Mercedes Lackey - Elvenborn

It had finally come down to this; a job he'd spent most of the day on until the anger in his heart started to interfere with his scrying spell. Spying with his own magic on the Wizardling children teaching his former cronies the magics that they used to transport themselves without harm and magnify their own powers, so that he could learn to use those magics without hav­ing to humiliate himself further. And he had to have those les­sons, because he had no choice; if he wanted something, he had to obtain it himself, and he didn't have the power he needed, alone.

And every day, new humiliations were piled atop the old. No one appeared to clean his quarters, and he, he, had to either do it himself, or find something one of the wretched children wanted and use it to bribe the little beast to do the work! And, of course, what they wanted was never some useless trinket of

his own or something he could just go and appropriate from the stores, oh no—it was always something difficult, and usually something he had to use his own powers to fetch from the old Citadel! It made him so angry he could hardly think for hours afterwards. He longed for the days when he could drop some­thing on the floor in the supreme confidence that whatever it was would be whisked off immediately to be discarded, put away, or cleaned as the case might be.

And it was all the fault of that overweening female.

She was up to something, too. No good, of course; that went without saying. He could tell that there was something in the air, something clandestine going on; from the way she acted, from the way that lover of hers acted. He'd felt the transporta­tion spell being triggered more times than it should have been of late, now that he knew how to recognize it. A noisy magic, that; nothing subtle about it, and oh so typical of a female, to use something that only drew attention to the caster. He knew how to use it himself now, of course, no thanks to anyone's ef­fort but his own. He'd gone back to the Old Citadel in person, to rummage through not only his own quarters, but the rooms of as many other people as he could before he grew too tired and hungry to stay there any longer. After all, if you didn't know or remember what was in a particular place, you couldn't bring it back by magic unless you did some fairly painstaking scrying. He'd piled what he wanted in his room when he could, and he'd made plenty of notes on what he couldn't pick up that he wanted in other rooms. He was getting more possessions to­gether now, besides the armload of things he'd brought back with him.

So he knew quite enough about the transportation spell to recognize it, and there was no doubt in his mind that it was be­ing used a great deal by Lashana herself of late. And for what? There was no need to use it to bring living things here anymore, now that they had flocks of sheep and goats and even cattle— you could bring anything you wanted here quietly, with the old magics that the Wizards had always used before, to steal what they wanted right out from beneath the noses of the Elvenlords.

In fact—that peculiar discordant feeling in the back of his

skull signaled that someone within the Citadel had used that particular magic again. It had to be Lashana. And in no way could it be for anyone's good except that selfish brat's.

But no one, no one would believe a single word he said against her. Not their dear Elvenbane, the person who had brought them the dragons (treacherous, sneaky beasts, whose minds could shift as easily as their shapes), the Trader clans (untrustworthy, wild human barbarians), and the Iron People (folly to put faith in any people who were not only wild human barbarians, but who had their own defenses against the Elven-lords and didn't need allies). Everyone so easily forgot that it was because of Lashana that they had needed those "allies," and needed to leave their comfortable, easy life in the old Citadel in the first place!

She was up to something; he knew it, he could taste it! She was up to something, and it could only mean new trouble for everyone else!

If only he could find out about it before everything fell apart—if he could catch her at some folly and prove she was up to something that would only drag everyone here into some new danger, they'd all believe him again!

That was it—that was it!

He kicked another shoe from his path, but this time with a triumphant cackle of laughter. That would serve the brat her just desserts! He'd use her own fancy magics to spy on her and find out exactly where she was going—then he'd use more of them to find out what she was doing! He'd catch her red-handed, and then he'd haul her back to the Citadel and make her confess in front of everyone! Oh, it would serve her right for her own magic to be used against her!

He turned abruptly and rummaged through the litter on his desk for the piece of smoke-quartz that served him for a magni­fier of his power, then cleared a space and concentrated on the scrying spell. Lashana didn't discover everything about magic, after all! She hadn't been the one to learn that in scrying, you didn't have to look for a place you knew, or even a person—just a particular object or kind of object. That was how they filched provisions from the Elvenlords, back in the good old days....

So rather than look for Lashana—because she might be alerted if she sensed someone scrying for her —he looked for an object. Something she always wore. A dragon-skin belt, made from the shed hide of her so-called "foster brother" and unique in that it had been dulled with dye so that it didn't catch the eye the way the brilliantly colored skin normally did.

When he found it, he would find her—then he would study where she was carefully—very carefully.

Then the next time she left, he would follow, a little behind. He'd find out where she was going, and what she was doing.

And the moment that he found out her secret—

He closed his hand into a fist, and smiled.

29

Triana lay on her stomach on the cold, hard ground be­neath a bush, peering down at an encampment in the tiny valley below her. Water dripped down on the hood of her cloak from the branches above her, and although the cloak itself was waterproof, mist permeated even the cleverly-magicked fabric somewhat. It was not a comfortable position, but her sheer astonishment at the sight that lay beneath her allowed her to ignore her discomfort.

There was a campsite down there in the mizzle, with six or eight standing figures, putting the place to rights, and one sit­ting figure. It was the seated one that had her attention.

"You see, my lady?" murmured the human tracker in Tri-ana's ear. "It is as I told you. There is the Elvenlord you wished to find."

Well, it was an Elvenlord, all right, but it was not the one she had intended to find. Not that the tracker could be blamed in this case. He didn't know what Lord Kyrtian looked like, espe­cially at a distance. He couldn't know that Kyrtian, the fool,

would never have sat back and watched while his slaves put up a camp. But what in the name of all the Ancestors had gotten Aelmarkin to stir his lazy behind and come out to this howling wilderness?

She was rather pleased to see that he didn't look very happy. Hunched over, elbows on knees, even from here she could see his frown. Ancestors! She could feel his frown. His slaves were trying to light a fire and not having a lot of success with the wet wood; he slumped on a stool beneath the shelter of his tent, watching them. She couldn't tell what he was thinking from here, but a moment later, he pointed his finger at the pile of wood and it roared up, causing his slaves to leap back lest they be scorched.