all but a very thin veneer of her surface. She still looked like a rock, but now she had eyes and ears, and she employed both cautiously.
The woman, heavily pregnant, moaned and got to her hands and knees, crawling towards the water. This was not the sort of desert traveler Alara would have expected; the woman was young, unscarred, burned red and blistered by the sun, and the clothing she wore was of delicate silk, fit for a boudoir, but hardly for desert travail. Her long red hair had been looped up in a series of elaborate braids; now half of her coiffure hung down in her face, and the rest was a tangled mess. Her feet were bare, the soles burned and cut, but she seemed oblivious, so delirious she was beyond pain. Even as Alara watched, she fell again, but not before she had reached the pool.
She dragged herself to the water’s edge, put her face down into the water, and lapped at the cool liquid like an animal. And the moment she touched the water, there was a sharp click.
The woman clawed at her neck, and an elaborately jeweled slave-collar came away in her hand. She dropped it unheeded beside her, and sank back on the stones, exhausted.
Alara’s attention was caught and held by the sunlight winking on the gems of the neckpiece. All humans wore slave-collars, but she had never seen one this ornate. Easily a thumb-length wide, it seemed to be made of solid gold, with emeralds, sapphires and rubies arranged in a series of geometrical patterns all around it. Her acquisitive soul hungered for it; no dragon ever had enough gems for its hoard, and this bit of jewelry drew her as nothing before ever had. She wanted it, not only to possess it, but to wear it.
And that anomaly warned her off, before she shifted fully back to draconic form in order to seize the thing. Suddenly alarmed, she eyed the collar carefully. Sure enough, there, among the gems, just over the point where the collar fastened, were three tiny, inconspicuous elf-stones. She knew the type, and the setting of the stones. One to hold the collar locked onto the slave’s neck, one negating any mind-magic the slave might have, and one, evidently still active, holding a spell of glamorie that made anyone who saw the collar want to wear it. A safe way to ensure that no slave ever abandoned his collar willingly.
Suddenly the collar no longer seemed quite so desirable.
Then, like a shout, a voice cried inside Alara’s mind. :Ah, gods –!:
Alara had one moment of surprise before she found herself pulled into the woman’s mind.
Serina Daeth. Not ‘the woman.’ Alara was just barely able to hold on to her own identity, caught in the desperate grip of Serina’s mind.
Serina was too fevered to actually build coherent thoughts; Alara found herself overwhelmed by memories, feelings, emotions, all tumbled together, out of sequence.
Alara pulled herself free of the woman’s mind with a gut-wrenching effort, and lay for a moment with her head pounding and a terrible pain between her eyes.
She’s a concubine, the dragon thought, amazed. She had never even gotten near enough to one of them to really see them well, much less listen to their thoughts. Lord Dyran – that must be V’Kass Dyran Lord Hernalth. He was an elder; practically chief in Council. But how did a High Lord’s concubine end up in the desert?
She reached out a little cautious mental finger, and touched the edges of the woman’s mind as lightly as she could manage.
With patient sifting, she gleaned a few facts; Serina had been the favorite of the harem, proud of her position, status, and her ability to ride out her Lord’s arbitrary nature. That is, until a new girl had been given to Lord Dyran by an underling who specialized in the breeding of beautiful human concubines, male and female. Leyda Shaybrel was just as beautiful as her owner had advertised, and as ruthless as she was beautiful.
When Leyda failed to oust Serina as favorite, and realized that Lord Dyran had no intention of replacing Serina, she turned to sabotage.
That had been several months ago, just before Lord Dyran went off to Council – which, due to the havoc and the feuding caused by Alara’s meddling, would last a record eight months. Lord Dyran left before Serina realized she was pregnant.
As soon as she knew, she must have been in a panic. That’s death – even if Dyran didn’t kill her, he’d cast her off. Alara was fascinated. This was a glimpse into the humans’ world she’d never had before. I wonder if I can get into her memory? This could be so useful –
Maybe if I just nudge her a little –
Amazing, Alara thought, pulling delicately out of the memory. She found it very hard to believe what she had just seen: the greed, the selfishness, the completely self-centered personality. Even at their worst, the Kin stood together!
The woman was only interested in her own promotion, not in anything that happened to any of the other girls. She went to her Lord, not only willingly, but eagerly. All of them did.
As far as Alara could tell, the concubines were all like her. There wasn’t a single sign of rebellion or unity there.
Alara blinked dazedly. In the past few heartbeats she’d learned more about humans and elvenkind than she had in years. The woman’s memories were so strong – and the pull of her mind well-nigh irresistible. But the temptation to allow herself to be pulled back in was too much; there was so much she was learning about classes of the humans that the Kin had never been able to approach, like the concubines and the gladiators.
The woman was a treasure trove of information; with what Alara was gleaning from her, the Kin would be able to infiltrate elven society in the form, not of other elves, which was chancy and sometimes dangerous, but in the forms of the invisibles –
Best of all would be if they could learn enough to fit in as guards, fighters, duelists –
Her father trained gladiators, Alara remembered suddenly. There was that short memory of the duel in the arena, but there were probably more. She’d have to go look –
Serina half fell into the water, hardly recognizing it for what it was until her arms went under the surface. She plunged her face into the blessed coolness, drinking until she could hold no more, crying tears of relief at the feel of the cold water down her throat, and on the parched and burned skin of her arms and face.
When she could no longer drink another drop, she lay beside the pool, her arms trailing into the water, too weak to move. Too weak even to think.
She was still so hot –
The sun overhead was like the bright lights of the arena, too bright to look at directly …
Today the Lord was garbed in a pure sapphire-blue, and his eyes reflected some of that blue in their depths. Serina thought he was even handsomer than he had been the first time she saw him. ‘In a very real sense,’ Dyran said lazily, as he strolled with his hands clasped behind his back, inspecting Jared’s latest crop of duelists, ‘I owe something of my prosperity to you.’ The men were arranged in a neat line before him, wearing their special leather armor, each set made to facilitate his – or her, there were a few women in the group – weapon’s specialty. They stood at parade rest, like so many sinister statues, helms covering their faces so that only the occasional glitter of an eye showed that they lived.
Serina
