Elvenborn hc-3

by Andre Nolton

  "Not nearly as much as it will take, I suspect," said Lord Van-drien dryly.

  "It will be a massive effort," Lord Kyndreth agreed. "Every tracking team will have to have a lord with it—one whose loyalty is unquestioned and cannot be subverted. Human slaves can be deceived or corrupted."

  Lord Wendrelith shook his head in disgust. "Ancestors! We'd either have to track them down one at a time—"

  "Which would take forever, even by our standards—" Triana interjected softly.

  "—or strip our estates of supervisors. Neither is a viable option," Kyndreth said, nodding.

  Triana, seeing that she had not been rebuffed, put in another of her observations. "Aren't they now crafting their own punishment?"

  Another of the Great Lords turned his full attention to Triana. "That is a very interesting idea, my Lady," Lord Arentiel-lan said, with an intensely alert expression in his eyes. "Could you elaborate?"

  "They cannot have more than one or two slaves apiece; they dare not collect in groups of more than three. They will not have anything that we think of as decent housing—not so much as a hunting lodge. They are likely to be living in caves or other crude shelters. None of them are truly powerful magicians; if they wish to eat, they must steal, hunt, gather—with their own hands and those of the one or two slaves they still retain." She laughed, in a voice low and husky. "It is entirely possible that many of them are out there, burning their dinners over smoking fires, only to shiver through the night in scant shelter, even as we speak." She smiled sweetly. "I cannot imagine a punishment worse than that—living like a wild human, and knowing that the only way to rectify the situation is to come groveling back to us."

  All five of the Great Lords stared at her for a long time; then Lord Kyndreth broke out in unexpectedly loud laughter, in which he was joined by the rest. Gildor looked up at them for a moment without interest, then went back to his concubine.

  "By the Ancestors, my Lady, I think you have the right of it!" said Lord Arentiellan with admiration. "My miserable brat is certainly welcome to all the burned rabbit and rain he can stand."

  "What of the army, Kyndreth?" asked Vandrien. "If it were up to me, I'd disband them."

  To Triana's veiled joy, the rest murmured agreement.

  "It's up to the full Council, of course," Kyndreth demurred. "And there are the Wizards to think of."

  "True ..." Vandrien mused.

  "Who we will, inevitably, outlive," Triana pointed out quietly. "With half their blood coming from slave-stock, I cannot see that they would have our years. With no more of the full blood, they will dilute their stock to the point that they are no more long-lived than mere slaves. Assuming that they don't kill each other off in their own quarrels."

  "Once again, my Lady, you surprise and delight me." Lord Vandrien sat up enough to give her the full bow of respect. "I am in your debt for such reasoned observations."

  "Thank you." She lowered her gaze modestly.

  "Still, the Wizards ... the question is, whether it is possible that they could pose a threat to us, simply by existing and serving as a temptation to the slaves to revolt." Kyndreth raised an eyebrow. "After all, our own offspring did."

  "And slaves would have no difficulty with the notion of— of—living like wild humans." Arentiellan nodded. "Still, I don't know—"

  "If you disbanded the army, there is a question of what Lord Kyrtian would do with himself," Triana suggested gently.

  "If you ask me, he ought to be on the Council!" Arentiellan said immediately—but Triana saw Lord Kyndreth exchange a pointed glance with one of the others. She strove to catch his eye, and nodded slightly.

  Lord Kyndreth looked surprised, then speculative, then returned her nod.

  She leaned back into her couch, secure in the certainty that her message had been read and understood.

  When the last honeyed grape had been eaten, and the last pleasantry exchanged, the Great Lords took their leave of their hostess, one by one. Lord Kyndreth sent his son and the concubine back through the Portal and made as if to follow, but found a sudden excuse to remain until all of the others had left but himself. Triana had accompanied them to the Portal herself to bid them a polite farewell, and now found herself, as she had hoped, alone with the Great Lord.

  "So, my lady," Kyndreth said, when the last haze of energy had died from the Portal mouth. "You seem to have some notions about Lord Kyrtian."

