Elvenbane

Just about that time, his mother made a gasping sound. Alarmed, Keman looked up and saw her folding around herself.

Keman had seen his pets give birth a half a hundred times, and it was no mystery to him what was happening. But the others backed away, and some of the older females popped out of their lairs and surrounded Alara, glaring at Father Dragon and Keman as if they didn't belong there.

Everyone ignored the human cub lying quietly in the dust, as if she didn't exist. No one would ever have guessed she had been the object of so much contention a few moments earlier.

Keman crept closer to the tiny, fragile-looking creature, wondering what he should do about it. Mother had said she wanted Keman to help her take care of it, but it was really hers, wasn't it? Should he just take it, or should he wait for her to say something?

He paused, paralyzed by indecision. He knew she might be until dawn or later in giving birth to his new sib. But if he waited, the cub could be dead. It had to be hungry by now...

As if in answer to that unspoken question, the little thing mewed and turned its head blindly. Keman put a knuckle...which seemed enormous, compared to its head...to its mouth and it sucked fruitlessly, then cried.

If he didn't take care of it, it was going to die, he decided, then looked to Father Dragon for help.

"If you know what needs to be done, Keman, you must do it," Father Dragon rumbled. "Especially if you know it is the right thing to do."

For one moment longer, Keman hesitated. What if Lori found out he took the cub? She backed down from Alara, but she wouldn't pay any attention to him. And if she ate the cub...he wouldn't be able to stop her.

But if nobody knew he had the cub until after Alara was better...and if he put the one-horns in the same pen as Hoppy...

That's what he'd do. Not even Lori wanted to get past four one-horns.

Once he'd made his decision, he didn't hesitate. Although he couldn't shift shape yet to something that could carry the little one in its arms, his foreclaws were certainly large enough for him to carry the cub in one with room to spare.

Provided he could avoid nicking her with one of his talons. He hadn't the least notion how to medicate her if he scratched her, and if he hurt her, she'd have to wait for his mother's recovery to be tended.

He'd just be really careful. He had handled babies before.

He put his right foreclaw over the cub, like a cage, and slowly worked the talons under her, a little at a time, trying to dig through the dirt under her rather than actually touch her. When all five talons met, and there was about enough space between each of his fingers to insert a human hand, he raised his arm, slowly.

The cub lay cradled securely in a basket of talons, without so much as a scratch on her.

Keman breathed a sigh of relief, and headed towards the lair, limping on three legs. He looked back once, to see if Father Dragon was going to come with him, but the shaman had silently vanished while he'd been trying to pick the cub up. And the others had long since taken his mother away.

Well, that was all right. Keman knew exactly what he needed to do now, and he figured he'd be able to take care of it without any help from the adults.

The menagerie lived just inside one of the lair's many exits, with the paddocks for the larger grazing animals located right outside. Keman was very tired by the time he made his way through the living caverns to the exit tunnel; he hadn't realized that hobbling along on three ' legs was going to be so hard. He hadn't noticed before that there were so many uneven places to scramble over, so many protrusions of rock to get around. It was one thing to blithely hop over them with all your legs intact; it was quite another proposition carrying something you didn't dare drop. And his foreclaw was beginning to cramp.

He wished profoundly that he was old enough to shift shape, or use some of the draconic magics. His mother could melt rock when she bothered to think about it. If he'd been able to work magic, he could have had his path cleared by now.

It was a very weary little dragon that clambered clumsily out over the rocks into the paddock area. The two-horns, gentle and unable to defend themselves, had the paddock nearest the cave mouth, with a little shelter he'd made of rocks piled together and a fence of more rocks ringing the paddock. He was entirely glad to put the baby down in the straw beside Hoppy, who was nursing her own kid, lying down on her side. Hoppy was a very gentle two-horn, even for her mild breed, and Keman had fostered many orphans on her before this.

He flexed his claw with relief. It had felt for a moment like he was never going to get it uncramped! He checked the cub; it seemed perfectly all right, cushioned with straw, and Hoppy was apparently ignoring it.

That was fine; that was exactly as he expected. He got up, and started back towards the exit, and the little side cave where he stored the supplies he needed to care for his animals. First he needed the mint-oil and a rag, then he would take Hoppy's kid away from her. He would rub all three of them with mint, and Hoppy wouldn't know which baby was really hers, so with luck she would nurse both of them.

It had worked before. Keman figured it should work this time, too, even though this cub was a great deal more helpless than the orphans he'd usually given Hoppy to nurse, and certainly wasn't shaped anything like a two-horn.

The cub gave a cry, and this time the hunger in it was unmistakable. Keman turned, suddenly apprehensive and unsure what Hoppy would do; the cub's cry was so unlike the bleating of her own young.

Hoppy stared at the cub, startled, her ears up. Keman took a single step, ready to put his foreclaw between the cub and the two-horn if she showed signs of aggression.

But Hoppy stretched out her nose and nuzzled the cub curiously...then, before Keman could move, she rolled the infant toward her while the baby continued to wail in hunger. Alarmed, and afraid of what this rough-and-tumble treatment might have done to the cub, Keman bounded over in a single leap.

Only to discover that the cub was nursing contentedly beside Hoppy's own kid, just as if they all had known exactly what to do.

Keman lured the last of the one-horns into Hoppy's paddock with a sweet-root, taking care to stay clear of those long, wicked claw-hooves. The one-horns tolerated him, as they tolerated the members of their little herd. They extended him no affection, and no kind of license. They regarded Hoppy and her brood with resigned disdain for a moment, then settled down to guard her.

Keman they ignored, but he was used to that. He padded wearily back to the lair, hoping to find his mother reinstalled, but found the cavern as echoingly empty as before.

It wasn't a very large lair as these things went; it was, in fact, part of a chain of limestone caves that extended under the mountain on this side of the valley. The caves were no longer connected; each dragon wanting an underground lair had laid claim to a certain number of caverns and dug his or her own entrance, then sealed his or her section off from the rest.

There had been numerous limestone projections, formations made over centuries by water dripping from above. Alara had arbitrarily cleared some of these away; others she had simply left because she liked the look of them. Smoothly polished by the endless drops of water that made them, they shone softly in the dim light. In the main cavern the ceiling was high enough that Alara could fly quite easily, and she had cleared and flattened most of the floor under the main dome. A few projections remained; the most impressive stood in the center, directly under the highest point of the dome. It was a large stalactite, still growing, that would meet its partnering stalagmite in a few centuries. The lower half of the pair looked strangely like a stylized sculpture of a tree-covered mountain, and Keman and his mother both found it fascinating to stare at. It stood in a reflecting pool that surrounded it totally, so clear Keman could see the bottom, deeper than he was tall.

Cold-glowing globes of glass, that his mother made and set mage-fire within, illuminated whatever portion of the lair she wished to see. The "tree-mountain" and the pool surrounding it were always lit with a soft blue, and Keman's sleeping-cave as well as his mother's shone with a muted green. Currently that was all, for Alara had not been home in a month, and the rest of the lair seemed terribly dark and not particularly friendly. From time to time the silence was broken by dripping water or the scuttlings of Keman's lizard pets, but that was all.

He tried to get to sleep, curled up within his egg-shaped cave, in his nest of sand and the gems of his own tiny hoard. It was a fairly useless attempt. He kept starting awake at the slightest noise, and then spent a dreadfully long time listening wide-eyed to the noises out in the dark.

Finally he just gave up. He couldn't just lie there anymore. Maybe he could do something.

As he trotted out to his menagerie, he saw that the sun was just rising.

Well, he'd have had to get up to feed them all anyway, he thought with a sigh. So he might as well take care of that right now.

Most of the grazers could be turned out into the big field he'd fenced off, but not Hoppy and the one-horns, not if he was going to keep the human cub fed and secret. So that meant laboriously tearing up grass, piling it all up on a hide he'd rigged, and pulling the lot to the paddock. Several times. Grazers, he had learned to his sorrow, ate a great deal. The sun was well up by the time he'd completed that job, and he was hungry and thirsty.

The predators among his menagerie were actually easier to deal with. He simply went out to hunt his own breakfast and brought back an extra kill for them. Sometimes it bothered him, pouncing on a fat two-horn and thinking that this same animal might easily have been one of his pets...sometimes he even had trouble at first nerving himself up to a kill. But then the herd would run, and instinct would take over, and before he knew it he had a mouthful of sweet, tender flesh.

Sometimes instinct was awfully hard to fight. The mere sight of a herd-beast running away was enough to set Keman's tail twitching with anticipation and make him ready to pounce on anything else that moved.

Right now he was getting hungry enough that even gentle Hoppy was starting to look edible.

Better go hunt something. He climbed to the top of a rock, spread his wings and lurched into the air clumsily; while he was old enough to fly, he wasn't terribly good at it yet. At least not at the takeoffs and landings. He tried to do those in private, where no one would laugh if he fell over on his nose.

As he flapped as hard as he could to gain altitude, his hunger grew. He decided to hunt the herds of wild horses today, feeling very sensitive about two-horns at the moment. He found some rising air at the mouth of his canyon and caught it, letting it take him out through the little twisting cuts and arroyos leading up to the Lair. Most of the adults didn't bother to hunt this close to home, and sometimes he had been able to find good hunting in here. Occasionally the good watering spots would lure little family herds of grazers in, despite the nearness of the huge, ever-hungry dragons.

Luck was with him; he surprised a herd of sturdy, dun-colored mares up a dead-end canyon with a tiny spring at the end of it. He spotted one without a foal at her side, nerved himself, and dove.

She was too confused to do anything but stand; he hit her full-on, talons digging into her back as he landed heavily right on top of her. He felt her neck and back snap as she went down beneath him without a struggle.

A clean kill. He felt enormously proud of himself. And a horse was a much larger beast than he usually took, too.

As the rest of the herd pounded away in panic, he feasted contentedly. He'd never bothered with the wild horses as members of his menagerie; they were just too stupid, too nervy, and too intractable for him to care about. Father Dragon said that the elves had somehow managed to get three-horns to breed with horses, and that was how they got one-horns. If that was true, it looked to him as if all the worst traits of both species had come out of the cross. One-horns as stubborn as horses, as aggressive as three-horns, and meaner than both. Keman had the feeling that they liked killing things. It figured that elves would breed something like that.

Keman decided that from now on he'd eat three-horns and horses exclusively. Most of the other dragons didn't care for horse, anyway, which left a lot more for him to hunt. So what if the meat was tough and a little gamey? At least his conscience wouldn't be bothering him, and he wouldn't be seeing Hoppy's eyes looking at him reproachfully every time be came back from a hunt. Maybe it was imagination, but it always seemed to him that she knew when he'd been eating two-horn.

The mare was more than he could eat; more than enough to take back to feed the rest of his zoo. But, carrying that much extra weight, he'd have to get some altitude before he could take off.

This was turning out to be a lot of work and he grumbled to himself. He wished they'd all just learn to feed themselves.

He climbed the side of the valley, clinging to the rocks as he hauled the carcass up after himself. It was pretty battered by the time he got it up to a ledge, and he was winded.

Oh well, the loupers wouldn't care what it looked like.

He had to rest in the sun, spreading his wings to catch the heat and restore his strength. He basked for quite some time before he felt up to grasping the thing in his rear claws and launching himself into labored flight.

It was a good thing the Lair wasn't far, with all the work he'd done so far, and short on sleep as he was, he was ready to drop with exhaustion.

He'd better get everybody fed before he fell over, he thought ruefully, as he tried to maneuver for a landing.

The landing was a bad one anyway, despite his care. He spilled too much air at the last minute and hit the ground too hard, falling over his kill and crashing face-first into the hard-baked adobe clay. Dust flew everywhere.

He picked himself up and winced as he felt yet another bruise on his chin.

He wondered if he was ever going to learn how to land as gracefully as his mother. Right now, it didn't seem likely.

Turning his attention back to his kill, he tore the carcass apart and distributed it among the carnivores in his menagerie. There were only the lizards, the loupers, and the spotted cats, and of the three, only the loupers were captive. The loupers came to the front of their enclosure at his call, pointed ears up, tongues lolling out of toothy muzzles, tails wagging. They took the horse shoulder from him directly and dragged it off to the back of the alcove. Loupers couldn't jump well, though they could run like streaks of gray lightning, and another of the ubiquitous stone fences kept them penned. One of the pack was blind; one, like Hoppy, lacked a leg; and the remaining two were too old to hunt for themselves. They were friendly little scavengers, and were perfectly willing to look to him for pack leadership.

The spotted cats came to no one, but he knew he could leave the haunch just inside the exit to the lair and they'd find it; they always did. The rest, scraps mostly, he scattered among the lizards, also kept in a common pen, who would eat when they felt like it. All except for the ones who lived in the lair itself, who were very happily eating the insects there.

He went to the little spring that watered the canyon, and washed himself off thoroughly. He didn't want to approach the one-horns or Hoppy with the smell of blood on him. He wasn't sure what Hoppy would do, but he knew what the one-horns would do; they'd charge him, and mean it. Anything that smelted of blood brought an immediate reaction from them. And they knew very well how to use those long, wicked, spiral horns; that seemed to come inborn with them, even the fawns would charge a perceived enemy with head down, nubby little horn aimed correctly.

Father Dragon said the elves had tried to breed the one-horns for fighting, but that most of them had proven impossible to tame, much less break to saddle, and so they had turned loose the beasts in disgust. Many of those had proven so aggressive, charging even creatures like dragons, that were more than a match for them, that the breed attacked itself into near extinction.

He wouldn't have bothered with them either, Keman thought, as he edged his way into the corral. They really were more trouble than they were worth, except as herd-guards. They were good at that, and they'd leave the two-horns alone, too. Maybe they figured killing two-horns was just too easy.

The one-horns seemed disposed to accept him today, perhaps because he'd fed them earlier, they just gave him a warning glare and went back to keeping a wary eye on the ground beyond the fence. Two-horns posted guards, but one-horns were always on guard.

It was a real pity that they were such nasty beasts, he thought a little wistfully, as be watched them posing against the red rock of the canyon. They really were pretty...

The single horn, a long shaft that seemed to be made of mother-of-pearl, spiraled up to a needle-sharp point from a base as thick as Keman's talon. The base rose from the beast's forehead, at a point directly between the eyes. Those eyes were the first clue that this was not a creature that could be commonly regarded as sane. The eyes, a strange, burnt-orange color, were huge, and the pupils were in a constant state of dilation, as if the beast were forever in a condition of extreme agitation. The head was shaped like that of a horse, graceful, even dainty, but the eyes took up so much space that it was obvious even to Keman that there couldn't be much room for brains there. The long, snake-supple neck led to powerful shoulders; the forelegs ended in feet that were a cross between cloven hooves and claws. The hindquarters were as powerful as the shoulders, though the feet there were more hooflike than clawlike. The beast had a long, flowing mane, tufted tail, a little chin-tuft much like a beard, and tufts on all four feet. The whole beast was a pure white that shone like pristine snow.

Father Dragon said the things came in black, too, but he'd never seen one. As with everything the elven lords did, the one-horn had been bred first for looks and second for function, and they evidently thought that pure white and black were more impressive than the natural colors of the two-horns and three-horns.

At least if they were pure white or black, that let more harmless creatures see them coming.

The crowning touch to this contradictory beast came when it opened its mouth, as one of them was doing now, in a bored yawn. Those dainty lips concealed inch-long fangs. One-horns were omnivorous, and Father Dragon had warned Keman about ever letting his get used to eating meat...because if he did, before long they'd start hunting it themselves.

Keman had kept them on a strictly vegetarian diet.

They made effective guards, though. Nothing much was going to get past them, that was certain.

Keman had more than a year of experience in handling himself around the one-horns. He moved very quietly, and very slowly, in the direction of Hoppy and the enclosure at the rear of the paddock, being very careful never to look directly at the one-horns or to present them with his full profile. The first action they regarded as preparatory to attack, and would attack first; the second they would consider a challenge, and would attack first.

He succeeded in getting across the paddock without incident.

In the enclosure, he found a perfectly contented Hoppy with her two "offspring." She had evidently learned how helpless the human cub was, and was keeping her body between her own rambunctious kid and the baby cradled in the straw. With only one hind leg, she was forced to nurse her own kid lying down, but she repeated her actions of the previous night while Keman watched, nosing the human cub into position so it, too, could suckle.

Keman was overjoyed. He'd already learned that the two-horns were as clever as the one-horns were stupid, but he really hadn't known whether Hoppy would be able to adapt her own behavior to this strange orphan.

While the baby nursed, he crouched down and watched Hoppy cleaning it vigorously with her tongue. That was another worry out of the way until his mother could deal with it. He had figured the baby would need special sanitary provisions, but he hadn't the foggiest how to take care of them. For now, at least, Hoppy seemed on top of the problem.

So there was only one thing that needed taking care of.

"You need a name," he told the mite, which paid no attention to him. "I can't go on calling you'the cub.' It doesn't seem right. Even the one-horns have names. They don't answer to them, but they do have names."

He gave the matter careful consideration, choosing, then discarding, at least a dozen while he pondered. Draconic names seemed somehow inappropriate, but the kind of names he'd given his pets seemed even worse. He knew a little of the elven tongue, not too many names. Still, the elven language seemed fitter than the language of the Kin as the vehicle of her naming.

Finally he decided to call her simply what she was: "Orphan." In the elven tongue it sounded pretty enough, and almost draconic.

"Your name is Lashana," he told the child gravely. "But since you're so little, 'Shana' will do for now. Do you like it?"

The baby, who had finished nursing, waved her hands in the air and gurgled a little. Keman took that as a good sign, and went to take a nap, feeling he'd done his best for her.

Keman rested his head on his crossed forearms and watched his newest little charge wave her arms in the air and coo at her hairy foster mother, and sighed. No matter how hard he tried, or how he braced her in her nest of straw, she would roll out into the sun...or Hoppy would nudge her there because the two-horn didn't want to leave her orphan, but wouldn't give up her morning doze in the sunshine either. Keman wasn't certain how much sunlight Shana could take, but her pale skin didn't augur well on that score. He'd seen albino animals scorched and blistered by the sun, and they had fur to protect them.

And that brought up another problem. Besides being exposed to the sun far too much, she was getting scratched by the straw. Hoppy was keeping her clean easily enough, but her little body was crisscrossed with a series of thin pink welts from the straw-ends poking into her.

No doubt about it, something was going to have to be done. He was going to have to improvise some sort of covering for her, a garment of some kind, as he'd seen the adults wear when shape-changed to elven lord or human. It would have to be made of something that was tough enough to protect her, soft enough not to hurt her, and impervious to the various bodily functions that she was exercising at the moment.

And it would have to be something that wouldn't hurt Hoppy, frighten her, or make her stop tending Shana in any way.

Keman pondered the problem, his tail twitching in the dust behind him. He'd rooted through his own family's storage areas often enough, and knew what kinds of things were kept there. The Kin brought home plenty of souvenirs in the way of fabrics, among other things; the lair was full of things Alara had carried off, then forgotten. But none of them seemed to be quite what Keman wanted. A good half of them were likely to end up in Hoppy's stomach, in fact; the two-horn's notion of taste was a catholic one, and Keman was often amazed at what she considered edible.

