Elvenborn (26 page)

"I know that it is trying to you to be in such primitive sur-

roundings, after having to abandon such a wonderful and com¬fortable place as your old home," Lorryn said, now interjecting a soothing note into his voice. "Who could know better than I? Do think what I left behind; I was the only male heir to a pow¬erful lord! But you will soon find this life as exhilarating as I do if you regard it as an opportunity rather than a loss! Think of it! You now have the chance to design your very own quarters in precisely the way you'd most like them—rather than be forced to endure inconveniences and awkwardnesses that countless generations of wizards before you created! With a little effort, you can, for the first time, have everything perfect!"

"Yes—but—" Caellach faltered.

"There, you see?" Lorryn slapped him lightly on the back. "That seems better already, doesn't it? I knew I could rely on you!"

And with that, he strolled away, leaving Caellach to go over the conversation in his mind and try to determine what could possibly have gone wrong.

As he rounded a corner, someone jumped at him from the shadows. Instinctively he sidestepped and drew his hidden dag¬ger, with a defensive magic meant deflect a levin-bolt already in place.

"You're getting better," Shana laughed, leaning against the rock wall with her arms crossed over her chest, looking quite as if she had not been catapulting herself across the hallway from a natural niche just at the level of his head a moment before.

"I should hope so," he retorted. "You certainly give me enough practice. Were you listening in on the meeting?"

"I was—and you are a genius. And some sort of mage that I haven't quite figured out." She tilted her head to the side, quizzically. "How you manage Caellach—and how you man¬age to not strangle Caellach—is quite beyond me."

Lorryn laughed and offered her his hand, which she took. "No magic—just politics," he told her. "Verbal self-defense. I didn't spend much time among the schemers and plotters, but I did hob-nob with some of them and, of course, I always had to be able to placate my father. I learned early how to say nothing while seeming to say everything."

She squeezed his hand. "It's still sheer genius. No matter how hard I try, I can't manage people half as well as you do."

He glanced aside at the young woman called "the Elven-bane." She didn't look like the stuff of legends; her scarlet tresses were tied up onto the top of her head in a very practical tail, which she often tossed like an impatient horse plagued with flies. Her handsome face was nothing in beauty compared to the homeliest of elven ladies, and her figure was so well-muscled that most of them would have recoiled in horror at the notion of looking like her. Today she had on a sleeveless tunic of leather and a pair of coarse slaves'-cloth trews—but to his eyes, she couldn't have looked better if she'd been enrobed in his sister Sheyrena's presentation-gown.

"I hope you aren't—bothered by me taking on all these meetings like this," he said, hesitantly. "You're supposed to be the leader, I know, but—"

"Am I jealous? Oh, Fire and Rain, get that idea out of your head this moment!" she replied with a laugh. "I never asked to be the Elvenbane, you know—and the only reason besides that stupid legend that people pay any attention to what I think is that I think quicker than they do. Handling the old goats is not a job that requires quick thinking—and you have the—" She considered for a moment, head tilted to one side. "—the 'man¬ner born' is how I'd put it. You say things, and people do them, instead of arguing with you about it."

He thought that if she was dissembling in any way, he would be able to tell; he was getting pretty sensitive to her nuances— not that she had many, for she was a strikingly open person. No, she seemed to be happy with him taking her leadership role.

"If I could find a double to play Elvenbane for me, I'd do that in a heartbeat," she continued onwards, oblivious of his scrutiny, "And then I could just be Shana again."

"Speaking of just being Shana—oh crafty one—" he led her down a side passage that brought them out onto the top of the Citadel, into the warm air and sunshine, where they could sit and talk without being overheard.

She didn't fling herself down onto the grass as she usually did when brought outside. "Crafty one, hmm? I know what that

means." She sauntered casually up the hill a little ways to a grassy knoll with a shade-tree atop it—downwind of the half-hidden entrance. Now they could speak without being over¬heard. Only then did she drop down into the grass in the sun, with all of the pleasure of her foster-mother dragon in basking.

"Ask away," she said, as he plopped down beside her. "I've just spent the better part of the morning talking to Keman but I need your help to reach Shadow."

