Elvenbane

favorite. She went anywhere with him that she could, provided she was not specifically forbidden to accompany him. Rowenie had never left the harem; Rowenie had never lifted a finger for herself, much less waited on her Lord.

So Serina followed Dyran everywhere, and waited on him with her own hands. Not adoringly, no...invisibly. So that he never noticed who was serving him unless he looked straight at her. Which he had done in the first few months of her ascendancy, and been surprised to find her there, with the goblet, the plate, the pen and tablet. And never did he see her looking back at him with anything other than a challenging stare: Dispute my right to be here, if you dare! Yes, he had been surprised. Then amused at her audacity, at her cleverness. Now he depended on her, on her ability to anticipate his needs, something he'd evidently never had before.

That she could surprise an elven lord was a continual source of self-satisfaction for her. A lord like Dyran had seen nearly everything in his long span, and to be able to provide him with the novelty of surprise would make her the more valuable in his eyes. Or so she hoped.

And I have ample cause for pride, she thought, gliding in his wake, taken for granted as his shadow. If nothing else, this self-appointed servitude was far more entertaining than staying in the harem, trying to while away the time with jewels and dresses and the little intrigues of the secondary concubines.

Today Dyran's errand took him to a part of the manor she'd never visited before; outside, in fact, to a barnlike outbuilding with whitewashed walls, a single door, and no windows, just the ubiquitous skylights. She hesitated for a moment on the threshold; blinked at the unaccustomed raw sunlight in her eyes; felt it like a kind of pressure against her fair skin, and wondered faintly how the field-workers ever stood it. She had been outside perhaps a handful of times in her life...when she was taken from her parents and the training building and barracks and moved to the facility for training concubines, again when she became a concubine and was taken to the manor itself...and most of those times she had been hurried along in a mob of others, with no time to look around. She found herself shrinking inside herself at the openness of it all. And the sky...she hadn't seen open sky since she was a child. There was just...so much of it. So far away...no walls to hold it in...

She fought down panic, a hollow feeling of fear as she gazed up, and up, and up...

She closed her eyes for a moment to steady herself, then hurried after Dyran. She wasn't certain how much more of this she was going to be able to bear...

But they were back under a roof soon enough. She paused behind Dyran as he waited for a moment in the entry. She welcomed the sight of the familiar beams and skylight...the gentle, milky light...feeling faint with relief. So much so, that she did not notice, at first, what it was that Dyran had come to inspect, not until Dyran cleared the doorway and she got a clear view of the room beyond.

Children? Why would he need to see children?

There were at least a hundred children of both sexes, mostly aged about six or thereabouts. All of them wore the standard short tunic and baggy pants of unbleached cloth, the garb of unassigned slaves, the same clothing Serina had worn until she was taken to be trained at age ten. The elven overseer had ordered them in ragged lines of ten, and they stood quite still, in a silence unusual for children of that age. Some looked bewildered; some still showed traces of tears on their chubby cheeks, some simply looked resigned. But all were unnaturally, eerily silent, and stood without fidgeting.

'My lord.' The elven overseer, garbed in livery and helm, with a face so carefully controlled that it could have been carved from granite, actually saluted. 'The trainees.'

The trainees? Now Serina was very puzzled. What on earth was he talking about?

'Have you tested them?' Dyran asked absently, walking slowly towards the group of children, who one and all fixed their enormous eyes on him with varying expressions of fear. 'It wouldn't do to send Lord Edres less than the very best.'

Lord Edres? What did he have to do with children?

'Yes, my lord,' the overseer replied, never moving from his pose of attention. 'Reactions, strength, speed, they're the top of their age-group. They should make fine fighters.'

Now Serina understood, and understood the references to Lord Edres. Dyran's ally and father-by-marriage trained the finest of duelists, gladiators, and guards; Dyran had begun a stepped-up breeding program with his fighters as soon as the ink on the marriage contract was dry; no doubt part of the bride-price was to be paid in slaves for training. These children were evidently the result of that program.

'I believe they're ready for you, my lord, if you're satisfied with them.' Now the overseer stepped back several paces as he spoke, as if to take himself out of range of something.

'Yes, I think they'll do.' Dyran raised his hands, shaking back his sleeves...and she felt a moment of unfocused fear, as if something deep inside her knew what was going to happen next, and was terrified.

Dyran clapped his hands together and Serina was blinded by a momentary flash of light, overwhelming and painful...when her eyes cleared, the children stood there still, but all signs of fear or unhappiness were gone. Each wore a dreamy, contented smile; each looked eagerly from Dyran to the overseer and back, as if waiting for an order to obey...

A tiny fragment of memory: standing in line with the other ten-year-old girls. Lord Dyran, in brilliant scarlet, raised his hands. A flash of light. And...Serina shook her head, and the tiny memory- fragment vanished, as if it had never been.

'Exactly what are these going to be trained for?' Dyran was asking the overseer. The other removed his helm, and Serina recognized him; Keloc by name, and one of the few of Dyran's subordinates he actually trusted.

'Half of them are going straight into infantry training; line soldiers, my lord,' Keloc said, shaking back his hair. 'A quarter's going into bodyguard training, the rest are for duelists. Lord Edres wanted about a dozen for assassins, but I told him we had nothing suitable.'

'Rightly,' Dyran replied with a frown. 'I'm a better mage than he is, but that doesn't rule out the chance of him allying with someone who's as good as I am and breaking my geas. It would be a sad state of affairs to find assassins with my brand on them making collops of my best human servants.'

'Exactly so, my lord,' the overseer replied. 'Did you sense any resistance? I didn't specify an exact number to Lord Edres, only a round figure. I weeded out what I could, but I'm not the mage you are.'

Dyran looked out over the sea of rapt young faces. 'No,' he said, finally. 'No, I don't think so. These should do very well. Excellent work, Keloc. You're getting better results with these than with the horses.'

The overseer smiled a little. 'It's easier to breed humans, my lord. So long as you keep an eye on them, damage during breeding is minimal, and they're always in season. And you've always had good stock, my lord.'

Dyran chuckled, with satisfied pride. 'I like to think so. Carry on, Keloc.'

The overseer clapped his helm back on and saluted. 'Very well, my lord.'

Alara was disappointed, though not by the clarity of the woman's memories. It wasn't going to be possible to pose as either a bodyguard or a concubine, she decided. That was really too bad; either position would have been ideal for gathering more information than the Kin' had access to at the moment. At least one thing was explained: It looked as if the elven lords encouraged rivalry among their humans, while maintaining control over them with spells...or at least, that was what happened with the humans they allowed close to them. So they kept the humans at odds with each other, while looking to their lord with complete loyalty.

He had spoken of a geas; Alara wondered what it was they really did, how it was set Was it just to keep the humans from being disloyal to their lord? Or was it more complicated than that? The father and mother kept saying that 'everything comes from the Lord.' She wondered if that was part of it too?

But it couldn't be foolproof; Dyran had said something about 'resistance.' Which had to mean the geas could be fought, or even broken, by the human himself...

She wondered if one of the Kin could break it, too...

Well, even if they couldn't get into the ranks of the fighters, Alara could at least see one of the duels through the woman's memory.

It could be very enlightening.

Serina drifted on clouds of light, too overcome with lassitude to wonder at anything. A few moments later, she found herself standing behind Dyran, in her place behind his seat in the arena. He was not alone.