Elvenbane (37 page)

After nearly a week of searching without reward, her persistence finally paid off. She found a glyph
inside
one of the storerooms she had already searched. It pointed to another in an otherwise blank wall, one without even a storage rack on it. She put her palm to the glyph on the wall, this time one surrounded by a circle, and pushed and twisted at the same time, in the direction suggested by the glyph. A
click
heralded her success; a section of the wall a little bigger than her hand loosened on one side, and she pried it open and swung it outwards like a tiny door.

And inside the recess disclosed she caught the glint of jewels, a spark of red and green, a hint of blue.

It wasn’t a large hoard; in fact, it probably wasn’t Kalama’s major hoard. It was probably an emergency cache, the kind Alara had scattered all over the lair and outside it, comprised of secondary gemstones that would serve if she could not, for some reason, reach her primary hoard. There were, perhaps, fifty or sixty stones in it, mostly semiprecious. But that was all right; semiprecious quartz and turquoise had worked as well for Alara as rubies and emeralds. Value and rarity did not matter, so long as the stone worked with the magic.

The problem was the sheer number of stones. There was no way she could put them all in her pockets, and if she carried them in the skirt of her tunic, someone would undoubtedly see them and demand a share, or all. Shana had come prepared, though; she had a square scarf with her that was just the right size to carry the gems in. She reached into the recess and lifted the stones out a few at a time, tying them all up into a bundle inside the scarf. She got them back to her room without incident and hid them under her clothing in the chest. Her hoard had been taken away from her twice, now; she was not in the mood to have it happen a third time.

She didn’t get a chance to do anything more that day, but when her chores and lessons were complete the following day she headed straight for her room and took out her little bundle, opening it up as she sat cross-legged on her bed.

She spilled the lot into her lap, trying to simulate the way the dragons lay upon their gems to use them, and put herself into a calm, trancelike state.

Keman
, she thought dreamily, once she reached trance-state. The first thing she needed to do was try to talk to Keman.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory of her foster brother’s image, building it up, scale by scale. When she thought she had him, when he seemed real enough to touch, she reached, with all her strength.

She had tried this before, but had simply not had the strength to send her thoughts past the borders of the forest. This time she
thought
she “heard” something, very faint and far off, in response—but it was too faint to make out, and certainly not clear enough to guarantee that she had reached him.

So near
—She couldn’t resist; she tried to stretch just a little farther, but a sharp pain stabbing between her brows threw her out of trance, and made her give it up as a bad job.

She sighed, opened her eyes, and stared down at the winking jewels in her lap. Maybe the problem was that she was trying to use all of them at once, she thought, finally. Maybe if she tried just one at a time, she’d be able to get it to work.

But there
were
fifty or sixty gemstones there, and all of them were different. It was a daunting task.

Oh well
, she thought with resignation. What else did she have but time?

So she spilled the rest back into their scarf, picked up the first, a cabochon beryl; rested it in the palm of her hand, looked deeply into it, and concentrated…

Alara followed the faint scent of dragon in the thin, cold air, putting all of her strength into each wing-beat as she sent herself higher and higher into the mountains on the western edge of the Kin’s territory. The thin atmosphere was hard to fly through; she was panting with effort, and even after shifting her lungs to compensate, she was still having a hard time keeping up the pace in this tenuous air.

Keman had been gone since early fall; it was midwinter, and still Alara had not been able to find him. The Lair was in chaos, with half of the dragons demanding that she go fetch him, and if need be, the halfblood—and the other half demanding that she disinherit him or hunt him and Shana down.

She was in something of a state herself. Certainly Keman was no younger than she had been when she made
her
first foray into the elven lands, but she had not been alone. And she had not been off on the trail of a halfblood—a creature who, if she were discovered, could get them
both
killed.

And as for Shana—

Fire and Rain
, she thought, with an ache in her heart, of pain and guilt and loss so sharp it might just as well be brand new. She loved that child. She might not be Kin-blood, but she was Kin to the heart, and child of Alara’s soul, and had a better grasp of Kin honor than most of the Lair. They should
never
have done what they had to Shana.

