Elvenborn

4

As Lynder replenished the goblet of cool water at Kyrtian's right hand, the young lord soaked until the aches in his tired, sore muscles eased. He'd have remained in the bath until he was in danger of falling asleep, if not for two factors. His stomach complained that it hadn't gotten anything but water for some time, and he knew his mother was waiting for him to have dinner with her and out of politeness would not touch a morsel until he appeared. Servants sent off for a platter of finger-foods would have taken care of the hunger, but he was not going to be rude to his mother!

It isn 't wise to be rude to one's mother. She knows everything about your childhood that is potentially embarrassing.

Reluctantly, he stepped up out of the water, dripping onto the marble floor, and waved off another attentive servant, taking the soft, snowy towel the lad held out to him. Wrapping the towel around himself, he returned to his bedroom to find clothing laid out over a stand and waiting for him to don. This clothing had been selected by Lynder to complement whatever his mother was wearing for dinner. It was a small gesture, but one that his mother appreciated, and it only cost a little extra attention on the part of the servants; such attention was no burden to them, for she was as beloved to her staff as she was to her son.

To his relief, the waiting clothing was casual, a comfortable tunic and trews of heavy amber silk with a simple geometric design in bronze beadwork trimming the collar and belt. That meant his mother was in a casual mood; in fact, with any luck, she had arranged to dine on the balcony outside the lesser dining-room, where they could watch their human dependents dancing and listen to their music.

He knew, because she had told him, that other Elvenlords generally chose to dine amid self-created, fantastic settings built of illusion, a simpler version of the illusions he'd seen at the few Elven gatherings and fetes he had attended. He had never been able to fathom why they would wish to do such a thing. How boring must it be, surrounded by something so utterly controlled, in which one knew to the moment exactly what would happen? He preferred real weather, real sunsets, and the spontaneity of live performers. But then, he'd never cared much for even the most elaborate of illusions, far preferring the beauties of the real world to gossamer fantasies. Even his suite held a but single illusion, to bring the outdoors that he loved inside regardless of weather or season. He had created an ethereal forest glade and waterfall, illuminated in a perpetual twilight, in the corner of his sitting room. This illusion opened his suite and made the room seem to extend far beyond the actual walls. He could easily have had a real waterfall put in, but that would have made the sitting room rather more humid than he liked. The three rooms of his suite—sitting room, study, and bedroom—were otherwise all as they had been built: grey carpet, white walls and ceiling, simple, unornamented furnishings with frames of pale birch-wood and fat cushions in grey-blue, grey-green, and slate-grey. Sourceless, gentle light bathed the rooms, but could be extinguished with a single command—magic, yes, but hardly illusion.

He donned the soft, comfortable silk garments, slipped on a pair of buttery leather indoor boots and belted the tunic with a matching sash. After a quick glance at himself in a mirror to ensure that he had not forgotten anything, he set out for the dining-chambers, leaving the servants to clean up behind him. The same sourceless light as brightened his rooms illuminated the hallways whose only ornaments were small tables placed at intervals against the wall. He noted with approval that now that it was summer, someone had replaced the statues that had stood on each table with arrangements of flowers which gently scented the air without being cloying. So much better than all the incense and heavy perfumes he'd encountered in the few other manors he'd occasionally visited! His mother made life here into an art form, something that appeared effortless and was anything but. It required a small army of their faithful servants, working in careful harmony, to achieve the "simple" effects that others created with illusions.

As he approached the dining chambers, the light subtly changed, growing warmer in tone, and the flower arrangements here were no longer made up of blooms of white and pale pastels, but of richer colors. This was clearly the work of his mother's hand and mind. The impression now created was that of cheer and welcome, and he noted proudly that once again, it was accomplished without the use of a single illusion.

Lynder waited patiently outside the door of the lesser dining-chamber, confirming Kyrtian's guess that he and his mother would be dining without the company of any of the other Elves of the estate. Lynder opened the bronze-edged door for him, and he passed through with a nod of thanks. Subdued lighting and an empty table greeted him, and the open casement door to the balcony beyond beckoned him onward.

Out on the alabaster balcony, a pair of bronze lamps gave just enough light to be useful without being obtrusive. A servant with a cart laden with covered dishes waited beside a small table flanked by two chairs. His mother rose from the furthest of these as he stepped onto the balcony, and held out her hand to him with a welcoming smile.

