by Andre Norton
That meant it was all the more imperative that he hold his illusion of full humanity over himself and Rena. It also meant that once everyone got over the novelty of seeing the blond
Com People in their midst, he and Rena would be here on bare and wary sufferance. After all, what did they bring with them? Nothing. No grain, no hope of grain, no skills of war. Only the ability to tame alicorns, animals the bulls would not tolerate. That wasn't exactly useful—and a demonstration of any other talents might well get them in more trouble than it got them out of.
The Priests that had welcomed the two of them wanted to take them directly to their Chief Priest—and Lorryn agreed, even though he sensed there was something that they were not telling him about, that request. It was somewhat unnerving to realize that he could not touch their minds, no matter how hard he tried; he was so used to being able to read people's thoughts as well as their expressions that he felt curiously half-deaf or half-blind. Was this how Rena felt? Or the more ordinary human slaves without wizard-powers? If so, he felt terribly sorry for them.
They were ushered into a large tent-wagon, redolent with fragrant smoke, and once the flap dropped behind them, seemingly empty. As Lorryn's eyes adjusted to the darkness, something moved at the far end of the tent.
I think you are not what you seem, tamer of one-horns, a deep and amused voice said, quietly, from out of the shadows there.
Lorryn started. I? he replied innocently. How can I be something other than what you see? Rena clutched at his hand, bewildered by the strange tongue and clearly ill at ease. He peered into the shadows, trying to make out the form of the speaker, it was hardly fair that these people were so dark; that made it hard to see them in this half-light.
Someone stood up; a human form detached itself from the shadowy form of a chair and moved forward. I say you are not what you seem, the deep voice continued, because what you seem to be is one of the Com People—yet beneath that seeming I see something else. Something I would have been tempted to name a green-eyed demon, had I not had four creatures like unto you brought to me within the fortnight.
A tall, powerfully built man with closely cropped, tightly curling gray-white hair stepped into the shaft of light from the smoke hole in the tent roof above, and stood before Lorryn, arms crossed over his chest. He leveled a challenging gaze at Lorryn, who froze.
So tell me what it is that you are, tamer of one-horns, he demanded. 'Tell me why it is that you and four of my captives share a semblance, while this you call your sister looks all too clearly like the other twain I hold in chains.
He knows what we are! He can see through the illusions! Lorryn thought in panic. Oh, Ancestors, now what do I do?
Well, there was no real choice. Tell the truth? It seems the only way out.
It's a very long story, he began, tentatively.
For the first time, the man who must be the Chief Priest cracked a slow, cautious smile.
There is always the time for a long story, he responded.
So Lorryn began at the beginning; the priest interrupted him often to ask very pointed questions, and by the time he reached the end of his narrative, the light from the smoke hole had crawled halfway up the wall of the tent, and he was hoarse.
I can't think of anything else to tell you, he concluded. Two of the people you have are elves, what you call green-eyed demons; the other four are obviously halfbloods like me. It seems to me that the wizards would be very interested in opening up trade with you, just as they claim. They probably need all the allies they can get against the elves.
Interesting. The man stroked his chin and stared quite through Lorryn. I am inclined to believe you. I must think on all of this you have told me; clearly things have greatly changed since my people fled into the South. His eyes focused again, and he gave Lorryn a look that made the halfblood quiver inside; in all of his life he had never met someone with so powerful a personality. Hold to your illusion; I think perhaps I am the only one to have seen through it, since I was consciously disposing myself to doubt it as soon as word of your coming reached my ears. The rest will see you both for Corn People. You will be on sufferance until I say otherwise.
Oh, just what I wanted to hear, Lorryn thought, suppressing a shiver.
The War Chief will find you of no interest, the Chief Priest continued. The Corn People were never of any use in warfare, and it is logical that he will dismiss you to my care. Be glad; if he penetrated your illusion, you would fare much worse than with me. And I think your illusion would not last beyond his desire to taste the strangeness of your sister.
The Priest's arched eyebrows left no doubt in Lorryn's mind about what that had meant. He fought down mingled fear and anger at the very idea; the Priest chuckled at his expression.
Have no fear that she shall be subject to my whims, boy; my taste is for my life partner and wife, which is just as well. Had she not chosen me, she would have become a Man-Hearted Woman, I think, and gone running with the warriors—and she does not brook that I should look elsewhere than her. He chuckled again, as if the idea amused him. Stay you in the dwelling to which I shall send you while I ponder upon the problem you have presented, and speak with the spirits of our fathers and with the First Smith.
Since they really didn't have any other choice, Lorryn nodded his agreement. The Priest went to the door of the tent and called out a soft summons; another, younger Priest came at his call, and ushered them out into the fading sunset, taking them to a small tent-wagon in the midst of many such. All of the people here were attired like the Priest, with the same iron torque with the flame-filigree pendant
The tent itself was plain enough, just a few cushions and some colorful blankets, with a cold brazier set under the smoke hole. As soon as they were alone, Lorryn quickly explained to Rena everything that had happened. He halfway expected her to react badly to the news that they had been unmasked, but she heard him out without making a single comment until the end.
