Elvenborn

20

Her guide paused at the edge of the mining-pit, and Shana surveyed the activity below her with an intense feeling of satisfaction. The dragons had, incredibly, found a place not that far from the New Citadel where iron ore lay near to the surface of the earth, making it possible to extract the precious substance without having to dig dangerous underground tunnels.

The dragons, however, had given some strict orders regarding mining operations. The fertile topsoil was to be carefully removed before true mining began, and set aside; when a spot had been played out, the harvested soil was to be returned and replanted with saplings culled from the forest, or clumps of meadow-flowers. Although this made very little sense to most of the Wizards and all of the humans, the dragons were so adamant about this that no one argued.

Shana, however, fully agreed with this injunction. She had lived among dragons for too long not to think in terms of centuries rather than years—and the scars left on the land by un-considered mining would last for centuries. In the desert and the mountains, resources were not inexhaustible; to scar the land and leave it that much less able to support the humans and Wizards of the Citadel was unthinkably stupid. No matter what else she was, she hoped that even her own worst enemies would never think of her as that stupid.

A great deal of work was required to produce a few ingots of iron. In the pit below her, twenty or thirty quite burly men, broad shoulders and backs pouring sweat, labored with picks and shovels to fill crude wheelbarrows. The barrows were in their turn trundled up a dirt ramp to the rim of the pit by less burly men, some women, and even a few adolescent boys with the muscle to make the grueling trip over and over.

At the opposite rim of the pit stood their primitive smelter, the mysteries of which were of no interest to Shana. That was Zed's purview, and so far as Shana was concerned, as long as his fuel-cutters and charcoal-burners cut their timber selectively and replanted where they cut, she didn't care. Her concern was for the iron to trade with and the land it came out of, not for how the iron was produced.

It was the number of people at work here that surprised her—and their ages. She had sent Zed and his would-be miners off with the young dragon who'd found this place, and there hadn't been a single one of them much over the age of twenty—nor were any of them particularly muscular. But down there in the pit were men that could have been labor-slaves for an Elvenlord—

"What do you think of my crew?" called Zed, as he waved at her from across the pit. The miners looked up, glanced from him to Shana, and grinned broadly. Fire and Rain! They looked like labor-slaves and were scarred like gladiators!

Not a familiar face among them. ...

"I think they're very impressive," she called back, as she and her guide made their way around the edge of the pit. "But what I'd really like to know," she continued, as she came closer and didn't have to shout, "is where they came from—"

Zed laughed. "They're slaves—ex-slaves actually. The same ex-slaves that old Caellach drove away from the New Citadel by treating them as slaves rather than our fellow-creatures."

"But..." She wrinkled her brow, puzzled. "They're working just as hard—harder—than they would have if they'd stayed at the Citadel."

"But I'm not treating them as slaves," Zed pointed out. "I don't expect them to work here for the sheer gratitude of serving a wizard and getting nothing more generous than food and shelter. They each get a fair share of the iron we smelt; they can trade it back to me for whatever we Wizards have that they want, or for what I've gotten from the Traders or the Iron People. That way the actual iron stays in our control, but they get a fair wage for their work." He raised an eyebrow. "We're great believers in wages here."

She shook her head in admiration. "Zed, that's brilliant! Are they settled here? Do they want to stay? Can they build a village or something?" It would be wonderful to have these strong folk nearby—there was so much they needed simple laborers for, and Shana didn't in the least object to bartering for work done.

"They want to know whether Caellach is likely to poke his nose in here first, before they actually build a settlement," Zed replied with a grimace.

Shana glanced down, and saw that all work had stopped, while the former slaves all listened for her reply.

She was not at all loath to give it, pitching her voice so that the workers could hear it as well as Zed.

"Caellach Gwain is about as likely to appear here as I am to be welcomed into the ranks of the Elvenlords," she said, with a touch of acidic humor. "He's gotten so bad about having the tiniest bit of iron near him that we've taken to wearing the false-gold pendants when we aren't working magic. Lorryn calls them 'Caellach-chasers.'"