Keman toyed with several possibilities, discarding them all eventually. Try as he would, he couldn't think of anything in the storage area that was suitable. He would be able to make something for her now. He was better equipped to manipulate small and delicate things than he had been when he'd first taken over Shana's care. Over the past several days he had discovered that if he concentrated very hard, he could shift the shape of his foreclaws to give him something like human hands.

There had to be something back there in the lair. Mother was as bad a collector as a miser-mouse. While he thought, he scratched at an itchy spot on his ankle; the skin around his joints was dry and had been bothering him since he came out to the pen.

The itch became a torture, and he scratched harder.

The skin on his ankle finally broke and tore along the claw-lines. He peeled the strips away and got at the new hide beneath with a sigh of relief, scratching the delicate skin lightly with just the tips of his talons. The new scales had to cure for a bit before they were as tough as the old hide, and until then they were easily damaged.

It just figured he was starting to shed. He could never think when he was shedding, he just itched all the time...

He stared at the shred of metallic-blue skin in his claws, something tugging at his mind. Slowly it dawned on him that he was holding the answer to the problem of Shana's protective garment.

Skin. Shed skin. It was supple, soft, yet so tough it took his claws to tear it. It was proof against everything. Hoppy wouldn't eat it, and wouldn't be afraid of it either. The one-horns didn't like it, but they were back in their own pen now that Alara was in the lair. Keman didn't need them to guard anymore; Shana's presence was no longer a secret, and no one seemed inclined to object to her or threaten her or Keman, given Alara's "ownership" and Father Dragon's unexpected interest in the mite.

This newly shed skin wouldn't do...the pieces shed at joints were much too small, and he wouldn't be able to peel off the larger pieces for about a week. But that didn't matter; Alara's hoarding extended even to something as "useless" as shed skin.

He sprang to his feet, leapt the fence, and hurried back into the cave complex, hoping Alara had left a light in the storage area in the back of the caverns. The last thing he wanted to do now that he had his solution was to disturb his mother's uneasy slumber. The new baby was being a pest...or so Keman thought privately...demanding food at all hours, and fussing when she wasn't eating.

He was mortally certain that he had never caused Alara half the problems this new baby had. Furthermore, he'd been perfectly capable of caring for himself and the lair while she was gone, and he was taking care of the human cub she'd brought home, without any help at all!

The storage caves were dimly lit; once he got beyond the bright glow of the "mountain rock" he saw the pale, weak yellow light of a guide-globe just barely visible against the darker stone ahead. That was really all anyone needed for the storage caves; the things kept back there were generally the kind of useless items most dragons brought back from forays into the world beyond the desert. Things like Alara's fabric collection; she couldn't use them in draconic form, her scales would slice them to ribbons. But they were pretty, and she liked occasionally to shift form and play with them and in them, and even to sleep on great piles of the costly stuffs.

Alara was unusual in that she saved bits of her shed skin, and Keman's; the tough hide made good pouches, though the pieces were never big enough for more than that unless you patched them together. She needed a lot of pouches to keep mysterious things, in her capacity as shaman, and she told Keman that nothing worked better for that than her own skin.

The Kin shed their brightly metallic, multicolored skin once every five or six years when they reached their full adult size, and once every couple of months when they were youngsters and growing. Even on a baby, the hide was very thick and tough, and a dragon grew an entirely new set of scales with the new skin forming beneath the old. That was one reason why a dragon needed metallic salts; when he was growing new skin and scales, the metals went into the scales, making them a lot tougher than the simple scales of snakes and lizards, very hard, and yet lightweight. For that reason, the shed skin stayed colorful even after shedding. Keman thought it was rather pretty, as attractive as some of his mother's fabric collection, and sometimes spent an idle afternoon laying out patterns with the smaller scraps.

His own skin from the last shed should be soft enough to use on Shana, he thought, groping his way across the smoothed floor and hoping that his mother hadn't left anything lying about that he was likely to trip over. And Shana would be used to the color and smell. So would Hoppy.

His eyes adjusted to the dim light fairly quickly, and by the time he reached the globe itself he could see reasonably well. He passed several caves filled with oddments from Alara's travels. The riot of fabric spilled out onto smooth stone of the floor, the colors wildly bright even in the dim illumination. Next to the fabrics was a niche filled with elven-made books. Next to that, various small bits of furnishings; chests, oil lamps, cushions, boxes, all piled onto one another in total confusion, the results of raiding a caravan that had taken a wrong turning in the desert and perished there. Beside that, a cave as organized as the former was chaotic: the storage place of Alara's herbs, bones, shells, all the raw materials of her shamanistic calling. Then another, equally well organized, containing dried and preserved foodstuffs against need or famine. Keman passed them all by, heading for the rear. The skin was kept in a tiny cavelet in the back of the storage area, and Keman was surprised to see how much had accumulated that was his own blue-green-and-gold coloration.

He rooted through the pile of scraps, which were soft and pliable; just as supple as he'd hoped. It was going to take some hunting, though, to find pieces big enough to make a whole garment for Shana, even as tiny as she was. When skin was ready to be shed, it split along fold-lines and scars, and it itched terribly. Most dragons tended to just shred it with their claws, and then spend the next several days peeling the strips off.

This time he would have to make sure he got a couple of big pieces, he told himself, as he pawed through piles of long strips, none wider than two of his talons put together. He would have to watch where and when he scratched, and he would have to be careful peeling the patches when the skin did come loose. Oh, that was going to itch...

Finally he managed to find a couple of wider bits; just enough to piece together a kind of miniature tunic. At least it would keep Shana's torso from being scratched and sunburned; her arms and legs would just have to toughen up.

He bundled up the entire lot and wrapped the end of his tail around it...his normal choice for the means of carrying something, when it didn't matter if he dropped it...and headed back out into the menagerie.

The sun hit him like a rock between the eyes when he first ventured out into it, and it took him a few moments before he could even see. He frowned; hopefully Hoppy hadn't perversely decided that she was going to have another sunbath while he'd been busy. If she had, Shana might be well on the way to a serious bum.

He speeded up to a trot, and sighed with relief when he rounded the edge of the rock fence, looked over the top, and saw the two-horn dozing away in the shade at the rear of the dusty pen.

He laid down his burden beside the tiny human, who was fast asleep and didn't even stir. Hoppy looked at him with a lazy shake of her ears, then her lids dropped over her eyes and she was off again in whatever dreams two-horns had.

Keman flung himself down on the straw, and stared at his foreclaws, doing his best to feel the power his mother said was there to be drawn upon. He concentrated so hard that he began to feel a headache coming on; glaring at his foreclaws, trying to will them into another shape, feeling his back itching horribly and the dry air making his eyes burn and his vision waver...

No, it wasn't his eyes...it was his foreclaws, their shape shifting slowly in that way that made his eyes ache...

He clamped down on the surge of elation, and kept his concentration intact. Slowly the talons pulled into his toes; slowly the toes shortened and thickened. Finally he found himself with a pair of stubby hands instead of foreclaws. They were still blue-green and covered with scales, but now he could manipulate things with them without ruining what he was working on with his sharp talons.

Quick now, before they change back...

He took his bits of skin and lacing and threaded the long, sinewy bits through the holes he had made, lacing the pieces at the side and shoulders so that he had a kind of crude tunic he could pull over Shana's head. He knotted the lacings securely, thinking that it wasn't pretty, but it was going to do the job.

Already his hands were wavering back into claws. Before they had a chance to sprout talons again, he picked up Shana, her head lolling on her weak little neck, and slipped the garment over her.

The talons started to grow again just as he put her down on the straw beside Hoppy. The two-horn nuzzled Shana's new "skin" curiously, but finding the scent familiar, paid no more heed to it. Keman sat back on his haunches as his foreclaws returned to normal, and admired his handiwork with pardonable pride.

The crude garment covered the child from neck to knee, but was open on the sides to her waist, so that Hoppy would be able to keep her clean. Shana herself seemed to appreciate the new protection. There had been an undertone of discomfort to her formless little baby-thoughts because of the prickly straw; now that edge of discomfort was gone, and she was completely content.

And so was he.

Keman moved out into the pen, spread his wings to the sun, and stretched out in the dust for his own sunbath. He "listened" to Shana's soft little mental murmurs, images and feelings, tastes of milk, the comfort of warmth on her skin, and a glow of general wellbeing.

They "sounded" a lot like his new sister's thoughts; nebulous, but nevertheless intelligent. Every day she was learning new things, making new connections, just like his little sister. That showed in her thought-forms, and her mind "sounded" utterly unlike, for instance, Hoppy's kid.

He had to wonder if maybe his mother had made a mistake. Maybe Shana's mother was really one of the Kin, only she was stuck in a two-legger shape when his mother found her.

The more he thought about it, the more logical it seemed. It was an awfully good explanation for why her thoughts were nothing like animal-thoughts.

But if that was true, why wouldn't Shana's mother have said or done something to show Mother she was Kin?

He closed his eyes and put his head down on his forearms again. It was all very perplexing. He frowned with concentration, eased a cramp in his leg, and scratched idly at his wrist, trying to work the puzzle out.

Maybe she had gotten stuck in that shape, then got hurt, and she forgot she was Kin. And if she had been shifted for long, the baby would have been shifted with her, otherwise there wouldn't have been any room for the baby!

He nodded to himself; it all made excellent sense.

That meant there was something else he could do, once Shana was older, something that would give her back her proper heritage. Once he learned how to shift right, he could teach Shana, and then she could shift back into Kin-shape and everything would be all right!

And then everyone would know Keman was really smart to have figured all that out. He preened a little, thinking about the surprise of the adults, and how that would make them realize that Keman was as smart as his mother. Then they'd let him train as a shaman and join the Thunder Dance before any of the other youngsters!

That must have been why Father Dragon told him to take care of the baby. The eldest shaman had guessed, but no one else had.

Keman decided to keep his discovery a secret, not even telling his mother. After all, she'd said that Shana was going to be able to study along with Keman; it wasn't going to hurt anything to let her grow up for a while as a two-legger. And that would make the surprise all the better when he taught her to shift back to her real form.

He heard a little cry, and the baby-thoughts took on a tone of demand. He opened his eyes a moment and watched the baby with her foster mother, as the infant groped after a teat and began to suckle. He smiled fondly at her. After the past few weeks, he could hardly imagine life without her.

Keman dangled the strung gem over Shana's head, and the baby made a grab for the bright object. Shana was growing much faster than his sister, Keman decided. She was smarter, too. Myre just wanted to eat all the time; Shana wanted to play.

He was certain of that, as certain as he was of his own name. His sibling had gotten the name Myrenateli on her Naming-Day; the name meant "Seeker of Wisdom," which Keman thought was not terribly appropriate, since the only thing Myre ever sought was the next meal. Between meals she curled up in the wannest place in her nest, sleeping, oblivious to everything around her. She wasn't curious, she wasn't alert, she wasn't much more than an ever-hungry mouth.

Naming-Day was supposed to mark the day when a dragonet took on the attributes and personality she'd have as an adult. Right now Keman hadn't seen anything to show that supposed change had taken place.

Unless she's going to be just as greedy and lazy as a grown-up as she is now.

Shana, on the other hand, exhibited a lively curiosity about everything that went on around her. She was crawling now, and it was a good thing that dragon-hide was impervious to everything except dragon-talons, or Shana's clothing would have been in shreds by now.

Keman's sister was a very demanding child, and what time Alara had to spare was occupied with her shamanic duties. She hadn't much more than a moment or two to give to the foundling.

So it was Keman who worried about training the child, and saw with relief that Hoppy was housebreaking the little tot, by nudging her over to the "proper" place in the pen when she was ambulatory. She crawled very well, now, which was aiding Hoppy's efforts.

And it was Keman, not Alara, who was teaching her to talk, as well as to eat solid food.

That much surprised even his mother. Shana was not supposed to be talking yet, but she was. She had a whole handful of words in her growing vocabulary: "Shana."

"Keman."

"Hop."

"bad."

"good," and the inevitable "no." She was very fond of "no" lately...

Shana could crawl with amazing speed and, with the help of the rock wall, even stand alone...and Keman was mortally certain from the way she kept staring longingly at the top of the wall, that she would be over it as soon as she was able. Myre, on the other hand, seemed disinclined to do more than toddle to the edge of her little nursery-cave, or to the store of torn-up meat Alara had left for her. If there was anything she wanted outside the nursery, she'd sit in the middle of the floor and wail until she got it. A dragonet's wailing, Keman was certain, could shatter rock. He was spending a lot of time with his pets, even to the point of sleeping outside occasionally. Myre could not tell day from night in the depths of the lair, and seemed bent on proving that she was indifferent to the hours Alara and Keman kept.

Shana's thoughts grew clearer and more abstract, and Keman was hard put to remember what his mother told him..."Don't give her anything until she asks for it, in words." He knew very well that she could hear his thoughts, and it was a hard thing to have to watch her contort her little round face with the effort of thinking at him, only to have him play as if he hadn't understood her. She knew perfectly well he could "hear" her, when she woke up in the middle of the night because of a storm or an unexpected noise, he was right beside her before she could even open her mouth. This new "game" was a frustrating one, and one she did not in the least like.

"Bad Keman!" was her usual response when he ignored her thoughts and persisted in asking her to tell him what she wanted.

Hoppy's own kid was long since weaned, but Hoppy seemed to be taking this orphan's prolonged infancy in stride. She also seemed to be able to hear the child's thoughts as well as did Keman. And that was truly unusual. Though Keman could hear animals' thoughts when he tried hard, he could never get them to hear him...but Shana seemed to have no such trouble.

Now that was something Alara hadn't told him was possible. Keman had asked her, and she had told him that, in general, the Kin could "hear" animal-thoughts dimly, but with the exception of one or two like Father Dragon, "the Kin could never get them to "hear" dragons in return.

Was it just Hoppy, or could she talk to all animals that way, he wondered. It might be worth it to try her on the one-horns sometime. From the other side of the fence, of course. If she could get them to obey her, that would be really useful.

She had turned from a red-faced little thing, looking half-finished and liable to break at a breath, to a truly attractive child. At least she was to Keman's eyes, since he was as used to seeing his mother in elven form as in draconic. He was fairly certain what those of the Kin who never changed form if they could help it would have to say about her.

The pale skin had browned with constant exposure to the sun, which made her emerald-green eyes all the more startling in her golden-brown face. Keman had regretfully had to keep her dark red hair chopped short; she kept getting it snarled past his unraveling, and getting bits of straw tangled up in it. Right now it looked pretty untidy; his last attempt at evening it out hadn't been very successful, and she'd slept on it oddly last night, so that one side stood up like a lopsided comb.

If he looked closely, he could just make out that the tips of her ears were pointy instead of rounded...but not sharply pointed ears like his own or the elven lords'.

She finished her snack, and patted Hoppy as she sat back up on the straw. She doesn't seem the least bit confused about the differences between Hoppy and me. Hoppy isn't her mother, even though Hoppy's the one who feeds her. I'm the closest thing she's got to a mother, I guess...

I never knew being a mother was...so much work!

SHANA WAITED PATIENTLY while the ground squirrel poked the very tip of its nose out of the crevice that hid its burrow. She would never have believed there was a ground squirrel burrow in the crevice if Alara hadn't pledged her that it was there; the crack was hardly wide enough for her to slip her flattened hand into it. But Alara had assured them it was there, and when Foster Mother told them something, Shana knew it was the truth.

Sun glared down on all of them from very near the zenith. The top of Shana's head felt awfully hot, and sweat trickled down the back of her neck. Shana would have liked to bring the squirrel out faster, but the minds of tiny rodents like the squirrel were too small and simple for her to influence, or even hear. And besides, Shana had the feeling that Foster Mother would not have approved if she'd used her powers to bring the squirrel out into the open before it was ready. They were supposed to be learning something from the squirrel...and figuring out what it was they were supposed to be learning was as much a part of the lesson as the learning itself.

A bit more of the squirrel's nose eased into the open air. Shana sat absolutely still, trying not to breathe. Whiskers twitched, and the head emerged as far as the eyes. There wasn't even a hint of breeze to bring their scent to him, so even though he was obviously timid, he had nothing to alarm him.

The squirrel peered around suspiciously. His whiskers twitched again as he eyed Shana and Keman, clearly mistrusting their presence despite their immobility.

More of the head emerged, hair by hair...then, suddenly, the ground squirrel was not only entirely out of his hole, but several arm-lengths away from the entrance to the burrow. Shana blinked in surprise; she hadn't even seen him begin to move. One moment he had been inside the crevice, all except for his head...the next, he'd been a blur of motion that had ended under the sajus-bush upwind of Keman.

She could hardly see him there, in the dappled and broken shade of the bush; his coloration of spots and lines on a fawn-brown background hid him perfectly. He looked just like a brown rock spattered with sunlight and shadow. Now I know why I never see them until they jump out from underfoot, she thought wonderingly. I thought those stripes would make him easy to see.

And it was obvious now why she could never catch one; as quickly as this squirrel had moved, from one spot of cover into another, only a very canny hunter would be able to intercept him.

The squirrel remained under the bush, completely motionless, until their continued immobility convinced him that they were no threat. Only then did he inch his way out into the sunlight and investigate the pile of pine nuts they'd put out as bait.

His stubby little tail went straight up as he sniffed and realized what bounty he had just found. He began stuffing them into his mouth as fast as his little paws could grab them, looking for all the world like Myre with a choice catch of fish. They had put out far more nuts than he could possibly carry; his cheek pouches were bulging so far that Shana could make out the individual nuts, and still he kept trying to fit one more in.

She couldn't help it; she giggled. And faster than a bolt of lightning, he was streaking across the yellow-brown, sunbaked earth, heading for the safety of his burrow. He actually ran over Keman's foot to get there, something he probably wouldn't have done if Shana hadn't frightened him.

:That will do, children,: Alara said clearly in Shana's mind. Shana leapt to her feet, glad to be moving again after her forced immobility. She truly hated having to sit still, even for lessons.

"I bet I beat you!" she shouted to her foster brother, and launched herself across the sand.

She raced Keman back to the lair, trying to use the advantages of her small size and speed to compensate for the fact that he could leap over obstacles she had to detour around. This time she beat him, though not by much; only the fact that she was able to squeeze between two boulders that he had to climb over gave her the extra edge she needed to defeat him.

Foster Mother was waiting for them in the shade of the stone gazebo. The lacy shadows cast by the intricate stonework looked very pretty on Alara's shining scales. Shana was glad Foster Mother had made the gazebo big enough for them all to sit in. She slid onto her own little bench. It had been fun watching her use magic to work the stone. Shana hoped she could do stone-shaping that pretty when she was bigger. She'd hate to be like Ahshlea; all he could make were ugly flat blocks. Ugh. No wonder he lives on a ledge.

Keman flopped down onto the cool floor beside her, panting. She nudged him with her foot, and he mock-snapped at it, grinning, before turning his attention to his mother.

"So," Alara said gravely, as she fixed her enormous golden eyes on Shana until the girl stopped squirming in her seat. "What was it that you saw?"

