Elvenborn

23

Shana hadn't seen Kelyan and Haldor in ages—and she would have been hard-pressed to recognize them now. Rena had been right to take action; perhaps the change in the two "young" Elvenlords had been so gradual that it had passed relatively unnoticed by the people who saw them every day, but to Shana's eyes the change was something of a shock. Elvenlords were rarely "robust" by human or halfblood standards, but Kelyan and Haldor were wraith-thin, bones showing through skin gone quite translucent. Their silver-gilt hair was lank and brittle, and they bruised badly and easily. The dragons had brought them to the Citadel in a stupor induced by Mero; after waking them only enough to stuff them full of food and drink and clean them up after their journey, Shana had put them back to sleep again.

Two elven captives summarily dumped on their doorstep— one more problem to try and fix.

This time she was at a loss; this was not her area of expertise! If it hadn't been for Lorryn coming in and volunteering to find a group to help her with them, she wouldn't have known where to start.

Now Shana and the group of young wizards Lorryn had called together stared down at their pair of captives as they slept in a magic-induced fog, illuminated by a pair of mage-lights. And it wasn't just wizards that Lorryn had asked for help, either; the group included some of the strongest of the human mages that Shana had ever met as well.

I wouldn 't have thought of that—stupid of me. Humans are the ones with the magic that works on thoughts. There were several of them now, living among the Wizards, drawn down out of the hills by the promise of a place where they could live without fear of being captured by elven-led slave-hunting expeditions. They stayed because Caellach had been very quiet ever since he had been defeated in the war of words with Shana. She was not altogether certain just how long he would remain quiet, but for now she was going to take the gift and not worry about him.

One of these human magicians was a middle-aged man called Narshy, whose ability to create illusions within the minds of those who were not adept at the Iron Peoples' mind-wall technique was nothing short of boggling. It was he, evidently, that Lorryn had first thought of when Mero had first suggested that the Wizards take over where Mero and Rena had been forced to leave off. Narshy could sometimes even get past the mind-wall—and because of that, Shana considered it a good thing he was on their side.

It made Shana wonder—before she dismissed the idea, appalled that she'd even considered it—if Narshy could be used to manipulate Caellach Gwain. A base and immoral idea—but oh, so tempting! It had taken a distinct effort of will to put the idea firmly aside.

It was just a good thing that Caellach regarded the full humans with so much disdain, though. She wouldn't have put it past him to use the weapon that she discarded as immoral.

For that matter, was it immoral to be tinkering with the minds of the two Elvenlords?

Probably. But they were already mad. We 'd either have to kill them or fix them in such a way that they can't either betray us or the Iron People. She was caught between two equally distasteful solutions—but had no real choice, since Mero and Rena had already meddled with the situation past mending.

Both Elvenlords lay on pallets in the middle of a small, disused room, with their human and halfblooded—"physicians"— clustered around them. "Well, it shouldn't be too difficult for ten or twenty of us together to concoct whatever memories of being held you want us to," Narshy told Shana with such supreme self-confidence that Shana felt a kind of grudging admiration. Whether he was right or wrong here, it would be nice to be able to feel, just once, that same sort of self-confidence. "With that many of us working at once, we can just—engrave the new memories in place within a few days. So, where do you want these two to have been held?"

"Umm—" she hadn't thought that far, to tell the truth, but if she admitted that, would she lose authority in their eyes? They were all looking at her as if they expected her to present them with everything they needed, ready to go. "What about the old Citadel?" she suggested, unable to think of anything more clever on such non-existent notice. "That way we won't have to make anything up—wouldn't real memories be better than ones we concocted?"

"But the Elvenlords know about the old Citadel," someone protested. "Wouldn't they have found these two?"

Before Shana could answer that, someone else did it for her, with glee in their voice. "No! Because we can use our memories of the old Citadel, but we don't have to have them think that the place they were kept was the old Citadel. If we don't leave these two where the old Citadel actually is, whoever finds them will think that their prison was somewhere near where they were found! Let the Elvenlords think that there's another hidden Citadel somewhere."

