AND I CANNOT understand what madness has come over us. We stood upon the very brink of victory; the elven lords were besieged in a handful of fortified estates, their armies reduced to a fraction, their bondlings in revolt and their own numbers decimated. And yet our leaders stopped short of the final conflict to turn against one another. It is insanity, and if the elven lords do not take advantage of our foolishness, I will next expect three moons to rise instead of one.
Two-Week, Month of the Spring Moon. It has happened as I feared; the elven lords have broken the siege, and are now, in turn, harrying us. I was of no party in particular, I cared only that those devils in fair-seeming be destroyed as they destroyed so many of their slaves. To that end I worked; to that end I continue to work, though now the cause seems hopeless indeed. The elves are regaining all the ground they lost, and more of the humans desert us every day.
Three-Week, Month of the Spring Moon. While Jasen disputed tactics with Lorn Haldorf, and Mormegan quarreled over territory with Atregale, the elven lords were not idle. They struck down Lorn by magic, taking Jasen in the very next instant with that thrice-damned elf-shot. Not a week agone, Mormegan called Atregale out and the twain dueled with knives—and both died. Four of our leaders gone, in less than a month! And I fear there is worse to come. The scattered armies of the elven lords are regrouping, and yet our own leaders are too lost in their own squabbles to take note of disaster after disaster…
Shana puzzled her way through the blotched, stained book with its crabbed, slantwise writing in the margins with excitement and sympathy for the author. She had discovered this strange journal, written in the empty space of an otherwise uninteresting treatise on hog-farming, during the course of going through the books in the Records room. Most of them up until now had been accounts of stores, or very dull histories of the land before the arrival of the elves, with an occasional chronicle on the original conquest of the humans by the elven lords. The doorstop was one such; Shana had tried three times without success to thread her way through the labyrinthine prose. The most she could glean from it was that the author had a sneaking admiration for the elven overlords, however much he protested otherwise—she often got the feeling that he considered the elven lords to be a civilizing force on the otherwise barbaric humans. If he was a typical specimen of an educated halfblood, small wonder that the elves had held sway for as long as they had. The book always made her want to wash her hands after she put it away, and not because of physical dirt. She was quite certain that if she had ever met the author of that work, she would have found him as repellent as his views.
But this—this was no chronicle written by an effete scribe sitting on a fat cushion and watching others act, with the detachment of a little tin god. This was a personal diary, a day-by-day account of the last moments of the Wizard War, written by someone who could understand no more than Shana why they had failed so close to victory.
But she was getting some hints as to the “why”—and the “how” was self-evident…
What if the elves had used traitors; humans or halfbloods intended to make trouble? Suppose they used halfbloods with mind-powers to actually manipulate the leaders of the wizard side, to make them jealous of each other, to make them so confident of winning that they figured they could take the time to get rid of a rival… or two… or three.
That was what this journal was beginning to suggest, at least to her mind. Trouble within the ranks, but caused by the elven lords. That was a possibility that had evidently never occurred to the author of those scrawled passages; he could not imagine anyone of human or halfblood lineage who could willingly choose the elven lords’ side over the wizards’.
Ithad to be: How else would they have known, over and over, exactly when and where to strike the leaders in the midst of their own quarrels?
It certainly made a great deal of sense, especially if that traitor had the human-magic powers to meddle with other peoples’ minds. That was the one thing the wizards didn’t guard against, because the elves couldn’t read or influence thoughts. They never entertained the idea that one of their own might turn against them.
One name kept recurring over and over—not as a powerful war-leader among the elves, but as a lord who was always at the right place, at the right time, taking wizard after wizard by surprise. It was a name that Shana had heard before, one she was coming to dread.
Lord Dyran.
From everything she knew or had learned these past several weeks, Lord Dyran was a lord to be reckoned with. Unlike his fellow lords, he gave humans (and, one supposed, halfbloods) full credit for intelligence. He had never been known to underestimate an enemy, and his schemes always contained layers of contingency plans. Clever, crafty, completely without scruples, it would be typical of him to think of subverting one of the wizards to his side. And that name had just cropped up again in the journal.