She clamped her jaws together with anger. No matter what the rest said, that had been the worst decision the Kin had
ever
made. They should have exiled that little bully Rovylern, or sent him to another Lair to teach him discipline. If anything, now that Keman and Shana were both gone, he was acting worse than before. His mother encouraged him, and Lori had all but stolen Alara’s own daughter away from her with petting and indulgences. And because Alara was the shaman, she couldn’t say or do anything about it. If children chose to leave their blood-mother to go to another, self-chosen foster mother, that was permissible within the Laws of the Kin. If Alara broke those Laws, she’d better have a reason for doing so—

A very good, logical reason. Just now, all she had was an emotional one.

But there was one court of appeal she could still resort to, and desperation had driven her to seek him out. Father Dragon, if she could find him,
could lend
his authority to her cause.

He was not an easy creature to find. He had long ago given up a lair of his own, having grown past the size where he was comfortable in anything but the most immense of caverns. And since he saw himself as being, not with any one Lair, but with all the Kin, he traveled frequently.

She had traced him from Ladarenao’s Lair, to Peleonavande’s Lair, to here. Now she was searching the mountains themselves, tracking him by her own knowledge of what he was like, where he tended to perch, what he found interesting enough to watch, and the faintest of hints of scent that came to her on the snow-chilled breezes.

But now the scent was more than a faint hint, and the landscape below her was composed of rocky outcrops overlooking pockets of pine forest or meadow. She flew low over the mountainsides, watching for a sign of him. This was the kind of territory Father Dragon liked the best; he could spend weeks watching the wildlife in a single meadow.

Something moved beneath her; sun glinted off a shiny surface that might have been an ice-formation, but for that movement. She folded her wings and dove without thinking, spreading her wing-membranes at the last possible moment, and landing beside the spot, backwinging and throwing up clouds of powdery snow and ice-crystals.

Father Dragon turned his head slowly; he had bleached his scales to pure white to blend in with the snow and ice around him, but had not camouflaged himself in any other way. Then again, he was so nearly invisible against the white snow and pale ice, he probably didn’t need to do anything else.

:Alara
,: he acknowledged.
:You seem agitated. What brings you to my retreat
?:

“I need your help, shaman,” she blurted, speaking aloud, her voice echoing across the rocks in the chill, thin air.

He simply looked at her; a blank expression that said, wordlessly, “You know better than to ask for help.”

Her face prickled with embarrassment.

A shaman didn’t ask for help, she reminded herself. A shaman found answers. That was a stupid request. She knew better than to ask for help.

“I need your
advice
, Father Dragon,” she said, bowing her head a little. “I’m in a terrible position, and I can’t see my way out of it. Our Lair is in turmoil. If I can return with advice from you—”

“Don’t they trust your advice anymore?” Father Dragon rumbled gently.

Her face prickled again, but she accepted the shame and embarrassment. “No,” she admitted, “they don’t. I am afraid I am part of the problem.”

She continued with the entire story of the situation, beginning with Rovy’s bullying of Keman and Shana and ending with Keman’s running away for the second time. Father Dragon closed his eyes while she spoke, but Alara did not have the feeling that he was ignoring her. Rather, she got the distinct impression he was concentrating on her every word. She waited, her heart slowing, and her feet growing cold.

He sat in silence for a very long time after she finished her tale, while the sun began to descend towards the horizon, and the air grew perceptibly cooler. He continued his silence while deer emerged from the trees to paw the snow aside and eat the sere grasses beneath.

She composed herself with a little difficulty, changed her circulation to warm her feet, and waited for him to speak.

:The children represent a greater change than the Kin may be prepared to face
,: he said suddenly in her mind, making her jump. The deer looked nervously in her direction, and one remained on guard while the others lowered their heads to the grass again.
I cannot advise you to any one path. You must decide for yourself whether
you
are willing to accept that much change, and if the others are willing to follow your example, so be it. The Kin forced Shana to
her
path, and Keman has obviously already chosen it as well. He has chosen to do without your protection, and this much, at least, you have no choice but to accept
.:

She replied the same way, bewildered.
:But
—
what am I going to do about that? He’s out there, likely to be caught, and that involves
all
the Kin
—:

:The Kin have lost the protection of their “invisibility, “
: he replied immediately.
.-Nothing you do or don’t do will change that. The world at large is about to discover their existence. And in my opinion
—
which is
only
my opinion
—
this is a good thing
.:

Alara shivered at the images his words called up; the anger of elven lords in full power, and the terrible things she had witnessed them doing.
:How can it be a good thing
?: she asked.
:The elven lords are powerful and cruel, and once they know we exist, they will give us no peace
.:

.•Which is a good thing
.: He opened one eye to look at her wryly.
.-Since coming here the Kin have become lazy. In the beginning, yes, we were few, and the elven lords could have destroyed us. We are no longer few, we are no longer weak, and the elven lords are no longer unchallenged. Circumstances have changed, but we have not. And now, without something to challenge
us,
the Kin are complacent and fat, and disinclined to bestir themselves over anything. The only thing that moves them to any kind of action is the possibility of mischief-making
. Now
they will have no choice
. Now
they will be forced to take an active role in protecting themselves, and possibly even seek outside the Kin for allies. But they won’t like it
.:

He closed his eye again, and settled himself a little deeper into the snow. It was obvious to Alara that he had said all that he was going to.