"The squirrel was very careful," Shana replied promptly. "He didn't come out until he was absolutely sure he was safe."

"Yes," Alara said, nodding. "And what did he do to make sure he was safe?"

"He checked for scent first," Keman answered, the end of his tail twitching a little. "Even when he was down in the burrow, he was checking for scent. He didn't even start to look around until after he thought there was nothing close to him."

"Then he stuck just his head out and looked all around," Shana continued. "Anything that was new he sat and watched to see if it was going to move at all. That was us; we didn't move, so he must have figured we weren't going to." She thought for a moment, watching the bright spots of sunlight on the white stone of the gazebo making negative-lace patterns. "Probably a hunter would have gotten tired of waiting and taken a chance on jumping on him once he got his whole head out of the burrow."

"But if we had moved, he could have been right down the burrow before we could blink," Keman finished, lifting his head from his foreclaws.

"Do you see why he is so hard to catch?" Alara asked. "Even though he is not a terribly intelligent beast?"

Keman nodded; Shana pursed her lips in thought.

"He's not very smart," she said at last, "but he's really careful and he's fast. That makes up for smart, I guess."

"It can," Alara acknowledged. "And the adult ground squirrel you've seen is a survivor...for every adult, there are ten little ones who never learned to be careful enough and became prey for other animals. You should both watch this particular squirrel, and see how he uses his speed and agility to protect himself...and try to think of ways in which his behavior could become a trap. Keman, you must learn how to imitate that behavior and avoid the traps; Shana, you must learn how he thinks so that you will be able to sense his tiny thoughts and become one with him."

This time both Keman and Shana nodded. In order to learn to hear the squirrel's mind, she was going to have to learn to think like him. She hadn't known that.

"Now, you've had your lessons in languages, and you've had your lesson with the ground squirrel," Alara said, smiling indulgently on both of them. "Can either of you think of any questions for me, before I go scry for storms?"

Shana recalled, belatedly, the elven children's book she was supposed to have read. "Why aren't there any human books?" Shana asked. "I know as much human as elven, so why aren't there any books?"

A shadow passed behind her foster mother's eyes. "It is said that the elven lords did not want their slaves to learn to read or write," Alara told her, her smile fading. "They felt that if their slaves could only pass things on by word of mouth, there was less chance of rebellion. So there are no books written in the human tongue, and in fact, it is also said that tongue died out. Most humans spoke a mixture of elven and human, and many spoke only pure elven."

"Are there books from the Kin?" Keman wanted to know. "I've seen the carvings, but do we have real books?"

"Yes," Alara told him. "A few, and all handwritten, done when the writers were in other forms. And most of them were written by shamans. I'll show you the written language later, when you've mastered written elven."

Spoken human, elven-human, elven and Kin. Shana sighed. It seemed like an awful lot to learn. But if she was going to go out into the world like Foster Mother did, she'd need to know all of them. Keman was learning all of them too, and he was older than she was. She wondered what a human looked like, or an elven lord...were they like the Kin, only smaller, or maybe different colored?

She looked up from her musing to see that Alara was watching her thoughtfully. With a start of guilt, she wondered if Alara knew she hadn't done her reading lesson yet. Shana nodded, trying to hide her guilt. I'd better think of an excuse before she asks me...

But Alara did not ask if Shana had finished her lessons. Instead, she said, "That will be all for today. We'll concentrate more on languages tomorrow. But in the meantime, both of you study the little ground squirrel, and bring what you learn to me tonight after dinner."

Shana escaped the confines of the gazebo with a feeling of reprieve.

Alara watched her foster daughter scamper away across the hard-baked ground and experienced mingled emotions: pride, and guilt. The child grew more attractive with every passing day...a lithe, lean girt, surefooted and athletic, a remarkable combination of frailty and toughness. Her fine-textured skin had darkened to a warm brown from constant exposure to the sun, and her bright green eyes sparkled with humor more often than not. From her elven father, she inherited delicate bones and a beautifully sculpted face with high cheekbones and a determined chin. From her mother, she took her dark, deep-auburn hair that shone in the sun like old copper. Her little tunics of patchwork dragon-skin gleamed against her sun-gilded limbs as if she wore a corselette of enameled metalwork.

She had become indispensable to Alara, and even those of the Kin most opposed to her presence agreed grudgingly that she was both attractive and useful. With her small size and clever hands, there were many things she could do that the Kin could not, unless they shifted...and fully half of the Kin in this Lair preferred not to shift to anything as small as a human child.

That accounted for the pride.

Though there were those Shana would rather not have done anything for, Alara could usually convince her to do so to keep the peace. She was stubborn, but not stupid. She knew very well that there were still those of the Kin who felt she had no place here...though she did not know why.

And that accounted for the guilt.

Alara knew she should tell the child... and she couldn't bring herself to. But if she didn't, Shana was going to find out on her own. And then what was Alara going to tell her?

There was no doubt in Alara's mind that the child was as bright as any of the Kin. If Shana had been born a dragon, Alara would have had no hesitation in officially training the girl as a shaman. As things stood, however, all Alara could do was to teach her fosterling alongside Keman, and see where Shana's inclinations led her. One thing was certain; the child's mental abilities were already impressive. And when Shana came into her full halfblood powers at puberty, Alara was not prepared to wager much on any individual coming against her.

Sometimes Alara wished she could trade Shana for Myre. This was one of those times, she thought, as she slid out of the gazebo and into the glaring sunlight, her belly-scales rasping a little on the stone steps. Alara was so exasperated with her second offspring that she hardly knew what to do with the child. Myre was lazy, self-centered...nothing moved her but her own interests. She lied constantly, and was surprised when her mother caught her. But worst of all, she was stupid. She did things without thinking. Myre should have been born a human; she'd have made a perfect concubine. And Shana should have been born into the Kin.

And that only brought Alara full circle back to her original worry, and the shadow of the mountain above her seemed to fall on her thoughts as well as her body. How was she to tell Shana that the girl wasn't a dragon?

Alara paused at the foot of the mountain behind her gazebo, and made certain the scrying-crystal in the pouch- around her neck was secure. She tucked her wings in close to her body, took just enough time to lengthen and strengthen her claws, and began the climb, setting her claws into the first of hundreds of tiny cracks she would use to climb to the top.

It was a trek she had made any number of times in the past. Some of the shamans preferred to scry deep in the hearts of their lairs, surrounded by countless crystals, and buried in the silence of the caves. But Alara found it easier to read the paths of the air as high up in the sky as possible, with the wind on her skin and the sun warming her and filling her with energy.

She moved up the rocky side of the mountain as easily as one of Keman's lizards climbing a wall. And why not? She had learned to climb like this by studying them. Like the lizards, she could climb near-vertical surfaces, so long as there were cracks and crevices she could wedge her claws into.

Today she had chosen to climb, rather than fly, because climbing left her free to think.

There was plenty of time to tell the child that she was not of the Kin. If Alara waited, Shana wouldn't be as devastated by the idea...her training in meditation would make the bad news easier to bear. She might even be able to be philosophical about it. After all, she was the child of Alara's heart, though not her body. And Alara had told the girl that often enough.

But she would make such a good shaman...

As good as Keman. He would be a shaman, even if his sister wouldn't. She came out of her thoughts long enough to look about and judge how far she had to go. She was about halfway up the side of the peak, and here the climbing slowed, as she sought toeholds in smoother rock. How strange it was that the child Alara meditated for had no gift for shamanism, the child she bore in her youth was gifted, but not outstandingly so, and the child that was not of the Kin at all would be a fit apprentice for Father Dragon himself if only she were of draconic blood and breeding. Alara sighed. Well, it was said that no learning is ever wasted. There was no point in permitting Shana to run about like a wild thing, one of Keman's pets, however much the others would prefer that Alara do so. It would be a crime to waste so fine a mind as hers.

She put all other thoughts aside for the moment, as she reached the top, hooked her claws over the final outcropping, and pulled herself up onto the little rock knob that crowned the peak. She spread her wings to catch the sun, grateful for the warmth and energy, for the wind whipping around her had a cold bite to it, and there was nothing up here to shelter her from its force.

Far below her lay the Lair, the largest of its buildings reduced to the size of Shana's toys. All about her, rocky crags lifted golden-brown spires to the blue sky, seeming to move as cloud shadows raced across their creviced and ridged faces.

Alara loved the solitude she found up here, as well as the sense of absolute freedom. It was easy for her to forget herself, her troubles, and all her petty vexations, and open herself to the wider world.

She could wait to tell Shana, she decided, taking her crystal from its pouch and laying it where it would best catch and hold the sunlight. A few more days or even months wouldn't matter. She could wait until Shana was older, and could understand.

Shana thought briefly of the book that awaited her attention back in her cavelet in the lair...but the sun was so bright, and the wind so fresh...

She'd read it later, when it was too hot to play, she promised her guilty conscience. She ran off after Keman, who had gone off down the canyon towards the trail leading away from the Lair.

Keman was waiting for her at the entrance to a path that led up into a dry wash they often used to play hide-and-seek in. She scrambled over a boulder, skinned her knee, and ignored it, as she hurried to catch up to him.

But today he was not in the mood to play.

"I want to show you something," he said, his tail twitching as it often did when he was excited or nervous about something. He looked back over his shoulder at her; his enormous blue-green eyes blinked at her anxiously. "You know Mother took me off by myself yesterday...well, she showed me how to shift. Really shift, and not just change the shape of my claws or something. Size-shift and shape-shift."

"I thought so," Shana said in excitement and satisfaction, skipping along beside him. "Everybody your age is learning. Are you any good at it? Rovylern is pretty awful, he was showing off while you were gone and he got all muddled, he ended up as sort of half three-horn and half lurcher, and he couldn't shift down at all. He looked pretty stupid. It took him forever to get himself sorted out. I laughed so hard my sides hurt."

"He didn't know you were watching, did he?" Keman asked, his voice betraying apprehension. His eyes darkened. "He doesn't like me and he hates you, and if he thought you saw him mess up like that he'd be awfully mad. Especially if he knew you were laughing at him.""

"He didn't see me," Shana hastened to assure him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. "I was hiding up in the rocks, I thought I'd keep an eye on him and Myre while you were gone, in case they decided to play a trick on you or something."

"Oh, good." Keman sighed. "Well, anyway, you're ahead of Myre in everything else. I thought that now I know how to shift properly, I can probably show you how so you can shift back to Kin. Then Myre won't be able to corner you anymore. Here, this is quiet enough." He indicated a shadowy little cul-de-sac with his nose, and turned around to face Shana, his expression hopeful.

"Really?" Shana stopped dead in her tracks, her heart pounding with sudden excitement. "Do you really think you can teach me? Oh, Fire and Rain! If I could shift, I wouldn't have to hide from the others anymore, either! Oh Keman!"

She threw her arms around his neck, unable to say anything else for sheer excitement.

"I'll bet I can teach you to spark, too," Keman said with gleeful satisfaction, his ears and spinal crest rising and quivering. "Then you can give Myre a good one, right where she deserves it."

"I bet I can too." Shana let go of her foster brother and found herself a rock to perch on. "All right," she said, "I'm ready. Show me!"

"Well, the first thing is just shape-shifting. You find that place Mother showed us, right in your middle where all the energy comes from." He closed his eyes for a moment, tightly, concentrating. "Then, when you've got it, you think of what you want to shift to, and you squeeze hard on the place, then let it go all of a sudden...like this..."

As Shana watched, Keman seemed to ripple, and then to blur, as if she were seeing him from underwater. It made her a little sick to watch, and she closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them again, there was a lurcher in Keman's place, but a lurcher with blue-green, scaled skin instead of gray, leathery hide. There was a second ripple, this time as if he were in the middle of a patch of heat-haze...and then he was properly gray and leathery.

Shana jumped to her feet and applauded enthusiastically.

:I can't talk right in this shape,: Keman complained in her mind. :I guess I'll have to talk to you this way until I change back. It makes you tired, you know, I won't be able to shift back for a little bit. It's kind of like running a race; you can't just jump up and run another one right away.:

"That's all right," Shana said quickly. "I don't mind talking to you that way. Now what was it I do first? Find the energy center?"

:Right. Just like Mother showed us both when we were learning about thought-exchanging. Remember?:

"I think so," Shana said. "All right, I find that place, and think of the animal I want to be, and squeeze..."

"You squeeze what?"

Shana and Keman both jumped; Keman blurred again, and was back to his own shape by the time his younger sister Myrenateli came around the boulder that hid them from the main trail. Her pale green and yellow coloration was unmistakable; there wasn't another dragonet of the Kin in the entire Lair with those colors. "You squeeze what?" she asked again, petulantly, her yellow-green eyes narrowed unpleasantly with suspicion.

"Nothing," Keman said quickly, before Shana could think of anything to tell the younger dragon. "Nothing, Myre. We're just playing a game."

Shana winced. Fire and Rain, that's the worst thing to tell her. Now she'll be certain we're hiding something.

"If it's nothing, how can you be playing it?" Myre demanded. "I want to play, too! Mother said you had to play with me! Mother said you leave me out of everything!"

Shana was fairly certain her foster mother hadn't said anything of the sort, but Keman looked guilty. She decided she'd better intervene before he said something stupid and they were stuck with Myre for the rest of the afternoon.

"It's a...a special exercise Mother showed us," Shana improvised. If there's one thing Myre hates, it's exercise. "You put your hands together like this, then squeeze..."

She put her hands palm-to-palm at about chest-level, and pushed as hard as she could, to demonstrate.

"It's supposed to make your arms really strong," Keman said glibly, following Shana's lead. Shana felt a burst of thankfulness towards Foster Mother, who had thought up these particular exercises and drilled Shana in them. "It keeps you from hurting yourself exercising because you're only working against yourself, see?"

Myre watched them both squeezing and letting go, a crease of puzzlement forming along her nose as she wrinkled it.

"I thought you said you were playing a game," she complained. "That doesn't look like any kind of fun to me. I think you're both making a loon out of me!"

"Well, it is kind of a game," Shana said. "Only it isn't, you know? Why would we want to make a loon out of you, anyway?"

You take care of that quite well on your own, you pain, she thought spitefully.

Myre shook her head, and her spinal crest flattened. "No, I don't see, and I think it's stupid," she snorted. "What's it supposed to be for? What do you need to have your arms strong for, anyway?"

To hit you back when you tease me, Shana thought, but wisely kept her mouth shut.

"So...uh...we can c-c-climb the mountain with Mother," Keman stammered, obviously trying to think of something quickly. Myre did not look convinced.

"You don't need to climb to get up the mountain," Myre sneered. "You can fly. This little rat is the only one that has to climb. And I don't know why Mother wants you on the mountain, anyway, either of you. I'm the one that's supposed to be a shaman. I'm the one with the right name. And I never get to go anywhere, I never get to do anything, Mother just likes you best because you're older. You get everything you want just because you're her favorite!"

"I do not!" Keman replied, stunned at this injustice. "I never..."

"Then how come you get to go on the mountain and I don't?"

"Because I'm old enough..." Keman began, when Myre interrupted him with a cry of thwarted triumph, bouncing on all four claws, her spinal crest as flat as it could go.

"See! See! I told you so! You get everything you want, just because you're older! You even get to have pets and I don't!"

"You could have pets if you wanted them..." Keman began unwisely. And as Shana had feared from the beginning, Myre seized on his words...and on her.

"Good! I want her!" The dragonet grabbed Shana by the arm and pulled at her, with a great deal of unnecessary roughness, making her stumble and land sprawling at Myre's feet, bruising both hands and reskinning her knee.

"Myre!" Keman snapped, shoving the dragonet away. "You leave her alone! Shana is not a pet!"

"Is too!" Myre sneered, snatching at Shana, who tried to crawl out of the way of her claws. "And I want her!"

"Is not!" Keman replied, going red-eyed with fury, shoving his sister again.

"Is too! Everybody says so, except dumb-butts like you!" Myre danced in place, her talons narrowly missing Shana until Keman shoved the dragonet back against a rock and kept her there by keeping himself between her and escape.

"Is not! Only dumb-butts like you think so!" Keman snarled, as Shana tried to scramble to her feet to get out of the way of the impending fight.

"Are you calling me a dumb-butt, crybaby?" The new voice, a supercilious sneer, made all three heads swivel in the direction of the newcomer.

The male dragonet was big, bigger than Keman; that, and his deep-red and orange coloration told Shana which of the other youngsters it was...not that there was any doubt in her mind on hearing that scornful voice. Rovylern, Myre's confederate, and the biggest bully in the Lair.

Rovylern was the same age as Keman, but he "played" with the dragonets of Myre's age-group because he had no friends among those his own age. Not surprising, considering that he had pushed them around until they refused to have anything more to do with him. There weren't that many in the group to begin with; five, counting himself. Keman, Asheanala, Lorialeris, and Mereolurien. Keman had his own interests to keep him out of Rovy's way, and the other three finally banded together against the bully, excluding him from their pastimes entirely by the simple expedient of flying off somewhere he couldn't find them.

So he bullied the younger dragonets, with the exception of Myre, who helped him think up tricks to play on the others. And he bullied Keman, who was smaller and weaker than he was.

He and Myre, however, got along like two of the same litter.

Shana thought they suited each other perfectly, and would have been completely happy if they had just left her and her foster brother alone.

But of course that was impossible. As long as Keman lived at the Lair,, he would be a target...and as long as

Shana "belonged" to Keman, she would be a bone of contention between them.

"Are you calling me a dumb-butt, pea-brain?" the bully repeated, swaggering towards them, his tail lashing the ground, his wings held half-open to make him look even bigger.

Keman stood his ground. "I didn't say anything about you, Rovylern," he said stoutly. "People who eavesdrop usually don't hear things clearly, and what they do hear, they usually don't understand."

Shana flinched. Tact was not Keman's strong suit. Keman, that wasn't too smart...

"Are you trying to call me a snoop and a dumb-butt?" Rovy demanded belligerently, his ears flat, his spinal crest rising, his tail stirring up a tremendous dust behind him.

"I'm trying to tell you to stay out of this. I was talking to my sister, I wasn't talking to you!" Keman pulled himself up as tall as he could, but still fell short of Rovylern's height by a full head.

"What if I don't want to stay out of it?" Rovy challenged, taking a few steps forward. "What if I think Myre's right, huh? If she wants that stupid animal of yours, I think you'd better give it to her." He drew himself up to his full height, and puffed out his chest. "You'd better do it, butt-head, or I'll make you do it."

Shana chose that moment to try to make a run for it, trying to cut between Rovy and Myre, but she underestimated the length of Rovy's arms. He made a grab for her as she shot by him, and managed to hook his claws into her tunic. The tough dragon-hide of her tunic was thick enough to prevent her being scratched, but he caught her anyway.

In the next moment she found herself dangling from Rovy's claw, high in the air, while the bully laughed and taunted Keman, swinging her in front of him by her tunic. She shrieked and struggled ineffectually, her heart pounding with anger and fear, while her stomach lurched and her tunic tightened around her neck. She felt one claw right behind the nape of her neck; that was the one that had caught in the neckline and was pulling the fabric of the tunic tighter with every moment. She tried to get her hands down to free her throat, but with her tunic all twisted up her hands were pinned above her head.

