Songs & Swords 2 by Cunningham Elaine

Author:Cunningham, Elaine [Cunningham, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786916610
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Late into the night, Vartain and Danilo huddled over the scroll, holding conference amid a circle of sleeping mercenaries. Wyn sat silently nearby, listening to all that was said with an increasingly troubled expression in his large green eyes.

“The first stanza is solved,” Vartain said at last “As we surmised, it refers to the spell placed on the bards at Silverymoon.”

“Why do you keep referring to those lines as the first stanza?” Danilo demanded. ‘There’s nothing else on the scroll!”

“Not yet” The riddlemaster pointed to a faint smudge on the parchment, like the shadow of words. As the incredulous Harper watched, a second stanza began to take form beneath the first “Ibis is not uncommon for a riddle spell of such complexity. The first line of the verse refers to one of seven. As each is solved, the next will appear. This is a device to keep the entire riddle from being solved too easily”

“Rather like using a remote dialect of Sespechian to hide the key to the riddle,” Danilo observed.

“Precisely. All these obscure details, however, tell us something about the spellcaster. He or she—or it, for that matter—is well versed in the riddlemaster’s art. The spellcaster is either a linguist or a native speaker of Sespechian. If the latter is true, that would make our foe at least three hundred years old.”

“Which makes sense, considering that the spellcaster has an interest in an elven artifact Three hundred years is not so old for an elf,” the Harper said. He squinted at the text dawning on the page. “What do you make of this?”

Vartain tipped the parchment to catch more of the dancing light of the campfire. “The answer to the first two lines is “mother.’ Many riddles have to do with family relationships. The mention of woodruff puzzles me,” he admitted.

“I can explain that,” Danilo said with a tight smile. “My family deals in wines, and a large part of our wealth is due to that herb. It is grown in the Moonshaes and is used to make the famous spring wine that lubricates the Midsummer festivities.”

“Fascinating. I would therefore suppose that the mother named here is the Earthmother, the goddess who is synonymous with the Moonshae Isles themselves. Where is the herb grown, precisely?”

“Where? In the ground, I would imagine. Granted, I’m no expert… .”

`That is not what I meant,” Vartain broke in impatiently. “Where is this herb-flavored wine produced? This could be important!”

Danilo thought it over. “Now that you mention it, my teacher from MacFuirmidh spoke of the vast herb gardens and vineyards that surrounded the college. The school has fallen into decline, of course, but the wineries are a thriving business. At least, they were until this very season,”

Danilo added slowly. “Nearly three moon cycles past, there were severe crop failures, and the herb gardens and vineyards were almost destroyed. I was in Tethyr at the time, working among the wine merchants there. The southern vintners were delighted by this development, as you can well imagine.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.