She waited while the sun set and gilded the snow with a pale flush as it descended. She waited while the moon rose and a million stars appeared overhead, painfully bright in the clear, thin air of the heights.

And finally, as the deer finished feeding and picked their way back to the shelter of their trees, she gave up. She fanned the air with her wings, and leapt for the sky, beating her wings so strongly that another shower of snow flew everywhere, a good deal of it spraying all over the huge, white sprawl of Father Dragon.

He gave no sign that he even noticed.

She circled three times, still waiting for another response, but got nothing. Not even a stirring of thought. Father Dragon might just as well have been a great snow-covered ice-sculpture.

Not only was he
not
going to solve her problem for her, he had no intention of giving her any more direction than she already had.

She flew off to the east, back towards the Lair, her frustration more than enough to keep her warm on the long flight back.

IT SEEMED VERY strange to be standing on two limbs instead of four, but Keman had gotten used to it.

What he couldn’t get used to was all the two-leggers. People, he reminded himself. They were people. Not “two-leggers.” Whatever, they were everywhere he went, and everywhere he looked.

This city was as full of them as an anthill, it
felt
like an anthill, crowded and congested, with every human in the place going somewhere on some task. The elves—might have been the drones. Pampered and cared for, without a great deal of effort on their part. Even the lowest of elves had at least a handful of human slaves to serve him… most had more than a handful. Humans were cheap, plentiful, and constantly reproducing.

Keman looked out of the window of his second-story room at the crowds below, streaming along the street on the other side of the wall around this townhouse, and tried to convince himself that the task he had taken on was not an impossible one. There were times he wondered; times he was tempted to turn right around and run home to his mother.

He had arrived at the city in the guise of a young elven lord; one with just enough magic to be treated with deference, but not enough to be a threat, or even particularly interesting. But by the time he managed to reach the city, after taking a circuitous route to confuse anyone on his trail, it was already autumn, and Shana was long gone.

He found the city alive with rumors and crawling with the agents of every major elven lord he’d ever heard his mother mention. There was no room in any of the inns, even if he’d had the coin to spend, and changing his guise to a human bondling would have restricted his movements too much. He wandered the streets for a couple of days, leaving the city by night to hunt, and tried to find a way to get himself into the circles of those who knew something.

And, just as important, tried to find somewhere he could live, at least temporarily.

He despaired of finding a place to stay until he decided to act like a young elven lord and risk everything in one bold move. To his amazement, it worked. He got himself quarters in Lord Alinor’s townhouse by strolling up to the door and announcing that he had been sent. He didn’t specify by
whom
he had been sent, or for what purpose, and no one ever ventured to ask him. Lord Alinor’s elven underlings were too busy with matters more important than the presence or absence of one young guest, arid the human bondlings assumed the elves knew what he was there for.

He’d been given one small room—small by
his
standards, at least—overlooking the street. He figured out pretty quickly what his putative status was. Too high to be put in the servants’ quarters, and not high enough to be given a ground-floor or upper-floor suite.

He wasn’t the only young elven lord there either, and most of them seemed to have just as little to do as he did…”

He spent most of his time in the streets, either in elven or human guise, listening to anyone who would talk to him, buying drinks for those with loose tongues, cultivating his peers in Lord Alinor’s house, and gambling occasionally—never twice with the same person; he’d figured out that much—and always winning. Working with Shana he had learned that draconic magic was suitable for manipulating dice and knucklebones, even if it couldn’t pick up rocks and hurl them through the air. He had used some of the gems of his hoard for his first stakes; now he had enough coin in his pocket to buy drink for bondlings and lesser elves who looked as if they might have information, and to entertain the other young elves when their boredom took them out of the house.