Zed's guffaw drowned anything from the workers, but Shana saw plenty of grins as they bent back to their work.

"I think you can count on a settlement going up here, then," Zed replied. "There's enough iron ore here to keep the smelter going for years and years, and more than enough work for everyone. Whoever isn't mining, smelting or hauling can be put to work on the replanting and restoration of played-out areas."

"I was afraid, after I saw that first load of ingots, that I was pushing you too hard over here," she said in tones aimed only for his ears, once he stopped speaking. "I'm glad to see that I was mistaken."

Zed patted her shoulder. "Anything but," he replied. "Ah— would you like to see the smelter? Or not—"

"Not," she said firmly. "I'm no Caellach, but this much iron kind of makes the inside of my head itch."

Zed shrugged. "Doesn't bother me as much, but then I've never had as much of the elven magic as you do. Here, I'll show you where we want to put a settlement instead. I think you'll be surprised."

He turned away from the smelter and headed into the woods. Shana followed him, glad to get out of the hot sun, away from the smelter and under the tree-shadows.

"How did the Iron People react to our first delivery?" Zed asked, with acute—and thoroughly understandable—interest.

"By throwing a festival, or so Mero tells me," she was happy to tell him. "I'm afraid that the Traders are a bit disappointed, though."

"The Traders can learn to live with their disappointment," Zed said smugly. "Now we can start doing more to protect ourselves—and we can send out the jewelry again."

"That can't happen too soon for me," Shana said fervently. "It's not just the Young Lords who need it, though the more jewelry we can get into their hands, the more disruption they'll make with the Great Lords. No, I want to get pieces to the Ladies, and I especially want to get it into the hands of the slaves."

Want was too mild a word; ever since she had last heard from Keman and Dora, she was positively wild to get the jewelry moving out into the Elven lands again. If they could get Lord Kyrtian on their side—

The jewelry might put Lord Kyrtian on their side. If he had a way to protect his own people from Elven magic, to protect his lands from the magical attacks of other Elvenlords, there was no doubt in Shana's mind that Lord Kyrtian's own intensely loyal fighters would be more than a match for any physical force that the Great Lords could bring against him. It was only attack—magical attack—that he needed to fear.

And treachery. There was that. And the Great Lords were past masters at treachery.

"You think it might nullify the collars?" Zed asked with interest, "Remember, if we can't do that, we might as well not give the stuff to them."

"I think I know how." Eagerly she outlined her idea, which had come to her just that morning. "If we make a sort of clamshell device that closes over the beryl in the collar, back and front—" she mimed the idea with her hands "—something that will lock in place, tight, even if we can't get the collar off, we keep commands from getting to the elf-stones and the stone from actually doing anything to the wearer."

Zed considered the idea. "Interesting. It doesn't help someone like a concubine, who might have a collar studded with beryls, but a common worker won't have more than one. So unless the Lords start replacing all the collars on all their slaves, which would be expensive, even for them, we could free whole groups at a time!"

Shana grinned with glee. "That was my idea—the clamshells wouldn't be big, and it wouldn't be hard to distribute them. For instance, we could smuggle a whole bagful out to the workers in a field, the slave taking the water-bucket around could pass them out, and the whole group could bolt at once."

Or the shells could be passed around an army, at night, under cover of darkness. And when the morning comes, and coercion no longer works on the fighters and they are safe from magical attack, how many of them will remain to fight for their masters?

"Tricky," Zed said with admiration. "It's too bad that collars are usually metal, not leather; we could incorporate cutters into the edges of the clamshell, and nullify the beryl and remove the collar all in one go. Well, this is where the camp is, and where the men would like to put in a permanent settlement."

