by Dragon Lance
“I did not break the law.”
“Then the slave was executed?”
“I sentenced Eadamm to death at my whim.”
“And your whim has not yet transpired?” Jyrbian guessed.
“No. And I doubt that it will. Eadamm not only saved Everlyn, but when I spared him, he proved a natural leader. He organized the other slaves. In one month, they took as much ore from the low mines, as many gems from the high mines, as they previously had in two months.”
“Doubled?” Jyrbian breathed deeply in disbelief. “Your production has doubled?”
Igraine had told the story before. He had seen the same expressions flit across the faces of his neighbors, his relatives, his guests. First anger, disbelief, then awe and finally greed.
“There’s more. When I saw this happen, I tried an experiment. I loosened the restrictions on the slaves. I gave them tiny freedoms, inconsequential things, and again they worked harder. They produced more. This summer, I allowed the huts and the gardens you can see from the windows. In the meantime, my profits have tripled.”
Now avarice gleamed at him from five pairs of eyes – all except Lyrralt’s and Khallayne’s.
Jyrbian thought of his family’s land, much like Igraine’s, though on a smaller scale: lush farmland backed up to cliffs and mountains riddled with mines, many of them unplumbed. To triple the output! He thought of Ogre cities built entirely of the valuable green stone shot through with tans and grays and pewters, which came from the rocky hills like those behind his home.
“We must have refreshments,” Igraine said, changing his tone and standing. “Everlyn, why don’t you take everyone on a tour of the house? I’m sure they’d like to see our excellent examples of elven sculpture.”
Lyrralt glanced up and found Igraine’s gaze fixed intently upon him. Lyrralt suddenly felt the runes on his arm dance feverishly.
Dutifully, Khallayne stood to join the others, but stepped through the tall windows onto the porch instead. The sun was setting, the land beginning to take on the shadows of darkness. Toward the slave huts, the sparkle of lantern light came to life.
It took a moment for her to understand why the lantern glow seemed so out of place, then she realized that on her uncle’s estate the slaves were not given lanterns in their quarters. At nightfall, if they weren’t working, they were expected to rest for the coming day.
As she stood there, breathing the fresh, cool air, a silhouetted figure eased out of a door at the other end of the gallery and into the shadows of the yard, a woman slave with a shawl draped over her head.
Trying to see where the woman went, Khallayne didn’t hear Igraine slip up behind her until he had touched her arm. “Are you not hungry, Lady?”
She started, then relaxed, smiling apologetically. “I was only admiring your estate, Lord. And noticing how odd it seems to see lights in the slave huts.”
“Yes, it is. But they appreciate having a little extra time for themselves in the evening. And the amount of oil they may use is rationed. In the end, I gain more than I lose.”
She looked pensively at the lantern-lit windows again before turning to him. “What you’re doing is very dangerous, isn’t it?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“In Takar, I’ve heard things said,” she continued. “They’re jealous of your success, and perhaps a little afraid of it. There are some who say the number of runaway slaves has increased dramatically since you began your program. We were warned to be careful on the trails.”
“But you experienced no trouble,” he admonished gently, “not from slaves anyway. And believe me, I have not had a runaway since last summer. You know how the court is for starting rumors. Perhaps others cannot control their slaves. If so, surely it is no concern or fault of mine?”
He certainly was persuasive. She had to grant him that. “Yes, of course, you’re right.”
“Lady Khallayne, many have come to hear of my success. They go away changed or confused or even angry. There is very little in between. Yet I had the feeling you were mostly disappointed with my explanations.”
“Lord, I hope I’ve given no insult —”
“None,” he said. “But I have the feeling you didn’t really come here for the same reason as everyone else anyway.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well,” he admitted, laughing. “Lord Jyrbian did tell me you do not own an estate. Of what use would my management techniques be to you?”
He walked off into the shadows and seated himself on a long, low settee. “Come.” He patted the soft cushion on the seat. “Tell me why you have come so far to meet me.”
