as the doors that allowed them entry to her chambers, but were nonetheless clearly doors that fronted rooms appropriate for dealing with dignitaries of note. They were very different from the doors that had led to the crammed, dingy room a mortal might have called home.
Severn glanced at Elluvian; the doors remained closed.
“They are warded,” Elluvian said, when the boy failed to move. “I will open them.”
“Allow the young man to do his duty,” An’Tellarus said.
“His duty, An’Tellarus, is defined by neither you nor me; he is a Wolf, not a page or a footman.” Ah, he had done it again. He wanted to turn on heel and march out of the rooms over which An’Tellarus was master. He should never have responded in any way to her summons. But a lack of response often caused interference in any of the other activities that demanded his presence within the High Halls.
It was not Elluvian, in the end, who would pay the price.
Severn waited while Elluvian considered her words and his own.
“Everything she does is a test of one kind or another. You have seen her casual tests. Had you failed you would either be injured or dead. She has had time to prepare something more deliberate and less casual. Caution is not only advised, but necessary.”
Severn, however, bowed to the closed doors. “An’Tellarus,” he said, as if she were his master. He held that bow.
Elluvian did not raise a hand to touch the doors. Every word he had spoken, he believed. An’Tellarus had no interest in those who failed. The mode of failure, the result of failure, were therefore irrelevant. Elluvian had come to understand that inherent in failure was information, some lesson to prevent that failure in the future. Survival, however, was necessary.
She did not generally play her games with mortals; they were too fragile and they were not Barrani; harm done to them, should they survive, removed all of her playful hostility from beneath the umbrella of the laws of exemption. Her interest in Severn was highly unusual, and it presented a risk she did not normally choose to take.
But it was the room into which she had eventually led Severn on their first visit that disturbed Elluvian; the contents implied—strongly—that she had some prior knowledge of the boy, a child who had grown up anonymously in the fief of Nightshade.
A child, he thought, who had been both friend and protector to the new Chosen. Fate’s hand here was not subtle; it was ugly and poorly understood, at least by Elluvian. Woe unto any who chose to enter An’Tellarus’s arena in ignorance.
Severn did not rise.
An’Tellarus did not bid him rise.
Minutes passed. Despite his misgivings, Elluvian was almost impressed. He thought Severn would hold that bow, as if it were one half of a staring contest, until An’Tellarus bade him rise. Or until these doors, as the first, rolled open. Elluvian raised a hand. An’Tellarus had time to play these games; Severn did not.
Before he could touch the surface of the door, however, the doors began to roll open. He was almost shocked.
Standing in the center of a large oval room was An’Tellarus herself.
* * *
Severn rose when the doors began to move. Not for the first time, Elluvian wished that human eyes shifted color; no part of the boy’s expression gave any hint of what he might be thinking or feeling, and absent the shift in eye color that denoted emotional response in any other sentient race, it was difficult to judge his state of mind. If he was afraid of An’Tellarus, it did not show. His posture was perfect, his hands steady, his expression shorn of any ticks that might have implied fear.
Her eyes were blue, but there seemed to be a distinct shade of purple in the mix of colors, and purple was rare for his kin—especially those who had survived to reach her age.
“Come,” she said. “This room is unlike the last room in which we met. It is entirely a Barrani room, but it is one not much used in these modern times.”
He nodded and walked the length of the room until he reached her. No hesitation marred his approach.
To Elluvian’s surprise, she offered him her right hand in a gesture he didn’t immediately recognize. Severn, however, didn’t have that problem. He took her right hand in his.
It was a human gesture, a mortal greeting, a handshake.
Elluvian wondered if all of this was somehow another test of Elluvian; if Severn himself was ancillary. If