Elvenbane (36 page)

She scratched her head and wrinkled her nose.
Would do them good to have that happen now… losing all the ‘prentices might make them get some better habits
.

She reached for the first of the books lined up in a careful row between two heavy pieces of rough, uncut crystal. It didn’t have quite the look of something “official,” like a chronicle, or a spellbook. She hoped it might contain personal notes, or something of the sort. And when she opened it up, she discovered within the first couple of words that it was not even a wizard’s book…

For
this
was a personal journal—like the scribbled journal in the margin of the hog-raising book. But this was something she had not even dreamed could exist here—the diary of a shape-changed dragon, written in the language of the Kin, that rare, written form that she and Keman had learned to read under Alara’s tutelage.

Dazed, she put out her hand and caught the back of the chair before her knees went to water. Still in a half-daze, she eased herself down onto the gray, leather-covered cushion, and began to read.

She came back to herself as her stomach began to growl, and only then did she realize how late it was.

Fortunately, she would not be missed until morning—but it must already be well into the evening, and she had barely begun the first of seven volumes chronicling the adventures of the young dragon, Kalamadea. He had begun this change as a test, in yet another example of draconic meddling in the lives of humans, elves, and halfbloods. His journal made it clear just how common a thing that was, even though the numbers of the Kin then on this world were much smaller than they were in the present day. Shana was a little overwhelmed by it all. She’d never suspected just how deeply involved the Kin were—or had been—in the lives of those they studied.

She started to rise, and hesitated. She didn’t want to leave—but she had to. She couldn’t
stay
here, after all. And the books wouldn’t run away.

If she took these books with her, and somebody happened to find them in her quarters, they’d find out about the Kin…

Worse than that, they’d find out about how the Kin had meddled, and for how long. Kalama had been more frank in this journal than Shana had
ever
known any of the Kin to be. He hadn’t been at all reticent about the fact of his shape-change, of what he was and where he was from, and why he had infiltrated the wizards—

And if anyone read them, the secrets of the dragons would be out in the open—the wizards would start to watch for them, and might even try to kill them. And if the wizards knew about the Kin, they might well leak the information to the elven lords to give their enemies a different target to hunt.

All they had to do was open the book and begin reading at
any
point to see what the dragons had been up to for centuries, how they had interfered without anyone guessing they existed.

Why, all it would take would be a single glance at the book, written in the strange script—

She began laughing, then, at her own foolishness.
What am I thinking of? All
they had to do? Of course, that was hardly going to be a simple task! Certainly, a reader could learn about the Kin—If they could read the draconic writings!

Nobody can read this stuff except me!

Even the Kin couldn’t all read the written form of their own language; Alara had taught Keman because he was likely to become a shaman, and had taught Shana because she showed some of the same talents. But Myre hadn’t wanted to learn, nor had most of the other young of the Kin.

It would be safe to assume that anyone who
could
read these books already knew everything there was to know about the Kin. In fact, it would be perfectly safe to assume, given what Shana had read already, that anyone who could read these words
was
a shape-changed dragon, hiding among the wizards for purposes known only to the Kin.

Possibly even to keep an eye on
her
.

She gathered up the books in one arm, and took them to the door with her. There was no earthly reason why she could not take them with her and read them at her leisure.

Certainly no one else would be able to.

I am alone in the Citadel. The rest are either dead, or gone. Perhaps the reason I survived the fever is because of what I am; certainly no one else that contracted it lived to tell the tale. That I
know
of; admittedly, I have no idea what happened after I took to my bed, or even what transpired outside the Citadel cavern.

It is just as well that the Kin are prepared to do without food for long periods, so long as we remain inactive. Once my illness became known and I closed the door to the corridor, there was not a soul alive, who would have been willing to help me. Not that I blame them, given the mortality rate of this disease.

When I recovered from my long fever-dream, it was to a silent world. I mustered the last of my strength, and sought the storerooms, hungry enough to have eaten my very books, and too weak to have chewed the pages!

But there was food there; in fact, there were more than enough journey-packs to see me through the initial few days of my recovery. I dragged them—literally, for I could not lift them, I, who once flew with entire fork-horns in my claws—back to my room. I did not even have the strength to shift my shape! Three of the hard cakes of journey-bread are soaking now; and it is all I can do to keep from snatching them up and trying to eat them
right now
. Try, for that would be all I
could
do; I am too weak even to pound a piece off to suck on.

I have propped the door open, hoping to hear someone stirring in the far reaches of the Citadel, but there is nothing. I suppose I should be glad, for it means that the elven lords have not found—or been shown—our last hiding place. But I cannot be glad, for I keep wondering about all those companions who built the rebellion with me, and who remained true to its ideals when others fell prey to ambition and greed.

What happened to them? Lasen Orvad, Jeof Lenger, Resa Sheden, where are you? Do you live, did the illness claim you as it did so many others—or did you escape the fever only to fall into the hands of our enemies?

Yes,
our
enemies, my friends. Though I am not of your blood, and though I came to this enterprise intending only to amuse myself, I came to believe in it, and in you. When I called you my friends, I meant it. And your enemies are mine, for as long as I live, and that will be long, indeed. I shall not let your dream die, if I am permitted to continue.

Three days later: I do not know the real date, for I have no notion how long I lay in fever. A very long time, I think, for dust was over everything, and the journey-bread was stale. Some of my friends escaped, I know now, for I found notes to that effect in their rooms. Though what became of them after they left the safety of the Citadel, I do not know.

I, too, shall escape as soon as I am able. I am afraid that any of the halfblood who returned and found me here would assume I was a traitor. It was known that I had the fever, and I think that any who survived it would likely be suspected to be in the pay and care of the elven lords. Without magic—or a draconic constitution—I cannot see how anyone
could
survive it.

