The slaves were coming out behind him, looking as stunned as he felt. A handful of the group that had accompanied him, cousins and staff and guards, saw them coming out of the mine and hastened to meet them.

It was a lovely fall day, air clear and crisp, sky blue and unmarred by clouds. His entourage wore bright splashes of color, red and blue and green silk. He could sense their agitation, hear their voices lift in excitement as they saw him.

He must be a sight: clothes torn, face bloodied, eyes hollow and distant. In a moment, they would descend upon him. He couldn’t bear the thought of facing their distress, their questions, the crying of the old aunts who had raised Everlyn after her mother had died.

He turned back to his slaves, to count how many had not escaped the mountain, to see that the injured were looked after. He realized immediately that some were missing.

“Where’s Eadamm?”

The humans nearest him shook their heads. Of those who were just emerging from the mine, who had been in the rear, three refused to meet his gaze. They stood with eyes cast down, shoulders hunched as if waiting for a blow. Finally one mumbled, “He stayed behind, Lord, to save the Ogre.”

The one in the middle elbowed the speaker hard. “He means ‘the lady” sir. ‘The lady!”

“Yes, Sire, the lady. I meant no disrespect.”

Igraine backhanded the man, knocking him against the walls of the mine. So Eadamm had gone back, disobeying his orders.

Igraine, governor of the district of Khal-Theraxian, had built his reputation on his handling of slaves. On his ruthless handling of slaves. The king had given him position, land, a title because of it. Igraine never allowed a slave to break a rule, to show disrespect, to shirk his duties, to disobey an order. Examples had to be set.

His personal honor guards came rushing up the path from the meadow, exclaiming, bowing. One grabbed up the slave Igraine had struck and dangled him by his arm.

“Lord, what has happened?”

“Where is Lady Everlyn?”

“Are you harmed?”

The questions came at Igraine too fast and thick to answer, and he turned and waited until the rest of the group was within hearing distance. He didn’t want to tell what happened more than once. “There’s been a cave-in. Everlyn is… lost.” He steeled himself for the cries of anguish.

Naej, who had been mistress of his estate until Everlyn was old enough, who had been mother and mentor and friend, covered her face with her hands.

“Sort out the slaves,” he told the captain of the guard. “Make sure they see to their injured. Find the foreman and see how many are lost.” Igraine’s face hardened. “And find out how many stayed in the mine against my orders. These three knew of it. Keep them separated from the others.” If the ones inside the mine died, these three would be used to set an example.

Behind him, a feminine voice started a song of sorrow for Everlyn, a melodic sound without words that was eerily like the grating of stone against stone in the tunnel. Naej whimpered, and another voice, this one masculine, joined the song.

Igraine whipped around, intending to tell them to shut up, to leave. He knew he would have to sing, to mourn, but not yet. Not just yet.

Naej had uncovered her face, was opening her mouth to sing. Instead she cried out, the O shape of her mouth going from anguished to astonished and delighted. “Everlyn!”

He wheeled to see six figures emerging from the entrance to the mine, one tall, five short: Everlyn and the five slaves who had remained behind to save her.

She was alive! Walking, albeit unsteadily. One sleeve was missing from her tunic. The hem hung in shreds around her slender hips. Both knees, scraped and bleeding, showed through rents in her pants. Her long hair was sticking out in tangled lumps. Her dark skin, bloodied at temple and shoulder, was coated with gray dust.

Igraine had never seen a more beautiful sight.

For the second time that day, pandemonium erupted around him as his guards, his entourage, his slaves, rushed to aid those who had just emerged from the mine.

Igraine plowed through them, stepping on Ogre and human alike to get to his daughter.

She threw herself into his arms, tears streaking the dirt on her face. “I thought I would never see you again!”

He squeezed her tightly. “I thought I would never see you,” he said gruffly.

Naej, brushing at the dirt and small rocks tangled in Everlyn’s long hair, said as she had when her charge was a child, “Let’s get her home, Igraine.”

Before Naej could lead her away, Eadamm stepped forward and bowed. “Lady… This is for you.” From the front of his shirt he produced the rock Everlyn had been trying to free from the wall of the tiny room.

It was a bloodstone, smoky and black-so dark it seemed to suck in the light and hold it-and shot through with globs of carmine. It looked like huge drops of blood had been trapped inside. Too ugly for jewelry, too soft to be useful in making tools, bloodstone was mostly used by minor magicians for show. With the casting of a spell, they made the red glow and throb like fire. This piece was the size of a potato with three thumb-sized pieces like growths protruding from one end.

Everlyn laughed, taking it as gently as if it were an egg, with much delight. “It will always remind me of how I felt when I saw the light of your lantern burst through the wall of rocks.”

Eadamm bowed to her again and started away, but Igraine stopped him. He motioned for his guards to come forward.

“Put these slaves under arrest along with the other three.”

Everlyn looked up from the gray-black rock. “Why, Father?”

“They disobeyed my order to evacuate the mine.”

Eadamm met her solemn gaze without lowering his.

“I understand,” she said, softly, regretfully.

Igraine, governor of Khal-Theraxian, sat alone in his office, the only light coming from the glowing coals in the fireplace. He had moved his favorite chair, the one covered in elf-made cloth, next to the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked his estate.

Solinari, the silver moon, overwhelmed her sister moon, Lunitari, bathing the garden and fields and distant mountains in pale light. Igraine’s eyes saw none of the cold beauty spread before him, not the nodding heads of fall flowers, not the mountain peaks already beginning to display their snowcaps.

A tap on the door interrupted the silence. A shaft of light cut through the room as a guard opened the hall door and peeked through. “I’ve brought the slave, Lord.”

Igraine murmured an incantation, and several candles leapt into flame. A small fire hissed and crackled into life in the fireplace. “Bring him in.”

The guard gestured to the human who was waiting in the hall, then withdrew when Igraine motioned him away.

Eadamm came into the room. He was clean, wearing clean though threadbare shirt and pants. Only his hands, bruised, scraped raw, and bound with chains, showed the signs of the afternoon’s events.

Igraine regarded him in silence for several minutes, during which the human stood without moving, his gaze fastened on the windows and the view outside.

“There is something I would like to understand,” Igraine said finally, noting that the human didn’t flinch when he spoke, didn’t fidget in the silence that followed.

“I have always prided myself on being a fair master.” He saw, finally, some emotion on the face of the slave, a flitting feeling that he didn’t know human faces well enough to recognize, but perhaps he could guess.

“A fair master,” he repeated more firmly. “Harsh, but fair. My laws are harsh, but none of my slaves can say they don’t know them. Therefore, if they break them and are punished, it is their own fault.”