by Andre Nolton
"Oh, hush," she said, suddenly full of a half-mad joy, and kissed him, putting everything she felt behind it just so she could get it all past the wild tide of his feelings.
:oh: she heard in her mind.
And then, for some timeless time, there was no room in either of their minds for words at all. Finally, for that one moment, no matter what would come after, everything was perfectly, completely, right. And she knew that she could trust Lorryn more than she could even trust herself.
"This isn't exactly the choicest spot—" he said, finally, into her hair. "We're rather out in public, not to mention our audience."
"I suppose they could wake up." Shana sighed and reluctantly broke the embrace.
She smoothed down her hair, self-consciously. He brushed a strand or two out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear for her. "Have you any time to spare?" he asked wistfully.
No—there's this, and the forges, and the slave-collars, and the defenses and—
"I'll make some," she replied.
The irony of the situation was that the only people affected by this sea-change in their relationship were Lorryn and Shana themselves. But oh, the difference for them!
No one seemed to have noticed that Lorryn's quarters had been stripped and converted into a storage area. Spiteful comments from Caellach Gwain as reported by Shana's sharp-eared observers among the children were in no wise changed. And yet—the difference to her!
But the world outside their chamber was not going to go away.
A plan—a large and complicated plan to safeguard the Citadel forever—was beginning to take shape between the two of them. When news came from Keman that Lord Kyrtian had either given or been ordered to give the command of the army to someone else while the Council debated its future, the need for that plan took on a new sense of urgency.
The old Citadel had defenses that this one didn't; it was time to put them in place. Alara and Kalamadea were the chief architects of the Citadel, and it was time to consult with them.
She and Lorryn, Alara and Father Dragon sat together over a three-dimensional "map" of the Citadel, sculpted in removable layers, trying to plan what next needed to be molded out of the rocks of their mountain. One grim consideration—escape tunnels. Just in case the Great Lords decided to send the formidable Lord Kyrtian after them. Another, a duplicate of the Citadel far enough away to flee to, but near enough that an evacuation could take place by means of the transportation spell. There were enough Wizards able to use it now that the entire population could be evacuated within hours, and the advantage of the spell was that there would be no tracks to trace them by.
The existence of this duplicate—which was near enough to Zed's iron-mines to provide extra protection, but at this point hardly more than a few chambers molded out of the rock by some of the youngest dragons—was for now a closely-kept secret. Even from the dragons working on it. Alara had told them it was nothing more than a new set of lairs.
Which we also need, Shana thought, wondering just how thin their resources could be stretched before things started snapping.
"The prisoners—how goes the memory-making?" Father Dragon asked. He and Alara were in halfblood form at the moment, or they would never have fit into the map-chamber. "I do not wish to alarm you unduly, but the sooner we can drop those two where they can be found, the better."
"Narshy's sorted out who's the best at planting the new memories, and he's got them stuffed with about a year's worth," Shana replied, tracing a possible exit tunnel from the lowest storage chamber onto the model with a wax pencil. "We decided to make the memories confused and foggy, as if they'd been kept drugged."
"We nominated Caellach as the Chief Wizard of this imaginary lot," Lorryn put in, getting a grin from Father Dragon and a head shake from Alara. "We had to have somebody, and at least he's memorable."
"Narshy says we should be able to plant them in a few days. He took the real memories of being captured, put new faces on the people doing the capture, then took it from there." Shana brooded over the model. "He's using as much of their real memories as he can, just changing the faces to Wizards, the tents to rock walls—and eliminating the iron collars. He's making those into something like slave-collars, so that the Elven-lords will think that this new lot of concocted Wizards are actually better at using elven magic than the Elvenlords themselves are."
"A good touch," Father Dragon Said, admiringly.
"Now if only I could figure out a way to be in two places at the same time," Shana said, staring down at the map.
Keman and Dora had not been able to get any nearer to Lord Kyrtian without revealing themselves, thanks in no small part to the suspicious Sargeant Gel. Shana had not dared ask them to take that final, irrevocable step. I need desperately to see Lord Kyrtian for myself! Only then would she know whether or not he was truly to be trusted—and if trusted, to be approached. But if she was gone from here, there was no telling what mischief Caellach might not get up to. If she was delayed—if something happened—could Lorryn control the old troublemaker for long? Or would Caellach manage to regain his hold over his old faction and set this entire warren seething with so many quarrels and bad feelings that it would all fall to pieces?
"Your mind or your body?" Kalamadea asked, suddenly, with an odd birdlike twist of his head.
"What do you mean?" she replied, wondering what had prompted that sort of reply.
"Well—if it's your mind that needs to be in two places at once—that is, if you feel that you have to be able to see and make decisions yourself about things going on in two different places at the same time, then we can't help you," Kalamadea said. "But if it's your body that needs to be seen in two places— if, for instance, you wanted to leave, and had confidence in someone enough to let him make decisions for you but you needed a sort of figurehead or puppet of yourself so that certain people wouldn't decide to make trouble while you were gone—
"A certain person whose name rhymes with drain," Alara put in, with a sly wink.