"Put her down!" she heard Keman scream, enraged. Her tunic tightened a little more, and she choked and fought for breath. Suddenly this had gone beyond the usual bullying. She got a glimpse of Rovy's face. He knew she was fighting for breath and that he was hurting her badly...and he was enjoying himself.

She was overcome with sudden terror.

She tried to scream, and couldn't. Her vision filled with little sparkles, and began to go gray at the edges. :Keman! I can't breathe!: she called desperately. :Keman, help!:

As the gray began to fill her vision, and her chest tightened to the bursting point, there was a blue-and-green blur of motion, followed by a flash of light and a scream...

And she was flung convulsively away, flying across the floor of the little wash...she ducked her head down and tried to make herself into a little ball, certain she was going to break her neck when she landed. Fortunately, she landed right on top of Myre. The smaller dragon took her impact with a surprised oof! and fell over with Shana sprawled on top of her, tangled up in her wings.

Shana shook her head quickly to clear it; felt Myre gasping for breath beneath her and saw that the dragonet's head was weaving as if she were dazed. She saw Keman standing over a prone Rovylern, who was shuddering convulsively...and looked up at sudden shadows. The sky was darkening with dragon-wings. Adult dragon-wings.

She decided that the best thing she could do would be to hide, and scrambled off into the rocks to cower between two of the biggest and watch.

None of the adults except Foster Mother would pay any attention to anything she said. In fact, she had the feeling that her presence in this would only get Keman in further trouble.

She hunched her head down between her aching shoulders in shame at deserting her foster brother as the adults surrounded the dragonets, rounding on Keman as the chief villain. There was no doubt in Shana's mind what had happened; unable to fight back against the bigger dragonet, Keman had "cheated." He'd arced across his own wingtips and caught Rovy with the shock. A full-fledged shock, not the little spark the dragonets sparred with.

If Rovy had been older, he'd have been able to handle the charge; but he hadn't learned his lessons half as well as Keman, and he'd been knocked senseless.

And serves him right, too, Shana thought rebelliously.

Rovy's mother was out for blood, and one of the first to descend; Alara, one of the last.

Shana stayed in hiding, and hoped for the best.

Alara remained silent as Rovylern's mother, Lori, gathered up her stunned child and made certain he was going to recover. But she interposed herself as Lori raised her claw to strike at Keman.

"Stop it, Lori," she said quietly. "If Keman needs punishment, it's my place to mete it out, not yours. Let's hear what the boy has to say."

"Has to say? Your precious little brat shocked my child!" Lori shrieked. "He could have..."

"Rovylern is a braggart and a bully, Lori," said one of the others...Orieana's father Laranel, whose own child had been abused more than once by Rovylern. He didn't look in the least sympathetic, and Alara knew she had at least one backer in this. Possibly more; a quick look around showed her that of the six adults present, three had children and presumably knew all about Rovylern.

Laranel shoved Lori aside and crouched down to bring his head level with Keman's, allowing Alara a moment to collect her other sniveling, winded child. "All right, son," Laranel said to Keman, who looked frightened but still defiant. "What exactly happened here?"

"Myre and me were"...he glanced over at his mother, and his crest flattened..."we were fighting, I guess. I, uh...we were fighting. I guess that was kind of my fault, 'cause I didn't want to play with her. Then Rovy stuck his snout in and he...and he..."

"He what, son?"

Keman's ears and crest were entirely flat. "He...uh...took something of mine. I tried to get it back. He tried to...uh...break it."

Alara heard the hesitation in her normally honest and straightforward son's voice, noted the absence of Shana and came to a quick conclusion.

Rovy bullied Keman over Shana, and probably hurt her. But if Keman brought Shana up, he wouldn't get any sympathy at all...

She held her breath, hoping Keman had the sense to realize this.

"That's no excuse to shock someone, Keman," Laranel said sternly. "Even if he is bigger than you are. You could have hurt him badly."

"Oh, leave the boy alone." Iridirina's high, clear voice sang across the tiny wash, in tones heavy with disgust. "Unless I miss my guess, this was just the last straw. He'd had his gut full of being bullied, and he wasn't going to put up with it any more. Am I right, child?"

Keman nodded, his head hunched down between his shoulders.

"Well, if you ask me, Lori..." Iridirina said.

"I didn't!" snapped the infuriated mother.

In continued, blithely ignoring her. "I think that brat of yours has had this coming for a long time. I hope it'll teach him a lesson, but I doubt it will. All the same...Keman, you did a very bad thing, you know that, don't you? You don't shock anyone but an enemy. You never shock one of the Kin."

"Yes ma'am," Keman muttered sullenly.

"Alara, I think you ought to punish your boy," Laranel said. "You really ought."

She sighed; it wasn't fair, but if she were going to keep the peace... "Keman, go straight home and go to bed. No more playing, and no supper. No story at sunset, and an extra lesson tomorrow. And you will have to make Myre's kill for her." She looked from her erring child to the rest. "Is everyone satisfied?"

"No!" snapped Lori, but the rest nodded.

"Lori, you're outvoted," Laranel said firmly. "And if that boy of yours were mine, he'd be going without his dinner as well."

Myre huddled at her mother's side, whimpering and sniveling, but saying not so much as a word. "Come on, Keman," Alara said, pushing Myre ahead of her and gesturing that Keman should follow with a sweep of her wingtip.

:But Mother...:

:No buts,: she told him. :There's no excuse for shocking one of the Kin.:

He followed, head down, tail dragging, as she led the way on foot back to their lair.

I'm sorry child, she said to herself with a sigh. I know it isn't fair. But that doesn't make it less a fact. Be grateful you learned your lesson this way. It could have been worse.

Shana watched the dragons taking to the air again with a feeling of profound relief. It didn't look like Keman was going to be punished that badly...and things could have been much, much worse if the others had found out what the fight had actually been about.

She put her back to the boulder and slid down it, resting her head on her folded arms, and her arms on her knees. I have got to learn how to protect myself, she decided. I...

"You!" spat an angry young voice. Shana spun around, to see that Myre had returned. She quickly scrambled to the top of a pile of boulders, putting herself out of reach of Myre's claws.

"What do you want?" she asked angrily, feeling a bit more secure in her new perch. "You already got Keman in trouble. Isn't that enough for you?"

Myre narrowed her eyes and licked her thin lips. "I just want you to know something, rat," she said nastily. "I don't know what Keman told you, but do you know why he didn't say anything about you to the others? It's because you're just an animal, rat. You're just a filthy little defective animal, you're not worth fighting over. You're not worth even one scale off one of the Kin. And Keman knows that. He knows he'd have gotten into even bigger trouble if they knew the fight was over you."

"That's not true!" Shana shouted furiously...

But Myre only laughed, secure in the knowledge that she'd scored a hit, and turned and flew clumsily off.

MYRE HATES ME. Shana shivered, thinking about the angry, reddish glare that had been at the back of Myre's eyes. Myre really hated her. The dragon-et was so stupid Shana wouldn't care, but Myre had Rovy to help her, and that was scary. She slid down the boulder and curled up in a little patch of shelter and shade between it and another jagged chunk of rock that was even larger.

Myre was too stupid to think up anything for herself, even a lie, so that "animal" stuff must have been something she got from Rovy. Shana rubbed her eyes and the back of her bruised neck, seething with anger. Right now she'd have given anything to get back at both of them. Rovy hated her too, but that was mostly because Shana was a way he could get at Keman. He d hate anything Keman liked.

But there was more to it than that. The expression on Rovy's face; that had told her he'd loved every minute of pain she'd felt. He really wanted to hurt me bad. And now that Keman hurt him to protect me, he'll try to take it out on me.

She couldn't hide from him forever. I've got to figure out how to protect myself.

She pondered the problem, and decided that the best way to keep herself safe would be to learn how to change back into one of the Kin. Once she was in draconic form, she'd have the protection of all the adults in the Lair. They didn't care a seed for an orphaned "animal," but an orphan of the Kin was entitled to the protection of every adult of the Kin.

And if they didn't protect Shana from Rovy once she was obviously Kin, they'd be in trouble with every other Lair. That'll work.

She shoved herself away from the rock and stood up, brushing the red dust and sand off her legs and arms. She kept herself sheltered behind the rocks, and peeked around the edge of the boulders to make sure that Myre wasn't lurking somewhere, the back of her neck prickling with nervousness, before she moved cautiously out into the open.

There was no sign of the young dragonet out in the wash, nor even at the entrance to it, but Shana was taking no chances. She turned around and trotted a little farther down towards the back of the wash, until she reached the dead end. A spill of gravel pouring down the steep hillside at the rear gave her a climbable, if slippery, ramp up to the narrow ledge that ran around the side of the cliff.

It wasn't an easy climb. For every two steps she made, she slipped back one, as the loose gravel slid out from under her feet. Shana was out of breath by the time she made the ledge itself; hot and sweaty, and covered with dirt, with both elbows skinned and her knee bleeding again, she sat down on the ledge to rest for a moment before getting on.

She took slow, deep breaths, as her foster mother had taught her, and stared out over the wash. The ground was still torn up where Rovy and Keman had tussled; with no rain due it would probably look that way until fall. She just didn't understand what was wrong with Rovy. Why did he want to hurt people? Why did he always have to be the biggest and have the best of everything? He was already stronger than anyone else in his group. His mother gave him anything he wanted. So why did he have to bully the rest of the young?

She wiped her wrist across her forehead, and stared at the smear of mud on her hand; licked the sweat off her upper lip. It tasted salty and gritty. She thought wistfully that if she had been that big and strong, no one would want to hurt her. Maybe they'd even want to be her friend. They'd let her play in their games, and she'd get them to let Keman in, too. Rovy could have anything he wanted if he didn't keep trying to take it.

She had finally caught her breath, so she got to her feet, and tried to ignore how her elbows stung and her knee ached. She squinted at the bright blue sky, making a guess about the time. She couldn't see the sun, here against the cliff-face, but by the shadows it was probably late afternoon. There should be plenty of time to get to her favorite hiding place and master the shift before supper. And even if there wasn't, well, she had some roots she'd put away in her sleeping-place, in case Foster Mother either forgot to save her something, or felt she should share Keman's punishment. This wasn't the first time she and Keman had been sent to bed supperless, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Poor Keman. He doesn't even have a bone to chew on. She sighed, and wished she was bigger, there was no way she'd be able to carry in something big enough to feed Keman, even if she knew how to kill it.

Then she brightened, and began edging her way along the ledge. Once she learned how to change, she could go make a kill, and she would be big enough to take it to Keman. Something like a two-horn, maybe, or a grassrunner. Those wouldn't be too big to carry, if she was Keman's size. If she could sneak it in through the back way, Foster Mother would never know she'd done it. She'd just have to learn how to shift, that was all. If Rovy could do it, it couldn't be that hard.

Shana had never even taken Keman to her favorite hiding place; she'd found it when she was just old enough to be climbing around in the hills by herself, and had literally fallen into it. It wasn't that she didn't want to share it, but one problem with showing it to her foster brother was that Keman probably would not have been able to fit through the narrow entrance. Another was that if Keman did fit through the entrance, it would be a very tight squeeze to have both of them inside at the same time.

It was another cul-de-sac, but this time halfway up one of the hills. From above, it looked like a very narrow chimney-crack, but the crack itself got wider just beneath the entrance, and was quite large enough for Shana to move about in it at the bottom. Since it faced westward, there was sunlight shining down into it for most of the day. Enough rain and dew collected that short, springy grass grew in the bottom, and there were even a few small animals making their homes there. Swallows nested on the walls, and Shana had seen at least one family of ground squirrels, one of rabbits, and any number of lizards.

It was her own secret, and the only place she felt secure even from the dragonets. They couldn't come in here, no matter what, even if they'd known where it was. It made a good place to go when Keman was busy and Foster Mother elsewhere, leaving her without protection.

She had begun building her own little cache of jewels here; a handful of gems that Keman had given her, augmented with things she had found in deserted lairs, and the odd agate she found, water-polished, in the beds of streams. She kept them in a dragon-skin pouch at the back of the crack, out of the reach of what little weather penetrated to the bottom.

She had high hopes for that little treasure trove.

She counted the stones over in her mind as she climbed up to the base of the crack, sun hot on her back, her shadow crawling up like a spindly twin. The others used jewels to help them change, sometimes. Keman said that jewels helped to focus power.

She scrambled over a boulder embedded in the hillside to reach the entrance to her hideaway. That was how she had found it in the first place; she'd fallen off the boulder and rolled into the entrance. Then she'd gotten curious, seeing the sun shining on something green in the depths, and had gone all the way inside. The crack in the hillside was barely visible from below, because of a fluke of structure it looked as if the entrance to the crack was simply part of the hillside jutting out, casting shadows on the hill behind it.

But the crevice was very real, and quite deep, and Shana slipped into it sideways, trusting to the boulder to shield her movements from eyes below.

Once she was a few steps past the opening, the crack widened considerably. A few more steps, and she could spread her arms and only touch the walls with her fingertips.

Light poured down through the crack above and behind her, illuminating a thin strip of rock along the back wall and falling on the carpet of grass at the bottom. There was always dust in the air, and the sun blazed through in a thick beam, like pale honey, full of dancing motes, shining through each grass-blade with such intensity that against the dark walls they glowed like tiny spears of emerald. Shana seated herself on the soft grass, full in the sun, and took her little bag of gemstones from a depression she had scooped out at the back of the crevice. The bag had been made from Keman's skin, and she hoped that was a good omen.

His scales sparkled in the sunlight like tiny gems themselves, emeralds and sapphires, each brushed with a dusting of gold. Her tunic was too dust-covered to sparkle, but when it was clean, the larger scales looked less like jewels and more like enameled metal plates, very similar to some of the elven-work Shana had seen.

She poured her jewels into the palm of her hand, focused her eyes on them, and concentrated on what Keman had told her. First, I find the center, the place where all the power comes from. Foster Mother said that's where you balance, too, and I know where that is...

She stared at the pool of light and color in her hand, and tried to find that elusive balance-point. The gems glowed at her, each one seeming to be alive, and she finally closed her eyes and "looked" for that same glow inside herself.

I... think this is it...

There was a place, just about at her navel, that seemed to pulse with the same, living glow she imagined in the stones. She thought very hard about that place, "squeezing," as Keman had told her, and was rewarded with a definite strengthening in the "glow." It was becoming very hard to think, or rather, to form thoughts into words. Was that good, or bad?

She squeezed harder. Now she felt the power elsewhere, running through her with little tingles; it seemed to be coming from the pile of sun-warmed gems cupped in her palm. Feeling hopeful now, she encouraged the flow, and it did, indeed, increase.

She gave up on trying to put her thoughts into words; doing so felt like trying to swim through mud. Instead she concentrated with pictures and feelings. Now she began picturing herself as she should be; a tall, strong dragonet, as tall as Rovylern, but much more supple, with scales of purple and blue, like the amethysts and lapis she held in her hand.

She saw herself, deep in her mind's eye; saw the way her wings would lift to the sky, the whipping cord of her tail. She built up every detail, down to the smallest scale, and all the while she kept up the pressure on her power-center, until she felt as if she were about to explode from tension.

Then she released it all, in a burst of power that left her inner eyes dazzled for a moment. She opened her real eyes, fully confident that she would find her gems cupped in a purple-scaled claw.

Only to find them still held in a very human hand.

Sunset filled the crevice with scarlet light, as if Shana sat in the heart of a great ruby. The light poured in from behind her, illuminating the entire rear of the crack, and her shadow stood etched blackly into the red-glowing rocks. It was beautiful, but Shana had no eye for beauty just now. She was exhausted; her arms quivered with strain, and all she wanted to do was lie down and rest. Sweat dripped down her forehead, beaded on her upper lip, and ran down the back of her neck.

She had been trying for hours to work the change from human to dragon with no more result than when she'd tried it the first time. The power was there, she could feel it every time she started. She was doing everything right.

And yet nothing whatsoever happened when she released the power.

She stared at the hand that clutched her gem cache, the knuckles white, the hand quivering, and suddenly knew that no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to be able to shift. It wasn't a matter of being too young, nor of not having the power. She had the power, and she had been able to speak mind-to-mind long before the others of her age could. She had everything she needed...or rather, almost everything.

Because Myre and the others were right. She was an animal.

All the taunts that Myre and Rovy had thrown at her came back to her with the clarity of the hatred that had spawned them.

Myre: "Alara picked you up as a pet for Keman. Mother found your two-legger mother dying, and took you because she felt sorry for you."

Rovy: "Alara's brought Keman lots of pets. The only difference between you and them is that you won't admit you're a pet!"

Myre: "Beast. Two-legger! Animal! You're nothing but a rat, a great big rat!"

"Rat! Rat! Rat!"

The taunts rang in her mind, and Shana flung the jewels away from her with a cry, hurling them at the stone of the crevice. They pattered against the stone like hard little raindrops. She scarcely heard them.

She was too lost in her own blackly bitter thoughts; the things she was only now piecing together.

Foster Mother would never tell her about her real mother. Alara only said she "knew" her, and that Shana's mother had died in the desert. Then she'd change the subject when Shana asked what her mother looked like, what kind of a person she was. Alara wouldn't look at her, either. Foster Mother had acted as if she were hiding something.

Myre had been full of details, though...details Shana had always dismissed as false, until now.

The rest of the Kin treat me like I was some kind of animal, too. Keman said that was because Shana was stuck in this two-legger shape, but if it was her real shape...

...then I am an animal to them.

She could think of countless times when the adults had talked to Keman about her as if she weren't there, or couldn't understand them, and when they had something to tell her to do, they used the same kind of voice on her that Keman used on his loupers.

Alara had never treated her that way...nor Father

Dragon. But they were the only ones among the Kin who didn't. Shana had always thought that was going to change once she could. After all, it was easy to think of her as an animal while she wore an animal's form.

Foster Mother taught her just like Keman...but when she talked about the Kin, she never had said that Shana was one of the Kin. She didn't talk that way to Keman...

Only to me...

So it wasn't just a malicious story. And Foster Mother knew it. That was why she taught Shana a little differently from Keman.

I'm not one of the Kin. I never will be. I'm an ugly old two-legger. Somebody's lunch, if he wasn't too hungry...

Tears welled up in her eyes as she clenched her hands into fists, fingernails cutting into her palms. They spilled down her cheeks, burning their way through the mingled sweat and dust, as the last rays of the sun faded and the light disappeared from Shana's little pocket, leaving only the blue glow of dusk.

Her chest tightened and ached, her throat closed, and more silent tears followed the first. She felt cheated, somehow, or betrayed.

Why didn't they tell me? Why didn't they tell me? If Myre knew what I was, then Keman knew, he had to...why did he let me think I was Kin? Why didn't Foster Mother tell me? She found me! She knew from the beginning what the truth was!

She cried silently, sobs shaking her thin frame, and hugged her arms to her chest in a vain attempt to keep the ache from overwhelming her. Arms that would never wear scales, or sprout long, fierce talons. She would never fly in the Thunder Dance, never be a shaman like Foster Mother.

