“Then what?” Keman asked, a little bewildered. “What would that gain him except for a few trinkets? Even if he looted all of Lord Tylar’s estate, the gain would be next to nothing divided up among all these people.”
“But if he didn’t divide it?” she countered. “If he kept it all in one big pile? It would look very impressive. It would awaken hunger for more in not only this Clan, but every other Clan he showed it to.”
“O-o-oh,” Keman said then, seeing exactly what she was getting at. “Then, once everyone wants some of the loot, he makes himself the leader of all the Clans, and comes right back up here.”
She nodded. “I don’t know if these elves of yours could beat him; if they are clever, they probably could. But I do know that with that many people coming up here looking for loot, the Clans are going to run into your friends unless they can pull themselves into that mountain of theirs and shut all entrances for a year.”
He considered that. “They might be able to. The rest of my Lair could certainly make it very unpleasant for Iron People trespassing near the mountain.”
“But here is the other thing,” she continued. “Even if Jamal suffers enough defeats that he decides to put the Clans in retreat, he’ll still be their leader. Once he reaches the Homelands again, he’ll start looking for something else to conquer—and sooner or later, he’ll find my Folk.”
Keman shivered. He remembered Kalamadea telling Shana, quite calmly, that the iron weapons the warriors carried could and would kill both dragons before they could shift. And magic or no magic, dragons in the sky were still vulnerable to powerful bows. “We have to stop him.”
“You have to escape first,” she pointed out, and paused for a moment. “I’ll help you,” she finished, as if with the words she had finally made up her mind.
“You will?” His head reeled with delight. “You’ll come with me?”
“Don’t tell anyone about me yet!” she amended hastily. “Please! I have to think about all this first—I have to decide how to tell my Folk that there are others—I—”
“I promise,” he pledged, before she could go on. “You can stay secret as long as you like. As long—as long as I can see you every night,” he added shyly.
“You would? You want to?” she stammered. “Of course! But—”
There was no more talk of plans or escaping for the rest of the night.
Lorryn was not entirely sure how Shana was going to react to his sister. For that matter, he was not certain how the young halfblood that was with her was going to react. There was certainly nothing in Rena’s true appearance to make anyone think of her as a threat, but still—
Well, there was no hope for it. The sooner they got the confrontation over with, the better.
This section of the huge tent that Kala shared with her husband that had been assigned to him and his sister was a far cry from the little tent they’d been given on their arrival. He’d always been under the impression that a tent was a tent—that there wasn’t a great deal you could do to make one luxurious, or even all that comfortable.
He knew now that he was wrong. If he hadn’t known they were in a tent and not, say, a pleasure-pavilion, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Rugs softened the wooden floor of the wagon, lying six or seven deep; around the curve of the tent wall a finely woven mesh was fastened to ornamental wickerwork that came up to about his knee.
This was so that when the walls of the tent were raised to let in fresh air around the base of the tent, insects were kept out.
The walls themselves were hung with tapestries that extended down to the top of the wickerwork, hiding the rough felt of the tent walls and providing extra insulation against heat or cold. Beautifully made lanterns hung from the ceiling, burning what Kala said was scented butter; whatever it was, it gave a clear light and the scent in it perfumed the air with a faint but pleasant musk. The ubiquitous cushions were piled everywhere; their bed-pads were soft and stuffed with dried grasses and herbs, covered with finely woven blankets and furs he could not identify. The tent itself was divided by felt partitions, also covered with tapestries; the walls moved slowly in the breeze blowing through the mesh on the exterior wall.
Kala had provided Rena with garments she said had belonged to one of her daughters—a daughter who’d had a distressing tendency to outgrow clothing before it could be finished. Rena had changed into it gratefully; the clothing she’d brought with her was hardly suited to the summer heat of the plains. Lorryn thought she looked charming in it—and as unlike a typical elven maiden as possible. It only remained to see if the other two thought the same.
Kala ushered the two halfbloods in, leaving with a nod. Lorryn waved at the cushions and took one himself.
“Lorryn, this is Mero, Valyn’s half cousin,” Shana said by way of introduction. “I expect you know about him.”
“Some.” Lorryn tilted his head to the side, and studied the thin, dark young man with the startlingly bright emerald eyes, even as the young man studied him. “They’re saying now in the Councils that Valyn himself was a halfblood; that he wouldn’t have revolted against his own kind if he’d been truly of elven blood.”
Mero snorted. “Oh, as if having Dyran for a father wasn’t enough to make anyone with half a conscience and any amount of compassion revolt!”
“Both of those qualities are in short supply on the Council,” Lorryn reminded him. “Well—I told Shana very little about the two of us, so now that I have both of you here, I should give you the tale in greater detail.”
He did so, omitting nothing about their escape except the fact that Rena was not a halfblood. It was a deliberate omission; he wanted all this fresh in their minds when he did bring Rena in. Logically, since Mero was cousin to a fullblooded elven er-Lord who had risked and lost all to save him, they shouldn’t be prejudiced against her.
On the other hand, logic had very little to do with prejudice.
When he finished, Shana let out the breath she’d been holding. “It sounds like quite an escape,” she told him. “A lot more exciting than my personal escape after the auction, if it conies to that.”
“More exciting than the one Valyn and I had, too,” Mero admitted. “We never actually saw our pursuers, you know, we just knew they were there.”
“1 would have been just as pleased to have made a quiet escape, personally,” Lorryn told them both, shrugging. “Although if we manage to come through this all right, I will admit to being glad things worked out this way. I wish I knew what happened to my sister’s maid, though,” he added with a frown.
“She doesn’t sound like anyone we know,” Shana said, after a sidelong glance at Mero. “On the other hand, there are ways that some of us can disguise ourselves that don’t qualify as ‘illusions,’ so she could have been. If she was—trust me, she’ll be all right. Not even falling into a river would harm one of our people with that sort of power.”
Well, that was something of a relief! “You just took one burden of guilt off my back,” he replied gratefully. “Now—I’ll discharge myself of another.” He raised his voice a little. “Rena!
Rena pushed aside the partition to her segment of the tent on the cue she’d been waiting for, and came into the light. She looked worried, hesitant, and very vulnerable.
She also looked unmistakably elven.
Shana only raised one eyebrow, though Mero sucked in a breath of surprise. “I wondered what you were hiding about her,” the wizard told him, with a hint of smile. “It’s nice to see that Valyn wasn’t the only decent person of his blood around.”
She stood up, and extended her hand to Rena with no sign of hesitation. “It is very good to meet you without illusions,” she said, as Rena took the hand gingerly. “And any sheltered maiden who could partner her brother through the wilderness as cleverly as you did is something more than she appears to be. I’d like to hear your ideas.”
“So would I,” Mero said, and indicated a cushion between himself and Lorryn. “Would you join us?”
“Yes, thank you,” Rena replied, smiling and relaxing visibly. “I hope I can help, at least a little.”
“You can help a lot,” Lorryn said forcefully as she took the indicated seat with a sidelong glance at Mero. Shana sat down again, and he turned instinctively toward her. “The one thing that neither of you know, and neither do I, is the kind of magic that only the females are taught. It’s very subtle; it works on the level of the very small. For instance, where you or I would—say—collapse this tent by crushing it outright, Rena would do something entirely different.”