Elvenbane (26 page)

So they were dragons. But why here, and why like this?

Why are they doing this? Is this a game
? she wondered confusedly, as she braced herself against the rock with one hand. They must have come from some other Lair, she didn’t recognize any of them. That thing—could it be a picture of their Elder? There weren’t any Elder copper dragons in her Lair. That must be it; they must come from another Lair. Were they undertaking a test of some kind? Or something like the Thunder Dance—or maybe it was a lesson…

Just then, as she stood there, her head beginning to float a little from hunger, one of them spotted her, pointed, and shouted something. To her amazement she recognized one of the “other” languages Alara had been teaching them; one that Shana had been able to learn fairly quickly.

The others turned to stare at her, their multicolored clothing billowing around them. The first one handed the ropes of his beast to one of them, and came striding across the sand to her. She stayed where she was, partly because she was feeling too dizzy to move, and partly because she was trying to figure out which one of them was the teacher.

I
don’t see anyone old enough to be a teacher
, she thought, vaguely puzzled.
Unless the teacher is very young
. It might be one of the ones just watching, though. If it was a lesson, it might be a lesson in staying in form. Two-legger form was awfully hard for Keman to keep…

“Child—girl,” said the stranger, as soon as he came close enough that he didn’t have to shout. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

He tucked the ends of a head-covering into a band that held it in place. She looked at him and considered her reply, her stomach now in knots, which made it very hard to think. If she told them that Keoke had thrown her out of the Lair, they might leave her here. But if they thought she was lost, they might take her with them, and they would probably feed her. She could run away before they got a chance to ask her to shift back.

“My name is Shana,” she said, pronouncing the words carefully. “I—I think I’m lost. I’ve been lost a long time—I’m awfully hungry, please. Could you give me something to eat?”

The stranger looked at her with the oddest expression on his face, then laughed, although she hadn’t said anything that was particularly funny. She stared at him, puzzled, rubbing her temple. Her head was starting to ache along with her stomach, and her eyes kept fogging and unfocusing. Right now, she could see dragon-shapes behind a cactus.

“Lost!” He turned to the others behind him, shouting, “She says she’s lost! Can you believe it? The child is out here in the middle of nothing, and says she’s lost!”

They, too, roared with laughter. Shana felt as if she were being left out of something, and wondered sullenly what on earth she had said that struck them as so very hilarious. But then, the Kin had always had an odd sense of humor.

Then she remembered one of the stranger pastimes of the Kin, a pastime neither Myre nor Keman had been old enough to join—the games they would play, half story, half puzzle, with each participant taking a part. Much of the challenge lay with the individuals making chance encounters work as best he could with the ongoing story. Those who extemporized the best and most creatively won; those who were thrown off by deviations in the story lost.

They did act as if they were working some kind of puzzle, or in a drama-game. That had to be the answer; they were acting something out, and she had given them some kind of clue. She’d better play along and work herself into their story. Once she’d done that, they’d take her with them, and once she was where she could fend for herself, she’d slip off.

“So, lost child, who are your people, eh?” the stranger asked, putting his arm around her shoulders in a friendly fashion, and drawing her back towards the rest of the group. Shana went with him readily enough; so long as he was disposed to be friendly, she was content.

“The Kin, of course,” she said reasonably. “Please, I’m awfully hungry—”

In fact, she began to feel as if she were likely to faint at any moment. But the others looked at her in a very strange way when she said that, as if she had spoken nonsense. She intercepted those wary looks, and frowned as she tried to fathom their meaning.

Maybe she wasn’t supposed to mention the Kin. Or maybe this other Lair didn’t call them the Kin. “You know, the Family.” She pointed at the cloth dragon, and instantly the others were all smiles again.

She sighed with relief. I
said the right thing
—

“Well, if you have lost the Family, child, we must certainly help you,” said the smiling man. “You say you are hungry? Come, we will feed you. And”—he got an odd, acquisitive expression—”where did you find this garment you wear?”

“Garment?” she asked, confused again. “My tunic? I made it. I got the—”

Now she was stymied, for she had no notion how to explain “shed skin” in this other tongue. “I—found the—bits and I made it,” she finished lamely, looking down at her feet, and hoping she had not failed a test that would make them abandon her as quickly as they had adopted her. The games could be like that; she’d watched enough of them to know.

“Here, child, eat—” Something dry and brown and shaped like a stone was thrust into her hands. She looked at it doubtfully before taking a tentative bite.

