Elvenborn

18

The ears outside Lord Kyrtian's tent are a lot keener than he has any reason to guess, Keman thought with glee, as he heard Kyrtian concluding the second conversation of the day with Lady Lydiell. So, Elvenlord, why haven't you figured out that you have dragons on your doorstep—literally? Keman, Shana's foster-brother, was, of course, that dragon. So was his partner in this spying endeavor, although she came from a Lair that had never known there were other dragons in the world until she met him. Dragons, with their ability to shapechange into virtually anything they chose, were uniquely suited to spying on the Elves, who could easily crack any disguise wrought with illusions. In spite of the fact that in his real form he was easily forty or fifty times the bulk of even the strongest and tallest male human (or Elf) he'd ever seen, the draconic gift of being able to push mass and weight elsewhere—they called it, "into the Out"—made it possible for him to masquerade as even a small child.

He and Dora had shapechanged themselves into human fighters and insinuated themselves into the Great Lords' army as soon as it became obvious that this new commander was just as brilliant as the old one had been incompetent. When they first began this task on Shana's behalf, they had gone from one Great Lord's household to another in the forms of various slaves—since no Great Lord ever bothered to take note of a mere human so long as he didn't disobey and had no hint of magic as an Elf understood it about him. They had actually been in Lord Kyndreth's household as a pair of pages when the first news of Lord Kyrtian's victories came in. From there it had been a matter of simplicity to insinuate themselves into the company of fighters the Great Lord sent to augment the army.

The only hard part had been slipping away at night every so often to hunt, for a dragon needed vastly more food than a human. Even that hadn't been too horribly difficult, and they had been keeping Shana informed faithfully of all that this new commander was doing. It had taken him a little time to get used to his partner's outward appearance, however; having a grizzled, muscle-bound, surly male look at him while he was hearing Dora's voice in his mind was a little unsettling. And it hardly needed to be said that while they were in these guises, they could not even make the most casual of affectionate gestures towards one another, not even the sorts of things that had been possible as pages. Only when they flew in their own shapes could he court her as she deserved.

Keman and Dora weren't the guards just outside the tent flaps of Lord Kyrtian's tent—that position was reserved for the handful of men that Sergeant Gel had tested and tried and found trustworthy. For one thing, although both dragons might look like fighters, they didn't have any real skill with the formidable weapons that they held—skill did not come with the shape, alas. They hadn't even been among the volunteers hoping for such a position. No, they were guarding the wagons holding the possessions of the other Elvenlords serving as Kyrtian's officers, possessions which had not been unpacked for days (much to the disgruntlement of their owners) since the speed of march had not permitted the kind of leisurely camping with luxuries that the previous commander had allowed.

It was a good thing that darkness cloaked any faint signs of his impatience, for Keman could hardly contain himself. They had known for some time that Lord Kyrtian was very unlike Lord Levelis, the previous commander, in more ways than simple competence. For one thing, his method of training was astounding—using magic to counterfeit blades and other weapons, so that it was possible to acquire real skill without ever getting hurt! For the first time, a human slave delegated to the position of "fighter" stood a decent chance of surviving— and would manage to get through his training period without being killed or maimed.

That in and of itself had brought excitement among the ranks to a fever pitch, but there was soon more to rejoice in. Rumor in the ranks had soon been proved truth—that Lord Kyrtian actually cared about the humans who served in the ranks and was not inclined to throw them into combat and use them up the way his predecessor had. But until tonight they had not realized how wildly different his attitudes toward humans were from those of other Elvenlords!

It seemed that Lady Moth and the late and lamented Lord Va-lyn were not the only ones of their kind to regard humans as something other than objects of possession, creatures destined by birth to serve and be consumed and tossed away at the whims of their Elven masters. Even the rebellious Young Lords had proved something of a disappointment once they had a modicum of power—the humans under their control might not have to fear the terrible punishments inflicted on them by magic anymore, but they were still slaves, and treated as such. Not so with Lord Kyrtian, whose very second-in-command was a human, much to the further disgruntlement of the Elvenlords serving as officers.

Wait until Shana hears all this! he thought, hardly able to contain himself and wait for the next shift of guards to come and relieve them.