Two-week, Month of the One-horn. Lord Dyran had been seen riding the bounds of the forest that hides us, and I feared the worst. Now the worst has come to pass. The last of us sought shelter here in the Citadel, thinking we could, perhaps, hide here in peace until the elven lords ceased to search for us. But another enemy has found us out, and although I have no proof, I feel Lord Dyran had something to do with it.
Plague.
We have been afflicted with a terrible, wasting fever. It strikes with no warning, no symptom of illness, and within one hour or less the victim is raving and burning with fever. Oh, I know what is said , that Leland Ander created this disease, and that it somehow escaped him. True, he was meddling with a fever, hoping to create a weapon to be used against the elven lords from afar. And true again, he was the first to fall victim. But I cannot think that he would have been so careless as to let the fever free of his control. No, it was Lord Dyran somehow, I know it in my bones.
Four-week, Month of the One-horn. Now it is my turn. Like the others with the disease, I have locked myself in my room while the rest flee or avoid me. We were so close, so very close, to victory. Not even elf-shot, that cursed missile that kills or paralyzes upon merest contact, could save the elven lords. Nothing stopped us—until we stopped ourselves. I am writing this, I think, in the hope that someday another of halfblood may read these words. Beware the elven lords! Beware their wiles, and expect bought traitors in your own ranks! Most especially, beware Lord Dyran, for he ., knows the ways to weakness, the paths to subvert the soul. And he will use them.
Shana turned the page, but that was all that remained. She didn’t even know the writer’s name, much less whether or not he survived the fever.
She slammed the book down in frustration, and went hunting among the shelves for another personal chronicle, but found nothing. At least, not anything more by the unknown journal-writer, and no other personal narratives of the same sort. Finally, in hopes of at least learning more about the old wizards, she sorted the books by category, relegating everything that was not a history of some kind to the back shelves.
Histories remained on the front shelves; not as many of them as she would have preferred. She did find more chronicles of the war, though; these were written with more detail, if less passion.
Through them, she learned some of the tactics the wizards used—and some of the weapons they employed. Either these were tricks the wizards of the present day had forgotten, or else they hadn’t yet decided Shana was trustworthy enough to learn them. Again and again, she had to marvel at the old wizards’ abilities. And her guess was confirmed, not once, but a dozen times, that the wizards had been defeated by treachery from within— causedby the elves.
Once the resources of the Records room were exhausted, as the winter season continued its slow march to spring outside the Citadel, she went hunting deeper into the tunnel complex, looking for more traces of those last days. Winter meant a little less in the way of mess; people tended to stay in their rooms and putter about rather than venture outside into the cold. Furthermore, faced with a mess they would have to live with, at least for a bit, the wizards also tended to clean up after themselves a little more regularly. That gave her time to explore, and she used every bit of it.
She found a dozen escape tunnels, most unknown to the current occupants of the Citadel, a few of them so long she never bothered to follow them in order to discover where they emerged. She would traverse twisting corridors lined only with tiny sleeping cubicles and closets, expecting to come to more living quarters or storage rooms, only to find a dead end. She would open the door to something she thought was a storage closet, only to find that it let out into a complex of rooms. The deeper she went into the bowels of the place, the more convoluted and strange the arrangements became.
Which was very draconic… Not the structure, but the complicated way it had been built.
Alara had constructed just such dead-end tunnels, just such rooms-within-rooms, in her own lair. And she was by no means among the most fervid builders. The Kin were firm believers in constructing their homes with an eye to protection against invasion; whoever penetrated a dragon’s lair would have no notion of how to find his way through it. That same principle seemed to be at work here. No two private lairs were alike; and no two Lairs of Kin-groups were similar, either. The Citadel was built along the lines of lairs within the greater Lair, with a common area that was relatively easy to navigate, and personal quarters deep within the hills that were anything but, each with its own escape route nearby, and each with its own defenses. Shana began to think that, even if most of the construction had been performed by the wizards, a dragon had at least had a hand in it, and she began looking for signs that would prove her theory, besides searching for more of the old records.
