Oh yes, this was too good a chance to waste! The bardling waved Naitachal on. The Dark Elf frowned, but obligingly played “The Maiden’s Garland” yet again. And this time Kevin sang the light, silly, happy words along with the music:
At first Naitachal stumbled, distracted by trying to listen to what Kevin was singing. But all at once he caught the performer’s knack of hearing but not really listening to the words, and played on, smiling faintly.
As the bardling had hoped, the bouncy, cheerful melody and lyrics quickly reached out to snare the others. First Lydia, hardly aware of what she was doing, started tapping her foot in time to the music. Then Tich’ki began humming along, fairy voice high and sweet as birdsong. Eliathanis fought it for a time, but at last gave up, murmuring the words in his dear, elven tenor.
“Oh, come on!” Kevin teased. “You all can do better than that!”
They could. They did. Pushed on by the bardling’s taunts, they laughed and set the echoes ringing with their singing. And Kevin, leading them on, grinned as he sang, watching the walls of suspicion come crumbling down, dissolved by the sheer joy that was music.
At last, breathless, they had to stop. Eliathanis coughed nervously, made a few abortive movements, then got to his feet and moved to the Dark Elf’s side.
“I seem to be forever begging your pardon,” he told Naitachal, “but ... I must do it yet again.” The White Elf shook his head. “I’m a warrior, not a magician, but that’s no real excuse. Even so, 1 should have recognized liathama safainias when I saw it.”
Naitachal glanced at the bewildered Kevin. “That doesn’t translate very well into your human tongue. It means ... mmm ... ‘explosion of pent-up Power’ is as close as I can get, with the implication that the explosion wasn’t the magician’s fault.”
“Exactly!” Eliathanis cut in. “Naitachal, we’ve fought enough foes together—and each other as well—for me to know something of who and what you are.”
“A Dark Elf,” Naitachal said drily. “A necromancer.”
“Bah, forget that!” The White Elf waved a dismissive hand. “You had no choice in either.” He paused, and Kevin could see his fair skin reddening even in the dim light. “Prejudice isn’t a logical thing,” Eliathanis began anew, “but it’s damnably difficult to forget—As I’ve been proving so far.”
“We are as we are.”
“Don’t mock me. This is difficult enough to say as it is. Naitachal, I... well ... look you, I admit I’ve had things fairly easy all my life. I was raised with love and Light. I never had a moment’s doubt about who I was or about the career I chose—But you—1 can only guess at the struggle you had to be you, to be your own free soul.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Ah ... I don’t know. Maybe that the you you’re creating is a being of whom you should be proud. Maybe that no matter what my people think of yours, or yours of mine, I know you, Naitachal, are not, you cannot be, my enemy. Agreed?”
The Dark Elf’s teeth flashed in a sudden smile. “Agreed.”
“Great,” came Lydia’s wry voice from the darkness. “Now can we all kiss and make up, and get some sleep?”
That created such a silly picture in Kevin’s mind that he started to chuckle. The bardling was still chuckling as he settled down for the night, but mixed in with the humor was sheer relief.
