Elvenborn

8

Kyrtian passed through the Portal, which on Aelmarkin's side was a great gilded bas-relief gate wide and tall enough for a cargo-wagon to pass through, and on the manor side was an ornately-carved wooden door with a high lintel featuring the family crest. He had been in a profoundly thoughtful state of mind from the moment that he had parted with Lord Kyndreth, and Gel didn't interrupt his musings by trying to talk to him. Then again, it was entirely likely that Gel was too tired to talk, which didn't hurt Kyrtian's feelings in the least.

Longstanding family tradition of caution situated the Portal inside a small chamber with walls of stone and a locked door of fire-toughened bronze as insurance against an enemy using it to penetrate the heart of the manor. Invited guests were met here by an escort and let out, and the chamber itself would hold no more than ten at the most. The "key" to unlock the door was the presence of a family member or someone else (like Gel) to whom the lock had been sensitized. Of course, it was possible to overpower the escort and open the chamber door that way, but the door was guarded every moment of every day, and at least one guard would be able to raise an alarm. There would be no invasions of the estate through this Portal—or so it was hoped. After all of his studies in military tactics, Kyrtian was only too aware that a clever commander could think of ways to get past their precautions. His only comfort was that most of the Elvenlords were not very clever commanders.

Kyrtian parted with Gel just outside the Portal Chamber, as the guards tried to pretend they weren't eavesdropping. "Well, we're in for it now," he said, in mingled pride and chagrin. "I think this is the highest-ranked member of the Great Council to come here since Grandfather's day, and we're going to have to make certain everyone is totally prepared and understands what they need to do. The sooner we start preparing the staff and servants for Lord Kyndreth's visit, the sooner we can get it over with, and then everything can go back to normal."

"And the longer we delay, the more we risk an insult. Don't worry, I'm on it," the Sergeant said with a wave. "You go break the news to the Lady."

Gel made for the training-quarters at a trot, and Kyrtian reflected that the Sergeant was probably already five steps ahead of him in planning things. And one thing was absolutely certain; the visit could not take place until every servant on the estate was so well-rehearsed in the appropriate conduct of a slave that nothing would force him to depart from it, not insult, not punishment, and certainly not carelessness. Those servants closest to Kyrtian and his mother would have to be the best actors of the lot, which meant that certain of the younger and less experienced house-servants (such as Lynder) would be replaced for the duration with others who had been promoted to other positions or had even retired. Kyrtian would certainly be doing without most of his personal servants, who would be attending Lord Kyndreth, but that was a small price to pay for keeping up the deception that this was a normal Elven household.

All that would be in the hands of Gel, Lady Lydiell, and Lord Tenebrinth the Seneschal, and the sooner he let the last two know what was about to descend on them, the better. Gel was right; Lord Kyndreth's visit could not be postponed for long without offending him.

He paused for a moment to locate both his mother and the Seneschal; this was no time to waste precious moments hunting for them by ordinary means. The merest whisper of magic told him that, as was often the case at this time of day, Tenebrinth was with his mother in the latter's office, probably going over the household and estate accounts, making plans for the next couple of months, or dealing with issues of the servants. That could not possibly have been better for Kyrtian's purposes. By catching them together, Kyrtian would only have to go over the prospective visit and the reasons for it once.

Lydiell's office was literally at the center of the manor, overlooking everything. The manor boasted five towers, one at each corner and one at the center, with the center-most being a good two stories taller than the others—a full twelve stories tall. The towers gave the manor a look of delicacy and attenuation that Kyrtian found both attractive and amusingly deceptive, for the building itself had been constructed to survive a long siege, and had been built to withstand siege weapons that for the most part no longer existed. Lydiell's office was a glass-walled room at the very tip of the center-most tower, a place that would, in wartime, be occupied by at least four lookouts. Even in the worst weather, it was a snug and welcoming place, as the tower was one of the few places in the manor that depended on magic for more than lighting and a decorative illusion or two. Magic, and not mechanical contrivances, heated and cooled the tower and protected it from the worst weather. Magic also ensured the safety of any occupants of the transparent tube he entered at the bottom of the tower, powering the little platform under his feet that slowly rose through the tower to the top. No human could use this contrivance by himself, not even if that human was blessed with the humans' own form of magic. In this way, when she worked, Lydiell could be assured that no one could interrupt her without having to go first to one of elven blood. There were drawbacks to being as approachable as the lords of this manor had always been; the short-lived humans tended to come to them with any problem that had them stymied for more than a few moments, assuming that long experience granted unfathomable wisdom.