"Exactly—and if that's what's concerning you, well, that's entirely different. And it's something Alara and I can help you with." Father Dragon looked particularly smug, and it didn't take long for Shana to realize why, what he meant, and she wanted to smack herself in the head for not thinking of it sooner.
"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Mother—there's no reason why you can't shape-shift into me, is there? You know me well enough to counterfeit me for everybody—" She flushed, as Lorryn laughed and made a face. "—well, practically everybody!"
"No reason at all," Alara said agreeably. "And I don't know why we didn't think of this before, when You-Know-Who became so interfering and disagreeable. Unless it was because we were too worried about what had happened to you to think of it."
Already her mind was racing; if Alara could do this, and was willing, then she could go in person to see this Lord Kyrtian and make a decision about whether or not she should try to make an ally of him.
She exchanged a glance with Lorryn. "Lord Kyrtian," he said simply, their minds following the same track.
"I can't make a decision about him without seeing him myself," she replied, nodding.
"Nor should you," Kalamadea said firmly. "Keman and Dora are good children, but if they make a poor choice, they have the option of flying away from Wizards and Citadel and all. Not—" he added hastily "—that I believe that they would, but the option is there, lurking behind their thoughts, and it could make them a bit less cautious." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I believe that same option might have made me too cavalier in my own decisions at the time of the First War."
Since Shana had occasionally wondered that herself, there was no good answer she could make to that.
Since she couldn't, she held her tongue. "Lorryn can control Caellach better than I can," she said, with complete confidence and a wink to him. "And Lorryn is someone the rest will listen to."
They listen to him more than they do to me, actually. Maybe because he
never was a wizard's apprentice. There were some profound disadvantages to having been the rawest of raw beginners within the old Citadel and the old regime itself, and that was one of them. "There's only one difficulty, and that's—well, if anyone looks into Alara's mind, they're going to know she isn't me."
"But the troublemakers are not the ones who are at all adept with the powers of human magic," Lorryn pointed out logically.
Alara just shrugged off the difficulty. "How often is anyone likely to snoop on the thoughts of the Elvenbane anyway?" she asked. "I shouldn't think it happens often, and besides, I can probably learn mind-wall well enough to keep them out."
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Dragon minds aren't like ours. But Alara was right that in all this time, Shana had very seldom felt the touch of another's mind on hers, and even then it was someone wanting to communicate, not snoop.
"I can take you to where Keman and Dora are," Kalamadea continued serenely. "Now that Lord Kyrtian has taken leave of his command while the Great Lords debate whether or not to disband the greater part of the army, Keman and Dora have just today followed him to Lady Morthena's estate."
"Lady Moth?" Lorryn's exclamation made them all turn to look at him—and this news must have come as a surprise to him. "But that's where my mother is! Lady Moth is one of her oldest friends!"
"Really?" That was interesting, but not overly so, and it didn't seem particularly important to their current situation. But Lorryn was continuing.
"You remember, we've been getting some communications from mother—irregular letters," he continued. "Lady Moth isn't just any elven lady. She has never mistreated her humans— they're servants, not slaves, to her. In fact, when we left mother with her, just at the start of the revolt, she was riding the bounds of her estate with armed human men who called her 'Little Mother' and treated her—well, with affection."
That got her attention. The only Elvenlord that she had ever seen treated with affection by humans had been Valyn. "Really?" And Lord Kyrtian had gone there—why? "I wonder—"
"Don't wonder, go and find out," Father Dragon urged her. "Do it before the Great Lords make up their minds what to do about him. Because if they don't decide to use him, you can be sure that they'll try to destroy him."
"Would that be so bad?" Shana countered, knowing that she sounded heartless—but she had to bring up the point, because others would. If it came down to it, her authority rested on one thing, and that was the ability of the rest to trust her decisions. With some rare exceptions, the humans and Wizards of the Citadel would see Elvenlords taking down other Elvenlords as a step in the right direction, and not trouble themselves as to what might follow.
"It could be." That was Lorryn, looking troubled. "For one thing, Shana, if we can make him an ally, he'd be better than anyone here at the art of war. For another—he has to be one of the rare ones, like Lady Moth. If he's removed, all the humans on his estate will be in deadly danger from whoever they put in his place. You can't want that!"
She groaned, but had to agree; if all that was true, even if they managed to rescue all of Lord Kyrtian's slaves, it would strain the capacity of the Citadel to support them. Why was it that every turn of fate brought more and more people for whom she had to be responsible into her purview?
"He may not realize just how treacherous the Great Lords are, Shana," Kalamadea said quietly. "He may not dream he's in danger. If nothing else, he deserves to be warned."
