SHANA BURIED HER nose in her book as Triana sailed past the door of the library, and smoldered with resentment. The words on the page blurred for a moment as she brought her anger under control. Triana had done it again this morning, made her look like a fool in front of everyone, and had left her no out but to pretend to laugh at the joke. The elven maiden’s delicate condescension had not escaped the intended target, and Shana was heartily sick of it—and the general misery brought on by the cold she still suffered from didn’t help matters. When she complained about Triana’s behavior, Valyn claimed she was being oversensitive. So she had decided to avoid Triana as much . as possible, which, in a place this size, wasn’t really difficult.
The library was the best place to go, and Shana blessed her foster mother’s foresight in training her in the written version of elven tongue. Triana’s forefathers had amassed quite a collection of instructional volumes, including those on magic—and Shana had just found the answer to some of her questions here.
Why did the elven lords destroy the wizards one by one, rather than together? And where did they get the power to do some of the things described in the old chronicles—like building manors overnight?
She shifted a little more in the overstuffed, velvet-cushioned chair, and reread the last paragraph of her chapter. Yes, there it was. The answer had turned out to be appallingly simple. If a magic-wielder was unguarded, it was possible to steal his power. It would return, usually within a day, but while it was gone he was defenseless. The trick was that one had to be within a certain distance of the victim—line of sight, usually. You didn’t have to be able to see him, so long as you knew him, but you had to be within that distance. This was the first time she had ever seen the spell and its execution and results printed openly.
So that was why they killed off the wizards one at a time—so that they could also steal the wizard’s power.
Without a doubt, all of the elven lords stayed guarded against just such an occurrence, of course, whenever they were with others of their kind. This was one spell that was democratic in its effect—the weaker could very easily steal from the stronger if he knew the trick.
Now Shana knew how the old wizards and the elven lords of the past had pulled off major spells that required much more power than a single magic-wielder could ever have—like the one that could transport several people from one place to another, the more elaborate version of the one the wizards now used to steal goods from the elves. They stole it. Or, in the case of the wizards, they loaned it. Possibly the elven lords had cooperated that way in the past, but they certainly weren’t doing so now.
The fact that it hadn’t been used in so long that the written record of it had “fallen out” of books wasn’t really surprising. Like a fancy “secret move” in sword work, which, once it is used and known, becomes useless because everyone guards against it, this stealing of power was no longer an effective weapon because everyone expected it when they knew they -were in the company of other, possibly adversarial, elven lords. But that didn’t mean that they guarded against it all the time…
No one could be on his guard all the time. Especially not when it was something you had to work to shield against.
And it certainly didn’t mean that Shadow, Valyn, or even Triana were on guard against the ploy.
Shana closed the book and pondered her options.
Right now, it looked as if Valyn’s big plan to help the humans and halfbloods had pretty much come to nothing. So whatever got done, she was going to have to be the one to do it. She nodded grimly to herself. I should have known better than to get involved with those two. I can’t undo it, so now I’m going to have to live with it . Maybe if she managed to pull this “cause” together, that would get Valyn’s attention.
She reopened the book, and checked the text carefully, then decided to make some little experiments, figuring that she could probably drain power in such small quantities that it would scarcely be noticed. Considering how much they’d used her, she thought resentfully, it would serve them right.
Shadow, in particular, with Triana a close second.
From the moment they had entered the house, Triana had been making much of Shadow, and mostly ignoring the others. She’d even cured his cold—ignoring Shana, who was just as miserable. Predictably enough, it seemed that Shadow stopped thinking whenever the beautiful elven woman was around.
Shana’s lip curled with contempt. Men. Completely useless .
Valyn had persuaded him to the handfasting—a simple ritual ceremony he himself had presided over—but if he had expected it to make the two of them fall madly in love, he had been sadly disappointed. Shana had no intention of following that particular plan.