There wasn't much there at the moment, and it was a good thing that not only was it high summer but there had been remarkably good weather, for the shelters were barely enough to keep off the rain. Shana could see how it would make a perfect spot for a settlement, however, and she made all the right sounds of enthusiasm for Zed and his people. There was no doubt in her mind that she and Lorryn had made the right decision in putting Zed in charge of mining, smelter, and crews to man both operations, although she would not have pictured him as a leader. And Caellach Gwain had, of course, argued against the mere thought of putting someone as young as Zed in charge of anything.

She completed her inspection—if that was not too official a word for merely looking the situation over—in short order. Things could not possibly be better; at the moment, she really didn't want production going any faster. It wouldn't hurt trade to keep the Iron People waiting for their ingots just a little between each shipment; she didn't want them to start thinking that the supply was unlimited, and she had a long talk with Zed on just that subject. He was disappointed in one way, and relieved in another. He wouldn't have been unhappy to be asked to find more ex-slaves to recruit, but on the other hand, he didn't want his workforce growing past the point where he could handle everything himself.

In the end, Shana and the latest load of crude iron ingots returned overland to the New Citadel by pack-mule, arriving just about sunset.

Just in time for Caellach Gwain to run straight into them.

He stared; he began to shake with anger. In a matter of moments, he was practically beside himself with rage.

"What are you doing, girl?" he screamed at the top of his lungs, drawing everyone within hearing distance to the mouth of the cavern where the unloading was taking place.

"I should think that was perfectly obvious," she retorted. After the long walk—for she was not going to ride when she had two perfectly good legs, and her weight-equivalent in iron bars could be loaded on a mule in her place—she was hot and tired, and not in the mood for the temper-tantrums of irascible old men.

"You idiot!" he shrieked. "Bringing that—filthy stuff here? Bringing it inside the caves? You're mad! You're crazed! How is anybody supposed to work magic with that foul garbage practically on top of us?"

There were some grumbles and mutterings from the older wizards in the crowd that had gathered around them, but this time Shana stood her ground. It was about time that the recalcitrant wizards adapted to the situation, instead of expecting someone to work around their reluctance to change.

"You'll work magic around it the same way we youngsters do," she said firmly, hands on hips, glaring at him. "I should think you'd be grateful to me! The more iron there is around here, the safer you are! Haven't you at least figured that out by now?"

Usually she made some pretense of politeness to the old man, but she was in no mood for him at the moment, and her attitude sent him into an incoherent frenzy.

That was just about the last straw.

"Shut up, you stupid old man!" she screamed—and since her soprano was considerably more piercing than his hoarse howls, even he heard her, and stared at her, mouth agape.

"Ever since we arrived here, all you've done is complain!" she shouted, her face flushed. "We've fed you, clothed you, seen to it that you got your creature comforts, and you have done nothing, nothing to help the rest of us! You're a parasite, Caellach Gwain, you're as useless as a second nose and you aren't even half as entertaining! Now shut up and learn to work magic around iron like everyone else, or—or—"

"Or what?" Gwain sneered. "You'll turn me over to the El-venlords? That's just what you would do, isn't it? Elvenbane?"

As hot as she had been the moment before, now she was cold. "No," she said flatly. "But only you would think that I could. No. If you won't learn to adapt to our new life here, Caellach Gwain, I will see to it that no one else will cosset you from this moment on. You will find your own food or starve, clean your own clothing or go dirty, cut your own firewood or freeze. Sooner or later, you'll figure out how to live like a responsible adult, and high time, too."

And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked off, pushing her way through the surrounding crowd of mingled young and old wizards.

Someone grabbed her elbow; she started to pull away blindly, when she realized it was Lorryn. "Don't run off," he muttered. "Not now. This isn't over yet." He turned her back to face the crowd.

"I've heard the mutters and the complaints," he said loudly. "I've heard them from the moment that I arrived here. I couldn't help but notice that most of them came from the same set of mouths—so let's just address this situation once and for all. I'm calling a convocation of all Wizards."

