Elvenborn

13

The sun shining down on the top of the highest tower of the lady-keep imparted a drowsy warmth to Lady Moth's back that she was thoroughly enjoying. She had always liked the gentle heat of the sun; her late husband had once scornfully accused her of being half-lizard for the way she enjoyed basking in the garden. But even if it had been the dead of winter, she would have been up here, for this was the only place on the entire estate that gave an unrestricted view down into the valley below. And what she watched through the eyepiece of her bit of antique equipment was fascinating indeed. There was no breeze to stir the silken, silvery-blue folds of her dress, or disturb the simple, straight fall of her hair, nor to make breezes wave distant branches between her and the interesting scene so far away in the valley. She felt sorry for the tiny little figures that she knew by their drab tunics were human slaves. First one brightly-colored creature in scarlet paraded them out and set them to work in the kitchen-garden. Then a second appeared, clad in a violent blue, far too soon for them to have accomplished much, and marched them off to drill with weapons.

Then a third emerged from the stables, this one in bronze satin, and ran them off into the farm-fields. What those poor bewildered slaves must be thinking now, she could not even begin to guess.

"Lady Morthena?" said a diffident voice from behind the El-ven lady. "What are you doing?"

Lady Moth took her eye away from the eyepiece of the old-fashioned, gold-and-bronze telescope, and turned to smile at her most recent guest.

"I am using an old device, my dear," she said to the younger woman in a kindly voice, knowing that Lady Viridina would never have seen such a thing as a telescope. "In fact, it dates quite back to Evelon—or at least, the lenses in it do. It is called a telescope, and although I normally use it to examine stars, at the moment I am using it to spy upon our neighbors." She patted the long cylinder of bronze, with ornate curlicues chased into the metal and inlaid with gold wire, for it was a very old friend and long-time companion.

Lady Viridina's pale brow wrinkled with puzzlement, with a faint frown on a face that was attenuated by long illness. "Why are you bothering to do that?" she wondered. "They already tell you everything, don't they?"

"That, my dear, is what I am ascertaining for myself." Lady Moth put her eye back to the eyepiece, and continued to make mental notes on the movements of the Young Lords' slaves outside the Great House. "In point of fact, I rather doubt that they are telling me everything. For instance, there seems to be some disagreement down there about just who is in charge of what. Just during the time I have been sitting here, I have seen one hapless group of slaves herded from one uncompleted task to another by three different Young Lords." She chuckled, and her laughter was echoed faintly by her companion, who patted the knot of long, silver hair at the back of her head self-consciously. "That is what comes with age, Viridina; suspicion. I stopped taking things at face value a very, very long time ago."

"So did I—but the difference between us, I think, is that you found other ways of finding out what you needed to know, and I didn't even try," Viridina said ruefully, twisting her hands in the fine silk of her flowing and many-layered violet gown. "If I had, perhaps—"

She didn't finish the sentence, but Lady Moth was not about to allow her to sink into self-recrimination. "If you had, I doubt that it would have materially changed anything. You and I were firmly under the thumbs of our unlamented Lords, and no knowledge or even foreknowledge would have allowed us to change what happened to us. Knowledge is not always power." She smiled again. "If it was, fond as I am of my Tower, it would be Lady Moth who ruled the manor down there, and not that rabble of Young Lords."

Lady Moth had known very well that there was going to be a slave revolt when the Young Lords staged their own revolution against their elders. Her own slaves had told her. She had already taken herself out of her disagreeable husband's home; she had made a bargain with him—if he gave her the lady-keep, which had been the Dowager-House attached to his estate, she would make no trouble for him when he filed a divorcement with the Council. He had his eye on a very young Elven girl— his tastes had begun to run to the barely-pubescent in the past few years—and he was heartily tired of the wife who could not or would not take him as seriously as he thought he should be taken.

"I wish you had managed to take the Manor," Lady Viridina sighed wistfully. "I hate to think what damage those careless boys are wreaking to your beautiful home."

Lady Moth only shrugged. "I have an equally beautiful home here—and much more manageable," she pointed out. "It's probably just as well that I didn't try."

For her part, she had been so heartily tired of her lord that— given that she would not be required to remarry and could have an establishment, however small, of her own—she was prepared to allow him to say whatever he pleased about her in order to obtain his freedom. She suspected that he would claim she was pleasuring herself with human slaves—but as it fell out, he never got the chance, so her reputation survived intact.

"May I look?" Viridina finally asked, allowing her curiosity to overcome her reticence. Moth just laughed, showed her how to focus the instrument, and rose so that Dina could take her seat.

Moth's husband had not even lived to encounter the revolt, though without a doubt, if he had, he and his son would have been on opposite sides of the conflict. Her son, who had suddenly become as conservative as his father once he was in the ruling seat, had managed to be slaughtered almost immediately, and her daughter had fled after an abortive attempt to rule the manor herself had failed miserably. Lady Moth, as was the tradition in her family, had always treated her slaves with consideration and respect, entirely as if they were servants, not slaves, and as if they were free to leave her service if they chose to. She had taken all her slaves with her to the Tower, every slave for which she could concoct even the remotest excuse to have with her— a fact which probably would have provided ample fodder for her husband's accusations. Once there, she had deactivated the elfstones in all of their collars, making them merely decorative shams, and told them frankly that they now were free to go or stay. They all, to a man and woman, chose to stay. When the revolt was at the breaking-point, her slaves had told her. They had fortified the place, she had armed those who knew how to use weapons. Together, they had outfaced rebellious ex-slaves and Young Lords. In fact, her burly young guards called her "little mother," and took as much care of her as if she had truly given birth to them—unlike her own offspring.