Though Shadow’s reaction had not been exactly what Shana had foreseen either. She had approached Shadow afterwards, intending to tell him frankly that she wasn’t in the least interested in him , only to have him steal a march on her.
She seethed a little inside, with resentment and frustration, and squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. It was one thing to plan on jilting someone—but when the person you intended to jilt had the same thing in mind, it didn’t do a lot for your pride… She’d made her little speech, too, just to save face, but it certainly fell flat. He hadn’t reacted at all, that she could tell.
Well, let him have Triana, then. She would choose power. She would accomplish great things, while he wasted his time playing the fool to a woman who’d discard him as soon as she tired of him.
And the first task: cure this wretched cold.
The summer wind blew his hair all awry as Valyn set Triana’s high-spirited little gelding into a gallop, riding out some of his restlessness and frustration. None of this was going as he had planned or hoped. Once they had reached this safe harbor, instead of everyone in the group pulling together and starting to plan how to take on the elven lords and the wizards, they all fell apart, drifting off to their own interests, the greater tasks ignored or forgotten.
While they plunged through a field of sweet-scented wildflowers, he guided the horse with skillful hands and a light pressure on the rein, and wondered what went wrong.
He’d used glamories on both Shana and Mero to get them to agree to the handfasting—but it hadn’t worked. Or at least, it hadn’t done more than get them to the handfasting. Once the handfasting ceremony was complete, they had gone off together—he’d thought for certain that they were starting to make a pair of it, that his glamories had worked.
But not too much later, he’d seen Shana alone in the library and Mero with Triana. The handfasting might just as well not have taken place.
He set the horse down a purposely overgrown path, where jumps appeared unexpectedly. The horse strained over the tallest of these, needing his encouragement to tackle them. He guided the gelding skillfully, and the horse responded—but not even the speed and the exhilaration of the jumping-course could shake the uneasy feeling that he’d done something wrong and it was backlashing on him. The horse took obstacle after obstacle, and he could not leave his worry behind him.
He wasn’t particularly happy with the way Mero was spending so much time with Triana. His cousin had assured him that he was trying to bring Triana around to their point of view, to recruit her fully for the cause, but it didn’t look like there was much recruiting going on…
He was being stupid, he told himself firmly, bringing the lathered horse to a walk and letting him cool himself down. Mero was just getting to her through the things she knew best. She had a good heart; when he got her to listen, Valyn knew Mero would bring her around. It was just a matter of time.
But he couldn’t rid himself the premonition that they had an increasingly small amount of that time left.
Triana smiled at Mero, settled down on the couch beside him, and let her glamorie steal gently over him, binding him even tighter to her will. She didn’t really have to condition most of her slaves; for all except the really strong-willed or dangerous, all she ever had to do was cast a glamorie. That was her strongest magic, the much-underrated magic of glamorie. The subtle webs of power that she wove were the reason why none of the elders had set their sights on her or her properties—why no one had ever seriously challenged her once she’d come to power—why her slaves were fanatically devoted to her.
She had put her entire stable of favorites aside for Mero’s sake; the first few weeks were critical in the weaving of as complex a spell as she was working. Any jarring note could force her to reweave the foundations again. Once the net was in place and tight, she could do anything she chose with her victim, but until then, she had to move very carefully.
Mero’s eyes glazed and he smiled happily back at her, gazing at her with his full attention. “And what should we do today?” she asked him. “I think we’ve surely gone over every bit of the estate by now; we’ve been riding, hawking, and hunting nearly every day. Is there anything you’d like to see or do?”
His eyes focused a little more, and he tilted his head to one side as he thought. Triana fluttered her eyelashes at him, enjoying the effect her flirtations had. She hadn’t taken him to bed yet—she would save that for the moment she set the glamorie. Until then it was rather enjoyable, playing with him, first courting and then drawing back.