If it did that, there wouldn 't be a Young Lords' War now. The Old Lords would have known better than to let them get as far as they did. And there wouldn't have been a second Wizard War either.

The intervening floors of the tower were, for the most part, unfurnished, although this was the oldest section of the manor and everything else had been constructed around it. The round rooms were too small to use for anything but offices, and only Lydiell and Tenebrinth had need of an office. So Kyrtian passed room after round, empty, alabaster-walled room with nothing more to entertain him than brief glimpses of the outside through the weapon-slits that served in place of windows. Even the look of alabaster was deceptive; the tower was built of something far stronger, though too much magic went into the construction of the material for anyone to use it these days. This tower was an artifact of the first fifty years after the Elves crossed out of Evelon, when no one knew if this world would prove to be as dangerous as the one they had left, a time when the elven-born existed as closely crowded together as any of the primitive humans in their huts, and waited for something infinitely more dangerous to descend without warning than a mob of weak, short-lived humans.

Tenebrinth's office, just below Lydiell's, was empty and un-tenanted as Kyrtian had anticipated. That office, and Lydiell's, were nearly double the size of the rooms below them. The walls swelled out here, giving the tower the look of a deep plate or shallow bowl balanced on a candlestick and covered with a round, pointed silver dish cover that was the overhanging (and projectile-proof) roof. The windows in Tenebrinth's office were only half the size of the ones in Lydiell's, but were glazed with the same impervious substance used instead of ordinary glass in every opening of this tower. Light that came through this substance lost some of its color and strength, making it appear as if the office lay underwater.

Now Kyrtian heard voices, and as he rose through the ceiling of Tenebrinth's office into that of Lady Lydiell, Lord Tene-brinth himself got up from his chair to greet him. Lady Lydiell remained seated, but welcomed her son with a smile and an extended hand.

Tenebrinth was a little older than Kyrtian's father would have been had he still been alive, having apprenticed in the position of Seneschal under Kyrtian's grandfather. He had served in his official capacity for as long as Kyrtian had known him, and as one of Kyrtian's tutors as well. As with all Elvenlords above a certain age but below the point of being considered ancient, it was impossible to tell exactly how old he was. Tall, thinner and less muscular than Lady Lydiell, with a long jaw and nose and prominent cheekbones, hair confined with a silver clasp at the nape of his neck, he looked exactly like what he was, a studious creature, serious and careful in thought and speech, a true scholar and thinker who preferred to joust with his mind and not his body.

"Well, I see you survived your encounter with the young tygers," the Seneschal said genially. "Permit me to congratulate you."

Kyrtian stepped out of the tube, kissed the back of his mother's hand, and took the chair that the Seneschal offered him. "Believe me, it felt like being in a tyger-pit," he replied with feeling. "I can't imagine how anyone enjoys these so-called social occasions."

"They aren't all as bad as combat challenges seem to be," Lady Lydiell said with a touch of sympathy and a shrug. "Some of the fetes can be positively pleasant, especially the fetes for unwed daughters. The presence of women seems to make the young tygers sheath their claws and hide their teeth, at least long enough to look civilized while in the company of the ladies."

Kyrtian had debated whether or not to tell his mother everything, and decided now that on the whole she was better off not knowing about how he had interrupted the challenge-combat, since only good had come out of his near-blunder in the end. "Well, I know you don't care who won the dispute—but Gel and I managed to pull off a little triumph that I think you two will approve of."

Tenebrinth blinked, and his mother raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said. "Now what have you two gotten into?"

"Well, there's good news and there's inconvenient news," he replied, "The inconvenient news is that Lyon Lord Kyndreth wants to visit for long enough to learn my training and combat methods. The good news is that the reason he does is that we persuaded the two feuding lords to have their differences settled in a combat my way, between Gel and Lord Lyon's man. Lyon was impressed, and not only wants to know how the spells are set, but said in the presence of the other lords that he intends to make this the way in which fighters are trained and disputes settled from now on. After seeing bloodless combat, he says that he agrees with me; the old ways are too wasteful to continue."