One day in the deepest heart of winter, Shana came to yet another dead end, and turned back in weary frustration. It had not been a good day. Master Denelor had taken a cold and gone to bed. That meant no lessons and more work, cleaning up after him; he was not a good patient, and he demanded a great deal of his ‘prentices when he was ill. Shana was tired of making tea, reading dull histories, warming milk, changing the bedclothes, brewing medicines, washing the bedclothes, and making more tea. Finally Lanet came to take her place and she managed to escape, taking up yesterday’s explorations, only to discover that she had hit yet another dead end.
She turned to retrace her steps—when the light from her mage-globe caught the rock wall of the tunnel in a peculiar way. There seemed to be a perfectly straight crack in the tan wall, a little in front of where she stood.
She stopped; the globe, which she had set to follow her in a certain way, so that its light came over her shoulder without blinding her, stopped too. She turned back, reversing herself, but slowly and deliberately.
The light from the globe glinted on the shiny surface—which was marred by a perfectly straight, regular crack. One that ran from floor to just above her head, and over—
She ran her fingers over the wall, tracing the outline of a door by feel. Just as she got to the place where a handle would have been, she felt the stone give a little, shifting under her fingers.
There were rumors of secret rooms and passages in the Citadel—as if the construction alone wasn’t confusing enough—but Shana had never found one, nor had she ever talked to one of the ‘prentices who had.
But if there really were secret places, she had a shrewd notion that the senior wizards would keep that little fact to themselves…
She pushed the place that had shifted—and a section of the stone depressed, forming a handle.
It seemed that she had finally found one of those secret passages. Now she began to wonder just how many of those dead-end corridors had held such a secret. Her heart raced with excitement; she couldn’t have stopped herself now if someone had told her there was a hungry one-horn on the other side of that door. She fitted her fingers into the recess, and pulled.
The door swung smoothly open, and she stepped inside the room thus revealed.
Rooms. There was a doorway in the opposite wall, and she saw a corner of a bedstead through the opening. But that wasn’t what excited her.
As she had passed the threshold, she had felt the tingle of energy on her skin that marked a simple spell upon the room. From the pristine condition of the place, she suspected that it was a preservation-spell, the kind that had been at work in the Records room. Denelor had shown her how to set one just this week, before he had fallen ill. Passing her hand through the field of his spell, she had felt exactly the same kind of tingle as the one she had just experienced.
This room looked as if it were still occupied. The smooth gray rock walls showed no trace of age or dust. The floor, paved in gray-and-white mosaic tile, was just as clean. There were books on the table, pen and ink waiting beside clean paper, a fire laid ready to light in the fireplace.
She started as the door swung closed, and jumped to put her back against the wall, half expecting to see the owner of the room behind her, about to demand the reason for her intrusion…
But she was quite alone. The silence was incredible; she had never been in a place that was quite this quiet.
She moved carefully to the black-lacquered desk, attracted by the books there. It was surprisingly neat, for a wizard’s; Denelor tended to pile things up until they fell over. Most of his fellows had the same habits, or so she had learned in talking with the other apprentices.
They’re lazy, that’s what, she decided abruptly, taking note of the careful placement of everything on the desk. They had ‘prentices to clean up after them, so they didn’t worry about whether things fell on the floor or not. Back in the old days, everybody was doing something, and there weren’t any ‘prentices. Every wizard had to clean up after himself.
She scratched her head and wrinkled her nose. Would do them good to have that happen now… losing all the ‘prentices might make them get some better habits .
She reached for the first of the books lined up in a careful row between two heavy pieces of rough, uncut crystal. It didn’t have quite the look of something “official,” like a chronicle, or a spellbook. She hoped it might contain personal notes, or something of the sort. And when she opened it up, she discovered within the first couple of words that it was not even a wizard’s book…
For this was a personal journal—like the scribbled journal in the margin of the hog-raising book. But this was something she had not even dreamed could exist here—the diary of a shape-changed dragon, written in the language of the Kin, that rare, written form that she and Keman had learned to read under Alara’s tutelage.
Dazed, she put out her hand and caught the back of the chair before her knees went to water. Still in a half-daze, she eased herself down onto the gray, leather-covered cushion, and began to read.
