Elvenblood

concoct a false and very clouded memory for Fa—Lord Tylar's benefit, of the midwife-slave substituting me for a stillborn child. You know, don't you, that he left her alone on the estate for the birth? She'll let him hear that under a coercive trance, let him hear the midwife supposedly using her wizard-powers to make her forget; then she'll 'go mad with grief as soon as he wakes her and confronts her with it.' It was a thin enough story, but Lady Viridina had never, ever been suspected of so much as an improper thought by her husband, and with the three Council members there, he would be forced to take it at face value. 'The Council Lords will insist she be placed in protective isolation, of course, but that won't be so bad.'

It would be better than death, anyway. And perhaps it would be better than being subject to her husband's every irrational whim and cruel trick.

But Rena shuddered. 'That means being confined to her bower, with slaves watching her day and night,' she replied. 'I would go mad. But I suppose it's better than—'

Better than the alternative. 'The Council will believe it,' he told her, this time quite firm in his conviction. 'Ever since the Elvenbane appeared, they've been seeing halfbloods under their beds, and behind anything that goes wrong. I'm sure they'll find a way to 'prove' that this switched-at-birth nonsense is how Dyran ended up with a halfblood as his own heir without ever being aware of the fact.'

'Oh,' Rena said, looking a bit less dubious. 'I'd forgotten about that. Actually, they'll probably want to believe it, and when they get done with him, so will Father.'

'Very likely,' he agreed. 'And Mother is clever enough to carry it all off.' He sniffed. 'It's just a good thing they don’t have the wizard-powers to read thoughts.'

'I hope they never get themselves some kind of tame halfblood then,' Rena replied, soberly. 'And oh, I hope Mother will be all right—'

'At least you won't have to marry Gildor-the-idiot!' he said quickly, and got a wan smile in answer.

'Yes—' She got spattered by a shower of drops from a branch above her, wiped them away, and got back a little more color and a real smile. 'And before you ask, believe me, life eating leaves in a howling wilderness is much, much preferable to that!'

Chapter 6

KALAMADEA AND KEMAN simply stood where they were, like a pair of perfectly ordinary halfbloods, and not a pair of extraordinary, shape-shifting dragons. What was wrong with them?

:Do something!: Shana thought furiously at Kalamadea. :Shift! Fight them!: He should already have been flinging himself into the sky!

Kalamadea did nothing except to look at her. :Lashana, these people are not afraid of magic, and they are all carrying very sharp spears. Spears which, may I point out to you, will penetrate dragon- hide. I think shifting would be a very bad idea, just at the moment; they could certainly use those spears. Can you think of anything else constructive?:

Try as she might, she couldn't. Even a dragon needed a storm to call lightning down out of the sky, and the weather wasn't obliging with one. Perhaps the dragons could use their powers with rock to rum the ground soft beneath their captors' feet, but an agile warrior could certainly leap free before he was trapped.

And as for flinging himself into the sky—well, even a dragon needed time to shift. These warriors would certainly react before then.

It looked as if giving up was their only option. At least the warriors had not retaliated for the magical attacks the two wizards had made.

She stood up slowly, and held her empty hands over her head in what she hoped was a universally accepted gesture of surrender. Mero and the two dragons followed her example.

It must have been the right thing to do, since the warriors relaxed, just a trifle, although they did not lower their guard or their spearpoints. They all stood staring at one another for several moments.

Their captors were a striking people; this close, it was quite obvious that the dark skin was natural and not a dye or cosmetic. Their armor was of extremely fine make; beautifully finished with first-rate craftsmanship. Beneath the armor corselets, they all wore loose trousers of light, brightly colored fabric, and half-boots of felt.

Shana wondered how she and her group looked to them.

Finally one of the warriors said something to Shana directly, very slowly, in a complex and musical tongue. It sounded from the inflection as if it was a question. She glanced over at Kalamadea, who shrugged. 'It isn't a language I understand,' he said softly.

She turned to the warrior who had spoken and made a cautious gesture of apology. 'Sorry, I'm afraid we don't speak your language.'

The warrior muttered something, his tone conveying his frustration, and after a brief conference with his fellows, gestured with his spearpoint, nodding at the wagons below. That was clear enough. He wanted them to go down to the wagons, presumably without making any more trouble.

:I think we'd better do as he wants, Shana,: Mero said uncomfortably. :We might get a chance to explain ourselves later.:

Since there didn't seem to be any choice in the matter, Shana nodded, then turned and headed down the slope of the ridge in the direction he'd indicated, leaving her gear on the ground where she'd left it. After a moment, the others followed. She glanced behind, briefly, and saw that two of the warriors had snatched up the discarded gear and slung it across the backs of their bulls before mounting up again.

All of the warriors took to their bulls before following the prisoners: Shana didn't think it would be a good idea to try and test the agility of the cattle by trying to escape. Cattle weren't horses, but she'd already seen how agile these beasts were, and over a short distance there was no way a human would outrun one.

Curious eyes followed them down the slope of the ridge, although no one stopped to question any of the warriors who'd captured them. The dark people had a very simple solution for the keeping of prisoners, it seemed. The warriors took them directly to a particular wagon; the driver stopped it briefly while someone produced a set of iron collars and chains from within, and they were all chained by the neck to the back of the wagon itself. That was all there was to it, but it proved to be very effective. The collars were too well made to break, the locks too intricate for either Shana or Mero to pick, and both of them discovered to their complete astonishment that elven magics would not work on the collars at all. They could still speak mind to mind, thank goodness, but at least as far as Shana and Mero were concerned, the collars themselves were impervious to tampering.

The oxen kept up a slow pace, but it was a very steady one; they simply never stopped. That, too, was an effective means of keeping them from causing trouble. It wasn't hard to keep up with the wagon, but that was all one could do. Even when Shana and her group had been scouting, they'd taken frequent breaks; she and Mero were not used to this. Kalamadea and Keman didn't have much problem with the steady walking, but Mero and Shana were tired and footsore by the end of the day, when the nomads finally made camp.

If circumstances had been otherwise, Shana would have admired the efficiency of the nomads' arrangements. The wagons were pulled into a formation of several concentric circles, and the wheels staked down. The oxen were unhitched, and taken to the common herd. Fire pits were carved out of the sod and cleared out down to the bare earth, and that was all there was to it. This was all done with the ease of something that was more than habit, it was custom. Once camp was set up, people could get about with doing their chores: fetching water, starting fires, cooking, the lot.

As it was, Shana was too busy sitting in the grass and rubbing her sore feet and calves to offer much in the way of admiration. I hope someone remembers us and brings us food and water, she thought forlornly. Not that she and Mero couldn't both fetch for themselves—or at least, she hoped they could. It would be pretty rotten if all of the magic they knew was no longer working. But she wasn't certain she wanted these people to know everything the four of them could do—not yet, anyway.

Sunset was approximately an hour or so away, and it was pretty clear that no one was going to even approach the prisoners without permission from some authority. People would glance at them covertly, but without wasting time to gawk, and without interrupting whatever chore they were engaged in. Shana began to wonder if she and her group were going to be left all night, chained like dogs to the tail of the wagon. But it seemed that their original captors were not yet done with them; six of the warriors appeared from between two of the wagons, finally, and marched purposefully toward them. All four of them got to their feet warily as the six surrounded their prisoners, just as warily.

So at least they think we might be dangerous. I wish I knew if that was good for us, or bad.