Elvenborn (45 page)

Perhaps, if he'd been in here before the Young Lords took residence, he'd have been able to find the things his father had studied that had given him his real clue. But they had simply shoveled everything they found to the side in heaps so that they could use the room for their own purposes, and Moth hadn't helped when she extracted the books that she thought were im¬portant. Moth, bless her, had been under the impression that she had kept some order and cleanliness to the library.

Yes, well, that was before we found the boxes in the storage-chamber. Moth's husband had maintained a "show" library, with things he thought worth keeping attractively shelved. The rest—which amounted to four or five times the volume of works on show—had gotten packed into boxes and stacked up in a storeroom behind the library itself. Moth had thought that the storeroom was empty until they'd opened the door. In their search for maps they could use to plan their campaign and the plans of manors and estate-houses, the Young Lords had rum¬maged through it all, bringing some things into the library and leaving them, removing other things to make room for what they brought in. Whatever order had once been here was gone completely. Now the storeroom had shelves, and so did the un¬used office next to it, and the unused reception-room next to that, and Kyrtian was trying to bring some order to the chaos.

Kyrtian, however, was fast becoming convinced that his an¬swer lay, not in printed books or illuminated manuscripts, inter¬esting as those might be, but in the personal journals kept often by elven ladies, and infrequently by their lords.

His father had almost certainly divined the location of the Portal from something in here. That location was lost, and what was more, there seemed to be evidence that the Ancestors who had built the thing had engaged in an active effort to hide that location from their descendants—and even from some of their own who had come through the Portal.

Why? That was a good question. Perhaps they feared a traitor in their midst who would re-open the Portal to their enemies. The Portal itself had cooperated in erasing memories; it was fairly clear that the Crossing was such a traumatic ordeal in and of itself that a substantial number of those who Crossed could

not remember a great deal of what happened immediately thereafter.

And perhaps some of those folk were "helped" to forget.

None, not one, of the Great Lords that had created the Portal and survived the Crossing left any substantive records about it. That much was fact. Nor did any of the historians—another fact. So with no official records, he was left with only one other source, the unofficial ones—and of those, the best would be the records of those who were considered too insignificant to matter.

The ladies . .. ah yes, the ladies.

And the eccentrics.

Some of those journals were attractively bound and might at one time have been shelved in the main room—and that might be where Kyrtian's father had gotten his information.

Or he might have found something in official records that Kyrtian had somehow completely overlooked.

Kyrtian ran a dusty hand through his hair in frustration, then told himself sternly not to get so impatient. After all, his father had been hunting for the Portal for decades before Kyrtian was born; by the time he found what he was looking for, he had probably gotten to the point that he was so familiar with the Ancestors and the way their minds worked that he was able to intuit things that weren't obvious.

So he was wading through everything handwritten that Moth had in this library, with the Great Book of Ancestors beside him. Before he could eliminate any manuscript or journal, he first had to figure out who wrote it, or at least who the author's contemporaries were, then discover whether or not the author lived far enough back to have made the Crossing.

Since it was almost a guarantee that most of the manuscripts he found would be from too late a period to mention the Cross¬ing except in passing, he would then try to find every other manuscript that could be attributed to that person. Most people who were addicted to journal-writing had produced multiple volumes over the course of their very long lives. If the author was of too late a period, well, it helped to be able to weed out everything that could be attributed to her pen.

It was a painfully logical and methodical plan of dealing with the situation. It was also very tedious, very time-consuming, and very, very dusty.

Kyrtian had two helpers at least—Gel, and that little female concubine that Lady Triana had been so considerate in planting on him. He'd sent for her a-purpose once he'd turned over his commission to Lord Kyndreth while the Council debated. If Triana was so interested in what he was doing, he was inclined to allow her more information than she could comfortably di¬gest. He had a notion that she was working with Aelmarkin, at least for the moment. Lady Moth had been very helpful in pre¬senting him with a summary of her past behavior, and from that he'd formed the opinion that whatever game she played, what¬ever alliances she made, her ultimate goal would serve no one but herself.

Now, to his mind, the best possible way to handle her was to give her the information he wanted her to have. Gel had exam¬ined the girl himself, interrogating her to the point of exhaus¬tion and even tears, and it was his opinion that Lydiell had succeeded in "turning" her. Whenever she reported to Triana— and Triana had been very interested to learn just where he was and what he was doing right now—Gel was there, making cer¬tain she stuck to the script they'd agreed on.

Nevertheless, she didn't know exactly what it was he was do¬ing in Moth's library; what she didn't know, she couldn't be forced to reveal if Triana or Aelmarkin ever got their hands on her. She knew only what she saw—which was that he had or¬dered all the books down off the shelves to be sorted—that Moth's slaves had then reshelved and cataloged all of the printed material. While they worked, he examined the hand¬written stuff, creating a second catalog, and she and Gel shelved what he was done with. She couldn't read elven hand-script; she didn't know what he was keeping and what he was reject¬ing. So although she now had a wealth of information about his movements, none of it was likely to do Triana any good.

He actually expected the infamous Triana to put in an ap¬pearance before too very much longer. He couldn't see how she could possibly resist trying to pry into his affairs in person. She

would probably also try to seduce him; that was her pattern in the past. He had heard, even from Moth, that she was a great beauty, and not a passive, statuesque creature either, but lively, witty, aggressive, and not afraid to show her intelligence. Such a woman had learned how to turn her looks and fascination into a weapon long ago. She might even have approached Lord Kyndreth as well as Aelmarkin, prepared to use anyone and anything in her quest for personal power. If that was the case, she might well have met her match in Lord Kyndreth, who had been playing deep games for far longer than little Lady Triana.

