"Not fair!" Alaire protested weakly, somehow man- aging to laugh at himself. Boy, was that stupid. Fell, or rather stepped, right into that one. "I was winning and you cheated."
"If you were really winning you wouldn't be sitting there like that," Naitachal said. "We're getting to the point in your training when almost anything is fair.
The real world is like that. Assassins," he added, his sword waving in the sunlight as if to punctuate the sentence, "will go to any lengths to kill their mark."
"What would an assassin want with me?" he replied, but only half seriously. Someone might want me dead, if only to get at my father. Being the eighth son o King put him in an awkward position. Derek, the first born and oldest brother, would almost certainly become king one day. The other brothers were train- ing for important government or military positions.
Yet, the King had never planned on having so many sons. As he once half-complained to the Queen, any other woman would have produced at least a few daughters along the way. Eventually he ran out of things to do with them.
Alaire, being the eighth and youngest son, enjoyed the rare luxury of choosing his life's work. He had been a very precocious child, and at six, he had decided to become a Bard. Fortunately, Naitachal was an old friend of the King as well as a loyal friend to many generations of the family. No one questioned wh Master would be.
This had not been a childish whim, but a real voca- tion. Naitachal had been able to assure the King that his son's talent was considerable, and that all would be well.
In many ways, his choice of lifework made him a less likely mark. The older brothers would certainly make better targets than he would. However, Alaire could not ignore the possibility that he could be sin- gled out by young toughs looking for a fight Naitachal had often pointed this out when he was sitting in the dust after a thorough trouncing.
For a year Alaire had trained under the King's Laureate, Gawaine, and under his guidance convinced everyone that he had an exceptional degree of musi- cal, and magical, talent. However, Gawaine was getting no younger; he had other students be Alaire, as well as the enormous burden demanded by his office of Laureate. Gawaine eventually found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the workload.
Since Alaire was hardly an ordinary, common stu Gawaine had known he ran the risk of favoring him over the other bardlings. It would have been a situ- ation fraught with trouble for a younger man Gawaine; for the Laureate, it was something he simply did not have the strength to deal with.
By this time Alaire was eight, and he had heard enough tales about Naitachal to be both excited and alarmed by having him as his Master. Though h "always" assumed Naitachal would be his teacher, he certainly didn't know what to expect from the mysteri- ous elf; the Necromancers becoming a Bard was bizarre enough. He had never seen a Dark Elf before; he'd had no notion that his father had used the "Dark Elf" so literally.
In the bright, airy colors of the court, Naitachal had stood out like a drop of ink on a white lace tablecloth.
The black cloak he wore habitually flowed about him as if it were liquid, and the tunic, hose and boots seemed to absorb whatever light hit them, as i Bard's body was a place that canceled daylight. Top- ping the darkness was his straight, silver hair that hung down his back, long as all elves wore it, and swept gracefully from side to side as he turned. His brilliant blue eyes, twin pools of color in the smooth black skin of that ageless face, burned right through Alaire when they first met. They distracted him, even now, during sword practice. Alaire soon found out Naitachal was no ordinary Dark Elf, if there could be such a thing.
The somber darkness that seemed to follow him wher- ever he went was only deceptive camouflage; within lurked an absurdly cheerful Bard, a master of his trade, as well as a teacher of other, more practical skills.
Naitachal had often reminded him of his royal obli- gations and duties, and the possibility that one day he might be nearer the throne than he was now. How- ever, this was the first time Naitachal had mentioned assassins.
It disturbed him at first, but after a moment of reflection, he shrugged it off. Sometimes the meaning of the elf's words didn't become clear for days or even weeks.
He's probably talking about years from now, when I join Fathers court. Right now, the prospect of Alaire's ever having to deal with an assassin seemed vague.
How would an assassin get out here near Fenrich, this remote village on the northeast coast? And once here, how could he ever be less than conspicuous?
Alaire loved this place, its peace and quiet, although he knew it would probably drive his brothers mad with boredom to stay here for more than a day. It seemed the ideal location to learn Bardic skills as well as magic; after all, there were few distractions here to speak of.
Naitachal had chosen this location to settle, in part because of the isolation, but also because the village folk readily accepted him as himself. His money was good, after all. In times of trouble Naitachal had gen- erously given his time and magical expertise, winning considerable popularity among the townsfolk.
Alaire stood and brushed the dust off his breeches, nursing some pride back into his damaged ego.
"Living out here on the edge of the kingdom doesn't change your lineage," Naitachal reminded him. "There's always the chance some enemy of your father's may want to kidnap you and hold you for ran- som. This is more likely to happen, though the same people often kidnap or kill with equal indifference."
"Perhaps," he said, acknowledging Naitachal's warning, but not really believing he could ever be a target. At least, not while he was a mere bardling, and under Naitachal's supervision. First, so few people knew he even existed, and even fewer knew he was way out here, Next Door to Nowhere. He didn't like the sudden serious turn the conversation had taken, but then what could one expect from a Dark Elf ?
Despite Naitachal's cheer he sometimes lapsed into the gloom and doom of his own kind. The bardling had met only a few Dark Elves, who were far more morbid than his Master had ever been.
No, it was probably just that Naitachal was having one of those relapses into depression. Probably no one remembered his existence, outside his own family.