SHANA HELD HERSELF in her trance by sheer force of will. She was looking through another’s eyes, that of a wizard-gifted child in charge of feeding the others in the slave pens. She didn’t want to watch this, and yet she could not look away. There was a young woman in this pen; a child-woman who reminded her of Meg so much that Shana was trembling in reaction. She had been following this girl’s story most of the afternoon, picking up information through the wizardling’s ears, listening in on the conversations of guards.
The girl cowered in one corner of the slave pen; an ordinary human child, one without wizard-powers, one who simply had the misfortune to fail the promise of early beauty. At six, she had been stunning; at twelve, merely lovely. But at fourteen, in the midst of concubine training, she had put on a spurt of sudden growth. Her features had coarsened, her limbs lengthened. Now she was simply attractive.
That was not enough for a concubine. A concubine had to be supernally beautiful.
The girl, gently reared, who had never once had a voice raised in anger against her, much less a hand, had been sent to the common pens as a breeder. The guards, who seldom saw a girl as unspoiled and attractive as this one, were wagering who would get to enjoy her first.
But as Shana watched, surreptitiously, through her host’s eyes, the decision was taken out of their hands.
A man she recalled only too well entered the room; a tall, blond man with cruel eyes. The guards seemed to know him, too; their conversation ceased, and they backed slowly away from him. Shana’s host froze in place, but it wasn’t the young boy that this nightmare out of Shana’s past wanted…
He scanned the room coldly—and his gaze alighted on the girl. He pointed.
“That one,” he said, smiling thinly. “I’ll take that one.”
One of the guards made as if to protest, but a single glance from the blond one’s eyes stopped him; the guard shrugged, and turned away. One of the other guards made his way through the rest of the waiting slaves, seized the girl by the arm, and hauled her to her feet. He would not look at her; he simply pulled her back across the room, and shoved her into the blond man’s arms.
The girl looked up into her captor’s face, and something she saw or sensed there made her blanch.
The blond man laughed—and as Shana watched in numb horror, drew on an odd, studded glove, and slapped the girl across the face with it, knocking her to the ground. As the girl fell back, Shana saw that her face was cut in a series of shallow, parallel lines, from which blood was welling.
The man looked about at the rest of the slaves. “Someone here is a troublemaker,” he announced indifferently. “This is what happens to slaves who make trouble.”
Then he hauled the girl to her feet, and began to beat her, starting with her face—
Just like Meg—
Shana fled her host’s mind, vowing through her tears as she did, that this would be the last time she ever stood by and watched the elven lords or their henchmen torture and murder again. One day—soon—she would have the power herself to deal with them.
And the wizards already did.
Shana wanted to scream in frustration. She had requested this private interview with her teacher, and it was going badly; much, much worse than she had ever thought it could. She clenched her hands on the arms of her chair, and tried again.
“We have to do something,” she said carefully. “I told you what it’s like out there; I told you that I think the elves are too busy going at each other’s throats to even notice us, if we keep our interference small. But people—good people—are being murdered every day, master! We can’t just sit here and let it continue!”
Denelor shook his head. “It’s just not possible, Shana,” he said. “We simply can’t do anything. The humans will have to get along the best they can, just as they’ve always done. If they want freedom, they’ll have to learn to fight for themselves.”
Right. The slaves should fight for themselves, when they were collared and conditioned against even thinking for themselves! “But why aren’t we doing anything?” Shana cried rebelliously. “There are more of us than there ever were, except before the Wizard War! We don’t have to have another war, but we could at least be doing something, instead of hiding like frightened mice!”
Denelor colored a little, and looked away. “Shana—you just can’t understand. The situation is a great deal more complicated than you realize. There are too many factors involved. What good would we do if we helped a handful of halfbloods—or humans—and got ourselves uncovered in the process? How would you like it if the elves discovered the Citadel? Where would you go? Back to the desert?”
“Why should they find the Citadel? It didn’t happen before,” Shana pointed out, her hands still clamped on the arms of her chair, as she tossed her hair angrily. “And that was in the middle of the Wizard War, when the elves knew what we were and what we could do! Not even Dyran knows we exist, you know that! Why should it happen now? Our ranks are closer than they’ve ever been, because no one wants to chance another split like the one that lost the war! What reason do you have for thinking something like that would happen?”
“Because—because it could,” Denelor faltered. “The Citadel isn’t invisible, you know. We can be discovered, if the elves know what to look for. And it’s doubly likely to happen if we start aiding humans .”
“I don’t see why—” Shana began.
He interrupted her. “Do you think that they are all going to welcome us with open arms, greet freedom with gratitude? If you do, you’re living in a dreamworld, my child.”
He sat back in his chair, his confidence restored, and Shana sensed that her advantage was slipping.
“Let me enlighten you. Most of the humans out there don’t even call themselves’slaves’ because they don’t think of themselves as slaves. The elven lords have them conditioned to obey—and to think of their fellow humans as the enemy, the rivals. It isn’t the elven lords they really worry about—it’s the overseer, who is quite likely to be human, and the fellow working next to them. Fully half of them have never seen one of the lords, and don’t particularly care if they never do. All they care about is getting that overseer’s job… and his privileges. They’re only interested in the immediate future.”
