But as she watched the slaves braiding and arranging her hair in the mirror, she was struck by how much she did resemble her mother. And an uncomfortable thought occurred to her. Had Lady Viridina always been the perfect elven lady? Or had she been forced to pretend that she was, until the last of her spirit faded, and the pretense became reality, the facade became fact?
Could that happen to me?
A very uncomfortable thought, that. Sheyrena turned away from it nastily. There was not and never had been a sign that Lady Viridina was anything but what she appeared to be. Sheyrena was not her mother. Viridina could never understand her.
If only I'd been born a boy… Another thought-path, this one worn by travel. If only she had been born a male, Lorryn's little brother instead of his sister They were nearly as close as brothers anyway, for despite custom to the contrary, because of his mother's obsessive need to oversee his welfare, Lorryn had spent plenty of time in the bower instead of being sequestered away with a series of male tutors. Viridina encouraged this, and even dropped her fanatic watchfulness whenever her son and daughter were together. He had shared plenty of lessons with Sheyrena as they grew. She had trailed along after him countless times, dressed in his castoffs, without anyone seeming to notice. Even now he smuggled her out in disguise as a male slave, sharing rides and hunts with her, whenever their father wasn't in residence. Discipline was relaxed whenever Lord Tylar was gone; there wasn't such a close watch kept, and Lorryn's age and status kept awkward questions from being asked.
She enjoyed the rides, although the inevitable conclusion of the hunts generally made her feel sick and she avoided the kill whenever possible. It was Lorryn who had told her most of what she knew about the real conclusion of what he called "the second Wizard War."
"Please close your eyes, my lady."
Sheyrena obeyed the request, and continued to follow her own thoughts. She assumed Lorryn picked up most of what he knew from the other el-Lords, the young heirs and younger sons that he saw socially. Most of what Lorryn had told her, she suspected, was not anything their elders would approve of her hearing. -Very little of it was flattering; Lorryn and his contemporaries did not have a high opinion of their elders' intelligence or ability.
She had the feeling that Lorryn secretly admired the now-deceased Valyn, Lord Dyran's heir, who had actually joined forces with the wizards, turning traitor to his own kind. Lorryn swore that he had done so to save his presumably halfblooded brother, Mere; though how he could know that, she hadn't a clue. He seemed obsessed with that part of the story, but as for her, she could not hear enough about the dragons.
Oh, the dragons…
The slaves were working on her face now, with tiny brushes and pots of cosmetic, trying to give her some semblance of a living person. That was going to be difficult to do; her hair was the palest white-gold imaginable, and her face completely without color in its natural state, her eyes so pale a green as to seem gray. Anything they did with cosmetics was doomed to look artificial. At the best, she would resemble a porcelain statue; at worst, a clown.
At the moment, she was inclined to hope for the clown.
Lorryn had also been the one to tell her about the Elvenbane, who summoned the dragons. Some of what he had told her she had also overheard when her father had made conversation with guests, but not that. Her father never even acknowledged that any such creature existed.
That wasn't particularly surprising. The Elvenbane was female and halfblood, and must represent everything Lord Tylar hated and feared.
But if I could choose anything other than a boy—I would choose to be her. Oh, how that would shock Lady Viridina! But that was what Sheyrena dreamed, in the secret dark of the deep night: that she was the Elvenbane. Powerful in her own right, bending the world to her will and her magic, riding across the sky on a dragon; that was the way to live!
If I was the Elvenbane, there would be no father to stop me, nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to. I could go anywhere, see anything, be anything that I wished!
She settled back into her daydreams as the slaves worked on her face, tiny brushes flicking across her cheeks, lips, and eyelids with the kiss of a thousand butterflies. She envisioned herself mounted on a huge scarlet dragon, soaring under a cloudless sky, so high above the forest that the trees blurred into a mossy carpet of green and there was no sign of walls or buildings. In her dreaming, the dragon carried her toward the mountains she had never seen, which rose to meet them, towering spires sparkling with fantastic crags of crystal and rose quartz, amethyst and—
A polite cough woke her out of her dream. Regretfully she opened her eyes and regarded the handiwork of the slaves in her mirror.