And he could usually win whatever he’d spent on them back before the evening was over. There were some advantages to this form, one of which was that no one ever considered he might be cheating. He simply looked too young and callow. And elven magic simply didn’t work that way. Anyone who was possessed of magic powerful enough to enable him to cheat at dice would not have bothered with cheating at dice.

He had considered moving himself to an inn after the first couple of weeks—but those were still full, and the agents, human and elven, who had taken the rooms were suspicious of everything and everyone. Above all, he needed to be invisible. Some ^of those agents might be more Kin in shape-change, and if they learned what he was, he might well be recaptured and bundled home to Alara.

He had managed to learn a great deal in the past several weeks; most of it
about
Shana, and none of it liable to get him to her.

The story was a strange one. Lord Dyran’s bondling had bought her at auction; he carried the Lord’s own gold, and the representatives, of several other elven lords recognized him.

But then the same man had come running up, out of breath, and as angry as a bondling was permitted to be, just as the auction closed. He swore he had
not
bought the girl; he swore he had fallen asleep in his room at the Lord’s town house—while standing. He had been found on the floor where he had collapsed, by one of Lord Dyran’s other slaves. He had been roused and then taken to the auction—only to learn that the girl was gone and
he
had supposedly bought her!

It was extremely unlikely, so common opinion ran, that the man lied. That could only mean he’d been bespelled and another had taken his place to buy the girl. But who? And, more important to Keman, why?

He was fairly certain that it was
not
another underling of Lord Dyran, although that was one of the many rumors. If it had been, the bondling who had lost the girl would have vanished, never to be heard of again. And whatever servant had arranged for the actual purchase would be in ascendancy. Instead, the bondling had been questioned and demoted, but was still alive and in Lord Dyran’s service. And there had been no power changing hands on Lord Dyran’s estate.

So said the most trustworthy and reliable of Roman’s informants, another young elven lord, cynical, disaffected from his own father, who
would
have had ideals if only he didn’t see honor, loyalty and truth bartered about among his elders like any other coin. Or so Keman surmised. The young man talked a great deal about these things, but still treated the human slaves like invisible automata with no feelings.

Keman sighed, and turned away from the window to lie down on his bed and think.

The closest he had come to finding out where Shana had vanished was the folded bit of paper under his pillow. His young friend had gotten it from
his
father’s agents, and had copied it for Keman before passing it on to Lord Alinor. That was the main task V’dern Iridelan an-Lord Kedris had; to take select information and pass it to his father’s ally. He did this perhaps once every four or five weeks, and the rest of the time he spent on his own amusement. Privately, Keman thought this was hardly the right way to handle someone like Iridelan, but his acquaintance was one of the few young elven lords who had an
older
brother, the el-Lord, or heir. There he was; useless for a marriage alliance—unless his father found a family with only daughters—and not to be trusted with the reins of the estate and fortune his brother guarded so jealously.

Keman felt obscurely sorry for him. There was something very sad about Iridelan; he was not stupid, he had potential—there were any number of things he could be doing. Even a drone bee had a use—Iridelan had none. He seemed to sense how futile his life was—but he didn’t know how or what to do to change it. He had convinced Iridelan that he was in some trouble with
his
parents, and that only a show of initiative—like tracking down the wild girl everyone seemed to be talking about—would save him from being fostered out to a particularly repellent aunt. He’d gotten
that
idea from one of the books Alara had brought back from one of her trips for her pupils to read.

He felt under the pillow and brought out the paper again, though he knew the contents by heart.

Collar found in girl’s possession had Dyran’s brand, identified as concubine collar last worn by Serina Daeth, slave who escaped to desert under sentence of death for bearing halfblood. Slave assumed dead. Girl likely to have found collar, as she made no mention of Serina.

So little, and yet it held so much import.

Keman had long ago given up his fantasies that Shana was really Kin. What he had not known was what, exactly, a halfblood was.

“Human mother, elven-lord father. A myth,” Iri had told him last night, when the young elven lord, at least, was deep in his cups. “Like those so-called’dragon-skins’ the girl was wearing. Halfbloods are a myth; they were’sposed to have started a war called the Wizard War. That’s why it’s death t’ let a human breed with an elven lord. There
was
a Wizard War; wiped out about three-fourths of the high mages, but I don’ think it had anythin’ to do with halfbloods. They’re’sposed to be fabulous mages.” He had snorted at the thought. “When slaves don’t have magic an’ even if they did, the collars’d block it, an’ even mages like Dyran have t’ try decades t’ get a kid with th’ same power
he
has—an’ outa nowhere, these halfbloods are’sposed to have enough magic t’ whip us all?”