Everything about him, his voice, his open manner, his beguiling tone, the way he sat patiently, quietly waiting, invited her to confide in him. She strode to the settee and sat down beside him. “Truthfully, Lord —”
“Igraine,” he interrupted. “Just Igraine.”
For a moment, she was taken aback by such familiarity, but there was nothing insincere about Igraine. “Igraine.” She tried the word and found the sound of it, like its owner, forthright and comforting. “I did come to hear your tale, to learn how you’ve become so successful, but I had thought …”
He waited in silence for her to continue. She felt his entire attention was hers.
“I thought the reason for your success would be magical in nature.”
He straightened.
She felt a thrill of triumph to have startled him.
“Magic! You thought I had increased my profits by magic?”
“I … hoped,” she admitted. Tensely she waited for his reaction.
“Jyrbian did not say you were of a Ruling Family.”
“I’m not.” She drew one leg up on the settee so that she could face him. “But I know a lot. And I want so badly to learn more. I think I could be so —”
She stopped when she realized what she’d confessed. She tensed as he looked her over, as his lips moved. The scrutiny of the spell he cast passed over her like fingers on her skin, on her very bones. The sensation lasted only a moment, then was gone.
“Yes,” he mused. “Very powerful. Well, Khallayne … My methods for running this province are not magical. And I am not of a Ruling Family, but as governor I have been allowed some leeway. I will be glad to teach you what I know.”
In the minutes since they had started talking, the sun had set. Khallayne knew he couldn’t see the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks, the dilation of her pupils, but surely he could feel the heat, hear the pounding of her heart. “You will?” Then immediately, “Why?”
He stood, reaching down to pull her up. “As you said, there are those who do not appreciate my ways. I believe there are dark days coming, for me and for all the Ogres. I think an ally such as yourself would be most beneficial.”
“What would I have to do?”
“Help me spread the word. Help me change the world. Be my friend. I can use someone as powerful, as persuasive, as you.”
He sounded almost insane. She had never encountered anyone like him before, and she wondered if perhaps he were using some sort of spell to influence her, because, lunacy and all, she wanted nothing so much as to do as he said.
“I don’t think the world needs changing, but I do want to learn the magic.”
Igraine clasped her shoulders and smiled at her.
“Perhaps I already can help you,” she continued. “With this warning. As governor, you report to Lady Enna, correct? And the profits of the province must be tithed to her?”
Igraine nodded.
“And the other ruling members might be … threatened by your success?”
Again he nodded.
She leaned close and said in an almost-whisper, “Then I think you should know that Jyrbian has come at the behest of Teragrym.”
*
Jyrbian looked up and frowned as Igraine strolled into the dining room with Khallayne on his arm.
He was already in a sour mood. Everlyn had brought him to the roo
m and introduced him to the large crowd of visitors and relatives. She had bustled about, ordering extra plates and more food.
He had invited her to dine with him, had deliberately saved the chair beside him for her, even glowering at Briah when she tried to sit in it. But Everlyn had disappeared through the door to the kitchen and never returned.
Now it appeared that Khallayne had been in private audience with Igraine. His scowl deepened.
“Oh, how lovely,” Khallayne exclaimed, detaching herself from her host so that she could walk to the head of the table and look at the elegant dining table that dominated the room. It appeared to be built of translucent ice.
“It’s very old, from a time when my family traded in elven slaves.” Igraine said.
“Is it made of crystal?”
“Can you imagine an entire city made like this?” One of the females Everlyn had introduced as an aunt beamed proudly at Khallayne.
As the two of them launched into a discussion of elven architecture, Jyrbian pushed away his uneaten supper and joined Igraine.
“Lord Igraine, if I may be so bold? This slave who saved Everlyn …”
“He is an extraordinary human.” Igraine took up the conversation with only the slightest prompting. “It is from him that I have learned everything.”
“I would like to meet this extraordinary slave.”
“I would, too.”
