Elvenbane (17 page)

She put all other thoughts aside for the moment, as she reached the top, hooked her claws over the final outcropping, and pulled herself up onto the little rock knob that crowned the peak. She spread her wings to catch the sun, grateful for the warmth and energy, for the wind whipping around her had a cold bite to it, and there was nothing up here to shelter her from its force.

Far below her lay the Lair, the largest of its buildings reduced to the size of Shana’s toys. All about her, rocky crags lifted golden-brown spires to the blue sky, seeming to move as cloud shadows raced across their creviced and ridged faces.

Alara loved the solitude she found up here, as well as the sense of absolute freedom. It was easy for her to forget herself, her troubles, and all her petty vexations, and open herself to the wider world.

She could wait to tell Shana, she decided, taking her crystal from its pouch and laying it where it would best catch and hold the sunlight. A few more days or even months wouldn’t matter. She could wait until Shana was older, and could understand.

Shana thought briefly of the book that awaited her attention back in her cavelet in the lair—but the sun was so bright, and the wind so fresh—

She’d read it later, when it was too hot to play, she promised her guilty conscience. She ran off after Keman, who had gone off down the canyon towards the trail leading away from the Lair.

Keman was waiting for her at the entrance to a path that led up into a dry wash they often used to play hide-and-seek in. She scrambled over a boulder, skinned her knee, and ignored it, as she hurried to catch up to him.

But today he was not in the mood to play.

“I want to show you something,” he said, his tail twitching as it often did when he was excited or nervous about something. He looked back over his shoulder at her; his enormous blue-green eyes blinked at her anxiously. “You know Mother took me off by myself yesterday—well, she showed me how to shift.
Really
shift, and not just change the shape of my claws or something. Size-shift
and
shape-shift.”

“I thought so,” Shana said in excitement and satisfaction, skipping along beside him. “Everybody your age is learning. Are you any good at it? Rovylern is pretty awful, he was showing off while you were gone and he got all muddled, he ended up as sort of half three-horn and half lurcher, and he couldn’t shift down at all. He looked pretty stupid. It took him forever to get himself sorted out. I laughed so hard my sides hurt.”

“He didn’t know you were watching, did he?” Keman asked, his voice betraying apprehension. His eyes darkened. “He doesn’t like me and he hates you, and if he thought you saw him mess up like that he’d be awfully mad. Especially if he knew you were laughing at him.”“

“He didn’t see me,” Shana hastened to assure him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I was hiding up in the rocks, I thought I’d keep an eye on him and Myre while you were gone, in case they decided to play a trick on you or something.”

“Oh, good.” Keman sighed. “Well, anyway, you’re ahead of Myre in everything else. I thought that now I know how to shift properly, I can probably show you how so you can shift back to Kin. Then Myre won’t be able to corner you anymore. Here, this is quiet enough.” He indicated a shadowy little cul-de-sac with his nose, and turned around to face Shana, his expression hopeful.

“Really?” Shana stopped dead in her tracks, her heart pounding with sudden excitement. “Do you really think you can teach me? Oh, Fire and Rain! If I could shift, I wouldn’t have to hide from the others anymore, either! Oh Keman!”

She threw her arms around his neck, unable to say anything else for sheer excitement.

“I’ll bet I can teach you to spark, too,” Keman said with gleeful satisfaction, his ears and spinal crest rising and quivering. “Then you can give Myre a good one, right where she deserves it.”

“I bet I can too.” Shana let go of her foster brother and found herself a rock to perch on. “All right,” she said, “I’m ready. Show me!”

“Well, the first thing is just shape-shifting. You find that place Mother showed us, right in your middle where all the energy comes from.” He closed his eyes for a moment, tightly, concentrating. “Then, when you’ve got it, you think of what you want to shift to, and you squeeze hard on the place, then let it go all of a sudden—like this—”

As Shana watched, Keman seemed to ripple, and then to blur, as if she were seeing him from underwater. It made her a little sick to watch, and she closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them again, there was a lurcher in Keman’s place, but a lurcher with blue-green, scaled skin instead of gray, leathery hide. There was a second ripple, this time as if he were in the middle of a patch of heat-haze—and then he was properly gray and leathery.