"Why not use scrying instead of this device?" Dina asked, moving the telescope to gaze at another part of the valley.

"Because, my dear, the place is adequately shielded against scrying—oh, not by magic, by all that iron and steel they've managed to collect." She stared down at the valley, one finger tapping her lips thoughtfully. "Very clever of them, actually; there aren't three of them together that are a match for a single one of the Old Lords, but the metal does their work for them."

Needless to say, her son's magic had not been enough to save him from enraged and mistreated humans who came in the middle of the night to beat him to death in his own bed—especially not when they arrived bedecked in thin iron armbands.

During the chaos of the revolt itself, some of her son's slaves had escaped to her; the rest fled to the Wizards and the wilderness. When more armed bands of escaped slaves had come upon the Tower, her people protected and guarded her while she stood ready to use deadly war-magics if it became necessary. She knew about the effects of iron and steel; she would not have made any attempt to blast attackers, unlike those foolish Elvenlords like Dina's husband. She planned to blast holes into the earth beneath their feet—or to use her magic to launch large and heavy objects at them. Most of her anxiety had not been for herself, but for her people, if they could not convince their fellow humans to go away peaceably. She didn't want them hurt on her behalf, and she didn't want them to have to witness what she might have to do to protect them all.

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 marauders during those first weeks of the Revolt to dissuade them from attacking the Tower; there probably had been several different 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 everything needed to ensure exactly the right weather for the farmfields, 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 moments, 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 breakdown 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 adequately 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 entirely 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 frightened 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 "working" 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 original 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 possible for frustration to drive one side or the other to make a crucial mistake.

But, of course, they didn't ask her opinion, and she didn't offer it—since it was clear that they would not believe a mere female 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 barbarians? 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 expressions, 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 humans and halfbloods in the same contempt as did their elders. The minority, led and coached by Lady Moth, wanted to see humans 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 already 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 suspected 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 intelligence 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, after 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 convince 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 somewhere 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 youngsters. 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 question of the slaves, and was back on the topic of the war. Someone 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 whatever 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 similar to the way Lord Dyran's son slew him. Her own trusted servants 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 conclusion, 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 useless, fit only for the concern of silly old ladies half living in the past. They thought all she was doing was cleaning and preserving 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 assembled 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 research in this very library once or twice before his disappearance, 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.

Nevertheless, since she had been forced to quit the place, she had been determined that at the first chance she would get in here and find them again. Since the Young Lords got here, she had been using her visits to find each and every one of those precious volumes and take them back to the Tower, a few at a time. Whatever was in them had led to the death of one Erven-lord; she suspected that what he had gone seeking had somehow killed him. Which implied that the secrets to be found in those books could be very, very dangerous indeed.

None of the Young Lords cared what she did in there. So as she worked on the task of keeping the library cleaned and preserved, and she ferreted out those precious few books so that one day, perhaps, she could present them to Kyrtian, they were completely oblivious to the value of what she was taking out right underneath their very noses.

I shall have to do some research of my own, I'm afraid, she reflected. A dangerous secret was exactly what she was looking for, after all; there were a few old half-remembered stories of things that had been abandoned right after the Crossing, and techniques that had been forgotten in the haste to find and build a secure haven.

For her part, at the moment, she would be happy to find some way to communicate with her nephew other than by teleson or messenger.

She had just been informed this morning of a very disturbing rumor—as yet unconfirmed, but she had been hoping to hear something either to confirm or deny it at today's meeting. One of her servants took periodic and very risky ventures into the lands still held by the Old Lords, coming back just after dawn with the situation as viewed from the Enemy's vantage—and he had told her that there was a report that Kyrtian had taken command of the Old Lords' army.

If that was true—

If that is true, then the other side has made a desperate gamble, and all unknowing has hit upon the one thing that will probably give them victory. And the thing is, these young fools will be dead certain that putting Kyrtian in command of the Enemy is going to be the one thing that will ensure the Old Lords' defeat. Young idiots.

If only she could speak to him, and persuade him that she was one of the rebels, surely he would think twice about his current allegiance!

I don't dare use a teleson—those are too easily monitored. And none of my humans have the human type of magic that lets them talk mind-to-mind with each other. And I won't send one of my people where he might be captured or conscripted into the army. It is a terrible position to be in.

She was going to have to start studying these old tomes herself.

After all, it was a far better idea than sitting with her hands folded, waiting for disaster to overtake all of them.

Besides, she decided firmly, shoving another ancient volume into the saddlebag for her guard to take with him. I will never sit by with folded hands while things fall to pieces.

—not even if someone ties me into the chair and binds my hands together!