It was clear to Keman at least that someone from the Wizards was going to have to approach Lord Kyrtian. They couldn't afford not to, now. It was clear from his two conversations that he did not want to find himself forced to hunt down the Wizards, which he would, if he managed to defeat the Young Lords.

What was more, it was entirely likely that he could find them and beat them in combat. The one thing that had saved them in the past was that the Elvenlords had used mostly magic against the Wizards—and the Wizards had used mostly magic against their foes. The problem was that the Wizards' main defense now was the use of iron—which was brilliant, but did prevent them from using magic offensively. The dragons could help, but they were as vulnerable to real weapons as humans and halfbloods were—and Lord Kyrtian could field an army of slaves that would have no difficulty in defeating any Wizard army.

Unless, of course, the Iron People could be convinced to help. Ah, but why should they? Why should they actually fight, when they themselves were in no real danger from the Elvenlords and they could always go back to the south and safety? Their leader, the Iron Priest Diric, certainly liked Shana and her friends, but he was a pragmatic sort, and he could lose his position if he advocated something that would bring danger to the Iron People with little or no reward.

Ah, but now they knew that Lord Kyrtian didn't want to fight the Wizards. True, he might find himself in the position where he had to appear to fight them, but if the Wizards were in secret partnership with Lord Kyrtian, he could obey the orders to do so with every appearance of obedience to the Council. If, for instance, he knew where the Wizards actually were, he could hunt unsuccessfully, but dutifully, everywhere that they weren't until the Council got tired of it all and disbanded the army.

Sooner or later they would do just that; especially if the Wizards were able to help in that direction. It wouldn't be difficult to stage scenes of abandoned camps and great desolation, to make it look as if, once chased from the haven of the Citadel, the Wizards had found it impossible to survive in the wilderness.

Keman's thoughts filled with contempt for the "Old Whin-ers." They would have had that very problem if it hadn't been for Shana and the dragons. Caellach Gwain and the others like him were no more equipped to take care of themselves than the pampered Elvenlords themselves would have been if stripped of magical powers. Put some forlorn "settlements" together, . made of mud huts with crumbling walls and caved-in roofs, and scatter a few bones about, and leave them for Lord Kyrtian to "discover" and the Elvenlords might be convinced that if any halfbloods did survive they were not worth pursuing.

And then, Keman thought, when we're secure again, we might even be able to secretly trade with Lord Kyrtian for things that we need. Although he liked Diric and the Iron People, and the folk of the Trader clans, enormously, it made him very uneasy that the Wizards now depended on these two sets of relative strangers (who after all had agendas of their own) for the things they couldn't produce themselves. Keman could never forget that the Iron People had once held him, Shana, Mero, and Father Dragon captive—Iron Priest Diric had nearly been toppled from his seat of power once, and it could happen again. Keman would rather that his friends and foster-sister had one more layer to their net of survival.

The Wizards had once stolen what they wanted from the supply-wagons of the Elvenlords themselves, but that had all come to an end when the Elvenlords realized that they still existed and were pilfering supplies. Such thefts were too dangerous now and, in fact, had been forbidden by the tenuous treaty that the Elvenlords had agreed to with them—but the Wizards were not craftsfolk or terribly successful farmers. Hunters—oh my, yes—they merely had to magically transport an animal from the forest or fields by magic to kill it, and even the least skilled of them could do that, for magic was one stalker that no beast could scent. Meat of all sorts they had in abundance, and hides, and the rather lovely horns of alicorns, but the best they were able to do in the way of agriculture was a bit of vegetable-gardening. Shana, one of the few Wizards to manage the transportation spell that enabled her to move living creatures intact, had been able to bring the flock of sheep that had been at the old Citadel, and had purloined some chickens that had strayed and so were technically not Elvenlord property. Keman and Kalamadea had brought them goats, and even horses, but the terrain around the caves they had taken to live in was simply unsuited for cultivating grain.

And as for crafts, well, at some point they were going to run out of cloth, and there weren't more than a dozen of the fully-human ex-slaves among them that knew how to spin and weave. There was one single potter, and no glassmakers. As for metal-smiths, well, the less said, the better. True, the Iron People had smiths in plenty, but they were down in the plain, and thus far there hadn't been a great deal that the Wizards could provide that the Iron People wanted in trade.