Never.

Why didn't they tell me?

The question produced a curious change; hurt became anger, and while the tears continued, they grew hotter and less frequent.

They didn't tell her because they didn't care. They were just like all the rest! They didn't care because she was just an animal and she didn't matter.

The sense of pressure she had been creating while she tried, in vain, to work the shape-shift built up inside her again. She hugged herself and rocked back and forth in impotent rage. It's all their fault. It's all their fault! They don't care and it's all their fault! I'll show them...I

She felt something snap inside her, and pounded her fists on the ground and howled with rage...

Suddenly every rock within touching distance flew into the air and hurled itself against the walls of the crevice; some hard enough to split themselves in two or more pieces.

She was so angry that for a moment this didn't even startle her, she just stretched out her hand to grab a bigger rock close by and throw it after the others...throw it at a target she'd spotted high up on the wall. But it rose into the air and struck the projection shaped like a rough dragon's head, and Shana watched as it and her target vanished in a shower of tiny bits of sand and rock.

The ground squirrel that called the crevice his home came shooting out of his burrow, tail high and stiff, bounding with rage, to chitter angrily at her.

His temper called up answering temper in her.

Shana didn't even think. A rock simply rose up from beside her right hand, and hurtled across the crevice.

Her aim when throwing rocks by hand was no better than any other child's. Her aim with this weapon of the mind was deadly and accurate.

The rock shot across the crevice so fast that it whistled; hit the little rodent in the head and killed it instantly.

The body tumbled from the top of the burrow and lay on the grass, like a little lump of squirrel-shaped mud in the blue twilight.

Unbidden, Foster Mother's voice filled her mind. "Study the ground squirrel so that you may become one with him. ..."

A terrible quiet filled the crevice. Shana came back to herself, thrown out of her temper with the shock of what she had just done. She had often spoken blithely of "making a kill" with Keman, but the fact was that she had never actually killed or even harmed another living creature.

Until this moment.

Never had she wanted so much to undo something she had done. Never had it been so impossible to undo it.

There was no point in going to look at the squirrel; she knew by the way it was lying that she had broken its neck and back. But she crept to it on hands and knees, anyway, and picked up the tiny body, cradling it in her hand. The body was still warm, the fur soft, all the little limbs limp.

"I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely, the tears starting again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...honest, I didn't. I'm really, really sorry..."

But the squirrel cooled swiftly on her palm, stiffening. It didn't spring magically to life again.

"I was supposed to learn about you." She sobbed, crying in earnest now. "I was supposed to learn about you, and I killed you! I..."

She put the little body in the depression that had held her cache of gems and piled rocks over him. She wanted to use her newfound power to do it...it seemed fittest...but the power seemed to have vanished along with her anger. So she built the tiny cairn by hand, crying with all her heart as she did so.

When she finally managed to stop crying, it was completely dark, and she had to make her way down the hillside by moonlight. It was slow, deliberate work; carefully placing each hand and foot, and testing the ground before she trusted her full weight to it.

It gave her plenty of time to think.

She felt for a toehold and looked up at the moon and stars, trying to judge how far she had come. I didn't mean to kill him. But she had, and she did it with her power. That must be why I lost it. Because I killed with it.

She didn't know whether to burst into further tears, or...oddly...feel relief. The power had been intoxicating while she used it, but now, in retrospect, it frightened her.

She slid carefully onto a narrow ledge, her body pressed tightly against the rough rock. If she still had it, she'd have something no one else did. But that wouldn't make her Kin. The others would probably just figure she was a dangerous animal now.

But if I had it, I could keep Rovy and Myre from hurting me.

But she killed with it. What if she killed them! She didn't want to kill them, she just wanted them to leave her alone!

Finally she reached relatively level ground, and could walk normally. She trudged towards home, head down, not so lost in thought that she forgot to watch her step. Each pace down the hill meant the same thoughts, running around and around her head in a litany that soon became part of the climb. When she reached the bottom of the hill and stood on flat ground, she found herself swaying with exhaustion and sick to her stomach. She was sweating and chilled at the same time, and her legs felt as if they weren't going to hold her up. She had to lean up against a tall pillar of rock for a moment to settle herself.

The rock was still warm from the summer sun, and she pressed herself against its smooth surface gratefully. Suddenly she was so tired that she couldn't even think, and if it hadn't been so dangerous, she would have slid down to the ground at the foot of the stone pillar and gone to sleep right there.

But loupers were out at night, and hill-cats, and both were killers in packs. And there were snakes or scorpions which might be attracted to her warmth, and sting or bite her when she moved.

No, she was going to have to get home, somehow.

When she thought she could go on, she raised her head, only to have a wave of disorientation wash over her and leave her weak-kneed and shaking. She clung to the rock and wished with all her heart that she could undo this entire day.

Another dizzy-spell hit her, now all thoughts of guilt and power were gone. All she wanted was to get back to her bed and safety.

She pushed away from the rock and stumbled, half-blinded, over the rough ground in the moonlight, tripping and falling more than once, and inflicting further punishment on her poor, skinned knee. It was the longest journey she'd ever made in her life, and she cried silent tears of joy when she rounded the foot of a hill and reached the area of the pens where Keman still kept his pets. It no longer mattered to her that she was one of them. All that mattered was that it was home, and meant a place to lie down.

She had to stop and lean against the rock surrounding the otter pond, as yet another wave of sickness and dizziness came over her. When leaning did no good, she sat down on the rim of the pond, and bent over the water, scooping up a handful and splashing it over her face.

Then she lost her bearings and her balance...and she was in the pond.

The cold water shocked her into awareness; she rose to the surface, spluttering, but clear-headed again, though still weak. She clung to the rock of the side for a while, as the otter came out of his den and nosed her curiously, swimming around her and nudging her. It took a long moment for her to drag herself up out of the water, and she lay on her side, panting, as the otter gave her up as a hopeless bore and went back to bed.

Her impromptu bath did one thing for her, at any rate. She was clean, at least, if battered and bruised by the afternoon's misadventures.

The dry air pulled the moisture off her; by the time she staggered to the entrance to the lair, everything was dry again except her hair. She was very glad that her bed was nearest the entrance; she wasn't sure if she could have told Foster Mother anything sensible about her absence after dark.

Even so, it was a long trek across the stone floor of the linked caverns. More than long enough that she was half-asleep and shaking in every limb by the time she made the safe haven of her little cavelet. She literally fell into her bed of Alara's stolen fabrics, already asleep, deaf and blind to everything around her.

Shana stared at the magically smoothed rock of her cavelet ceiling, and blinked befuddled eyes. When she first woke, she had been puzzled about why she ached so, and why her knees and elbows were so battered. Then she had remembered...and could not believe the memories.

It must have been a dream, she thought finally. No one could have thrown stones around just by thinking about it. Even Foster Mother couldn't do that; all she could do was move the stone, mold it with her hands. She couldn't make it fly through the air.

The more Shana thought about yesterday, and all the things she thought she'd done, the less likely it all seemed. All except the part with Myre and Rovy...her bruised and battered body gave ample testament that this much, at least, was very real.

When she couldn't shift, she was so tired...she must have cried herself to sleep and dreamt it all.

She had no idea how long she'd slept, but she didn't feel entirely rested...and her head ached, a dull, constant throb, that made her feel a little sick. Not from the temples, the way it did when she'd overworked, but from deep inside, somewhere behind her eyes.

I'd better get up, she decided. Before someone comes looking for me.

She pulled herself out of her tangled nest of fabric, and stripped off her tunic. After the beating she'd given it yesterday, this one would need some repair-work to make it fit to wear again.

She pulled out another, she had half a dozen, all told, most of them made by her own two hands. Alara had shown her how, but had been adamant that she learn to make her own clothing.

And now she knew why. Because she'd have to have clothing to wear, she thought glumly, as she ran her fingers through the tangled mess of her hair, trying to put it in some kind of order. Finally she gave it up as a bad job, and went to find Keman.

He's bound to be up by now, and his punishment is over. Maybe we configure out something I can do. She was no longer angry with her foster brother and his mother...they couldn't help it. If they'd told her the truth, she wouldn't have believed it anyway. She looked in Keman's little sleeping-place...only five times the size of her own...but he wasn't there. She was torn between going out the front, and seeing if Keman was in the rear with his pets.

Alara found her first.

The shaman intercepted her halfway between her little sleeping-cave and the rear outside entrance. She startled Shana halfway out of her wits. When she chose, Alara could move with complete silence, and her appearance on the trail before Shana, noiseless and sudden, made the girl jump back a step, stifling a scream.

"Myre told me you were out last night after dark."

Alara said without preamble, in that steady, expressionless voice that told Shana she was in very deep trouble.

If I lie, she'll know, Shana thought with resignation, putting her hands behind her back and staring up through the gloom of the softly lit cave at her foster mother's head. Alara looked down at her; a long way down. The adult dragons were large enough to carry Shana on their backs, if they chose, without using much, if any, magic to help them fly. That meant they were very tall indeed, and Alara knew how to use every bit of her height to her advantage.

"Yes, Foster Mother," Shana said sadly. "I didn't mean to be, but I was so unhappy after Keman's fight yesterday that I went and hid. I...It got dark before I...I...could go home."

Alara blinked; twin ellipses of her moon-pale eyes. "Are you what Keman and Rovy fought over?" she asked evenly. "I didn't see you there, but Keman wouldn't tell me where you were, and I thought that you might have been the cause of the quarrel."

"Yes, Foster Mother," Shana replied. She lifted her own chin defiantly. "Myre was mean to me, and Rovy shoved his snout into it. Rovy tried to hurt me, he almost choked me. There are bruises on my neck if you don't believe me..."

She started to pull her tunic away from her neck. Alara stopped her, but without uttering a word in reply. Shana waited for her to say something and, when nothing was forthcoming, decided she might as well say everything.

"Maybe I'm not Kin," she said, her voice trembling with anger, "but I'm not an animal, either! I'm not a pet Rovy can hurt whenever he wants to! Keman wanted to protect me; he tried to, he tried his best. That was why he shocked Rovy, it was the only way he could get Rovy to put me down."

She didn't ask what she was thinking, which was: Where were you when we needed you? Why haven't you protected me from the rest? And why did you let me go on believing that I was Kin?

Alara just sighed, though she lowered her head a little. "I know you're not an animal, Lashana," she said softly, some of the cold flatness gone from her voice. "And none of this was your fault. There's no sin in not being of the Kin, though there are more than a few dragons who would tell you that I'm mad to say that. I don't blame you for the fight...and I'm very glad Keman stood up to that bully."

Shana sighed with her own feeling of relief. But her relief was short-lived.

"You disobeyed by staying out after dark, though," Alara continued, "and I'm going to have to punish you for that. If I don't, Myre will think she doesn't have to obey either, and she'll be out on the wing with Rovylera all night. She gets into quite enough trouble as it is."

Shana's heart sank. There was only one punishment Foster Mother was likely to mete out to her, given her love of the open sky and the hills.

"You're staying in or near the lair until I tell you differently," Alara finished, putting the seal on Shana's fears. "That should teach you a suitable lesson, I think."

"Yes, Foster Mother," Shana said unhappily. "But..."

"Not another word. You heard me." Alara drew herself back up to her full height, and her eyes glistened in the blue glow from the lights beside the pathway.

"Yes, Foster Mother." Shana's heart sank, and she stared at her feet, her hands clasped behind her back.

She heard something that almost sounded like a chuckle. "You'll find Keman by the otter pool. He's staying confined to the lair too, for the present." As Shana lifted her head and looked up at her foster mother in astonishment, Alara turned lithely and vanished into the darkness of the caverns, heading into the unlit areas where only she went.

Shana's heart lifted a little, and she sighed and rubbed her eyes, still sore from all her weeping yesterday. At least, if she was going to be confined, she wouldn't be alone!

She trudged up the pathway to the rear entrance; no longer a hidden exit-point, since there was so much activity around it, what with Keman's pets and all, that there was no concealing the fact that it was there. The entrance was in sight when Shana literally ran into Myre. The dragonet was lurking in an alcove beside the passageway, waiting for someone. Probably Keman; she faced the entrance rather than the passage. Shana didn't see her until the girl was on top of her, and Myre squealed and jumped in surprise when Shana stepped on her tail.

Shana jumped back a pace or two herself, and her mood was not improved when Myre turned around and glared at her, with her upper lip curled in a sneer. Shana balled her hands into fists, and thought longingly of hitting her. Not that it would do much good...Shana would probably only hurt her hand. Twist her wings, maybe, or put a knot in her tail...

"I told Mother you were out all night," Myre taunted, in a thin, whiny voice. "I told her you ran off and didn't come back all night long. I told her that you were nothing but a wild animal, and she ought to have a leash for you and keep you tied up at night."

She sounded just like Rovy. Was that where Myre was getting everything now? Shana kept a tight rein on her temper and pretended to ignore the dragonet. She just stared past her for a moment, then blinked, as if brought back from a thought.

"Did you say something?" she asked. "I thought I heard Rovylern for a moment, and I wondered how he'd gotten down here."

While Myre's jaw dropped, Shana started for the entrance, intending to walk past Myre, but the youngster moved to block her path.

"You're supposed to stay in the lair!" Myre hissed. "Mother said so! She told you to stay in the lair, and she told Keman to stay here too! I'm going to go tell Mother!"

"Go right ahead, tattletale." Shana spat, losing her temper, as she felt her face flush with anger. "You go right ahead and see what she says!"

"All right, I will!" Myre scampered off, up towards the heart of the lair, calling back over her shoulder, "I will! I will! See if I don't! Then you'll be sorry!"

Shana's anger seethed and boiled over; she felt her chest growing tight, and clenched her fists so hard her knuckles ached. Never had she wanted anything so badly as she wanted to hit the little snitch...

And a rock as big as her fist separated from the wall with a crack. It shot past her, hurtling into the gloom of the lair like a diving falcon.

There was a dull thud. The blot of shadow that was Myre squealed. "You hit me!" came the accusing wail. "You hit me! That hurt! I'm going to tell Mother! I'm going to tell, I'm going to tell! You're going to get it, little rat!"

The shadow blot cringed as if expecting another blow, then came the scratching of claws on stone as the dragonet broke into a run. Myre vanished around a bend of the path that took her out of Shana's line of sight.

Shana stood frozen in the middle of the path, stunned disbelief holding her motionless. That rock...it had come away from the wall and launched itself at Myre with the same accuracy she'd had last night.

I did it! She thought wonderingly, her heart beating faster. I did it, I really did; it wasn't a dream or anything else. And I didn't lose the power either! I've got to try it again!

A fleeting moment of guilt stopped her as she remembered the ground squirrel.

No, I have to have this, I have to be able to use it. She couldn't let Rovy threaten her or Keman again. He's too big and too mean, and I don't know what he might do after yesterday.

She directed her thought at a similar lump of stone lying loose beside the pathway. But now, no matter how hard she thought about it, how hard she "squeezed," nothing happened. She sat down beside the path, all her excitement deflated. She sagged right down onto the cool rock, and tried to imagine what could have gone wrong.

I did it just now. I know I did it. It couldn't have been anyone else but me. No matter how hard she thought, she couldn't come up with an answer to the puzzle. First she had the power, then she didn't...what was the difference?

She rubbed her aching head, and thought resentfully of how Myre always seemed to ruin everything. That stupid Myre, she gets me so mad...she gets me in trouble, and she gets Keman in trouble and she calls me bad names, and nothing ever happens to her! It isn't fair! I'd like to hit her so hard...

A handful of gravel launched itself from the pathway into the darkness. Once again, surprise broke Shana's anger. But this time, now that she was looking for causes, she made the missing connection.

When I get angry...I can throw things. When I'm not, I can't. Fire and Rain! That's the opposite of what happens to Keman and the others. The madder they get, the less they're able to do...

She scrambled to her feet, eager to find Keman and tell him of her new found powers. She ran, excitement giving her extra speed...but stopped just short of the entrance, as something else occurred to her.

If she told him, he'd tell Foster Mother, and Alara would have to tell the rest. They might not like it. They might think Shana was dangerous. But if she didn't tell anyone, she could do things without their knowing. She could protect herself when Keman wasn't around.

I'd better not. I hate keeping it a secret, but I'd better not. Not if I want to stay safe.

She resumed her search for her foster brother, but at a sedate walk.

SHANA CROUCHED BESIDE the otter's pool, her eyes narrowed in concentration. The otter was in his den, but not asleep; that much she could tell just from the "feel" of his mind. She extended a mental hand, delicately, toward him, and imagined herself to be him; felt her limbs shorten, her body lengthen, fur cover her skin...

Her change wasn't a physical one, as Keman's would be, but in the mental image of herself. The moment she felt herself to be an otter, and one with him, she made contact with the "thoughts" of the playful beast.

:Warm-sun, warm-water.: The otter contemplated what lay beyond the underwater entrance to his den, rolled over on his back, and scratched his nose. His stomach was full, and he was wide awake; not particularly interested in napping again. The inside of the den was dimly lit by the sunlight filtering through the water and reflecting up into the burrow. :Sleep-not,: he decided. :Play-now:

Shana felt him slip into the water before she saw his sleek form shooting across the bottom of the pond.

Whether or not this was what Foster Mother had meant when she told Shana to "become one with the ground squirrel," Shana didn't know. Nor did she much care; ever since she had learned to "hear" the thoughts of the tiniest animals, an entire world had opened up to her. This much of her new powers she could share with Keman; her foster brother expected her to learn to sense animal-thoughts, although he himself could not. After all, Alara had been teaching her with an eye to just that development.

And since he wasn't suspecting anything, he wasn't surprised by the extent of her ability.

The otter looked up through the water, spotted her on the bank, and shot out of the water to greet her. She amused him by holding pebbles afloat just above the surface, and letting him slap at them. Then she submerged the smooth stones and let him chase them around the pond. It was great fun for both of them, though a little tiring for her. Another lesson learned: working this "magic" was real work, and took a great deal out of her. She could not imagine how Alara managed her work without becoming exhausted.

Shana no longer had to be in a temper to work her brand of magic, she only had to think in a certain way, wanting something so badly that her emotions became involved...though the angrier she became, the stronger her magic was. Emotion definitely played a part, the stronger, the better.

She had discovered another talent, though what use it could be, she had no idea. She could find water, just by being thirsty. She had followed Keman out on one of his explorations, and forgot to take a water flask with her. By midmorning she was half-mad with thirst...and at that point had felt a peculiar tugging at her wrist, as if something had hold of her and was trying to lead her away.

Curious, she had followed where the signal led, and had discovered a patch of the sajus-brush and fir-grass that marked a "seep." A few moments of digging at the foot of the bushes, and patience, and she had her drink. Once her thirst was satisfied, the "tugging" stopped.

It was an interesting talent, but right now, her ability to move things about was of more use, and a great deal more fun. She'd even managed to get Rovy and Myre quarreling a time or two, by plinking them with small stones and letting each think that the other had been poking him.