She came back to herself as her stomach began to growl, and only then did she realize how late it was.
Fortunately, she would not be missed until morning—but it must already be well into the evening, and she had barely begun the first of seven volumes chronicling the adventures of the young dragon, Kalamadea. He had begun this change as a test, in yet another example of draconic meddling in the lives of humans, elves, and halfbloods. His journal made it clear just how common a thing that was, even though the numbers of the Kin then on this world were much smaller than they were in the present day. Shana was a little overwhelmed by it all. She’d never suspected just how deeply involved the Kin were—or had been—in the lives of those they studied.
She started to rise, and hesitated. She didn’t want to leave—but she had to. She couldn’t stay here, after all. And the books wouldn’t run away.
If she took these books with her, and somebody happened to find them in her quarters, they’d find out about the Kin…
Worse than that, they’d find out about how the Kin had meddled, and for how long. Kalama had been more frank in this journal than Shana had ever known any of the Kin to be. He hadn’t been at all reticent about the fact of his shape-change, of what he was and where he was from, and why he had infiltrated the wizards—
And if anyone read them, the secrets of the dragons would be out in the open—the wizards would start to watch for them, and might even try to kill them. And if the wizards knew about the Kin, they might well leak the information to the elven lords to give their enemies a different target to hunt.
All they had to do was open the book and begin reading at any point to see what the dragons had been up to for centuries, how they had interfered without anyone guessing they existed.
Why, all it would take would be a single glance at the book, written in the strange script—
She began laughing, then, at her own foolishness. What am I thinking of? All they had to do? Of course, that was hardly going to be a simple task! Certainly, a reader could learn about the Kin—If they could read the draconic writings!
Nobody can read this stuff except me!
Even the Kin couldn’t all read the written form of their own language; Alara had taught Keman because he was likely to become a shaman, and had taught Shana because she showed some of the same talents. But Myre hadn’t wanted to learn, nor had most of the other young of the Kin.
It would be safe to assume that anyone who could read these books already knew everything there was to know about the Kin. In fact, it would be perfectly safe to assume, given what Shana had read already, that anyone who could read these words was a shape-changed dragon, hiding among the wizards for purposes known only to the Kin.
Possibly even to keep an eye on her .
She gathered up the books in one arm, and took them to the door with her. There was no earthly reason why she could not take them with her and read them at her leisure.
Certainly no one else would be able to.
I am alone in the Citadel. The rest are either dead, or gone. Perhaps the reason I survived the fever is because of what I am; certainly no one else that contracted it lived to tell the tale. That I know of; admittedly, I have no idea what happened after I took to my bed, or even what transpired outside the Citadel cavern.
It is just as well that the Kin are prepared to do without food for long periods, so long as we remain inactive. Once my illness became known and I closed the door to the corridor, there was not a soul alive, who would have been willing to help me. Not that I blame them, given the mortality rate of this disease.
When I recovered from my long fever-dream, it was to a silent world. I mustered the last of my strength, and sought the storerooms, hungry enough to have eaten my very books, and too weak to have chewed the pages!
But there was food there; in fact, there were more than enough journey-packs to see me through the initial few days of my recovery. I dragged them—literally, for I could not lift them, I, who once flew with entire fork-horns in my claws—back to my room. I did not even have the strength to shift my shape! Three of the hard cakes of journey-bread are soaking now; and it is all I can do to keep from snatching them up and trying to eat them right now . Try, for that would be all I could do; I am too weak even to pound a piece off to suck on.
I have propped the door open, hoping to hear someone stirring in the far reaches of the Citadel, but there is nothing. I suppose I should be glad, for it means that the elven lords have not found—or been shown—our last hiding place. But I cannot be glad, for I keep wondering about all those companions who built the rebellion with me, and who remained true to its ideals when others fell prey to ambition and greed.
What happened to them? Lasen Orvad, Jeof Lenger, Resa Sheden, where are you? Do you live, did the illness claim you as it did so many others—or did you escape the fever only to fall into the hands of our enemies?
