Ah. Another good reason to put off domestication.
They had set off in midafternoon. By the time night fell, between the mad boat ride and the alicorn trek, they would have gotten far beyond where even the wildest estimation of their abilities would have placed them. And they
were
going south, into the lands no elven lord had ever set foot on. The lands where the dragons and the wizards had supposedly gone.
That
came from more reliable sources than Myre; it was part of the treaty between the elves and the wizards.
And in the space of a few hours, thanks to Rena, he was a great deal more optimistic about their chances than he had been this morning. He no longer needed to worry where they would find food; Rena had already proven she could change the leaves of the trees into treats for the alicorns; presumably she could make them as nourishing for the riders as well.
A little bland, not at all fete fare, but I don't think I'm going to complain to the cook
. He could still hunt—though on the whole it would probably be better to wait until the alicorns went on their own way before doing so. He could sense the minds of even animals, which meant he
should
be able to sense dangerous beasts or pursuit before it got too close.
Even if they didn't find the wizards immediately, they were
not
doing badly!
For now
, he reminded himself, before he got caught up in unreasoning optimism.
It's barely summer. When winter arrives, we'd
better
have found the wizards. We haven't got real shelter, and it's going to be hard to magic
that
up out of the wilderness without someone noticing and coming after us. I'm not certain Rena can make dead grass or pine needles into anything edible, and we don't have warm clothing except for our cloaks
.
He noted something with half of his mind, while the rest worried over the problems to come. The alicorns had the same effect on forest life that a human or elven hunter would; where they passed, silence fell. Evidently they were just as fierce a predator as their reputation made them out to be. Off in the far, far distance, he heard birdsong, and the occasional animal call, but right here, along this deer path, there was nothing but the dull thudding of hooves on the bare earth and damp leaves.
"We really did it, didn't we?" Rena said, wonderingly, into the silence. The stallion flicked its ears at the sound of her voice, but did not slacken pace. Wherever it
was
going, it wanted to get there in a hurry. He only hoped that his muscles and Rena's would be up to a pace like this.
"We really did," he called back, softly. "We got away, both of us, and I couldn't have done it without you. I'm glad you came."
He hadn't been, at the time. He hadn't been until the moment she dried his clothing for him. Cynically he admitted to himself that once she became a benefit to
his
comfort, his attitude had changed.
But how was he to know that she would be anything other than a burden and something to be protected every step of the way?
She giggled. "It was almost
me
bursting into
your
room to beg for help last night, you know," she said unexpectedly.
He turned his head just enough so that he could look back at her while keeping an eye out for those pesky branches. "Why?" he asked. "I—I knew there was something besides the fete that had everyone in a state, but I didn't know it had anything to do with you!"
"They didn't tell you?" she said, astonishment writ large in her wide eyes. "How could they not tell you? Father was even letting me sleep late!"
He grimaced. "Lord Tylar has never confided anything to me, and he has always forbidden the servants to tell me anything he thinks I might object to. I assume I would have objected to this?"
"I don't know," she said hesitantly. "I—I was betrothed to Lord Gildor last night."
He almost lost his seat over that. "Gildor?" he spluttered. "Gildor, the brainless wonder? Gildor, who couldn't find his—his behind with both hands and a map? Gildor the dullard, the dolt, the incredibly, impossibly boring?" Was there another Gildor he didn't know about?
"That certainly describes the Gildor I saw," she agreed, and her eyes twinkled. "Now you see why I was so insistent on coming with you, and why I told you Father would use coercion on me to find out where you'd gone! I'd rather face wild alicorns than go into Gildor's bower!"
He shook his head. "I'm not certain
this
is preferable to marriage to Gildor," he retorted, wondering if his anger at her deception was valid, even as the heat rose in him. After all,
he
wasn't the one being told to wed Gildor.
"Please don't be angry with me," she pled, wilting before the accusation in his eyes. "It wasn't a lie; if he thought I
did
know, he
would
have used coercion on me—but—"
"But it's possible, given his
high
opinion of females, that it wouldn't even have entered his mind that you would be capable of such a clever deception." He thought it over, weighed Lord Tylar's well-known fear in the face of halfbloods with his well-known contempt of women, and concluded she was right not to take the chance. "Ah, you were probably right to assume he
would
, anyway," he replied, and her face lightened. "He's not exactly rational about halfbloods. He'll probably be using coercion on every person on the estate. Thank the Ancestors that Mother is strong enough to resist him, and clever enough to have something to give him that will clear her of guilt. He won't dare offend her House by doing away with her as long as
she
can make it seem she went mad on being told I was halfblooded."
Rena's face went deathly pale. "What's going to happen to her?" she whispered, as if Lady Viridina's part in all of this had never occurred to her.
Lorryn wished he could be more reassuring, but that was difficult on the back of a moving alicorn. He tried to give her a smile that would convey the emotion. "It's all right, we've planned for this for some time.
She
is going to concoct a false and very clouded memory for Fa—Lord Tylar's benefit, of the midwife-slave substituting me for a stillborn child. You know, don't you, that he left her alone on the estate for the birth? She'll let him hear that under a coercive trance, let him hear the midwife supposedly using her wizard-powers to make her forget; then she'll 'go mad with grief as soon as he wakes her and confronts her with it." It was a thin enough story, but Lady Viridina had never, ever been suspected of so much as an improper thought by her husband, and with the three Council members there, he would be forced to take it at face value. "The Council Lords will insist she be placed in protective isolation, of course, but that won't be so bad."
It would be better than death, anyway. And perhaps it would be better than being subject to her husband's every irrational whim and cruel trick.
