Elvenborn

Kyrtian knew what was coming, and this time decided to pre­empt the little speech about his duty to the legacy left to him by his father. 'My obnoxious cousin in particular is going to be very wnhappy as soon as you finish the project I'd like you to undertake, Lady-Mother,' he interrupted, tapping her hand playfully with his index finger. 'I want you to go hunt me out a couple of suitable females so I can make a selection for a bride. I'd likely only bungle the job; you, however, will manage it brilliantly.'

Lydiell stared at him with her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide and her eyebrows arched as high as they would go. 'Are you serious?' she demanded. 'Are you really ready to wed?'

She didn't say 'at last' but she didn't have to.

He shrugged. 'As ready as I am ever likely to be, and with all the unrest about, it would probably be better to get it over with before it becomes impossible for you to travel around to find me someone.'

Lydiell's expression assumed a faint cast of guilt. 'I swore to

your father I would never pressure you into marrying someone for whom you had no affection,' she began. 'And—'

'And you aren't going to now,' he replied firmly. 'I've just gotten over the expectation that the perfect woman will some­how drop out of the sky on gossamer wings, emerge nixielike from the river, or materialize spirit-wise out of the forest, and make me fall into passionate love with her. A girl who won't become a risk for us is far more important, and you're the best judge of that. So far as my own needs are concerned, someone I can tolerate over breakfast will do nicely. If we have some things in common so that we don't baffle or bore each other, better still.' He put his hand over his mother's as it rested on the table, and he felt it tremble. 'To my mind, it is far more impor­tant that she feel love and affection for you, my lady.'

'If you found a wife whom you loved but who didn't care for me, I could always retire to the Dowager-House,' she began bravely, but he shook his head.

'I know Grandmother loved the Dowager-House and retired there because she found too many memories in these halls, but that won't be the case for you. I couldn't care for anyone who drove you out of your own home, so I rely on you to find me someone sensible. I will be happy with safety, sense, and intel­ligence, in that order. Now,' he continued, seeing the light in her eyes and deciding to take advantage of the situation, 'Gel and I want to stage another holiday-battle, and we thought we'd have a siege of the Dowager-House instead of the usual woods-battle or field-melee. Do you think we could arrange that?'

As surely as if he had the human magic for reading thoughts, he knew she was engrossed in running over the various matri­monial possibilities in her mind, and that the moment he had said Gel's name, she dismissed the rest of the sentence as irrel­evant to the all-important task of matchmaking. 'Oh, certainly,' she said absently, allowing the servant to take away her soup and serve her a portion of baked eel, a dish she normally never touched. She ate it, too, taking dainty but rapid bites, all of her thoughts occupied with more important things than food.

He grinned to himself, and devoured his own portion without further comment, congratulating himself on his clever maneu-

ver. He'd gotten her approval of the siege—which she would belatedly remember, some time late tonight as she went over the dinner conversation in her mind. By that time it would be too late to retract the approval. And it hadn't cost him anything other than something he'd already made up his mind to do. Sat­isfaction gave him a hearty appetite, and he enjoyed every bite of his dinner.

Down below the balcony, the lawn stretched out in a plush, velvety slope for some distance before it flattened out and be­came the village green shared by all of the human servants who had earned cottages in the manor-village. Surrounded by lanterns suspended from stands plunged into the turf, it was brilliantly and festively illuminated. The green served as fair­grounds, dance-floor, and feast-table in fine weather, and it served the latter two purposes tonight. The warriors, victorious and defeated both, celebrated at long wooden tables that had been carried out from their barracks. Other servants and field-workers, their dinners long over, slowly came by groups of two and three to join the fun. Festive torches burned brightly at ei­ther end of each table, and a little band of musicians had set up at the far end and played raucous dancing-tunes that were un­like anything ever heard at an Elven celebration. Kyrtian rather liked human music, himself, and he knew his mother was amused by it—but to compare human to Elven music would be like comparing a noisy forest stream to an illuminated water-sculpture. They were both made of moving water, but with that all resemblance ended.

Gel and a dozen others had already finished their dinner and found themselves partners, and were dancing with great enthu­siasm and abandon, if not skill. From the rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes of the girls, none of the partners were inclined to complain if their toes got trodden on, occasionally. Kyrtian fin­ished his meal in silence, and settled back in his chair with a glass of wine, watching the swirl and chaos of the ever-increasing crowd of dancers.

'About your obnoxious cousin—' Lydiell murmured unex­pectedly, startling him.

'What about him?' Kyrtian replied, glancing at her. 'He

doesn't want to visit again, does he? I thought we'd managed to cure him of that after the last time.'

Lydiell winced. 'It almost cured me of wanting to stay here,' she said, shuddering. 'If I'd had to sit through one more eve­ning of youJroning in that flat voice—! You'd have made erotic poetry unbearably dull with that voice!'

Kyrtian grinned. 'I thought the monotone went with the sub­ject matter. You can thank Gel for that, by the way. I had no idea he knew so much about the tactical importance of camp supply and sanitation; by the time he was done filling my head with the information, I could have written a monograph on the subject.'

'Remind me to have him served a nice dish of live scorpi­ons,' she said, with a touch of exasperation. 'He might have taken care to recall that I was going to have to endure that eve­ning too! But, to go back to the subject—no, your cousin Ael-markin has no intention of visiting. Evidently, however, he does want to make up for trying to disinherit you.'

'Oh, really?' Kyrtian felt his eyebrows rising in an imitation of his mother's most sardonic expression. 'How fraternal of him. What, exactly, does he want?'

Lydiell's face gave no hint of her feelings. 'He wants you to visit. He's invited you to a—a gathering, of sorts. Lord Marthien and Lord Wyvarna are settling their dispute at his estate.'

Kyrtian was unpleasantly surprised. 'Two Great Lords are settling a feud and Aelmarkin wants me there? Whatever for?'

Lydiell shook her head. 'I don't know,' she replied, sound­ing honestly perplexed. 'Perhaps he has decided he should change his behavior, in the hope you'll forget his petition. Or forgive it, at least.'

Kyrtian made a sour face. 'Perhaps he just wants to show the Great Lords that I'm as crazed as my father. After all, I have the same obsession with the past that father did. He's probably hoping I'll start droning about Evelon history, or asking if any of them have ancient books in their libraries that I could have copied.'

'Darthenian wasn't crazed,' Lydiell said softly. 'And neither are you. It isn't madness to be concerned about the past—it's madness to try and pretend it never happened. Look at the situ-

ation the Great Lords have created—at war with their own sons! If they had remembered the past, and the feuds that sent us fleeing Evelon in the first place, they might have avoided this tragedy.'

'I sometimes wonder if it isn't a little mad to pursue the past so relentlessly,' Kyrtian replied, his mood suddenly shadowed. 'Why else would father have disappeared?'

Lydiell's cheeks flushed delicately with anger, but she did not give rein to it. 'Why else?' she asked, and answered the question herself, forcefully. 'A combination of dedication and bad luck—or, perhaps, the acquisition of a ruthless enemy. I don't know what Darthenian was hunting when he vanished, my love, for he kept it a secret even from me, but I do know that it was important and potentially very powerful. That made the secret a dangerous one, and that was why he kept it from me. It is possible that he met with an accident. It is also possible that someone besides me took him seriously—and wished to learn