"What about the forest on the edge of Lord Cheynar's estate?" Lorryn suggested, from the rear of the group. "It's got a bad reputation anyway. Ancestors only know what's in there; plenty of hunters have gone in and never come out again. Chey-nar won't even send his own men in there after escaped slaves anymore."

"That's true enough," Shana said thoughtfully. "I remember that Mero told me about some spooky sort of invisible thing that got his horse in there and nearly got him, when he and Va-lyn were escaping." She couldn't help it; she caught herself smiling grimly. There were plenty of things in those hills that were more than a match for Elvenlords.

"Good enough," Narshy said, taking the decision as made. "That's what we'll do—the lot of you that lived in the old Citadel, let's pry some of those memories out of your skulls and get them shared around so we can stuff these two full of them."

Shana was pleased and amazed at the way he managed to take control of the little group and herd them off to a corner where they could work undisturbed. With a sense of relief that was quite palpable, she realized that this time, for once, someone else was going to take care of a problem.

Unbelievable. "Where did you find him?" she asked Lorryn. "He acts as if he's been in charge of people, mages even, before this—"

"He has been—that's why I asked him to take charge of this group of yours," Lorryn replied, then suddenly looked anxious. "You don't mind—I hope—here I've gone and usurped your authority and now so has Narshy. Please tell me you aren't upset!"

"Mind? I should think not!" She shook her head and smiled, tiredly. "I don't know how you just do this, find the right people and get them to take over this or that job—I can't seem to find the right way to get people to think for themselves—or find the ones that can take the initiative on their own." She bit her lip as the all-too-familiar frustration arose.

"Maybe it's because you can't believe that you don't have to do everything," Lorryn said gently. "That's all I do; I find the people who are good at something, I ask them to do the job—and I believe that they can. Then I get out of the way and let them do it, in their own way, at their own pace."

There was no graceful way to reply to that, and she just sat down on a stone ledge, feeling totally inadequate and utterly deflated. "I never wanted to be a leader," she said, forlornly. "If anybody had asked me, I could have had the chance to say no."

"I know." He sat down beside her. "I'd rather you were free to do what you're good at; planning, thinking, coming up with solutions. You're all bogged down with trying to get people to see that your solutions are sensible—or to come up with better ones. You spend half your time trying to convince people, and the other half trying to herd them into working on the solution rather than sitting around and arguing about it. I'd rather you -didn't have to worry about all that."

"So would I." Suddenly she felt like weeping, and swallowed the lump in her throat, blinking rapidly. "But—"

He interrupted her. "Would you trust me to take what you aren't good at off your plate?" he asked, looking earnestly into her eyes. "I'm beginning to think that I am a leader, that it's in my nature—people listen to me, and I'm good at getting them to cooperate. But would you trust me to do what I'm good at so that you can do what you're good at?"

It took her a moment to work out what he was getting at, and he probably wasn't entirely certain of it himself. Would she put him in the position that Caellach Gwain wanted so badly, trust him to carry out what she could see were the right plans and decisions for her? Shouldn't she have someone older, someone from the original Wizards of the Citadel?

But neither Denelor nor Parth Agon—who should have been the leaders, and who Shana had expected would act as the leaders—seemed to be up to the job. Instead they had been delegating more and more authority to her, regardless of how she felt about it. Denelor never had cared to stir himself more than he had to, after all—she already knew that his besetting sin was sloth—and Parth—

Parth, she suddenly realized, was old. How old, she didn't actually know, not in years—but once they had gotten settled here and it seemed that she and her young wizards had the situation well in hand, he'd started taking a back seat, letting her fight with Caellach and his cronies, waiting for her to make the decisions. From vague hints over the years, she realized that he must be at least a century old, and perhaps more.

He's too old and tired to lead anymore, especially now that the Wizards are doing things and not just hiding. He doesn 't want the leadership position either. It's too much for him now.

Maybe that was the case with Denelor, too.

But could she hand over that much authority to Lorryn? It would make her terribly vulnerable.

As vulnerable as if he truly is my lover, the way everyone seems to think he is—and this is the sort of thing they'd expect me to do, start making him my—my—ruling consort. This will only make them more certain that we're lovers even though we 're not—even though I—

She flushed as that thought came, unbidden, and she must have forgotten to shield it, for suddenly he flushed, too. "I can't help what other people think," he said, defensively. "I can't help it that we—that I—"

She flushed again, fumbled for words, and couldn't find any.

