Elvenborn

Shana hadn't seen Kelyan and Haldor in ages—and she would have been hard-pressed to recognize them now. Rena had been right to take action; perhaps the change in the two 'young' Elvenlords had been so gradual that it had passed relatively unnoticed by the people who saw them every day, but to Shana's eyes the change was something of a shock. Elvenlords were rarely 'robust' by human or halfblood stan­dards, but Kelyan and Haldor were wraith-thin, bones showing through skin gone quite translucent. Their silver-gilt hair was lank and brittle, and they bruised badly and easily. The dragons had brought them to the Citadel in a stupor induced by Mero; after waking them only enough to stuff them full of food and drink and clean them up after their journey, Shana had put them back to sleep again.

Two elven captives summarily dumped on their doorstep— one more problem to try and fix.

This time she was at a loss; this was not her area of expertise! If it hadn't been for Lorryn coming in and volunteering to find a group to help her with them, she wouldn't have known where to start.

Now Shana and the group of young wizards Lorryn had called together stared down at their pair of captives as they slept in a magic-induced fog, illuminated by a pair of mage-lights. And it wasn't just wizards that Lorryn had asked for help, ei­ther; the group included some of the strongest of the human mages that Shana had ever met as well.

I wouldn 't have thought of that—stupid of me. Humans are the ones with the magic that works on thoughts. There were several of them now, living among the Wizards, drawn down out of the hills by the promise of a place where they could live without fear of being captured by elven- led slave-hunting ex­peditions. They stayed because Caellach had been very quiet ever since he had been defeated in the war of words with Shana. She was not altogether certain just how long he would remain quiet, but for now she was going to take the gift and not worry about him.

One of these human magicians was a middle-aged man called Narshy, whose ability to create illusions within the minds of those who were not adept at the Iron Peoples' mind-wall technique was nothing short of boggling. It was he, evidently, that Lorryn had first thought of when Mero had first suggested that the Wizards take over where Mero and Rena had been forced to leave off. Narshy could sometimes even get past the mind-wall—and because of that, Shana considered it a good thing he was on their side.

It made Shana wonder—before she dismissed the idea, ap­palled that she'd even considered it—if Narshy could be used to manipulate Caellach Gwain. A base and immoral idea—but oh, so tempting! It had taken a distinct effort of will to put the idea firmly aside.

It was just a good thing that Caellach regarded the full hu-

mans with so much disdain, though. She wouldn't have put it past him to use the weapon that she discarded as immoral.

For that matter, was it immoral to be tinkering with the minds of the two Elvenlords?

Probably. But they were already mad. We 'd either have to kill them or fix them in such a way that they can't either betray us or the Iron People. She was caught between two equally dis­tasteful solutions—but had no real choice, since Mero and Rena had already meddled with the situation past mending.

Both Elvenlords lay on pallets in the middle of a small, dis­used room, with their human and halfblooded —'physicians'— clustered around them. 'Well, it shouldn't be too difficult for ten or twenty of us together to concoct whatever memories of being held you want us to,' Narshy told Shana with such supreme self-confidence that Shana felt a kind of grudging ad­miration. Whether he was right or wrong here, it would be nice to be able to feel, just once, that same sort of self-confidence. 'With that many of us working at once, we can just—engrave the new memories in place within a few days. So, where do you want these two to have been held?'

'Umm—' she hadn't thought that far, to tell the truth, but if she admitted that, would she lose authority in their eyes? They were all looking at her as if they expected her to present them with everything they needed, ready to go. 'What about the old Citadel?' she suggested, unable to think of anything more clever on such non-existent notice. 'That way we won't have to make anything up—wouldn't real memories be better than ones we concocted?'

'But the Elvenlords know about the old Citadel,' someone protested. 'Wouldn't they have found these two?'

Before Shana could answer that, someone else did it for her, with glee in their voice. 'No! Because we can use our memo­ries of the old Citadel, but we don't have to have them think that the place they were kept was the old Citadel. If we don't leave these two where the old Citadel actually is, whoever finds them will think that their prison was somewhere near where they were found! Let the Elvenlords think that there's another hidden Citadel somewhere.'

'What about the forest on the edge of Lord Cheynar's es­tate?' Lorryn suggested, from the rear of the group. 'It's got a bad reputation anyway. Ancestors only know what's in there; plenty of hunters have gone in and never come out again. Chey-nar won't even send his own men in there after escaped slaves anymore.'

'That's true enough,' Shana said thoughtfully. 'I remember that Mero told me about some spooky sort of invisible thing that got his horse in there and nearly got him, when he and Va-lyn were escaping.' She couldn't help it; she caught herself smiling grimly. There were plenty of things in those hills that were more than a match for Elvenlords.

'Good enough,' Narshy said, taking the decision as made. 'That's what we'll do—the lot of you that lived in the old Citadel, let's pry some of those memories out of your skulls and get them shared around so we can stuff these two full of them.'

Shana was pleased and amazed at the way he managed to take control of the little group and herd them off to a corner where they could work undisturbed. With a sense of relief that was quite palpable, she realized that this time, for once, some­one else was going to take care of a problem.

Unbelievable. 'Where did you find him?' she asked Lorryn. 'He acts as if he's been in charge of people, mages even, before this—'

'He has been—that's why I asked him to take charge of this group of yours,' Lorryn replied, then suddenly looked anxious. 'You don't mind—I hope—here I've gone and usurped your au­thority and now so has Narshy. Please tell me you aren't upset!'

'Mind? I should think not!' She shook her head and smiled, tiredly. 'I don't know how you just do this, find the right people and get them to take over this or that job—I can't seem to find the right way to get people to think for themselves—or find the ones that can take the initiative on their own.' She bit her lip as the all-too-familiar frustration arose.

'Maybe it's because you can't believe that you don't have to do everything,' Lorryn said gently. 'That's all I do; I find the people who are good at something, I ask them to do the job—