Valyn probably thinks I’m bedding him every night, she thought with carefully concealed amusement. And he doesn’t approve . She wondered if his prejudices were finally showing—it was all right to befriend a human or a halfblood, but don’t go to bed with one.
Poor fool, he couldn’t see how that untidy little halfblood girl fawned on his every word. Or if he did, for some reason he was pretending he didn’t. Triana hadn’t had so much fun since the Midsummer Party last year when everyone turned out to be everyone else’s lover, betraying each other on all sides, and no one knew it until they got to the party and the drink started to flow!
Mero blinked, as if he were trying to think of something. “I—you know, this probably sounds boring to you—but I’d really like to see what a Council session is like,” he said finally. “I don’t think I could get inside alone; I don’t know how, I don’t even know where it’s held. And anyway I’m not good enough to do my own illusion of disguise yet. But you are, and since you’re a Clan head, you could get in, right?”
Triana raised her eyebrows in surprise. So he was still thinking for himself. She hadn’t thought he had that much willpower left. Obviously she was going to have to be extra-careful in setting the glamorie. “I could. Why?” she asked casually. “Is there a point in going?”
“Well, it’s just that you learn a lot about an enemy from the way he acts with his peers,” Mero said slowly. “And I want to see Dyran with his peers. I’ve never seen him as anything other than the master, and I have the feeling that he’s the real enemy we’ll have to face.”
Interesting that he was still thinking of Dyran as an enemy, which meant he still had Valyn’s “cause” on his mind. Well, it couldn’t hurt to humor him.
“I do have a gallery box,” she said, playing with her hair and looking up through her lashes coyly. “I don’t use it very often but—why not?” She jumped to her feet, and gave her hand gracefully to Mero. “Here, stand up. I can’t work on you while you’re sitting there.”
He rose obediently, and she admired the play of muscles beneath his shirt as he moved. His frame, light, but strong, was much more to her taste than the attenuated bodies of elven men. Or even the bulky forms of human men, for that matter.
She really did need a little wizard for her very own, she mused, and she spun a careful mist of illusion that lightened his dark hair to silver-blond, thinned his body, lengthened his ears, and bleached his complexion to pale alabaster. Once I get him broken in, he just might turn out to be the best lover I’ve ever had .
Her work done, she stepped back and admired it critically. “I think that will do,” she said, nodding. “Are you ready? Come on, there’s a Council session going on now.”
“How are we going to get there?” he asked, as she turned without waiting for his answer, and led the way to her father’s study at a fast walk. “Lord Dyran has to spend a week in travel to get there, but Lord Leremyn lives farther away and gets home every night. What’s the trick?”
“Every one of the original High Lords had a permanent spell-cabinet in their manor,” she said over her shoulder, as he trotted down the white marble hallway to catch up with her. “It only goes one place: the Council building at the capital. We can’t change it, and if we ever tried to move it, the spell would break. Lords like Dyran, who are upstarts, really, don’t have one. There were a few of them destroyed during the Wizard War, but most of them still work. The idea was that with the cabinets, lords could live on their estates and govern them while still sitting on Council. Of course, the ones that don’t have the cabinets have to live in the capital during Council season, but that’s just too bad for them, really.”
“Why don’t they just build their own?” Mero asked, as she paused in her chatter long enough to open the study door.
“Because it takes too much power,” she explained. “The old ones built the cabinets as the manors were being built, and they all contributed to each cabinet’s spell, all twenty of them. It took them a year, and they couldn’t do anything magical at all during the year except to build the cabinets, it took that much power.”
Unspoken was the implication that the elven lords on the Council these days didn’t trust one another enough to either contribute power or lie helpless while recovering, in order to build more cabinets. She wondered if Mero had picked that up.
Probably, she decided, looking at his thoughtful expression as she pulled back the pale-pink satin drapery that concealed the cabinet, and handed him one of her sardonyx seals from the drawer of the dainty carved-birch desk in front of it.