At least three quarters of that lack of skilled workers was due to the attitudes of Caellach Gwain and his cronies. What sensible wild human or even a former slave, especially one with skills and a trade, would care to settle among people who regarded him as an inferior peon who should be happy to serve his "betters" with no thought for compensation? No few of the slaves that had escaped during the Young Lord's initial revolt had settled briefly with the Wizards then drifted off with the Traders to settle elsewhere.

They're as bad as the Elvenlords, Keman thought, not for the first time.

For now they were relying on the things that had once been stockpiled in the Citadel; they hadn't been able to carry those things away with them, but the Citadel had somehow remained unpenetrated—or at least, no one had bothered to loot it or destroy what was in it. Shana had teams of the younger wizards working together to transport everything possible out of there and into the hands of those who actually owned the things or into the storage-rooms of their new home. Some things were in surplus—anything that didn't get used up or suffer much from wear and tear. Nevertheless, they had more—many more— bodies to clothe and mouths to feed than they'd had back when only halfblooded Wizards lived in the old Citadel.

But if they could set up a trading-agreement with a real El-ven estate ... well, then their transportation magics could be used to swap hides and meat, raw lumber, even the gems and precious metals that were so easy for the dragons to coax up out of the earth, for most of those things that they now depended on the Traders and Iron People for.

Don't depend on that egg to hatch just yet, Keman, he warned himself. Report to Shana first. It's more important to get to the point where we 've got an agreement with this Kyrtian that will prevent him and the army from coming after us!

Their relief party arrived just then, two stripling humans that had been recruited from the ranks of the gladiators and looked it—muscled everywhere, including between their ears. They presented themselves with the proper password, and he and Dora gratefully surrendered their arms to the new sentries and plodded down the hill to their own campsite. They had managed to make themselves unpopular, not by unpleasant behavior, but simply by being unfriendly and taciturn. No one disliked them, but no one wanted to associate with them either. Humans, in Keman's experience, when away from their familiar surroundings, needed to socialize. When any particular human offered a cold shoulder, he was generally shut out tacitly.

So Keman and Dora had a little fire to themselves; they undertook their duties in silence, and now they collected their rations from the common camp-kitchen without comment beyond a grunt or a nod. They brought their food back to their camp, and to all appearances settled down to their belated dinners.

Ah, but beneath the surface, thoughts were flying between them. They were, in fact, mostly finished with that rather meager (by draconic standards) meal, before the exchanges got beyond incredulous :Can you believe what he said?: and similar exclamations of astonishment.

:How soon tonight do you think Shana will try and make contact with us?: Dora asked at last. :We have to tell her about this! If we can somehow get this Kyrtian on our side, it will make all the difference!:

Keman's face showed no expression, but there was nothing but glee in his thoughts. :It's what we've needed all along, really—what Shana has needed—: he amended.

:Oh, we dragons have thrown our lot in with the Wizards now, no matter what some of us think,: Dora said cheerfully. :It's what we need, an ally and a person inside the ranks of the Elvenlords.:

Keman thought a chuckle. :It wouldn 't hurt the Trader clans to discover they've got some competition, either.: He was beginning to resent the casual way in which the Traders had assumed that the Wizards were totally at their mercy now when it came to things that the Wizards couldn't produce. His persistent fear was that the Traders would learn that the Iron Folk most valued and needed the metal that gave them their name, and would find a way to supply it in quantity, thereby giving the Iron People no reason to continue their alliance with the Wizards. That could be a disaster; without the Iron People, the Wizards didn't have a lot of fighting-types if it came to real combat.

:But if we can get this new commander on our side, we won't need any fighters!: Dora reminded him excitedly.

:I wouldn't want to abandon the alliance, though,: he replied with caution, as he took her tin plate and his own, and scraped coals into both of them to burn off the remains of their stew— the most common way any of these humans here cleaned their dishes when they were done with them. Even the cooks cleaned their great pots this way sometimes. Especially lately, with Kyrtian moving the army from dawn to just before dark, chasing the Young Lords' army.

:Well, do you think you've sufficiently calmed down enough to help me reach Shana?: he teased, as he sat down across the fire from her.