There are three tunnels I might use. I shall check all of them, and use the best of the three. If luck is with me, I will emerge in the wilderness, and there I will be, able to resume my natural form and rejoin the Kin. If it is not—

But I will not think of that. One day, if I can, I will return and reclaim this journal of the war. If not, it will be a puzzle for whoever finds it. They will surely think it is in some kind of code. I wish them luck in deciphering it!

There the page ended, and the rest of the seventh and last book was blank. Whatever had happened to-the dragon-wizard after that passage, he had not recorded it in his book.

Shana closed the book with a feeling of frustration, put it down on the chest beside her bed, and lay back down, staring at the ceiling as she thought. The globe of mage-light burned steadily, without flickering, as the lights Alara had placed in their lair did, and as did the elven lords’ glowing ceilings; unlike the firelight, candles, and lanterns humans made do with.

How much were the halfbloods like their elven fathers, and how little like their human mothers, at least in power? And how very much like the Kin.

The fate of Kalama gnawed at her. She had the feeling that his fate held the keys to hers. If only she knew more! If only she knew at least what had happened to him after he locked his books away and left his rooms for the last time!

Well, now she certainly knew why the Kin shape-shifted. It seemed that their primary form of amusement was to manipulate the elves and their human slaves and see how they would react. And that, indeed, was how Kalama had begun his career.

Her head swam at the thought of all the ways in which the Kin could—and doubtless, did—interfere with elven lives, and so with the humans under their rule. Some did so for sheer amusement. Some did so to test themselves.

But some—like Kalama—began for the sake of entertainment, but continued because they saw a great wrong being done, and decided to help do something about it.

She thought that she would probably like Kalama a great deal, if only she could meet him. He sounded a lot like Keman, with his ideas of what was right and fair. He admitted in his journal that he
had
started out on this venture with the idea in mind that manipulating the lives of these “lesser creatures” would be entertaining, but before long he was passionately involved with them. He simply could not sit back and permit the wrongs he saw to persist, could not help but interfere, this time with a constructive purpose.

So he had shifted to a halfblood, and joined the newly founded rebellion. He
had
helped to build the Citadel, and had suggested many of its defenses. He had fought the Wizard War as a participant, not an observer—and not as a leader, either, but as one of the lesser wizards, one who went out and took his place in the front lines of the fighting.

She had learned a great deal about those old ones, not the powers they wielded, but rather, about them personally. Through his eyes she had seen the wizards who had been nothing more than names to her, the leaders who won and lost the rebellion. They became people to her—she learned how their simple quarrels with each other had mounted into hatreds, the animosity that foundered the war. And she became convinced, as he was, that the elves had a hand in their problems.

And now the chronicle was at an end. Shana would know nothing more of the shape-shifted wizard, and she felt an odd kind of loss. She wondered what became of him, though she now knew that he was the one who had found the scribbled over book on hog-farming in the room of a fever victim, and had replaced it in the Records room in the hopes that someone else would come upon it and read it.

Either he finished recovering and left, or one of the halfbloods came back, thought he was an enemy, and killed him. As he had said, if they found him alive, they might think he was a traitor.

She hoped he had escaped. Even as the wizards he described had become people to her, so much more had he come to life in her mind. She felt that she knew him, that he was even a kind of friend. If he escaped, he might well still be alive somewhere, in some other Lair. And since he had interested himself in the affairs of the halfbloods, he might well do so again. She might meet him. She wondered what his reaction would be when she identified herself, using Kin tongue.

She turned on her side and gestured her light-globe away; it dwindled down to a point, then vanished, leaving her in the absolute darkness only found underground.

She would to have to keep quiet about all this, she decided, after a moment of thought.
If there were traitors among the halfbloods before, there might well be again
. She certainly wouldn’t be able to tell. Lord Dyran played some pretty deep games; if he decided it was worth the loss of a few children he’d have to destroy anyway, he could be willing to leave the halfbloods alone as long as they stayed hidden away and didn’t steal from him. Which they wouldn’t; if Denelor wouldn’t,
none
of them would. And they were stealing from Dyran’s enemies, which ought to please him.

The thought that Dyran might know all about them was chilling, and she resolved to get herself out of the Citadel as soon as she was practiced and adept enough to work her magic silently. If even one of elven lords knew about this place, it wasn’t a shelter, it was a trap. It was only a matter of time before it became a bargaining chip in their endless games with each other. And it was a chip that an elven lord would never hesitate to gamble away.

She’d go back to the room and return the books, she decided. She didn’t want anyone else to find them, even if they couldn’t read them. Then she’d see if Kalama had left any of his hoard behind. Elves and humans could mate; maybe shape-shifted dragons and humans could, or elves and dragons. Maybe she was one of those. Or maybe halfbloods could use jewels the way the Kin did, to boost their powers; maybe halfblood magic was enough like the Kin’s that gems would work for them, too. It was worth trying. Anything was worth trying, if it would get her out of here faster.

Absolutely anything.

She spent the next several days following the faint personal marks etched on the walls of the corridors of this section, the twisted glyph that stood for “Kalamadea” combined with the one for “Thunder-Dancer,” which meant he was a shaman as well as a shape-shifter. He had probably put them here during the building of the place, scratching them in with a talon when no one else was looking, or carving them with his rock-shaping magic. He had signed his chronicles with both of those glyphs, and when Shana had checked outside the door to his lair, she had found that same glyph cut faintly into the rock, just beyond the door, and as tall as she was. On watch for the glyphs now, she found several storage places, now empty, and one or two rooms that looked as if he had used them for experiments in magic. Perhaps he had been trying to duplicate some of the powers the wizards demonstrated.