It was appalling. It was also the best they could do, and she knew it. Her eyes were washed out by the heavy peacock-blue they had painted on her lids; her cheeks had hectic red circles that looked as clownlike as she had imagined, and her rosy, pouting lips simply did not look as if they belonged on her face.
She dared not approve it, but she did not disapprove either. If Lord Tylar didn't like it, let him be the one to say so.
When she said nothing, the slaves went back to the final arrangement of her hair.
Left alone, it was her one beauty, but they were building it into an edifice that would match the dress, and as a result, it looked like a wig made of bleached horsehair. They had piled most of it on the top of her head in stiff curls, coils, and braids, leaving only a few tendrils, stiffened with dressing and trained into wirelike spirals, to trail artificially about her face. Now they were inserting all the bejeweled hair ornaments her father had dictated; heavy gold and emerald, of course.
If I had been dressing myself—I would have chosen the pale rose silk, with flowers and ribbons, pearls and white gold. Nothing like this. I would fade into the background, but at least I would not look like a clown.
By the time they were done, no one would ever recognize her. Which was just as well. She wouldn't want anyone to recognize her, looking like this.
It wouldn't have been so bad if only Lorryn could be with her. He'd have been able to make her laugh, he'd have helped her to keep her sense of humor about it all, and he would have kept anyone she actually disliked from getting too close. But Lorryn was subject to spells of terrible pain in his head—the one affliction that elves were subject to—and he had been overcome by one of those spells just this morning.
It's just as well. I wouldn't even want Lorryn to see me looking like this.
Lorryn lay on his bed, with one eye on the door, one eye on his hard-won book about an ancient and extinct tribe of humans called the Iron People, and one ear cocked for the sound of footsteps. He had carefully positioned himself so that he could drop the book to the floor and fling his arm over his eyes at the slightest sound or movement of the door to his bedroom. Fortunately, Lord Tylar was more likely to come striding into his son's chambers with a fanfare and an entourage than he was to try and catch Lorryn unawares.
He hated having to feign kryshein, a dreadful head pain accompanied by disorientation that had no counterpart in any human illness, and was supposedly brought on by overuse of magic. This deception meant he dared not leave his bedroom even after Lord Tylar left for the fete. He never had suffered from this particular affliction, though many elves did—it was considered to show either a great deal of ambition or the precocious onset of magical power in a child. Viridina had chosen to have him pretend to kryshein attacks long ago, precisely because such attacks were crippling, easy to counterfeit, and impossible to disprove. And because to be afflicted by kryshein implied that Lorryn was a powerful mage. Lord Tylar was predictably and perversely proud of the fact that his son suffered from the affliction.
He particularly hated having to feign yet another attack on this occasion. He had wanted to attend the fete—not because he was particularly looking forward to what was going to be a tedious evening at the very best, but because he had not wanted to leave poor little Rena to fend for herself. Lord Tylar would not be bothering himself about her whereabouts and welfare; he would be cultivating Lord Ardeyn's other supporters. Lorryn knew what happened at huge fetes like this one; they were too large to properly supervise, and things happened when people became intoxicated. Rena could find herself being teased or humiliated, made the butt of unpleasant or cruel jokes, or fending off the unwanted advances of half-drunk old reprobates or callow young hotheaded fools. The Ancestors knew he had made his share of drunken, unwanted advances when he was younger, before he learned his limits. No real harm would come to her, of course; there would be plenty of Lord Ardeyn's sober underlings on the watch for a male trying to carry off an unwilling or inexperienced elven maid. Before anything could really happen, one or more of them would move in, separate the gentleman from his quarry, and substitute a human slave-girl, before sending him on to his original destination in the garden or other secluded place. The virtue and presumed chastity of the elven maiden would remain intact. No one worries about what the slave-girls think about the situation. Poor things.
No, Rena would not be allowed to come to any physical harm, but she could be hurt or frightened, and he did not want to see either. She was so fragile, so vulnerable.
She'd be all right, even at a wilder affair than this, if she were just a little braver. Ancestors! I wish she'd grown a bit more spine sometimes! She acts as if she just might actually start to assert herself—then she just folds up and does what anyone tells her to do. She wouldn’t need me if she'd just learn to stand up for herself!
