Meanwhile Rennati had evidently taken him at his word; she was the "aggressor" in this courtship, and in Kyrtian's opinion, Gel might just as well run up the flag of surrender, because he hadn't a chance in the world. Not that he seemed to be unhappy about the prospect. But it was certainly an odd thing to see tough old Gel wandering about the gardens, eyes faintly clouded with bemusement, holding a basket for the flowers Rennati was se¬lecting to grace the vases of Lady Moth's chambers.
Three days passed, then four, and there was no sign that the two "lost Lords" had yet been discovered. On the one hand, Kyrtian was perfectly happy with this, since it gave him more time among the books.
On the other hand, he grew more anxious with every day that passed, for there was no telling what Lord Kyndreth and the Council were up to, what they were thinking, and perhaps most importantly of all, whether Triana had been convinced that he was not ambitious for a place on the Grand Council as a Great Lord. Only if she was convinced would she in turn convince Kyndreth.
There was no further sign from the Elvenbane, either, but Kyrtian didn't truly expect anything. It had been terribly risky for her to come to him; it would be better for the next meeting to take place somewhere in the wilderness, perhaps while he pursued the false Wizards.
Then, on the fourth day after Triana left, came the summons to the teleson that he had been waiting for. It took all of his self-control to maintain a curious, but calm expression when he greeted Lord Kyndreth's image in the flat glass.
"Something entirely unexpected has come up, my Lord," Kyndreth said, in tones of controlled urgency. "Two minor El-venlords that we thought had somehow been killed on a hunting expedition decades ago have turned up. They were found by two of Lord Cheynar's slaves and brought straight to his manor, and their story—well, it's terrifying."
Ancestors! They managed to walk all the way from the forest to the estate? They must have been exhausted!
"Where were they all this time?" Kyrtian asked, carefully as¬suming an expression of concern. "I know that forest has an evil reputation, but how could they have been lost for decades?"
"They say that they were held as prisoners by Wizards," Kyndreth continued, "and the accident of a rockfall in the caves where they were held is what allowed them to escape. There is only one problem—the Wizards that held them are not the Wiz¬ards with whom we fought!"
"Ancestors!" Kyrtian exclaimed, falling back a little in feigned shock. "But—that's terrible!"
"It is, and the Council was in an uproar about it," Kyndreth replied with visible unhappiness. "We have to find these crea¬tures and eliminate them. If they are laired up somewhere within striking distance of Cheynar's estate—"
"Then they are too close, however few in number they may be," Kyrtian said firmly. "I will deal with the matter, my Lord. This is precisely the sort of thing my personal slaves are trained for. We will take a small force into the forest to find the place, then return with a larger one and wipe them out."
"I knew I could rely on you," Kyndreth said, with evident re¬lief, and broke the connection.
With a laugh, Kyrtian leapt to his feet, feeling very like a racehorse finally let loose—now he could show what he was re¬ally made of; this might have been what he had been training for all of his life.
And let Kyndreth and the others scheme as they would, for he was finally on the right side.
26
Kyrtian’s own estate was roughly halfway between Moth s property and Lord Cheynar's, around the perimeter of the ragged circle defined by the outermost Elvenlord es¬tates. Although it might have been shorter to cut through the heart of elven lands, it was quicker to take Moth's Portal to his own property, select the men he wanted, and go from there to the nearest estate with a Portal that he could get access to. In this case, it was the estate of the late unlamented Lord Dyran, which had eventually wound up in the hands of Lord Kyndreth. Dyran's estate bordered on the desert; Cheynar's, between Dyran's land and the rest of the elven-held world, was in well-watered hills that ran up to low, forested mountains that were equally well watered. So much water, in fact, that the estate spent most of the winter shrouded in grey clouds that drizzled continuously. There could not have been a greater contrast in territory, but that wasn't the most interesting part. The interest-
ing part was, beneath those hills and mountains—caves, and a great many of them.