"Here?" someone gasped. "Now?"

"Here and now," Lorryn agreed. "I give you all a quarter-candle to get everyone assembled; whoever isn't here by then I'll assume has no interest in the way things are run in the New Citadel, and doesn't feel the need to have his voice heard."

About half of those present shot or lumbered off in every direction to gather friends and enemies from every part of the Citadel. Shana looked askance at Lorryn.

"Is this a good idea?" she asked doubtfully.

"It had to happen sometime soon," Lorryn replied. "Better that it comes as a surprise to both sides; Caellach and his cronies won't have a chance to prepare themselves."

"And we're prepared?" she replied, staring at him incredulously.

"More than they are—and what's the besetting sin of every one of the Whiners?" he asked, and answered himself triumphantly. "Laziness! That's why I only gave them a quarter-candle. How many will think it's too much trouble to drag themselves away from whatever they'd planned or were in the middle of?"

"Maybe enough to make a real difference," she said slowly— for already the young wizards were coming up to the clearing at the entrance, brought in by the youngsters who had scattered like quail to bring the message to everyone within reach of a pair of fleet feet.

With the help of a couple of their friends, Lorryn prepared the area. This was also the spot where firewood was chopped and stored, and the young wizards got to work, rolling in some logs for the less-than-healthy to sit on down in front, and setting up sawn sections of trunk for himself, Shana, and presumably Caellach to stand on so everyone could see them. Caellach, of course, merely stood about and observed them sourly. More and more people were arriving with every passing moment, and by the time the allotted span was gone, the only Wizards not present were a scant handful of the oldest or laziest. The biggest surprise was the number of pure humans who had come as well; virtually every full human in the Citadel.

With a great deal of overacted infirmity, Caellach bullied a couple of human youngsters into helping him up onto one trunk-section, as Shana and Lorryn took the other two.

"Now, settle down!" Lorryn shouted, very loudly, so that those who were chattering and milling about obediently stopped talking aloud and turned their attention to where the three of them stood. "All right, then. I am going to moderate this convocation since I'm the one who called it."

"But you're Shana's lover!" Caellach sputtered, red-faced.

Shana was going to protest, but Lorryn beat her to it. The furious look that Lorryn turned on him sent him from red to white, and he even shrank back a little. No one had ever seen Lorryn angry before—and he looked positively murderous.

"I am not," he replied into the silence, "Lashana's lover. We are friends, and she has been relying upon my experience on my father's estate to help her handle you unruly lot. Even if that were true, it would have nothing to do with this situation and it would be none of your business so long as her foster mother approves. I am offended, Caellach Gwain. I do suggest that you confine your words to the issues at hand, or I will be tempted to challenge you."

Challenge him? What on earth does he mean by that? Shana thought, bewildered. Caellach Gwain evidently knew, though, for he turned even whiter, and stammered an apology.

"The primary issue at hand," Lorryn said, when the old wizard was done, "is a greater one than just the presence of iron within the Citadel, or the number of people who are attending to tasks other than ... housekeeping." His bland expression gave no hint as to his own feelings on the subject, and although they were no secret to Shana, from the looks on the faces of Caellach's cronies, they were not sure if he was Shana's partisan or not. He might be courting her, but he was also an aristocrat, used to the attentions of hundreds of slaves, so shouldn't he be on their side? For that matter, he might only be using her to get the power of leadership himself—she saw that in the new speculation with which Caellach regarded him.

"Caellach Gwain," Lorryn continued, turning to the old wizard, "you have voiced your opinions often enough for the ears of your friends and supporters—I must insist that you allow everyone in the Citadel to hear them."

Caellach stared at him; tried without success to stare him down. His expression remained inscrutable. "As moderator, I will not be questioning either of you. Instead, you will answer questions from everyone except me. I will see to it that there are no interruptions and that you both have a fair chance to be heard."

