Elvenbane (16 page)

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 WATTED 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.