Mercedes Lackey - Castle of Deception

“Oh, hardly that”

Her shape blurred, altered ... Volmar rubbed a hand over his eyes—He’d known from the start that Carlotta was as much a master of shape-shifting as any fairy, but watching her in action always made him dizzy.

“You can look now, poor Volmar.” Her voice was an octave higher than before, and so filled with sugar he dropped his hand to stare.

Where the adult Carlotta had sat was now a cloyingly sweet little blonde girl of, Volmar guessed, the bardling’s own age, though it was difficult to tell age amid all the golden ringlets and alabaster skin and large, shining blue eyes.

“How do I look?” she cooed.

Honest words came to his lips before he could stop them. “Sweet enough to rot my teeth.”

She merely threw back her head and laughed. Her teeth, of course, were flawless. “I am a bit sickening, aren’t I? Let me try a more plausible form.”

The sickening coyness faded. The girl remained the same age, but the blonde hair was now less perfectly golden, the big blue eyes a bit less glowing, the pale skin just a touch less smooth. As Volmar grit his teeth, determinedly watching despite a new surge of dizziness, he saw the perfect oval other face broaden ever so slightly at the forehead, narrow at the chin, until she looked just like ...

“Charina!” the count gasped.

“Charina,” the princess agreed. “Your darling little niece.”

Too amazed to remember propriety, Volmar got to his feet and slowly circled her. “Marvelous!” he breathed at last. “Simply marvelous! I would never know you weren’t the real—But what do we do with the real Charina?”

Her voice was deceptively light. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Ah, yes.” Volmar smiled thinly. “Poor Charina. She always has been a bit of a nuisance, wandering about the castle like a lonely wraith. How unfortunate that my sister and her fool of a husband had the bad taste to die. Poor little creature: too far from the main line of descent to be of any use as a marriage pawn. No political value at all. Just another useless girl.”

“Not so useless now.” Carlotta/

Charina dimpled prettily.

“Poor Charina,” Volmar repeated without any warmth at all. “So easily disposed of. She never will be missed.”

Kevin woke with a jolt as something smothering landed smack across his face, molding itself over his nose and mouth—Gasping, he clawed the monster aside —and found himself holding a damp towel.

“Very funny!” he began angrily, only to find himself talking to empty space. The last of the squires was just leaving the hall, laughing with the others.

Fuming, Kevin got to his feet and found the garderobe facilities, grateful that at least the count didn’t insist his underlings use lowly chamber pots. Going to the communal washing trough, he discovered the squires hadn’t left him more than a few inches of water, barely enough to splash on his face. Grumbling, he dressed, pulling his clothes from the chest at the foot of his bed, and sat down to a solitary breakfast—at least they’d left him something to eat—of a roll and some scraps of cheese, washed down with a lukewarm goblet of khafe.

Now, all he had to do was find the count’s library.

Easily said. Kevin wandered helplessly through the castle corridors for a time, sure he was going to be shouted at by D’Krikas for being where he shouldn’t be. At last, to his relief, he intercepted a page, a wide-eyed boy even younger than Am, who shyly gave him directions, then hurried away.

At last, the bardling thought wryly. Someone whose status here is even lower than mine.

The library was a large, dusty room lined with tall shelves piled high with scrolls and books of all sizes. It was so redolent with the scent of dusty old parchment and leather that Kevin sneezed. Obviously scholarship wasn’t high on the count’s list of priorities!

As he glanced about the crowded room, the bardling shook his head in gloom. The room faced onto an inner courtyard, safely away from attack, so at least the windows were large enough to let him see what he was doing. But there wasn’t a title anywhere, not on books or scroll cases. There wasn’t any sign of a librarian, either. There probably wasn’t one, judging from the dustiness of the room.

All right The sooner he started looking, the sooner he’d get this whole stupid job finished.

By mid-afternoon, Kevin was dusty, weary of climbing up and down the rickety library ladder and sick to death of the whole room. Ha, by now he probably knew more about the contents of the count’s library than anyone, including the count! And what a weird collection it was, without any logic to it! Why in the world would anyone want to keep not one but three copies of The Agricultural Summaries of Kendall County for the First Twenty Years of King Sendak’s Reign? And what was a treatise on politics doing tucked in between two volumes of rather bad love poetry?

How can the Master even know for sure the manuscript’s in here?

By Bardic Magic, of course. Kevin started to sigh, then coughed instead. Blast this dust!

The bardling stopped his hunt long enough to snag some lunch from a startled page, then dove into the library once more. A book about farm tools. Another. A catalog of cattle diseases. One on swine, wild and domestic. A book on—

“Ow!”

Kevin nearly fell off the ladder, just barely managing to catch his balance in time. Something in the shelves had bit him!

No, no, it hadn’t been a bite at all, more of a weird tingling in his fingertips. Kevin looked warily at the last book he’d touched—and let out a whoop of joy. Yes, yes, yes, he’d found the manuscript he needed at last!

The bardling scurried down the ladder clutching his prize, and took it over to the library’s one desk, wiping off dust from the manuscripts leather binding as he went. A good chunk of the day was already gone, but at least he could get the copying started. Someone, presumably at D’Krikas’ command, had left him supplies. Kevin found an inkwell and two quill pens on the desk, and a nice stack of parchment in a drawer. Sitting with the manuscript open before him, the bardling paused for one anticipatory moment, then dove into his work.

But after a moment, Kevin straightened again, blinking in confusion. He could have sworn the whole manuscript had been written in the common script used by most of the human lands here in the West, yet now some of the words seemed to be in a different language completely.

The bardling rubbed his eyes. He’d spent too much time in this dusty place, peering at old books. Manuscripts did not change themselves from one language to another.

Yet when Kevin took a second look, he saw, without any doubt about it, that some of the letters were actually, slowly and gracefully, changing before his eyes, altering from the human script into elaborate, beautiful, alien figures.

Elvish, he realized with a shock, recognizing the script from some of his Master’s music books.

Kevin bit back a groan as he realized what lay ahead. He could only read a few words in elvish. That meant he’d have to copy the symbols line for line, much more slowly and carefully than he would the script of a language that meant something to him. Oh, wonderful. More tine wasted.

But as the bardling started copying the manuscript word by word and symbol by symbol, a sudden little shiver of wonder raced through him. Even though the elvish wasn’t miraculously translating itself for him, even though he had no idea what he was copying, the very fact that he’d been able to see the letters transform could only mean one thing: his long-sleeping gift for Bardic Magic had finally started to wake up! His fingers fairly itched to try his lute and see if the magical songs finally had some Power to them!