It could be worse, she pointed out. If he's a Priest, he could have gotten quite a bit of prestige out of revealing us for what we are. He didn't; I don't think he will. I think there's some kind of power-playing going on between him and the War Chief. I think he might be holding us in reserve, to be used against this man.
Lorryn blinked in surprise; where had she come up with that! Not that it wasn't logical; in fact, it made altogether too much sense. But how had she seen it so quickly?
She might not be able to read thoughts, but she could certainly read his expressions like one of her romances. Mother and I were subject to every shift in politics that Lord Tylar made, she commented ironically. We learned to read the state of things very quickly and from very small hints. We had to; we had no choice. We had to be certain that if we said something complimentary about last week's ally, he was still an ally and not an enemy.
Ah, he replied, at a loss for an answer.
Then he was saved from having to give one by the arrival of a woman with a basket of food: a soft white cheese and strips of dried meat the consistency of leather, together with fresh water. Rena frowned as she surveyed their limited meal.
I could get very tired of that, very quickly, she said, gingerly picking up a meat strip and nibbling on it. I think perhaps I'd better work a bit of magic on a handful of grass or two every day.
I wouldn't argue with that, Lorryn agreed—although to his mind, the meat and cheese made a wonderful change from handfuls of grass. He'd begun to feel rather like a goat these past few days. He yawned hugely, only now becoming aware of how tired he was. Meanwhile, maybe we ought to rest while we've been given the chance?
Rena echoed his yawn as if she couldn't help herself. I—1 would have thought I'd never be able to sleep under a circumstance like this one—but—
But we might as well; the circumstance isn't going to change, whether we sleep or not. He took up a meat strip and began to work his way through it, valiantly. The same goes for making the most of these meals—
Rena took
the strip away from him, before he'd even managed to worry a bit off. Before he could object, she'd handed it back. Try that now, she suggested.
He did—and to his surprise, it was tender. It still tasted like unflavored dried meat, but now one could eat it without getting sore jaws.
I didn't know you could do that with anything other than plants, he said in surprise.
She shrugged. Neither did I until just a moment ago.
He felt his eyebrows rising. With every day that passed, she offered yet another surprise. Now she was trying her magic on something that was no longer alive—and making it work. What would she be able to do in a month?
Enough, perhaps, for them to win free of these people?
It could be. After all that they had been through so far, he was not willing to put any limitations on her potential abilities anymore.
He managed to muster up the energy to work the spell of tongues on Rena after a short nap, before anyone looked in on them. That was just as well, for immediately after they broke their fast, another young Priest arrived to bring them to the Chief Priest for another round of intense questioning. This time he concentrated as much of his attention on Rena as he did on Lorryn, pretty much dividing his questions equally between the two of them.
Not that this proved to make things any easier, at least for Lorryn. He was constantly worrying that Rena would say something wrong—not that he would know what was wrong or right! But the Priest—who finally introduced himself, belatedly, as Diric —was far more intent on learning what she knew about the wizards than about anything else.
Finally, after hours and hours of this interrogation, Diric dismissed them into the cool of the early evening. Do not speak to anyone else, particularly not the prisoners, he cautioned sternly. Be polite to any of my folk who speak to you, but answer to questions only that Diric has not given you leave to speak. Otherwise you may go about the camp and observe whatever you choose.
He did not insult their intelligence by ordering them not to try to escape; that was obvious. It was equally obvious, at least to Lorryn, that any attempt to use magic against the Iron People would be as futile as his own attempts at reading their thoughts. Obviously if magic could have gotten anyone free around here, neither the two elves nor the four wizards would still be captives.
He and Rena wandered about the camp, simply observing things, for the rest of the evening. No one stopped them or gave them orders to go elsewhere, and people seemed quite willing to talk to them and answer their questions. Lorryn found himself fascinated in spite of their obvious danger; he had never seen anyone who lived as these people did.
Their entire way of life revolved around their cattle. Fully half their food came from the cattle themselves; what Lorryn had thought was wool felt that made the tents proved to come from the carefully husbanded winter hair the cattle shed in the spring. While they might call themselves the Iron People, they could with justification have referred to themselves as the Leather People ; Lorryn had never seen anyone use leather in so many ways and for so many purposes. Often what he had taken for woven fabric turned out to be supple leather, thin and fluid as any woven goods, and cleverly dyed and embroidered to resemble cloth.
They had cloth as well, but Rena learned by asking a woman who was busy redyeing a faded shirt over a pot on the fire that it was all obtained by trade. We have had no trade, and no new cloth, for many moons, the woman said sadly, stirring the dye-pot with a stick. We are not poor, but we must husband our cloth as if we were the poorest Clan among the People! It is a sad thing.
They walked on through the warm evening breeze, the sharp scent of the dye following them.
