Elvenbane (21 page)

“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.