V'dyll Lydiell Lady Prastaran was not the most beautiful of Elven women; her green eyes were a touch too shrewd, her cheekbones too sharply defined, her mouth at once too generous and too sardonic, her winglike eyebrows too inclined to arc upwards in wry amusement. Her figure was too slight to be called "generous," and too muscular to be called "delicate"; in fact, she was a notable dancer and athlete. And she was too tall for the current fashion, with fully as much height as her son. Tonight her moon-pale hair was caught at the back of her head in a single, practical knot, only relieved by three strands of bronze, moonstone and amber beads threaded onto slender locks of hair behind her left ear. Her clothing was virtually identical to her son's, except that she wore a divided skirt instead of trews. She followed no fashions, and set none; she was a law unto herself, and as such, fit the Prastaran estate and clan perfectly.

Kyrtian took her hand, dropped a filial kiss on it, and assisted her back into her seat before taking his own. He sniffed appreciatively at the savory scents arising from the first dish as the servant uncovered a thick soup and offered it for their approval.

Lydiell took the ladle herself, and measured out two porcelain bowls full. "I've already quizzed Lynder, so I know that you beat Gel," she said with amusement. "And I also know that he managed to kill you in the process of beating him. A rather dubious victory, don't you think?"

"I suppose it would depend on whether you were the captain who was killed or the general who sent him," Kyrtian pointed out. "My imaginary superior would have no reason to be unhappy about the outcome of our battle." Lydiell made a little grimace of distaste. "Your not-so-imaginary relations would either be very grieved or very pleased if your demise had been genuine," she countered. "Your obnoxious cousin Aelmarkin in particular—"

Kyrtian knew what was coming, and this time decided to preempt the little speech about his duty to the legacy left to him by his father. "My obnoxious cousin in particular is going to be very wnhappy as soon as you finish the project I'd like you to undertake, Lady-Mother," he interrupted, tapping her hand playfully with his index finger. "I want you to go hunt me out a couple of suitable females so I can make a selection for a bride. I'd likely only bungle the job; you, however, will manage it brilliantly."

Lydiell stared at him with her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide and her eyebrows arched as high as they would go. "Are you serious?" she demanded. "Are you really ready to wed?"

She didn't say "at last" but she didn't have to.

He shrugged. "As ready as I am ever likely to be, and with all the unrest about, it would probably be better to get it over with before it becomes impossible for you to travel around to find me someone."

Lydiell's expression assumed a faint cast of guilt. "I swore to your father I would never pressure you into marrying someone for whom you had no affection," she began. "And—"

"And you aren't going to now," he replied firmly. "I've just gotten over the expectation that the perfect woman will somehow drop out of the sky on gossamer wings, emerge nixielike from the river, or materialize spirit-wise out of the forest, and make me fall into passionate love with her. A girl who won't become a risk for us is far more important, and you're the best judge of that. So far as my own needs are concerned, someone I can tolerate over breakfast will do nicely. If we have some things in common so that we don't baffle or bore each other, better still." He put his hand over his mother's as it rested on the table, and he felt it tremble. "To my mind, it is far more important that she feel love and affection for you, my lady."

"If you found a wife whom you loved but who didn't care for me, I could always retire to the Dowager-House," she began bravely, but he shook his head.

"I know Grandmother loved the Dowager-House and retired there because she found too many memories in these halls, but that won't be the case for you. I couldn't care for anyone who drove you out of your own home, so I rely on you to find me someone sensible. I will be happy with safety, sense, and intelligence, in that order. Now," he continued, seeing the light in her eyes and deciding to take advantage of the situation, "Gel and I want to stage another holiday-battle, and we thought we'd have a siege of the Dowager-House instead of the usual woods-battle or field-melee. Do you think we could arrange that?"

As surely as if he had the human magic for reading thoughts, he knew she was engrossed in running over the various matrimonial possibilities in her mind, and that the moment he had said Gel's name, she dismissed the rest of the sentence as irrelevant to the all-important task of matchmaking. "Oh, certainly," she said absently, allowing the servant to take away her soup and serve her a portion of baked eel, a dish she normally never touched. She ate it, too, taking dainty but rapid bites, all of her thoughts occupied with more important things than food.

