“My Master knew, though, didn’t he?” Kevin asked. “What and who you really are, I mean.”
“Of course.” The green eyes narrowed slightly. “And it’s past time you started thinking about that Master. We’ve been crying all this time to track you down!” He shook his head. “We woke, and you were gone. We reached Count Volmar’s castle, and you were gone from there, too. We went back to Bracklin, only to learn you had never returned. Master Aidan has been frantic with worry. Why, he even considered going after you and the spell himself, despite his too-sudden age and ill health.”
Ill health? Master Aidan? It was the first Kevin had heard of that. And yet ... with a sudden surge of guilt he remembered all the times he’d thought the old Bard lazy or afraid, remembered how he’d seen his Master’s pallor and shrugged it off as the result of too much of an indoor life. The signs of carefully concealed illness had been there all along. He’d simply failed, in his impatience and arrogance, to notice them.
Wait, now, what else had Berak said? “Too-sudden age?” the bardling asked hesitantly. “I don’t—”
“Think, boy!” Berak snapped. “Aidan was a youngling when he rescued the king, not all that much older than you. Only some thirty years have passed. Even for you short-lived humans that’s not such a vast span.”
“But—but he’s old!” Kevin insisted. “He’s been old ever since I’ve known him!”
“Ai-yi, Kevin! Who do you think created that spell to destroy Carlotta? Bardic Magic is a Powerful, perilous thing: it created the spell, yes, but in the process Aidan was forced to de up his age and health within the thing until he no longer had the strength to do anything about it”
“Then speaking the spell—”
“May restore him.” Berak shrugged with true elven fatalism. “Or it may not. But either way, you must make his sacrifice worth it”
“I will,” Kevin said softly. And I’ll make it up to you, Master Aidan. “But there’s something I must do, here and now. Take these, please.” He gave Berak all but one of the remaining copies he’d made of the spell. “At least this way it won’t be lost with me.”
“What ... is this thing?” Berak peered at the parchment. “ Elfish, yet not quite elfish ....”
“It is, we pray, the spell that shall put an end to Carlotta,” Naitachal said. “Berak, if you will permit it, we will ride with you. And together you and I and Kevin can set about deciphering the thing.”
“Why?” the minstrel asked suspiciously. “Why Kevin?”
The bardling sighed. “Because the spell’s Bardic Magic. But I can’t read elfish. And unless you and Naitachal can tell me how to pronounce the glyphs properly, I’ll never be able to sing them.”
“You!” Berak glanced sharply from Kevin to Naitachal, then began speaking very rapidly in the elven tongue.
Naitachal held up a hand. “Kevin and I have gone over all the dangers. I agree, it’s an incredibly risky thing for him to try. But neither you nor I are qualified to handle Bardic Magic. Kevin is.”
“But he’s not a Bard! The boy is just a bardling!”
“Still, I’m as close to a Bard as we’re going to find in such a short time—And we’ve wasted enough of that time already. Will you help us, Berak?”
“So-o! The cub grows fangs! Yes, youngling, I will help you. And pray for you as well,” he added wryly.
It wasn’t an easy decipherment. As the wagons rolled and rattled their way toward Count Volmar’s castle, the two elves spent much of the next day bent over the parchment, arguing “It says teatal,” or “No, no, that has to read sentaila, not sentailach!”
When they were satisfied with each glyph, they made Kevin recite it till they were sure he had the intonation correct, then sing it to the corresponding note.
“When do I get to put the whole thing together?”
“You don’t!” Naitachal said in alarm. “Do you want to trigger the spell here and now?”
“Uh ... no. But if I can’t rehearse the spell now, how am I going to know I’ve got it right?”
The Dark Elf grinned without humor. “Therein,” he said drily, “lies the adventure.”
“But I think you do have the component glyphs properly memorized,” Berak added in what was presumably meant to be a comforting tone. “Naitachal, there is one unwoven thread to all this that bothers me.”
