Elvenbane (9 page)

He had spoken of a geas; Alara wondered what it was they really did, how it was set Was it
just
to keep the humans from being disloyal to their lord? Or was it more complicated than that? The father and mother kept saying that “everything comes from the Lord.” She wondered if that was part of it too?

But it couldn’t be foolproof; Dyran had said something about “resistance.” Which had to mean the geas could be fought, or even broken, by the human himself…

She wondered if one of the Kin could break it, too…

Well, even if they couldn’t get into the ranks of the fighters, Alara could at least see one of the duels through the woman’s memory.

It could be very enlightening.

Serina drifted on clouds of light, too overcome with lassitude to wonder at anything. A few moments later, she found herself standing behind Dyran, in her place behind his seat in the arena. He was not alone.

The arena was alive with color and light, and buzzing with conversation. Serina replaced a red velvet cushion that had fallen from Lord Dyran’s couch, trying to remain inconspicuous and very much aware that she was the only other human in the audience.

She had followed Dyran out to the arena, even though it meant crossing under that horrid open sky to do so, and he had made no move to stop her. Nor had anyone barred her from his side when he took his place in his private box with his guests, V’Tarn Sandar Lord Festin and V’Kal Alinor Lady Auraen. The Lady had given her a very sharp and penetrating look when Serina entered behind Dyran, but when she made no move to seat herself, but rather, remained standing in a posture of humility, the Lady evidently made up her mind to ignore the human interloper.

All three elven lords were in high formal garb, in their house colors, wearing elaborate surcoats stiff with bullion, embroidery in gold and silver thread, and bright gemstones, all in motifs that reflected their Clan crests. Dyran sported gold and vermilion sunbursts, Lord Sandar wore emerald and sapphire delphins, and Lady Alinor pale green and silver cranes.

The occasion for all this finery was the settling of a disagreement between Lord Vossinor and Lord Jertain. Serina wasn’t entirely sure what, exactly, the disagreement was about. It
did
involve a disputed trade route, and a series of insults traded in Council—and it was by the ruling of the Council itself that the duel was to take place.

“… and I, for one, am heartily sick of it,” Lady Alinor murmured to Dyran as she dropped gracefully into her seat. “Jertain might actually be in the right this time, but he has lied so often that how can one know for certain? I truly believe that
he
doesn’t know the truth of the matter anymore.”

“The Council is exceedingly grateful to you and Edres for providing the means of settling the damned situation once and for all,” Sandar said, with just the faintest hint of annoyance.

Dyran only smiled graciously. “I am always happy to be of service to the Council,” he said smoothly, handing Lady Alinor a rosy plum from the dish Serina held out to him.

He’s been working toward this for months
, Serina thought smugly, offering the dish to Lord Sandar as well.
This way the Council owes him for getting a nuisance out of their hair, and neither side can expect him to take a side. No matter who wins, he wins. Not to mention the favors owed for providing a neutral place, and fighters matched to a hair
.

“And what about the dispute between Hellebore and Ondine?” Sandar asked Alinor. “Is there any word on that?”

“Oh, it’s to be war, as I told you,” she replied offhandedly. “The Board is going to meet in a few days to decide on the size of the armies and where they’ll meet. After that it will be up to the two of them. I told you they’d never settle an inheritance dispute with anything less than a war.”

“So you did, my lady,” Dyran replied, leaning toward her with an odd gleam in his eye. “And once again, you were correct. Tell me, which of the two of them do
you
think likely to be the better commander?”

He’s been so
—
strange
—
about Lady Alinor. She’s challenged him in Council, and he doesn’t like it. But he’s been challenged before, and he never acted like he is with her. It’s almost as if he
wants
her, wants to possess her, and she keeps rejecting him in ways that only make him more determined to have her
. Serina shivered, and did her best not to show it. Dyran had never been this obsessive about anything before. She wasn’t sure what to do about it—or even if she dared to try.