“Here,” she said. “Don’t lose this. The cabinet here only works one-way, but the one at the Council building won’t know where to send you home if you don’t have this with you.”
Obediently, he pocketed it, and she pulled the door open for him. There was just barely enough room inside for two.
“Get in,” she said, and followed him, closing the door after herself and giggling when he tickled her playfully.
They returned at nightfall, and Mero handed her out of the cabinet with a great deal of gallantry, but none of the playfulness he’d shown earlier. The room had been made ready for their return; lights burning, and the curtains drawn as she preferred them. She broke the illusion on him with that touch, and his face shimmered and changed as she allowed him to resume his core-illusion, of full humanity.
He looked at her thoughtfully, and she smiled. He smiled back, but didn’t say anything, and Triana gathered that the Council session had really opened his eyes to the reality of elven politics—and the strength of Lord Dyran.
The subject that had been before the Council was a dispute between two of the lesser lords—one which seemed simple on the surface, but involved the prestige and welfare of at least a half dozen Council members. And the rest, of course, had bets riding on the outcome. Insofar as she had been able, Triana had kept up a running commentary on exactly who was involved with what, who was being betrayed, who was likely to turn his coat if the tide turned against him. Dyran, who, as always, was covering both sides without either side knowing that he was, controlled both halves of the conflict with a masterful hand.
If Mero had to pick a day to visit the Council, this was a good one, she thought with satisfaction, as she had Mero take a seat, and summoned a servant to fetch them a late meal. Not like the day they spent arguing over trade quotas and the Council tax on oat harvests.
She felt a little light-headed, and recognized the symptoms for what they were. “If you don’t mind, Mero,” she said, breaking into the young halfblood’s reverie, “I’m going to go change. I’ll be right back.”
He kissed her hand as she stood, and she gave him a dazzling smile before turning away and going out the study door.
She didn’t really want to change; she wanted to reinforce the glamorie, and for that she needed one of the talismans in which she had stored power. Besides creating the illusion for Mero, the transport-cabinet used her energy for the actual transportation, and she was depleted. But no matter how depleted she was, one thing she would never do was to allow any of the slaves to handle her talismans. That would be inviting disaster. You never knew when one of them might have enough residual wizard-power and will left to use the stored energy of the talisman to counter the spells on his collar.
She wouldn’t run; it wasn’t dignified. But she hurried her steps as much as she could without running, her heels echoing in the white marble hall, and let herself into her room without any fanfare. There was no one there, which was just as well. She tried not to let anyone know where she kept her talismans, not even the lowest of the slaves.
She took the key from around her wrist and unlocked the appropriate drawer of her white-lacquered jewel cabinet, and looked through her talismanic jewelry until she found the necklace of amber that matched her creamy-gold gown. She slipped it on over her head hurriedly, and immediately felt better, less as if she were reduced to a mere wisp of herself. Being depleted always made her feel as if she were likely to blow away on the next breeze.
She returned to Mero, her steps echoing confidently up the hall. She thought she heard male voices somewhere ahead, and didn’t give it a second thought. But as she approached the door, she heard the sound of a splintering crash, and the thud of two bodies on the floor.
Ancestors! What on earth? Who would dare—
She flung the door open, just in time to see Mero receive a kick in the ribs that sent him flying into the wall, taking one of her little carved-birch chairs with him. The chair did not survive the impact. Mero did, but not well.
Triana whirled, her power rising within her, to confront Mero’s assailant. A huge, muscular, dark-haired man stalked past her, ignoring her presence and advancing on Mero with blood-lust in his eyes. She recognized him with surprise. It was a human named Laras, one of her stable, a slave who had been intended for the gladiatorial ranks before she had taken him for her own purposes. If he had been a little brighter, she might have elevated him to be Rafe’s replacement, but his dim-wittedness ruled that out. Nevertheless, he seemed to regard himself as her favorite. He had always been inclined to jealousy, and his fits of temper were violent and notorious among the slaves, but she had never seen him lose his control so completely.
