He noted something with half of his mind, while the rest worried over the problems to come. The alicorns had the same effect on forest life that a human or elven hunter would; where they passed, silence fell. Evidently they were just as fierce a predator as their reputation made them out to be. Off in the far, far distance, he heard birdsong, and the occasional animal call, but right here, along this deer path, there was nothing but the dull thudding of hooves on the bare earth and damp leaves.
“We really did it, didn’t we?” Rena said, wonderingly, into the silence. The stallion flicked its ears at the sound of her voice, but did not slacken pace. Wherever it was going, it wanted to get there in a hurry. He only hoped that his muscles and Rena’s would be up to a pace like this.
“We really did,” he called back, softly. “We got away, both of us, and I couldn’t have done it without you. I’m glad you came.”
He hadn’t been, at the time. He hadn’t been until the moment she dried his clothing for him. Cynically he admitted to himself that once she became a benefit to his comfort, his attitude had changed.
But how was he to know that she would be anything other than a burden and something to be protected every step of the way?
She giggled. “It was almost me bursting into your room to beg for help last night, you know,” she said unexpectedly.
He turned his head just enough so that he could look back at her while keeping an eye out for those pesky branches. “Why?” he asked. “I—I knew there was something besides the fete that had everyone in a state, but I didn’t know it had anything to do with you!”
“They didn’t tell you?” she said, astonishment writ large in her wide eyes. “How could they not tell you? Father was even letting me sleep late!”
He grimaced. “Lord Tylar has never confided anything to me, and he has always forbidden the servants to tell me anything he thinks I might object to. I assume I would have objected to this?”
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I—I was betrothed to Lord Gildor last night.”
He almost lost his seat over that. “Gildor?” he spluttered. “Gildor, the brainless wonder? Gildor, who couldn’t find his—his behind with both hands and a map? Gildor the dullard, the dolt, the incredibly, impossibly boring?” Was there another Gildor he didn’t know about?
“That certainly describes the Gildor I saw,” she agreed, and her eyes twinkled. “Now you see why I was so insistent on coming with you, and why I told you Father would use coercion on me to find out where you’d gone! I’d rather face wild alicorns than go into Gildor’s bower!”
He shook his head. “I’m not certain this is preferable to marriage to Gildor,” he retorted, wondering if his anger at her deception was valid, even as the heat rose in him. After all, he wasn’t the one being told to wed Gildor.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” she pled, wilting before the accusation in his eyes. “It wasn’t a lie; if he thought I did know, he would have used coercion on me—but—”
“But it’s possible, given his high opinion of females, that it wouldn’t even have entered his mind that you would be capable of such a clever deception.” He thought it over, weighed Lord Tylar’s well-known fear in the face of halfbloods with his well-known contempt of women, and concluded she was right not to take the chance. “Ah, you were probably right to assume he would, anyway,” he replied, and her face lightened. “He’s not exactly rational about halfbloods. He’ll probably be using coercion on every person on the estate. Thank the Ancestors that Mother is strong enough to resist him, and clever enough to have something to give him that will clear her of guilt. He won’t dare offend her House by doing away with her as long as she can make it seem she went mad on being told I was halfblooded.”
Rena’s face went deathly pale. “What’s going to happen to her?” she whispered, as if Lady Viridina’s part in all of this had never occurred to her.
Lorryn wished he could be more reassuring, but that was difficult on the back of a moving alicorn. He tried to give her a smile that would convey the emotion. “It’s all right, we’ve planned for this for some time. She is going to concoct a false and very clouded memory for Fa—Lord Tylar’s benefit, of the midwife-slave substituting me for a stillborn child. You know, don’t you, that he left her alone on the estate for the birth? She’ll let him hear that under a coercive trance, let him hear the midwife supposedly using her wizard-powers to make her forget; then she’ll ‘go mad with grief as soon as he wakes her and confronts her with it.” It was a thin enough story, but Lady Viridina had never, ever been suspected of so much as an improper thought by her husband, and with the three Council members there, he would be forced to take it at face value. “The Council Lords will insist she be placed in protective isolation, of course, but that won’t be so bad.”
It would be better than death, anyway. And perhaps it would be better than being subject to her husband’s every irrational whim and cruel trick.
But Rena shuddered. “That means being confined to her bower, with slaves watching her day and night,” she replied. “I would go mad. But I suppose it’s better than—”
Better than the alternative. “The Council will believe it,” he told her, this time quite firm in his conviction. “Ever since the Elvenbane appeared, they’ve been seeing halfbloods under their beds, and behind anything that goes wrong. I’m sure they’ll find a way to ‘prove’ that this switched-at-birth nonsense is how Dyran ended up with a halfblood as his own heir without ever being aware of the fact.”
“Oh,” Rena said, looking a bit less dubious. “I’d forgotten about that. Actually, they’ll probably want to believe it, and when they get done with him, so will Father.”
“Very likely,” he agreed. “And Mother is clever enough to carry it all off.” He sniffed. “It’s just a good thing they don’t have the wizard-powers to read thoughts.”
“I hope they never get themselves some kind of tame halfblood then,” Rena replied, soberly. “And oh, I hope Mother will be all right—”
“At least you won’t have to marry Gildor-the-idiot!” he said quickly, and got a wan smile in answer.
“Yes—” She got spattered by a shower of drops from a branch above her, wiped them away, and got back a little more color and a real smile. “And before you ask, believe me, life eating leaves in a howling wilderness is much, much preferable to that!”
Chapter 6
KALAMADEA AND KEMAN simply stood where they were, like a pair of perfectly ordinary halfbloods, and not a pair of extraordinary, shape-shifting dragons. What was wrong with them?
:Do something!: Shana thought furiously at Kalamadea. :Shift! Fight them!: He should already have been flinging himself into the sky!
Kalamadea did nothing except to look at her. :Lashana, these people are not afraid of magic, and they are all carrying very sharp spears. Spears which, may I point out to you, will penetrate dragon-hide. I think shifting would be a very bad idea, just at the moment; they could certainly use those spears. Can you think of anything else constructive?:
Try as she might, she couldn’t. Even a dragon needed a storm to call lightning down out of the sky, and the weather wasn’t obliging with one. Perhaps the dragons could use their powers with rock to rum the ground soft beneath their captors’ feet, but an agile warrior could certainly leap free before he was trapped.
And as for flinging himself into the sky—well, even a dragon needed time to shift. These warriors would certainly react before then.
It looked as if giving up was their only option. At least the warriors had not retaliated for the magical attacks the two wizards had made.
She stood up slowly, and held her empty hands over her head in what she hoped was a universally accepted gesture of surrender. Mero and the two dragons followed her example.
It must have been the right thing to do, since the warriors relaxed, just a trifle, although they did not lower their guard or their spearpoints. They all stood staring at one another for several moments.
Their captors were a striking people; this close, it was quite obvious that the dark skin was natural and not a dye or cosmetic. Their armor was of extremely fine make; beautifully finished with first-rate craftsmanship. Beneath the armor corselets, they all wore loose trousers of light, brightly colored fabric, and half-boots of felt.