The Elvenbane - Softcover

Mercedes Lackey And Andre Norton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586216871 ISBN 13: 9780586216873

Publisher: Collins, 1993

Synopsis

Two masters of epic fantasy have combined in this brilliant collaboration to create a rousing tale of the sort that becomes an instant favorite. This is the story of Shana, a halfbreed born of the forbidden union of an Elvenlord father with a human mother. Her exiled mother dead, she was rescued and raised by dragons, a proud, ancient race who existed unbeknownst to elven or humankind. From birth, Shana was the embodiment of the Prophecy that all-powerful Elvenlords feared. Her destiny is the enthralling adventure of a lifetime.\n\n"A brisk, glittering yarn that packs as much action, suspense, and twisting of conventions into one novel as many writers invest in whole trilogies." -Amazing Stories

About this title

About the Author:

For well over a half century, Andre Norton was one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to science fiction.

Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these were collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). Andre Norton passed away in 2005.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1
Serina Daeth. I am—Serina Daeth. Serina clung to her name as the only thing she was still certain of, the only thing the sun could not burn away from her. The sun—it was high overhead now, beating down upon her, trying to evaporate her.
Hot—she’d never been so hot. It was hard to think, hard to remember that she must keep moving. She couldn’t see her feet under the swollen ball of her belly—she felt them, though, every step an agony. But it would be worse if she stopped.
Her throat and mouth were so dry; there was nothing left from the dew she’d drunk this morning, lapping it off the rocks like an animal.
I am Serina Daeth. I am—
Ah, gods, that it should come to this.
A few months ago she had been Lord Dyran’s favorite. A few days ago she had hopes of hiding her pregnancy until the damned brat was delivered. She had planned to get rid of it, then return to the harem to give that bitch Leyda Shaybrel exactly what she deserved. She couldn’t have told Lord Dyran what Leyda had done to her, but she could have found some way to bring her down. Leyda had enemies; all the women of the harem had enemies. It was just a matter of making common cause until Leyda was ousted....
But Dyran returned from Council unexpectedly, and Leyda was waiting....
I will live, I will return, and I will find a way to make her suffer—
Lord Dyran had found their rivalry amusing, and encouraged it, by promising Leyda any number of things, but keeping Serina in the number-one position. When Leyda failed to oust Serina as favorite, and realized that Lord Dyran had no intention of replacing Serina, she had not given up. Undoubtedly she had turned to sabotage.
She must have. How else could I have conceived?
She must have substituted all of Serina’s food for a month with that intended for the elves. That had been several months ago, just before Lord Dyran went off to Council—
The Council lasted eight months. Would that it had lasted longer! I would have been free of this burden, and none the wiser!
Lord Dyran had left before Serina realized she was pregnant.
As soon as she knew, she had been in a panic.
To be pregnant with an elf-lord’s child, a halfblood, was a death sentence unless the lord was very lenient. And even if Dyran didn’t kill her, he’d have cast her off.
That would be as bad as death. To be given to some underling, or to the fighters as a breeder—or worst of all, given to Leyda as a servant—
No, never, not after what she had been, all she had fought to achieve—
All she had fought to achieve...for so long, and so hard....
* * *
Serina pinned an errant strand of russet hair back in place, and surveyed her image in her silver-rimmed mirror critically. She nodded a little, and turned her attention to her makeup. She was in competition with the best, and that left no room for anything other than perfection.
The current standard of beauty in Lord Dyran’s harem—as set by the style of his favorite—was for an ethereal, innocent, fresh look. Serina knew very well what Rowenie was using as a model, even if the other girls hadn’t figured it out yet. She was trying to be as elvenlike as possible, fashioning herself after the high-bred maidens she’d seen being paraded before Lord Dyran in hopes of a marriage alliance.
That meant pale gold hair worn loose, or garlanded with artificial flowers made of gemstones; creamy rose-and-white complexions; wide, childlike blue eyes; sylph-slim figures. Serina went counter, wildly counter, to that standard. Her hair was a fiery red; her eyes so dark a violet as to be nearly black, and seething with carefully controlled emotion. Her mother called her figure "generous," but that was an understatement, and said nothing about the slim waist, kept that way by years of dancing lessons, the hips that could distract even hardened gladiators from their practice, and the high, proud breasts that did more than distract them, to the point that her father had forbidden her the practice ground since she was thirteen.
Serina smiled at her reflection, and examined the smile with careful detachment. It would do. She kept the smile, and continued to examine her own handiwork, tossing tiny brushes down on the floor beside her when she was finished with them. The drudges would clean it all up as soon as she was gone.
While the other girls being groomed as concubines bleached their hair, dusted their cheeks with powder, and starved themselves to fit into the delicate skirts and tunics Rowenie Ordone favored, Serina flaunted her differences and learned to enhance them. She found rinses that made her hair even more lustrous and vivid, and painted her lids with purple and violet to bring out the color of her eyes, and brushed rose across her cheekbones. She kept up her dancing lessons and exercised in secret, adding tone and strength to her limbs. And she sought out the teachers of the bed-secrets, and begged extra lessons. Sooner or later Lord Dyran would tire of pale and ethereal, of coy and delicate, of dainty and timid. The Lord was not noted for steadfastness. And when he tired of the cool Zephyr, Serina was determined to catch him with Flame.
She corrected a smudge of deep violet above her eye with a careful fingertip and stood up, smoothing the soft panels of her wine-velvet gown. Let Rowenie keep to her pale pastel silks, all flutters and lace. They made almost anyone else look like a pale-pink lettuce, or an overblown cabbage rose. It would not be much longer before the Lord demanded spice instead of sugar.
Serina edged the stool in front of her dressing table back with a careful foot, so as not to tear or crease her gown. There wasn’t much room in this little cubicle; just her bed, stowage beneath it for undergarments, a hanging rack for gowns, and her dressing table, mirror, and little stool. But it was more room than she’d had with her mother; just a little closet hardly large enough for her bed. And she intended to have more, soon.
She left her little cubicle, keeping to a graceful, swaying walk as though the Lord himself were watching her. After all, who was to say that he was not? The elven lords were all-powerful, and it might well be that the Lord would choose to spy on the unguarded moments of his harem. Her father claimed he did so with the gladiators.
She glanced at the tall, green-glass water clock in the center of the indoor courtyard as she pushed aside the curtain to her cubicle to show that she was gone. Sunlight streamed in through the frosted dome of the skylight above; by the level in the glass delphin’s tail, there was plenty of time before the Lord made his daily visit to his concubines. In fact, most of the curtains still hung across the doors of the little swans’ cubicles, showing that the younger concubines were either still asleep or disinclined to leave. Serina was a "little swan," a girl in her first six months of office. In fact, she had only begun her post as concubine a week ago. Most girls did not survive the initial six months; most were ignored, and after a mere six weeks were sent down to the breeders, to become the living rewards to the Lord’s most successful gladiators.
Serina’s own mother was one such; and she had been lucky. Jared Daeth was the most successful ever of Lord Dyran’s hundreds of single-combat fighters. He had won so many duels for the Lord that he had stopped counting, and only the odds makers kept track. Ambra had been his reward on his retirement, still unbeaten, to become a trainer; he had taken to her, and she to him, and the Lord had indulgently agreed to allow them to pair perm

About this edition

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0586216871
• ISBN 13: 9780586216873
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400