For a moment, her blood and heartbeat quickened. She was being fought over! It was like the old days, when elven lords dueled for the favor of a chosen lady. But that was long ago—long before elves came here, to this world.
How exciting—they were fighting for her’! She didn’t know of anyone who’d had men fight over her—
But then, as she took in the damage that had been done so far (two broken chairs, a ruined table, and most of the ornaments smashed), her anger awoke. Laras had broken conditioning and training, and he was in the process of destroying her property. This was not to be tolerated. Even if it had been caused by jealousy over her—
She stepped into the room, her power tingling at her fingertips.
“Laras!” she shouted— hervoice evidently penetrated the fog of rage that enveloped him, and he began to turn. When he saw that it was really her, he started to smile.
She ignored the smile. “You’ve been a very bad boy, Laras,” she said coldly. “I’m going to have to make sure you never do this again.”
As Laras winced, and his eyes darted frantically from one corner to the other, looking for a place to hide, she acted. Before she could change her mind, she called combat-fire and burned him to ashes where he stood.
She was merciful. He didn’t even have time to scream.
Now, too late to stop the fight, other slaves came running; they arrived at the door just in time to see her punish Laras for his presumption, and most of them shrank back from her as she leveled an angry gaze at them. No one made the mistake of trying to run; that would be tantamount to a confession of guilt. And a suicidal move, given the temper she was in now.
“Who allowed this to happen?” she snarled, knowing very well that no one was going to answer. She raked them all with her eyes, and had the satisfaction of seeing them blanch. There had been times when she had punished everyone for misdeeds, and not just the guilty party. She was tempted to do just that right now, and reinforce the lesson in obedience she had just delivered.
But—there was another witness. She dared not give in to her anger around Mero. Not when she was trying to impress him with her charm and gentleness.
“See that the room is clean and refurnished,” she ordered, knowing that everyone within hearing would leap to do just that. Her tempers were too unpredictable to take a chance with. “And see that everyone on the estate hears about this. I have no wish to see a repetition of this incident.”
She picked one servant at random and directed him to see to Mero. He scuttled to the halfblood’s side and helped him sit up. She stood by with a look of assumed concern while the slave checked Mero for injuries.
Fortunately for the halfblood, Laras had not even begun to punish him. All his hurts were superficial, and the slave helped him to his feet. Triana was a little gratified at his reaction of shock and nausea—it gave her a little thrill of power, but she didn’t want that particular reaction to last. She took his arm as soon as the slave released him, and reexerted the glamorie, striving to wind him back to his former state of bemused contentment. He must come to see this as her protecting him from a slave who was crazed, an irrational man who could not be reasoned with.
She didn’t even have to say anything; she just cooed over him and wove her magic, and before she returned him to his quarters for rest, he was as glassy-eyed as ever.
He was more than beglamored, she thought contentedly. He was half in love with her. This was going to work out very well—especially if she could figure out how to get rid of Valyn and the other two. Permanently, if possible. And soon.
Keman paced the hardwood floor of his enormous, luxurious room, and fretted. From time to time he glanced out the window, but the view of the ethereal lighted gardens gave him no answers.
Nothing was going right. Shana spent all her time in the library, and when she did come out, he got the feeling that she was hiding something from him. Valyn seemed to have lost all of his earlier fervor for the cause of humans and halfbloods, and acted as if he wasn’t quite sure where he belonged anymore. And Mero—Mero was totally changed. He paid no attention to Shana, he was no longer practicing combined magics, only elven ones, and Valyn had confessed that he wasn’t even confiding in his cousin anymore. And it was all the fault of that Triana—
She was trying to split them up, Keman thought desperately, kicking aside a footstool covered in emerald velvet. She was trying to make the group fall apart, and she was working on Mero as the weakest of the lot.