Jyrbian looked around to discover Lyrralt standing behind him. He grimaced, but before he could tell his brother he wasn’t welcome, Igraine answered, “I’d be pleased to have you both tour the grounds and meet Eadamm. Of those who have come to visit and to learn, there are always those who see beyond the obvious. I hope this time it will be you.” Igraine bowed and left them standing there, wondering to which of them he had spoken.
“And me? I always see beyond the obvious, too,” said a lovely voice behind them.
They turned to find Khallayne lounging against the sturdy elven chair at the head of the table. Her heavy, dark hair looked like coal against the crystal, and her black eyes glittered as if lit by candles.
*
The slave named Eadamm was unlike any human in Jyrbian’s experience. He had never seen one who bore himself with such pride and audacity. He had none of the hunched look of a slave waiting for the next command. He stood tall, shoulders back, and his gaze met Jyrbian’s squarely, without flinching.
“It’s almost as if he doesn’t consider himself a slave at all,” Lyrralt murmured.
Jyrbian, who usually was offhand with slaves as long as they performed their tasks with a minimum of efficiency, found the slave’s attitude unsettling. “A slave wearing decoration?” he questioned, pointing out the black-and-red stone wrapped in silver hanging from a silver chain on the slave’s neck.
“It does seem a bit frivolous,” Lyrralt agreed.
Despite his misgivings about the slave, Jyrbian was impressed with the quality and quantity of raw gems being processed from the mines. Igraine’s fields, also, were thriving. What could this philosophy do for his father’s estate?
He glanced speculatively at his brother, who had edged away and was standing near Everlyn, listening as the slave explained their mining procedures. He sounded unbearably pompous. Yet Everlyn was smiling at him as if his words were as fascinating as thoughts from the gods.
*
Later that evening, Jyrbian lay in bed and remembered the slave and the way he held Everlyn’s attention. Jyrbian didn’t seem to be able to coax more than a pleasant but detached smile from her.
He pulled the rope over the bed, which rang a bell in the kitchen. When the night slave entered his room hesitantly, minutes later, he was standing beside the window, naked, the moonlight shining on his magnificent skin.
*
Lyrralt, too, could not get the slave out of his mind. He could almost hear Igraine’s persuasive words. “Think of it, Lyrralt, a choice. A true choice. Decide for yourself what is right or wrong. Good or bad.”
In the privacy of the room he’d been given, he opened the vial of water, rinsed and spat, touched ears and eyes.
Worse even than Eadamm’s face, the whispered words that none of the others had heard kept returning. When Igraine had seen that the sight of Eadamm and the happy, confident slaves had intrigued him, had puzzled him, Igraine had whispered, “Free will, Lyrralt, such as only the humans who live on the plains have. To choose even which gods you will worship!”
He banished the memory and prepared to pray, to meditate.
There was no warning. No buildup of itching and tingling. The searing agony branded his flesh, speared him with instant pain. He writhed on the cold stone floor and cried repeatedly the name of his god until it was over.
When sanity returned, and he could move his arm without torment, he sat up. It was several minutes before he dared look down at his arm. To his surprise, there was only one rune. Even with his novitiate’s eye, he had no trouble reading the augury.
It had only one meaning: Doom.
Chapter 6
MAGIC TO SPILL MEN’S BLOOD
On the morning they were to start for Takar, Khallayne slept late. In her dreams she found herself alone in Igraine’s audience parlor. As she looked up at the constellations on the ceiling, they began to spin, moving faster and faster, until the pinpoints of brilliant light became magical threads, streams of silver, gushing across the sky. Her feet drifted upward.
The embroidery on her tunic, which depicted an inferno, ignited. She could taste the smoke, smell charred skin, singed hair. Then Jyrbian was at her side, and Lyrralt, and Briah, smiling as their faces melted, as their flesh dripped in globs onto the floor. And still the constellations swirled, visible through the flames and smoke.
And she, whirling in the flames, untouched, laughed and laughed and laughed.