Ancestors—I've turned into such a cynic—

There were times when he longed for what he had been— when the worst of his worries was working out little battle-plans and conspiring with Lydiell to keep Aelmarkin at a distance. To think that he had actually looked up to people like Lord Kyndreth!

Well, I know better now.

It hadn't just been his own experiences that had enlightened him, nor the night-long, acid-washed "frank talk" that Moth had had with him when he first arrived. It was the testament of these very manuscripts beneath his hands, that outlined the machinations and betrayals, the abuse of power and the use of it, from the point of view of those that the powerful considered too insignificant to monitor. Mind, some of them were no prizes, either, acting like chickens in the hen yard, turning, when pecked, to hammer on those beneath them. But it had been an enlightening, if distasteful education, wading through the pages they probably thought no one else would ever read.

Is it any better among the Wizards and free humans, I won¬der? With most of his illusions gone, he had to guess that it was probably more a matter of degree. The Great Lords were so powerful and those who aspired to their power were so fixated on achieving it, that the very power they all held or craved cor¬rupted them. It was inevitable unless, like Moth, they were acutely aware of just how dangerous that much power was. The fact that they lived such very long lives only meant that the cor¬ruption and selfishness was etched deeper than it could ever possibly go with a mere human.

But there are the others. Like Moth, Lydiell—and myself, I hope. Power didn't have to corrupt, if you knew just how dan¬gerous it was, and were well aware that it came burdened with incredible responsibilities. He hoped that there were those among the Wizards and free humans who knew that.

Perhaps that was the key to those among the Elvenlords who did treat the humans who had come under their protection with the same consideration that they would have given an elven un¬derling; and those elven underlings who treated humans as equals. They were the ones who had felt the boot of the Evelon overlords on their backs, and had learned from the experience— or who, at least, had determined never to treat one with less power as they themselves had been treated. And those Ances¬tors, in their turn, had passed their attitude down to their off¬spring.

Were there more such households as his.and Lady Moth's? Possibly—for a moment, he dared to hope that there were, hiding their nature just as he and his father and grandfather had. They were probably just like his family—remaining quietly, self-sufficiently in the background, permitting the Great Lords to believe that they were hopelessly provincial and not worth trou¬bling with. Ancestors knew that if Aelmarkin hadn't been such a thorn in their side, their household would never have come under the scrutiny of Kyndreth, and he would never have been forced into the "open" to find himself recruited as a military ex¬pert.

He realized at that moment that he'd been staring at the same page for quite some time, and hadn't deciphered a word of it.

Gah. I'm a scholar, not a philosopher! He bent over the closely-written page again.

Whispers from the rear of the library intruded on his attention— because one of the whisperers was Gel, and there was a tone in the man's voice he'd never heard before.

He took a quick glance over the top of the manuscript. Sure enough, there wasn't a great deal of shelving going on, but Gel and the pretty little concubine certainly had their heads close together.

Well, well, well! The granite crag cracks at last!

He didn't know whether to laugh or be annoyed. Not that he wanted the girl; oh, she was attractive and talented enough, but so were the two other girls his mother had purchased for him. But of all the times for his tough-minded partner to pick to go soft over a woman, this had to be the worst!

On the other hand, this was Gel he was talking about. Gel, who had taught him the business of war and fighting, Gel who stuck by his side like a faithful dog, Gel who had never asked for anything for himself. How could he possibly be annoyed that Gel had finally found someone who touched his heart?

Oh, Ancestors.

Now how was he going to juggle all this? Hidden rebels, possible treachery from his superiors, the hunt for his father— and now Gel in love? What next?

As he stared at the not-so-young lover, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Lady Moth had come into the library without his noticing, and she wore her mask-face, the one that generally meant that she was—well, up to something.

"We have a visitor that I believe you will want to meet your¬self," she whispered, after a glance at Gel and the girl who were completely oblivious to anything else going on around them.

Oh no—not Triana—

"You may tell Lady Triana that—" he began.

But Moth's eyebrows shot up, and she interrupted him. "I don't know why you should be expecting her," Moth replied, "but it's not Lady Triana. And I do think you should put down that stupid journal written by an equally stupid blockhead and come with me. Now."

Seeing that she was not to be denied, Kyrtian sighed, marked the place where he was leaving off, and stood up.

The lovers never noticed that he was leaving. That in itself was an indication of just how hard Gel had fallen.

Oh, Ancestors, I only hope that Triana didn 't place that girl with me to get at Gel rather than me. . . .

With his thoughts flitting between amusement and concern, he wasn't paying a great deal of attention when Moth brought him into a tiny chamber kitted out as a sitting-room, where a

young woman waited, pacing up and down in front of the win¬dows, displaying no great patience herself. All he noticed at first was that she was red-haired and green-eyed, clothed in the same sort of tunic, boots, and trews as a common laborer, with the physique of someone who was athletic and very much used to taking care of herself in any and all circumstances. He couldn't imagine why Moth had insisted he meet this person— unless, perhaps, she was one of Moth's human servants and had information about the Young Lords?

"Lord Kyrtian," Moth said formally, "I believe that you have many things to discuss with Lashana." She tipped her head to the side as he sighed with exasperation, still wondering what she was getting at. She pursed her lips, but her green eyes held the ghost of amusement in them. "I believe you might know her by another name. Elvenbane."

WHAT?

He lost every vestige of exasperation, annoyance, impatience in that moment. He stared at the woman, who stood poised like a deer about to flee, trying to make his mind believe what his ears had just heard.

Red hair—but elven eyes. And the ears. Wizard blood, unless it's an illusion—

But Moth would never have been fooled by an illusion. Moth had met Wizards. Moth's friend Viridina—her son was a wizard.

"Lashana arrived bearing a letter from Viridina's halfblood son, verifying her identity," Moth said, as if divining his thoughts.