Keman had tried to wake him up; had tried to make him see what Triana was up to, but he had dismissed the dragon’s attempts at reason with a shrug. He wouldn’t even argue the point. He just ignored it.
Finally Keman had tried to distract Triana from her goal by making a play for her himself. I thought it would be easy , he recalled ruefully. After all, she had all those men — she should have been willing to go after anything that looked good, right? He’d thought that when Mero saw her casting him aside for a new conquest, his friend would see what the elven woman was really like. He had brought her presents, tried to engage her in conversation when she was plainly on her way to a meeting with Shadow, and did his level best to charm her. But all he really knew of mating were dragon-courtship ways.
He flushed at the memory of his clumsy attempts at seduction. The approaches a dragon considered subtle—a few presents, which were followed, if they were successful, by the direct question of “Do we mate in the air or on the ground?”—were pretty inept by elven standards. Triana laughed at me . He flushed again at the recollection of Triana’s reaction. She didn’t even say “no”—she’d just laughed at him.
It couldn’t have been his disguise—he’d chosen to appear as if he had full elven blood, and he had, in fact, modeled his disguise on several young elven lords thought particularly handsome. It had to have been his manner.
At least he’d amused her. He sighed. He hadn’t done anything but amuse her, though. And he hadn’t gotten his message across to Mero. Mero had laughed at him right along with Triana.
He had gone to Valyn then, but it hadn’t done a bit of good except to worry him more. Valyn was helpless where his cousin was concerned.
And Shana was angry. Very angry. He could tell by the way she avoided everyone and everything and kept herself locked away in the library. He surmised that Shadow had said or done something to her that made her angry, but he couldn’t imagine what it was.
And when he asked her what was wrong, she acted as if she didn’t care. Which left him unable to think of any solutions to what was obviously—at least, to him—a problem.
He looked up in startlement from his pacing, as someone walked through the door without even tapping on the frame, then closed it behind himself and stood in the shadows where the light from Keman’s single glow didn’t quite reach. There was no mistaking who it was, though. Keman was surprised to see that his visitor was Mero.
“Keman—have you got some time to spare?” the halfblood asked hesitantly, shifting his weight from foot to foot uncertainly as if he wasn’t sure he was welcome, and giving the dragon a slow, sheepish smile. “I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a mess.”
Keman looked from him to the door, Mero nodded, and turned to lock it behind himself. “That should be sufficient to keep us from being disturbed,” Mero told him. As he turned back, Keman finally noticed the bruises on his face, and instantly surmised from the way he was walking that there were more like them under his clothing.
What—Fire and Rain! Someone had been beating him!
“What happened to you?” the dragon blurted, frozen with shock. Mero limped over to him and looked around for somewhere to sit.
“One of Triana’s old harem decided he didn’t like being put away,” the young man said casually, and eased himself down into one of Keman’s armchairs. “He decided that if I wasn’t around anymore, Triana would come back to her old ways. The Lady disagreed with his approach—and he is even now being shoveled into a very small sack for disposal.”
The young man’s face and hands betrayed the casual tone of his words; his hands were shaking, his face was white, and his expression was set in a patently forced smile.
He looked up at Keman, who was slowly lowering himself into the chair opposite him, and his eyes were dark, and full of something Keman couldn’t read. Pain. And something else. “I never saw an elven lord actually kill someone before,” he said forlornly. “I’ve seen them hurt plenty of people, but I never saw one kill someone. And she did it the way you or I might squash a bug.”
Keman didn’t know quite what to say, so he waited for Shadow to continue. Finally the halfblood’s shoulders relaxed and he sighed as he sat back into the armchair.
“Elven lords—the fullbloods—they’re really funny that way. They can convince you that they’re feeling something when they’re not, but they can’t convince you they’re feeling something when they are .”
Keman tried to follow the logic of that sentence. “I don’t understand,” he replied, shaking his head in confusion.