With every word, Lydiell and Tenebrinth grew more and more astonished, eyes widening and mouths dropping slightly open. It was Tenebrinth who could not restrain himself as Kyrtian leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face.

"By the Ancestors, boy, that isn't good news, it's wonderful news! Do you realize what this means to the humans out there?" Tenebrinth waved his arm at the world outside the windows.

"Well—mostly," Lady Lydiell interjected gently. "There are going to be those of our race whose thirst for blood and cruelty will not be satisfied with bloodless combat and who will continue to waste the lives of gladiators. Not even Lyon could get a law through the Council forbidding them to kill their own slaves. That strikes at the heart and soul of what nearly every Elvenlord sees as his basic rights over creatures he considers to be no better than beasts and property." At Kyrtian's nod of agreement, she smiled. "Nonetheless, Tenebrinth is right. Most of the Elvenlords will be only too pleased with the notion that they can settle differences through bloodless combat. It's a great drain, breeding and buying expensive fighting stock. The further expense of training gladiators and keeping them in training is bad enough; it's worse to have their expensive property massacred during training, and nearly as bad when the massacre happens in settling a petty argument, leaving them to train gladiators all over again if they wish to maintain their position and status."

Tenebrinth nodded. "That's been a complaint of the Lesser Lords against the Greater for the past two generations—very few have the resources to toss away slaves without considering the expense! Lord Lyon will gain a great deal of support among the Lesser Lords for this, if he makes it policy—and almost as importantly, he won't aggravate the Greater. He stands to win all around."

Lydiell patted her son's hand. "I'm so pleased that I won't even ask what trouble you tumbled into in order to achieve this remarkable goal!"

"Mother!" Kyrtian objected, hoping he didn't sound guilty.

"But the price of this is that we are to expect Lord Kyndreth some time in the immediate future?" the Seneschal interjected. "Did you actually set a date for the visit?"

"No date has been set, and I told him that I would send him a Portal-key when I had things ready for him. I tried to give the impression that, as we were a small household, reclusive and unused to visitors, we needed time to prepare for the visit of so prominent a guest. He was satisfied with that so far as I could tell, and I have no intention of letting him set foot here until everyone is prepared. That won't be until you two and Gel have gotten the servants and field-hands ready to hold up the illusion that this is an ordinary estate," Kyrtian assured him. "He didn't seem all that impatient and he wasn't offended that I couldn't offer him our hospitality immediately."

"No doubt he has business of his own to take care of before he can afford a formal visit," the Seneschal murmured, as if to himself.

"More likely he is taking the time to see who is and is not our ally, going back to the time we all left Evelon," Lydiell replied tartly. "Someone of his rank and status can't afford an ally with an inconvenient number of deadly enemies."

"Well, the only enemy we have that I know of is Ael-markin...." Kyrtian said, letting his voice trail off and looking at his mother questioningly.

"Correct; Aelmarkin is our only open enemy, with the remote possibility that his allies might choose to throw in on his side," his mother confirmed. "Though once they see that Lyon has thrown in with us, however briefly, they are unlikely to back Aelmarkin against us in anything important. Thank the Ancestors we never meddled in politics on either side of the family! We'll have a clean slate, so far as Lord Lyon is concerned. All we have to worry about is keeping up appearances for a few days at most."

"I—don't intend to ask anything of Lord Lyon for this, Mother," Kyrtian said, hesitantly. "And I don't intend to make it seem as if I consider it a great favor on my part to teach him my methods. I want it to seem as if I consider this to be—how shall 1 put this?—something that I truly believe should be offered, part of my duty to the Elvenlords as a whole. I want to give him the impression of a solemn young man who is devoted to the welfare of his people. Which I am; just not the people that he thinks." He smiled. "There's no point in disillusioning him on that."

"Exactly right; any of the ordinary status-grubbers would do the opposite," she confirmed. "By acting differently than he expects, you'll catch him off guard and he won't know quite what to think of us. At best, he may decide that we're worth having as a permanent ally. The worst he'll assume is that we are so quietly provincial, so wrapped up in our own ways and life, with such quaint ideas of loyalty and duty, that we are no threat or challenge to anyone. We'll be safe to patronize, and he'll be motivated to protect us from any more of Aelmarkin's maneuverings."