He actually smirked, and Shana flushed in frustration.
“That’s the difference between us and them, child,” he said fatuously. “They can’t see beyond their noses to the vast horizon. And if we threaten to take away the little privileges they’ve worked so hard for, and give them only this dubious freedom in return, they won’t thank us for it. To them, it’ll be freedom—to starve, to shiver in the cold, to lose the promise of a steady meal and guaranteed shelter, with guaranteed rewards if they are good and do what they are told. That is who would betray us, those same humans you want us to help—because we wouldn’t be giving anything to them that they want, or need. We would be the enemy, because we threaten their way of life.”
And was that what he kept telling himself, Shana thought, a bit contemptuously. She didn’t have a great deal of use for humans—but they weren’t the problem. The elves were. The elves were the ones who gave the orders; the humans only obeyed. And she could not understand why the wizards were cowering behind the protections of the Citadel—as she had said, like so many frightened mice. There was no reason why they couldn’t be helping the humans covertly—or saving a lot more of the halfblood babies and youngsters than they were now. Most of the halfblood children resulted from encounters with accidentally fertile concubines or with breeders, and most of those were eliminated as soon as they were born. It wouldn’t take much work to start substituting wizards for midwives, and the illusion of a dead baby for the reality of a live one.
She had approached her teacher about doing something with purpose in the world outside the cavern; actively helping the halfbloods out there—and intervening on behalf of the humans with wizard-powers as well. She remembered what had happened in the slave pens all too clearly, particularly on long, sleepless nights.
Denelor had seemed sympathetic enough during discussions with his apprentices, but she had discovered during the course of this conversation that he was like all the rest of the senior wizards. So long as what he did would not put him at risk, he would act. The moment there was the slightest chance that any action would alert the elven lords to the reemergence of the wizards—and thus threaten his comfortable life—he would sit back and do nothing.
Just like the humans he thought of so contemptuously.
But he was not the worst of his kind here—
Denelor finished his lecture, and looked at her expectantly. She shook her head, and gave it one more try. “It’s not right , master,” she said stubbornly, hoping that one last appeal might turn him to consider her argument. “It’s just not right . We have power; doesn’t that mean we have responsibility, too? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling us? The greater the power, the more the responsibility? Who are we responsible to , if not to those who are helpless?”
“Our responsibility is first to ourselves, Shana,” he replied, after a moment of hesitation. “We can’t do anything if we’re under siege by the elves. Think of all the halfbloods we’d be unable to help, if the lords knew we existed.”
Think of all the ones you don’t help now, because you’re afraid to, she replied, but only in her mind, and under the tightest of shields.
“We do what we can, but we have to be here to do it,” he said, with an air of finality. “I know it’s hard to accept, but just because something isn’t right, that doesn’t make it less true.” He paused a moment, then finally looked at her again, this time with concern. “Shana, I hope you’re keeping this to yourself. I probably shouldn’t say this, but there are those among the senior wizards who are—ah—disturbed by you. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that you have a great deal of power. You’ve surprised me with it, more often than I’d like to admit. Some of my colleagues are afraid of that power. Some of them are suspicious of you; they think you could be a plant by the elven lords. Most of them don’t understand how a child as young as you are, and without formal training, could acquire the kind of power and expertise you have.” Now he looked at her as if he suspected something. “There are those who think you may be planted on us by the elven lords, or that you may even be a fullblood—”
Shana’s eyes widened, and she said defensively, “I told you, I had to learn by myself just to stay alive! Do they think that living out in the middle of a desert is easy! Besides, I have the mind-powers, and you know I do. You’ve been the one training me. No one of full elven blood has the mind-powers, and I do.”
“You do,” Denelor agreed, looking a little easier. “And those can’t be duplicated by magic. But you could still be a plant, a halfblood raised and trained by elves to infiltrate our ranks.”
Shana frowned. “How could I be a plant if the elves don’t know we exist? And besides, I’m trying to get everyone to do something about the elves, to fight back against them, and if I was a plant, why would I be doing that?”
Denelor shook his head. “Child, that’s precisely what would make them even more suspicious. How else would the elves find out where we were, unless we attacked them or even worked more actively against them at a time when they have been alerted to look for the source of those actions? Please, Shana, be more careful of what you say. You’re making people uncomfortable, and that makes them irrational.”
Shana sighed, and gave it up as a lost cause. She agreed that she would be more careful, shared a cup of tea with her master, and then let herself out of Denelor’s quarters.
Well, that’s that. She grimaced, and set off down the halls to her own room. If Denelor wouldn’t back her up, there was no hope of convincing any of the other senior wizards. She had some supporters among the apprentices, and there were a few of the junior wizards, like Zed, who agreed with her. But for the most part, Shana’s cause looked pretty hopeless.
She shoved her hands into her pockets and slouched back to her room. The halls were mostly empty; at this time of the day, people were generally amusing themselves before dinner. The really powerful ones mostly wanted to be as much like the elves as possible, she thought cynically. With their comforts, their entourages, their little intrigues—they did things with magic, instead of with slaves, and it was on a smaller scale, but that was what they wanted. Right down to pushing people around who didn’t want to think for themselves. That’s why she made them uncomfortable, because they were afraid she couldn’t be manipulated, and she had so much power… power they would like to control.
