Elvenborn (24 page)

Dina stood, and relinquished her seat with a smile. "Very clever of you to know the things that can't be interfered with by that metal," she said, as Moth took her seat again.

"Not clever, dear, only resourceful. If I were clever, I'd have managed to find a way to eavesdrop on them." That irritated her; she still hadn't managed to insinuate a reliable spy into their slave-stock.

She was not entirely certain what her people had told ma¬rauders during those first weeks of the Revolt to dissuade them from attacking the Tower; there probably had been several dif¬ferent stories, specifically tailored to each group. It was true enough that a few, select escapees had decided to swell the ranks of her own folk—no doubt, because they were unwilling or unable to make the strenuous journey over the mountains to an uncertain and probably uncomfortably barbaric existence in the wilderness.

Not that she blamed them in the least. She had always had an ample portion of "Lady-magic," and although her husband had not been aware of the fact, she was his equal in the realms of Elven magic usually taught only to men. Had it been necessary, she could have defended the Tower as well as many Elvenlords, and probably better than most. Now, her magic went to ensuring the continued survival of her diminished estate. She did every¬thing needed to ensure exactly the right weather for the farm-

fields, she went over the fields and gardens daily to monitor and encourage growth and health in plants and animals. She had the knowledge and the long memory to tell them what they needed to do, and when. They trusted her, her learning, her judgment, her experience. That was what she had brought to the table; they had brought their labor. Returning to the grand tradition of her family, they had worked together to make sure that Elven-blood and human-blood prospered.

"Is there anything you'd like me to do this afternoon?" Dina asked, diffidently.

Moth examined her friend carefully. There had been mo¬ments, in those first days after Viridina took refuge with her, that she truly felt that Viridina would never be entirely sane again. But Dina was stronger than Moth had first thought; even after escaping murder at her Lord's hands and seeing her Lord incinerated virtually at her feet, she had not truly had a break¬down of her senses. It took time and careful tending, but she had recovered. Moth decided that it was time for her to help do her part here.

"Would you make the rounds of the kitchen-gardens for me, dear? I would really appreciate it, and I know you must have tended your own gardens thousands of times. I needn't tell you what to do." Moth felt herself both justified and rewarded when Dina's face lit up.

"Gladly! I have been feeling so—" she gestured frustration with both hands "—so useless. And a burden on you."

"You have never been a burden," Moth lied gracefully. Dina only smiled, recognizing the lie, and the graciousness behind it, and turned to go back down the stairs, her sleeves and trailing hem fluttering behind her.

After most of the escaping slaves were gone, but before Moth had a chance to move herself and her people back to the Great House, the Young Lords had moved in. Occasionally, even now, she cursed herself for hesitating—but on the other hand, the Great House was much less defensible, and even with her new followers, she still had really not enough people to ad¬equately staff and run a property that was ten times the size of that attached to the Tower.

The Young Lords had taken over the abandoned estate; they had brought their own slaves with them. Lady Moth was not en¬tirely certain where they had gotten those slaves; many of them seemed terribly young for the work they were required to do. She suspected that the Young Lords had raided the breeding-farms of some of the Old Lords while the latter were occupied with the fighting, carrying off hordes of confused and fright¬ened creatures barely out of childhood.

Poor, poor things, she thought, taking one last look through the telescope, her lips tightening. Well, at least there are enough of them to do the work they are ordered to do, and they are saved one horror. Their masters are too busy with their own concerns to abuse them; confusion is the worst they have to face.

The reason she had asked Dina to take her place in "work¬ing" the garden was that she had an appointment with the Young Lords quite soon, and it was bound to be stressful. She had come up here in the first place to get a little more information before she faced them; now it was time to change into a riding-habit and make the short journey over to their stronghold.

She chose her clothing carefully: a tailored, severe habit of stark black, with only the barest hints of silver at the cuffs and throat. She dressed to intimidate; the last thing she wished to be thought was "feminine." Her groom brought her horse around, along with her guards, and she mounted and made the short journey to what had once been her home.