Their next campfire proved to belong to some of the warriors—and there was a single woman among them, a woman who wore virtually the same garments and armor as a man, and who was treated exactly as another man. There he learned what the Man-Hearted Women were that Diric had obliquely referred to, for she was one of them—women who took vows to forgo marriage and children in order to join the warriors' society. There were not many of them, and it was often difficult to pick them out from the young men, so hardened were they by their intense training. The term seemed to refer, not to their courage, but to the fact that their hearts chose a way otherwise reserved for men.
Were there such things as Woman-Hearted Men ? When he asked that question, the answer was a matter-of-fact Of course—but I doubt you could tell them from maidens.
He also learned that the smiths were as honored among these people as the warriors—although there had been no metal for the smiths to forge for some time, a fact that made all the people restless and a bit uneasy. Their god was the First Smith, after all, who had given to humans fire and the knowledge of metalcraft. To be unable to worship this god by working in metal was unsettling to everyone in the encampment. So the Iron People were suffering many deprivations besides that of new cloth.
Although women could be smiths as readily as men, there were again differences in what they wrought, based on their sex. Men tended to concentrate on arms and armor—women on the iron jewelry that both sexes wore. Men's jewelry was utilitarian and based on armor—wrist cuffs, torques, headbands, belts, and ankle cuffs. Women's jewelry, however, though also of iron, was the most amazing stuff Lorryn had ever seen. As delicate as black lace, the filigree-work done by the women smiths would have attracted the envy of any elven crafter. It was sophisticated and lovely, and it would not have been at all difficult to start a fad for the jewelry among not only the elven ladies, but among their lords as well.
The sound of distant music caught both his attention and Rena's; they followed their ears to the tent where the music originated, and that was where they discovered why the Iron People had kept a pair of elven captives in the first place.
After the initial shock wore off, and the initial feeling of smug self-satisfaction at the fate of two who would in another time and place have been his enemies, he was reduced to feeling an odd sort of pity for them. Both of them were hardly more than caricatures of what they must have been when they'd first been captured. Neither could survive in his own society anymore, even if they somehow won free. It was impossible to feel anything but pity for them.
But as he and Rena returned to the relative security of their own tent, he wondered how long he would have for the luxury of pity for anyone but himself.
For Keman, the arrival of the new humans that their captors called the Corn People was only the second surprise of the day. The first was something he had not even told Kalamadea about, because he was not certain what it meant, nor what he was going to do about it.
One of the pack-beasts, oxen trained to carry enormous loads on their backs, had a dragon-shadow.
Back in the long-ago time before he and Shana had any notion that elves or humans existed, Shana had showed him how he could look for a dragon shape-shifted into something else by a kind of shadow it had, a wisp of form that showed its true nature. The more of its mass a dragon had shifted into the Out, the stronger the shadow would be, although as far as he knew, only he, his mother, Alara, and Shana knew how to spot those shadows. You had to know what you were looking for, then be looking at the right time to see it. It wasn't like breaking an illusion, which only needed disbelief.
He was rather fascinated with the variety of livestock the Iron People had bred for their uses, taking the place of beef and milk cattle, horses, donkeys, and grels. He had taken to watching the herds, idly trying to spot something new. This morning he had been looking over the pack-beasts, a variety of short-horned, broad-backed cattle with stout legs and placid tempers, when one of them caught his attention, perhaps because it moved just a little differently from the rest.
That was when he spotted the other difference; a dragon-shadow.
Certain that he was somehow mistaken—or that the circumstances of their captivity were doing something to his mind—he watched that particular animal all morning, right up until Shana called him after her session with Diric for
their little meeting.
He returned to that herd, looking for it, as soon as the meeting was over. It was still there, and it still had a dragon-shadow.
He sat down to watch it while the afternoon sun crawled across the sky and headed for the horizon, oblivious to the heat, to the flies that came to drink his sweat and went away disappointed. He watched it from the best vantage points he could manage, moving with the herd until he was certain it did not act like the others.
Or rather, it acted like the others; its actions and movements were a little stilted, a bit of a caricature. After studying the beast for some time, he realized that it had selected one particular ox and was copying everything that ox did, acting a heartbeat or so behind it. When it bent its head to graze, so did the cow. When the ox turned to look at something, so did the cow. When it ambled down to the river for a drink, the cow followed, and when it lay down in the afternoon to chew its cud, the cow did the same a few feet away. The cow never once took its eyes off the ox, which was very peculiar behavior for a herd-beast, and a female at that.
Which meant that he wasn't delusional; that dragon-shadow was there. The pack-beast was a shape-shifted dragon.
But since it hadn't made itself known to him, it wasn't one of the rebels who had cast their lot in with Shana and the wizards; they all knew what his halfblood-form looked like, and one of them would have signaled to him as soon as they saw him. So what Lair was it from? That was important; if it was from his old Lair, it was likely to be an enemy, and might cause trouble for him and for Shana if it knew they were here. If it was from another Lair, there was no telling how it would feel about them, and it still might cause trouble for them.
So just at the moment, it didn't look as if it would be a good dung to just stroll up to it and greet it in the dragons'-tongue, or speak to it mind to mind. Best to keep quiet and study the situation, perhaps.