Leida looked into the eyes of the mage. Perilous eyes sometimes, strange eyes at best, she'd never looked there without feeling a quickening of her breath and the excited leap of her heart. Dangerous, warned the little chill running down her spine.
'Dalamar, there is a quiet place I know…'
A quiet place in the attic, in the little room where the linen was kept. In her own small chamber, perhaps. Or his. Dalamar leaned close to taste the rain on her neck. Eflid forbade any union between the servants in Lord Ralan's hall. He would have no alliances forged, no distractions created. He would lift the minds and hearts from us all if he could, Dalamar thought, and have a small army of automatons.
His lips still on the soft flesh of Leida's neck, Dalamar smiled. She felt it and came into his arms, lifting her face for his kiss.
His kiss was not like fire, as she had often imagined. It was like sudden lightning. The blood in her leaped, and her pulse drummed. 'Come to my room,' she said, her words felt against his lips rather than heard. She took his hands and stepped away, holding them, pulling him, laughing. 'Come with me…'
Outside, the morning's rain still dripped from the eaves, gurgling in gutters and along the channels it cut for itself beside stone paths. Leida laughed again, bright against the gray day.
The shadow fell upon her like a thin grim cloak. Eflid's hand closed hard on her shoulder, and his voice hissed like a snake's in her ear. 'Go where, eh? Slut-'
Leida cried out in fear, perhaps in pain. Swift, Dalamar grabbed the steward's wrist. Before he could think yea or nay, he broke Eflid's grip with one sharp twist. Loathing like poison flared in the steward's eyes. He pulled back, trying to free himself. He failed. Color drained from his cheeks. Rage and fear warred in him.
'Let go,' he snarled. Dalamar did not. 'Boy, I mean it.' His voice shook, but only a little, and only he and Dalamar knew it. 'You'd better let go-'
Outside, lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled then suddenly roared. In the garden something white moved through the mist, like a ghost on the rain-running paths. Leida gasped, slipping behind Dalamar into the dark safety of the kitchen. Her footfalls sounded in the darkness, swift as she ran past the deep hearth, the long tables, and the shelves of pots and pans. Gone, she did not look back, and no one looked after her.
On a second flash of lightning the ghostly figure in the garden became a man, a cleric running ahead of the storm, the hem of his white robe hitched high out of the mud. Splashing and slipping, he dashed for the kitchen.
Dalamar loosed his grip on Eflid's wrist. 'Your master has a guest, Lord Eflid,' he said, mocking the man with the title he did not own. 'You'd best tend him, eh?'
'Aye, and I'll attend to you later, boy.'
'Do you think so?' Dalamar nodded once, an ironic bow. 'Well, you may try, as ever you do.'
The cleric came into the kitchen, the storm on his heels, thunder at his back. Dalamar moved aside, barely hearing the man's reply when Eflid hustled him inside, fawning and bowing, assuring him that a fire would be made for him, wine brought. 'Lord Ralan will be pleased to see you, my Lord Tellin. Come with me. Yes, right through here into the study.'
Dalamar looked up at the sky, the lightning cutting through the clouds and the rain pouring down, then he turned and left the kitchen. He had countered Eflid's threat with a threat, and he thought he could smell the docks and the fishers' nets.
Idiot, he thought. He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robes, clenching fists he wanted no one to see. Neither did anyone see the rage on his face as he went through the kitchen, the dining hall, and along the corridor to the servants' wing and his own tiny chamber. Had any looked into his eyes, though, he would have found rage there. Rage as cold as winter's rage, fury like a storm over Icewall Bay. Idiot! To risk a comfortable enough position for the sake of a girl he'd have enjoyed once, perhaps twice, then never bothered with again. He deserved what fate he'd earned, the reek of fish at the docks, the endless mending of nets, the constant slap and groan of the river outside whatever poor hut he would be given as home.
Firelight glowed on rich polished oak, making Lord Ralan's desk seem to be crafted of gold. It warmed the mahogany of chairs to deep red, and the crystal carafe looked as if it had been cut from one whole ruby, so deeply did the fire's light shine in the wine. Outside, the world hung gray, pouring with rain beneath a sky the color of lead. Inside, ah, inside the study of Lord Ralan, things were far more pleasant.