But Rena shuddered. "That means being confined to her bower, with slaves watching her day and night," she replied. "I
would
go mad. But I suppose it's better than—"
Better than the alternative
. "The Council will believe it," he told her, this time quite firm in his conviction. "Ever since the Elvenbane appeared, they've been seeing halfbloods under their beds, and behind
anything
that goes wrong. I'm sure they'll find a way to 'prove' that this switched-at-birth nonsense is how Dyran ended up with a halfblood as his own heir without ever being aware of the fact."
"Oh," Rena said, looking a bit less dubious. "I'd forgotten about that. Actually, they'll probably
want
to believe it, and when they get done with him, so will Father."
"Very likely," he agreed. "And Mother is clever enough to carry it all off." He sniffed. "It's just a good thing they
don’t
have the wizard-powers to read thoughts."
"I hope they never get themselves some kind of tame halfblood then," Rena replied, soberly. "And oh, I hope Mother will be all right—"
"At least you
won't
have to marry Gildor-the-idiot!" he said quickly, and got a wan smile in answer.
"Yes—" She got spattered by a shower of drops from a branch above her, wiped them away, and got back a little more color and a real smile. "And before you ask,
believe
me, life eating leaves in a howling wilderness is much,
much
preferable to that!"
Chapter 6
KAL
AMADEA
AND KEMAN simply stood where
they were, like a pair of perfectly ordinary halfbloods, and not a pair of extraordinary, shape-shifting dragons. What was wrong with them?
:Do something
!: Shana thought furiously at Kalamadea.
:Shift! Fight them
!: He should already have been flinging himself into the sky!
Kalamadea did nothing except to look at her.
:Lashana, these people are not afraid of magic, and they are all carrying very sharp spears. Spears which, may
I
point out to you
, will
penetrate dragon-hide
.
I
think shifting would be a very bad idea, just at the moment; they could certainly use those spears. Can you think of anything else constructive
?:
Try as she might, she couldn't. Even a dragon needed a storm to call lightning down out of the sky, and the weather wasn't obliging with one. Perhaps the dragons could use their powers with rock to rum the ground soft beneath their captors' feet, but an agile warrior could certainly leap free before he was trapped.
And
as
for flinging himself into the sky—well, even a dragon needed
time
to shift. These warriors would certainly react before then.
It looked as if giving up was their only option. At least the warriors had not retaliated for the magical attacks the two wizards had made.
She stood up slowly, and held her empty hands over her head in what she hoped was a universally accepted gesture of surrender. Mero and the two dragons followed her example.
It must have been the right thing to do, since the warriors relaxed, just a trifle, although they did not lower their guard or their spearpoints. They all stood staring at one another for several moments.
Their captors were a striking people; this close, it was quite obvious that the dark skin was natural and not a dye or cosmetic. Their armor was of extremely fine make; beautifully finished with first-rate craftsmanship. Beneath the armor corselets, they all wore loose trousers of light, brightly colored fabric, and half-boots of felt.
Shana wondered how she and her group looked to them.
Finally one of the warriors said something to Shana directly, very slowly, in a complex and musical tongue. It sounded from the inflection as if it was a question. She glanced over at Kalamadea, who shrugged. "It isn't a language I understand," he said softly.
She turned to the warrior who had spoken and made a cautious gesture of apology. "Sorry, I'm afraid we don't speak your language."
The warrior muttered something, his tone conveying his frustration, and after a brief conference with his fellows, gestured with his spearpoint, nodding at the wagons below. That was clear enough. He wanted them to go down to the wagons, presumably without making any more trouble.
:I
think we'd better do as he wants, Shana
,: Mero said uncomfortably.
:We might get a chance to explain ourselves later
.:
Since there didn't seem to be any choice in the matter, Shana nodded, then turned and headed down the slope of the ridge in the direction he'd indicated, leaving her gear on the ground where she'd left it. After a moment, the others followed. She glanced behind, briefly, and saw that two of the warriors had snatched up the discarded gear and slung it across the backs of their bulls before mounting up again.
All of the warriors took to their bulls before following the prisoners: Shana didn't think it would be a good idea to try and test the agility of the cattle by trying to escape. Cattle weren't horses, but she'd already seen how agile these beasts were, and over a short distance there was no way a human would outrun one.
Curious eyes followed them down the slope of the ridge, although no one stopped to question any of the warriors who'd captured them. The dark people had a very simple solution for the keeping of prisoners, it seemed. The warriors took them directly to a particular wagon; the driver stopped it briefly while someone produced a set of iron collars and chains from within, and they were all chained by the neck to the back of the wagon itself. That was all there was to it, but it proved to be very effective. The collars were too well made to break, the locks too intricate for either Shana or Mero to pick, and both of them discovered to their complete astonishment that elven magics would not work on the collars at all. They could still speak mind to mind, thank goodness, but at least as far as Shana and Mero were concerned, the collars themselves were impervious to tampering.
The oxen kept up a slow pace, but it was a very steady one; they simply never stopped. That, too, was an effective means of keeping them from causing trouble. It wasn't hard to keep up with the wagon, but that was
all
one could do. Even when Shana and her group had been scouting, they'd taken frequent breaks; she and Mero were not used to this. Kalamadea and Keman didn't have much problem with the steady walking, but Mero and Shana were tired and footsore by the end of the day, when the nomads finally made camp.
If circumstances had been otherwise, Shana would have admired the efficiency of the nomads' arrangements. The wagons were pulled into a formation of several concentric circles, and the wheels staked down. The oxen were unhitched, and taken to the common herd. Fire pits were carved out of the sod and cleared out down to the bare earth, and that was all there was to it. This was all done with the ease of something that was more than habit, it was custom. Once camp was set up, people could get about with doing their chores: fetching water, starting fires, cooking, the lot.