Shana jumped to her feet and applauded enthusiastically.

:
I can’t talk right in this shape
,: Keman complained in her mind.
:I guess I’ll have to talk to you this way until I change back. It makes you tired, you know, I won’t be able to shift back for a little bit. It’s kind of like running a race; you can’t just jump up and run another one right away
.:

“That’s all right,” Shana said quickly. “I don’t mind talking to you that way. Now what was it I do first? Find the energy center?”

.-Right. Just like Mother showed us both when we were learning about thought-exchanging. Remember?:

“I think so,” Shana said. “All right, I find that place, and think of the animal I want to be, and squeeze—”

“You squeeze what?”

Shana and Keman both jumped; Keman blurred again, and was back to his own shape by the time his younger sister Myrenateli came around the boulder that hid them from the main trail. Her pale green and yellow coloration was unmistakable; there wasn’t another dragonet of the Kin in the entire Lair with those colors. “You squeeze what?” she asked again, petulantly, her yellow-green eyes narrowed unpleasantly with suspicion.

“Nothing,” Keman said quickly, before Shana could think of anything to tell the younger dragon. “Nothing, Myre. We’re just playing a game.”

Shana winced.
Fire and Rain, that’s the worst thing to tell her. Now she’ll be certain we’re hiding something
.

“If it’s nothing, how can you be playing it?” Myre demanded. “I want to play, too! Mother said you had to play with me! Mother said you leave me out of everything!”

Shana was fairly certain her foster mother hadn’t said anything of the sort, but Keman looked guilty. She decided she’d better intervene before he said something stupid and they were stuck with Myre for the rest of the afternoon.

“It’s a—a special exercise Mother showed us,” Shana improvised.
If there’s one thing Myre hates, it’s exercise
. “You put your hands together like this, then squeeze—”

She put her hands palm-to-palm at about chest-level, and pushed as hard as she could, to demonstrate.

“It’s supposed to make your arms really strong,” Keman said glibly, following Shana’s lead. Shana felt a burst of thankfulness towards Foster Mother, who had thought up these particular exercises and drilled Shana in them. “It keeps you from hurting yourself exercising because you’re only working against yourself, see?”

Myre watched them both squeezing and letting go, a crease of puzzlement forming along her nose as she wrinkled it.

“I thought you said you were playing a game,” she complained. “That doesn’t look like any kind of fun to me. I think you’re both making a loon out of me!”

“Well, it is kind of a game,” Shana said. “Only it isn’t, you know? Why would we want to make a loon out of you, anyway?”

You take care of that quite well on your own, you pain
, she thought spitefully.

Myre shook her head, and her spinal crest flattened. “No, I don’t see, and I think it’s stupid,” she snorted. “What’s it supposed to be for? What do you need to have your arms strong for, anyway?”

To hit you back when you tease me
, Shana thought, but wisely kept her mouth shut.

“So—uh—we can c-c-climb the mountain with Mother,” Keman stammered, obviously trying to think of something quickly. Myre did not look convinced.

“
You
don’t need to climb to get up the mountain,” Myre sneered. “You can fly. This little rat is the only one that has to climb. And I don’t know why Mother wants
you
on the mountain, anyway, either of you.
I’m
the one that’s supposed to be a shaman. I’m the one with the right name. And I never get to go anywhere, I never get to do anything, Mother just likes you best because you’re older. You get everything you want just because you’re her favorite!”

“I do not!” Keman replied, stunned at this injustice. “I never—”

“Then how come
you
get to go on the mountain and I don’t?”

“Because I’m old enough—” Keman began, when Myre interrupted him with a cry of thwarted triumph, bouncing on all four claws, her spinal crest as flat as it could go.

“See! See! I told you so! You get everything you want, just because you’re older! You even get to have pets and I don’t!”

“You could have pets if you wanted them—” Keman began unwisely. And as Shana had feared from the beginning, Myre seized on his words—and on
her
.

“Good! I want
her!”
The dragonet grabbed Shana by the arm and pulled at her, with a great deal of unnecessary roughness, making her stumble and land sprawling at Myre’s feet, bruising both hands and reskinning her knee.

