Elvenborn

14

In the heart of the Citadel, the home of the halfblooded Wizards, Lorryn ignored the drone of voices around the table and took just a moment to marvel at his surroundings. It seems so strange, even now, to finally be myself. No illusions, no carefully hiding what I am— In spite of everything, all the hardships, all the danger, even the silly aggravations, Lorryn was not sorry to be here, among Halfbloods like himself, at last.

This most spacious of caverns in their new home that the Wizards used as a meeting-hall was a pleasant place in which to find oneself—so long as no one was meeting in it. A peculiarity of the caverns allowed a wonderful flow of fresh air through here, so long as certain openings that served as doors and windows were left open to catch the summer breezes. Last winter things had gotten a little stale in this room, and with such a high ceiling it tended to be dank and chill.

Unfortunately for his sheer pleasure, there was a meeting going on, and Lorryn was glad that he had ample experience in keeping a pleasant expression plastered on his face while he himself was not feeling in the least pleasant. He had a headache like a tight band around his head, and he had inserted his tongue a trifle between his teeth to keep from grinding them and making the headache worse.

How is it that Caellach Gwain has managed to find the precise nasal whine best calculated to set my nerves on edge ? he asked himself, as he nodded affably at the elder Wizard. He actually couldn't make out more than half of what the man said, thanks to the weird acoustics in the place, but then he didn't have to listen to Caellach to know what he was going to say. The man is like a teleson stuck on endless repetition of the last thing it sent.

This was supposed to be a meeting about the progress made in setting up the sheep and cattle farm below the Citadel, but Caellach had taken it over as usual. He was intent only on recreating as much of the old comfort of the first Citadel in their new home as he could manage, and he had taken the opportunity of a brief allusion to the old Citadel to air his usual grievance.

Which is, of course, that the Wizards are not treated like El-venlords of the High Council. Old fool. Hasn't he figured out yet that when one group lords it over another, the underlings are going to want to strike back?

The old man's litany of complaints was as familiar to Lorryn as the texture of the wooden table he stared at as he controlled his temper and his expression. The beginning, middle, and end of Caellach's troubles were seated in his own greed. He wanted all the effort of the younger Wizards and the humans to go into making him as cossetted as he had been before the second Half-blood War. He didn't care that they had to be self-sufficient now, and couldn't steal magically from the Elvenlords anymore. He didn't trouble himself to think that it was far more important to see to the raising of sheep, goats and cattle, the cultivation of fields, than to scrub an old wizard's floor on a daily basis.

And he absolutely hated that the majority of the Halfbloods, voting down Caellach and his cronies, had made treaties of alliance with the Iron People and with the Trader clans, giving them the status of full equals and honored partners. These were fullblooded humans who had the status of full equals and honored partners. Though he did not dare come out and say so directly, this attitude incensed Caellach and his ilk, for to their minds, the halfblooded Wizards were clearly superior in every way to mere humans, and thus, should be treated as such.

And we should all be running and fetching for them, tending to their comfort, giving them of ourselves and the first fruits of our labors, so as to reward them for the fatiguing effort of their magics on our behalf. Lorryn, who was not only halfblooded himself, but had been brought up as an Elvenlord with all of the attendant privileges, found Caellach's attitude just as insulting and absurd as any of the highly independent Iron People or Trader clan folk did. There was nothing inherently superior about a wizard. Yes, they had magics, but so did the humans. And since they had been settled here in the new Citadel, the older wizards had not exerted themselves once for the common good—except, rarely, to teach some of the children how to use their powers.

Rather than listening to Caellach's words, Lorryn listened to the tone behind the words. He'd discovered he possessed an interesting knack for ferreting out the emotions and motives behind what people said, provided that they weren't as skilled at covering themselves as he was. He heard injured self-esteem and affront—that was expected—but he also heard fear, and that was interesting. He had not anticipated that.

I should have, though, he thought, raising his eyes and studying Caellach's expression as the man shifted his eyes away from Lorryn's direct gaze. Caellach was looking a bit unkempt, now that there was no one to wait on him. His clothing, the usual long robe affected by most of the older Wizards, was a bit stained and frayed about the hem. His grey hair was brushed, but no longer hung about his shoulders in a kind of thick mantle—instead, it was held back untidily in a tail, and it seemed to Lorryn that it had gotten a bit thin at the temples. People do tend to react to new things either with interest or fear, and really, I think Caellach Gwain is too hidebound to react with interest to anything new.

Lorryn already knew that Caellach was afraid of the dragons; that was abundantly clear to anyone with half an eye. The old Wizard wouldn't set foot outside when there were dragons about in their natural form, and as for the ones shifted into half-blood or human shape—well. If they took seats on one side of the table, it was a safe bet that Caellach would place himself as far from them as physically possible while still remaining at the table.

His dislike of the Traders and the Iron People was a little more complicated, and harder to understand. Lorryn let a few of the old wizard's actual words—laden with anger and apprehension—sift in past his own thoughts. What in the world had the old man's trews in a wad?

