Elvenborn

Kyrtian sat wearily on his horse beneath the broiling sun, and waited for his scout to come report to him. Ahead of him—somewhere—were the retreating forces of the Young Lords. They were far enough ahead of his troops that there wasn't even the tell-tale sign of a dust-cloud on the horizon.

It was uncanny, it was indeed. The moment, the very moment that the Council agreed—reluctantly—to put him in charge of their forces, someone must have alerted the rebels. And that same someone must have told them that in Lord Kyrtian they were going to face a trained commander and trained troops. Be­cause he never even got a chance to face an army in the field, only a few skirmishers meant to delay him while the army itself retreated.

That was what his scouts were out looking for now—skir­mishers, traps, false trails. And, just possibly, signs that the Young Lords had chosen a place to make a stand. But he didn't really expect that, not for some time yet. They were too far from areas they held secure, nor was the ground particularly good for turning at bay.

Meanwhile—

The scout—one of his own people—came running up; the man stopped at his stirrup and saluted.

'Report,' Kyrtian commanded.

'My lord—all's clear, and the others have marked out a se­cure campsite,' the man said crisply. 'No sign of the enemy, other than the marks of retreat.'

'Very good.' Kyrtian saluted in dismissal, and the scout trot­ted off to return to his own group. He looked over at Gel, who was also mounted, and waiting just beside him.

'Well?' he asked.

Gel barked a laugh. 'It's making your reputation easily enough,' he said. 'But I wouldn't count on it to last.'

'I'm not.' He sighed. 'Let's get them moving. If we camp early enough, I can drill them some more.'

'Good plan.' Gel wheeled his horse away and headed to­wards the main body of the army, paused for a rest, to relay Kyrtian's orders. Kyrtian stared at the horizon—and wondered when the inevitable blow was going to fall.

Rennati sighed, brushed her hair back over her shoulders, and bent to look out of the window in her sleeping-alcove, craning her neck to see as much of the view below her as possible. Since Lord Kyrtian had left—and she did not know why, only that their servants said that he had gone—there had been noth­ing to report to Lady Triana, and nothing whatsoever had hap­pened here in the harem. No more visitors had come, and nothing had been told to the concubines. Rennati had assidu­ously practiced her dancing, but one couldn't fill every hour of the day with dancing. It had been her one passion, but now she had all the leisure she could ever have dreamed of to practice and perfect her art, and she realized that without an audience to appreciate what she did, simply practicing and perfecting no longer was enough for her.

The other two concubines were happily occupied with the contents of several chests that Lady Lydiell had thoughtfully sent up. Somehow she had known that the last batch of dress­making materials was exhausted, and she had supplied a true horde of precious things—swaths of silks, satins, and velvets, yards of trim, buckets of glittering glass, shell and stone beads, gold and silver and silken embroidery threads, and everything the heart could desire for the making of dresses and ornaments. A thoughtful gift that had rather surprised Rennati, actually; nothing in her life would have led her to expect any such atten­tions from the chatelaine and mother of a young lord. And if Rennati had been just a little more like the other two slaves of Lord Kyrtian's harem, she would have been right down there

beside Gianna and Kara, planning dresses, sewing, and making delicate little amulet-necklaces with the wealth of beads.

She had done some of that, but like her dancing, there was only so much puttering with trinkets that she could do before she lost interest. Concubines were supposed to be obsessed with clothing and self-ornamentation; Rennati liked clothing well enough, and she enjoyed looking pretty, but she had al­ways felt frustrated and confined by life in the harem, though she had taken very great care never to show it. The alternative to the harem was the life of a field- or house-slave, and they were not treated nearly as well as the concubines.

The view from her window, though restricted, was more in­teresting than anything inside the harem. At least there was something going on out there, something different from the in­terior of the harem tower. Weather changed, slaves walked past, birds flew by. And she was, frankly, putting off reporting to Lady Triana. The Lady had been increasingly impatient with Rennati's lack of information and, the last time, had threatened to revoke her bargain unless Rennati had more to report the next time she called.

At last, with a grimace, she decided that she couldn't put it off any longer. She picked up the little box of personal jewelry, and dug the teleson-ring out from its hiding-place among her tiny treasures. Carefully she put it on, spoke the few words that activated it, and stared into the dark green murk of the beryl, waiting for a voice to call to her thinly across the vast distance between this manor and Lady Triana's.

'Well. So this is where the disturbance has been coming from.'

Rennati started, and looked up, for the voice did not come from the ring, nor was it Lady Triana's.

Lady Lydiell stood in the doorway, and in her shock, Rennati could only stare at her dumbly. Elven ladies never entered the harem, much less came into the concubines' private quarters! She had feared discovery by Gianna or Kara, or perhaps even Lord Kyrtian himself, but never, ever by his mother!

The lady was not dressed in the same fashion that she had

been when Rennati first met with her; in fact, she looked very little like the sheltered Lady of the manor that Rennati knew her to be. With her long, silver hair bound into a severe knot at the nape of her neck, no cosmetics on her face, and no jewels— wearing a soft brown divided skirt and matching long-sleeved tunic—only her air of authority betrayed her rank.

Her eyes were quiet, unreadable pools of murky green, ex­actly like the beryl in Rennati's ring; her face as expressionless as a statue.

Lady Lydiell calmly took the few steps needed to cross the distance between the doorway and Rennati, and held out her hand.

'Whomever you have been reporting to won't answer you, child,' the Lady said, with no sign of anger or any other emo­tion that Rennati could detect. 'I've taken care of that. You might as well give that teleson-ring to me.'

Numbly, Rennati took the ring off and handed it to her—then automatically dropped to her knees beside the couch she had been seated on, and bowed her head, clasping her hands behind her back, waiting for the Lady to punish her.

Her vivid imagination painted a dozen pictures for her of what to expect in the next few moments, as her heart beat so rapidly she had trouble breathing, and she shivered with fear. Her mouth dried, her throat closed, and she felt as if she was about to faint. She would be punished, of course. She had be­trayed her Master—at the behest of another Elvenlord, true, but that was no excuse. No slave could betray her master and be caught, and expect to escape without punishment. At the least, she would be sent out into the fields. At the worst—

'What on earth are you doing, child?' Lady Lydiell asked, in an astonished voice, which turned exasperated as Rennati re­mained where she was. 'Oh, for—get up little fool! I'm not go­ing to hurt you! And look at me!'