And she'd been able to make Rovy think she had taken to the hills when in fact she was hiding near the lair, by making the sounds of someone running up a path on two feet and bringing down showers of gravel from the side of the hill. He'd been completely taken in, enough to follow the path until it narrowed to a point where he couldn't use it anymore. If he'd been less lazy he could have taken to the rock and climbed, but Shana had judged his temper correctly; it was too much effort to follow her at that point. He was a bully, but he preferred to use a minimum of effort, a characteristic Shana and Keman were able to use to their advantage.

And of course, she was able to have fun with the otter using her magic, and with other small creatures that were both curious and playful. There were night-birds that greatly enjoyed the flocks of moths she called to her, and would circle around her, calling to each other and snatching the moths out of the air. There was also a kind of long-legged runner-bird that would even play "fetch," provided she did not move.

Shana laughed, and sent the pebbles through loops and dives; she turned the otter back on himself, so that he was chasing a pebble that was chasing his tail. The otter redoubled his efforts to catch the shiny bit of stone, both parties having the times of their lives, and both oblivious to the rest of the world.

Alara raised her head from her foreclaws as a sound like a jayee's trill sang inside her mind, briefly interrupting her perusal of the weather patterns for many leagues around the Lair.

It came again. She stared down from her cliff-top perch at the Lair, took a moment to focus and identify the source, and dismissed it. The child was playing with the otter. So long as it kept her content, and she was no longer so unhappy about not being of the Kin, what harm could there possibly be?

She put her head back down on her crossed foreclaws, closed her eyes, and went back to her task of weather-calling. The plains where the herds of this Lair roamed were dry and badly in need of a good, soaking rain. Summer had brought no more than half the expected rainfall, and now that fall was here, the rains had dried up altogether. Ordinarily Alara would not have meddled in weather patterns at this time of year other than to call storms for the Thunder Dance, but she had no choice but to act if things were to be returned to normal. She must play with the weather because the elven lords had already done so, twisting the storm-flows out of all resemblance to the normal autumn systems.

Now she must restore them, or else the herds would starve and many animals would die; animals the Lair needed to see it through the winter. And who knew what other problems this interference had caused? She only watched over her Lair's territory; elsewhere there could be further droughts, or floods, and not all shamans were weather-workers.

At least she could work her will knowing that those who had made the changes would assume some other rival was revoking what they had done.

Of course, to ensure this, she would have to go out of the Lair again, taking the guise of a young elven messenger, and deliver a cleverly worded, anonymous message to the lord responsible for this foolish and careless tampering. That, too, was part of her duty, for all that it took her away from her children. And Myre was being so troublesome...

She would worry about that when the time came. For now, it would be enough to set things aright.

She settled back into her trance, sending her mind into the sky and becoming one with the world around her. She moved from the earth where she lay, to the heavens; reaching out to the winds and the clouds, calling them gently back to the paths they should be taking. And canceling the spells that had sent and held them elsewhere.

Another trill brushed the surface of her mind, but now that she had identified young Shana's magic-working, it was easy to ignore it.

Mostly. There was always a part of her that was "mother" first and "shaman" second.

Still, she wished the child were a little quieter, with an unoccupied corner of her mind that worried at the strength of the disturbance. She couldn't help wondering who else could "hear" the child, and if they knew who it was that was making the noise.

She dismissed the thought as it began to intrude on her task. Nothing was going to happen to Shana at the moment. Any dragon with the ability to "hear" her would also be one of the seniors in the Lair, and the seniors would come to the shaman before acting.

Restoring what the elves had twisted was rather like untangling several skeins of madly snarled yarn. Before she had finished, Alara was in something of a temper. There was not just one spell, there were layers upon layers of them, all interacting, some in quite peculiar ways.

Didn't they ever pay any attention to the consequences before they did something, she thought resentfully. Or did they just wait until disaster hit, then shove things back into place by brute force?

She was beginning to think that the latter was the case, at least for the more powerful lords. The lesser seemed to create muddles like this one; piling spell atop spell until the entire structure collapsed, or warped into something no one intended, with effects that were completely unpredictable.

And then, of course, the powerful mages would have to intervene.

Provided the Kin don't do so first, she thought, a little smugly.

She set to her task of unraveling and unweaving, determined to do the job properly, which took both time and energy. It took her most of the afternoon to set everything right, and by the time the rains were falling (as they should have been) on the parched grasslands, Alara was famished and short-tempered. She had been up on her retreat all day, and had begun this job fasting; all she wanted at the moment was a nice fat three-horn, or even two. Being hungry made her irritable, and her temper was not improved by finding three of the oldest dragons in the Lair waiting at the stone gazebo when she descended. Two were coiled within the marble edifice; one draped on the wide stone benches that rimmed the inside, and one sprawled on the floor. The third actually sat on the threshold of the entrance to her lair, sunning himself, and so positioned that he was keeping her from entering. She doubted that was an accident.

"Alara!" said the one on the floor, looking oh-so-innocent, which expression Alara did not in the least believe. "We've been waiting for you to come down. We knew you'd be hungry, so Anoa killed you a three-horn and left it in your lair."

"Now, about that two-legged fosterling of yours..." Orolanela began hesitantly, raising her head from the bench at Alara's approach. "She's..."

"What?" Alara snapped impatiently, not in the least mollified by the bribe. "I thought we had all agreed after that episode with Rovylern that you all would leave her in peace so long as she didn't do anything to cause quarrels between the youngsters!"

"I know that, but she's noisy, shaman," Anoahalo replied, calmly. "Magic-noisy. You know what I mean. We can hear her, and probably some of the others can, too...they just haven't figured out who it is that's making the disturbance." She stretched, flexing her claws against the rough rock of the cave entrance. "Since most of them consider her an animal, they probably won't ever make the connection...but you never know. And if they find out she has magic...well, I can't say what they might or might not think. Or do. Especially Lori."

Alara sighed, and wished she had hands to rub her aching head. Instead, she massaged her temple with a knuckle, hoping to ease the pain. "Is she bothering you?" she asked finally. "I really could care less what Lori says or does, so long as you seniors aren't being bothered."

"Well, no, not really," the third, Keokeshala, said lazily, from his position on the floor of the gazebo. He yawned delicately, and smiled. "Interesting effect, that trill. She's actually rather nice to listen to, if you like birds. It's not that she's annoying, it's that she's doing it at all. This wasn't something we even thought about when we told you we'd leave her alone. What we want to know is, what do you intend to do about her?"

"I don't intend to do anything about her, at least not at the moment," Alara said flatly, coiling up around a sun-warmed rock and spreading her wings to the last evening rays. "I think she's doing very well as she is. She isn't hurting anything, she's staying out of trouble, and these little tricks of hers keep her amused. What did you want me to do about her?"

Keoke laughed, and his smile broadened. "Not a thing, actually, at the moment. It's rather fun to watch her learning what she can do, and leading Rovylern a merry chase. She's awfully bright, you know. You might take her for Kin if you didn't know any better."

Anoa coughed politely, and shook her head, her spinal crest half-raised. "Well, I won't go that far," she said doubtfully, "but I do say she has a lot of potential. The fact is, Alara, we've been thinking. All this time we've been playing with this Prophecy, but it's occurred to us that your little fosterling could well be the Elvenbane. I mean, we could make her the Elvenbane with a little nudging in the right direction. She's got all the right credentials, so to speak. If she ever finds out what she is, and about her mother and father, she's likely to be a little handful for you. I'd be willing to bet that you'd have a time keeping her here."

Orola chuckled, and stretched her neck up to look Alara straight in the face. "We might as well stop dancing around the bush. Actually, we thought we would like you to tell her about her mother and father; about the elven lords and the humans, and everything else. To tell you the truth, Alara, once we realized she was working magic, it seemed to us that there was an opportunity here too good to be wasted. We'd like to turn her loose in their world and see what she can do."

Keoke rolled his eyes and grinned, his tail twitching a little. "She ought to create a marvelous amount of havoc before she's caught," he said in a satisfied voice. "And if one of us went along to keep an eye on her, we could make sure she either got loose again, or simply couldn't tell the elven lords anything about us."

Keoke's matter-of-fact tone of voice made Alara's blood chill. She knew very well what he meant. If...no, when...Shana was caught, one of them would see to it that she died before revealing the secrets of the dragons. They just want to use her, as if she were a two-horn to be petted then eaten at will, or a tool to be wielded until it breaks.

"I think that's a bit much, Keoke," Orola objected mildly, lowering her lids over her eyes. "It's a child, after all. Not Kin, but it hasn't done us any harm, and it might provide us with a lot of entertainment if we take very good care of it." She turned to Alara. "I agree, we should turn it loose among the elves, but I think we should assure its safety. There is a certain amount of honor involved here; we've taken on the child, we really are somewhat responsible for its safety. Just letting it go charging into danger is...distasteful." Orola curled her tongue a little, as if she had bitten into something bitter. "It's like...oh...eating one of your Keman's pets. You don't bring up something to trust you, then betray it."

"Hmm." Keoke tilted his head to one side, considering her words. "True. That smacks of something Lori might do...and we all know Lori's irresponsible."

Orola nodded, while Alara held her temper firmly in check, and kept up a serene exterior. "If nothing else," Orola continued, "we have no idea how long these halfbreeds live. If it has a lifespan even half that of elves, and keeps learning all the time, it could probably think up any number of clever tricks to work on them. And it would have all the motivation in the world to do so."

Alara resented Orola's categorization of Shana as an "it," but at least Orola had some notion of honor, even if it was only the kind of protection owed to a pet. She wasn't planning to throw the child out into the world with no defenses, and kill Shana when the child was caught. Keoke, on the other hand, seemed a bit more cynical about it all, probably considered Shana's welfare purely in terms of her entertainment value, and might still be able to convince the other two to come around to his point of view. Unless she could change Keoke's mind instead.

Alara took a deep, calming breath, and began to plan, her mind working as quickly as ever it did in the Thunder Dance. She had to make them see Shana as a person, even Orola, and convince them all that Shana was worth the kind of protection she'd get if she were Kin. It occurred to her that the best way to do that was to convince them that Shana was a very valuable little girl.

"She's still a child," Alara reminded them all, taking care to sound calm and noncommittal. She pulled her wings in, and rested her chin against the stone railing of the gazebo. "She hasn't even begun to come into her powers yet. Of all of us, only Father Dragon knows what the halfbreeds are capable of, and I doubt he knows everything. It's hard to say what she can or can't do...we just don't know. I think she could be more important to us than she appears right now."

"That alone is entertaining enough," Anoa admitted, scratching at a loosening patch of skin thoughtfully. "Watching her figure out what else she can do is like opening a puzzle-box. You never know what's coming next. I had no idea she'd be able to reach the minds of moths...nor that runner-birds could play. I don't think we ought to turn her loose on the world anytime soon. I'd hate to miss what happens as she discovers more of her abilities, and I don't think we've come to the bottom of the bag yet."

"True enough," Keoke acknowledged with a nod. "All right, I suppose we should keep her around until she's a bit more seasoned. Adult size, even." He turned to Alara, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the gathering dusk. "But then what? You surely don't intend her to stay in the Lair for the rest of her life, do you, Alara? I think that's a bit cruel, like caging a falcon."

"I...hadn't really thought about it," Alara admitted reluctantly. She didn't like to think of any of her children growing up and wanting to leave. Shana was as much her child as Keman was. With the way she soaked up Alara's teaching, she was more Alara's child than Myre.

"Turn it loose, I say," urged Orola, her scales rasping on the stone of the bench as she stirred restlessly. "Let it know what its heritage is as soon as it's adult, take it to see what's going on out there, and give it a chance to raise a bit of trouble. Be ready to whisk it out of danger, but let it run for a bit. You don't help a young thing by keeping it from its first kill, Alara."

"I really do think that Shana could be more important...to us, to the Kin as a whole...than that," Alara replied carefully. "There's something about her that's extraordinary, something I can't quite pin down. Remember what Father Dragon said when I first brought her to the Lair?"

"That she had great hamenleai," Anoa said, after a moment's thought. "I'd forgotten that." The senior dragon's eyes caught the light of the rising moon and glowed a soft silver. "You could be right; I had forgotten that."

"I hadn't," Alara retorted, feeling as if she had finally gotten the high spot in the thermal in this discussion. "I've kept it in mind all the time I've been raising her. She's too important to be used for nothing more than a bit of amusement. Keoke, you said it yourself...she fits the Prophecy of the Elvenbane. Now, what if this Prophecy we've been spreading all these years is right! What if all we've done has been to keep something going that was actually a true reading of the future? And what if Shana is the Elvenbane? Don't you see what an incredible change that would make in the whole world?"

All three of them stirred restlessly; Alara sensed emotions rising around her. She'd awakened them to Shana's potential; now if they would only see her value as well...

"I can see something else, Alara," Orola whispered, her eyes wide with surprise and unease. She chewed on the end of one of her talons, something she only did when nervous. "And I don't know if you've considered this. You're right, we don't know what it can do...and if it's the object of a true foretelling, we don't know what it could turn out to be like, the kinds of powers it would have, or the way it would look at things. The Elvenbane of the Prophecy doesn't sound like a very pleasant creature, after all. I can see where it could be a real danger to us, and not just by betraying us to the elves. We have no idea what its powers could do to us, or how strong they could be."

Alara's heart sank. She had hoped that particular possibility would not occur to them.

"In other words," Keoke spoke into the silence that followed, "she might not only be the Elvenbane, she could become a dragon bane. She could wreak havoc on us before she ever sees her real people."

She had to head this off before they really talked themselves into getting rid of the child. "First of all, it's only a supposition that she is the Elvenbane. You're all forgetting that. Second, even if she is, those very problems are exactly what I've been trying to prevent!" Alara exclaimed, allowing her exasperation to show. "If I raise her with us, as one of ours, and make her feel part of the Kin...then she'll never turn her powers against the Kin as a whole. I won't speak for what she might do to individuals, though...if I were in her skin, with Rovy bullying me, I'd probably rip his head and tail off and exchange them if I found I could."

A further silence followed, and Alara could feel passions ebbing as the other three calmed.

Keoke nodded slowly. "Makes sense," he admitted. "Raise a louper on a two-horn, it thinks it's a two-horn. And...I must agree with you that Rovy is a problem unto himself."

Alara caught herself before she snorted with contempt. That was not the way to win the others over to her side. "There's more to it than that," she said, as reasonably as she could. "I'm trying to teach her that we're basically very like each other, her kind and ours. I'm trying to make her see herself as part of something, instead of estranged from it. I'm trying to show her what being part of the Kin and the world is all about, so that when she makes changes, she thinks about the consequences of those changes first. I hope that by the time I'm finished with her, she won't ever do anything that would adversely affect the Kin, no matter how trivial it may be. I love change as much as any of you, but I want it to be beneficial. And I want it under our control."

All three heads nodded; none of them needed to be reminded about what uncontrolled change could do. "I don't think there's any doubt that she is going to make changes," Keoke said at last. "But if we can control the direction of the changes..."

His eyes grew thoughtful, and a pleased expression crept over his face. "I can't help thinking what she could do to keep the elven lords out of mischief. All they have to do is suspect she exists, and they'll be chasing shadows at every turn!"

"She'd be a better agent among the humans than any of us could ever be," Alara reminded him. "Think of what she could accomplish!" She voiced a possibility she had only begun to explore, figuring it was worth placing before them. "She might even be able to awaken the powers of those humans who have magic, but are not aware of it. Then think what the elven lords would have to contend with."

Orola nodded, very slowly. "But we have to make sure its powers are never turned against us. Alara, you're going to have to watch this creature as carefully as you fly the Thunder Dance. The potential for change is too great to dismiss, but there's danger in this creature, danger for us."

"I am watching her, Orola," Alara reminded her tartly. "Haven't I just said as much? I know the risks as well as you do. But I also know the rewards, and I think they're worth the risks."

"I agree," Keoke said decisively. "And you're one of the best shamans in the Kin. If anyone can keep her from getting out of hand, you can."

"Thank you, Keoke," Alara said, so surprised she hardly knew what to say. Praise did not often fall from Keoke's lips. "You know I always do my best for the Kin."

Keoke heaved himself to his feet, and the other two followed his lead. "Just keep an eye on the child, Alara," he said. "Make sure she will never get a chance to turn on us. That's all. If you'll do that, we'll keep the rest off the glide path and out of your thermals."

Alara sighed, and bowed her head thankfully. "That's all I've ever asked," she replied. "Thank you."

Keoke considered the night sky, then abruptly heaved himself into the air, his huge wings spreading with a snap to catch a rising breeze. "You're welcome," he called, as Orola and Anoa strolled back towards their lairs, leaving Alara standing before hers alone. "Just don't make a fool out of me."

I'll be trying just as hard not to make a fool out of myself, she thought wryly, and she waved him farewell before descending into the lair and looking for the three-horn she could smell just inside. Despite her own self-doubt and worries, her mouth watered.

But hunger could not keep her from other thoughts. Keoke, my friend, I have a great deal more to lose. My reputation, my self-respect...

...my children. Especially the one with only two legs.

Shana lay in the shadow of a huge boulder, so quiet that a tiny lizard ran over her leg and paused to sun itself on her thigh, as if she were nothing more than a particularly soft rock. She didn't even twitch. She had just discovered something strange and wonderful, a new way to look at things, and if she was spotted now by the dragons she was watching, it would ruin a very rare chance to put what she had learned into practice.

Below her, three of the young dragons...dragonets no longer; they were quickly reaching adult size...were practicing shape-shifting.

Now there was nothing new about that; Shana had watched Keman shifting his form hundreds of times over the past five years. But she rarely got a chance to see any of the other dragons at the exercise, and she wanted badly to learn if what she had found today, watching Keman, was peculiar only to him, or could be used to spot any dragon in a shifted form.

If it could, she would never again have to worry about Myre or Rovy sneaking up on her in the guise of a two-horn or something equally innocuous. Or worse yet, lying in wait for her in the guise of a rock.

She unfocused her gaze and relaxed the same way she did when she was about to enter a trance, but she kept her eyes open. Then, while the youngster immediately below her was still in his shifted two-legger form, she looked slightly to one side of him.

Sure enough, in a strange way that was both seeing and not-seeing, she found him surrounded by a kind of rainbow shadow-dragon, a shadow that she could only see out of the corner of her eye.

It was as if she could see into the Out, she thought wonderingly. As if she could see where the rest of him had gone.

Keman had told her that when a dragon size-shifted, he threw most of himself into something they called the Out. It was hard work, and required quite a bit of concentration. Not all dragons were equally proficient; Rovy, for instance, couldn't manage anything much below half his size.

Which was going to make it awfully hard for him to shift into anything practical once he was a full adult, Shana thought, snickering. Or if he lived long enough to get as big as Father Dragon, he was never going to be able to shift to anything but a small hill. She doubted that anybody would believe in a two-horn the size of a long-nose.

The youngsters beneath her, though, were quite good for their age, and fully capable of shifting to the two variations of two-legger form. The adults were very insistent that the youngsters keep the two kinds separate...not that Shana could see there was a great deal of difference between the two. One kind was a little taller, a little thinner. Their coloring was consistent...very white skin, pale gold hair, green eyes. The others tended to come in several colors, none of them quite so bleached-out. The first forms made Shana think of a cave-spider she'd seen, an unusually old and large one. The pale forms had the same attenuated limbs, the same washed-out look, the same languid menace.