"For my part, I would say that this would be the best thing he could assume," Kyrtian replied, relieved. "Can I take it that you approve?"

"Completely," Lady Lydiell said, as Tenebrinth nodded. Kyrtian smiled, a little thrill of pleasure tickling his spirit at the notion that his first foray into the dangerous world of Great Lords and politics had come off so successfully.

Even though I almost turned it into a disaster, he reminded himself. This is not the time for hubris!

He took his leave of both of them and stepped into the tube, which held him in place until the platform rose to receive him. Once he had been deposited on the ground floor, he headed straight for the West Tower, which held all five floors of the great library.

He planned to do a little genealogical investigation himself before his own plans went any further.

In the home of every Elvenlord, Great or Lesser, there was always a Great Book of Ancestors, kept up to date by either the Lady of the clan or a clerk she personally supervised. Every birth, death, and wedding was promptly reported to the Council, which sent out immediate notification to every household, however small and insignificant. No marriage or alliance could be made without consulting the Great Book, which dated back to the exile from Evelon.

Kyrtian sat at the table holding the Great Book on its slanting stand, and drew it closer to him. As he always did, because those First Days fascinated him, Kyrtian opened the Book to the first page where the names of all of those who had dared the Gate out of Evelon were written. Fully half of them were inscribed with death-dates that came within days or weeks of the Crossing. Some had died of the strain of the Crossing itself, or of injuries sustained in Evelon before the Crossing.

Few in these days realized that those who had made the Crossing had been the losers in a war that had split Elvenkind and set one half warring against the other. The Crossing had been the desperate attempt of the defeated to escape rather than surrender, not the valiant and bold move of those who were in search of a new world to conquer. That was one fact that those who ruled here now preferred to forget and bury in the past.

Of the survivors that remained after the Crossing, none were still alive at the present day. Elvenlords lived long, provided no accident, illness, inherited weakness, or murder disposed of them before the normal span of four or five centuries, but they were hardly immortal. Kyrtian's paternal great-grandfather had been one of the longest-lived survivors, as (he now learned) had Lyon Lord Kyndreth's great-grandsire; most other Elvenlords in these days were yet a further generation down the line from the original inhabitants of the new land.

He turned the page to trace his mother's line, rather than his father's. Odd, he thought, as he noted something that had never seemed important before. I'm literally the first male any woman of her line has produced since Evelon—

"That is why there was no great objection when I wedded your father," said Lydiell, behind him, as if she had the human gift of reading thoughts. He was too used to her uncanny ability to do this with him to be startled; he simply turned and smiled at her as she stepped forward another pace and placed her hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"No one—least of all Aelmarkin—ever thought I would produce a male heir," she said quietly. "That was why there was no objection raised to the marriage, and why Aelmarkin is so intent on dispossessing you of your inheritance now. He assumed that the ripe plum of our estate would drop into his lap without any effort on his part—or that he could somehow connive or force me to wed my presumed daughter to him." Lydiell smiled down at her son, whose birth had spoiled Aelmarkin's plans.

"But he's really a cousin in name only," Kyrtian objected, tracing back Aelmarkin's line. "His people haven't been directly related to ours since Evelon itself! It was our greatgrandfathers who were cousins, and there's been no closer marriage since then."

"But if you trace carefully, he's the only other male heir to the Clan," Lydiell pointed out. "That's as much your greatgrandfather's and grandfather's fault as anything else. Once they had a single, living child, the need to protect what we had built here took precedence over trying to sire any more children. They each had one male heir by one marriage and no further children; no daughters to wed outside the Clan, no second sons to secure alliances. Granted, they were exceptionally long-lived, and that's what saved us, but I was the first bride to come from a family not bound in any way to your Clan, and if your father was still with us, by now you would have at least a younger sister or brother, because I would have personally seen to it, rather than accepted the edict that there was no need for further children."

Now Kyrtian noted something else that had somehow escaped his attention. His ageless mother was nearer in age to his grandfather than his father! She saw his eyes resting on the birth-date under her name, and chuckled richly.