Her reply was not translatable, but was rude. He almost cracked his disguise with a grin, then they settled into their task—looking from the outside as if they were two middle-aged, weary men dozing by their fire.

Shana had hardly been able to believe what Keman told her; in fact, the moment he'd told her what Lord Kyrtian was plotting with his aunt Morthena, she'd asked him to wait for a moment. Then, her blood singing with excitement, she ran to get Lorryn so that he could hear and verify it before it actually sank in as truth.

She pounded down the rough stone corridors, red hair streaming behind her, from her chambers to the common-room, where he was sitting with Zed and one or two others, practicing working in concert and using gemstones to focus and amplify their powers. These were the skills that the younger wizards had developed that enabled them to do so much more than their elders—abilities which Caellach Gwain and his cronies resented without actually troubling themselves to learn.

"Keman has some news," she said breathlessly, as the little group looked up with some surprise at her hasty entrance. "I'd like to hear what you think about it, if you can spare the time, Lorryn."

"Certainly; we were just about finished anyway." Lorryn stood up, and handed the basket-full of baby chicks he'd been cradling in his lap to Zed with a grin. "I never thought that I'd find myself purloining chickens with magic when I ran off to join the Wizards!"

"Hah. Can you think of any better way to practice the 'safe' transportation spell?" Zed countered, with his own wide grin splitting his tanned and swarthy face. "If you flatten a chick or two, it's no great loss."

"But they're so—well, cute—I'd feel guilty," Lorryn protested, looking down at the yellow balls of fluff while they cheeped sleepily.

Zed only grinned wider. "All the more incentive, then," he pointed out.

"Let's take a walk," Shana suggested—a good excuse to get away from the others. She didn't want to raise hopes that might be crushed; Lorryn could be trusted to consider all possible outcomes and not just the most desired. Together they could discuss possibilities—grim as well as hopeful.

Which is just another reason why I'm glad he's with me. She'd fallen into the habit of considering him as a partner so quickly it was almost as magical as any spell. How not? She knew she could depend on him to do something when she asked him to, but even more importantly, she knew she could depend on him to do something he saw needed doing even if she didn't ask.

After a quick walk up to one of the concealed exits on the top of the hill covering their cave-complex, the two of them were out under the stars. It wasn't likely that they'd be overheard, but Shana related what Keman had told her mind-to-mind anyway. Just because something wasn't likely that was no reason to assume it wouldn't happen.

And the Old Whiners are just as like to set someone to spy on us as not, she thought resentfully. The fat would be in the fire if they even thought that I was going to open negotiations with an Elvenlord!

:Ancestors!: Lorryn exclaimed, .-This is fantastic news! I would never, ever have anticipated this!:

While Shana went to get Lorryn, Keman had been waiting patiently; now she sat down on a rock and concentrated on the focus-stone in her hand, contacting him once again.

:I have Lorryn,: she told him, opening her thoughts slightly so that Lorryn could sense what Keman was telling her. :Can you go through all that again for both of us?:

Keman was only too willing to; Shana sensed both Lorryn's growing excitement and that of Dora behind Keman's carefully controlled thoughts. But Lorryn sobered immediately after the first burst of incredulous enthusiasm, and didn't interrupt anymore while Keman concluded his report to Shana. It was difficult enough for them to maintain contact at such extreme distance, and Shana appreciated that he kept his own thoughts quiet while she and her foster-brother finished their business.

But Keman had an idea of his own for their situation, that he voiced before they broke off contact.:Shana, why don't you ask Mother and Kalamadea to find iron for you ? Oh, I know it interferes too much even with our magic for them to bring it to the surface, but surely they can find it, and once it's been found, you can work out how to mine it. Surely the Iron People know how!:

.7 can ask,: she replied.

:Good! The more claws we have sharpened, the better,: was his final reply.

"That's not a bad thought," Shana said aloud, as a mental silence filled the place where Keman's word-thoughts had been. She headed back down into the caverns, with Lorryn following beside her. "But I thought the dragons didn't much like being around iron—"

"They don't," Lorryn agreed, "But Father Dragon and your foster-mother Alara are likely to agree to do just about anything within reason that you ask them to, don't you think?"

"Hmm. Somehow I can't believe that it's going to be that easy," Shana told him, skeptically. "Still, there's no harm in asking."