Yes, our enemies, my friends. Though I am not of your blood, and though I came to this enterprise intending only to amuse myself, I came to believe in it, and in you. When I called you my friends, I meant it. And your enemies are mine, for as long as I live, and that will be long, indeed. I shall not let your dream die, if I am permitted to continue.
Three days later: I do not know the real date, for I have no notion how long I lay in fever. A very long time, I think, for dust was over everything, and the journey-bread was stale. Some of my friends escaped, I know now, for I found notes to that effect in their rooms. Though what became of them after they left the safety of the Citadel, I do not know.
I, too, shall escape as soon as I am able. I am afraid that any of the halfblood who returned and found me here would assume I was a traitor. It was known that I had the fever, and I think that any who survived it would likely be suspected to be in the pay and care of the elven lords. Without magic—or a draconic constitution—I cannot see how anyone could survive it.
There are three tunnels I might use. I shall check all of them, and use the best of the three. If luck is with me, I will emerge in the wilderness, and there I will be, able to resume my natural form and rejoin the Kin. If it is not—
But I will not think of that. One day, if I can, I will return and reclaim this journal of the war. If not, it will be a puzzle for whoever finds it. They will surely think it is in some kind of code. I wish them luck in deciphering it!
There the page ended, and the rest of the seventh and last book was blank. Whatever had happened to-the dragon-wizard after that passage, he had not recorded it in his book.
Shana closed the book with a feeling of frustration, put it down on the chest beside her bed, and lay back down, staring at the ceiling as she thought. The globe of mage-light burned steadily, without flickering, as the lights Alara had placed in their lair did, and as did the elven lords’ glowing ceilings; unlike the firelight, candles, and lanterns humans made do with.
How much were the halfbloods like their elven fathers, and how little like their human mothers, at least in power? And how very much like the Kin.
The fate of Kalama gnawed at her. She had the feeling that his fate held the keys to hers. If only she knew more! If only she knew at least what had happened to him after he locked his books away and left his rooms for the last time!
Well, now she certainly knew why the Kin shape-shifted. It seemed that their primary form of amusement was to manipulate the elves and their human slaves and see how they would react. And that, indeed, was how Kalama had begun his career.
Her head swam at the thought of all the ways in which the Kin could—and doubtless, did—interfere with elven lives, and so with the humans under their rule. Some did so for sheer amusement. Some did so to test themselves.
But some—like Kalama—began for the sake of entertainment, but continued because they saw a great wrong being done, and decided to help do something about it.
She thought that she would probably like Kalama a great deal, if only she could meet him. He sounded a lot like Keman, with his ideas of what was right and fair. He admitted in his journal that he had started out on this venture with the idea in mind that manipulating the lives of these “lesser creatures” would be entertaining, but before long he was passionately involved with them. He simply could not sit back and permit the wrongs he saw to persist, could not help but interfere, this time with a constructive purpose.
So he had shifted to a halfblood, and joined the newly founded rebellion. He had helped to build the Citadel, and had suggested many of its defenses. He had fought the Wizard War as a participant, not an observer—and not as a leader, either, but as one of the lesser wizards, one who went out and took his place in the front lines of the fighting.
She had learned a great deal about those old ones, not the powers they wielded, but rather, about them personally. Through his eyes she had seen the wizards who had been nothing more than names to her, the leaders who won and lost the rebellion. They became people to her—she learned how their simple quarrels with each other had mounted into hatreds, the animosity that foundered the war. And she became convinced, as he was, that the elves had a hand in their problems.
And now the chronicle was at an end. Shana would know nothing more of the shape-shifted wizard, and she felt an odd kind of loss. She wondered what became of him, though she now knew that he was the one who had found the scribbled over book on hog-farming in the room of a fever victim, and had replaced it in the Records room in the hopes that someone else would come upon it and read it.
Either he finished recovering and left, or one of the halfbloods came back, thought he was an enemy, and killed him. As he had said, if they found him alive, they might think he was a traitor.
She hoped he had escaped. Even as the wizards he described had become people to her, so much more had he come to life in her mind. She felt that she knew him, that he was even a kind of friend. If he escaped, he might well still be alive somewhere, in some other Lair. And since he had interested himself in the affairs of the halfbloods, he might well do so again. She might meet him. She wondered what his reaction would be when she identified herself, using Kin tongue.