She was accompanied by four burly young men—humans, not Elves, and humans that wore scale-armor of iron, not bronze, and had ostentatiously bare necks. Moth had played the game of wits and treachery for centuries before these striplings had ever been born.

They were, one and all, less than a century old; when she swept into the meeting-chamber in her trim sable-silk riding habit, her hair in an uncompromising knot bound in a black silk snood, with all four of her escorts flanking her, they found themselves rising from their seats despite whatever their origi¬nal intentions had been in the way of greeting.

She paused at her seat, looked gravely up and down the table

with an unreadable expression, and only then did she sit— which in turn, allowed them to resume their seats. She might not be the leader here, but in their hearts, they all acknowledged her power.

Which is more than their fathers would. Then again, she probably wouldn't ever use tactics this crude with their fathers.

She listened without comment to the reports of their progress—or lack of it—against their fathers. The situation was clearly at stalemate, and had been for some time now. This was not necessarily bad, and had they asked her opinion, she would have advised patience. When there is stalemate, it is often pos¬sible for frustration to drive one side or the other to make a cru¬cial mistake.

But, of course, they didn't ask her opinion, and she didn't of¬fer it—since it was clear that they would not believe a mere fe¬male would have any experience relevant to the "man's work" of warfare.

As if they have any! she thought, without amusement. But warfare was not why she had come to this meeting. Eventually they got around to the topic she wished to cover, in the form of a single casual comment by one of the least intelligent (to her mind) of the lot, occasioned by one of her bodyguards stifling a cough at one of the more fatuous suggestions.

"Lady Morthena," said Lord Alrethane, with a frown on his face, "I really do not know what you are thinking, allowing armed and uncontrolled slaves to continue in your service."

"They are not slaves, they are my willing servants," she countered smoothly. "I find that I sleep better, knowing that my sleep is guarded by faithful people who serve me from loyalty and not because they are forced to."

"Loyalty? Loyalty?" Alrethane exploded. "Are you actually ascribing a civilized emotion to these simple-minded barbar¬ians? They're a bare step above the beasts!"

Another discreet cough reminded him that he was insulting people who were freemen, armed, and protected with armor that would stop both magic and blades. He stopped, abruptly, and averted his eyes.

"He has a point—" someone said.

Morthena looked up and down the table again, examining ex¬pressions, and was disappointed.

So. Nothing has changed. She had hoped that some, at least, of the Young Lords would have started to see sense. Insofar as the humans were concerned, the Young Lords were of two camps; the majority—a scant majority, but enough—held hu¬mans and halfbloods in the same contempt as did their elders. The minority, led and coached by Lady Moth, wanted to see hu¬mans and halfbloods given equal status with Elves. So far, none of those she considered to be "wavering" had changed their minds. She had hoped that this particular display, showing just how far she trusted her people, would have had some effect.

At least the minority saw to it that the human slaves owned by the rest were not mistreated.

And there have been enough chances already that those who had the courage and initiative to escape to the Wizards have al¬ready done so.

The slaves they now had probably served out of the usual mix of fear of the collar, an inability to imagine that anything could be different, and an inability to get their hands on any iron or steel which would render a slave-collar useless. She sus¬pected that it was the former two reasons that were the strongest, since anyone who really wanted the metal rings that would negate the collars could have one from Moth's people just by asking. Pity would only take her so far; if the slaves here couldn't look beyond their fear, if they didn't have the basic in¬telligence to imagine something different from their current life, she couldn't help them.

I won't press the issue any further; if I do, I'll only weaken my own party, and if the rest of these young fools turn on me, I will have to barricade myself within my own lands and hope they grow bored with me. There would be no point in trying to flee; I am not at all sanguine about the likelihood of a full El-venlord finding a welcome among the Wizards, even if Dina's children are among them.