Going home first also allowed him to take Rennati back to the estate. That took one burden off his mind and would give him an excuse to leave Gel as well. Not that he didn't want Gel along—but this would not be a mission where Gel's expertise was needed. Given that he could not be at home, he wanted someone he trusted to be there. Lady Lydiell was clever and cunning, but she was no soldier. If soldiers were needed, Gel could command as well, if not better, than Kyrtian.
As for his own troops, those who were left were by this time heartily tired of real warfare and ready to go back to the farm, field, and household positions they had left. It was time to take them home, too—and by the greatest of good fortune, he would be taking all of them home. There had been only minor casual¬ties among his own people, no deaths at all, and those injuries they sustained were neither crippling nor incapacitating. That was not by accident or entirely by good fortune alone; Kyrtian's men, with their greater expertise in fighting than the Young Lords' conscripts, had shown their clear superiority in the field in all ways.
He was terribly proud of them. The point was, they weren't professional, trained fighters; they were fanners, house-servants, herders. But they had applied themselves with will and enthusiasm to his training, and when called on to use that training, they had done so with all the dedication he could have asked for.
He didn't quite know how to reward them; the kind of great feast he usually held for a successful "campaign" was woefully inadequate as a recompense. And as he shepherded the last of his people through Moth's Portal, he made a mental note to ask his mother her opinion. Of all people, she surely should have some notion.
Finally there were only the three of them left to cross—him¬self, Gel, and Rennati. And as he watched the other two waiting patiently for the Portal to clear, with Gel's arm openly and pro¬tectively around the apprehensive little dancer, he knew with
considerable amusement that there was at least one person he had had no difficulty in fitting a reward to. There had been a grain of truth in that pompous and incredibly insulting little speech he'd made in front of Lady Triana; he really did hope that Gel would have a son—or several—to train to take the fa¬ther's place at Kyrtian's side. No one could have had a better bodyguard—or friend—and Kyrtian was not looking forward to the day when he would have to tell Gel to stand down and let another take his place. But like it or not, the fact was that unless something happened to him, Kyrtian would likely be served by Gel's great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Near-immortality came with its own costs.
He shook off the melancholy thought, and brought his mind back to the present. Lady Lydiell would be very amused, he was sure, when she realized what had happened between Ren-nati and Gel. An inveterate matchmaker, she had been trying to pair Gel off for years. She'd find the current situation entirely to her liking.
She'll have them tucked up in a little cottage or suite of their own in the manor before the two of them get a chance to turn around.
"Go on through, you two," he said, waving at them. He turned to Moth, as they stepped into the utter blackness within the Portal.
"Are you going to be all right?" he asked. "Can you keep those idiot children from trying to start the rebellion all over again, or somehow getting caught?"
She laughed. "The day I can't keep an unruly pack of pup¬pies like that under my thumb, now that they've had a good scare, is the day you might as well start planning my funeral-games. You and your boys showed them that everything they'd won against their fathers was due to their incredible good luck, the Wizards' iron, and the Great Lords' incompetence. They're happy enough to be escaping the hounds, and I imagine they'll stay that way for some little while."
He had to smile at that. "I should have known better than to ask; I should be asking them if they think they'll be safe from you."
"Indeed you should." Moth smiled, and winked. "Two or three of those lads are rather toothsome, and still young enough to train properly. I'm not too old to remarry." She grinned as he laughed. "Now, get on with you. By now, poor Lydiell is prob¬ably wondering if the Portal's broken down."
He embraced her, then stepped across the threshold.
As soon as he recovered from the shock of crossing, which was always disorienting, he saw that his mother had already sorted out the new relationship between Gel and Rennati. And much to Gel's surprise and bemusement, she had taken it all in stride and with considerable aplomb—and from the sound of things, had begun making plans for them without waiting for Kyrtian.
Heh. I wonder if he expected Mother to be shocked or out¬raged that Rennati has managed to capture him? He should have known better than that—given all the matchmaking she's done all over the estate! He's just lucky she never seriously took it into her head to find a woman for him, or he 'd have been tied up long before this.
