Andre Norton - Elveblood

Rena paused on the last stair to wait, trembling inside, for her father to speak.

Silence stretched the moment into an eternity, as she strove to keep her trembling invisible.

Good, he said, finally, with grudging approval. You are actually presentable.

She kept her relief as invisible as her trembling, and took the last few steps across the marble between them. Thank you, my Lord Father, she whispered. She hadn't meant to whisper, but somehow she couldn't raise her voice any further than that.

Well, let's not stand here all night. He turned before he even finished the sentence, and strode off down yet another pink marble hallway, this time heading for his study and the Transportation Portal in it

He could never have mustered the magic for a direct Portal to the Council Hall, but one had come with the manor. The Treves Portal would take them to the Council Hall, and from there they would use the Hemalth Portal to the estate, permitted to pass there by the magic signet impressed into the invitation. Only those who had access to such Portals would be able to take such a direct and immediate route to the fete—the ones who did not would be forced to take tedious journeys across country until they reached the estate the hard way. It was a measure of the power the House of Hemalth held that there were plenty of elven lords praying for the opportunity to make such a journey.

The ring on Rena's right index finger was not one of Lorryn's creations, but a simple signet, with a moonbird carved into the beryl (not an emerald) held in the bezel. That would be her key to the Portal that would allow her to return home; without it, she would be stuck in the Council Hall until someone came to get her. While emeralds were prized for their beauty and sought after by the human slaves permitted jewels, it was the more common beryl that was truly priceless to the elven lords, for only beryls could take and hold magic power, or be used as the containers for spells. Women wore emeralds, useless, lovely emeralds. Men bore beryls, as the outward signature of their power.

Rena trailed along behind her father, careful not to step on the train of her mother's gown, with the guards following in her wake.

The door opened as Lord Tylar approached, and me little parade massed through it into the room beyond. There wasn't much to mark the room that her father called his study as anything of the kind; it really held nothing but a white marble desk and a couple of chairs-—no books, certainly no papers; he left all of the tedious business of dealing with accounts and the like to his supervisors and underlings. The pink marble of the floor of the hall gave way here to soft, thick carpets of (leathered gray, and the pink marble of the walls to some unidentifiable substance the pale gray of rain clouds. There were two doors to this room, both of a darker gray than the walls; the one they used to enter, and the one that stood directly across from it—but the second was no door at all, but the Portal.

Lord Tylar stopped in front of the Portal, his hand on the latch, and turned back to frown at his daughter. Rena shrank into herself a little, involuntarily.

Hold your head up, he reminded her sharply. And smile.

Without waiting to see if she followed his orders, he opened the door and stepped through it. He did not hesitate a moment—but then, he was used to Portals by now.

The doorway held only darkness, and it was as if he had been devoured by that darkness the moment he stepped across the threshold. Rena had never actually used this or any other Portal before, although Lorryn who had, told her it was nothing to be afraid of. Still, something inside her quailed before the lightless emptiness of it, and she would have stepped back except for the presence of the guards behind her—

— who are probably there to make sure I don't turn and bolt back to my room !

Lady Viridina seemed oblivious to her daughter's fear, she didn't even hesitate, simply followed her husband's lead, stooped and gathered her train up gracefully, and stepped across the threshold into nothingness.

Rena froze.

One of the guards cleared his throat ostentatiously. She started, and turned to look at him, knowing her eyes were probably as wide and frightened as a rabbit's.

If my lady would please to follow the Lady Viridina? he said, in a voice harsh with many years of shouting orders. His bland but implacable expression left no doubt in her mind that he had been ordered to pick her up and carry her across if she balked.

That indignity, at least, she would spare herself. She bent as her mother had, though with none of Viridina's grace, picked up the end of her train in hands that were damp with sweat, and crushed the silk to her meager chest. Then, with her eyes shut firmly, so she would not have to see what she stepped into, she crossed the threshold.

Myre took a great deal of satisfaction in delivering Rena's orders to Tanhya Leis, a particularly nasty piece of blond work that Myre had been longing to get stirred into mischief for some time now.

Mischief, after all, was a time-honored draconid tradition, and this was one tradition Myre saw no reason to abandon.

Tanhya had been banished from the harem for deliberate sabotage, and now was trying to make everyone else's life miserable, engaging in histrionics and trickery in an effort to regain the comforts of her rightful place. She wouldn't get it, of course; she was far too common for the tastes of Lord Tylar and she probably would have been disposed of soon anyway, but nothing would convince her otherwise. In fact, she was quite certain the place of Chief Concubine (now occupied by a slim and dignified brunette) was hers by right . Where she got that particular illusion, Myre had no idea—but forcing her to spend her evening cooling her heels in Lady Sheyrena's dressing room should give her plenty leisure to nurse her grievances. With any luck, she'd have come up with some plan or other to rid herself of the obstacles in her path that would be even more entertaining than her last attempt at eliminating Keri Eisa—the one that had gotten her banished in the first place.

Really , Myre chuckled to herself, as she watched Tanhya returning to the dressing chamber, her back stiff with anger, how dense can even a two-legger be? You'd think she'd have known that stupid cook's helper of hers would be caught. And that he'd talk once he was caught. I don't care how good you are in bed, that's not going to keep your paramour from telling everything he knows when his tail is in the fire? After all, it was trying to seduce one of the guards into spoiling Keri's looks and making it look like an accident that got her sent down here in the first place .

One more incident, and Tanhya would probably find herself sent to the breeding pens. No elven lord would ever take the quarrels between the women in his harem seriously enough to invoke the ultimate punishment on the perpetrators—but no elven lord would ever allow someone like Tanhya to inconvenience him, either. And right now, being without Keri would be a serious inconvenience for Lord Tylar.

This was all the more amusing to Myre because Keri's rise in the harem was due to her own interference. Keri had been simply very attractive—until Myre slipped into the harem one night, and did a little careful rearrangement of her face. From sculpting stone it was a simple matter to move to sculpting flesh, and anyone who knew how to shape-change would find it very easy to make that transition if the power was there in the first place. Next morning, Lord Tylar found himself possessed of a real beauty, and Keri's rise from nothing to Chief Concubine had upset the established order of the harem. That had put the idea in Tanhya's head that she could become Chief Concubine as easily as Ken, and the fight was on.