She turned on her side and gestured her light-globe away; it dwindled down to a point, then vanished, leaving her in the absolute darkness only found underground.
She would to have to keep quiet about all this, she decided, after a moment of thought. If there were traitors among the halfbloods before, there might well be again . She certainly wouldn’t be able to tell. Lord Dyran played some pretty deep games; if he decided it was worth the loss of a few children he’d have to destroy anyway, he could be willing to leave the halfbloods alone as long as they stayed hidden away and didn’t steal from him. Which they wouldn’t; if Denelor wouldn’t, none of them would. And they were stealing from Dyran’s enemies, which ought to please him.
The thought that Dyran might know all about them was chilling, and she resolved to get herself out of the Citadel as soon as she was practiced and adept enough to work her magic silently. If even one of elven lords knew about this place, it wasn’t a shelter, it was a trap. It was only a matter of time before it became a bargaining chip in their endless games with each other. And it was a chip that an elven lord would never hesitate to gamble away.
She’d go back to the room and return the books, she decided. She didn’t want anyone else to find them, even if they couldn’t read them. Then she’d see if Kalama had left any of his hoard behind. Elves and humans could mate; maybe shape-shifted dragons and humans could, or elves and dragons. Maybe she was one of those. Or maybe halfbloods could use jewels the way the Kin did, to boost their powers; maybe halfblood magic was enough like the Kin’s that gems would work for them, too. It was worth trying. Anything was worth trying, if it would get her out of here faster.
Absolutely anything.
She spent the next several days following the faint personal marks etched on the walls of the corridors of this section, the twisted glyph that stood for “Kalamadea” combined with the one for “Thunder-Dancer,” which meant he was a shaman as well as a shape-shifter. He had probably put them here during the building of the place, scratching them in with a talon when no one else was looking, or carving them with his rock-shaping magic. He had signed his chronicles with both of those glyphs, and when Shana had checked outside the door to his lair, she had found that same glyph cut faintly into the rock, just beyond the door, and as tall as she was. On watch for the glyphs now, she found several storage places, now empty, and one or two rooms that looked as if he had used them for experiments in magic. Perhaps he had been trying to duplicate some of the powers the wizards demonstrated.
After nearly a week of searching without reward, her persistence finally paid off. She found a glyph inside one of the storerooms she had already searched. It pointed to another in an otherwise blank wall, one without even a storage rack on it. She put her palm to the glyph on the wall, this time one surrounded by a circle, and pushed and twisted at the same time, in the direction suggested by the glyph. A click heralded her success; a section of the wall a little bigger than her hand loosened on one side, and she pried it open and swung it outwards like a tiny door.
And inside the recess disclosed she caught the glint of jewels, a spark of red and green, a hint of blue.
It wasn’t a large hoard; in fact, it probably wasn’t Kalama’s major hoard. It was probably an emergency cache, the kind Alara had scattered all over the lair and outside it, comprised of secondary gemstones that would serve if she could not, for some reason, reach her primary hoard. There were, perhaps, fifty or sixty stones in it, mostly semiprecious. But that was all right; semiprecious quartz and turquoise had worked as well for Alara as rubies and emeralds. Value and rarity did not matter, so long as the stone worked with the magic.
The problem was the sheer number of stones. There was no way she could put them all in her pockets, and if she carried them in the skirt of her tunic, someone would undoubtedly see them and demand a share, or all. Shana had come prepared, though; she had a square scarf with her that was just the right size to carry the gems in. She reached into the recess and lifted the stones out a few at a time, tying them all up into a bundle inside the scarf. She got them back to her room without incident and hid them under her clothing in the chest. Her hoard had been taken away from her twice, now; she was not in the mood to have it happen a third time.
She didn’t get a chance to do anything more that day, but when her chores and lessons were complete the following day she headed straight for her room and took out her little bundle, opening it up as she sat cross-legged on her bed.
She spilled the lot into her lap, trying to simulate the way the dragons lay upon their gems to use them, and put herself into a calm, trancelike state.