She’d been watching and listening—her few days in the slave pens had taught her a lot about that—and she’d seen the pattern to life in the Citadel. And life in the Citadel was like life in one of the Great Households of the elves. On top was Parth Agon, the chief wizard—the strongest, rather than the eldest—who liked things the way they were and did not want to see his tiny kingdom disrupted. Below him were the wizards who felt as he did, the ones given the highest positions. And below them , on the bottom, were the ones who might have felt differently—but saw no reason to risk themselves.
Just before this meeting she’d said as much to Zed, who’d only shrugged his shoulders. “Lots of people here escaped being killed in the nick of time,” he pointed out. “Maybe they don’t want to have to go back to living each day afraid.”
“Neither do I!” she’d exclaimed, “But I’m not going to let that keep me from doing what I know is right!”
“Tell me that when the hunt’s on your tail,” Zed had replied, then strolled off to vanish down one of the mazes of corridors. Zed had that talent; if he didn’t want to be found, he could vanish as completely as Father Dragon…
She looked for him, in a desultory fashion, all the way back to the apprentices’ quarters. She didn’t see him, which probably meant he still didn’t feel like being social. And in her current mood of disgust with the lot of them, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see him, either. But when Shana reached her room, after the conversation with Denelor, it seemed to be singularly confining. She found herself longing for a glimpse of the sky, of a leafless, winter-bound tree, of anything that wasn’t within the walls of the Citadel. She thought about going to round up some of her own tiny circle of adherents, the ones she was teaching what she’d discovered about the power of jewels—but that seemed too much like the same manipulative games the older wizards were playing.
So instead she closed the door and began restlessly roaming the confines of her quarters. They didn’t enlarge any for all her pacing.
“I want to do something!” she said to the four walls of her room as she prowled back and forth like a caged animal. “I want to make a difference out there! I want to do more than the Kin are doing—”
So why don’t I?
The thought took her by surprise, and made her steps falter and stop. She rubbed her head, then sat down on her bed to think about the idea a little further.
Why didn’t she do something? She probably could , all by herself. She didn’t need their cooperation, or even their permission. With the jewels, she could do just about anything, really. She could certainly reach just about anywhere.
That was something of an exaggeration, but the jewels did help, they gave her reach and power she wouldn’t have had without them. Not that she depended on them, but they were a wonderfully useful tool… oddly, it was the least precious that did the most. Considering that the Kin held that the exact opposite was true, she found that fact rather funny.
A great deal of practice had revealed some general rules. Crystalline forms boosted power, and lens-shaped forms concentrated it. She worked better with some specific kinds of stones than with others, and what worked well for her did not necessarily work for someone else. For her, quartz-crystals, semiprecious agates, and amber did the most—the precious stones like rubies and emeralds accomplished little more than to catch the light, in her hands.
That had led to an ironic situation. She no longer feared having her hoard discovered—no one would want the specific stones that were the most valuable to her—a double-ended spear of clear quartz, common enough; an irregular globe of polished amber, perfectly clear, with no inclusions of seeds or bits of leaf; and a handful of assorted moonstones. But with these, she suddenly felt certain that she could reach beyond these walls, to affect the real world beyond them.
Or at least see what was going on out there…
She put her back against the wall and reached out for the crystal spear, where she had left it on the chest beside her bed. She held it where the light from her magically powered lamp would shine into it, and cradled it in the palm of her hand, staring deeply into it, past the surface reflections.
When she felt ready, she reached out with her mind as Alara had taught her when she was learning to speak mind-to-mind—but sent her thoughts into the crystal, instead of seeking a specific person.
Now she closed her eyes and held her mind very still, as she identified and closed out all the thoughts closest to her. There weren’t many; most of the wizards preferred to be under mind-shields at all times. Though she had not understood why at first, it seemed a sensible precaution now, and a courtesy, when there were many others who could hear thoughts about you—and some who might not yet be able to close them out.
She moved her “self” out of the Citadel, and into the forest, seeking for a viewpoint, her mind spread out like a fine net to snare errant thoughts. In moments, she had found one; she caught a thought and held it, and was looking through the eyes of a canny mountain-cat, crouched over a game trail.
She stared in mute fascination. Some snow fell in the area of the Lair in winter, but not much—a similar amount of rain fell in there in the summer. Keman had gone up into the higher country where there was more, but he could fly; she couldn’t. And she had not been outside the Citadel since she had arrived here.
She had never seen so much snow before. The ground was white, snow-covered as far as the cat’s eyes could see. The cat perched on a heavy limb of an evergreen of some kind, the branches above him so snow-laden that they sagged down over the one he had chosen, giving him a truly effective hiding place.
She held down her elation, so as not to startle her temporary host, but she felt a pardonable surge of triumph. She had moved outside the Citadel—and for the first time, had made contact with the mind of a creature she did not actually know was there.
Next jump— farther out—
She cast herself loose from the cat and reached out again; “listened” for further thoughts—and snatched at the first ones that presented themselves.