  "You are coming to the point with unaccustomed abruptness, if I may say so, Lord Kyndreth," Triana demurred.

  "I am—somewhat concerned about Lord Kyrtian," the Great Lord replied, shifting his weight restlessly from his left foot to his right. "I may have awakened sleeping ambition in him, and if now he finds no outlet for it, he may be—distressed."

  "He may use his new-won reputation within the Council to the disadvantage of others," Triana retorted, coming to the point just as directly as Lord Kyndreth had. "The strategies of war and politics are not unalike. On the other hand—"

  "Yes?" Kyndreth prompted.

  "His energies could be turned elsewhere, by someone who is clever enough to devise a channel for them." She looked up at him from beneath her long lashes, and smiled.

  "And what would this distraction cost me, if I may ask, my lady?" Kyndreth was wasting no time; it occurred to Triana that he might be more worried about Kyrtian's ambitions than she had thought.

  She decided to risk all on a single throw of the dice. "The Council Seat once held by my father."

  His mouth pursed, but he didn't look as if he particularly objected to the notion. "It could be done ... there have been females on the Council before now."

  But he hadn't committed to the bargain either. "The same clever person who found one outlet for his energies could turn them back to a more—unfortunate—direction, if bargains made are not kept."

  Now he smiled, wryly. "You have a way with words, my lady. The bargain will be kept—and I believe that you will find our young Commander at the estate of his Aunt, the Lady Morthena."

  She smiled radiantly at him. "Thank you, my lord. That is all I need."

  He gave her a full court bow. "And all I require, as well." He stepped towards the Portal, which began to glow with energy in response to his proximity. Then he paused on the threshold, to look back over his shoulder at her. "Good hunting, my Lady," he said.

  "And to you, my lord—" she replied. And he was gone.

  23

  Shana hadn't seen Kelyan and Haldor in ages—and she would have been hard-pressed to recognize them now. Rena had been right to take action; perhaps the change in the two "young" Elvenlords had been so gradual that it had passed relatively unnoticed by the people who saw them every day, but to Shana's eyes the change was something of a shock. Elvenlords were rarely "robust" by human or halfblood standards, but Kelyan and Haldor were wraith-thin, bones showing through skin gone quite translucent. Their silver-gilt hair was lank and brittle, and they bruised badly and easily. The dragons had brought them to the Citadel in a stupor induced by Mero; after waking them only enough to stuff them full of food and drink and clean them up after their journey, Shana had put them back to sleep again.

  Two elven captives summarily dumped on their doorstep— one more problem to try and fix.

  This time she was at a loss; this was not her area of expertise! If it hadn't been for Lorryn coming in and volunteering to find a group to help her with them, she wouldn't have known where to start.

  Now Shana and the group of young wizards Lorryn had called together stared down at their pair of captives as they slept in a magic-induced fog, illuminated by a pair of mage-lights. And it wasn't just wizards that Lorryn had asked for help, either; the group included some of the strongest of the human mages that Shana had ever met as well.

  I wouldn 't have thought of that—stupid of me. Humans are the ones with the magic that works on thoughts. There were several of them now, living among the Wizards, drawn down out of the hills by the promise of a place where they
could live without fear of being captured by elven-led slave-hunting expeditions. They stayed because Caellach had been very quiet ever since he had been defeated in the war of words with Shana. She was not altogether certain just how long he would remain quiet, but for now she was going to take the gift and not worry about him.

  One of these human magicians was a middle-aged man called Narshy, whose ability to create illusions within the minds of those who were not adept at the Iron Peoples' mind-wall technique was nothing short of boggling. It was he, evidently, that Lorryn had first thought of when Mero had first suggested that the Wizards take over where Mero and Rena had been forced to leave off. Narshy could sometimes even get past the mind-wall—and because of that, Shana considered it a good thing he was on their side.

