Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

There was no intermediate pause in the Council Chamber this time; perhaps that was the reason for the signet ring, to enable her to go directly to her destination. She emerged into a reception room—

It was like no other room she had ever seen, though it was not one that had been altered by magic. This was a chamber with leather furnishings and hunting trophies everywhere. The blank-eyed heads of dead animals stared down at her from walls paneled in dark woods; whole dead animals and petrified birds had been made into lamp holders, table supports, or grisly display pieces. Hides with the heads intact carpeted the floor, and the whole of one wall was taken up with a mounted pair of stud alicorns locked in combat—one with a coat the black of ebony, and one white as a cloud. Both had mad, orange eyes that glittered with malice, and there was blood—or something made to resemble blood—on their twisting, spiraling single horns.

She shuddered, and looked away.

Anything that could possibly be hunted was here in some form and had been made into a trophy of some kind. Alicorn horns made a rack holding boar-spears, ivory and horn inlay covered every inch of the furniture that was not already upholstered with hides, some finished as smooth leather, and some with the hair or fur left on. Teeth snarled at her from all corners. Stuffed snakes twined around the bases of quivers mounted beside their bows. Racks for knives and swords had been fashioned of antlers.

Everywhere, glassy eyes stared at her, and she fancied that their stares held anger, bewilderment, or accusation. The place felt haunted by silent rage.

A silent human servant appeared, bowed deeply, and gestured for her to follow. She did so, glad only to be free of that room of accusing eyes.

Was this Lord Lyon's way of impressing his visitors? Or did he truly take pleasure in having victims of his hunting expeditions displayed in a place where he could view them frequently?

Was she to become just another such trophy?

The servant led the way down a corridor paneled in more of the dark wood, lit by globes of mage-light caught in sconces made of yet more antlers, and carpeted with bloodred plush. She gave up trying to reckon how many deer and elk the sconces represented; Lord Lyon was one of the older High Lords, and he had many long years of hunting behind him. He might even be displaying only a fraction of his trophies here, given how long he had been alive.

What a horrid thought!

What was he trying to say, with this room of death? It was the first thing any visitor arriving by Portal would see, after all. Was he showing them, wordlessly, just how ruthless a foe he was? Did he mean for them to be impressed with his physical skill, or with the mental ability it took to stalk and kill so many creatures?

The corridor seemed to go on forever; the lights brightened as she reached them and dimmed behind her, so that she could not tell where the real end of it was. It said something for the dazed state of her mind that somewhere along it she lost her escort of guards, and she did not even notice that they were gone until the human servant stopped at a doorway and waited for her to join him. This was no ordinary door, of course; as soon as she stepped in front of it, she saw that it was an inlaid geometric mosaic of thousands of tiny bones, all of them vertebrae, fitted together with exacting skill to cover the entire face of the door with bone ivory. The design was probably supposed to signify something, but what that was, she had no notion.

The servant opened the door smoothly and bowed for her to enter. She stepped hesitantly through, into the half-dark beyond.

Once again, she found herself at the edge of a sylvan glade beneath a full moon. There were no tame animals here, though, and the moon and stars overhead were all too clearly magelights. Most of this was illusion, and it was not as per feet an illusion as the fete had boasted. In fact, given Lord Lyon's power and prestige, it was probably not as perfect an illusion as he could create, if he cared to. An unseen musician played quietly on a dulcimer, and the branches of the trees moved to a breeze that did not stir even a hair of Rena's coiffure.

The door closed behind her.

In the center of the glade was a table, set for three. Mage-light caught in a candelabra of antlers centered on the table, though it did not appear that the occupants had been served yet. There were two people there already; the dim light made it impossible for her to identify either of them, but she assumed they were Gildor and his father.

She stepped forward a few paces and the light at the table brightened. The two occupants of the table turned toward her—and she saw that one of them was really a female.

A human female.

Sharing the board at what was supposed to be her intimate betrothal dinner with her Lord-to-be.

She froze where she stood, unable to go on, or to turn and leave.

The light was bright enough now to show humiliating details. The human was very beautiful, exquisitely and expensively gowned and jeweled in crimson satin the color of blood, with rubies and gold circling her throat, and her wrists—and from her posture and Gildor's, obviously his favorite concubine.

A concubine? At what was supposed to be her betrothal dinner?

For a moment, she wondered wildly if her mother had gotten the time of the invitation wrong, or if she had somehow misheard her orders.

But—no, that was not possible. The escort had been waiting for her, the acceptance ready for her to take with her, the ring that allowed her to come here readied for her hand. There was no mistake here.

Far from suffering from the paralysis and fear that had held her until this moment, her mind suddenly leapt free of its bonds of dazed indecision. She saw everything with heightened clarity, and her thoughts raced as if she had been playing the games of intrigue for decades. Perhaps it was only that for the first time in this awful day, she had confronted something she could act upon, rather than being in a position in which she had no control whatsoever.

This was no accident, nor had Gildor thought of this arrangement on his own. He could not simply have "invited" his concubine; his father would never have permitted such a thing, and the servants would have reported such a social gaffe immediately, long before Sheyrena arrived. Lord Lyon had orchestrated everything so thoroughly thus far that this insult to her dignity and pride could only be due to some plan of his—or of him and Lord Tylar combined. It could not be designed as an affront as such—Lord Lyon would not go through all that he had just to insult a nonentity like her, and if he wished to insult Lord Tylar, he would do so directly and not through her. He was the more powerful of the two, and it would be a social gaffe on his part to insult her House through a female.

It's a test. And Father must have had a hand in it. Only he would think of using a human concubine as the tool and weapon.

She was being presented with a situation designed to test precisely how biddable, how obedient to her Lord's wishes, she would be in the future. Gildor was clearly not capable of making any kind of decent decision; to present him with a bride who had a mind of her own and a will of her own was to concoct a recipe for disaster. A willful wife could show him to be the fool that he truly was, and with no difficulty at all. Almost as bad, a willful wife might learn to manipulate him.

If I make a fuss, if I take insult with this and walk out, what would that mean?

Probably that she was going to be too much for Gildor to cope with.

She was tempted to do just that—

But if I do—

If anything would tempt Lord Tylar into having her Changed, it would be just such a reaction. She had her orders, after all; she was not supposed to have any pride that could suffer insult. If she dared to think for herself, she was a danger to her father's ambitions as well as to Gildor. And with Lord Lyon's help and influence backing him, her father would be able, monetarily and politically, to afford having her Changed so that she would no longer cause problems for her betrothed. Lord Lyon clearly needed, with some desperation, a bride who would not challenge Gildor or attempt to usurp his own power through Gildor. And if he could find a maiden whose father countenanced sending her away for the Change, wouldn't he seize such a chance with both hands? A Changed bride would be a bride who also would be unable to manipulate Gildor and use him against his father—and one who would make Gildor completely happy. A perfect bride, in other words, insofar as Lord Lyon's purposes went.