He grinned to himself, and devoured his own portion without further comment, congratulating himself on his clever maneuver. He'd gotten her approval of the siege—which she would belatedly remember, some time late tonight as she went over the dinner conversation in her mind. By that time it would be too late to retract the approval. And it hadn't cost him anything other than something he'd already made up his mind to do. Satisfaction gave him a hearty appetite, and he enjoyed every bite of his dinner.

Down below the balcony, the lawn stretched out in a plush, velvety slope for some distance before it flattened out and became the village green shared by all of the human servants who had earned cottages in the manor-village. Surrounded by lanterns suspended from stands plunged into the turf, it was brilliantly and festively illuminated. The green served as fairgrounds, dance-floor, and feast-table in fine weather, and it served the latter two purposes tonight. The warriors, victorious and defeated both, celebrated at long wooden tables that had been carried out from their barracks. Other servants and field-workers, their dinners long over, slowly came by groups of two and three to join the fun. Festive torches burned brightly at either end of each table, and a little band of musicians had set up at the far end and played raucous dancing-tunes that were unlike anything ever heard at an Elven celebration. Kyrtian rather liked human music, himself, and he knew his mother was amused by it—but to compare human to Elven music would be like comparing a noisy forest stream to an illuminated water-sculpture. They were both made of moving water, but with that all resemblance ended.

Gel and a dozen others had already finished their dinner and found themselves partners, and were dancing with great enthusiasm and abandon, if not skill. From the rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes of the girls, none of the partners were inclined to complain if their toes got trodden on, occasionally. Kyrtian finished his meal in silence, and settled back in his chair with a glass of wine, watching the swirl and chaos of the ever-increasing crowd of dancers.

"About your obnoxious cousin—" Lydiell murmured unexpectedly, startling him.

"What about him?" Kyrtian replied, glancing at her. "He doesn't want to visit again, does he? I thought we'd managed to cure him of that after the last time."

Lydiell winced. "It almost cured me of wanting to stay here," she said, shuddering. "If I'd had to sit through one more evening of youJroning in that flat voice—! You'd have made erotic poetry unbearably dull with that voice!"

Kyrtian grinned. "I thought the monotone went with the subject matter. You can thank Gel for that, by the way. I had no idea he knew so much about the tactical importance of camp supply and sanitation; by the time he was done filling my head with the information, I could have written a monograph on the subject."

"Remind me to have him served a nice dish of live scorpions," she said, with a touch of exasperation. "He might have taken care to recall that I was going to have to endure that evening too! But, to go back to the subject—no, your cousin Ael-markin has no intention of visiting. Evidently, however, he does want to make up for trying to disinherit you."

"Oh, really?" Kyrtian felt his eyebrows rising in an imitation of his mother's most sardonic expression. "How fraternal of him. What, exactly, does he want?"

Lydiell's face gave no hint of her feelings. "He wants you to visit. He's invited you to a—a gathering, of sorts. Lord Marthien and Lord Wyvarna are settling their dispute at his estate."

Kyrtian was unpleasantly surprised. "Two Great Lords are settling a feud and Aelmarkin wants me there? Whatever for?"

Lydiell shook her head. "I don't know," she replied, sounding honestly perplexed. "Perhaps he has decided he should change his behavior, in the hope you'll forget his petition. Or forgive it, at least."

Kyrtian made a sour face. "Perhaps he just wants to show the Great Lords that I'm as crazed as my father. After all, I have the same obsession with the past that father did. He's probably hoping I'll start droning about Evelon history, or asking if any of them have ancient books in their libraries that I could have copied."

"Darthenian wasn't crazed," Lydiell said softly. "And neither are you. It isn't madness to be concerned about the past—it's madness to try and pretend it never happened. Look at the situation the Great Lords have created—at war with their own sons! If they had remembered the past, and the feuds that sent us fleeing Evelon in the first place, they might have avoided this tragedy."

"I sometimes wonder if it isn't a little mad to pursue the past so relentlessly," Kyrtian replied, his mood suddenly shadowed. "Why else would father have disappeared?"

Lydiell's cheeks flushed delicately with anger, but she did not give rein to it. "Why else?" she asked, and answered the question herself, forcefully. "A combination of dedication and bad luck—or, perhaps, the acquisition of a ruthless enemy. I don't know what Darthenian was hunting when he vanished, my love, for he kept it a secret even from me, but I do know that it was important and potentially very powerful. That made the secret a dangerous one, and that was why he kept it from me. It is possible that he met with an accident. It is also possible that someone besides me took him seriously—and wished to learn what he knew, or prevent him from discovering anything that might have given him an edge in the endless jostling for power."