Lady Alinor laughed, laughter with a delicate hint of mockery in it. “Ondine, of course—” she began.

A single, brazen gong-note split the air, silencing the chatter, and causing every head to turn towards the entrance to the sands. A pair of fighters, one bearing a mace and shield, the other, the unusual weapon of singlestick, walked side-by-side into the center of the” arena. The mace-wielder, with shield colors and helm ribbons in Lord Jertain’s indigo-and-white, turned smartly to the left, to end his march below Jertain’s box. The other, with helm ribbons and armbands in Vossinor’s cinnabar-and-brown, turned at the same moment to the right, to salute Vossinor’s box.

Both elven lords acknowledged their fighters with a lifted hand. The gong sounded again. The two men turned to face each other, and waited with the patience of automata.

Dyran rose slowly, a vermilion scarf in his hand. Every eye in the area was now on
him;
as host to the conflict, it was his privilege to signal the start of the duel. He smiled graciously, and dropped the square of silk.

It fluttered to the sand, ignored, as the carnage began.

In the end, even a few of the elven spectators excused themselves, and Serina found herself averting her eyes. She’d had no idea how much damage two blunt instruments could do.

But Dyran watched on; not eagerly, as Lady Alinor, who sat forward in her seat, punctuating each blow with little coos of delight—nor with bored patience, as Sandar. But with casual amusement, a little, pleased smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and a light in his eyes when he looked at Alinor that Serina could not read.

And when it was over—as it was, quickly, too quickly for many of the spectators—when all of the other elven lords had gone, he made
his
move. Toward Alinor. A significant touch of his hand on her arm, a few carefully chosen words—both, as if Serina were not present.

White with suppressed emotion, she pretended not to be there; pretended she was part of the furnishings. Certainly Lady Alinor took no notice of her.

The Lady stared at Dyran as if she could not believe what she had heard—then burst into mocking laughter.

“You?” she crowed. “
You
? I’d sooner bed a viper, my lord. My chances of survival would be much higher!”

She shook off his hand and swept out of the arena, head high, her posture saying that she knew he would not dare to challenge her. If he did, he would have to say
why
—and being rejected by a lady was not valid grounds for a challenge.

Dyran went as white as Serina; he stood like one of the silent pillars supporting the roof, and Serina read a rage so great in his eyes that she did not even breathe. If he remembered she was there—he would kill her.

Finally he moved. He swept out of the arena in the opposite direction that Lady Alinor had taken, heading for the slave pens.

Serina fled for the safety of her room and hid there, shivering in the darkness and praying he had forgotten her. After a long while, she heard muffled screams of agony from Dyran’s suite.

He’s forgotten me
, she thought, incoherent with relief and joy.
He’s forgotten me. I’m safe
…

If I dared, I would shift and fly off
, Alara thought in disgust. The last scene replayed in Serina’s memory had left the dragon limp and sick.

The duel was bad enough. The Kin had no idea that
this
was the kind of thing that went on in these duels. The sheer brutality of two thinking beings battering each other until one finally dropped over dead—
moments
before the other also succumbed—was something Serina took for granted. It was that, as much as the duel itself, that made Alara ill.
How could she
—
she didn’t feel anything at all for those two men, she basically just reacted to the blood and injuries. She would have been just as nauseated seeing someone gut a chicken. Probably more. Those were her
own kind,
and she watched them slaughter each other to settle someone else’s quarrel without a second thought
!

But then, her reaction when Dyran chose some poor, hapless victim to torture—to feel
joy
that the victim was someone else—

The dragon forced herself to calm down, closing her mind to the human’s for a moment, telling herself that it didn’t really matter. These weren’t the Kin; they were Outsiders. It shouldn’t matter what they did. to each other or what was done to them.

Yet she was utterly disgusted by the way the woman had let herself be manipulated, geas or not. The human was intelligent, she
saw
what was happening, and Alara guessed that she had come very close to breaking her own geas a time or two. Yet nothing of what she saw mattered to her, only her own well-being, her luxurious life. Perhaps at one time she would have felt
something
—but that time had vanished with her childhood.