And this time found herself looking at the world through elven eyes.
There was no doubt of it; the hands she looked down on were long, slender, and as pale as her moonstones. And elves saw things a little differently from humans; everything living had a kind of shimmer about it, like heat-haze. Anything nonliving didn’t. And if that wasn’t enough, there was another elven lady sitting beside her, in the attitude of a teacher, watching every move she made.
Finding herself in an elven mind was so much of a surprise that she nearly lost her hold on the elven lord’s—-or rather, lady’s —thoughts. But she steadied herself down quickly, and began taking in her surroundings.
It was a girl, not a woman. That was the first realization. This was a girl about her own age. She was clothed in shimmery silks of an opalescent green, and she moved with studious grace, practicing the kind of movement Shana had always thought was natural.
Her hostess was flower-sculpting—a term Shana plucked out of the girl’s memory. Not arranging—that was different, and something the girl left up to her slaves. The girl—
She knew , with the certainty of her own name, that of the elven maiden. Sheyrena an Treves .
Sheyrena, then—was delicately shaping the petals of the living flower before her. She spun them out, her magic delicately rearranging the form, and making the petals thinner, turning them into gossamer webs of color. She had finished two of the four petals of what had been an ordinary poppy. Now it looked as if it had been made of silk; transparent, crimson silk, that billowed about the dark heart in carefully arranged folds. She finished the third petal even as Shana watched, and began on the fourth.
Shana took careful notes. She’d had no idea anything like this was possible. And it was absurdly simple as well. Already she had several ideas on how else she could use this particular spell of manipulation.
When the girl had finished, she turned to her mother, her face carefully schooled into a calm mask, for approval. No elven lady should ever be seen as less than perfect, and perfectly controlled . Shana caught that thought as the girl smoothed the hope from her expression.
Poor thing… For a moment, Shana actually pitied the girl.
“Very good, dear,” Viridina an Treves said, nodding her head slowly and graciously. Her expression was that mask of perfect serenity her daughter strove to imitate. The rest of her was just as flawless. Viridina wore her silver gown with a complete unconcern that made it seem a part of her. The elven lady’s pale gold hair was arranged in an artfully careless fall over one ear, no less a sculpted work of art than the flower her daughter had just transformed, and yet showing no sign of how much time had gone into its creation.
Her daughter permitted herself a smile of acknowledgment of her mother’s compliment. Viridina responded with an answering smile of approval for her daughter.
Her very young daughter; Shana realized with a start that she had made a mistake in her assessment. The mind she had touched was that of a child no more than ten or twelve. The child had power —that was what had deceived her—
No, that wasn’t it at all. The child had control. Very little power, really; what she had was total control over all the power she possessed. And all it would ever be good for was to manipulate tiny things—
Her spells would always be minor ones, like flower-sculpting, or water-weaving, or light-arranging—Shana saw that in her memories of her lessons and what her mother could do. Her father could do more; he was quite adept at illusions. But all Viridina and her daughter could use their insignificant power for was the kind of spells that were decorative—
Or stopping someone’s heart, Shana’s mind whispered eagerly, at this hint that the girl thought of herself as something less than the males of her kind. Little things weren’t necessarily minor. Tell her. Show her.
She shook off the temptation. Even if she thought of herself as inferior, she was still of elven blood; she was still one of the masters. If the girl had been a human, though, and otherwise helpless—
But something she had not consciously noted alerted that other part of her mind. Wasn’t she helpless, as helpless as the slaves? Look at the mother’s face—and into the mother’s mind!
Unable to resist the temptation, Shana did so, and saw the real state of most of the ladies of the elven Clans.
They were pampered—as a prize brood-mare was pampered. Protected—as a valuable gem. Allowed no choice of fates, any more than a slave was. Allowed no freedom at all until a child was conceived and carried to live birth…
The future that awaited this girl was as bleak as a slave’s. A loveless mating to someone who valued her only for her potential power, the dower she brought from her father, the alliance she represented, and the heirs she might breed. A life spent in the confines of the “bower,” the women’s quarters, with nothing of any importance to do. Ladies were not expected to exert themselves, and few did. Most whiled away the long hours with music, flower-sculpting or playing other similarly mindless games.
This was the life the girl’s mother had endured for the past four hundred years—with no end in sight. An endless pastel existence, close-confined, safe—
Shana shuddered, and withdrew a little.
The girl picked up another flower, and began on it; a wild rose, this time. She touched the first petal, spinning it out into a thin mist of palest pink.
Shana couldn’t bear it any longer. Well, why shouldn’t she at least—suggest what she could do. Where was the harm in that? She might need it someday. If she had the courage to use the information… Why not? If the girl doesn’t use it, no harm; if she does—someone will get what he deserves. She would just hint at the possibilities.
A kind of reckless intoxication impelled her to do just that, hiding the suggestion deep in the girl’s mind— If you can change a flower petal, what else can you change?—
The girl didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. Certainly her mother didn’t. They continued to make their artistic little flowers, placing them carefully in a studied arrangement for tonight’s banquet, for magically formed flowers were too important and delicate to be entrusted to slaves. When Lord Treves’s guests saw these, and knew the powers of the daughter, there might be marriage proposals…
Shana couldn’t take anymore. She withdrew her mind completely and let herself drift back to the safety of the Citadel before anyone detected her meddling.