"This isn't a very nice position for you," he said at last. "Even my own sister thinks we're—you know. No matter what we do, people are going to make up their own minds about your personal life and there's nothing you can say or do that will change what they think. But that doesn't make things easy for you, when there's nothing going on between us."

"Nor for you," she managed. "I mean, here I've been dumping all these things on you, and people are making all these assumptions, and you aren't even getting—" Now her face reddened so it felt as if she were inches from a fire.

"Assumptions! I don't mind, but I'm not in the same position that you are. It's got to be intolerable for you!" he exclaimed. "I—Shana—I wish—"

Suddenly, everything fell beautifully into place, as if the broken shards of a vase flew back together again before her eyes. She knew what he wished; he didn't need to say it, he was projecting it so forcefully that he was almost shouting the words in her head. He wanted those assumptions to be true, but he had been afraid that if he tried to push himself onto her, she would react by sending him away. He—he loved her. He really did! And—

Fire and Rain! I feel the same way!

Lorryn wasn't just a supportive and clever friend anymore. It wasn't just his friendship she needed and wanted. How long had she been feeling this about him? When did she stop feeling mere attraction, just enjoying his company, and suddenly start needing his presence the way she needed to breathe?

"I didn't—I don't want to force you into anything," he was saying, a little wildly. "I knew how you'd felt about Valyn and I didn't want you to think I thought I could replace him! I wanted us to be friends, really good friends, and I wanted it to be that we could depend on each other, and then after a while, when things started to get calmed down, and we had the leisure to think about ourselves we could—I mean I know that—I don't know—"

"Oh, hush," she said, suddenly full of a half-mad joy, and kissed him, putting everything she felt behind it just so she could get it all past the wild tide of his feelings.

:oh: she heard in her mind.

And then, for some timeless time, there was no room in either of their minds for words at all. Finally, for that one moment, no matter what would come after, everything was perfectly, completely, right. And she knew that she could trust Lorryn more than she could even trust herself.

"This isn't exactly the choicest spot—" he said, finally, into her hair. "We're rather out in public, not to mention our audience."

"I suppose they could wake up." Shana sighed and reluctantly broke the embrace.

She smoothed down her hair, self-consciously. He brushed a strand or two out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear for her. "Have you any time to spare?" he asked wistfully.

No—there's this, and the forges, and the slave-collars, and the defenses and—

"I'll make some," she replied.

The irony of the situation was that the only people affected by this sea-change in their relationship were Lorryn and Shana themselves. But oh, the difference for them!

No one seemed to have noticed that Lorryn's quarters had been stripped and converted into a storage area. Spiteful comments from Caellach Gwain as reported by Shana's sharp-eared observers among the children were in no wise changed. And yet—the difference to her!

But the world outside their chamber was not going to go away.

A plan—a large and complicated plan to safeguard the Citadel forever—was beginning to take shape between the two of them. When news came from Keman that Lord Kyrtian had either given or been ordered to give the command of the army to someone else while the Council debated its future, the need for that plan took on a new sense of urgency.

The old Citadel had defenses that this one didn't; it was time to put them in place. Alara and Kalamadea were the chief architects of the Citadel, and it was time to consult with them.

She and Lorryn, Alara and Father Dragon sat together over a three-dimensional "map" of the Citadel, sculpted in removable layers, trying to plan what next needed to be molded out of the rocks of their mountain. One grim consideration—escape tunnels. Just in case the Great Lords decided to send the formidable Lord Kyrtian after them. Another, a duplicate of the Citadel far enough away to flee to, but near enough that an evacuation could take place by means of the transportation spell. There were enough Wizards able to use it now that the entire population could be evacuated within hours, and the advantage of the spell was that there would be no tracks to trace them by.

The existence of this duplicate—which was near enough to Zed's iron-mines to provide extra protection, but at this point hardly more than a few chambers molded out of the rock by some of the youngest dragons—was for now a closely-kept secret. Even from the dragons working on it. Alara had told them it was nothing more than a new set of lairs.

