by Andre Nolton
"More likely he is taking the time to see who is and is not our ally, going back to the time we all left Evelon," Lydiell replied tartly. "Someone of his rank and status can't afford an ally with an inconvenient number of deadly enemies."
"Well, the only enemy we have that I know of is Ael-markin...." Kyrtian said, letting his voice trail off and looking at his mother questioningly.
"Correct; Aelmarkin is our only open enemy, with the remote possibility that his allies might choose to throw in on his side," his mother confirmed. "Though once they see that Lyon has thrown in with us, however briefly, they are unlikely to back Aelmarkin against us in anything important. Thank the Ancestors we never meddled in politics on either side of the family! We'll have a clean slate, so far as Lord Lyon is concerned. All we have to worry about is keeping up appearances for a few days at most."
"I—don't intend to ask anything of Lord Lyon for this, Mother," Kyrtian said, hesitantly. "And I don't intend to make it seem as if I consider it a great favor on my part to teach him my methods. I want it to seem as if I consider this to be—how shall 1 put this?—something that I truly believe should be offered, part of my duty to the Elvenlords as a whole. I want to give him the impression of a solemn young man who is devoted to the welfare of his people. Which I am; just not the people that he thinks." He smiled. "There's no point in disillusioning him on that."
"Exactly right; any of the ordinary status-grubbers would do the opposite," she confirmed. "By acting differently than he expects, you'll catch him off guard and he won't know quite what to think of us. At best, he may decide that we're worth having as a permanent ally. The worst he'll assume is that we are so quietly provincial, so wrapped up in our own ways and life, with such quaint ideas of loyalty and duty, that we are no threat or challenge to anyone. We'll be safe to patronize, and he'll be motivated to protect us from any more of Aelmarkin's maneuverings."
"For my part, I would say that this would be the best thing he could assume," Kyrtian replied, relieved. "Can I take it that you approve?"
"Completely," Lady Lydiell said, as Tenebrinth nodded. Kyrtian smiled, a little thrill of pleasure tickling his spirit at the notion that his first foray into the dangerous world of Great Lords and politics had come off so successfully.
Even though I almost turned it into a disaster, he reminded himself. This is not the time for hubris!
He took his leave of both of them and stepped into the tube, which held him in place until the platform rose to receive him. Once he had been deposited on the ground floor, he headed straight for the West Tower, which held all five floors of the great library.
He planned to do a little genealogical investigation himself before his own plans went any further.
In the home of every Elvenlord, Great or Lesser, there was always a Great Book of Ancestors, kept up to date by either the Lady of the clan or a clerk she personally supervised. Every birth, death, and wedding was promptly reported to the Council, which sent out immediate notification to every household, however small and insignificant. No marriage or alliance could be made without consulting the Great Book, which dated back to the exile from Evelon.
Kyrtian sat at the table holding the Great Book on its slanting stand, and drew it closer to him. As he always did, because those First Days fascinated him, Kyrtian opened the Book to the first page where the names of all of those who had dared the Gate out of Evelon were written. Fully half of them were inscribed with death-dates that came within days or weeks of the Crossing. Some had died of the strain of the Crossing itself, or of injuries sustained in Evelon before the Crossing.
Few in these days realized that those who had made the Crossing had been the losers in a war that had split Elvenkind and set one half warring against the other. The Crossing had been the desperate attempt of the defeated to escape rather than surrender, not the valiant and bold move of those who were in search of a new world to conquer. That was one fact that those who ruled here now preferred to forget and bury in the past.
Of the survivors that remained after the Crossing, none were still alive at the present day. Elvenlords lived long, provided no accident, illness, inherited weakness, or murder disposed of them before the normal span of four or five centuries, but they were hardly immortal. Kyrtian's paternal great-grandfather had been one of the longest-lived survivors, as (he now learned) had Lyon Lord Kyndreth's great-grandsire; most other Elvenlords in these days were yet a further generation down the line from the original inhabitants of the new land.