Lord Tellin Windglimmer had been standing awhile, unattended in Ralan's study, but the wait was not an unpleasant one. Warm by the fire, he passed the time looking around at the high ceiling of his host's study and the tapestries on the walls, each depicting a scene from Silvanesti history.
Upon the grandest of those hangings Silvanos was shown, a king in his kingdom. He stood in the midst of a circle of towers, each tower representing one of the Houses of the people. In that tapestry even an elf child could read the history of his people and know how in ancient days Silvanos gathered together all the tribes of elf-kind and imposed upon them an order, a structure of Houses that survived even to this day. The head of each house, the Householder, became a member of the Silvanos Council, the Sinthal-Elish, and from them the king and all kings who followed sought advice when he wanted it or endured it when his council insisted he hear it.
First, the ancient king anointed House Silvanos, which people now knew as House Royal. He then ordained House Cleric, among whom lived the priests, temple-keepers, and those who maintained the records of the nation. The defenders of Silvanesti were men and women of House Protector. In his wisdom, Silvanos had gathered to himself magic-users, and he created for them House Mystic, giving to them the charge of training mages. He said to them, and they swore to him, that the magic of red Lunitari, which existed for its own sake, and that of Nuitari, which existed in darkness, would be forbidden. No other magic would be done in the kingdom but that of Solinari- white magic, the magic of Good. It had ever been so, and what shoots from that mystic branch that had tried to grow toward the magic of Lunitari's neutrality or Nuitari's darkness were ruthlessly pruned. They were taken to the Temple of E'li, accused and judged in the dread Ceremony of Darkness, then cast out from the kingdom and the company of their kindred to survive as best they might among the outlanders, humans and dwarves and minotaurs. The exiles were named dark elves, for they had fallen from the light. They did not have a long history of survival, those dark elves, for there were few Silvanesti who did not view life among outlanders as life among madmen in lands of chaos. When they died, they most often died by their own hands.
Great Silvanos also created other castes: House Metalline for the miners; House Advocate, where tradition was kept and law was made; House Mason of the stone-wrights; House Gardener, whose folk grew the food that fed a kingdom; and House Woodshaper, whose folk had the magic of wild spirits sparkling gently in their blood. One other house the king made, and that was House Servitor. This creation of his did not turn out to be what he'd hoped, for he had first called to him the elves of the Elderwild, that strange clan of hunters and explorers who seemed, perversely, to thrive in the hinterlands away from others of their kind. Silvanos, seeing no worth in their wild ways, sought to fit them into his caste structure as servants. The leader of that clan, Kaganos the Pathfinder, defied the king's will and took his people out from Silvanesti Forest. He would not condemn them to serve in the halls of others when he could lead them to a place where they could live free as hunters and practitioners of their own strange kind of wild magic. And so, Silvanos, who would not constrain those who wished to leave, no matter how mad-minded their choice seemed to him, created House Servitor from all those left un-housed, those whose menial jobs and skills fit nowhere else.
Every elf child knew this. Tellin had known it from the cradle, for his was a family of record-keepers, and history ran in his veins as blood.
'Good day, my Lord Tellin-good, if you like rain.' Lord Ralan came into the study, flushed, a little harried, or perhaps, Tellin thought, somewhat impatient. 'Forgive me for keeping you waiting. A matter having to do with a servant.'
'Please, do not apologize,' Tellin murmured. 'I have been enjoying the wait.'
Ralan nodded to the tapestry. 'My mother's family had it for generations. She brought it to her marriage, and it is said that this is an accurate depiction of Silvanos, for it was made only decades after his death by one who actually knew him.' He smiled, the quiet contented expression of one who is certain of his truths.
'It is lovely,' Tellin said, though he did not think the tapestry had so grand a history as Ralan or his family imagined. He said no such thing to his host, however. Instead he murmured, 'But I wonder why we don't see the Tower of the Stars there, only the towers representing the various Houses.'
Ralan pursed his lips and frowned, thinking. History was no favorite study of his. 'I think my father once said
