Elvenborn

burners cut their timber selec­tively and replanted where they cut, she didn't care. Her con­cern was for the iron to trade with and the land it came out of, not for how the iron was produced.

It was the number of people at work here that surprised her—and their ages. She had sent Zed and his would-be miners off with the young dragon who'd found this place, and there hadn't been a single one of them much over the age of twenty—nor were any of them particularly muscular. But down there in the pit were men that could have been labor-slaves for an Elvenlord—

'What do you think of my crew?' called Zed, as he waved at her from across the pit. The miners looked up, glanced from him to Shana, and grinned broadly. Fire and Rain! They looked like labor-slaves and were scarred like gladiators!

Not a familiar face among them. ...

'I think they're very impressive,' she called back, as she and her guide made their way around the edge of the pit. 'But what I'd really like to know,' she continued, as she came closer and didn't have to shout, 'is where they came from—'

Zed laughed. 'They're slaves—ex-slaves actually. The same ex-slaves that old Caellach drove away from the New Citadel by treating them as slaves rather than our fellow-creatures.'

'But...' She wrinkled her brow, puzzled. 'They're working just as hard—harder—than they would have if they'd stayed at the Citadel.'

'But I'm not treating them as slaves,' Zed pointed out. 'I don't expect them to work here for the sheer gratitude of serv­ing a wizard and getting nothing more generous than food and shelter. They each get a fair share of the iron we smelt; they can trade it back to me for whatever we Wizards have that they want, or for what I've gotten from the Traders or the Iron Peo­ple. That way the actual iron stays in our control, but they get a fair wage for their work.' He raised an eyebrow. 'We're great believers in wages here.'

She shook her head in admiration. 'Zed, that's brilliant! Are they settled here? Do they want to stay? Can they build a village or something?' It would be wonderful to have these strong folk nearby—there was so much they needed simple laborers for, and Shana didn't in the least object to bartering for work done.

'They want to know whether Caellach is likely to poke his nose in here first, before they actually build a settlement,' Zed replied with a grimace.

Shana glanced down, and saw that all work had stopped, while the former slaves all listened for her reply.

She was not at all loath to give it, pitching her voice so that the workers could hear it as well as Zed.

'Caellach Gwain is about as likely to appear here as I am to be welcomed into the ranks of the Elvenlords,' she said, with a touch of acidic humor. 'He's gotten so bad about having the tiniest bit of iron near him that we've taken to wearing the false-gold pendants when we aren't working magic. Lorryn calls them 'Caellach-chasers.''

Zed's guffaw drowned anything from the workers, but Shana saw plenty of grins as they bent back to their work.

'I think you can count on a settlement going up here, then,' Zed replied. 'There's enough iron ore here to keep the smelter going for years and years, and more than enough work for everyone. Whoever isn't mining, smelting or hauling can be put to work on the replanting and restoration of played-out areas.'

'I was afraid, after I saw that first load of ingots, that I was pushing you too hard over here,' she said in tones aimed only for his ears, once he stopped speaking. 'I'm glad to see that I was mistaken.'

Zed patted her shoulder. 'Anything but,' he replied. 'Ah— would you like to see the smelter? Or not—'

'Not,' she said firmly. 'I'm no Caellach, but this much iron kind of makes the inside of my head itch.'

Zed shrugged. 'Doesn't bother me as much, but then I've never had as much of the elven magic as you do. Here, I'll show you where we want to put a settlement instead. I think you'll be surprised.'

He turned away from the smelter and headed into the woods. Shana followed him, glad to get out of the hot sun, away from the smelter and under the tree-shadows.

'How did the Iron People react to our first delivery?' Zed asked, with acute—and thoroughly understandable— interest.

'By throwing a festival, or so Mero tells me,' she was happy to tell him. 'I'm afraid that the Traders are a bit disappointed, though.'

'The Traders can learn to live with their disappointment,' Zed said smugly. 'Now we can start doing more to protect ourselves—and we can send out the jewelry again.'

'That can't happen too soon for me,' Shana said fervently. 'It's not just the Young Lords who need it, though the more jewelry we can get into their hands, the more disruption they'll make with the Great Lords. No, I want to get pieces to the Ladies, and I especially want to get it into the hands of the slaves.'

Want was too mild a word; ever since she had last heard from

Keman and Dora, she was positively wild to get the jewelry moving out into the Elven lands again. If they could get Lord Kyrtian on their side—

The jewelry might put Lord Kyrtian on their side. If he had a way to protect his own people from Elven magic, to protect his lands from the magical attacks of other Elvenlords, there was no doubt in Shana's mind that Lord Kyrtian's own intensely loyal fighters would be more than a match for any physical force that the Great Lords could bring against him. It was only attack—magical attack—that he needed to fear.

And treachery. There was that. And the Great Lords were past masters at treachery.

'You think it might nullify the collars?' Zed asked with in­terest, 'Remember, if we can't do that, we might as well not give the stuff to them.'

'I think I know how.' Eagerly she outlined her idea, which had come to her just that morning. 'If we make a sort of clamshell device that closes over the beryl in the collar, back and front—' she mimed the idea with her hands '—something that will lock in place, tight, even if we can't get the collar off, we keep commands from getting to the elf-stones and the stone from actually doing anything to the wearer.'

Zed considered the idea. 'Interesting. It doesn't help some­one like a concubine, who might have a collar studded with beryls, but a common worker won't have more than one. So un­less the Lords start replacing all the collars on all their slaves, which would be expensive, even for them, we could free whole groups at a time!'

Shana grinned with glee. 'That was my idea—the clamshells wouldn't be big, and it wouldn't be hard to distribute them. For instance, we could smuggle a whole bagful out to the workers in a field, the slave taking the water-bucket around could pass them out, and the whole group could bolt at once.'

Or the shells could be passed around an army, at night, un­der cover of darkness. And when the morning comes, and coer­cion no longer works on the fighters and they are safe from magical attack, how many of them will remain to fight for their masters?

'Tricky,' Zed said with admiration. 'It's too bad that collars are usually metal, not leather; we could incorporate cutters into the edges of the clamshell, and nullify the beryl and remove the collar all in one go. Well, this is where the camp is, and where the men would like to put in a permanent settlement.'

There wasn't much there at the moment, and it was a good thing that not only was it high summer but there had been re­markably good weather, for the shelters were barely enough to keep off the rain. Shana could see how it would make a perfect spot for a settlement, however, and she made all the right sounds of enthusiasm for Zed and his people. There was no doubt in her mind that she and Lorryn had made the right deci­sion in putting Zed in charge of mining, smelter, and crews to man both operations, although she would not have pictured him as a leader. And Caellach Gwain had, of course, argued against the mere thought of putting someone as young as Zed in charge of anything.

She completed her inspection—if that was not too official a word for merely looking the situation over—in