  It made Shana wonder—before she dismissed the idea, appalled that she'd even considered it—if Narshy could be used to manipulate Caellach Gwain. A base and immoral idea—but oh, so tempting! It had taken a distinct effort of will to put the idea firmly aside.

  It was just a good thing that Caellach regarded the full humans with so much disdain, though. She wouldn't have put it past him to use the weapon that she discarded as immoral.

  For that matter, was it immoral to be tinkering with the minds of the two Elvenlords?

  Probably. But they were already mad. We 'd either have to kill them or fix them in such a way that they can't either betray us or the Iron People. She was caught between two equally distasteful solutions—but had no real choice, since Mero and Rena had already meddled with the situation past mending.

  Both Elvenlords lay on pallets in the middle of a small, disused room, with their human and halfblooded—"physicians"— clustered around them. "Well, it shouldn't be too difficult for ten or twenty of us together to concoct whatever memories of being held you want us to," Narshy told Shana with such supreme self-confidence that Shana felt a kind of grudging admiration. Whether he was right or wrong here, it would be nice to be able to feel, just once, that same sort of self-confidence. "With that many of us working at once, we can just—engrave the new memories in place within a few days. So, where do you want these two to have been held?"

  "Umm—" she hadn't thought that far, to tell the truth, but if she admitted that, would she lose authority in their eyes? They were all looking at her as if they expected her to present them with everything they needed, ready to go. "What about the old Citadel?" she suggested, unable to think of anything more clever on such non-existent notice. "That way we won't have to make anything up—wouldn't real memories be better than ones we concocted?"

  "But the Elvenlords know about the old Citadel," someone protested. "Wouldn't they have found these two?"

  Before Shana could answer that, someone else did it for her, with glee in their voice. "No! Because we can use our memories of the old Citadel, but we don't have to have them think that the place they were kept was the old Citadel. If we don't leave these two where the old Citadel actually is, whoever finds them will think that their prison was somewhere near where they were found! Let the Elvenlords think that there's another hidden Citadel somewhere."

  "What about the forest on the edge of Lord Cheynar's estate?" Lorryn suggested, from the rear of the group. "It's got a bad reputation anyway. Ancestors only know what's in there; plenty of hunters have gone in and never come out again. Chey-nar won't even send his own men in there after escaped slaves anymore."

  "That's true enough," Shana said thoughtfully. "I remember that Mero told me about some spooky sort of invisible thing that got his horse in there and nearly got him, when he and Va-lyn were escaping." She couldn't help it; she caught herself smiling grimly. There were plenty of things in those hills that were more than a match for Elvenlords.

  "Good enough," Narshy said, taking the decision as made. "That's what we'll do—the lot of you that lived in the old Citadel, let's pry some of those memories out of your skulls and get them shared around so we can stuff these two full of them."

  Shana was pleased and amazed at the way he managed to take control of the little group and herd them off to a corner where they could work undisturbed. With a sense of relief that was quite palpable, she realized that this time, for once, someone else was going to take care of a problem.

  Unbelievable. "Where did you find him?" she asked Lorryn. "He acts as if he's been in charge of people, mages even, before this—"

  "He has been—that's why I asked him to take charge of this group of yours," Lorryn replied, then suddenly looked anxious. "You don't mind—I hope—here I've gone and usurped your authority and now so has Narshy. Please tell me you aren't upset!"

  "Mind? I should think not!" She shook her head and smiled, tiredly. "I don't know how you just do this, find the right people and get them to take over this or that job—I can't seem to find the right way to get people to think for themselves—or find the ones that can take the initiative on their own." She bit her lip as the all-too-familiar frustration arose.

  "Maybe it's because you can't believe that you don't have to do everything," Lorryn said gently. "That's all I do; I find the people who are good at something, I ask them to do the job—and I believe that they can. Then I get out of the way and let them do it, in their own way, at their own pace."

  There was no graceful way to reply to that, and she just sat down on a stone ledge, feeling totally inadequate and utterly deflated. "I never wanted to be a leader," she said, forlornly. "If anybody had asked me, I could have had the chance to say no."