She centered herself; woke herself carefully from trance, speeding her heartbeat, letting the blood flow freely through her veins.
As she opened her eyes again, she realized what it was that drove the dragons to shift their shapes and take the forms of men and elves. It was a different kind of power—
And it was a heady experience. And addictive…
With time, she became more and more adept at reading the minds of distant elven lords and their ladies. The human minds, of course, remained closed to her, because of the collars the human slaves wore.
Those collars could, and did, function in a way that kept prying thoughts out as well as developing mind-powers locked within. But the elven lords were wide open to her questing mind, and she took full advantage of the fact. Shana came to know all of the neighbors bordering the wild lands that held the Citadel.
She also came to learn more of what she could do with magic; power did not have to be overwhelming to be effective—something as “simple” as the elven maid’s flower-sculpting ability could be as devastatingly effective as calling lightning.
And a lot less draining.
As spring approached, she took to spending all her free time “watching” through the eyes of others, mostly elves, even as she had spent all her time last fall in roaming the corridors of the Citadel. Her goal was the same: knowledge. Now she knew pretty much what the old wizards could do, and she was on her way to duplicating a number of those powers. What she didn’t know was what elven lords were capable of. She wanted—no, needed ,—to know, both to know what she might have to counter one day, and to determine what she might be able to duplicate herself. And here were teachers, all the teachers she could ask for. She began learning by observation.
Not even the senior wizards knew some of the tricks she was picking up from the elven mages—or if they did, they hadn’t shown any of them to their pupils. And fully as important as magic—at least to Shana’s mind—she was learning how the elven lords thought.
Which turned out to be a great deal like the way the senior wizards thought…
Shana told herself to be patient; she was the only member of the group accustomed to thinking of gems in terms of being power-sources. Blond, shaggy-headed Kyle frowned, and stared at the carnelian in his hand. She “heard” him fumbling around, trying to use the stone, and getting nowhere, as if he were trying to cut wood with a hammer.
He looked up at her, and shook the hair out of his eyes. “But what if I’m not getting any more power with this thing?” he asked petulantly.
Shana sighed, and dark Elly rolled her eyes and shrugged. Elly, several years younger than Kyle, had already mastered the basics, and was working on finesse.
Shana decided to let her explain. Maybe he’d pay attention to someone he knew. “Lens-shaped stones focus , Kyle,” Elly said slowly and carefully. “It’s the crystals that increase power. You’re using a cabochon-cut stone; you could push from now’till next spring and still have the same amount of power going in as coming out of there. That stone is going to concentrate the power to a little point—”
Someone pounded on the wooden door of the room Shana and her little circle were using as a meeting place. All conversation stopped dead, and Shana started guiltily; and she wasn’t the only one to jump. Not that they were doing anything wrong , but none of the senior wizards actually knew anything about these meetings. They weren’t forbidden—but if the senior wizards knew about them, they might be.
Operating on the principle that what the authorities didn’t know about, they couldn’t forbid, Shana had taken great care to see that they didn’t learn about the lessons in the first place. She didn’t see any reason why she should share the new knowledge she had been gaining with people who weren’t going to use it—or at least, weren’t going to use it for anything useful. .
So the meetings were held in one of the empty rooms in the maze of corridors winding deeply into the living rock of the Citadel. And the only people who knew which room it was were her fellow apprentices—and Zed.
“Shana!” It was Zed’s voice, muffled by the door, but recognizable. “Shana, it’s me! I’ve got something to tell you! It’s important!”
Shana jumped to her feet and hurled the door open quickly. Zed slipped inside as soon as she had it open a crack, and shut it behind him. “Listen,” he said, looking around at all of them with a peculiarly intense expression on his face. “Do you people really intend to start doing something about what’s going on out there, instead of sitting on your thumbs? Or are you all talk and no action?”
“Why?” Shana demanded, a stir of excitement and anticipation prickling the back of her neck.
“Because I just found out that one of Lord Treves’s overseers is going to cull about a dozen kids, that’s why,” Zed said, anger creeping into his voice, a fleeting expression of outrage moving across his face like a shadow. “And the mud-clods in charge around here won’t do one damn thing to stop them!”
Kyle blanched; he’d very nearly been “culled” himself, and only escaped when his mother smuggled him out and left him in the woods. “W-why not?” he stammered. “Th-they’ve intervened on Treves’s land before! Wh-what’s stopping them?”
Zed leaned back against the door, and crossed his arms, all trace of his earlier emotion gone, as if it had never been. “Because,” he drawled, “this time the kids are all full-human. They’ve got the human magic, that’s why they’re being culled. Master Parth doesn’t see any reason to help mere humans, especially not when the overseers already have all the uncollared kids locked up, and we’d have to actually break them out.”
“Master Parth is—not the only answer around here,” Shana said flatly, cold anger settling just under her breastbone. “And yes, I’m ready to do something.” She looked around her, challenge in her gaze. “What about the rest of you?”