"And the best person to warn him is me, I suppose." She tried to sound resigned, but aside from the pressure and burden of apparently additional responsibilities, she didn't really feel resigned at all. She felt excited—this was the sort of thing she was good at.
But Lorryn—to separate, even temporarily, now that they were together—
Once again, he read her feelings as well as her thoughts.
"You go," he said, softly, before she even looked at him. "You have to go. I'll see no one makes trouble here, and you'll be there and back again before you know it. It can't take more than a few days at most, can it?"
"I wouldn't think so, but—" Now she looked at him.
:I'll miss you every moment, but this is something only you can do. He might not trust a dragon. He won't trust that some strange wizard has the authority to speak for all of us. Rena can't get here soon enough to talk to him, even if she'd be willing to leave Mew. But you're the Elvenbane. If you make him an offer, he'll believe you.:
And there, after all, was the heart of the matter. She was distinctive; no one could mistake her for anything other than what she was. Her description had circulated to every part of the El-venlords' domain now, and once Lord Kyrtian set eyes on her, he would know who she was.
:Just promise to come back to me.: That was the easiest promise she had ever made.
24
Kyrtian's nose tickled, and he rubbed it absently. Why is it that in spite of decades of practice, the Ancestors had handwriting that was uniformly atrocious? The tiny words not only looked as though they had been written with the aid of a lens, they conformed to no school of calligraphy he 'd ever seen.
Kyrtian labored his way through yet another personal journal, making notes on sheets of foolscap for later transcription in his own neat (and extremely legible) hand. This business of concocting a "personal" script-style must have been a common affectation among the bored. But why they should choose to also write as if paper was more valuable than gold was beyond his comprehension.
Here in Lady Moth's library, it was so quiet he could almost hear dust motes falling out of the air to add to the accumulation on the books. Lady Moth had brought back all the volumes that she had extracted during the time that the Young Lords were using the place as their headquarters. The situation was reversed now, and she commanded her late husband's estate and holdings as she should have done some time past. With no army to command and no war to fight, the Young Lords were hardly in need of a command-post, although they were still full of an impotent defiance.
Kyrtian reached for a glass of water and absently took a sip.
For the moment, the Young Lords were living on the grounds of the dowager-estate, Lady Moth's Tower, hiding in the one place where no one was likely to come looking for them. Wearing illusory disguises to make them look like human slaves, it was unlikely that even if a search was made there for them that they would be found.
As long as they can hold together, and not have someone get a change of heart and defect, they should do all right.
He'd talked to them all, and at the moment, he didn't think that likely. Not while they were safe and not having to suffer any serious hardships.
Not even Moth's own slaves knew who they were—the story was that they had been part of the Young Lord's army, and that Moth was sheltering them to keep them from being punished for having been conscripted in the first place.
It was a situation that made it hard for Kyrtian to keep a straight face whenever he thought about it. Living among the slaves was going to do them a world of good.
Already he'd seen signs of a change in attitude towards the humans from some of them. He had every confidence that if— or when—the Revolt started again, it would be on a very different footing.
If it happened, they already counted on it having a very different ending. Their plans called for him to either join them openly or permit the Great Lords to place him back in command of the army and proceed to actually do as little as possible. Then, at the right moment, he could turn the Council's army against the Great Lords themselves.
But I don't want to do that if I can help it. Such a war—because it would be a war, and not a revolt—would be bloody. Most of the casualties would be human; there was just no getting around that. And although—if the Young Lords had changed their attitude towards slave-owning by then—the humans on their side would have an active stake in the outcome, they would still be the ones taking the full force of the fighting. There were far more of them than there were Elves, and as physical fighters—well, the Yo
ung Lords were not very good.
Kyrtian's plan, which he hoped to talk the Young Lords into, was more subtle. He wanted them to creep back to their august fathers one at a time, in secret, and grovel. They would still have the iron jewelry that kept their fathers from working magic on them; that was key.
After they returned, and once they managed to regain some freedom of movement, he hoped they could work their own way back up through the hierarchy, and attrition among the Great Lords would eventually put them in the seats of power.
Such a plan, however, did have a number of drawbacks, not the least of" which was that there were plenty of the Great Lords who would quite readily slay their rebellious sons and underlings out of hand if they ever so much as showed their faces. And once back in a father's good graces, there was always the chance that someone would turn traitor. That would be ... awkward.
So for now, they were in hiding, and if they weren't accomplishing anything, at least they weren't getting into trouble either.
Meanwhile—as the Council debated the next use they were going to make of him, and his erstwhile enemies cooled their heels in circumstances he hoped would teach them some empathy, he was using his enforced leisure to get back to the search for his father.
The answer to his father's whereabouts was in this room, somewhere, he was sure. The trouble was that there was so much to wade through, and none of it had ever been properly cataloged. Personal journals were crammed in next to the sort of romantic novels considered appropriate for ladies to while away their hours with—books on flora and fauna were piled atop maps and volumes on magic.