Shana, freed from the responsibilities of the day-to-day run¬ning of the Citadel, was concentrating on the vastly more im¬portant project of collecting intelligence reports, by means of amplified telepathy, from Keman and some of the other people she and Lorryn had out in the greater world. Although it would not be possible to send either a human or a halfblood into the midst of Elves to spy under a spell of illusion, the halfbloods were not limited to illusion as long as they had dragons with them, for the dragons could actually shift their shape to appear like anyone or anything they liked. Shana's foster-brother Ke¬man and his probable mate Dora were Shana's shapechanged spies among both camps of Elves.

"Your mother is not only doing well, so far as Dora can tell, she's taking over some of Lady Moth's duties on the home-fields," Shana told him, smiling at his sigh of relief. It might not be the most important piece of information, but it was the one that was most likely to relieve his mind. "Dora thinks that she's probably well over the shock of—well, you know—by now."

"I know I do her a disservice by thinking of her as being so frail," he replied, chafing one finger against another nervously, "But that's how she looks. And she's my mother—"

"You can't help being protective of your mother, I know. I feel the same way about my mother." By this, she meant not her real mother, who presumably had been an Elvenlord's con¬cubine, but her foster-mother, who was a dragon and not much in need of anyone's protection. But Lorryn refrained from say¬ing this.

"Is there any change in the situation there?" he asked, and Shana shook her head.

"Stalemate. The Old Lords can't break in and the Young

Lords can't break out. Occasional skirmishes and feints, but nothing worth talking about. Lady Moth's no closer to getting the Young Lords to see that humans are—well—people. And until she does, they're going to be ignoring the one resource they have that might tip the scales in their favor." Shana sounded curiously indifferent to the situation, more as if it was a chess game that she was observing, rather than playing in. Lorryn wondered how she could detach herself from it so eas¬ily. He couldn't.

"Now, on the other side—there's something just come up that Keman thinks is going to give the Old Lords the advantage, and a major one at that." She tossed her head, and her "tail" switched like an impatient horse's. "They've got a new com¬mander, and from what Keman says, he's absolutely brilliant."

There was no indifference in her voice now, and he sat up a bit straighter. "A new commander? Who? I thought that there wasn't an Old Lord in the lot that could coordinate a proper attack!"

"Keman says his name is Kyrtian. Kyrtian V'dyll Lord Pras-taran." She turned her head to look keenly into his emerald eyes with her own, the mark of their Elvenlord blood along with the pointed ears and Elven magics. "Heard of him?"

"Vaguely." And that, in and of itself, was interesting. It sug¬gested that for some reason the High Council had elevated a no¬body into a position of major importance, with no steps in between. "I think his father was supposed to be a scholar—I know there was something when I was a child about Lord Pras-taran who vanished off in the Waste Lands between here and the site of the Gate that brought us from Evelon." He waved vaguely in a southerly direction. "He keeps—kept—to himself, and his son did the same. Until now. And why, one wonders?"

"Apparently, because he's brilliant. And according to Ke¬man, because he's got a way of training slaves to be soldiers without the untidy process of having half of them cut to ribbons in order that the rest get experience in fighting." She drammed her fingers silently on the side of her leg. "And you realize, of course, that this is not good news for us."

"No." That was clear enough; if this Kyrtian was as brilliant as Shana said, he wasn't bound by tradition—he would use

what worked. Being encased in tradition like a chrysalis never meant to be opened was the only thing that kept the Old Lords from hammering their less-experienced offspring.

"A good commander with the resources of the Old Lords be¬hind him can take the defenses of the Young Lords to pieces," she continued, turning her gaze in the direction of Elven-held lands.

"When he does that, he'll have proved himself to his mas¬ters," Lorryn agreed. "And it won't take them any time at all to break the treaty and send him after us." He felt his stomach turn over uneasily. "I don't suppose you have any good news for me, do you?" he asked plaintively.

She shook off her own somber mood. "I know what you're thinking, and you're right; until we know something about this Kyrtian, there is no point in imagining all the things he might— or might not—do. Besides, Mero and Rena are doing very well for us, and the Iron People seem to like them a great deal."

