Elvenblood

concubine; they certainly were ill suited to her.

She sighed and turned away from the mirror. It didn't matter anyway. She didn't matter. She was nothing more than a display. The very best thing she could do tonight would be to stay seated somewhere where Lord Ardeyn (or any other would-be suitor) could admire her jewels, her gown, and the power they implied—power that any children she bore would be presumed to inherit. After all, Lorryn had inherited that power, hadn't he?

The maids waited for her to say something, either in praise or blame. She waved a heavy hand at them. 'My father will probably be very pleased with you,' she told them, unable to offer either on her own behalf. 'Myre, please stay; the rest of you may go.'

The maids curtsied, with relief evident on every face, and swiftly left the room, leaving only Rena's favorite slave, Myre, behind. The girl was not one of Lord Tylar's former concubines, one of the few who wasn't, and that alone would have endeared her to Rena. Myre had other virtues, however.

There was nothing particularly distinguishing about Myre; she was neither plain nor pretty, tall nor dwarfish, her hair and eyes were an ordinary enough brown. That was the outside, an exterior that Rena now knew was purely protective. That was because Myre was the only one of all her slaves who actually knew some of what was going on outside the walls of the estate, although she was very mysterious and elusive about her sources of information. What was the most important, though, was that she was willing to share that knowledge with her mistress. She had begun by calling that news 'tales' and 'stories,' but that particular pretense had been dropped a long time ago.

With the rest of the maids gone, Rena dropped her illusion (thin as it was) of satisfaction, then chuckled as Myre made a grimace of distaste.

'I know,' Rena said to the human. 'I know. Dreadful, isn't it?'

'You make me think of a sacrificial virgin from one of the old religions,' Myre replied, shaking her head, a sardonic smile on her lips. 'Some poor little slip of a thing, all weighed down with the gifts to the gods so that she sinks properly when they push her into the gods' well—brr!'

'Not so much important for herself, but as the bearer of the gifts, yes, I was thinking much the same.' Rena sat back down carefully. 'Is there any way you can make these things a little more balanced? I feel as if I might fall over at any moment.'

'I'll see,' Myre responded readily. 'You know, I think I might be able to 'lose' some of those horrid hair ornaments. I doubt Lord Tylar will bother to count them. I have never envied you, my lady, but tonight I am very glad that I do not stand in your place. The hair-sculpture must be horrible to wear, and the hair ornaments too heavy to think about.' She cocked her head to one side. 'Hmm. I believe I can rid you of about half of them and still keep the entire dreadful effect.'

'Oh, please,' Rena begged shamelessly. 'Lorryn made them; they'll go away by themselves in a day or two. And you can tell me news, if you have any.'

'Some.' The slave carefully removed one of the ornaments, dropped it, and kicked it behind the dressing table. 'I've heard that the wizards have found a new stronghold and are settling in it. That is, they've found a place where they can build a stronghold, and they've sent word so that escaping halfbloods can find them there. The dragons are actually building the stronghold for them, or so it is said. I suspect it's true.'

'They are?' Rena didn't care about the wizards—but that the dragons were still with them, helping them —'How can a dragon build, though? Wouldn't that be terribly hard to do, with claws and all?'

Myre laughed, and kicked another ornament into a new hiding place. 'I thought I'd told you that when I told you about the war! Dragons have magic too, besides the magic of calling lightning; they can shape rock to whatever form they like. It's as easy for them to mold rock as it is for a slave to mold clay into a pot.'

Rena saw her own pale green eyes widen as she stared into the mirror. 'No, you didn't tell me that—you didn't tell me they had magic. I mean, flying and calling lightning is wonderful enough, but magic of their own— they're like one of the great dursans from Evelon!'

Myre shrugged, as if it didn't matter much to her. 'Well, I suppose it's a magic that's logical, even necessary, for something that big to have, anyway. Think about it—if you have to live in a cave, wouldn't it be a good thing to have some way to make it more livable?'