Which we also need, Shana thought, wondering just how thin their resources could be stretched before things started snapping.

"The prisoners—how goes the memory-making?" Father Dragon asked. He and Alara were in halfblood form at the moment, or they would never have fit into the map-chamber. "I do not wish to alarm you unduly, but the sooner we can drop those two where they can be found, the better."

"Narshy's sorted out who's the best at planting the new memories, and he's got them stuffed with about a year's worth," Shana replied, tracing a possible exit tunnel from the lowest storage chamber onto the model with a wax pencil. "We decided to make the memories confused and foggy, as if they'd been kept drugged."

"We nominated Caellach as the Chief Wizard of this imaginary lot," Lorryn put in, getting a grin from Father Dragon and a head shake from Alara. "We had to have somebody, and at least he's memorable."

"Narshy says we should be able to plant them in a few days. He took the real memories of being captured, put new faces on the people doing the capture, then took it from there." Shana brooded over the model. "He's using as much of their real memories as he can, just changing the faces to Wizards, the tents to rock walls—and eliminating the iron collars. He's making those into something like slave-collars, so that the Elven-lords will think that this new lot of concocted Wizards are actually better at using elven magic than the Elvenlords themselves are."

"A good touch," Father Dragon Said, admiringly.

"Now if only I could figure out a way to be in two places at the same time," Shana said, staring down at the map.

Keman and Dora had not been able to get any nearer to Lord Kyrtian without revealing themselves, thanks in no small part to the suspicious Sargeant Gel. Shana had not dared ask them to take that final, irrevocable step. I need desperately to see Lord Kyrtian for myself! Only then would she know whether or not he was truly to be trusted—and if trusted, to be approached. But if she was gone from here, there was no telling what mischief Caellach might not get up to. If she was delayed—if something happened—could Lorryn control the old troublemaker for long? Or would Caellach manage to regain his hold over his old faction and set this entire warren seething with so many quarrels and bad feelings that it would all fall to pieces?

"Your mind or your body?" Kalamadea asked, suddenly, with an odd birdlike twist of his head.

"What do you mean?" she replied, wondering what had prompted that sort of reply.

"Well—if it's your mind that needs to be in two places at once—that is, if you feel that you have to be able to see and make decisions yourself about things going on in two different places at the same time, then we can't help you," Kalamadea said. "But if it's your body that needs to be seen in two places— if, for instance, you wanted to leave, and had confidence in someone enough to let him make decisions for you but you needed a sort of figurehead or puppet of yourself so that certain people wouldn't decide to make trouble while you were gone—

"A certain person whose name rhymes with drain," Alara put in, with a sly wink.

"Exactly—and if that's what's concerning you, well, that's entirely different. And it's something Alara and I can help you with." Father Dragon looked particularly smug, and it didn't take long for Shana to realize why, what he meant, and she wanted to smack herself in the head for not thinking of it sooner.

"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Mother—there's no reason why you can't shape-shift into me, is there? You know me well enough to counterfeit me for everybody—" She flushed, as Lorryn laughed and made a face. "—well, practically everybody!"

"No reason at all," Alara said agreeably. "And I don't know why we didn't think of this before, when You-Know-Who became so interfering and disagreeable. Unless it was because we were too worried about what had happened to you to think of it."

Already her mind was racing; if Alara could do this, and was willing, then she could go in person to see this Lord Kyrtian and make a decision about whether or not she should try to make an ally of him.

She exchanged a glance with Lorryn. "Lord Kyrtian," he said simply, their minds following the same track.

"I can't make a decision about him without seeing him myself," she replied, nodding.

"Nor should you," Kalamadea said firmly. "Keman and Dora are good children, but if they make a poor choice, they have the option of flying away from Wizards and Citadel and all. Not—" he added hastily "—that I believe that they would, but the option is there, lurking behind their thoughts, and it could make them a bit less cautious." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I believe that same option might have made me too cavalier in my own decisions at the time of the First War."

Since Shana had occasionally wondered that herself, there was no good answer she could make to that.

Since she couldn't, she held her tongue. "Lorryn can control Caellach better than I can," she said, with complete confidence and a wink to him. "And Lorryn is someone the rest will listen to."

