[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

pale skin, and eyes as green as leaves.
Fortunately, the midwife was half-blind, and did not see the telltale
signs of halfblood.
Somehow and Valyn still marveled at Delia's courage and audacity the
baby's mother had managed to keep him hidden until he was eleven years old.
She used a variety of ruses when the overseers came making him cry so that his
eyes were swollen shut, and combing his long hair over his ears, telling them
that he had some childish ailment so that she could keep him in bed in a
darkened room, feigning sleep. And later, when he was older, instructing him
to keep his eyes cast down, always; to hide his ears and sit in the sun until
he was as brown as a little pottery figurine. But then the day came when she
could no longer put off Mero's collaring and she had known that when the
supervisors saw him, she, and he, would die.
That was when she exercised the ultimate in audacity. She smuggled
herself and Mere into Valyn's chambers, and revealed the entire story to him.
Valyn had long been known to be sympathetic to the plight of his
father's slaves and bondlings he had, once he became aware of their plight,
Page 201
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
often conspired to save them from beatings and other punishments. He had even,
though he did not remember it, intervened on Delia's behalf to keep her out of
the grasp of a particularly brutal gladiator. Having entirely human nurses
might have sensitized him early; or perhaps it had something to do with his
first teachers also human who made him aware that theywere his intellectual
equals, and not merely the trainable animals his father thought them to be. Or
perhaps it was simply that, rather than reveling in the pain of others as so
many of his kind did, he found the very idea abhorrent. And as soon as he
became old enough to exercise guile or power on the humans' behalf, he had
begun doing so. He knew they were grateful, but he had not realized that they
trusted himthis much. The combined appeal to his chivalry and his sympathy was
too much to contest. That very night, in his father's absence,he announced
that he was commandeering the boy to train to serve him, and the supervisor,
seeing no need to intervene in so minor a matter, agreed without a qualm. He
constructed a collar himself but instead of holding the beryl that negated the
boy's growing magic, it was one that held illusions to make him look entirely
human.
For the past five years, Mero had been constantly at Valyn's side, so
much so that first the human slaves, and then the elven members of the
household, began calling him "Valyn's Shadow." Now scarcely anyone recalled
his real name; even Dyran knew him as "Shadow."
Valyn paused before opening the door to his own quarters; he was
going to have to face his Shadow, and tell him that they were going to be
separated, that Mero was about to be sent to someone even more sadistic than
the Clan Lord. And he'd better have an alternative scheme, something that
would circumvent Lord Dyran's plans, if he didn't want Mero to do something
that would get him killed.
Because Mero was lying facedown on his bed in Valyn's quarters, his
back a mass of welts inflicted by that same Clan Lord and he had sworn when he
was carried in that he wasn't going to take that kind of punishment a second
time.
Valyn's mind raced. If only there were some way to substitute Mero
for the bondling servant that would be assigned to him for this journey there
would be one, of course. There would be no way that his father would entrust
his son and heir to the hands of a bondlingnot trained and conditioned in
Dyran's household not even though the fosterage he sent Valyn to was his own
sworn man, one of his oldest allies.
But everyone here knew Shadow
And then he had his answer. Everyonehere knew Shadow. But there would
be many stops along the way.
He had been ordered to take his timeand to take his shelter only in
the households of underlings and allies. There, in a place where no one knew
Mero, there could be a substitution. Particularly if his servant became ill
and he had to either turn back, or appropriate a new one&
The plan to save the situation blossomed even as he opened the door.
Dyran ended the conversation with Lord Cheynar, and dismissed the
communications-spell with a gesture. The fanatical Lord's scowling face faded
from the desktop, leaving behind only the reflection of Dyran's own in the
shining stone. Dyran sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with one finger,
aware that he had been expending a great deal more energy in magic than he was
used to doing. He felt tired and drained, and more than anything else right
Page 202
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
now, he wanted to retire to the harem for some well-earned pampering. That
message completed his preparations to send his son into fosterage and he
should have been able to dismiss the boy, and the entire episode that
precipitated this, from his mind.
But he couldn't. The incident unaccountably irritated him, quite
beyond reason.
He dimmed the lights with a gesture, lit a soothing incense with
another, and stared down at his own vague reflection. It was a pity that he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • moje-waterloo.xlx.pl

    •