What? That took Shana completely by surprise, and she felt seriously shaken. What on earth was he after? Surely the Old Whiners would try to make her look a fool—

But it was too late to back out now, for either of them, as Lorryn fielded those who wanted a chance and selected one of Caellach's cronies for the first question.

"You were the one that brought the Elvenlords down on us in the first place, girl, so what've you got to say for yourself?" shouted the old man, who practically trembled with eagerness to finally have a chance to confront her in front of witnesses. "If it hadn't been for you and your pretensions of being some mythical Elvenbane, we'd still all be back in the Citadel and comfortable!"

Think! Don't react, think! "I never called myself the Elvenbane," she retorted, throttling down panic and irritation that mingled uncomfortably, setting her insides topsy-turvy. "I never even heard of the Elvenbane until after I was brought to the Citadel. And besides, it was the dragons that made the Elvenbane up in the first place, not me!" She caught sight of Father Dragon back in the crowd, in his halfblood-shape. "Right, Kalamadea?"

Gazes followed hers, and several of the more wary, elderly wizards who found the dragons as uncanny as Caellach did cleared away from him. Father Dragon cleared his throat modestly. "Well, it was mostly my doing," he admitted. "But yes. We dragons created the legend of the Elvenbane, and we were just as surprised as the rest of you when the legend came to life." He warmed to his subject. "We believe, we dragonkin, that certain creatures are endowed at birth with great hamen-leai, which is the power to become Fate rather than to be steered by it, and I tell you all now, Lashana, even as an infant, showed such tremendous hamenleai that even if she had been raised by alicorns in the wilderness, the legend would have fitted itself around her. Every dragon acknowledges that now, whether or not they count her as a friend. Where she walks, great change will follow."

That was not what Shana had hoped he would say—nothing like it, in fact—but she gamely took up where she had left off. "As for all of you still being in the Citadel, I don't think you would have lasted undetected for much longer. You were taking too many risks. Someone would have found out why goods and supplies were vanishing and where they were going, if nothing else. The Elvenlords were already starting to wonder about that even before I joined you."

"Didn't I say that was too risky?" said a wizened old scrap of a wizard, before he was hushed. Lorryn had already signaled someone else to ask a question, and Shana felt her heart sink as she surveyed the faces around her. She had felt, and sounded, weak and uncertain. She hadn't convinced anyone, and Father Dragon hadn't helped.

"What makes you think you're better than any of the rest of us at leading?" shouted someone from the back. "Both of you!"

"I don't," Shana replied promptly, but Caellach was already swelling with self-importance and ran right over the top of her.

"I have decades of experience, not to mention intelligence and wisdom," he boasted, "which is far more than this impudent little girl can claim. I do not make impetuous decisions, and I do not rush to embrace something just because it is novel and new. There is no doubt in my mind that the situation here is well on the way to becoming intolerable, between these foolish innovations in magic and dangerous liaisons with barbaric wild humans, not to mention creatures that aren't even human. The young should serve their elders, not dictate absurd rules to them! They should be thrilled to trade their service for the wisdom that we have gathered!" He warmed to his subject, surrounded as he was by his own nodding supporters, paying no attention at all to the expressions of some of those who were farthest away. "What should we Wizards have to do with humans, anyway—except in that they, too, should be eager to serve us! We are more powerful, we are longer-lived and have the opportunity to garner far more experience than what can be learned in the few years these mayfly humans enjoy. It is clear that we are far superior in every way—and this girl, this child, thinks that we are to treat them as equals! Never! I will never tolerate treating such debased creatures, creatures who should be competing in devotion to me, as my equals!"

An actual growl arose from the humans who made up the bulk of the crowd—perhaps few of them had ever realized just how deeply Caellach's prejudices went, nor how poisonous they were. At that moment Shana realized Lorryn's tactics in allowing this convocation to take place in the way it had, for he had permitted Caellach full freedom to say whatever he chose with his followers around him, and the old wizard's mouth had run away with him.