*
Although the members were the same, the group that started back to Takar was not the noisy, playful one that had left three weeks before. Subdued, lost in thought, they rode the steep path single file.
Instead of taking the faster route, through Therax Pass, the way they had come, Jyrbian had decided to return by a western trail that wound around the mountain and along a high ridge.
Briah and her sister, Nylora, and Tenaj and her two cousins rode together and spoke in low whispers. Jyrbian, Khallayne, and Lyrralt rode apart, alone with their thoughts.
The roar of rushing water drew them forward and upward. The sound at the beginning of the steep trail was just a distant hissing, but it grew louder and louder as the trail leveled and foliage thinned, becoming scrubby plants and tufts of grass.
Right beside the waterfall, the sound grew deafening. The rushing water threw a rainbow of spray into the air, then fell away into the valley, a silver ribbon snaking its way through the fields. Stands of green-and-gold grain rippled gently in the breeze.
Khallayne, riding in the middle of the group, reined in her horse and sat staring at the magnificent view before her. One corner of the fields, all Igraine’s land, was bisected by the river. Farther to the northwest, out of sight, was the manor, and even farther were the mines.
She had been to the mines, riding with Igraine. There had been no special magic at work there, just the usual activities of slaves, the starting of cook fires, the wielding of common tools, jewels laboriously dredged up from the bowels of the earth. Those were mostly mundane tasks, which was disappointing, but the things Igraine had begun teaching her, spells of higher cunning than anything she’d stolen from humans, unusual wards of defense, were special. And there would be more. Just as soon as she could, she would make arrangements to return.
“What do you think of it?” Jyrbian stopped beside her, interrupting her daydreams.
“It’s breathtaking.”
“I didn’t mean the view,” he said acidly. “I meant Igraine and his ideas.”
“I don’t know. It’s … They’re …” She was stalling. She knew exactly how she felt. Igraine’s ideas were at be
st dangerous, at worst treason.
Lyrralt stopped beside them. “What if everyone decided to act in this fashion? What would happen, Khallayne? Our world is built on order. To each, his place. To everything, its reason. What will it mean if everyone chooses to behave anyway he or she pleases?”
“For myself, I think I like the idea of choice.” Jyrbian nudged his horse on. He would prefer to be alone with his thoughts of Everlyn; he intended to ask for her when Teragrym offered him a reward for his services.
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Lyrralt snapped.
“Yes, I do.” Jyrbian reined in. “And I know what I would choose for myself.”
“You mean who, don’t you?” Khallayne asked.
“Women and sex!” Lyrralt snorted with disgust. “You think of nothing else!”
For a moment, Jyrbian stared at his brother with something like astonishment, then he shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “What else is there, Brother?” When Lyrralt didn’t respond, Jyrbian shrugged and twisted his face comically, the old expression of cynicism returning to his eyes.
Khallayne didn’t laugh. For just a moment, just before Lyrralt had broken the spell, the expression on Jyrbian’s face had been something she’d never seen before. For just a moment, he was alien to her, a handsome stranger whose face shone with pure, sweet emotion, totally devoid of hunger and greed.
“Let’s move on. I want to make time to stop at the Caves of the Gods,” Lyrralt said, ending the conversation by turning his back on both of them and riding away.
The Caves of the Gods were one of most visited landmarks in the southern Khalkists, located at the highest point on the Therax Ridge, where three trailheads met.
From that wide, well-worn section of trail, travelers could head down along the north face of the ridge and continue deeper into the Khalkists, or go down along the south face to Takar, or even farther down the mountainside and out across the plains to where the eastern arm of the southern Khalkists wrapped the ancient city of Bloten in a protective curve.
The Caves of the Gods were little more than a squiggle of trails honeycombed in the mountain. But the caves had three entrances near the trailheads, and inside, the paths formed a circular maze, all interconnected, all leading eventually, some way or another, back to one of the three mouths. The mouth by which one exited, upper, middle or lower, foretold the answer of the gods to one’s prayers.
