Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [8]
Shakti ignored the stairs and levitated smoothly upward to the fortress door. Not only did this small flight grant her a more impressive entrance, but it also had a practical purpose. The proud drow, with their love of beauty, did not allow imperfect children to survive and had little patience for those who developed physical defects later in life. Shakti was extremely nearsighted and took great pains to conceal this fact. She did not trust her footing on the treacherous stairs, and was not certain which would be worse, the actual tumble down the steep incline, or having to explain why she had missed a step.
The overseer, a female from some lesser branch of the Hunzrin family tree, bowed deeply when Shakti walked into the vast center room. Shakti was somewhat mollified by this show of respect, and pleased to note that her brothers fell into guard position at either side of the entrance, as if she were already a respected matron.
She laid aside her own weapon-a three-tined pitchfork with a slender, rune-carved handle-and walked over to the far window. The scene beyond was not encouraging. Moss and lichen fields had been dangerously overgrazed, and the irrigation system was clogged and neglected. Rothe wandered aimlessly about, cropping here and there at the meager fodder. Their usually thick, long coats were ragged and histerless. Shakti noted with dismay there would be little wool at shearing time. Even more distressing was the utter darkness that enshrouded the pasture.
"How many born so far this season?" Shakti snapped as she shrugged out of herpiwafwi. One of her brothers leaped forward to take the glittering cloak.
"Eleven," the overseer said in a (pirn tone. "Two of those stillborn."
The priestess nodded; the answer was not unexpected. The rothe were magical creatures who called to prospective mates with faint, blinking lights. At this season, the rothe's courting rituals should have set the island aglow. The neglected animals were too weak and listless to attend to such matters.
But what else could she have expected? Most of the ores and goblins who tended the rothe herds had been taken as battle fodder, without regard for the logical consequences. These were things the ruling priestesses did not heed, expecting meat and cheese to appear at their tables as if by magic. In their vaunting pride, they did not understand some things required not only magic, but management.
This Shakti understood, and this she could provide. She seated herself behind a vast table and reached for the ledger that kept the breeding records. A sharp, pleasurable feeling of anticipation sped her fingers as she leafed through the pages. Keeping this ledger had been her responsibility before she'd been sent off to the Academy, and no one in the city knew more about breeding rothe than she did. Perhaps no one else shared her enthusiasm for the subject, but the drow certainly enjoyed the fine meat, cheeses, and wool her expertise produced!
One glance at the current page dampened both her pride and her enthusiasm. In her years of absence, the records had been written in a small, faint hand. Shakti swore, squinting her eyes into slits in an attempt to read the careless writing. Her mood did not improve as she read.
While she had been exiled to Arach-Tinilith, studying for the priestesshood and kowtowing to the Academy's mistresses, the herd had been sadly neglected. The rothe were highly specialized for life on the island, and carefully supervised breeding was essential.
Muttering curses, Shakti leafed to the back of the book, where the records of the slave stock were kept. These were considerably less detailed; in Shakti's opinion, the goblins could do whatever they liked provided their