Elvenbane

'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!'

Chapter 18

KEMAN STOPPED IN the middle of the road, with a chilly spring breeze whipping his mane and tail, and raised his head suddenly at the unexpected trill of melody in his mind.

Magic...an elven lord? Here? It 'sounded' like someone he knew...

Then he realized why it 'felt' so familiar. The last person on earth he expected. Fire and Rain, it's Shana! She's alive! She's all right!

Now Keman knew what was meant by the two-legger expression, 'It made the hair on the back of my neck crawl'...if that was the right expression. Did hair crawl? Feeling Shana's magic at close range for the first time in months did something like that to him. The hair of his mane actually stood upright, and he raised his tail a little as he cast about for direction.

It's her! he thought, first stunned, then incredulous, then overwhelmed by an avalanche of simple joy. It's her! I found her! I found her!

And it was Shana's magic; there was no doubt of that. But it was much, much stronger than it had been when she'd been driven out of the Lair. Stronger, and more controlled as well; be read that in the complexity and implicit power of the melody, and the general feeling that it was effortless. The change in