"Debased creatures, are we?" came an angry shout from one of the carters who had brought the last batch of iron ingots up from the mine. "I'd like to see you try your hand at a little honest work, you soft white worm!"

"You can just fetch and carry for yourself from now on!" came another, disgusted voice, along with a chorus of similar sentiments. Even some of the children that Caellach had cowed into obeying his demands took heart from the sentiments of their elders, and added their shrill voices to the rest.

Caellach and the others woke to their danger, but considerably too late for any retraction. They gathered in a knot around Caellach and it became painfully clear to them how tiny a minority they formed, as a sea of angry faces surrounded them. Shana and her shortcomings were quite forgotten.

Lorryn allowed them enough time to really begin to frighten Caellach, before using a little touch of magic to amplify his voice so that it carried over the noise of what was fast becoming a mob.

"Friends!" he boomed. "Quiet! Please!"

Surprise silenced all the voices for the moment—just long enough for one single voice, the voice of her foster mother Alara, to be heard.

"Shana, the objections seem to be to all of the changes," Alara said, in the first reasoned voice Shana had heard in the last few moments. "And you really were the author of most of them. So what have you to say about the objections?"

"If you don't change," she said, very slowly, choosing each word as carefully as if she picked her way across a treacherous swamp. "I think you become just like the Elvenlords."

That brought true silence, in which even the sighing of the breeze in their clearing seemed loud. It was a silence that begged for an explanation and drew further words, however unwillingly, out of her.

"They haven't changed, not since they conquered this place, and maybe not even in longer than that," she continued. "They assume that they're the proper lords of the universe and that nothing they want or think or do can be wrong—no matter how many times things happen that prove that they are wrong. When you don't change, you get brittle, and the next thing that hits you will break you."

She looked past the faces of her own friends, out to the humans, in whose eyes smoldered resentment for all Wizards now, even her. "Changing means that we can't sit in our Citadel and think we're superior to anything just because we can do some things well. Don't you see?" She fumbled a little. "We all need each other. Oh, I can bring in a live sheep from the hills with magic, but I don't have the first idea of how to take clay and make a watertight cup, and let's face it, if I'm thirsty, I need that cup, and the person who can make it is superior to me at that moment! Don't you see?" she pleaded. "I never wanted to be a leader, but—I don't know, maybe Kalamadea is right and hamenleai has something to do with it and I just can see that we all need to change and we all need each other if we are going to survive—and maybe, if they'll learn to change a little, we even need—them—"

She gestured helplessly at Caellach and his friends, unable to put what she wanted to show them into words—the great puzzle that she saw in her mind that somehow had places for all of them to fit into.

But evidently, although there was some puzzlement out there, she got part of her point across. The resentment and anger had faded, and although there were grimaces at the thought of including Caellach and his ilk back into the fold, there seemed to be acceptance of the idea, too.

Then came the thing she hadn't expected—

"It's hard on an old man, all this changing," said one of Cael-lach's cronies plaintively. "It's hard, girl. You go along with your life all even, then suddenly it's all upset—but—"

He took a deep breath, and shuffled across the space between Caellach's crowd and the rest of the convocation. He looked up at her, and heaved a sigh. "I hate all of this uncom-fortableness and having to do without," he continued, half in complaint, half in resignation, "but I'd rather stand with you than against you. Just don't ask too much all at once of an old, tired man, will you?"

She got down off her slice of tree-trunk and offered her hand. He took it, and that was the beginning of the end. In ones and twos, the rest of Caellach's followers came over to her side, although most of them just tried to blend back into the crowd and didn't actually come to stand with her. It didn't matter; they'd abandoned Caellach. Even if they didn't entirely agree with her, even if they were still going to argue and grumble, they'd abandoned their leader and they had opened themselves up to the possibility of change.

It was enough. For now, it was enough.