Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

And after that, she would not even be here; she would begin a round of visits to her own female kin, then to Lord Lyon's. There would be fetes in honor of the betrothal, and long talks with each chosen female on the duty of wives to their husbands. That round of visits would end, not here, but at Lord Lyon's estate, where the wedding would finally take place.

No, the timing on this could not have been better—

And here was the escape she had longed for, dreamed of—even prayed for, although the elves had no deities to entreat, and felt such superstitions were the product of inferior minds. Perhaps the humans were right after all—something did listen to prayers!

Myre appeared within moments of her sounding the bell, looking a bit out-of-sorts, but not at all disheveled; it had never occurred to her before, but Myre always looked like that, no matter how odd the hour when Rena summoned her. Did she never sleep? Or was she something other than what she seemed?

Did wizards sleep, for instance?

Myre's eyes widened just a trifle to see Lorryn sitting on the couch, but she nodded as Rena motioned for silence.

"There's no one listening, not even with magic," Lorryn said wearily. "Believe me, I would know."

Myre stared at him—then slowly smiled. "So, wizard," she said softly. "I heard about the three Council members arriving last night, but I had thought it was because of Sheyrena's betrothal."

"Sheyrena's—what?" Lorryn said, taken aback.

"Never mind, it doesn't matter," Rena told him fiercely, men turned to Myre. "Please," she pleaded. "You seem to know so much about the free wizards—we have to get away from here! We need your help!"

Myre's smile broadened, as if none of this surprised her in the least "Indeed," she said calmly. "I would say that's an understatement."

The slave sat down on the edge of the bed as if she were the master, and not the other way around.

Then again—right now, she is. Her posture certainly seemed to confirm every speculation Rena had just made about her. No slave ever unlearned discipline to look the way Myre did now.

"So, I do believe I can help," the slave said, leaning back on her hands and regarding them both with an amused eye, as relief made Rena feel faint "The first thing we'll need is a weapon or two. And after that—" She smiled, as if at a secret only she knew. "Just how good a swimmer are you?"

Chapter 5

THE DISCOVERY OF a few wild humans out here was startling in its way, although Shana had assumed ever since they began their search through the wilderness for a new home that sooner or later the wizards would come across humans that had never been subjugated by the elves. This world was simply too big, and the elves too few, for them to have either conquered or destroyed all humans in it.

Now that they all knew the facts, though, this discovery was very intimidating; from everything they learned from Collen's clan, there were many more humans out beyond the lands she knew than Shana had thought; here was a group—one of many—that existed simply to trade with the other wild ones.

Collen's family of traders had been unable to tell the wizards anything about the grasslands to the south of the Citadel, or who might be living there now. He and his kin stuck to the river, seldom venturing beyond it. He could only tell her that there were many groups of nomadic herdsmen that roamed the plains, and that once in a great while some of these sent representatives to the river to trade with his people.

Shana had taken that lack of information as a reason to escape the Citadel on a scouting expedition, and Mero, Keman, and Kalamadea had not been much behind in volunteering as well. The retrieval of personal belongings was proceeding at what Shana considered to be a reasonable rate, but it was not satisfying Caellach Gwain and his cronies, who seemed to see no reason why they could not come barging into any given session with demands that the circle of young wizards bring back a particular object right now. Nor, despite much urging both polite and brusque, would they stoop to the use of stones to amplify their powers, or to work in a circle to combine their abilities as the younger set had learned. They had much more important work to do; "fetching things was a job for apprentices," or so Shana was told at least once a day.

What that "important work" was, Shana had yet to learn. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they might be working on ways to defend the Citadel or keep the magics practiced within it cloaked. She herself had seen no evidence of that, however, nor had anyone else she'd spoken to. Unfortunately for all, it was most likely that the "important work" consisted of arranging their personal quarters to their liking, and trying to bully the dragons into making changes and additions before those changes were scheduled.

Caellach himself had treated Shana to a lecture on the duty of an apprentice to her masters, and a tirade on how an apprentice who had single-handedly brought about the wreckage of her masters' lives should be grateful they still permitted her to walk among them. Shana decided then and there that she had much more important work to do than fetching things as well—seeing if there were any more wild humans to the south. After all, it stood to reason that the plains could support any number of groups of "nomadic herdsmen," and one of those groups might retain knowledge of human magic from the times before the elves arrived. The elves didn't own the world, though they might think they did, and what they knew about it was probably only a fraction of what there was to know.

Shana had another reason for her expedition, though it was one she kept to herself. Realistically speaking, even though Collen's traders had been friendly, there was no law saying that the next batch of humans that stumbled on the Citadel might not be hostile. According to the old chronicles, humans had warred with other humans long before the elves came here. Fullblood humans might consider the halfblood wizards to be as bad or worse than the elves themselves.

Her absence would give the circle a clever excuse not to accede to Caellach Gwain's more unreasonable demands if they didn't feel like it. If she—the most powerful of the lot—wasn't there, they would "naturally" be very limited in what they could bring. Caellach had already gotten far more than his share of their time and effort. If they told him that getting the particular trinket he had his heart set on would mean that he and the rest of the wizards would be enjoying a dinner of oat porridge instead of nice fresh game—and that they would be certain to let everyone know why there was oat porridge on the table that night—he would probably go away.

And if the old whiners didn't like that answer, there was no way they could refute it, since they hadn't bothered to learn the limitations of the new ways of using magic. What was even more delightful, it was not a situation they could win by addressing that ignorance; if they learned the new ways, they would obviously be capable of doing their own retrievals. Denelor had promised that was how he would deal with the situation, and even Parth Agon, who had grown heartily tired of their demands, had agreed to back him up. The Chief Wizard had changed a great deal in the days past, and in Shana's opinion, it was all for the better. She frankly had not expected it; she had really thought he would become more like Caellach and not more like Denelor. Having him on her side instead of opposing her had made her situation marginally more comfortable.

"I will tell them that since they have proven that they are ready to learn new magics, they must, of course, practice them diligently," Parth had said without cracking a smile. "As the Chief and most senior, of course, I have the obligation to set such an assignment on those who are my junior. And how better to practice than by retrieving their own gear?"