Well, it didn't much matter. Shana had never seen anything but a dragon wearing those forms anyway. They were useful for jobs that needed hands, or for things that required a smaller body than a dragon's.

She wondered wistfully where she came from. Maybe my real mother and I were two of the last...like the one-horns, dying out. Alara still had not had a great deal to say about Shana's birth or her kind. She always told Shana that she would find out "when she was ready."

So when would Shana be ready? Alara wouldn't tell her that.

Stewing away on the old question made her forget what she was trying to do. Even as she lost her concentration, the shadow-dragon faded away, and everything looked perfectly normal again.

Fewmets. She tried to get it back, but it was no use. Now all she could see down there were three young two-leggers, with two-legger shadows on the ground at their feet, and not even a hint of spectral dragon-shapes hovering behind them.

Oh, fewmets. She stirred a little, and the lizard scampered off her leg and into a crevice, its tiny mind full of alarm. It takes too much concentration; it isn't worth it, she decided. She was better off "listening" for Rovy and Myre, and catching them when they had shifted that way. They couldn't hide what they were thinking. Not from Shana, anyway. Keman couldn't hear them...but he couldn't hear most animals, either.

It occurred to her then to wonder where Keman was. He was supposed to be joining this group about now, as soon as his lessons with Alara were over.

Suddenly, she...and the young dragons below her...doubled up with a hammer-blow of phantom pain, followed by a cry of mind-sent anguish.

Keman! Even in a wordless mental shriek, she felt his personality. Even as she recognized him, she heard him scream again in pain...this time in a very vocal shriek that rang across the hills.

The group of startled youngsters below her "popped" back into dragon-form as they lost their concentration, but Shana had no thoughts or energy to waste on them. She was up and running across the ridge as fast as her paltry two legs would carry her.

At first, all she could see as she topped the ridge was Rovylern at the bottom of the cut below, wings mantling, tail lashing, neck curled as he looked down at something. Then she realized what he was looking down at, as another shriek come up from underneath him and echoed from the rocks. Rovy had Keman pinned beneath him, foreclaws clamped in the thin and sensitive skin where Keman's forelegs and wings joined the body. Shana had to block the waves of pain coming from him; she couldn't imagine how anyone could feel that agony and choose to ignore it.

"Say it, lizard!" Rovy hissed down at his victim, his eyes narrowed in satisfaction, spinal crest high, teeth bared in a feral grin of pleasure. "Say it! Call me Master! Say, TU do anything you want, Great

Rovylern!' Do it, or I'll make you think I've just been playing with you!"

"Go stuff your tail up your..." The rest of the insult was drowned in a howl of pain as Rovy tightened his clawhold. Keman had no intention of surrendering and submitting to Rovy, but those intentions couldn't last much longer.

I'll kill him! I'll peel his scales off! Shana couldn't even frame coherent thoughts after the first glimpse...anger boiled up in her, and everything narrowed to her target.

A terrible, molten pressure rose in her chest, her eyes misted with a red haze, and she heard herself growling like an enraged louper.

Keman screamed, and the power exploded from her. Three rocks the size of her head erupted from the ground beside her where they lay half-buried, and launched themselves at the bully, hurtling down at him in the blink of an eye.

Shana maintained just enough sanity and control that they did not target his head; instead, all three thudded into Rovy's midsection below the spine and just past the ribs.

They caught him off-balance when they hit him, hurling him off Keman's back with the force of their blows, knocking the breath out of him.

He landed on his side, flailing wildly, and barely able to squeak. He beat the air with his free wing as Keman scrambled to his feet, and Shana slid down the side of the ridge in a shower of sand and stones to land beside her foster brother.

She was still white-hot with anger, and the bloody marks of Rovy's talons on Keman's hide did nothing to assuage that anger. Rovy clambered to his feet, staring at both of them in blank astonishment, too surprised even to move.

But Shana was not too surprised to act. She had only begun her assault. Everything Rovy had done to her or Keman burned in her memory, and she was quite prepared to take revenge for all of it.

"Bully!" she shouted, using her power to throw fist-sized rocks at his head, so he had to duck and dance to avoid them. "Coward! Fewmet! You're a throwback, Rovy! You're nothing but a big, dumb lizard! Pea-brain! Sneak! Sparrow-heart! Rat-face! Tail-chaser!"

Rovy's antics as he danced about trying to avoid the hail of flying rocks were truly amazing. But Shana was faster than he was. Finally he didn't duck quickly enough, and one of the stones caught him right above the eye, making him howl with pain.

"You like that?" Shana screamed, hurling a dozen stones at once, as Rovy backed up against the hillside and she followed, giving him no chance to escape. "I've got more where that came from! Try picking on someone your own size, Rovy, you fewmet! You big bully, I'll show you how it feels to get picked on! I'll beat you black and purple! I'll..."

"Shana!"

Shana had been concentrating so hard on Rovy that she had ignored everything else, and the voice seemed to come out of nowhere, startling her so that the last few rocks dropped in midflight. A large claw clamped down on Shana's shoulder...too large to be Keman's.

Broken out of her fit of rage, she looked up, into Alara's frightened face.

But behind Alara every dragon in the Lair was either winging in or scrambling over the ridge.

Foremost of those was Lori, Rovy's mother, who landed beside her abused offspring and covered him protectively with her wings, craning her head around with the most vicious expression on her face that Shana had ever seen. Her eyes were wide with rage, her spinal crest bristling, and her teeth bared clear to the back of her jaw.

"There, you see!" she shrilled at the top of her lungs.

"You see! I told you all, and you wouldn't listen! That thing is dangerous, it's rabid, it can't be trusted!"

"Now wait just a moment, Lori," Keoke began, interposing his body between her and Shana, when it looked as if she was about to lunge for the girl.

"No!" she screamed, her eyes red with a rage as great as Shana's had been. "No more waiting! It's too dangerous to live! Kill it! Kill it now!"

THERE WAS ONLY one place in the Lair large enough to hold a Lair meeting: the huge cavern from which all the rest branched. It was full now, nearly a hundred of the Kin crowding the floor or perched on rock outcroppings or formations around the walls and rising from the floor itself. The convoluted cavern blazed with multicolored radiance, some from the magic lights kindled by the adept of the Kin, the rest reflecting in prismatic brilliance through the thousands of crystals mounted in the upper walls and ceiling.

The cavern throbbed with the cacophony of voices; the Kin that did not have an opinion on this subject were few indeed. The echoes doubled and trebled the voices, making it that much harder to hear. Alara held her peace and her temper, and let the others finish shouting themselves out. Right now there was no reasoning with the most fanatic and frightened of the Kin. Most of them had had no idea up until this moment that Shana was anything other than an exotic pet. The girl's abilities, especially the magnitude of those abilities, had come as a tremendous shock.

Of the rest, those who had known what Shana was were divided and vocal. Lori, for one, had been screaming at the top of her lungs since the Lair meeting began; Alara had hopes that she was beginning to wear even on the tempers of her supporters.

Surely by now she must be getting hoarse, at least.

Alara spared a pitying thought for poor Shana, confined in a dead-end cavelet at the end of the main cavern, with a stone too large for her to lift blocking the entrance. They had left her alone and in the dark, and only Alara and Keoke's presence had kept Lori from tearing her apart on the spot. Keoke had taken advantage of his position as most senior dragon present to order the confinement, pointing out that the boulder they used to stop up the entrance to the cavelet was too large for even Father Dragon to move.

That left the others thinking it was too large for Shana to lift, especially given the size of the rocks the halfblood had used on Rovy. Alara wasn't so sure. The entire altercation with Rovylern bespoke control to her, not unthinking violence.

Alara considered the relatively light injuries the bully had taken. Rovy had one broken rib, a gash over his eye, and a concussion. Shana could have hit him in the head with any of those larger rocks, and he would have been dead. Not even a dragon could survive a blow to the skull with something that size, especially not if Shana had placed it just right. She could have taken his eye out with that rock that gashed him. The broken rib wasn't even on the side she hit...it was on the side he had fallen on. He had probably broken it when he fell. Fire and Rain, if she had been really cruel, she could have just as easily broken his wings with those rocks, and he would have been flightless for months.

"That rabid animal broke my child's rib," Lori shrilled for at least the hundredth time. Her voice echoed off the cavern ceiling, making those nearest her wince. Alara noted with hope that even Lori's supporters were beginning to look bored. "He's going to be abed for a week, at least! I'm telling you, it's gone mad, and if you don't kill it, I will!"

Her voice was finally getting hoarse, the din had died down considerably, and Alara decided that now was the best time to speak. She had chosen a position atop one of the rock formations, but had been reclining on it, with the result that she was relatively inconspicuous. As she raised her head and mantled her wings, heads swiveled in her direction.

"Your precious child...who is not a child by the definition of the Kin...was assaulting Shana's foster brother, who is still a child by that same definition," she said coldly and clearly, trumpeting her own accusation out over the general hubbub. Silence descended immediately; even Lori was caught off-guard, and stared with her mouth open in surprise. "Keman will not be flying for several weeks, thanks to Rovylern, and he walks only with pain. I suggest you consider that, Kin! Rovylern instigated the trouble...Shana only came to her foster brother's rescue."

"But..." Lori cried weakly.

Alara spoke right over her, trying to make her words sound calm and reasoned. "Keman weighs a third less than Rovy. Shana weighs...perhaps!...a hundredth of what Rovylern does. Do those odds sound, fair to you?"

"But...but that thing has magic!" Lori squawked. "It used magic on Rovy! It could have killed him! Even you don't know what it can do! It's a halfblood, and no one knows what they can do, and you can't claim otherwise!"

Alara nodded. "Yes, she does have the halfblood powers of magic. No, I do not know what she can do with them. But I think, given the situation, she showed admirable restraint."

Lori subsided sullenly and the cavern held a silence so profound it hurt the ears. Keoke spoke into the silence, breaking it gently. "The problem is, Alara, we don't know whether it was restraint, or accident. We have only the halfblood's word that her weapons were aimed, and did not hit random targets. That simply isn't good enough."

Orola followed his speech, clearing her throat. All eyes went to her, she took advantage of the attention by standing up and towering over the rest. "Lori, your son got exactly what he deserved," the Elder said firmly. "I'll have you know that I was winging in to thrash him myself. I may yet, if he shows no sign of learning his lesson. I heard most of what he said, and he should by rights be punished for it. No dragon calls another 'Master.' We left all that behind us, and I will not tolerate anyone bringing it back again."

Elated by this unexpected support from the most senior dragon in the Lair, Alara's hopes for getting Shana out of this predicament lifted.

But those hopes were dashed by Orola's next words.

"But Keoke is right, Alara," she continued, turning her soft gold eyes on her. "I know you're fond of the halfblood, and I know Keman considers it his foster sister, but it isn't one of the Kin and we both know it. The real problem is that what we do not know if whether it really did aim its power as it claims. If it's telling the truth, well and good; it showed restraint that was utterly admirable. But if not...the next time it's angered, it could kill. We can't take that chance, Alara. We simply cannot."

No...no, this wasn't right, it wasn't fair...

"Kill it!" Lori snarled. "It's a rabid beast!" She flexed her claws against the stone with a scraping sound everyone in the cavern heard clearly.

Anoa interrupted before Alara could reply to that. "Killing is out of the question," she said flatly, as the other two seniors nodded agreement. "No matter what you, Lori...and some of the rest...may think, the child is not a beast. I've taken the form of the elven lords and their human slaves and walked about in their world, as has Alara, often enough to know. Lori, you and those backing you have not and will not. You either haven't the skill or the inclination...and no one who has not been there has any basis for making a judgment."

The dragons who did take other forms nodded vigorously. Lori glowered; the rest looked elsewhere.

Anoa waited, then continued, her voice soft and rational. "I speak from experience. The humans are as intelligent...or as stupid...as the best and the worst of the Kin. They are not animals. The elves are formidable, more than you imagine, and the reason for the unwritten Law against revealing our existence to them is that they could destroy us if they chose. Yet history tells us that the Halfbloods came very near to destroying them." Anoa paused, allowing her statements to have their full impact. "No, Lori, that potential for destruction is not found among animals. But you are right in this: That very potential is terribly dangerous, and I think the child has gone past our ability to control her."

Heads nodding all around the meeting put an end to Alara's hopes of gaining support for her position. They were going to throw Shana out, into a world she knew nothing about, into the hands of those who would kill the child if they discovered what Shana was. What could she do? What could she possibly do?

Keoke stood as Anoa lay back down. "Alara, I think that you are going to have to rid us of that danger, by ridding us of the child." Alara surged to her feet, her spinal crest a-bristle, but Keoke stared her down. She settled herself again, but unwillingly, her wings mantling. "I do not mean that you should kill her, but she simply cannot stay here, or even in the vicinity of the Lair. You're going to have to allow us to turn her out into the world. If she is half as remarkable as you claim she is, she'll be fine."

But she isn't ready! Alara wanted to exclaim. I haven't told her anything about that world! She doesn't even know that there are any real two-leggers alive except herself!

But she said none of this. There was more at stake than just Shana's fate...if she protested, she would lose face with many of the Kin. And that would cost her dearly in respect as a shaman. And in the end, it would gain Shana nothing. The Kin were determined to exile the child...no matter what she said or did in the girl's defense.

She held in her anger, but it was harder to rein in her despair...

"Father Dragon said when you brought her to us that she had great hamenleai" Keoke continued, his tail lashing restlessly, so that those nearest him moved out of range. "You rightly reminded us of that not long ago. We will give her a chance to prove that. I think we should take her out to the desert, near the caravan trails, and leave her there. I know the Law, but I don't feel that anything she tells the humans will matter. When she is found by humans, if she is, they will take anything she says about the Kin as the ravings of a creature with sun-sickness. She has the ability to find water. If she is more than simply a bright animal, she will be able to save herself, and her potential for making changes occur will be well exercised among the humans."

"And if she is the 'animal' that Lori claims she is," Anoa interjected dryly, "she won't save herself, and there is no harm done."

"Shouldn't I do this?" Alara asked desperately, looking frantically for a single chance to give Shana the information she needed before she was abandoned to her fate, whatever that might be. And her death, Alara thought bleakly, if they recognized her for what she was...

"No!" Lori shouted, before someone buffeted her with a wing to shut her up.

Keoke shook his head, and light rippled down his neck in liquid waves. "Lori's right in this much, Alara," he told the shaman. "You've spent more than enough time with this halfblood as it is. An inordinate amount of time, really, considering all your duties. You have functions and responsibilities, and there are those among us who think you might have wasted some of the time you could have spent on fulfilling those duties in tending this fosterling of yours. No, we'll take care of the child. You deal with your own son and daughter, and your office."

Alara bowed her head in submission; she wanted to scream in angry protest that to be a shaman was to be contrary...but she knew, now, that there was a fine line between being contrary and being enough of an annoyance to be looked on as a danger.

That put an end to the meeting, for all practical purposes. There was a certain amount more of discussion...mostly involving Lori, who was not pleased with the outcome, nor with the censure her son had incurred. But in the end, she left, defeated and unsatisfied.

Alara returned to her lair and Keman, with a heavy heart. She had not even been permitted to bid Shana good-bye.

She stood in the sunlight outside the entrance to her home and watched Keoke taking off, something small clutched in his right foreclaw. That something was her fosterling, bearing nothing with her except the tunic she wore.

Alara could hardly bear to watch...and yet she could not look away. Forbidden even to speak mind-to-mind with the halfblood, she bid Shana a silent, sorrowful farewell, her eyes burning and her stomach knotted with sorrow and loss.

My little one...my poor, innocent little one...She stared after them, long after Keoke had vanished into the blue glare of the cloudless sky, wishing with all her heart that there was something she could have done to prevent all this. Then she descended into the cool depths of the caverns, wondering how she was going to break the news to Keman.

Shana spent most of her captivity crying, both from anger and from fear. Anger at the injustice of it all...and fear of what they might do to her.

The cave they'd left her in was cold and unfinished; they hadn't even made a light to leave with her. They hadn't let Alara near her, and no one would tell her where Keman was or even how he fared.

It was all so unfair! Rovy outweighed her and Keman together...he was a known bully and troublemaker, and there wasn't a single one of the young dragons (except, perhaps, Myre) who didn't rejoice in the fact that someone had at long last given him a trouncing.

And Rovy had transgressed far more than Keman had five years ago...he'd been inflicting damage on the younger dragon that could easily have been permanent. Yet she was being confined as if she had done something vile!

But that was not the worst aspect of this miscarriage of justice; she'd heard Lori's shrill calls for her death...Lori had been against her from the beginning, and there were plenty of the Kin who agreed with her. Shana didn't think Foster Mother would let them kill her...

But the idea was enough to frighten her into tears long after her anger had faded away.

She couldn't make out anything of what was being said, out there in the big cavern. The voices echoed too much. She heard her name from time to time, and Rovy's, and Keman's, but that was all.

Finally the noise died down, and she heard only murmuring; she waited for someone to come and tell her what was going to be done with her. It seemed to take forever as she crouched on the cold, bare stone in near-darkness, with only a bit of light leaking around the rock they had used to cover the entrance to her prison.

She hugged her arms to her chest and shivered, and not just from the chill.

Finally she heard the clicking of talons on the floor, and the mumbling of two voices. There was a grating noise of rock on rock. The huge boulder rolled slowly to one side, as progressively more light poured in through the widening opening, and she saw the dark, spidery shape of a taloned claw pulling at the side of the boulder.

She felt she should meet them standing. She got to her feet, slowly and awkwardly, feeling every bruise and scrape she had acquired in her scramble over the ridge, her muscles aching and stiff from the cold. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and blinked in the yellow glow from the light-ball hovering over Keoke's head. Orola was with him, but left as soon as the boulder cleared the doorway.

Keoke watched her warily for a moment, as if waiting for her to hurl rocks at his head. In fact, his unguarded thoughts made it quite clear to her that this was precisely what he was waiting for.

:I wish I knew what she was thinking,: she "heard" him say, as he stared at her. She saw herself through his eyes; not the tiny, dirt-smudged, helpless creature she felt herself to be, but something alien and unreadable, and no less deadly than a dragon for all of its small size. :The scorpion is small.: she heard, :and the fanged spider. Both of them can kill. She could hurt even me, if she chose to. She could hurl a stone at my head as easily as she did at the boy's.:

I kind of wish I could... She was utterly exhausted by her exercise of her powers against Rovy. If she hadn't been so frightened and so apprehensive in her little prison, she probably would have fallen asleep.

"I hope you don't expect me to say I'm sorry," she said sullenly, "because I'm not. I'd do it again. Rovy's a toad, and I think you all were horrid to let him get away with bullying us for so long."

To her surprise, Keoke chuckled sadly. "No, I don't expect you to apologize, child, and if I were in your place, I venture to say I would feel the same."

She rubbed her hands along her arms, trying to warm herself, but stayed where she was. Keoke's thoughts were guarded now, and she couldn't read them without alerting him to the fact that she was doing so. Since she couldn't see what he was thinking, she didn't know what he had planned, and she didn't intend to move until she did know.