The slave disposed of another pair of hair ornaments, then loosened the necklace somewhat as Rena nodded. 'I imagine you're right,' Rena responded. 'It's just that every new thing you tell me about them is more wonderful than the last! Oh, I would give anything to see one, even at a distance!'

The slave laughed dryly. 'The way things are going, you're likely to get your wish, since they don't seem disposed to hide themselves. They're likely to start flying over the estates someday! You really are attracted to them, though, aren't you?'

Rena just nodded. Lorryn, now—if he were here, she knew what he would be asking the girl about. The Elvenbane; he was as obsessed with the halfblood wizard-girl as Rena was with dragons. Never mind that it was forbidden to even mention the name of the Elvenbane to the slaves, and that if they were overheard, the fact he had done so would get Myre in serious trouble!

Not that Myre would ever get herself in jeopardy; she's too canny for that. She always made sure that there was no one to overhear any of these conversations. Still, Lorryn took risks she never would..

But Rena would rather hear about dragons, a safe enough topic even if there was someone to overhear.

'What's a dursan, anyway?' Myre asked, as she took a comb and carefully rearranged Rena's hair to disguise the fact that ornaments had been removed. 'And what's Evelon?'

'Evelon's where we came from,' the girl replied absently, her own thoughts caught up in a vivid image of a dragon sculpting a mountaintop into an image of itself. 'I don't remember it, of course, and neither does Lord Tylar, because we were born here, but all of the really old High Lords of the Council do—like Lord Ardeyn's uncle. It's supposed to have been a dangerous place, so dangerous we had to leave or die.'

'Dangerous?' Myre persisted, her eyes narrowing. 'How?'

Rena shrugged. 'Lorryn says it was all our own fault. Every House had at least a dozen feuds on the boil, and they didn't fight those feuds with armies of slaves or with gladiators because there aren't any slaves there, there aren't any humans. Houses train their children as assassins or have magic-duels, or create horrible monsters to turn against other Houses, only half the time those monsters get away and become dangerous to everyone. Some of the Houses got their emblems from the monsters they created. The dursans are something like a dragon, I suppose; they look like huge lizards, but they don't have wings, they'll eat anything in sight, and they breathe fire. They made dragons too—only the dragons flew away entirely. The dursans began to have magic, fascination magic, so the histories say, and that was one reason why they became more dangerous than before.

'Huh.' Myre smoothed Rena's hair, but she wore a closed, inward-turning expression. 'So was that why you all left this Evelon in the first place?'

'I suppose so. Mostly we left because we could.' Rena didn't blame her grandfather for leaving either, if Evelon was as terrible as Viridina had said it was. 'Lorryn thinks the Houses that left were probably the weakest, the ones with the least to lose by trying somewhere else. He says that's why there are so many lords here with very little magic.'

'Every once in a while your brother makes sense,' Myre replied sardonically. 'So the weak ones fled and left the field to the strong—who will probably destroy themselves and everything around them as they fight each other. I don't think I would care to live in Evelon either.'

'You sound like Lorryn now,' Rena observed, with a tiny laugh. 'That's the kind of thing he'd say.'

'As I said, every once in a while he makes sense.' Myre put down the comb and examined her handiwork. 'So I take it that's the reason why no High Lord will ever have a direct conflict with another, why it's all done through intrigue and battles with armies of slaves or gladiators?'

Rena nodded. 'It's not a law so much as an agreement—in fact, in the old days, when we were first building our estates, the High Lords would all join power so that everything was done quickly. Now, though—' it was her turn to grimace '—well, pigs will don court-gowns and play harps before someone like Lord Syndar would lend his power to help Lord Kylan. I hope that the dragons are better at working together than they are.'

'I've been told they are,' Myre offered. 'I've been told they lend their powers to each other, and that there are never any petty quarrels between them, that only betrayal of the worst kind can force them to become enemies. They say that where the dragons are, there has been peace for thousands of years. That's supposed to be why they helped the halfbloods; the wizards were just trying to live in hiding and it was the lords who attacked them to destroy them. I suppose the dragons must have felt sorry for the halfbloods, and disliked the lords who were trying