“Please, let me finish. There’s no point in you going into danger because—well, even if this spell works, even if Carlotta is disabled. Count Volmar won’t be. And anyone who’s with me is going to be in big trouble.”
“For a change,” Lydia said drily.
“You'll be in that trouble, too,” Naitachal reminded the bardling. “I’ve already ... lost ... one friend. I don’t want to lose another.”
“I don’t want to be lost, either’ But ...” Kevin shook his head. “To put it bluntly, I’m going to be worried enough as it is. I don’t want to have to worry about anyone else. Particularly not those I care about. Or those who’ve helped us, either.”
“The minstrels.”
“Exactly. I’d like to travel to the castle with them; it does seem to be the obvious way back in. But I really want to keep their involvement in all this to an absolute minimum.” Kevin gave a shaky sigh. “There’s not enough time for anything other than what I think knights call desperation moves. There won’t be any heroes coming out of this.”
“Sounds like you’ve gained some sense at least,” said a sardonic voice. “Maybe even enough to keep you from being killed.”
Kevin nearly sprained his neck twisting about in shock. That voice ... It was only Berak who stood there, and yet ...
“Don’t you think the masquerade has gone far enough?” Naitachal asked the minstrel.
Berak grinned. “You knew what I was right away, didn’t you?”
The Dark Elf grinned in return. “Even as you recognized me.”
Lydia looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”
“Just this.” Berak murmured a quiet Word. And ... it wasn’t so much that his face and form changed as it was that a masking glamour seemed to fall away. Kevin stared. How could he ever have missed how high those cheekbones were» how sharply slanted those eyes? And that hair was surely far too silky to be human hair—
“You’re an elf!” Kevin gasped in alarm. “You’re all elves!”
Berak chuckled, “We’re all elves,” he agreed, “all my troupe.” The minstrel gestured to where they, laughing, had also shed their glamour of humanity.
Tich’ki wriggled out of hiding. “So that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Clever disguises! So obvious, right under the humans’ noses and not one of them ever noticed!”
Berak’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the fairy’s sudden appearance, but all he did was dip his head in polite acknowledgement and say smoothly, “Humans do tend to see what they expect to see.”
Lydia snorted. “No wonder Seritha’s Power was so much more than anything a human could master!”
“Exactly.”
But Kevin was still staring. “1 know you! You’re the group who surrounded me in the forest that night! Yes, and scared the life out of me, too!”
“We were trying to scare the life into you, youngling,” Berak corrected drily. “You were much too cocky then for your own survival.”
“I don’t understand something,” Naitachal cut in. “You are very obviously White Elves, all of you, and yet you never hesitated to help an enemy.”
“A Dark Elf, you mean?” Berak raised a brow. “And are you our enemy?”
“No, of course not. But—” Naitachal gave a small sigh of confusion. “I really don’t understand. What clan are you? What clan can you possibly be that you don’t share the usual prejudice against my kind?”
“No clan at all, or one of our own imagining.”
“And what does that mean?”
Berak smiled. “Simply that we are the bits and tatters of many clans, the outcasts, the ones who couldn’t fit in with all the staid and somber old traditions. We like to laugh, to rove, to sing and play our songs for others, elf or human, and share our joy with them. It amuses us, just as it amuses us to disguise ourselves as humans.”
