Margaret Weis - Elven Star

The slave, following Aleatha’s gaze, suddenly remembered his duty and hastened to take up his position. The carriage was made of the leaves of the benthan tree, woven to form a round basket open at the front end. The top of the basket was held in the grip of several drivehands attached to a strong rope running from Aleatha’s father’s house down into the jungle. Prodded from their drowsy, constant lethargy, the drivehands crawled up the rope, pulling the carriage to the house. Allowed to drift back into slumber, the drivehands would slide down the rope, bringing the carriage to a junction, where Aleatha would transfer to another carriage whose drivehands would cany her to her destination.

The slave, pushing the carriage, started it on its way and Calandra watched her sister—green skirts fluttering in the wind—swoop down into the lush jungle vegetation.

Calandra smiled disdainfully at the slave, who was lounging at his post, gazing admiringly after the carriage. What fools these humans are. They don’t even know when they’re being teased. Aleatha was wild, but at least her dalliances were with men of her own kind. She flirted with humans because it was enjoyable to watch their brutish reactions. Aleatha, like her older sister, would sooner let the family dog kiss her as she would a human. Paithan was another story. Settling down to her work, Calandra decided she would send the scullery maid to work in the boltarch shop. Leaning back in the carriage, enjoying the cool wind blowing against her face as she descended rapidly through the trees, Aleatha foresaw regaling a certain person at Lord Durndrun’s with her tale of arousing the human slave’s passion. Of course, her story would be told from a slightly different angle.

“I swear to you. My Lord, that his great hand closed over mine until I thought he would crush it, and then the beast had the nerve to press his sweat-covered body up against me!”

“Dreadful!” Lord Someone would say, his pale elven face flushed with indignation … or was it with the thought of bodies pressing together. He would lean nearer. “What did you do?”

“I ignored him, of course. That’s the best way to handle the brutes, besides the lash, that is. But, of course, I couldn’t beat him, could I?”

“No, but I could!” the lord would cry gallantly. “Oh, Thea, you know you tease the slaves to distraction.” Aleatha gave a slight start. Where had that disturbing voice come from? An imagined Paithan … invading her reverie. Catching hold of her hat that was about to be whisked off her head by the breeze, Aleatha made a mental note to make certain her brother was off playing the fool somewhere else before she began relating her enticing little story. Paithan was a good fellow and wouldn’t deliberately ruin his sister’s fun, but he was simply too guileless to live-The carriage reached the end of its rope, arriving at the junction. Another human slave—an ugly one, Aleatha didn’t bother with him—handed her out.

“Lord Dumdrun’s,” she informed him coolly, and the slave helped her into one of several carriages waiting at the junction, each attached to a rope that headed off into a different part of the jungle. The slave gave the drivehands a prod, they flapped to life, and the carriage sailed off into the gradually darkening shadows, carrying its passenger down deeper into the city of Equilan. The carriages were for the convenience of the wealthy, who paid a subscription to the city fathers for their use. Those who couldn’t afford to subscribe to the carriage system made do with the swinging bridges spanning the jungle. These bridges led from house to house, shop to shop, house to shop, and back again. They had been constructed at the time the early elven settlers founded Equilan, connecting those few houses and businesses that had been built in the trees for defense purposes. As the city grew, so did the bridge system, without any particular order or thought, keeping the houses connected with their neighbors and the heart of the city.

Equilan had flourished and so had its people. Thousands of elves lived in the city and there were nearly as many bridges. Making one’s way on foot was extraordinarily confusing, even for those who had lived there all their lives. No one who was any one in elven society walked the bridges, except for possibly a daring foray during darktime. The bridges were, however, an excellent defense against the elves’ human neighbors, who had looked—in days long gone by—on the elven treeholdings with covetous eyes. As time passed, and Equilan grew wealthier and more secure, her human neighbors to the norinth decided it would be wiser to leave the elves alone and fight each other. Thillia was divided into five kingdoms, each one an enemy of the other four, and the elves lived well by supplying weapons to all sides of the conflict. The elven royal families and those of the middle class who had risen to wealth and power moved higher into the trees. Lenthan Quindiniar’s home was located on the highest “hill” [14] Moss beds that grow in the very tops of the gigantic jungle trees. in Equilan—a mark of status among his fellow middle class but not among the royalty, who built their homes on the shores of Lake Enthial. No matter that Lenthan could buy and sell most of the homes on the lakeshore, he would never be allowed to live there.

To be honest, Lenthan didn’t want to. He was quite content living where he was, with a fine view of the stars and a clear place amid the jungle’s vegetation for the launching of his rockets.

Aleatha, however, had made up her mind to dwell by the lake. Nobility would be purchased with her charm and her body and her share of her father’s money when he died. But just which duke or earl or baron or prince Aleatha was going to buy hadn’t been decided yet. They were all such bores. The task before Aleatha was to shop around, find one less boring than the rest.

The carriage gently set down Aleatha in Lord Durndrun’s ornate receiving house. A human slave started to hand her out, but a young lord, arriving at the same time, beat him to the honor. The young lord was married; Aleatha favored him with a sweet, charming smile anyway. The young lord was fascinated and walked off with Aleatha, leaving his wife to be handed down by the slave. Running through the annotated list of elven royalty she kept in her head, Aleatha recognized the young lord as a near cousin to the queen, with the fourth finest house on the lake. She permitted him to present her to her host and hostess, asked him to give her a tour of the house (she’d been there many times previous), and was blushingly enthusiastic about a more intimate tour of the lush and shadowy garden.

Lord Durndrun’s house, as were all others on Lake Enthial, was constructed on the top edge of a large moss bowl. The houses of the nobility of elven society stood scattered around the “rim” of the bowl. The dwelling of Her Majesty, the queen, was located at the very farthest end, away from the crowded city of her subjects. The other homes were all built facing the palace, as if they were continually paying homage.

In the center of the bowl was the lake, supported on a thick bed of moss, cradled in the arms of gigantic trees. Most lakes in the area were, because of their moss beds, a clear, crystalline green color. Due to a rare species of fish that swam in the lake (a gift to Her Majesty from the father of Lenthan Quindiniar) the water of Lake Enthial was a vibrant, stunning blue and was considered one of the wonders of Equilan.

The view was wasted on Aleatha, who had seen it all before and whose primary goal was to make it her own. She had been introduced to Lord Daidlus before, but had not noticed until now that he was witty and intelligent and moderately handsome. Seated next to the admiring young man on a teakwood bench, Aleatha was just about to tell him her story of the slave when, as in her reverie, a cheerful voice interrupted her.