“You can count me in,” Kyle said immediately, though he was still pale, and looked more than a little frightened.
“And me,” Elly added, an eye-blink after him.
There was no dissension, and no hesitation; the rest followed Shana’s lead in agreeing to help within a heartbeat of one another.
“Fine,” Zed said with satisfaction and approval. He pushed away from the door and joined them. The rest of the apprentices looked up at him expectantly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. The overseers don’t actually know which kids have the wizard-powers, so they rounded up every uncollared child in the area and they’re going to be testing them tomorrow. I know who they are, and the kids all know who they are. And if we work fast, and together, we should be able to get them out of the pen before the overseers find out which ones are the kids they really want. So, first off, have any of you ever seen the holding pen at Treves’s manor?”
Kyle had, as Shana knew. Kyle had most certainly seen it; he’d been in it before he was taken by his mother to be left for the wizards to find.
Kyle didn’t hesitate; he grabbed a stick of charcoal and a bit of scrap paper and began drawing a map for the others. Within moments they were huddled together over the drawing, proposing and discarding plans.
Shana turned back to Zed, to see that he was grinning from ear to ear.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” she said accusingly, whispering so that the others wouldn’t overhear. “You did—I know you did—”
“Not this , exactly,” he admitted, “but I knew something like this would come up. I’m getting tired of Faith’s attitude about full-humans. I’ve been tired of the way he won’t interfere in any situation that looks the tiniest bit risky, and I’ve felt that way for a long time. And after I saw how you were shaping up, I was hoping you were going to put some spine into some of the ‘prentices so we could have a group to work with. One or two couldn’t make much difference—but a group this big can.”
“I tried to put some spine into some of the masters,” she said sourly, “but it didn’t work.”
Zed’s only reply was a snort. Then he leaned over the shoulders of the huddled ‘prentices, and studied Kyle’s sketched map.
“All right—” he said, and they quieted down so quickly that Shana was consumed with envy. “This is what I’d do____”
The fire crackled, and scented candles burned all over the room, imparting a warm light no mage-made glow could duplicate. Parth Agon sipped his stolen wine, and frowned at the goblet. Not because of the bouquet of the wine— thatwas fine. It was something else entirely that left a sour taste in his mouth.
The new ‘prentice, Shana, to be precise.
He turned the goblet in his hands, watching the play of light over the matte metal surface without really seeing it. Shana was a problem, and was likely to become a greater one.
Somehow, some way, she had learned to shield her mind even from him . Somehow she had acquired the power to keep that shielding intact against all of his efforts to penetrate it. That was cause enough for alarm. Parth had gotten and held his power by knowing exactly what the others were thinking at all times. Shana represented a disturbing blank spot in his knowledge.
Furthermore, she had begun teaching a carefully chosen circle of her peers how to accomplish exactly the same thing. The blank spot was spreading. He was not pleased. And that was by no means all…
She was a bad influence, he brooded, holding his goblet in both hands as he slumped in his chair. She was asking questions the masters would rather not answer—and that he would just as soon she didn’t ask. Why the wizards were remaining in hiding, for instance; never interfering except when there was no chance they could be detected—and why they wouldn’t aid humans, even those with wizard-powers of their own. She was implying that they were cowards, lazy, or both. She was encouraging the ‘prentices to think about acting directly against the elves.
The ‘prentices didn’t like the answers they were getting from their masters. Or the lack of answers. And it was entirely possible they’d started to act on their own.
That thought led inevitably to another.
I’m losing control.
That was the worst thought of all; his hands tightened on the cool metal of the goblet as he gritted his teeth in carefully restrained anger. The candles flickered in a bit of draft.
She was working against him. But she was only a child—she couldn’t be doing this on her own. So who was behind her ? Who in the Citadel was teaching her these things? It wasn’t Denelor… it couldn’t be. That lazy fool couldn’t have taught her half of what she had learned this winter.
But if it wasn’t Denelor, then who was it?
He ran down the entire list of senior wizards in his mind, and couldn’t find a connection between any of them and Shana. Half of them didn’t even know she existed; they were lost in their little otherworlds of illusion, trance, and daydream. The other half didn’t care she existed. They played out their dance of control and power within the microcosm of the Citadel, and cared nothing for the outside world. And none of them would have been willing to risk putting their precious safety in the hands of these reckless children, if they’d known what their ‘prentices were up to.
But dealing with them—which really meant dealing with their ringleader, Shana—presented something of a problem. She hadn’t actually done anything yet, and neither had they. Parth couldn’t prove that she was even thinking of it, and even if he could, thinking was no crime. Until they made an overt action that truly, demonstrably, endangered the Citadel, he could only watch her.
And even if he caught her at something—aiding halfbloods to escape to the Citadel without her master’s permission, for instance—there were still limits to the punishments he could or dared impose on her.
He couldn’t expel her from the Citadel; the elven lords would catch her before very long. And as soon as they questioned her, the elves would know about the halfbloods.