"So why did you put me under a rock, like a mouse you were saving for dinner?" she asked, making no attempt to hide her anger. "If I didn't do anything wrong, why are you punishing me?"

Keoke sighed, and relaxed his crest. ''Child, you represent something new and strange...you've done something we can't. Everything alive fears what is strange, Shana, even the Kin. We love change, but only if it is under our control...and, frankly, only if it doesn't materially affect us. Perhaps it is foolish to fear a young child most of us could crush with a single claw, but we do." He lowered his head and looked a little to one side of her, as if be was ashamed. "I'm sorry, Shana, but what you did to Rovy would not have been wrong if you were of the Kin. He deserved it, and you have told us you could have hurt him worse than you actually did. But..."

"But I'm not of the Kin," she replied flatly. Somehow she had known it would all come down to this.

"Exactly. And some of the Kin even think you are some kind of animal that has turned on its masters, like a one-horn." He blinked, and she sensed that he was embarrassed. "We managed to convince the rest that you weren't, but you can't stay here anymore, Shana. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to take you far away from the Lair, far enough that you won't be able to make your way back, and set you on your own."

The words fell on her like the stones she had launched at Rovy, and left her just as stunned. She could only stare at Keoke numbly, unable to move, or even speak, her mind going in tiny, panicked circles like a mouse caught in a jar.

Take me away? Where? What will I do? What's going to happen to me?

She was so sunk in shock that she never noticed that Keoke was moving. She had no idea what he was going to do, until his great foreclaw closed around her waist and he lifted her up and out of her prison.

And then, of course, it was too late for anything, even for tears.

Keoke dropped her...literally...somewhere in a desert. He didn't even land long enough to put her down; he just hovered, his wings throwing up huge clouds of sand, opened his claw, and let her fall. It wasn't a long drop...little more than her own height...but it was unexpected.

She went limp as she landed, and tumbled, rolling over her shoulder to keep from hurting herself as she hit. She lay in the hot sand for a moment, collecting her scattered wits. By the time she had picked herself up, Keoke was a tiny speck against the hard blue turquoise bowl of the sky.

She brushed sand off herself, looked about at the desolation she had been left in, and was tempted to give in to a fit of hysteria. But tears and screaming wouldn't change anything...

So instead she clamped control down on herself and took stock of her surroundings.

He could have picked a worse place to leave me, she thought glumly.

There had been plenty of worse places on the way; they had flown over a flat salt plain that stretched on for leagues, followed by a featureless expanse of sand and small stones worn smooth by the constant wind, then a stretch of sand where nothing grew but cactus, and not too much of that.

Here, at least, sajus dotted the landscape, and there were some projecting rocks with a cluster of brush around them; enough to give her shelter from the sun for the rest of the day. She was wilderness-wise enough to know that she could not possibly endure the full glare of the sun for long, and that she would have to travel by night...

If she could find somewhere to go...

She choked down the tears that threatened to break out of her control, and calmed herself. That clump of brush and rock was too inviting; undoubtedly there were other creatures in there using it for shelter. Some of those would share it with her without contesting it; others would not.

And the only way to find out who was "home" was to "look."

First things first; she had to have some shade, before she fell over with heatstroke. Already the sun felt like a claw pressing her into the earth, and she regretted every tear she had shed in the caves as lost water. She went to her hands and knees and crawled carefully into the bare bit of shade provided by the closest sajus-bush. Scanty though that shade was, there was a vast difference in temperature between the shadowed sand beneath its branches and the open ground a few footsteps away.

Shana lay on her stomach, stretched out with bits of the sajus-twigs tangled in her hair, and rested her chin on her folded hands in front of her. There was just enough shade beneath the sajus for her to fit all of herself beneath it. She used the methods to calm herself that Alara had taught her, taking slow, deep breaths, forcing herself to relax. The discipline Alara had made a part of her worked as effectively as ever, despite her strain, her fears, and all the myriad of problems facing her. In a moment more she was able to drop into a light trance and begin searching the area around her for life.

A kestrel in a hollowed-out place in the stone was the first sign of life. That was good; his presence meant no mice, and not a lot of big bugs. A runner-bird rested at the foot of the stone...that was even better! No snakes were ever around runner-birds, unless they were in his stomach...

She searched further, sending her mind deeper, looking for even tinier forms of life. She found them, and identified where they were, exactly, marking them in a little mental map to remember when she came out of trance.

There were plenty of scorpions, though the only spiders were ordinary hunting spiders that would leave her alone. Lots of lizards, mostly small ones the size of her longest finger. A nest of ants, and those were to be avoided at all cost. No wasps, though, which probably explained the healthy population of hunting spiders, since desert wasps preyed on spiders, laying their eggs inside them before walling the paralyzed body into a nest-cavity.

And that comprised the entire population of this arid little bit of vegetation. There was nothing living here that needed to drink water, no mammals at all, and the two birds received all the moisture they needed from their prey. That meant there was no water Shana could dig to.

No water...she fought a surge of fear, but it broke her out of her trance. She opened her eyes on the same view of sand and barren branches, and licked dry lips. She knew she would be all right for now...knew intellectually, that is. Convincing the unreasoning part of her was another question altogether.

First things first, she told herself. She needed shelter and rest, and soon.

Now that she knew where every creature down to the ant colony was, she could avoid a potentially fatal mistake...like putting her hand right down on top of a scorpion. She resumed her hands-and-knees crawl under the branches of the sajus, working her way into the cluster of rocks at the middle, and projecting calm at the runner-bird as hard as she could manage while still moving. The closer she could get to that bird, the better off she would be. Not only would its presence ensure that there would be no snakes, but it would probably keep scorpions away too. She'd never seen one actually eat a scorpion, but she had seen them kill the venomous insects.

As she neared the base of the rock she saw the bird, resting quietly, its bright black eyes watching her as she crawled nearer. It had chosen to bed down right against the bottom of the boulders in the deepest shadow, and its mottled gray-and-brown feathers blended right in with the sand and the stone. It blinked at her and tilted its head to one side to get a better look at her, but didn't seem in the least alarmed at her approach.

She wriggled her way in past the last of the branches and to within an arm's length of the bird, hardly able to believe her luck. The bird continued to stare, but its crest was down, and its posture relaxed. She curled up next to it, putting her back up against the rock...the rough stone was cool, or at least, cooler than the earth beneath the sajus had been. The bird tilted its head the other way, and she reached out to it, greatly daring, and began to scratch the crest feathers gently. This was the closest she had ever been to a runner-bird; the long, sharp beak was at least as long as her hand, and quite dangerous-looking...but if she could make friends with it, she wouldn't need to fear falling asleep beside it.

The bird leaned into her hand, closing its eyes in pleasure. She continued to scratch until it pulled away; she took her hand back, and it gave her another of those bright-eyed, measuring looks. It fluffed its feathers a little, and raised its crest for a moment, then settled back down with every appearance of content.

She lay down beside it, and pillowed her head on her arms, closing her tired, burning eyes for a moment.

Or at least, she only intended to close them for a moment.

But sometime between resolving to close them, and deciding to open them again, she fell asleep.

When Shana woke, the runner-bird was gone, and she came very close to crying. That bird was the nearest thing she had to a friend here in this empty wilderness of sand and stone.

Night had fallen while she slept; a desert night, full of sound and scent. Insects chirred, sand hissed as the breezes moved it. And off in the distance, a pack of loupers howled...not a hunting howl, but a pack-howl, undertaken just for the sake of community.

Shana wished they were closer; she had grown to like the loupers Keman kept, and they would have been company, however simpleminded. If she could find and be accepted by a louper-pack, she wouldn't need to worry about finding food or water.

Keman...she hadn't even gotten to say good-bye to him, or to Alara. Her last memory of him was of seeing him limping away in the custody of some of the adults, his shoulder and wing-muscles marked by bleeding punctures. She remembered him looking back over his shoulder and trying to say something, but being hurried away. Her throat closed, and once again, tears threatened.

But now crying was something worse than merely futile...crying meant loss of precious moisture. She fought the tears back and carefully wiped the two that did escape onto her finger and licked it dry. The salty liquid only made her thirstier.

She looked up through the branches of the sajus at the brilliance of the stars, and made a guess as to the time. Probably not too long after sunset; she hadn't lost much traveling time to sleep.

She set her back against the rock, and entered her trance again...necessary, since it was likely that everything she had pinpointed except the ant nest had moved since she'd fallen asleep. Scorpions were just as much a danger after dark as in daylight. More, actually; they tended to be nocturnal.

But most of them had converged on the remains of a kill the runner-bird must have made; a half-eaten snake on the other side of the rock. They were busy nipping off tiny bits with their pincers, and quarreling over choice positions on the carcass.

That was an unlooked-for blessing...and Shana wondered for a moment if the runner-bird had dropped the thing there deliberately, to lure the poisonous insects away from her.

Then she decided that it had probably been an accident; although it was hard to tell the actual size of the dead snake from the tiny minds of the scorpions, it appeared to be a real monster. Very likely the runner-bird had found it couldn't eat it all, and had left the remains where they wouldn't lure scavengers too near its chosen resting place.

But no matter what the cause, the result was that Shana could crawl out of the brush to the open ground in relative safety, and she was deeply grateful for that result.

But once out of her temporary shelter and on her feet again, she looked around with a growing sense of despair. North, south, east or west, the landscape was the same. Silver sand under the brilliant moonlight, dotted with dark clumps of sajus or rocks. There was no hint of anything different on the breeze; just the ever-present spice of the sajus. Any direction was as good as another. There really didn't seem to be much point in moving...except to find water. Now her mouth was dry as well as her lips, and she tried to work up enough saliva to wet her tongue. She had to find water soon. She couldn't last longer than a couple of days without it.

She closed her eyes to the blazing stars, and invoked her water-sense, but the best she could get was a hint of something eastward, faint and far away.

Well, that was better than nothing.

She turned her back on the little clump of brush, and set off across the sand, with no more goal than that. The moonlight gave her enough light to find her way without stumbling too much, and as long as she kept to the open, she thought she'd be all right. Before long, she knew she was lost...or at least, she'd never be able to find that particular clump of rock and brush again. The loupers howled again, but farther away, and there was no way to distinguish where she was from where she had been except that the faint "feeling" of water was a little stronger than before.

Was she walking in circles? With no landmarks to show her way it was certainly possible.

But if she worried about that, she might as well give up.

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, staying to the open ground to avoid snakes and scorpions, and trying to concentrate on that promise of water. She succeeded better than she had anticipated, for after a time, she was simply a kind of walking machine, repeating the steps over and over, her mind gone into a kind of numb haze where coherent thoughts simply weren't possible. Her world had narrowed to the need to keep moving, and that far-off hint of water.

Once or twice, she woke up, and finding that nothing much had changed, she sank back into her trance of apathy. But just before dawn, she sensed something in the air that made her stop and scan with all her senses for trouble.

It didn't take her long to find it.

Trouble was a darkness on the eastern horizon that blotted out the false dawn; a hissing roar, and the dead calm of the air around her. The darkness grew with the speed of magic, towering higher and higher, obscuring more of the sky with every breath.

Sandstorm!

She had no chance to avoid it, and only enough warning to enable her to take shelter in the lee of a rock. She dug a hole at the base of it as quickly as she could, then, as the roar of the storm neared, pulled the branches of a bush around her and cupped a space between her body and the rock to give her clean air to breathe.

Then the storm was upon her, and the universe narrowed to the tiny dark space between her and the stone. The voice of the storm shrieked, howled, and bellowed, and after the first few moments, the noise was so overwhelming it was meaningless. Wind and sand scoured the back of her tunic and her arms and legs, and she tried desperately to tuck as much of her bare skin under shelter as possible, feeling the sting that was certain to mount to pain in no time unless she protected herself.

Then there was nothing but dark, and noise, and the fight for breath.

She was certain she was going to die.

For a time, until the klee-klee-klee of a kestrel overhead convinced her that the sandstorm had passed, Shana was certain that either she had gone deaf, or the storm had indeed killed her. She sat up slowly, sand pouring from her shoulders, her abraded skin stinging, and blinked at the blinding white morning sun.

There was no sign of the sandstorm that had done its best to kill her, except for the pile of sand half burying her, and the fact that the tiny leaves had been entirely stripped from the sajus-brush she had used to protect herself.

The air was already warming, and the tiny kestrel shot past and pounced on something just on the other side of the boulder, mounting back to the sky with a mouse clutched in its talons, crying a klee-klee-klee of triumph.

Shana's dry mouth and tongue were nothing less than torture.

She pulled herself up out of her shelter, fighting her way clear of the mound of sand piled to her waist around the boulder, and finally stood free of it, one hand on the boulder to keep herself steady.

Sun or not, she had to find water...water, or someplace to wait out the heat of the day, or both. If she couldn't find water soon...

She shook her head to drive away the thought, took a deep breath, and set out towards the east on rubbery legs that felt like they were going to give way under her at any moment. Her mind was simply not working; every thought emerged only after a long fight through a fog of weariness. It wasn't until she had staggered forward for half the morning that she thought to look for water.

And as soon as she did...her entire body shook with the nearness of it, as if she were inside a cavern and a dragon gave a full-throated bellow, so that everything in the cave shook with the reverberating echoes.

East. Due east. Into the sun...

Her legs moved on their own; first a clumsy shuffle, then a stiff walk...then, unable to help herself, an awkward, stumbling run. She ran, even though she was blinded by the glare of the sun, even though she fell over rocks and had to pull herself to her feet a dozen times and more. She ran until she finally tripped and fell over something that wasn't a rock, something that stood knee-high and sent her falling flat on her face, with all the breath knocked out of her.

She lay there for a moment, panting, while her head cleared and the stars stopped dancing in front of her eyes, until she could again draw a full breath.

When she did, she pushed herself up off the hard-packed sand, to find herself in the middle of a ruin.

She had fallen over the remains of a low stone wall; there were what appeared to be the remains of buildings all around her. And in front of her, cool and serene beneath the equally blue sky, was the impossible.

Water; an entire pool of it.

She didn't even try to get to her feet; she scrambled towards it on hands and knees, and flung herself down onto the stone rim confining it. She scooped up the cool, pure stuff by the handful, gulping it down, then splashing it over her face and neck, laughing and babbling hysterically to herself.

Finally her thirst was assuaged and her hysterical energy ran out. She rolled herself away from the edge of the pool and slowly sat up.

And found herself staring at a body. A two-legger body.

What was left of one, anyway.

There wasn't much; the desert air and the sand had mummified what there was that the insects and birds hadn't gotten. A few shreds of silk; the bleached remains of the bones.

"I guess you didn't get here soon enough, did you?" Shana said aloud, staring curiously at the oddly rounded skull, the talonless fingers. "I wonder how long you've been here? It could be a hundred years, or only ten. I wish you could tell me. Well, I'm sorry for you, but right now I'd better take care of me. I wonder if you had anything with you?"

She began to search through the sand beside the pool for anything the unknown might have brought with him. At this point, even a hollow gourd would be more than what she had. She combed the sand with her fingers, and before too long, encountered something hard and oddly shaped.

She pulled it out of the sand, and gasped at the sight of it; she held in her hand a kind of band of flexible gold mesh, studded with cut jewels that flashed in the sun with thousands of points of multicolored light. She'd never seen anything so beautiful in her life, and as soon as she saw it, she knew she had to have it.

She was puzzled for a moment about how to carry it, and finally hit on the idea of coiling it into a roll, making a little bundle of it with one of the scraps of silk still fluttering around the poor two-legger's skeleton, and tying the bundle around her neck, dropping it securely inside her tunic.

Once it was safely there, she felt immensely better, although she couldn't have said why. Maybe since it had come from a two-legger it could focus her magic like Keman's jewels focused his. Maybe it would even let her shape-shift. She still might be Kin, who could tell? Maybe all she needed were the right gems...

She blinked, beginning to feel a little light-headed from the sun beating down on her.

I'd better find someplace to sleep out the day, she realized finally. I'm going to fall over if I don't.

There was a sand-and-wind-worn hollow beneath the wall of one of the ruins, a place where the sun wasn't touching even though it was directly overhead. Shana tried to go into trance to check for snakes or scorpions, but was so tired and so dizzy she finally gave up.

Instead she poked around inside with one of the leg-bones of the skeleton, and when she stirred up no more than a single flat desert toad, rolled herself into the shade and shelter, and promptly went to sleep.

KEMAN BRISTLED WITH resentment and stared at Keoke until the Elder dropped his eyes. Keoke's crest was already flat, and Keman didn't intend to give in to him one tiny bit, no matter how hopeless his cause. If he could make Keoke and his mother feel horribly guilty, he would. "Rovy tried to hurt me real bad, and you know it," the youngster said angrily, his voice full of undisguised contempt. "He's been hurting everybody younger or smaller than him and you know that, too. And you let him. Then, when Shana gave him what was coming to him, you punish her and let him get away without even getting yelled at! Is that fair?"

"Lashana was not of the Kin, Keman," the Elder said, looking steadfastly over Keman's shoulder. Keman figured it was to avoid looking into his eyes.

I hope you feel rotten, he thought angrily at the elder dragon. I hope you feel awful. I hope you have nightmares about Shana for the rest of your life.

"But I am, and she was just defending me!" he insisted. "If she'd been one of my loupers and she'd bitten Rovy when he was hurting me, would you have punished her?"

"It's different," Keoke said lamely. "You're too young to understand, Keman, but it's different..."

"Why?" Keman interrupted. "Because she's a two-legger? Why should it be different? Mother raised her like one of us, with the same code of honor, and she lived up to it and Rovy didn't! It's not fair, and you know it!"

"Keman!" his mother said sharply, with enough force that he turned away from Keoke to look at her. "You're still young, and Keoke is an Elder. This situation is very complicated. There is more at stake here than just Shana's welfare."

That was what she said aloud, but she added, mind-to-mind, :If you keep up this insolence, I'm going to have to do something neither of us will appreciate. I can't explain it all to you now. Someday you'll understand.:

Keman ducked his head between his aching shoulder blades, his spinal crest flat in submission, but muttered rebelliously, "It's not fair. You know it's not fair. And nothing you can say is going to make it fair."

The adults exchanged a glance that he had no trouble reading. Exasperation, shared guilt, impatience, "well-you-know-children-he'll-learn-better." He slunk away, back to his cavelet, his stomach churning with anger.

Right now all he wanted was Rovy's throat in his claws. Rovy was ultimately the one responsible for this, him and his stupid mother. It wasn't fair. They should never have done that to Shana. She didn't know anything about the two-leggers; Mother had never told her. All she knew was the language and the writing. And now they'd thrown her out there and she was going to get hurt. Keman was positive of that.

He wanted to claw something, bite something, scream his rage from the top of the mountains. He'd already staged one temper-tantrum when he had asked where Shana was and his mother had had to tell him what had happened to her. That had gotten him nowhere. He'd thought he could get some justice if he forced one of the Elders to see what had been done to him. So he'd insisted on seeing Keoke as soon as he could stand without hurting too much, and this was all the result he'd gotten out of that interview.