They listen to him more than they do to me, actually. Maybe because he never was a wizard's apprentice. There were some profound disadvantages to having been the rawest of raw beginners within the old Citadel and the old regime itself, and that was one of them. "There's only one difficulty, and that's—well, if anyone looks into Alara's mind, they're going to know she isn't me."

"But the troublemakers are not the ones who are at all adept with the powers of human magic," Lorryn pointed out logically.

Alara just shrugged off the difficulty. "How often is anyone likely to snoop on the thoughts of the Elvenbane anyway?" she asked. "I shouldn't think it happens often, and besides, I can probably learn mind-wall well enough to keep them out."

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Dragon minds aren't like ours. But Alara was right that in all this time, Shana had very seldom felt the touch of another's mind on hers, and even then it was someone wanting to communicate, not snoop.

"I can take you to where Keman and Dora are," Kalamadea continued serenely. "Now that Lord Kyrtian has taken leave of his command while the Great Lords debate whether or not to disband the greater part of the army, Keman and Dora have just today followed him to Lady Morthena's estate."

"Lady Moth?" Lorryn's exclamation made them all turn to look at him—and this news must have come as a surprise to him. "But that's where my mother is! Lady Moth is one of her oldest friends!"

"Really?" That was interesting, but not overly so, and it didn't seem particularly important to their current situation. But Lorryn was continuing.

"You remember, we've been getting some communications from mother—irregular letters," he continued. "Lady Moth isn't just any elven lady. She has never mistreated her humans— they're servants, not slaves, to her. In fact, when we left mother with her, just at the start of the revolt, she was riding the bounds of her estate with armed human men who called her 'Little Mother' and treated her—well, with affection."

That got her attention. The only Elvenlord that she had ever seen treated with affection by humans had been Valyn. "Really?" And Lord Kyrtian had gone there—why? "I wonder—"

"Don't wonder, go and find out," Father Dragon urged her. "Do it before the Great Lords make up their minds what to do about him. Because if they don't decide to use him, you can be sure that they'll try to destroy him."

"Would that be so bad?" Shana countered, knowing that she sounded heartless—but she had to bring up the point, because others would. If it came down to it, her authority rested on one thing, and that was the ability of the rest to trust her decisions. With some rare exceptions, the humans and Wizards of the Citadel would see Elvenlords taking down other Elvenlords as a step in the right direction, and not trouble themselves as to what might follow.

"It could be." That was Lorryn, looking troubled. "For one thing, Shana, if we can make him an ally, he'd be better than anyone here at the art of war. For another—he has to be one of the rare ones, like Lady Moth. If he's removed, all the humans on his estate will be in deadly danger from whoever they put in his place. You can't want that!"

She groaned, but had to agree; if all that was true, even if they managed to rescue all of Lord Kyrtian's slaves, it would strain the capacity of the Citadel to support them. Why was it that every turn of fate brought more and more people for whom she had to be responsible into her purview?

"He may not realize just how treacherous the Great Lords are, Shana," Kalamadea said quietly. "He may not dream he's in danger. If nothing else, he deserves to be warned."

"And the best person to warn him is me, I suppose." She tried to sound resigned, but aside from the pressure and burden of apparently additional responsibilities, she didn't really feel resigned at all. She felt excited—this was the sort of thing she was good at.

But Lorryn—to separate, even temporarily, now that they were together—

Once again, he read her feelings as well as her thoughts.

"You go," he said, softly, before she even looked at him. "You have to go. I'll see no one makes trouble here, and you'll be there and back again before you know it. It can't take more than a few days at most, can it?"

"I wouldn't think so, but—" Now she looked at him.

:I'll miss you every moment, but this is something only you can do. He might not trust a dragon. He won't trust that some strange wizard has the authority to speak for all of us. Rena can't get here soon enough to talk to him, even if she'd be willing to leave Mew. But you're the Elvenbane. If you make him an offer, he'll believe you.:

And there, after all, was the heart of the matter. She was distinctive; no one could mistake her for anything other than what she was. Her description had circulated to every part of the El-venlords' domain now, and once Lord Kyrtian set eyes on her, he would know who she was.

:Just promise to come back to me.: That was the easiest promise she had ever made.