He turned the page to trace his mother's line, rather than his father's. Odd, he thought, as he noted something that had never seemed important before. I'm literally the first male any woman of her line has produced since Evelon—
"That is why there was no great objection when I wedded your father," said Lydiell, behind him, as if she had the human gift of reading thoughts. He was too used to her uncanny ability to do this with him to be startled; he simply turned and smiled at her as she stepped forward another pace and placed her hand affectionately on his shoulder.
"No one—least of all Aelmarkin—ever thought I would produce a male heir," she said quietly. "That was why there was no objection raised to the marriage, and why Aelmarkin is so intent on dispossessing you of your inheritance now. He assumed that the ripe plum of our estate would drop into his lap without any effort on his part—or that he could somehow connive or force me to wed my presumed daughter to him." Lydiell smiled down at her son, whose birth had spoiled Aelmarkin's plans.
"But he's really a cousin in name only," Kyrtian objected, tracing back Aelmarkin's line. "His people haven't been directly related to ours since Evelon itself! It was our greatgrandfathers who were cousins, and there's been no closer marriage since then."
"But if you trace carefully, he's the only other male heir to the Clan," Lydiell pointed out. "That's as much your greatgrandfather's and grandfather's fault as anything else. Once they had a single, living child, the need to protect what we had built here took precedence over trying to sire any more children. They each had one male heir by one marriage and no further children; no daughters to wed outside the Clan, no second sons to secure alliances. Granted, they were exceptionally long-lived, and that's what saved us, but I was the first bride to come from a family not bound in any way to your Clan, and if your father was still with us, by now you would have at least a younger sister or brother, because I would have personally seen to it, rather than accepted the edict that there was no need for further children."
Now Kyrtian noted something else that had somehow escaped his attention. His ageless mother was nearer in age to his grandfather than his father! She saw his eyes resting on the birth-date under her name, and chuckled richly.
"I wondered when you would uncover that!" she said. "Yes, I'll admit it; I robbed the cradle! When your grandmother— wiser or more pragmatic than her husband—knew that she would not survive your father's birth, she had enough time to handpick a successor. She turned to our family, who had been her friends; she wanted my sister, but the family had already wed her off, so she chose me! But she had reckoned without your grandfather's love and devotion; he refused to take another wife, especially one as barely-nubile as I was. Still, for the sake of my friendship with her, I visited often and long, trying to amuse your grandfather and possibly even persuade him in time that I was fascinating and desirable! I wish you had seen me, still barely past my presentation fete, slinking around here as if I was a hardened seductress!"
Since Kyrtian couldn't imagine his mother slinking around like a seductress at any age, he spluttered a little and reddened.
"Well, when seduction failed, I thought I would win him by showing him what a devoted mother I could be to his son," she continued. "There was one little wrinkle in that plan; by the time I thought of it, your father was hardly of an age to need mothering! But I persisted in cultivating him, only to find that his son and I were mutually falling head over heels in love as soon as he was old enough to think of such thi
ngs! Your grand-sire was much amused, and so was my sister, Moth."
"Moth," of course, was V'tern Morthena Lady Arada, nearly a full century Lydiell's senior, and the only surviving relict of Lord Arada's tiny Clan. She held a small estate granted her by her late husband in her own right, with no inconvenient cousins to pester her.
Kyrtian sighed. When he looked at the Great Book, in the complicated web of intermarriages and second and third marriages, his family stood all alone, like a single strand of silk off to one side of the greater pattern.
"I have not told you this before, but Aelmarkin tried to force a marriage on me when your father first disappeared," she continued, as calmly as if it had happened to someone else. "That was when Moth came to my rescue; she dug up an obscure law preventing a man from marrying the widow of his cousin if she already had a male heir. She visited each of the Great Lords herself and pointed out to each one of them—with examples— how that law would protect their own sons from certain of their opponents if anything happened to the lord himself. Needless to say, they upheld the law to a man, and Aelmarkin had to slink away with his tail between his legs."
"No wonder he hates you," Kyrtian replied, enlightened.