He wished passionately that it was Shana’s neck between his hands, rather than the goblet. He would give so much to be able to strangle the baggage… which he couldn’t do even if he caught her red-handed. There were laws about that, laid down because of what had divided the wizards at the end of the war. If she were caught and If the entire populace of the Citadel found her guilty of acting against the Citadel, the worst that could be done to her would be to send her into the desert, back where she came from.
He couldn’t “dispose” of her either; she hadn’t actually done anything, and the others would certainly take exception to his taking the law into his own hands on a mere supposition.
I wish I knew what she wanted .
I wish I knew who was behind her!
He had never been so frustrated in his life. From the time he had reached the Citadel and became the protected protege of the most senior wizard of the time, to this moment, his life had been one smooth climb to the high seats of power. No one had ever thwarted him before. No one had ever challenged him before. He was not enjoying the experience.
He sat, slumped over in his chair, for the remainder of the afternoon, trying to think of some way he could either dispose of the girl or control her, and coming up with nothing. The candles guttered down to the sockets, and his own ‘prentice— notone of the young rebels—came in to replace them, and still he was unable to think of an answer to the problem.
Finally he was forced to conclude that he was going to have to leave her alone. He set the empty goblet down on the little table beside his chair, and sat up a bit straighter, trying to divorce himself from the emotions that raised in him. He stroked his beard with one hand, forcing himself to accept that solution.
He decided, slowly, to leave her alone. Unless she brought the elves’ attention down on the halfbloods. Then he could move against her.
He nodded to himself, and refilled the goblet, taking it up again. Oddly enough, the conclusion was not as hard to take as he’d thought it would be. It was not an end; it was merely a delay. The girl was reckless; she took wild chances. With luck, one of those risks would catch up with her.
And then— she’s mine.
With a creak of tortured metal, the stem of the goblet bent double beneath the pressure of his tightening fingers. Parth Agon did not notice.
“Dear Ancestors, I’m bored,” Valyn said, flinging down his book on the cushion of the window seat, and staring out at the gloomy, dark pine woods beyond his window. Cheynar’s manor was unlike any Valyn had ever seen before; it had none of the glowing ceiling lights that most of the elven-made buildings he’d been in boasted. Instead, illumination was supplied by day with natural light, through skylights and windows. And at night, Valyn either had to glow his own magic-lights, or make do with lanterns and candles. Magic was clearly at a premium on this estate.
And yet, Cheynar was considered a power to be reckoned with among Dyran’s allies and underlings.
Today Valyn was considering lighting a glow even though it was not much past noon. The sky outside was a flat, dark, slate-gray. Rain dripped down through the branches, and more rain misted the air between the window and the trees.
Shadow sneezed, and rubbed his nose. “I thought you were supposed to be learning something from Lord Cheynar,” he observed with a sniff. “But all we’ve done since you got here is sit around this suite or go out riding in the rain.” Shadow sniffed again.
“Riding in the rain, and catching colds,” Valyn replied, immediately guilty. “Sorry, Shadow. That cold of yours is my fault. We shouldn’t have gone out yesterday. I didn’t mean to act like a spoiled brat about the riding, but I just couldn’t stand being inside one moment more—”
“I know, I know—” Shadow blew his nose, and took a long drink of hot tea. “And it’s not your fault elves don’t catch colds. I just wish I shared that immunity.”
Valyn shrugged apologetically. “I wish I could cure it.” He looked back outside; the gloomy woods had not changed a fraction. “I wish we had something to do. Anything.”
“I guess we should both be just as glad Lord Cheynar hasn’t been paying much attention to us,” Shadow observed, as he joined Valyn in the window seat. “It surely makes it a lot easier to stay out of his way.”
Valyn glanced at his cousin out of the corner of his eye. Shadow had bounced back from his beating so fast even Valyn was impressed, though he seemed much quieter than usual. But perhaps that was only because of the cold.
Shadow folded his arms on the window ledge and rested his chin on them, watching the wet pines as if he found them completely fascinating. “On the whole,” he drawled, “I think I’ll take bored. It’s much better than having Lord Cheynar’s overseers asking me pointed questions about my background.”
Valyn gave himself a mental kick for being such a donkey. Of course being bored was better than being noticed! Even a fool would have been able to figure that out! As long as he and Shadow were left to their own devices, there was very little chance that Lord Cheynar would check back with Dyran and possibly let slip the description of Valyn’s “bodyguard.” And there was no chance that Shadow would find himself being interrogated by Cheynar’s men.
When they first arrived, Cheynar had received Valyn in his office, with the same cold courtesy Valyn fancied he used with his underlings. He had taken a scant moment to glance at the sealed letter from Lord Dyran that Valyn presented to him, then thrown the packet on a corner of his desk, and leaned over the broad expanse of cherry-wood to pin Valyn in his chair with his dagger-keen glare.
“I want one thing understood, young Valyn,” he’d said, his voice completely without expression. “You’re on my estate now, not your father’s. You will follow my orders. Is that perfectly clear?”
“Yes, my lord,” Valyn had murmured, in his most submissive tone. Cheynar had sat back in his seat with a fleeting expression of satisfaction.