“They can’t show their feelings; they’re trained out of it,” Mero replied, running his hand through his hair. “I should have known, I really should have known, that when Triana was acting like I was the only man in the universe she was faking it. Valyn, he’s that way, and I’ve lived with him all my life, so I should have known . The stronger an elven lord feels about something, the colder he gets on the outside.”
Suddenly that explained a great deal to Keman. “Shana’s the opposite—but she was raised by us,” he pointed out.
Mero smiled. “Doesn’t hide anything , does she? No, Valyn has been getting more and more like a statue, and that should have told me something. And it didn’t.”
Keman didn’t reply, just looked attentive.
“I doubt he meant it that way, but that fellow who tried to beat me into oblivion did me a good turn. He broke what I think was a half-formed glamorie on me, Keman. I’m sorry I’ve been such an idiot over Triana. Now I see what you were trying to tell me. Do you know, I actually had myself convinced that if I could somehow make myself into a really good imitation elven lord that she’d have me?”
Keman tilted his head to one side. “I had guessed something like that was going on. But I am not the one you should be apologizing to. You made Shana very angry with you, though I don’t know why. And Valyn is not happy either.”
Mero rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “I don’t know what Shana’s problem is, honestly. I’m not sure it has anything to do with Triana, or if it does, that’s only part of it.”
“I don’t always understand her either,” Keman replied ruefully, when Mero looked up at him.
Mero sighed. “I’ve been ignoring all of you, actually. Triana’s been taking me everywhere, as if I was a lover or a mate. We’ve hunted or ridden over every thumb-length of this estate, she did some magic tricks for me—she built a mountain and flew us both up to the top for a picnic.”
“I remember that. Afterwards she slept for two days,” Keman said absently. “I didn’t know elves had to sleep after doing magic.”
Mero wasn’t paying attention. “I thought that meant she loved me, so I started asking her to take me places she could only take one of the elven lords. And she did, she took me to a gladiator duel, and she took me to a Council meeting. I really thought she cared for me.” He hung his head. “I should have known. It was all a lie, a ploy. She’s just like all those women in the harem who try to eliminate each other to get positions as favorites. There isn’t one of them that really cares for another person, just what that person can do for her.”
“What does she want?” Keman asked reasonably. Mero looked up, startled.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “All that time with her, and I don’t know.”
“It must be something important for her to be taking so much time with you,” Keman pointed out. “And using a glamorie to get you, too—”
“Oh, that’s not a big thing.” Mero dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “I half think Valyn used a glamorie on me to get me to handfast to Shana. Elves do that sort of thing all the time.”
“I don’t know about that,” Keman said reluctantly. “I wouldn’t say that. There are lots of other things she could have done to you, you know, including ignoring you. If she wanted to control you, she could have substituted her collar for the one you’re wearing. She’s spent a lot of time and effort on this one spell, and it has to be because she wants something important from you, don’t you think?”
“That is the purpose of a glamorie,” Mero replied thoughtfully, looking past Keman to the darkening window. “But maybe you’re right. I know I had a kind of fight with Shana over it. She kept saying Triana was trying to get something from me, and I didn’t believe her.”
“Are you going to be able to keep your mind free now that you know?” Keman asked, dreading the answer. “If she wants something from you, she isn’t going to give up now.”
“I think I can,” Mero said, after a long moment of thought. “I really think I can. And if I can , then I can find out what it is she wants.”
“Is that such a good idea?” Keman asked doubtfully.
“I think I’m going to have to,” Mere said, with a grimace. He stood up. “Thanks, Keman. Thanks for not telling me to go lose myself.”
“That’s all right,” the dragon replied, surprised at the feeling of warmth Mero’s words kindled in him. “You needed somebody to listen, I think.”
“You’re the right person for that, Keman,” Mero said over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “We have a lot in common. Thanks.”
He was gone before Keman could say “you’re welcome,” but the pleasure those few words gave him stayed with the young dragon for a long time.