"Are you suggesting that he was—murdered?" Kyrtian asked slowly. It was something that had never occurred to him.

Lydiell sighed. "I don't know. It is possible—but I cannot even guess at how likely it is. I have never seen or heard anything to allow me to dismiss the idea, or that confirmed it." Her expression was haunted by that very uncertainty. "Nevertheless, let others remember him as an unstable dabbler for delving into the oldest of our records—I know better, and so should you."

Kyrtian immediately felt ashamed, and bent his head in mute apology. "And I should not allow the views of V'kel Aelmarkin er-Lord Tornal to shade my opinion of even so trivial a question as wine selection, much less anything important." He frowned. "I've half a mind to turn his invitation down. It's come too quickly on the Council's decision, and Aelmarkin is nothing if not persistent. He surely has something planned as an attempt to embarrass me."

But Lydiell shook her head. "That, you mustn't do. He has more political power than you, and he could make things difficult if you offend him. Do you really want to waste your time countering his petty nastiness with the Council, when you could avoid having to do so by attending his gathering?"

Kyrtian sighed, knowing with resignation that he was going to have to go and play the fool to keep Aelmarkin happy. "Not really. When is this farce scheduled?"

"In three days," Lydiell told him, and patted his hand comfortingly. "Cheer up," she offered. "It's only for an afternoon. How hard can it be to maintain your composure for an afternoon?"

How hard can it be to maintain my composure for an afternoon? Kyrtian asked himself savagely, as he glared down at the sands of the arena to avoid meeting any more contemptuous or amused glances. Harder than getting the better of Gel in a sword-bout, that's how!

From the moment he'd stepped out of the Portal into Ael-markin's manor, he'd realized two things. The first: Lydiell had been absolutely right; if he hadn't shown his face—and his sanity—at this function, Aelmarkin would have been able to say whatever he liked and be believed. The second: it was going to stress his patience and his acting ability to the limit to put up with the attitude of every other guest that Aelmarkin had invited. He had never felt so utterly out-of-place in his life. Why, he had more in common with the humans of his estate than he did these strange creatures of his own race!

A great many of them were approximately his age—much younger than Aelmarkin—the idle offspring of Great Lords who didn't care to attend this particular challenge-fight themselves, but wanted to send representatives. Of course this meant that he was surrounded by those with little to do except chatter about others of their set, current fads, useless pastimes, and new fashions. The people of their social set were people he didn't know anything about, and the pursuits they found so important—well, he couldn't imagine why anyone would waste time on such things. But in their eyes, he was clearly impossibly backward, out-of-step, and provincial.

None of them knew anything about any of the subjects he cared about, which made him sound both a bore and a boor.

And after he'd shown a flicker of startlement at statements he considered outrageous, they probably put him down as callow and a prig.

Well, by their standards, I am a prig. I don't consider an afternoon spent in having my jaded appetites aroused by poor human girls who only exist to serve as my concubines to be particularly amusing.

After the first hour, they snubbed him openly, and with unveiled contempt.

This, strangely enough, made him very uncomfortable. He hadn't expected them to make him feel that way. He could try to tell himself that these people didn't matter, that all he had to do was remain polite and comport himself like a gentleman and nothing they reported back to their fathers would do any harm—but that didn't make the sneers and the sniggering any easier to bear. He didn't like them, but they were many and he was one; it was all too easy to feel the hurt of the scorned outsider. He truly hadn't anticipated that sort of reaction from himself, and he wished there was a way he could gracefully extricate himself and go home.

As he stared fixedly down at the wooden-walled arena below him, he heard whispers behind him, and snickering, and felt the back of his neck grow hot. He was just glad that Gel was here with him, in the role of bodyguard; somehow it was easier to stay composed with Gel's stone-faced example to copy.

I'm on their choice of ground; the best I can hope to do is get out of this without making any major blunders. Mother couldn 't possibly have known how slippery this situation could become. He was acutely aware that they had far more experience than he at the maneuvering of intrigue and politics. He felt horribly young, shallow, and naive; these people had drunk machination with their first milk, and he had no idea how to deal with situations they wouldn't even hesitate over.