Keman, she thought dreamily, once she reached trance-state. The first thing she needed to do was try to talk to Keman.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory of her foster brother’s image, building it up, scale by scale. When she thought she had him, when he seemed real enough to touch, she reached, with all her strength.
She had tried this before, but had simply not had the strength to send her thoughts past the borders of the forest. This time she thought she “heard” something, very faint and far off, in response—but it was too faint to make out, and certainly not clear enough to guarantee that she had reached him.
So near—She couldn’t resist; she tried to stretch just a little farther, but a sharp pain stabbing between her brows threw her out of trance, and made her give it up as a bad job.
She sighed, opened her eyes, and stared down at the winking jewels in her lap. Maybe the problem was that she was trying to use all of them at once, she thought, finally. Maybe if she tried just one at a time, she’d be able to get it to work.
But there were fifty or sixty gemstones there, and all of them were different. It was a daunting task.
Oh well, she thought with resignation. What else did she have but time?
So she spilled the rest back into their scarf, picked up the first, a cabochon beryl; rested it in the palm of her hand, looked deeply into it, and concentrated…
Alara followed the faint scent of dragon in the thin, cold air, putting all of her strength into each wing-beat as she sent herself higher and higher into the mountains on the western edge of the Kin’s territory. The thin atmosphere was hard to fly through; she was panting with effort, and even after shifting her lungs to compensate, she was still having a hard time keeping up the pace in this tenuous air.
Keman had been gone since early fall; it was midwinter, and still Alara had not been able to find him. The Lair was in chaos, with half of the dragons demanding that she go fetch him, and if need be, the halfblood—and the other half demanding that she disinherit him or hunt him and Shana down.
She was in something of a state herself. Certainly Keman was no younger than she had been when she made her first foray into the elven lands, but she had not been alone. And she had not been off on the trail of a halfblood—a creature who, if she were discovered, could get them both killed.
And as for Shana—
Fire and Rain, she thought, with an ache in her heart, of pain and guilt and loss so sharp it might just as well be brand new. She loved that child. She might not be Kin-blood, but she was Kin to the heart, and child of Alara’s soul, and had a better grasp of Kin honor than most of the Lair. They should never have done what they had to Shana.
She clamped her jaws together with anger. No matter what the rest said, that had been the worst decision the Kin had ever made. They should have exiled that little bully Rovylern, or sent him to another Lair to teach him discipline. If anything, now that Keman and Shana were both gone, he was acting worse than before. His mother encouraged him, and Lori had all but stolen Alara’s own daughter away from her with petting and indulgences. And because Alara was the shaman, she couldn’t say or do anything about it. If children chose to leave their blood-mother to go to another, self-chosen foster mother, that was permissible within the Laws of the Kin. If Alara broke those Laws, she’d better have a reason for doing so—
A very good, logical reason. Just now, all she had was an emotional one.
But there was one court of appeal she could still resort to, and desperation had driven her to seek him out. Father Dragon, if she could find him, could lend his authority to her cause.
He was not an easy creature to find. He had long ago given up a lair of his own, having grown past the size where he was comfortable in anything but the most immense of caverns. And since he saw himself as being, not with any one Lair, but with all the Kin, he traveled frequently.
She had traced him from Ladarenao’s Lair, to Peleonavande’s Lair, to here. Now she was searching the mountains themselves, tracking him by her own knowledge of what he was like, where he tended to perch, what he found interesting enough to watch, and the faintest of hints of scent that came to her on the snow-chilled breezes.
But now the scent was more than a faint hint, and the landscape below her was composed of rocky outcrops overlooking pockets of pine forest or meadow. She flew low over the mountainsides, watching for a sign of him. This was the kind of territory Father Dragon liked the best; he could spend weeks watching the wildlife in a single meadow.
Something moved beneath her; sun glinted off a shiny surface that might have been an ice-formation, but for that movement. She folded her wings and dove without thinking, spreading her wing-membranes at the last possible moment, and landing beside the spot, backwinging and throwing up clouds of powdery snow and ice-crystals.
Father Dragon turned his head slowly; he had bleached his scales to pure white to blend in with the snow and ice around him, but had not camouflaged himself in any other way. Then again, he was so nearly invisible against the white snow and pale ice, he probably didn’t need to do anything else.