She sniffed delicately. "Personally, I prefer not to waste an emotion as empowering as hatred on that worm. It was obvious from the start what his plans were when he came slinking around here, oozing false sympathy and groomed and jewel-bedecked to within an inch of his life. Even if I had been the foolish woman he thought I was, I would quickly have seen that such an alliance would mean your death. No matter what my personal feelings were on the subject, I would never have placed you or our people in the hands of the odious Aelmarkin!"
"Thank you for that!" Kyrtian laughed. "And sometime you might thank your aunt for devising the means to protect us both," she replied cheerfully, with a light squeeze of her hand on his shoulder.
"Well, however much you play at modesty, I think that you would have found the solution just as quickly as Lady Moth if you hadn't had her help," he told her. "You are two out of the same mold, as clever as you are beautiful, and far more intelligent than any mere males."
"I only needed to be clever enough to take advantage of our isolation," she said, with a laugh at his attempt to compliment her. "After all, we are out back of beyond of nowhere, and I doubt that anyone other than Aelmarkin would even consider wanting our estate for that reason;" Her tone turned scornful. "And frankly, I think if Aelmarkin knew how much work it is to keep this estate so profitable, he'd quickly change his mind about wanting it."
"I only wish that were true," Kyrtian sighed. "It's only a lot of work because of the way we treat our human friends; if this estate were run on the same lines as any other, the profits would probably be much higher. At least," he amended, "That's what Tenebrinth told me once."
"That's beside the point," Lydiell said resolutely. "The point now is to make sure we get the most out of Lord Lyon's visit, without making any blunders and without sacrificing any of our independence. You go off and consult with Gel over dinner; I'll do the same with Tenebrinth. We're going to want to please Lyon without dazzling him, charm him without making it look as if we have anything he really wants other than your knowledge and expertise. And you and Gel ought to put your heads together to see if you can think of anything else he might want out of you in particular."
Kyrtian closed the Great Book with a determined snap. "You're perfectly right, as usual," he said. "I'll go change into something less ostentatious and find Gel, and we'll get down to business."
But in spite of the excitement of the moment, there was one thing he had realized as he walked off in search of Gel. With all of the conversation about marriages and alliances, for the first time since he'd come of age, Lydiell had not even mentioned the prospect of his own marriage! And that was enough of a relief that his steps became noticeably lighter.
9
Over the next several days, he and Gel were so busy with preparations for Lord Kyndreth's visit that he hardly had time to do anything other than eat and sleep. He certainly didn't have any time for staging even combat-practice, so the fighters were left to fend for themselves until Gel could take over their practice-sessions using the old, blunted wooden weapons instead of the magic ones.
He already knew that he did not have to worry about the fighters taking advantage of his inattention. Thanks to a very real sense of what Gel would have to say—and do—about it, if they spent their time idle, they took it upon themselves to follow the usual course of exercise and simple drill, varied with hand-to-hand, unarmed contests, in which the worst accident that could befall would be a broken bone or two.
Kyrtian also knew that the fighters would not give the game away by acting out-of-character. They were military, heart and soul, and would no more speak out-of-turn or hesitate to obey an order than fly. No, the fighters could be counted upon to play their parts like the professionals that they were.
It was the regular servants and field-hands who had to be drilled in subservience until it became second nature, and many times Kyrtian was strongly tempted to meddle with their minds by means of magic to keep them from forgetting. It was finally Gel who came up with the excellent solution of actually working through the elf-stones on their seldom-worn collars, setting up a warning tingle whenever the wearer altered his or her posture from that of complete servility.
That worked, and far better than Kyrtian had expected. The servile pose, with shoulders slightly hunched and eyes on the ground, forcibly reminded people of how they were expected to act. "It won't matter if they look cowed and afraid all the time," Gel pointed out. "Lord Kyndreth won't know it's all acting a part, no matter how exaggerated it seems to us. A real slave just can't be too servile; if they grovel a lot, he'll only think you're keeping their leashes short and using the whip a great deal. Now—much as I hate to bring this up, but what if Kyndreth doesn't bring along some of his own women? He'll expect to be offered entertainment, even if he turns it down."