Kyrtian had taken a seat in the first row to avoid meeting their eyes any longer, but they continued to speak to each other in voices pitched for him to overhear, taunting him to respond.

"Who, exactly, is this fellow?" asked an arrogant young male a little to Kyrtian's left.

"My cousin Kyrtian," Aelmarkin said lightly. "Son of the late Lord Darthenian, my uncle."

"Lord Darthenian..." someone murmured behind him. "That name sounds familiar. Don't I know it from some old story or other?"

"Try coupling the name with daft," drawled another, sounding so smug that it was all Kyrtian could do to keep from standing up and going for the fellow's throat. "Daft Darthenian, pot-hunter, excavator of things better left buried, and pursuer of useless old manuscripts. Missing in pursuit of same, and presumed dead, oh, decades ago."

"Now, Ferahine, there's nothing wrong with having a hobby," replied Aelmarkin, in a tone so tolerant that Kyrtian clenched his hands on the armrests of his chair to keep himself in his seat. "Isn't insect-collecting as silly? I've seen you send slaves out bobbing about in fields and forests with a net and a bottle—and all those boxes of dead beetles are just as useless as unreadable manuscripts!"

"Point taken. Still, hobbies are all very well, Aelmarkin," said the drawler, "But no gentleman and no sane fellow goes off himself to dig up nasty old discards in parts unknown, now, does he? I certainly don't go rambling through briars with nets and bottles! That's what slaves are for! And he went out alone, too! Why, that was simply insane, if you ask me."

Kyrtian gritted his teeth. He knew he was meant to overhear all of this. He knew they were trying to provoke him. And they were only saying in his hearing what they told each other—and what their elders said. If he just kept his temper, he would learn a great deal. If they thought he was too dull to understand—or too cowardly to respond—what possible harm could it do?

Still, it was the hardest thing he had ever done, to sit there and let strangers abuse the memory of his own father, without challenging them.

"Alone!" exclaimed the first speaker. "Why didn't he take slaves, if he wouldn't send them to do his hunting for him? Aelmarkin, admit it, he must have been deranged!"

There was an audible rustle of fabric, marking Aelmarkin's careless shrug. "He was always secretive about these hunts of his, and never more so than on the last one. He was hunting the site of the Great Gate that brought us from Evelon, and the things that were discarded as useless because they no longer functioned after passing the Gate. Why? I haven't a notion."

"Yes, well, it's obvious he was an obsessive, at the very least," said the drawler, dismissively. "And judging from the disaster of a conversation I had with Kyrtian, yonder, obsession runs in the family blood. All the poor fool can talk about is military matters! History, tactics, battles no one cares about." A sneer crept into the drawl. "As if anyone would ever give the likes of him command over so much as a squad of latrine-diggers."

By now Kyrtian's neck burned, his cheeks were nearly the same temperature, and his jaw and shoulders ached with the strain of tightly-clenched muscles. He gladly would have given half his possessions for the opportunity to come at any of those foppish fools in barehanded combat!

And that's just what they expect from you, he reminded himself, trying mentally to throw a little cold water on his overheated temper. They think you 're an atavistic barbarian, and they may very well be waiting for you to stand up and attack them physically! They would have the right to challenge you or bring you up in front of the Great Council.

And that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was what Aelmarkin wanted him to do, for such an attack would prove to everyone's satisfaction that he, Kyrtian, was just as mad as Aelmarkin claimed in his petition. An Elvenlord and a gentleman did not settle differences hand-to-hand. An Elvenlord and a gentleman issued a proper challenge, and settled it as this feud was being settled.

I have to keep my mouth closed and my eyes open and find out just how these things work! he told himself vehemently. So that if I get a chance, I can arrange for these fools to eat their words without salt!

Beside him, Gel stood at wary attention, as impassive as any statue, and as invisible to these fools as any other bodyguard. Gel had heard every word, too—but you would never know it by looking at him.

Copy Gel, he told himself. Stay quiet, if not calm. Wait, and watch. He knew only that these feuds were settled in trial-by-combat, using slaves as proxies. If his fighters were better-trained than these—

Then it might be worth dealing with these dolts in a way they 'II understand.

Abruptly, conversation behind him ceased, as some signal he didn't recognize warned the idlers that the combat was about to begin. Abruptly caught up in spite of himself, Kyrtian leaned forward with the rest, as the light in the arena brightened, and the lights above their seats dimmed.