Elvenborn

pleased with herself. 'I can negate their collars; I've enough bits of iron to do that. We've done some experimenting, and all it takes is a thin sheet of it slipped in behind and around the lock and beryl, and you can pry the collar off without hurting the slave. I al­ways carry a few pieces with me now, just in case.'

'Hah!' Gel hit the table with his fist, greatly pleased. 'Good! You tell 'em that when we attack, if they scatter instead of fighting, we'll open up our lines at a particular point inside the forest to let 'em through, then swallow them up into the army.' Kyrtian immediately saw what Gel had in mind—they had a cadre of fighters that Gel trusted trained up now, who were ac­tually loyal to Kyrtian. So even if, say, Lord Kyndreth was watching via magic, all he would see was that the enemy gladi­ators scattered and nothing more. He also had a good idea what Gel was going to suggest next.

'Then,' he took over, 'Moth, you go to your rebels, and sug­gest that they break up and get out of the estates; take to the hills with small groups to avoid being captured, and start a guerrilla war.'

His aunt absorbed all this for a moment, then a smile broke out on her face. 'I see! I scare the youngsters, by telling them what I personally witnessed of the slaughter of their best troops, and convince them that they can't possibly hold out di­rectly. They abandon the estates, or at least the ones that still have older relatives among the Great Lords to claim them— which is half of what their fathers want. I can be 'rescued' and serve as their eyes and ears into what their fathers are up to— which gives you eyes and ears into what they're doing, so you can arrange things to your liking. You still have a war that you can fight in tiny skirmishes, without ever coming to a conclu­sion.' Her grin widened. 'I can even offer to hide the ringlead­ers and some of the rest on the property I hold now, and they can run their fight from there.'

Kyrtian gave her a little bow of respect. She should have been a general. 'Which means the Great Lords won't send me against the Wizards, at least, not for a while.' He considered the next move in the plan. 'We can delay things for a while, while I try and come up with a better solution.'

Lady Moth laughed mockingly. 'And my reward is to get my husband's estate back, which is no bad bribe for my complic­ity, boy.'

'There has to be something in this bargain for you, my Lady,' he demurred. She shook her head at him.

'I think this will work for a while, anyway,' Gel voiced his own opinion. 'I like it. And I've got no particular objection to patching together temporary solutions for the next two decades.'

Lady Moth stood up. 'Time for me to go. Boy, when you have the time, find an excuse to come to the estate —I've found some things in the library I think will interest you.'

She didn't waste time on farewells; Lady Moth was not one to waste time on anything, as Kyrtian recalled. A brief embrace for him, and a sketchy salute for Gel was all she gave, then she was out of the tent and back on her way to her waiting human escort.

Gel followed her out, to be sure she got back safely through the lines. While he was gone, Kyrtian folded the maps, tidied

the tent, and removed the bronze plaque from the teleson. He wanted to talk to Lady Lydiell about this while it was all still fresh in his mind. It was worth the chance of being 'overheard,' although given that this was a very odd hour to be talking to her, that was less likely this time.

Lydiell listened to his brief summary with her eyes alight. 'If this had been anyone other than Moth, I would have said it was too good to be true,' she said when he was finished. 'But it is Moth, and frankly, it's exactly the sort of thing I would expect out of her. Well—look what she's done on her own, discovering how to negate the collar-spells and get them off without hurting the slaves!'

'Useful bit of information, that,' Kyrtian murmured, think­ing out loud. 'It would have to be a human that did it, though; I wouldn't want to chance either poisoning by the metal or mag­ical backlash. Mother, how am I going to keep Lord Kyndreth from suspecting that something is up when all resistance sud­denly melts away?'

'By staging more of a rout at this next mock-battle than you're likely to get from the handful of former gladiators there,' she said instantly. 'You and I will create a Gate from here to there, and we'll send through all of our people that can fight. They'll pose as slaves of the Young Lords—they'll hold a line, then break and rout— straight back to the Gate and home. That will give you something to convince Kyndreth that you've won a conclusive victory.'

'A Gate? Can I do that?' he asked doubtfully. 'Am I strong enough?'

'Not by yourself—but remember what you discovered about combining magic from several people?' she countered. 'You have me and the others here; together we will have quite enough to create a Gate.'

He nodded, and began to feel more confident. 'Perhaps I should invite Lord Kyndreth to observe?'

'At a distance,' she answered. 'With the Council. There's an old viewing-teleson in the Council Chamber; they probably haven't used it since the disastrous debacle with Lord Dyran.'

'But if I choose where to put the teleson-sender, they'll see

what I want them to see.' This was coming out better and bet­ter. 'And with all of the Great Lords jostling about, they aren't going to notice the Gate—'

'They won't notice it anyway,' Lydiell said with confidence. 'It's very noisy, but they won't be expecting it and they'll be too far away. They'd have to know something like that was go­ing on.'

'Oh, I can cover it with some levin-bolts anyway,' Kyrtian decided. 'They'd be expecting something of the sort. Mother— I think this is going to work—'

'I never doubted that you would find a way,' she said serenely.

When they ended their conversation, and he had covered the teleson-screen again, he waited impatiently for Gel to return so that he could work out all the details of this addition to the plan.

For the first time since he had taken over the command of the Great Lords' army, he began to hope he could save, not only his own people, but everyone involved. Or at least, almost every­one. And that was so much more than he had ever thought he'd be able to do, that he felt as if he had just drunk an entire bottle of sparkling wine.

Now, let's hope all this doesn't prove to be as ephemeral as wine-joy!

18

The ears outside Lord Kyrtian's tent are a lot keener than he has any reason to guess, Keman thought with glee, as he heard Kyrtian concluding the second conversation of the day with Lady Lydiell. So, Elvenlord, why haven't you fig­ured out that you have dragons on your doorstep—literally?

Keman, Shana's foster-brother, was, of course, that dragon. So was his partner in this spying endeavor, although she came

from a Lair that had never known there were other dragons in the world until she met him. Dragons, with their ability to shapechange into virtually anything they chose, were uniquely suited to spying on the Elves, who could easily crack any dis­guise wrought with illusions. In spite of the fact that in his real form he was easily forty or fifty times the bulk of even the strongest and tallest male human (or Elf) he'd ever seen, the draconic gift of being