Elvenborn

years of working at her own jewelry-forge. Rena wouldn't have dared to try; she'd have come up with blisters on the tips of every finger.

The finished cakes, paper-thin and tasty, were tossed into a basket to wait. Breakfast was always cakes, milk, a little cheese or meat, and whatever fruit could be found. There were bram­bles out here, and the berries were just coming ripe. Rena her­self had gathered some yesterday, after cheating a bit by softening the thorns with her magic so that they wouldn't stick her while she gathered the fruit.

Just as they finished the last of the batter, they heard the voices of the two men: Diric's a low, cheerful rumble like the wheels of a heavy cart on a bumpy road, Mero's a clear tenor.

'—I haven't any idea where this 'Lord Kyrtian' came from,' Mero was saying as they came around the side of the round

tent. 'There certainly wasn't any Elvenlord commander by that name when I had any regular contact with the Elvenlords.'

By that Rena realized that Mero had been catching the Iron Priest up on what he'd been told last night when Shana had fi­nally been able to reach him with her thoughts.

'But this can mean very little to us,' Diric objected, then paused to bend and give his wife a morning-kiss by way of a greeting. He was a tall, round-faced human, heavily muscled— not surprising, given that he was the chief Priest of a religion that centered around the forge. Rena was no good at judging the ages of humans, but Mero said he guessed that both Diric and Kala were probably in their fifties. 'Kala, my rock-dove, the young one tells me that the Demons have a new War-Captain in their battle with their own rebellious youth. This one seems to have rather more sense than the last, and is making progress in his campaign to bring them to heel. Mero is concerned that this could mean trouble for us.'

'This can have very little to do with us,' Kala agreed com­placently. 'Except, perhaps, good. Let them concentrate on each other and forget that we are here.'

'But that's just what won't happen if this Kyrtian is success­ful, don't you see?' Mero objected, as Rena nodded vigorously.

But the gray-haired Iron Priest only shook his head. 'Time enough to be concerned if it happens,' he responded with a shrug. 'My people will be more fretful that their forges are dark than that some war among Demons has possibly taken another turn.'

Mero bit his lip and looked to Rena for help, but she couldn't offer him any. Diric was right; the Iron People hadn't had to en­gage the Elvenlords in combat for generations, and legends were unlikely to arouse any anxiety in their hearts at this point. But the lack of iron for their forges was a problem, and a cur­ rent, even urgent one.

It was a concern for the Wizards, as well—the Young Lords' Rebellion had been grounded on the foundation of the iron jew­elry that the Iron People had made and the Wizards had distrib­uted. Wearing this jewelry, the rebels—not just younger sons, but the abused and reviled Lesser Lords with very little magic,

who often were treated as badly as any human slave—were protected from the Great Lords' magic. For the first time, they were able to act without fear of levin-bolt and paralyzing pain, and act they had.

But that had used up the scant store of raw iron, and the Iron People were grumbling about the lack of material to work with and wondering if their sacrifice to help save the Wizards by giv­ing the Great Lords a new threat to worry about had been worth it. So far, the only bits of iron that the dragons had been able to find had been coaxed out of the ground and dropped as raw lumps between the territory claimed by the Wizards and the strongholds of the Elves. They formed a barrier of protection, difficult to find and disruptive far out of proportion to their small size, and the Wizards were very reluctant to remove them, however badly the Iron People wanted them.

The plain fact was that the Iron People were not going to make any more of their jewelry for the Wizards unless and un­til the Wizards came up with more iron. And the supply of jew­elry to sneak in among the rebels had long ago run out. How much more disruption could be accomplished if simple iron torques could be sent in among the human slaves? Those iron bands could negate the magic that controlled the slaves through their collars—with them, escapes could be successful, and even the takeover of an entire estate. Without them—nothing would change. If this Lord Kyrtian managed to conquer the Young Lords by power of arms alone, the Wizards would desperately need another diversion to keep the Elvenlords occupied, and the human slaves could only look forward to more abuse, more repression.

Diric ate his breakfast with a placid face, oblivious to the concerns of his guests. 'The Trader-people are to come, also, at last,' he offered, between bites. 'One of the new Corn People told me that they were following no more than a few days be­hind, with burdens of trade-goods. I am eager to see them, and I think the rest will be also.'

Rena smiled, despite her concerns. 'I have no doubt,' she replied, thinking of the excitement that each new boatload of Traders caused among the Wizards.

'They are good people,' Mero offered. 'You won't be sorry that you decided to open full trade with them.'

'So you said in council, though there are still those of my folk who think we should simply take them as slaves and have them and their goods.' The gleam in Diric's eye reminded Rena that the Iron People were quite used to the idea of having other humans as slaves. There weren't many slaves among the tents, mostly ton People who had been sold by their parents or who had sold themselves to repay debts, but they did exist. Mero had been rather taken aback when he discovered their existence.

'And I pointed out then, as I will repeat, that it will be far more profitable to trade honorably. If you take them and their goods,' Mero reminded the Iron Priest shrewdly, 'you will only have a few slaves and the goods they carried. No more will come to you. But if you trade—more will pour into your camp, and you will likely be able to barter what is common to you for what is worth a great deal to you.'

'Eh, now, did I say that I did not feel the same way?' Diric asked, ingenuously, pretending that he had never even enter­tained the notion, although both Rena and Mero knew how hard they had argued to sway him to their way of thinking. This would be one more hold on the Iron People, one more reason for them to stay here instead of looking for another spot to set­tle. Right now, with a growing number of voices calling for an­other move to some place that might have more to offer than just water and grazing, the Traders could provide what Mero and Rena needed until somehow, somewhere, they could come up with a source for the all-important iron.

The Traders arrived riding on—of all improbable things— pack-grels. These incredibly ugly animals, long- legged, long-necked, with bulging eyes and blubbery lips, served the trading-caravans into the desert commanded by the Elvenlords, but Mero had hardly expected that the Trader-clans would have any. Up until this point, he had thought that they traveled exclu­sively afoot or on water.

The Iron People were just as surprised, and even more ex­cited to see a half-dozen of the creatures they themselves had

once depended on. In the oldest chronicles, the Iron People had even been referred to as the 'grel-riders.' It was only when they had been driven south that they had lost the grels, which had not survived the arduous journey and the new pests that the cat­tle had shrugged off.

The grels were less enthused to see these new dark-skinned humans—they had no long tradition of association, and they shied and bellowed at the unfamiliar dark faces, much to the Iron People's disappointment.

'I'm sorry, but they aren't very bright, and they think any­thing they don't recognize is going to eat them,' the grel-handler kept saying, over and over, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar syllables of the Iron Peoples' tongue. Eventually, when the beasts refused to cooperate, the curious got over their disappointment and settled down to serious trading.

Each side laid out the goods that they had brought. The Iron People offered hides, dried meat, baskets,