Her thoughts were momentarily distracted by that reminder of Dina's children. Poor Dina; she hadn't heard anything from them since they parted from her on Moth's doorstep. It was, af-

ter all, just as likely they were in hiding somewhere other than among the halfblooded Wizards. Only one of them was a half-blood anyway—Lorryn, the boy. Sheyrena was of full elven blood, and she could not imagine the girl being welcomed by the Wizards.

It's likely that although Lorryn might have been able to con¬vince the Wizards that Sheyrena was not actually an immediate danger to them when he first encountered them, he would never be able to convince them that Rena is completely harmless. And if he couldn't convince them that his own sister wasn't going to bring disaster on them, he'd never be able to make them believe that an ancient Elven lady like Moth was on their side.

Poor, poor Dina; she worried so much about them, although she tried not to show it. The one regret that Moth had was that there was no way for her to discover if Dina's two children were all right, or even where they were.

It is the most likely, actually, that Rena is ensconced some¬where off in the wilderness, far from Elvenlord, human, or half-blood. She has magic enough to keep herself safe—well, according to Dina, she has magic enough to control alicorns! And Lorryn would never allow her to come to harm or suffer any want—if he's with the Wizards, he'll see to it that she's got food enough and shelter. In a way, she envied the two young¬sters. If I'd had the youth and the opportunity, I'd have gone right off the map. The world is wide, after all; wide enough to hide dragons from us for all these centuries, it can certainly hide a few Elves who don't wish to be found.

The conversation had made a wide detour around the ques¬tion of the slaves, and was back on the topic of the war. Some¬one wished aloud for some secret that would allow the select elimination of some of the leaders. "That would throw a good fright into them," the callow youngster said, with a savagery worthy of any "barbarian and bestial human." "Let a few more of them die the way Lord Dyran died, and they'll give us what¬ever we want!"

Moth held her tongue. It was just as well that the Young Lords were not aware that Dina and her daughter managed to incinerate Dina's husband, the Lord Treves, in a' way very sim-

ilar to the way Lord Dyran's son slew him. Her own trusted ser¬vants knew, and they had kept it a strict secret, and she was quite grateful to them for preserving that secret. These young hotheads should never learn something that dangerous. They 'd probably manage to kill each other with it.

Eventually the meeting ground down to its inevitable conclu¬sion, and Moth rose. "With your permission, gentlemen, I should like to go tend to the library until sunset, if I may?" she asked politely.

They didn't even take a second thought about her request— young Lord Ketaliarn waved vaguely at her, and she took that as permission and left, trailed faithfully by her escort.

Of all the things that showed how callow they were, this was by far the most blatant. They considered the library to be use¬less, fit only for the concern of silly old ladies half living in the past. They thought all she was doing was cleaning and preserv¬ing the books—removing a few, now and then, for her own amusement in her bower.

Oh, the young fools.

The room she now entered, one of the finest libraries ever as¬sembled in this world, was (had they only had the wit to realize it) full of information the Young Lords could use to help their own cause. She breathed deeply of the scent of leather, vellum, parchment and paper, took a long look around the shelves that her husband had only seldom permitted her to access while he was alive, and set to work.

Many of the oldest books had not been tended in far too long; she would not permit any book, however trivial, to suffer from the worm's tooth or the decay of age. Whenever she was here, she spent a few hours in cleaning and restoring those ancient books—no matter how trivial they seemed to be, there was no telling when some scrap of knowledge in them might prove useful.

Most of her time, however, was spent in looking for the ones that she would rather not leave to the curious eyes of the Young Lords.

Lady Moth had helped young Kyrtian's father with his re¬search in this very library once or twice before his disappear-

ance, and. she was well aware that he had known better than she what lay here. She only knew within her own books was a set of very, very ancient works that Kyrtian's father had consulted in his searches for ancient secrets; she did not know which books they were, nor what they held.