"—and how dare they demand payment in advance, much less at all, for—"

Ah. That was enough to get the key. Lorryn had the tail of the tree-snake now. Caellach wasn't incensed that he was expected to pay in advance for the goods that the Traders brought here— he was angry that he was expected to pay at all. Possibly because Caellach's only available coin was, quite frankly, debased. He wasn't the most powerful Wizard anymore, he wasn't the most skilled, and his greed had led him to expend most of his energies on his own comforts, leaving him with little that he could use to barter for things he wanted.

"And as for those—barbarians—"

Third leg to the stool; he was incensed that the Iron People showed him no deference at all—and didn't need his magic.

Though why Caellach should think that a mob of ill-regulated cave-dwelling refugees should consider themselves more civilized than a well-regulated nomadic people was beyond Lor-ryn's imagination. But prejudice has nothing to do with logic. Perhaps it was because the Iron People were completely unimpressed by the Wizards. They didn't need Wizards to defend themselves from the Elvenlords; they had their iron ornaments and a powerful warrior class. Not to put too fine a point on it, they had actually held two Elvenlords as enslaved prisoners for the purposes of their own amusement. The most that Caellach Gwain had ever managed was to escape relatively unscathed from them.

That had been a near thing, too. Caellach and his cronies either did not realize, or would not admit, that it wasn't the El-venbane's fault entirely that the old Citadel and its dwellers had been discovered. The Wizards had been dancing on the edge of a knife for a very long time, what with their pilferings from the Elvenlords and all. So far as the Elves were concerned, there was only one kind of good halfblood—a dead one. Halfbloods weren't even supposed to exist, and most of the Elvenlords were utterly devoted to making certain that they didn't. Lashana's actions had only triggered the avalanche of Elven retribution, not caused it.

And if it hadn't been for her quick thinking, and her draconic friends, the wizards wouldn't have survived it.

What was more, they weren't out of the woods yet. As long as the halfblooded wizards lived, the Elvenlords would try to eliminated them, treaty or no treaty. If Caellach Gwain and his circle thought any differently, they were deluding themselves.

Not that there was anything new in the notion of Caellach Gwain deluding himself....

Finally, Caellach ran out of things to say, and sat down. Lor-ryn had very quickly figured out that allowing the old Wizard to rant and whine, while unpleasant to listen to, generally had the salubrious effect of making him silent for the rest of any meeting of which he was a part. "Thank you, Caellach; your experience is, as always, apparent to all of us," he said, graciously. Caellach began to preen. "Your observations are continuously fascinating." He ignored the grimace that one of the younger halfbloods made at him from behind the shelter of one hand, and the spasms that crossed several other faces in an effort to keep from bursting out into laughter. "Now—I'd like to put the matter of the proposed upper pasture for the goats to a vote. All in favor?"

Even Caellach raised his hand, seduced, no doubt, into thinking that the goats would look after themselves, and not require shepherds, now that they had some of the huge cattle-dogs raised by the Iron People at their disposal. Lorryn made certain that there were no dissenters, and nodded. "Good. We're all agreed. Halfden, would you see about finding some volunteers for the job and getting them to me to be interviewed?" He needed humans for this task, preferably children with the ability to speak mind-to-mind, so that they could call for help if they saw anything, or if there was something out there that neither they nor the dogs could handle.

More of the servants that Caellach Gwain thinks are his personal property.

Halfden, one of the older ex-slaves, nodded, and Lorryn called the meeting to a close.

But like it or not, he wasn't quite done with Caellach—at least so far as Caellach was concerned.

"I really need to talk with you about the quality of my quarters, Lorryn," the wizard said, grabbing him by the elbow before he could make his escape. Lorryn leveled a blank gaze at him.

"My good sir," he said, with the kind of polite tone in which a specious warmth and charm were mixed with utter calm, "if you think you are being slighted, I invite you to come and inspect my quarters—or Shana's for that matter. I think you will find that they are by no means superior to yours. In fact, given that neither of us chose our rooms until everyone else had gotten their pick, you'll find them far inferior to yours."

"Yes, but—" Caellach protested-—although weakly, since he had been in the little nook of a cave that Lorryn used, and knew that it was scarcely larger than the closet in his own suite of linked cavelets.

"I know that it is trying to you to be in such primitive surroundings, after having to abandon such a wonderful and comfortable 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 powerful 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 dagger, 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 manage 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 'manner 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 overheard. 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 running of the Citadel, was concentrating on the vastly more important 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 Keman 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 concubine, but her foster-mother, who was a dragon and not much in need of anyone's protection. But Lorryn refrained from saying 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 easily. 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 commander, 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 suggested that for some reason the High Council had elevated a nobody 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 Keman, 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 behind 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 masters," 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, feeling 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 finished for him. "One of Dora's lair is helping them to find grazing 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 People?" Lorryn asked, his curiosity now piqued.

Shana shrugged. "They could just be Traders—we knew already that the Iron People have had some contact with Traders. Keman says they are slowly bringing in their families and dependents 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 allies, 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 problem 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 actually 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 concerned, 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 problems 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 accomplishing 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 little 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.