Margaret Weis - Elven Star

“Blessed Orn!” Calandra groaned again. She sat silent for several moments, staring at the abacus, her fingers twitching one of the beads back and forth, back and forth. “I’ll go talk to him,” she said at last. Paithan carefully kept his face under control. “Yes, that might be a good idea, Callie. You go talk to him.”

Calandra rose to her feet, her skirts rustling stiffly about her. She paused, and looked down at her brother. “We were going to discuss this next shipment—”

“That can wait until tomorrow. This is much more important.”

“Humpf. You needn’t pretend to look so concerned. I know what you’re up to, Paithan. You’ll be off on some scatter-brained outing with your fine friends instead of staying home, minding your business as you ought. But you’re right, though you probably don’t have brains enough to know it. This is more important.” A muffled explosion came from below, a crash of falling plates, and a scream from the kitchen. Calandra sighed. “I’ll go talk with him, though I’m bound to say I doubt if it’ll do much good. If I could just get him to keep his mouth shut!”

She slammed down the ledger. Lips compressed, back straight as a bridgepole tree, she marched in the direction of the door at the far end of the dining area. Her hips were straight as her back; no alluring swaying of skirt for Calandra Quindiniar.

Paithan shook his head. “Poor Guvnor,” he said with a moment’s feeling of true pity. Then, flipping the palm frond fan in the air, he went to his room to get dressed.

Descending the stairs, Calandra passed through the kitchen, located on the first floor of the house. The heat increased noticeably as she moved from the airy upper regions into the more closed and steamy lower part. The scullery maid—eyes red rimmed and a mark on her face from the cook’s broad hand—was sullenly sweeping up broken crockery. The maid was an ugly human, as Calandra had said, and the red eyes and swollen tip did nothing to enhance her appearance.

But then Calandra considered all humans ugly and boorish, little more than brutes and savages. The human girl was a slave, who had been purchased along with a sack of flour and a stonewood cooking pot. She would work at the most menial tasks under a stern taskmaster—the cook—for about fifteen of the twenty-one-hour day. She would share a tiny room with the downstairs maid, have no possessions of her own, and earn a pittance by which she might, by the time she was an old woman, buy her way out of slavery. And yet Calandra firmly believed that she had done the human a tremendous favor by bringing her to live among civilized people.

Seeing the girl in her kitchen fanned the coals of Calandra’s ire. A human priest! What madness. Her father should have more sense. It was one thing to be insane, quite another to abandon all sense of proper decorum. Calandra marched through the pantry, yanked open the cellar door, and proceeded down the cobwebby steps into the cool darkness below.

The Quindiniar house was built on a moss plain that grew among the upper levels of vegetation of the world of Pryan. The name Pryan meant Realm of Fire in a language supposedly used by those first people who came to the world. The nomenclature was appropriate, because Pryan’s sun shone constantly. A more apt name for the planet might have been “Realm of Green,” for—due to the continual sunshine and frequent rains—Pryan’s ground was so thickly covered with vegetation that few people currently living on the planet had ever seen it. Huge moss plains spanned the branches of gigantic trees, whose trunks at the base were sometimes wide as continents. Level after level of leaves and various plant life extended upward, many levels existing on top of levels beneath them. The moss was incredibly thick and strong; the large city of Equilan was built on a moss bed. Lakes and even oceans floated on top of the thick, brownish green mass. The topmost branches of the trees poked out above it, forming tremendous, junglelike forests. It was here, in the treetops or on the moss plains, that most civilizations on Pryan built their cities. The moss plains didn’t completely cover the world. They came to end in frightful places known as dragonwalls. Few ventured near these chasms. Water from the moss seas leapt over the edge and cascaded down into the darkness with a roar that shook the mighty trees. Any person standing on the edge of the land, staring into that limitless mass of jungle beneath his feet, felt small and puny and fragile as the newest unfurled leaf.

Occasionally, if the observer managed to gather his courage and spend some time staring into the jungle below, he might see ominous movement—a sinuous body humping up among the branches and slithering away, moving among the deep green shadows so swiftly that the brain wondered if the eye was lying. It was these creatures that gave the dragonwalls their name—the dragons of Pryan. Few had ever seen them, for the dragons were as wary of the tiny strange beings inhabiting the tops of the trees as the humans, dwarves, and elves were wary of the dragons. It was believed, however, that the dragons were enormous, wingless beasts of great intelligence who carried on their lives far, far below, perhaps even living on the fabled ground.

Lenthan Quindiniar had never seen a dragon. His father had; he’d seen several. Quintain Quindiniar had been a legendary explorer and inventor. He had helped establish the elven city of Equilan. He had invented numerous weapons and other devices that were immediately coveted by the human settlers in the area. He had used the already considerable family fortune, founded in ornite, [8] Lodestone. to establish a trading company that grew more prosperous every year. Despite his success. Quintain had not been content to stay quietly at home and count his coins. When his only son, Lenthan, was old enough. Quintain turned over the business to his son and went back out into the world. He’d never been heard from again, and all assumed, after a hundred years had passed, that he was dead.

Lenthan had the family’s wandering blood in his veins but was never allowed to indulge in it, having been forced to take over the affairs of the business. He also had the family gift for making money, but it didn’t seem to Lenthan as if the money he made was his money. He was, after all, simply carrying on the trade built up by his father. Lenthan had long sought a way to make his own mark in the world, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t much of the world left to explore. The humans held the lands to the norinth, the Terinthian Ocean prohibited expansion to the est and vars and the dragonwall blocked the sorinth. As far as Lenthan was concerned, he had nowhere to go but up. Calandra entered the cellar laboratory, holding her skirts out of the dirt; the look on her face would have curdled milk. It came near curdling her father. Lenthan, seeing his daughter here in this place he knew she abhorred, blanched and moved nervously nearer another elf who was present in the laboratory. This other elf smiled and bowed officiously. The expression on Calandra’s face darkened at the sight.

“How nice—nice to see you down here, m—my dear,” stammered poor Lenthan, dropping a crock of some foul-smelling liquid onto a filthy tabletop. An ancestor of Lenthan, Quindiniar was the first to discover and recognize its properties, which—for the first time—made overland travel possible. Before the discovery of ornite, people had no way of telling direction and would become hopelessly lost in the jungle. The location of the motherlode is a closely guarded family secret.

Calandra wrinkled her nose. The moss walls and floor gave off a pungent musky odor that blended ill with the various chemical smells—most notably sulfur—drifting about the laboratory.