“But the Wizard War—” Keman had said tentatively.

“Nursery tales. Stuff t’ cover up what
really
happened. Tell you what, I think the Wizard War had plenty of the lords on
both
sides. Prob’ly wasn’t anything to do with halfbloods at all—most likely the other side was a bunch of the ones got tired of bein’ on the bottom all the time, an’ got together, an’ the winners blamed everything on the halfbloods so
their
kids wouldn’t get ideas in their heads.” Iri sloshed the wine in his cup, gesturing with it. “Tell you what, the High Lords could
use
some young blood in the Council! They could damn well
use
some shaking up again!”

Then Iri was off on his favorite tirade, about how the old oppressed the young, the powerful oppressed the weak, and how everything would be better if every elven lord was a lord in
truth
, with one vote to his name, and everything shared out equally, no matter who was a powerful mage and who was a weak one.

Keman refrained from asking, “What about the humans”; he knew from past experience that In would just give him the same kind of look as if he’d asked, “What about the two-horns.” When Iri spoke of equality, he meant equality of the male elven lords. Females were to be pampered and protected. Humans were livestock.

But that business about the halfbloods, and the death sentence, had given him the clues he needed to search the library of the town house where they both were staying, and now he knew exactly the kind of danger Shana was in. And he also knew a little more about the Wizard War and the Prophecy of the Elvenbane.

She was a halfblood, she was the daughter of Dyran and his concubine, and by now everyone who wanted to get his hands on her had at least guessed that was what she might be. Keman couldn’t imagine how she had managed to find her mother’s collar—but that must be why he couldn’t speak mind-to-mind with her. Just one more piece of rotten bad luck… if she
hadn’t
found it, likely no one would ever have guessed what she was. But since she had found it, they were bound to at least think about the possibility.

The real fanatics would kill her on sight, just on the suspicion of being a halfblood. Lords like Dyran would take her, try to find out about the dragon-skins, and then kill her.

The only thing that kept his hopes up was the fact that no one, no one at all, had come forward with the “secret of the dragon-skin.” And that argued for the idea that someone or something else had got her—

And from all the evidence, it
might
well have been dragons from another Lair.

He wasn’t getting anything done here, he decided abruptly, tearing the paper to bits. It was time to get out of here, before he was challenged and discovered. Maybe he’d have more luck once he got out of the city.

There was nothing he needed to take with him except what he was already carrying. All he had to do was walk out. And all he needed was a destination.

Lord Dyran’s estate, he decided, taking his cloak and closing the door of the guest room behind him. That’s where she was supposed to be going. Maybe he’d find something out along the way.

She couldn’t have been swallowed up by the ground, after all.

V’kass Valyn el-Lord Hernalth, heir to the vast estates of his father, Lord Dyran, sat in his chair as quietly and motionlessly as a marble statue. His father’s scarlet-draped office was as utterly silent as the inside of a crypt. Blood-scarlet draperies and upholstery, white walls, black furniture, the frames carved of onyx, as cold and implacable as Dyran’s anger.

Yesterday the room had been entirely green; jade green, an exact match for Dyran’s eyes.

My lord father is in a mood, I see. It isn’t just me
. Something was not going well for Lord Dyran—but it was Valyn who was going to have the brunt of his displeasure. Valyn compressed his lips to hold in his temper, and waited.

“I am not pleased with you, V’kass Valyn,” Lord Dyran said, after a long silence that was supposed to cow his errant offspring, and did nothing of the sort. Valyn had played this game before. “I am not pleased with you at all.”

“I am sorry, my lord,” Valyn murmured, bowing his head in what he hoped was a convincing imitation of repentance.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t get Shadow away before you started in on him. I’m even sorrier that I’m not old enough to challenge you
. One day he would challenge his father, and when Lord Dyran least expected it. Dyran didn’t know it yet, but Valyn’s magic was stronger than his. What Dyran had that Valyn didn’t was experience, and a long history of tricks and treachery.

“Sorry is not enough, V’kass Valyn.” Dyran rose, wearing his power like a cloak, flaunting it by creating a subtle glow about himself. The trick didn’t work on Valyn though; he’d seen it too many times before.

Besides, he could glow too. That was a baby-trick; he could glow almost as soon as he could walk. Ancestors knew he used it on his nurses often enough.