That was an uncharitable thought, and he felt ashamed of it immediately. After all, when would Rena ever learn to stand up for herself? That was absolutely the very last thing Lord Tylar wanted her to learn. A properly submissive daughter, well bred, well trained, meekly bowing to whatever her father wanted from her—that was what Lord Tylar wanted.
And that was what Lord Tylar was likely to get, too. Lady Viridina was already risking her very life for the sake of her son, and she had very little time or energy to spare to worry about her daughter…
A light tap at his door, two knocks, a pause, then three more, made him drop the book and slide off the bed even as Viridina opened the door a crack and slid inside. She was gowned and coiffed for the fete in silver silk and diamonds; she could have been a living statue of crystal, carved by the hand of a master.
"I cannot stay," she said in a low, urgent voice. "I only came to tell you that I overheard Tylar on the teleson and the guess you made was right."
"So the High Lords have set a trap for any halfbloods among the youngsters attending this fete." He felt his blood run cold at the nearness of his escape. "I wondered, when Tylar gave all those orders about Rena. He could have made her look any way he wished with subtle illusions—unless there was going to be some reason why he dared not."
His mother nodded solemnly. "There is to be an entire gauntlet of illusion-banishing spells in place, cast by the most powerful members of the Council, through which every guest must pass. There is a rumor now that it was Valyn, and not his slave Mero, who was the halfblood."
"As if they couldn't believe that a fullblood would revolt against a mad sadist like Dyran." Lorryn's lip curled with contempt.
But Viridina shook her head. "No. It is just the old men, being afraid, pretending that it was not revolt, but the inherent evil and instability of a halfblood. But now, having decided that there was one halfblood among the young lords and el-Lords, there may be more. They are afraid, and acting out of fear."
Lorryn coughed. "They might be afraid, but they are right," he reminded her with gentle irony. "There is at least one halfblood among them."
Viridina swiftly crossed the space between them and placed a finger on his lips before he could say more. "There are ears everywhere," she whispered warningly.
"Not here," he replied, with a certainty she could not share—could not, for she was only elven. He was halfblood, and had the magics of both his mother and true father—and his true father had taught him how to use the latter, before Viridina had freed him and sent him away to join the outlaw humans that had escaped their lives of slavery. There was not a single mind in this manor he could not read if he wished—and he knew there was no one listening to them.
"I must go soon," she said then, bestowing a faint smile on him. "I only came to tell you that you were right. And we must walk even more carefully from this moment on. I still do not know how you guessed."
He made no reply to that, only bent to kiss her hand; she turned it and laid it against his cheek for a moment in affection.
He stood up again and began to pace. "When Tylar asked me to help create Rena's ornaments with my magic, I first suspected a trap. Why go to all the effort of making real, solid creations when simple illusions would be just as effective and a great deal easier to wear?"
She nodded, slowly, the crystals woven into her hair sparkling with the movement.
His nerves were not going to be eased by pacing, but at least it gave him some release for his energy. "When I learned from you that Tylar had ordered you to lend Rena some of your maids to enhance her looks with paint and powder, the suspicion deepened into certainty. That was when I knew."
"I see!" she exclaimed. "An illusion laid over her features would have been much more effective—and much more flattering than anything those poor clumsy creatures can do with cosmetics. How clever of you to know that!"
He shrugged. "Not clever, simply observant. So I went out of my way to create impossibly ornate jewelry for Rena, of heavy gold filigree and emeralds; not only necklace and rings, but an elaborate belt that reached to the floor, bracelets, and hair ornaments." His constructions would last for three or even four weeks, and exerting himself gave him every excuse to have an attack of kryshein as a consequence. Tylar would be able to brag about his son's prowess as a mage, while offering the reason for his absence, and since the trap was supposed to be secret, no one would guess the real reason why he was not at the fete. Only Rena would suffer for this, and only a little.
That did not make him happy—but he had a great deal more to worry about than Rena's welfare. It was beginning to look as if his own secret was in jeopardy.