“In that case, we’ll get along just fine,” Cheynar stated flatly. “Right now, I am sorry I simply don’t have time to see to your amusement, but something has come up that requires all of my attention. I shouldn’t have taken the time to meet with you myself, but I wanted to make certain that you understood how things are here. Do you?”
“Entirely, my lord,” Valyn had replied, looking down at his clasped hands.
“Good.” Valyn looked up at the scrape of wood on stone. Cheynar stood, obviously impatient for him to be gone. “There’s a slave just outside the door, he’ll show you your quarters. I’m sure they’ll be satisfactory.”
And without waiting for a reply, Cheynar had turned and walked away, leaving Valyn to stare after him, a bit stunned.
Since that time he had not once set eyes on the Lord of the estate. He had been left to amuse himself however he wished. More than once, he had decided that Cheynar’s dour manner was due entirely to the estate itself. Bordering the wilderlands, the manor was surrounded on three sides by tall, greenish-black pine trees with thick, drooping branches that blocked the sun for most of the day, and were home to what seemed like hundreds of owls at night. And for some reason, at least since Valyn arrived here, it had rained at least part of every single day.
There was no hunting to speak of, except for Valyn’s accipiter hawks, who were nasty-tempered enough to fling themselves into the thickest of underbrush after prey. But the hawks were not willing to fly in weather this foul, and after having one goshawk turn on him in frustration at having missed a kill, Valyn was not inclined to press his luck with them. The gos missed his face by a breath with those wicked talons, and only Shadow’s Intervention had gotten the hawk calmed.
There was no hunting with hounds; Cheynar did not keep a pack. His dogs guarded the pens of his slaves, and he did not have enough of them to spare for such frivolities as hunting.
The only other form of exercise and amusement was riding—through cold, dark pines that dripped constantly, even when it wasn’t actually raining.
Other than that, there wasn’t much of anything to do. Valyn had often thought that he was bored back on his father’s estate. Now he knew what boredom really was.
:On the other hand, we could have Lord Cheynar’s undivided attentions,: he thought wryly, and saw Shadow nod.
“There are always worse situations, brother,” Shadow said aloud, and sneezed again.
“Like having a cold—” Valyn teased, producing a handkerchief and handing it to him. “Or being out in that with a cold. Or keeping my gos from taking your eye out.”
“Like being the person—or persons—who really have Lord Cheynar’s undivided attentions,” Shadow corrected, and bent closer, lowering his voice. “My lord is not at all happy at the moment. It seems there’s been a disturbance at one of his breeding farms.”
“Oh?” Valyn suddenly found the view out the window just as fascinating as Mero did. There probably weren’t any watchers—or at least Mero couldn’t detect them—but it was a good idea to exercise a little caution now and again, just in case. “And what was this disturbance?”
“When we first arrived here, he had a message that the latest crop of youngsters included an unknown number with wizard-powers among them,” Shadow informed him, as they both stared fixedly out the window at the dripping pines. “That was just before he met us, when he sent me to the suite with the baggage and took you off to his office. I haven’t said anything until now, because he’s had someone watching us. Either he can’t spare the watcher, or he’s convinced we’re harmless.”
“I devoutly hope the latter,” Valyn replied grimly. “So, there were children with wizard-powers… Halfbloods?”
Mero shook his head. “No. Full-humans. There isn’t a chance you’d get a halfblood on this estate. He sterilizes all his concubines, and elves caught using anything other than a sterile concubine get thrown out without a copper piece.”
“Full-humans.” Valyn mused on that for a moment. “I take it that the signs were objects flying about, and the rest of the usual symptoms?”
Shadow turned his head just enough so that his cousin could see his approving smile. “Your father taught you better than he knew.”
“My father doesn’t know that I know that,” Valyn corrected. “Most of the elven lords my age think human magic is a myth, and I think my father wants to keep it that way. So, what happened to the children?”
“Ah, now that is what has Cheynar’s undivided attention,” Shadow whispered, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. “It seems that they vanished, right out of the slave pen, before they could be identified positively. About a dozen, more or less; that night they were bedded down with the rest, the next morning, they were gone. You might almost say, they disappeared.”
“They what! Valyn kept his voice down with an effort. “How could they—”
“With help.” Shadow licked his lips, and Valyn felt a tingle of excitement. “I’ve been hearing magic since we arrived, Val. Quite a lot of it, in fact, but none of it on this estate. It’s all out there in the woods. I think it’s probably safe to assume that it had something to do with the children disappearing out of the slave pens.”
“So there are more halfbloods?” Valyn whispered, half to himself, half to Shadow. When he got no reply, he turned back to see his cousin watching him soberly, red nose and all.
“I don’t know, Val,” Shadow replied. “I’m just not that good, to tell what and who is out there. But I do know that those children are gone, and magic had something to do with it, and Cheynar is really, really worried. And that is all I can tell you.”
“That’s enough,” Valyn said, excited at the very idea. “That’s enough for me to do something. I haven’t been able to train you, because I didn’t really know what you could do. But if there’s a wizard out there good enough to steal children, if I can scry and watch him, I can start showing you what to do.”
“Well—” Shadow said suddenly, his eyes going distant, his brows creasing, “better get ready to watch, then. Because I hear it—them—and they’re right out there in those woods!”