Even
freedom
didn’t matter to her. Only pleasure.

I
really should just abandon her here to die
, Alara thought, feeling as if she had bitten into something rotten. She didn’t owe the woman anything. She wasn’t of the Kin. She wasn’t even worth saving. Alara could almost agree with the elvenkind about these humans, how base they were, how much they really deserved to be slaves. She could at least agree with Dyran’s faction, anyway.

Alara had often discussed politics in her guise as a low-ranking elven lord, or had them discussed in her presence as a human slave. Having served as an elven page for several Council sessions, and eavesdropped in many ways and many forms on others, Alara knew considerably more about elven politics than Serina had ever learned, especially where the treatment of humans was concerned. Oddly enough, for all his cruelty, Dyran was one of the better masters. The Council faction he headed held that humans were something—slightly—more than brute beasts. He allowed his human slaves to rise as high as overseer, as he had Serina’s father. He obviously believed what his party used as their platform: that one could despise, or even pity one’s human slaves, but that there was potential there to be exploited. So long as human greed and elven magic held, humans could be allowed a bit of freedom on their leashes, and permitted to make decisions on their own. Such freedom was profitable to the master, after all—it meant that he needed fewer elven subordinates, whose loyalty night be in question, and whose interests were undeniably their own. The humans owed everything to their lords; the elves might well decide to seek greener pastures. Humans were simple in their greed; elven emotions were more complex and harder to manipulate, even for a master like Dyran.

From what Alara had gleaned, Dyran’s faction was slightly in the minority. The majority of the Council were of the other party; the party that felt that the humans were dangerous, near-rabid creatures, unpredictable and uncontrollable. That
every
human should be kept under guard, with the strictest kind of supervision; coerced into their duties, with that coercion aided by magic whenever possible. And that those humans that showed any signs of independent thought must be destroyed before they contaminated the rest.

Predictably enough, Dyran’s faction contained most of the younger elves, who looked upon the survivors of the Wizard War as reactionary old fools, frightened by an uprising that could never recur into watching their very shadows.

But Dyran knew something that Alara was fairly certain he had
not
told the others, who had been born after the Wizard War. She
knew
he knew this little fact, because he himself had brought up the subject, more than once, in Council.

Human magic was still cropping up in the race. And the elves had no idea how or why.

Most of the younger elven lords thought that human magic had vanished after the last of the halfbreeds had been killed and the human “mages” had been identified and destroyed. That simply wasn’t true, as this woman Serina proved so clearly. Though untrained, she had been strong enough to trap Alara’s mind with her own. Granted, that was largely because of the strength of her fear and hatred, since this “natural magic” was fueled by the power of emotion. Still, Alara was a shaman of the Kin, and it took a powerful force to trap and hold her for even an instant.

The elves had been trying to breed the “mind-magic” out of their humans for centuries, yet the ability kept showing up, over and over again. No matter how carefully they studied their slaves’ pedigrees, no matter how many children they destroyed as soon as the ability manifested, the powers kept recurring.

Some children were hidden, of course, kept out of the way of overseers until they learned to conceal their gift—and once collared, of course, the situation was moot. Another problem: despite careful pairing, some supposed “fathers” were no? the real sires of “their” children. Human fertility had baffled the elves since they had taken this world for their own; and human inheritance baffled them still further. Elven magic was inherited in simple ways; two strong mages produced powerful children, a strong mage mated to a weaker produced something in between, and two weak mages (like Goris, Dorion, or Goris’s unfortunate daughter) produced weak mages.
Never
did a mating produce a stronger mage than the strongest of the pairing.
Never
did a strong pair produce a weak child, only to have the power reappear in the next generation. Power simply could not be passed that way.

But that sort of inheritance pattern occurred all the time in humans, and the elves were utterly bewildered by it.