Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

"Before you ask—I can't work any magic on the collar itself, and I'm not certain I can shift," Keman said quietly. "Kalamadea and I have tried; I think it may be something in the collars."

She made a face of distaste. "Well, the elves manage it; I don't see why these people couldn't, too. Oh, fire and blast it! At least none of them know our tongue; it's easier talking man thinking at you."

"We are going to have to convince this Jamal that we aren't fullblood elves and we can't do illusions," Keman continued urgently. "Otherwise they'll have us sitting there making butterflies and flowers, for the rest of our lives—"

"Unless Collen runs into them and arranges a trade or a ransom or—yes, well, that isn't very likely at the moment." She chewed her lip. "Let's sit here and watch the people for a while. Maybe we can find out more about them, something useful."

They didn't learn much, except that the riders worked the elves to sheer exhaustion—and that both Haldor and Kelyan grew depleted of magic and weary a great deal faster than either Shana or Mero would have under the same conditions.

Even then, the riders didn't seem disposed to let the elves go for the evening. Instead, they were plied with food and drink, allowed to rest for a bit, then put back to work.

This did not bode well for the four of them, if ever the riders discovered their real abilities, Jamal would not want to let them go, ever.

It was interesting, though, that although the warriors did not wear their armor here, they did retain their iron neckpieces and armbands, and sometimes added a browband as well. The women wore truly exquisite jewelry of black filigree, some of it faceted and polished in places until it sparkled like gemstones. All of the people here favored bright costumes of light, flowing fabrics; oranges, reds, and golden yellows, in more elaborate versions of the garments Shana had already seen them wearing during the day.

"Who's that?" Keman whispered suddenly, as there was something of a stir at the entrance to the tent. She peered through the half-lit darkness and made out a familiar face among the crowd pushing in through the entrance.

"That's Jamal," she whispered back, as the War Chief and his entourage were offered a hastily vacated set of cushions by those who had scrambled to their feet. "But who's that beside him?"

An older man with the physique of a blacksmith, his short hair as white as sheep's wool, had entered at nearly the same time, with his own entourage. While Jamal's followers were all clearly warriors, though none of them actually carried weapons here, this man's followers were all of his type; they all wore an odd headdress of folded fabric, and all wore spotless leather aprons. They differed from Jamal's group in one other striking way: They all wore iron torques from which a stylized flame-shape was hung as a pendant, formed out of the same filigree as the women's jewelry.

"Don't know," Keman answered, "But he seems to be just as important as Jamal!"

Indeed, there were as many people waiting to talk to the older man or hastening to serve him. He and his entourage got the same deferential treatment. Shana didn't detect any open animosity between the two groups, but she thought there was a certain undercurrent of tension when the two men glanced at each other.

If she were to hazard a guess about it, she'd say that the Iron People had two leaders, not one, and that this older man was the second of them. And that it was just possible that neither of them was entirely happy about sharing power.

Well, that was interesting! It might be useful, too. If there was some rivalry there, it might just be possible to exploit it

The first thing to do was to find out just what, exactly, the function of this older man was. Then she could see if there was some way to use one of them as leverage against the other.

She turned her attention back to Jamal, studying him further. He was the younger of the two, and might be the more flexible and forward-thinking. It might be best to appeal to him, rather than to the older man.

"He's watching us," Keman whispered urgently. "The old man, he's watching us."

She transferred her gaze, quickly. The old man was watching them both closely, eyes narrowed. Even as she looked, he turned his head slightly aside to talk to one of his followers, never taking that speculative regard off of them.

"I wish I knew what he was saying," Keman muttered to her.

She nodded; there was a great deal of intelligence in that man's face; something about the determined set of his mouth and chin told her he would be a bad man to cross. He would take his time about a solution to the problem you represented, and when he had his solution, he would methodically and thoroughly implement it. And she could not tell what she and Keman meant to him. Now, more than ever, she cursed the ability these people possessed that enabled them to keep her out of their minds.

"I wish," she replied fervently, "That I knew what he was thinking."

"Where did these new green-eyed demons spring from?" First Iron Priest Diric asked one of the acolytes in an aside. He took care to show none of his displeasure in his expression, but he made it very clear in his tone of voice. "And more to the point, why was I not informed of their capture?"

"Lord, as to the first, I was told that they were caught spying upon the wagons this afternoon," the acolyte replied, keeping his voice down and cultivating a pleasant tone, as if he spoke of nothing consequential at all. "As to the second, lord, I cannot tell you. I only heard of them this very evening."

Diric raised an eyebrow, both at the words and at the precautionary tone of voice, and took a sip of his beer, savoring it carefully. Only he and Jamal received beer; there wasn't a great deal of it left, and there was no more barley to brew more. Somewhere, somehow, the Forge Clan of the Iron People were going to have to find farmers to trade with. The People were running short of all manner of grain and grain products; in a month or so there would not even be flour for bread.

For that matter, they would have to find supplies of iron ore, or better yet, iron ingots. The last farmers they had found to trade with had been clustered in a village six months' travel behind them—the last miners, nearly a year in their wake. The forges had not been unpacked for far too long; the war-bulls would need horn-tips soon, surely. The women were already complaining that they needed new jewelry.

But Jamal did not seem particularly interested in finding miners or farmers with whom to trade. He seemed much more intent on finding someone to fight.

It was a good thing that the land itself had conspired against this particular plan. The People could not have sustained a war with supplies in their current state. The only creatures they had encountered on this endless grass-plain were alicorn s and these new green-eyed demons.

Of which no one bothered to inform me until I saw them myself when I entered the gather-tent. He had a sour taste in his mouth that the beer could not remove, and a bitter taste in his mind when he considered his War Chief. Jamal was ambitious; he had known that from the start. The War Chief had made no attempt to cloak that ambition, and indeed, most War Chiefs were ambitious. Diric himself had outlived three of them—ambition was a good thing in a leader whose functions were all of aggression and defense. But Jamal was also popular, and that was beginning to worry Diric. The fact that he had been able to convince his followers to conceal the existence of these new green-eyed demons was very disturbing.

He cast a veiled glance at the War Chief, who reclined at his ease and watched with a paternal smile on his lips while the unmated danced and disported with one another. He had heard rumors that Jamal had greater ambitions than any other War Chief in Diric's memory. Those rumors spoke of Jamal's dream of returning to the homelands laden with booty, to unite all of the Iron Clans under his sole leadership. No one had ever done that before; the only body with any authority between the Iron Clans were the Priests, who oversaw disputes and made all needed arrangements whenever two or more Clans gathered together. Never had any two Clans agreed on a single leader before, much less all the Clans together. Had it been anyone else, Diric would have dismissed the ambition with a snort as idle dreaming. The trouble was, Jamal was just charismatic enough to carry the plan off. If he returned with the wagons groaning with foreign booty, his chances of success were very good.