"I wondered when you would uncover that!" she said. "Yes, I'll admit it; I robbed the cradle! When your grandmother— wiser or more pragmatic than her husband—knew that she would not survive your father's birth, she had enough time to handpick a successor. She turned to our family, who had been her friends; she wanted my sister, but the family had already wed her off, so she chose me! But she had reckoned without your grandfather's love and devotion; he refused to take another wife, especially one as barely-nubile as I was. Still, for the sake of my friendship with her, I visited often and long, trying to amuse your grandfather and possibly even persuade him in time that I was fascinating and desirable! I wish you had seen me, still barely past my presentation fete, slinking around here as if I was a hardened seductress!"

Since Kyrtian couldn't imagine his mother slinking around like a seductress at any age, he spluttered a little and reddened.

"Well, when seduction failed, I thought I would win him by showing him what a devoted mother I could be to his son," she continued. "There was one little wrinkle in that plan; by the time I thought of it, your father was hardly of an age to need mothering! But I persisted in cultivating him, only to find that his son and I were mutually falling head over heels in love as soon as he was old enough to think of such things! Your grand-sire was much amused, and so was my sister, Moth."

"Moth," of course, was V'tern Morthena Lady Arada, nearly a full century Lydiell's senior, and the only surviving relict of Lord Arada's tiny Clan. She held a small estate granted her by her late husband in her own right, with no inconvenient cousins to pester her.

Kyrtian sighed. When he looked at the Great Book, in the complicated web of intermarriages and second and third marriages, his family stood all alone, like a single strand of silk off to one side of the greater pattern.

"I have not told you this before, but Aelmarkin tried to force a marriage on me when your father first disappeared," she continued, as calmly as if it had happened to someone else. "That was when Moth came to my rescue; she dug up an obscure law preventing a man from marrying the widow of his cousin if she already had a male heir. She visited each of the Great Lords herself and pointed out to each one of them—with examples— how that law would protect their own sons from certain of their opponents if anything happened to the lord himself. Needless to say, they upheld the law to a man, and Aelmarkin had to slink away with his tail between his legs."

"No wonder he hates you," Kyrtian replied, enlightened.

She sniffed delicately. "Personally, I prefer not to waste an emotion as empowering as hatred on that worm. It was obvious from the start what his plans were when he came slinking around here, oozing false sympathy and groomed and jewel-bedecked to within an inch of his life. Even if I had been the foolish woman he thought I was, I would quickly have seen that such an alliance would mean your death. No matter what my personal feelings were on the subject, I would never have placed you or our people in the hands of the odious Aelmarkin!"

"Thank you for that!" Kyrtian laughed. "And sometime you might thank your aunt for devising the means to protect us both," she replied cheerfully, with a light squeeze of her hand on his shoulder.

"Well, however much you play at modesty, I think that you would have found the solution just as quickly as Lady Moth if you hadn't had her help," he told her. "You are two out of the same mold, as clever as you are beautiful, and far more intelligent than any mere males."

"I only needed to be clever enough to take advantage of our isolation," she said, with a laugh at his attempt to compliment her. "After all, we are out back of beyond of nowhere, and I doubt that anyone other than Aelmarkin would even consider wanting our estate for that reason;" Her tone turned scornful. "And frankly, I think if Aelmarkin knew how much work it is to keep this estate so profitable, he'd quickly change his mind about wanting it."

"I only wish that were true," Kyrtian sighed. "It's only a lot of work because of the way we treat our human friends; if this estate were run on the same lines as any other, the profits would probably be much higher. At least," he amended, "That's what Tenebrinth told me once."

"That's beside the point," Lydiell said resolutely. "The point now is to make sure we get the most out of Lord Lyon's visit, without making any blunders and without sacrificing any of our independence. You go off and consult with Gel over dinner; I'll do the same with Tenebrinth. We're going to want to please Lyon without dazzling him, charm him without making it look as if we have anything he really wants other than your knowledge and expertise. And you and Gel ought to put your heads together to see if you can think of anything else he might want out of you in particular."

Kyrtian closed the Great Book with a determined snap. "You're perfectly right, as usual," he said. "I'll go change into something less ostentatious and find Gel, and we'll get down to business."

But in spite of the excitement of the moment, there was one thing he had realized as he walked off in search of Gel. With all of the conversation about marriages and alliances, for the first time since he'd come of age, Lydiell had not even mentioned the prospect of his own marriage! And that was enough of a relief that his steps became noticeably lighter.