"And no time like the present," Lorryn agreed. She was not at all displeased when he took her hand and squeezed it encouragingly, then didn't bother to let it go as they descended once again into the Citadel corridors.

And when they found the two dragons who (next to Keman) had most closely aligned themselves with the Wizards, she put the question to them.

They had made themselves real lairs here, which was no great difficulty for a dragon, a creature who could shape rock and earth to its will. The two of them were in Alara's lair, reclining in their natural forms in smooth hollows filled with the soft sand that dragons preferred to rest in. Father Dragon— Kalamadea by actual name—was not at his full size in here, for dragons never really stopped growing as long as they lived, and Father Dragon was very, very old and his size was immense. He would hardly have fit in one of Alara's hollows if he hadn't shifted part of his bulk into the Out first.

Even so, both of them were huge, dwarfing the two half-bloods next to them. Alara's scarlet-scaled torso could have served as a hut if it were hollow.

"I thought what you needed were gemstones and precious metals to trade with," Alara responded to Shana's question, her bobbing head indicating her confusion. "That's what we've all been looking for. That's what you asked us to find."

Shana grimaced. "I know; that was my mistake. I thought so, too—actually, I didn't really think, not even when Shadow told us how nervy the Iron People were getting without any new source of metal for their forges. Two mistakes, then. I suppose, if I had thought about it at all, I just assumed that now that the Iron People were settling, they'd find their own iron. So, can you find it?"

"More or less," Kalamadea rumbled, lifting his head from his foreclaws. "Remember, after all, that we use magic to find things, and since the Rotten Metal interferes with magic, its very presence is going to interfere with locating it. We'll actually have to do some roundabout reckoning on where the interference is strongest to find veins of ore."

"I knew it couldn't be all that easy," Shana muttered to herself, but at least Father Dragon seemed to think that there was a way to work around the problem, and that was more than she had expected.

"We also won't be able to bring it to the surface the way we can the silver and gold," Alara sighed regretfully. "So once we find it, you'll still have to dig for it, and it'll be ore rather than the nice, pure nuggets of other things we can bring up."

"Oh, Ancestors—" Lorryn said in mock dismay. "Think of it—one more reason for able-bodied folks to have to leave the Citadel, which means fewer servants to attend to the whims of the Old Whiners! They might actually have to learn to clean up after themselves once in a while!"

Shana had noticed that Lorryn had, if anything, less patience with Caellach Gwain than she did, although you would never have known it by the way he acted with the old wizard and his cronies. She smiled. "I wouldn't mind taking my turn on the end of a shovel," she volunteered. "Especially if it meant that you would take over dealing with them instead of me."

He groaned and shook his head. "Oh, Shana—all right. I suppose that among the three of us, Parth Agon, Denelor and I can handle them. I've noticed a distinct improvement in Parth's attitude ever since he's seen just what an idiot Caellach is being."

"And Denelor always was a dear," Shana said, speaking fondly of her former teacher and the "master" to her "apprentice."

Kalamadea snorted. "I would not have used that description," he said. "But he certainly is far more willing to adapt, accommodate, and change than any of the other older wizards. Well, I would say that we have something of a plan, then. Alara and one or two of the others should be the ones to go looking for Rotten Metal; when they find some that is not too far beneath the surface, you and a few hardy souls, Shana, can see about digging some up. Meanwhile Lorryn will advise Parth Agon, with the help of Denelor—and me."

Shana almost laughed aloud at that last. If Caellach was afraid of anything, it was of the dragons, and Kalamadea was the most imposing of his kind. Caellach had tried—and nearly succeeded—in undoing all of the reforms of the younger wizards once, when Shana had been away from the Citadel. As it happened, she had been the captive, at the time, of the Iron People, as had Kalamadea and Keman. So there had been no one in place to keep Caellach Gwain in check.

"You or I, Shana, will always have a presence here, and Lorryn, too, I think," Father Dragon rumbled, confirming her thought. "At least, until the day when Caellach Gwain swells up with indignation and explodes."

They all laughed so hard at the images conjured up by that statement that a sleepy older wizard padded grumbling into the lair to lodge a protest at having her sleep disturbed, and went away muttering under her breath.