“Myre!” Keman snapped, shoving the dragonet away. “You leave her alone! Shana is
not
a pet!”

“Is too!” Myre sneered, snatching at Shana, who tried to crawl out of the way of her claws. “And I want her!”

“Is not!” Keman replied, going red-eyed with fury, shoving his sister again.

“Is too! Everybody says so, except dumb-butts like you!” Myre danced in place, her talons narrowly missing Shana until Keman shoved the dragonet back against a rock and kept her there by keeping himself between her and escape.

“Is
not!
Only dumb-butts like
you
think so!” Keman snarled, as Shana tried to scramble to her feet to get out of the way of the impending fight.

“Are you calling me a dumb-butt, crybaby?” The new voice, a supercilious sneer, made all three heads swivel in the direction of the newcomer.

The male dragonet was big, bigger than Keman; that, and his deep-red and orange coloration told Shana which of the other youngsters it was—not that there was any doubt in her mind on hearing that scornful voice. Rovylern, Myre’s confederate, and the biggest bully in the Lair.

Rovylern was the same age as Keman, but he “played” with the dragonets of Myre’s age-group because he had no friends among those his own age. Not surprising, considering that he had pushed them around until they refused to have anything more to do with him. There weren’t that many in the group to begin with; five, counting himself. Keman, Asheanala, Lorialeris, and Mereolurien. Keman had his own interests to keep him out of Rovy’s way, and the other three finally banded together against the bully, excluding him from their pastimes entirely by the simple expedient of flying off somewhere he couldn’t find them.

So he bullied the younger dragonets, with the exception of Myre, who helped him think up tricks to play on the others. And he bullied Keman, who was smaller and weaker than he was.

He and Myre, however, got along like two of the same litter.

Shana thought they suited each other perfectly, and would have been completely happy if they had just left her and her foster brother alone.

But of course that was impossible. As long as Keman lived at the Lair,, he would be a target—and as long as

Shana “belonged” to Keman,
she
would be a bone of contention between them.

“Are you calling me a dumb-butt, pea-brain?” the bully repeated, swaggering towards them, his tail lashing the ground, his wings held half-open to make him look even bigger.

Keman stood his ground. “I didn’t say anything about you, Rovylern,” he said stoutly. “People who eavesdrop usually don’t hear things clearly, and what they do hear, they usually don’t understand.”

Shana flinched. Tact was not Keman’s strong suit.
Keman, that wasn’t too smart
—

“Are you trying to call me a snoop
and
a dumb-butt?” Rovy demanded belligerently, his ears flat, his spinal crest rising, his tail stirring up a tremendous dust behind him.

“I’m trying to tell you to stay out of this. I was talking to my sister, I
wasn’t
talking to you!” Keman pulled himself up as tall as he could, but still fell short of Rovylern’s height by a full head.

“What if I don’t want to stay out of it?” Rovy challenged, taking a few steps forward. “What if I think Myre’s right, huh? If she wants that stupid animal of yours, I think you’d better give it to her.” He drew himself up to
his
full height, and puffed out his chest. “You’d better do it, butt-head, or I’ll
make
you do it.”

Shana chose that moment to try to make a run for it, trying to cut between Rovy and Myre, but she underestimated the length of Rovy’s arms. He made a grab for her as she shot by him, and managed to hook his claws into her tunic. The tough dragon-hide of her tunic was thick enough to prevent her being scratched, but he caught her anyway.

In the next moment she found herself dangling from Rovy’s claw, high in the air, while the bully laughed and taunted Keman, swinging her in front of him by her tunic. She shrieked and struggled ineffectually, her heart pounding with anger and fear, while her stomach lurched and her tunic tightened around her neck. She felt one claw right behind the nape of her neck; that was the one that had caught in the neckline and was pulling the fabric of the tunic tighter with every moment. She tried to get her hands down to free her throat, but with her tunic all twisted up her hands were pinned above her head.

“
Put her down
!” she heard Keman scream, enraged. Her tunic tightened a little more, and she choked and fought for breath. Suddenly this had gone beyond the usual bullying. She got a glimpse of Rovy’s face. He knew she was fighting for breath and that he was hurting her badly—and he was enjoying himself.