"Once again, my Lady, you surprise and delight me." Lord Vandrien sat up enough to give her the full bow of respect. "I am in your debt for such reasoned observations."
"Thank you." She lowered her gaze modestly.
"Still, the Wizards ... the question is, whether it is possible that they could pose a threat to us, simply by existing and serving as a temptation to the slaves to revolt." Kyndreth raised an eyebrow. "After all, our own offspring did."
"And slaves would have no difficulty with the notion of— of—living like wild humans." Arentiellan nodded. "Still, I don't know—"
"If you disbanded the army, there is a question of what Lord Kyrtian would do with himself," Triana suggested gently.
"If you ask me, he ought to be on the Council!" Arentiellan said immediately—but Triana saw Lord Kyndreth exchange a pointed glance with one of the others. She strove to catch his eye, and nodded slightly.
Lord Kyndreth looked surprised, then speculative, then returned her nod.
She leaned back into her couch, secure in the certainty that her message had been read and understood.
When the last honeyed grape had been eaten, and the last pleasantry exchanged, the Great Lords took their leave of their hostess, one by one. Lord Kyndreth sent his son and the concubine back through the Portal and made as if to follow, but found a sudden excuse to remain until all of the others had left but himself. Triana had accompanied them to the Portal herself to bid them a polite farewell, and now found herself, as she had hoped, alone with the Great Lord.
"So, my lady," Kyndreth said, when the last haze of energy had died from the Portal mouth. "You seem to have some notions about Lord Kyrtian."
"You are coming to the point with unaccustomed abruptness, if I may say so, Lord Kyndreth," Triana demurred.
"I am—somewhat concerned about Lord Kyrtian," the Great Lord replied, shifting his weight restlessly from his left foot to his right. "I may have awakened sleeping ambition in him, and if now he finds no outlet for it, he may be—distressed."
"He may use his new-won reputation within the Council to the disadvantage of others," Triana retorted, coming to the point just as directly as Lord Kyndreth had. "The strategies of war and politics are not unalike. On the other hand—"
"Yes?" Kyndreth prompted.
"His energies could be turned elsewhere, by someone who is clever enough to devise a channel for them." She looked up at him from beneath her long lashes, and smiled.
"And what would this distraction cost me, if I may ask, my lady?" Kyndreth was wasting no time; it occurred to Triana that he might be more worried about Kyrtian's ambitions than she had thought.
She decided to risk all on a single throw of the dice. "The Council Seat once held by my father."
His mouth pursed, but he didn't look as if he particularly objected to the notion. "It could be done ... there have been females on the Council before now."
But he hadn't committed to the bargain either. "The same
clever person who found one outlet for his energies could turn them back to a more—unfortunate—direction, if bargains made are not kept."
Now he smiled, wryly. "You have a way with words, my lady. The bargain will be kept—and I believe that you will find our young Commander at the estate of his Aunt, the Lady Morthena."
She smiled radiantly at him. "Thank you, my lord. That is all I need."
He gave her a full court bow. "And all I require, as well." He stepped towards the Portal, which began to glow with energy in response to his proximity. Then he paused on the threshold, to look back over his shoulder at her. "Good hunting, my Lady," he said.
"And to you, my lord—" she replied. And he was gone.
23
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Shana hadn't seen Kelyan and Haldor in ages—and she would have been hard-pressed to recognize them now. Rena had been right to take action; perhaps the change in the two "young" Elvenlords had been so gradual that it had passed relatively unnoticed by the people who saw them every day, but to Shana's eyes the change was something of a shock. Elvenlords were rarely "robust" by human or halfblood standards, but Kelyan and Haldor were wraith-thin, bones showing through skin gone quite translucent. Their silver-gilt hair was lank and brittle, and they bruised badly and easily. The dragons had brought them to the Citadel in a stupor induced by Mero; after waking them only enough to stuff them full of food and drink and clean them up after their journey, Shana had put them back to sleep again.
Two elven captives summarily dumped on their doorstep— one more problem to try and fix.
This time she was at a loss; this was not her area of expertise! If it hadn't been for Lorryn coming in and volunteering to find a group to help her with them, she wouldn't have known where to start.
Now Shana and the group of young wizards Lorryn had called together stared down at their pair of captives as they slept in a magic-induced fog, illuminated by a pair of mage-lights. And it wasn't just wizards that Lorryn had asked for help, either; the group included some of the strongest of the human mages that Shana had ever met as well.
I wouldn 't have thought of that—stupid of me. Humans are the ones with the magic that works on thoughts. There were several of them now, living among the Wizards, drawn down out of the hills by the promise of a place where they could live without fear of being captured by elven-led slave-hunting expeditions. They stayed because Caellach had been very quiet ever since he had been defeated in the war of words with Shana. She was not altogether certain just how long he would remain quiet, but for now she was going to take the gift and not worry about him.
One of these human magicians was a middle-aged man called Narshy, whose ability to create illusions within the minds of those who were not adept at the Iron Peoples' mind-wall technique was nothing short of boggling. It was he, evidently, that Lorryn had first thought of when Mero had first suggested that the Wizards take over where Mero and Rena had been forced to leave off. Narshy could sometimes even get past the mind-wall—and because of that, Shana considered it a good thing he was on their side.
It made Shana wonder—before she dismissed the idea, appalled that she'd even considered it—if Narshy could be used to manipulate Caellach Gwain. A base and immoral idea—but oh, so tempting! It had taken a distinct effort of will to put the idea firmly aside.
It was just a good thing that Caellach regarded the full hu-
mans with so much disdain, though. She wouldn't have put it past him to use the weapon that she discarded as immoral.
For that matter, was it immoral to be tinkering with the minds of the two Elvenlords?
Probably. But they were already mad. We 'd either have to kill them or fix them in such a way that they can't either betray us or the Iron People. She was caught between two equally distasteful solutions—but had no real choice, since Mero and Rena had already meddled with the situation past mending.
Both Elvenlords lay on pallets in the middle of a small, disused room, with their human and halfblooded—"physicians"— clustered around them. "Well, it shouldn't be too difficult for ten or twenty of us together to concoct whatever memories of being held you want us to," Narshy told Shana with such supreme self-confidence that Shana felt a kind of grudging admiration. Whether he was right or wrong here, it would be nice to be able to feel, just once, that same sort of self-confidence. "With that many of us working at once, we can just—engrave the new memories in place within a few days. So, where do you want these two to have been held?"
"Umm—" she hadn't thought that far, to tell the truth, but if she admitted that, would she lose authority in their eyes? They were all looking at her as if they expected her to present them with everything they needed, ready to go. "What about the old Citadel?" she suggested, unable to think of anything more clever on such non-existent notice. "That way we won't have to make anything up—wouldn't real memories be better than ones we concocted?"
"But the Elvenlords know about the old Citadel," someone protested. "Wouldn't they have found these two?"
Before Shana could answer that, someone else did it for her, with glee in their voice. "No! Because we can use our memories of the old Citadel, but we don't have to have them think that the place they were kept was the old Citadel. If we don't leave these two where the old Citadel actually is, whoever finds them will think that their prison was somewhere near where they were found! Let the Elvenlords think that there's another hidden Citadel somewhere."
"What about the forest on the edge of Lord Cheynar's estate?" Lorryn suggested, from the rear of the group. "It's got a bad reputation anyway. Ancestors only know what's in there; plenty of hunters have gone in and never come out again. Chey-nar won't even send his own men in there after escaped slaves anymore."