:Alara,: he acknowledged. :You seem agitated. What brings you to my retreat ?:
“I need your help, shaman,” she blurted, speaking aloud, her voice echoing across the rocks in the chill, thin air.
He simply looked at her; a blank expression that said, wordlessly, “You know better than to ask for help.”
Her face prickled with embarrassment.
A shaman didn’t ask for help, she reminded herself. A shaman found answers. That was a stupid request. She knew better than to ask for help.
“I need your advice , Father Dragon,” she said, bowing her head a little. “I’m in a terrible position, and I can’t see my way out of it. Our Lair is in turmoil. If I can return with advice from you—”
“Don’t they trust your advice anymore?” Father Dragon rumbled gently.
Her face prickled again, but she accepted the shame and embarrassment. “No,” she admitted, “they don’t. I am afraid I am part of the problem.”
She continued with the entire story of the situation, beginning with Rovy’s bullying of Keman and Shana and ending with Keman’s running away for the second time. Father Dragon closed his eyes while she spoke, but Alara did not have the feeling that he was ignoring her. Rather, she got the distinct impression he was concentrating on her every word. She waited, her heart slowing, and her feet growing cold.
He sat in silence for a very long time after she finished her tale, while the sun began to descend towards the horizon, and the air grew perceptibly cooler. He continued his silence while deer emerged from the trees to paw the snow aside and eat the sere grasses beneath.
She composed herself with a little difficulty, changed her circulation to warm her feet, and waited for him to speak.
:The children represent a greater change than the Kin may be prepared to face,: he said suddenly in her mind, making her jump. The deer looked nervously in her direction, and one remained on guard while the others lowered their heads to the grass again. I cannot advise you to any one path. You must decide for yourself whether you are willing to accept that much change, and if the others are willing to follow your example, so be it. The Kin forced Shana to her path, and Keman has obviously already chosen it as well. He has chosen to do without your protection, and this much, at least, you have no choice but to accept .:
She replied the same way, bewildered. :But — what am I going to do about that? He’s out there, likely to be caught, and that involvesall the Kin —:
:The Kin have lost the protection of their “invisibility, “: he replied immediately. .-Nothing you do or don’t do will change that. The world at large is about to discover their existence. And in my opinion — which isonly my opinion — this is a good thing.:
Alara shivered at the images his words called up; the anger of elven lords in full power, and the terrible things she had witnessed them doing. :How can it be a good thing ?: she asked. :The elven lords are powerful and cruel, and once they know we exist, they will give us no peace .:
.•Which is a good thing.: He opened one eye to look at her wryly. .-Since coming here the Kin have become lazy. In the beginning, yes, we were few, and the elven lords could have destroyed us. We are no longer few, we are no longer weak, and the elven lords are no longer unchallenged. Circumstances have changed, but we have not. And now, without something to challenge us, the Kin are complacent and fat, and disinclined to bestir themselves over anything. The only thing that moves them to any kind of action is the possibility of mischief-making . Now they will have no choice . Now they will be forced to take an active role in protecting themselves, and possibly even seek outside the Kin for allies. But they won’t like it .:
He closed his eye again, and settled himself a little deeper into the snow. It was obvious to Alara that he had said all that he was going to.
She waited while the sun set and gilded the snow with a pale flush as it descended. She waited while the moon rose and a million stars appeared overhead, painfully bright in the clear, thin air of the heights.
And finally, as the deer finished feeding and picked their way back to the shelter of their trees, she gave up. She fanned the air with her wings, and leapt for the sky, beating her wings so strongly that another shower of snow flew everywhere, a good deal of it spraying all over the huge, white sprawl of Father Dragon.
He gave no sign that he even noticed.
She circled three times, still waiting for another response, but got nothing. Not even a stirring of thought. Father Dragon might just as well have been a great snow-covered ice-sculpture.
Not only was he not going to solve her problem for her, he had no intention of giving her any more direction than she already had.
She flew off to the east, back towards the Lair, her frustration more than enough to keep her warm on the long flight back.