"The Iron People helped us hold off the Elvenlords the last time without actually getting involved—" Lorryn mused, feel¬ing a bit less hag-ridden at the thought of another conflict with the Elvenlords. "If they joined us this time—between them and the dragons—"

"It might be the Elvenlords doing the retreating," Shana fin¬ished for him. "One of Dora's lair is helping them to find graz¬ing and ore—and lately there have been small groups of 'wild' humans turning up who speak some dialect that the Iron People understand."

"Do you suppose they could be what is left of the Corn Peo¬ple?" Lorryn asked, his curiosity now piqued.

Shana shrugged. "They could just be Traders—we knew al¬ready that the Iron People have had some contact with Traders. Keman says they are slowly bringing in their families and de¬pendents to join the encampment, and some of them have been saying it's safer than hiding in the wilderness. They do know farming, though—"

"Grazing—and farmers to help with crops." Lorryn pulled a grass stem to chew on it. "That would suit the Iron People down to the bone. They'd prefer to make a settlement, if they can. It's

hard to run proper forges unless you're settled. Did you tell Mero about this new Elven commander?"

She nodded. "I told him to pass the information on, as he sees fit. There's been a complication; we really need to find a reliable source of iron. Mero and Rena can't do anything about finding some, and if we're going to keep the Iron People as al¬lies, we have to get a dragon to find us a mine."

"That reminds me—we've got an iron-related problem of our own." Lorryn wished profoundly that Caellach Gwain wasn't at the heart of so many of his problems. "There is another prob¬lem among the wizards so far as Caellach Gwain and his cronies are concerned."

"The magic-twisting." Shana made a face. "Well, we've known about that for as long as we've had any amount of iron around us; you just increase your focus to get around the way the magic warps. Or you use the warp—I've seen Orien actu¬ally lob a levin-bolt around a corner! What's the problem?"

"Younger wizards can learn how to deal with it, because they're used to using semi-precious stones as focuses. Caellach just doesn't want the iron around, at all. So far as he's con¬cerned, it's one more Change in the Way Things Were, and that's what he wants to go back to." Lorryn sighed, and felt his headache coming back. Why was it that so many of the prob¬lems seemed to begin and end in Caellach Gwain?

"He's just lazy," Shana snorted.

"Well—I agree, he is, but not all of the older wizards are, and they're having the same problems adjusting. And they aren't complaining, they're just suffering quietly."

"Suffering?" Shana raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Well, not suffering then, but it's hard for the old ones. They aren't as fit, they aren't as healthy, and it's harder for them to learn new things. None of it's out of stubbornness." He felt very sorry for them—he'd seen some of them struggling to use a focus-stone to do things that pre-adolescents were accomplish¬ing without a thought. He'd watched them suffer with aching joints and coughs and colds from living in caverns rather than the comfortable rooms of the old Citadel. Most importantly, he'd seen them disheartened and frustrated, thinking that after

all of their years in hiding, they were now considered to be lit¬tle better than useless.

"I know." It was her turn to sigh. "It's not fair, is it? If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here. But I don't know what to do about it. We can't stop things from changing—"

"No, but—let me think about this one." He offered her a shy smile. "You've said it yourself; you're the one that's good with plans and strategy, I'm the one that's good with people. Maybe we can find a way to turn all this to our advantage."

"How?" That skeptical look again—but this time he had just the glimmering of an idea, and he met her gaze firmly.

"I don't know—but there's always possibilities, as long as you keep your eyes open for them." And on that positive note, he got to his feet and offered her his hand. "Let's go take a walk and blow the cobwebs out of our brains before we go back to work."

"Cobwebs do get in the way of clear sight," she agreed, to his great pleasure. "And I could use a walk—with you."

And those last two words increased his pleasure tenfold.

15

Rena had been working hard most of yesterday, changing grasses and leaves with her elven magic into sweet treats with which the Iron People could lure in the young bulls for their first lessons in being accustomed to saddles and being ridden. Horses could be broken to saddle—it was not the best way to teach them, but it was successful—but bulls, never. Their stubborn natures and the great courage bred into their line made it impossible to break their spirit, so the only way to train them for their duties as war-bulls was to begin by tempting them, gently, into captivity, and rewarding them for every sign of cooperation with the one thing they always responded to—