"Our people will expect a wedding-ceremony and a feast, of course," she was explaining to a bewildered Rennati. "Our Gel is a person of great importance here, and if we did anything less, people would feel cheated. We'll have to have all of the fighters and their families, of course—I wonder if we could have the whole thing in the open air? I can't think of any build¬ing on the estate large enough to fit everyone inside—"
"But—" Rennati said, feebly, looking alarmed.
"Oh, I know you've no idea what to do, child," Lydiell con¬tinued calmly. "But our people never had their traditions wrenched from them and buried past retrieval. They have their priests and their rituals exactly as they did before we came on the scene. Don't concern yourself with it; they know what to do, and if you can learn a clever dance, you can certainly learn a simple wedding ceremony. Now, this could fit in very nicely with the general homecoming; your wedding can be the start of a week of festivities and—"
"Mother, my love," Kyrtian interrupted her. "Don't forget, with all your planning, I have to be off with a select crew on
Lord Kyndreth's Wizard-hunt as soon as may be. This will have to look as if I consider it to be as urgent as he does."
"So Gel tells me," Lydiell said serenely. "All the more reason to have the wedding as soon as possible. I have been planning these homecoming celebrations for a fortnight, and you will be here for at least the first day and night of them! And if Kyndreth gets impatient, I will tell him that you needed the time to select exactly the right group of scouts and hunters."
Kyrtian bowed to the inevitable. "Yes, Mother," he said obe¬diently, and beat a hasty retreat to his own suite, leaving Gel and Rennati to face his formidable mother and all her plans alone.
A coward's ploy, and he would surely hear all about it from Gel once the Sargeant got away. But in the meanwhile—
He can take care of himself. At least for a while. Once Ren¬nati gets over being dazed, she 'II probably join forces with mother, the females against the poor, helpless male. I've never seen a woman that could resist an opportunity for a celebration and a new gown. Gel won't have a chance.
But oh, the more he thought about it, the more he hoped that his own time to wed wouldn't arrive anytime soon.
I think I'll run off and have Moth take care of everything. I'll hide in her library until the very last moment, so no one can swarm over me.
He pushed open the doors to his own rooms and sighed; it seemed an age since he'd been here, and the sight of his own quarters was very welcome.
But more welcome still was the bathroom, the ready tub, and the smiling servants waiting to help him.
He didn't stop for their help; he threw off his clothes and plunged into the hot water, relaxing completely in the penetrat¬ing heat, as he had not been able to do since he left. Much as he loved and trusted Lady Moth, she had all those Young Lords still lurking on her premises, and Lady Triana's unexpected ar¬rival only proved that even the formidable Lady Morthena could be surprised by unexpected visitors. Furthermore, she ad¬mitted later that she had no notion how many keys to her Portal her late husband had handed about. It could be many, it could
be few, but the fact was they probably existed. And if anyone was likely to ferret those keys out, it would be Kyndreth, Tri-ana, or Aelmarkin. As a result, he had not really been able to re¬lax, even while on her estate.
And, of course, while on campaign he'd had no such luxuries as this. Just the thought of all the times he'd gone to bed aching and bruised and bathless made this all the more pleasurable.
It might be a while before I get to enjoy it again. Although his hunt for the non-existent Wizards was by its very nature a wild-goose chase, he would have to conduct it as if it was seri¬ous. The bare essentials for camping, no more than six men, and they would have to keep themselves fed off the land as much as possible. There would be no hot, soaking baths out there in the forests.
He was, however, too energetic by nature to relax for too long in a hot bath when he wasn't bone-tired and wasn't cur¬rently aching and bruised. Soon enough he was out and dressed, and went looking for his father's notes. They were still where he had left them, in the library. A quick glance through them told him everything he needed to know.
He sent his bodyservant Lynder to find Gel. Just about now, Gel should be frantic for a way to escape the two females who were planning a wedding around him, will-he, nill-he.