She shook her head, dumbly.
"I have," Mero put in quietly. Both Shana and Kelyan turned to look at him. "After all, I spent most of my life in Dyran's manor. Shana, the elves base everything on how much magic a person commands. If you have a lot, you have everything. If you don't—well, I've seen slaves treated better than some of Dyran's pensioners."
Kelyan nodded, bitterly, and even Haldor seemed to be listening and not ignoring them.
"At least the slaves have set duties," Mero continued. "They aren't expected to perform miracles with nothing, and they aren't punished or ridiculed when they can't make those miracles happen. The slaves are ignored, which is better than being watched, when the watcher is someone like Dyran. I saw him set one of his overseers an impossible task, make him work to exhaustion, then accuse him of shirking and as punishment order an arranged marriage for the fellow's daughter with another of his underlings who was—well, just vile. I watched him drive another quite mad, then order his wife be taken away and given to someone else as a lady. And at least the slaves of someone like Dyran have mercifully short lives compared to the elven lords. A pensioner can look forward to centuries of that kind of treatment."
Kelyan nodded all through Mero's explanation. "Exactly right, halfbreed—" He paused, and tilted his head in inquiry. "Sorry, I've forgotten your name. You're very quiet—"
"Mero," the wizard supplied, and smiled. "They called me Shadow; I am very good at making myself ignored."
Kelyan gave him a nod of acknowledgment. "Mero, then. Yes, exactly right. There were plenty of Dyran's slaves who would look at me with pity in their eyes—and my father, too, before he worked himself into a premature senility." He sighed. "Well, needless to say, there are—or at least there were, when last I walked civilized lands—plenty of younger elves who would be only too happy to find a way to limit the High Lords' magic. And given enough time to think about it, there are probably any number of them who could find it in their hearts to sympathize with the wizards. And actually, now that I've had a taste of being a slave myself, I even find it in my heart to sympathize with the humans." He quirked another of his ironic smiles. "At least Dyran met a nasty end. I will sleep very peacefully tonight, knowing that."
He would have said more, but another of the warriors appeared at the door to the tent, pushing the flap aside and gesturing peremptorily. Kelyan made a face, and got to his feet, prodding Haldor with a toe. "Come on, old thing," he said with resignation. Time for our performances. Our masters are awaiting us."
Haldor just grunted again, got to his feet, gathered up his chain, and followed Kelyan out.
"Want to watch?" Shana said to Mero in an undertone. "I really have got to see what it is they're doing. Especially if we're going to be expected to do the same."
He shook his head.
"I'll go with you," Keman offered.
"I'll stay with Mero," Kalamadea said. "You two go see what you can see; we'll see if we can come up with any plans."
Shana didn't need a second invitation; she gathered up her chain and followed the two elves, Keman on her heels.
Just as Kelyan had told her, no one tried to prevent either of them from following the two elves as long as it was obvious they were not trying to escape. The elves didn't go far, only to about the third circle. Their destination was a tent—a real tent and not a tent-wagon, the kind Shana remembered the caravan-traders using, only much, much bigger. She reflected that it must have taken a dozen people working together to put this up. As they neared it, colored lights played on the tent walls from inside, and music drifted through the quiet night air.
The elves went inside; Shana and Keman followed them.
They stopped just inside the tent flap, which was tied open. Inside, it had been furnished much like Jamal's tent; there were painted hangings decorating some of the walls, rugs forming a floor, and large piles of cushions for people to sit or recline on. At one end was a group of musicians; at the other, someone dispensing food and drink. Servers brought both to the men and women who were dispersed about the tent. Most of them had the look of fighters; most were relatively young. Some sat or reclined, eating, talking, or playing games of chance. Some danced to the tune the musicians played.
But most were drifting toward the musicians' end of the tent where the elves had just arranged themselves.
"What do you suppose they're up to?" Shana wondered aloud.
"I haven't a clue," Keman told her. "But we ought to see if we can't get nearer."
They worked their way through the crowd; carefully, trying to attract no attention to themselves. They managed to get into a corner where they had a good view, but were out of the way.
The musicians finished their current piece, and stopped, clearly waiting for the elves to settle themselves. There were six musicians: two drummers, two with string instruments, one with a horn, and one with something Shana couldn't identify. Kelyan took a comfortable position, and nodded to the head musician, the one with the horn, who started a new piece. He played the first phrase alone, and the others joined in after a few beats.
That was when Shana understood why the riders were so intent on keeping the elves as their captives.
Kelyan spun a complicated illusion of fantastic birds and creatures with the bodies of lithe young females and males, but with butterfly wings. He danced them around each other in time to the music, to the evident pleasure of the watching riders. It wasn't a very good illusion; the birds and butterfly-creatures were quite transparent, easy to see through, impossible to believe in. But as an artistic piece, and as entertainment, it was excellent.
Certainly it was something the riders would never have been able to produce for themselves.
When the piece ended, the illusion faded. Haldor sat up, face full of resignation, as the next piece began. His illusion, like Kelyan's, was a frail thing and quite transparent, but his tiny horses of flame, darting and rearing and galloping in the air, were quite mesmerizing to watch.
Shana tapped Keman on the elbow and inclined her head toward the less crowded part of the tent as Haldor's piece ended. He nodded agreement, and they made their way to the end nearer the open doorway.
"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."