  "I know." He sat down beside her. "I'd rather you were free to do what you're good at; planning, thinking, coming up with solutions. You're all bogged down with trying to get people to see that your solutions are sensible—or to come up with better ones. You spend half your time trying to convince people, and the other half trying to herd them into working on the solution rather than sitting around and arguing about it. I'd rather you -didn't have to worry about all that."

  "So would I." Suddenly she felt like weeping, and swallowed the lump in her throat, blinking rapidly. "But—"

  He interrupted her. "Would you trust me to take what you aren't good at off your plate?" he asked, looking earnestly into her eyes. "I'm beginning to think that I am a leader, that it's in my nature—people listen to me, and I'm good at getting them to cooperate. But would you trust me to do what I'm good at so that you can do what you're good at?"

  It took her a moment to work out what he was getting at, and he probably wasn't entirely certain of it himself. Would she put him in the position that Caellach Gwain wanted so badly, trust him to carry out what she could see were the right plans and decisions for her? Shouldn't she have someone older, someone from the original Wizards of the Citadel?

  But neither Denelor nor Parth Agon—who should have been the leaders, and who Shana had expected would act as the leaders—seemed to be up to the job. Instead they had been delegating more and more authority to her, regardless of how she felt about it. Denelor never had cared to stir himself more than he had to, after all—she already knew that his besetting sin was sloth—and Parth—

  Parth, she suddenly realized, was old. How old, she didn't actually know, not in years—but once they had gotten settled here and it seemed that she and her young wizards had the situation well in hand, he'd started taking a back seat, letting her fight with Caellach and his cronies, waiting for her to make the decisions. From vague hints over the years, she realized that he must be at least a century old, and perhaps more.

  He's too old and tired to lead anymore, especially now that the Wizards are doing things and not just hiding. He doesn 't want the leadership position either. It's too much for him now.

  Maybe that was the case with Denelor, too.

  But could she hand over that much authority to Lorryn? It would make her terribly vulnerable.

  As vulnerable as if he truly is my lover, the way everyone seems to think he is—and this is the sort of thing they'd expect me to do, start making him my—my—ruling consort. This will only
make them more certain that we're lovers even though we 're not—even though I—

  She flushed as that thought came, unbidden, and she must have forgotten to shield it, for suddenly he flushed, too. "I can't help what other people think," he said, defensively. "I can't help it that we—that I—"

  She flushed again, fumbled for words, and couldn't find any.

  "This isn't a very nice position for you," he said at last. "Even my own sister thinks we're—you know. No matter what we do, people are going to make up their own minds about your personal life and there's nothing you can say or do that will change what they think. But that doesn't make things easy for you, when there's nothing going on between us."

  "Nor for you," she managed. "I mean, here I've been dumping all these things on you, and people are making all these assumptions, and you aren't even getting—" Now her face reddened so it felt as if she were inches from a fire.

  "Assumptions! I don't mind, but I'm not in the same position that you are. It's got to be intolerable for you!" he exclaimed. "I—Shana—I wish—"

  Suddenly, everything fell beautifully into place, as if the broken shards of a vase flew back together again before her eyes. She knew what he wished; he didn't need to say it, he was projecting it so forcefully that he was almost shouting the words in her head. He wanted those assumptions to be true, but he had been afraid that if he tried to push himself onto her, she would react by sending him away. He—he loved her. He really did! And—

  Fire and Rain! I feel the same way!

  Lorryn wasn't just a supportive and clever friend anymore. It wasn't just his friendship she needed and wanted. How long had she been feeling this about him? When did she stop feeling mere attraction, just enjoying his company, and suddenly start needing his presence the way she needed to breathe?

  "I didn't—I don't want to force you into anything," he was saying, a little wildly. "I knew how you'd felt about Valyn and I didn't want you to think I thought I could replace him! I wanted us to be friends, really good friends, and I wanted it to be that we could depend on each other, and then after a while, when things started to get calmed down, and we had the leisure to think about ourselves we could—I mean I know that—I don't know—"