"I don't have any concubines to offer him," Kyrtian pointed out. "I suspect that's one of the things Aelmarkin tries to use against me with the other Lords, that I'm—ah—"
"Virginal and chaste—and probably sexless, hence no fit heir," Gel growled bluntly. "Well, you may not have a harem to offer him at the moment, but what are you going to do? Have you made any plans?"
"Mother had an idea," Kyrtian replied, but made a face of distaste. "I don't like it, mind you, but... she thinks it's just that I'm too fastidious. She's going to send Tenebrinth to the slave markets and buy a pretty concubine or two just before the visit; she'll meddle with their memories to make them think they've been here for the last couple of years, keep them isolated in a tiny harem of their own and have me offer them to Lord Kyndreth."
"You're too fastidious," Gel told him bluntly. "It's perfect. They won't know anything about us, and they won't be related to anyone here. If there's an ... accident... we won't be losing any of our people."
Kyrtian's distaste grew, but he couldn't deny that Gel's pragmatic view was at least practical. "And what do we do with them afterwards?" he asked sourly.
Gel shrugged. "Hardly matters. Concubines aren't the brightest as a whole, and I suspect any that your mother picks will be very pretty and very dim—much safer that way. We could probably marry them off to someone, if you've got no taste for having them around. Or sell them again," He raised an eyebrow at Kyrtian's expression, and snorted. "Do yourself a favor; let your mother and Tenebrinth deal with it. Keep your hands clean if you dislike it that much."
As if my not knowing makes it any better, he thought grimly. No, that's no answer. "I'll tell Mother you agree with her idea, and even though I don't like the idea, I agree it's necessary, there really doesn't seem to be a better solution."
"There isn't," Gel said, with emphasis. "What else do you want to do, ask for volunteers?"
That was definitely no answer. He shook his head. "I'll do the memory manipulation—mothe
r isn't going to be able to impart many convincing illusions about—um—I mean, it's not as if she's a male—" He flushed, and didn't complete the sentence, but got the distinct feeling that Gel found his embarrassment highly amusing. "We'll do what we have to, all of us, and try to make things up afterwards if there's anyone hurt by this." He just hoped that Lord Kyndreth wasn't one of those who left women damaged. "I can always make the girls forget everything when he's gone," he added, as much for his own benefit as for Gel's.
Gel looked relieved. "You'll never be a real commander if you can't make the difficult decisions and carry them out," he reminded his erstwhile superior—perhaps just a touch smugly.
"I just did, didn't I?" he replied, irritated. "Enough; we're spending more time on this than the issue warrants, and it has nothing to do with your part in this, which is getting the fighters ready. Well?"
Gel grinned. "Oh, they're ready. Very eager to show their paces, and just as eager to see you vindicated. Have no fear, they know their parts. We'll give Lord Kyndreth a show he isn't likely to forget for the next three centuries."
Triana considered the slave dispassionately—a rare state of mind for her. There were several considerations here, not the least of which was this; how far could one trust a human? As she had told Aelmarkin, she seldom trained female slaves. Never was not the operative word; never was not a word to be used at all among the Elvenlords, whose long lives had no room in them for never. Sooner or later, whatever it was that had been vowed against would happen. Mind, there were Elvenlords so rigid in their thinking that they actually believed that they could say they would "never" do something—but Tri-ana knew better.
This woman was not of her breeding; the female slaves that Triana bred on her own estate were strictly utilitarian, and while not plain (she couldn't bear to have anything plain or ugly about her) were about as animated as statues in the presence of their mistress. This girl, bought, not at auction, but handpicked from among the offerings of a private sale, was the opposite of stoic and unanimated. She was trained as a dancer as well as in harem skills; she was very intelligent. Triana needed a woman who was intelligent, but with intelligence came the liability of thinking for one's self.