To her surprise, the thing had a tough but tasty outside, and an even tastier middle. She devoured it with enthusiasm, drank the metallic-tasting water they gave her, and smiled shyly at her new friends from under her lashes. They crowded around her, moving carefully, as if she were some kind of wild animal that they thought they might frighten.

“Shana, your name is?” said the man who had befriended her first. She nodded, and he moved closer to her, looking at her tunic, but not touching it. “Shana, this thing you wear—would you have this instead?”

He held up a longer tunic than hers, of a beautiful crimson and of material like the cloth dragon. It looked exactly like the ones the rest of them wore; all one piece and one color, not patched, cast-off skin as hers was. She wanted it, wanted it nearly as much as she had wanted the jeweled band, and could hardly believe that he wanted hers in exchange. It did not seem an equal exchange to her.

Maybe he was just being kind, giving her this as a trade so she didn’t feel badly about taking the new one. That must be it. Or else she had to dress like them to play in this game; that could be it, too. Well, she didn’t care, so long as they would give her that new tunic.

“Please?” she said, and the man laughed and handed it to her. She started to strip off her old tunic, and he suddenly grew alarmed, and stopped her.

“There—” he said, pointing to a building made of cloth. While she had been eating, some of the others had put it up, all in the blink of an eye. “Go there, take off the old garment, put on the new.”

She looked at him with her mouth open in surprise, but he was insistent. She obeyed, but wondered what kind of game they could possibly be playing. It certainly seemed very odd…

But as she slipped out of the old tunic and into the new, the silk-wrapped bundle of the jeweled band thudded against her breastbone, and she was suddenly very glad that they
were
playing such an odd game.
If they see this, they’ll want it. I can’t let them see it. If they do, they’ll take it for their own hoards, just like the others took away the gems Keman gave me
…

She hastily put on the new tunic, and hid her bundle beneath the high collar, making sure that it didn’t show.

That
should
do. She left the cloth building, and handed her old tunic to the waiting stranger, who took it with every evidence of delight.

“Are you not weary?” he asked, very solicitously. She started to say that she was fine, then caught herself in a yawn.

It must be the food
. She
was
sleepy. She yawned again, and the man chuckled.

“Go inside, in the shade. Sleep. It is very comfortable inside.” He motioned .to her to go back inside the cloth thing.

“But—” She felt she had to give at least a token objection. “Shouldn’t I be—doing something?”

“No, child,” he said, and smiled. “You have been lost, and now you are with friends again. Of course you are tired. You must sleep as long as you need to.”

He pushed her gently in the direction of the cloth building, and she obeyed his direction without another objection.

She looked around once she was inside, something she hadn’t bothered to do before. There was a kind of nest of fabric to curl up in; it looked even more comfortable than the one she had made in Alara’s lair.

She flopped down into it, and discovered that several of the pieces of cloth were stuffed with something soft and incredibly cushiony, and that there was more of the same stuff inside a bigger, flatter piece of cloth under all the fabric. It felt wonderful, and she sprawled at her ease, for once in her life finding herself in a position where there was nothing digging into her, and nothing hard and unyielding to have to cope with.

Once lying down, she discovered she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She tried, but her lids kept drifting down, and she kept dozing off. Not that it mattered now. She was among friends, the stranger had said so. She would be fed and taken care of.

No matter what kind of strange game they were playing.

She let her eyes close, and sleep take her.

CAN YOU BELIEVE OUR luck?” Kel Rosten
laughed, and the caravan chief fingered the strange tunic the wild girl had worn. Dripping between his hard brown hands, it glittered in the sunlight like a thousand jewels; he couldn’t imagine what it could be made of. Skin of some kind, of course, some sort of reptile skin, but it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. The reptiles themselves must have been very small, for the tunic was made of many patches sewn carefully together. But the colors were quite amazing; gold-washed vermilion, purple-washed blue, silver-washed green—

In all of his life as a trader for K’trenn Lord Berenel Hydatha, he had never seen anything like it. And if he could find out the source of these wondrous skins—

“The lords’ll eat that stuff up,” his second-in-command said, touching the tunic with a wondering finger. “Demonspawn! That’s just fair amazin’ skin. C’n you picture Berenel’s Lady in that? Or th’ young Lord? Strut around like peacocks, they would. An’ hev’ ev’ other elven lord beggin’ fer some fer himself.”

“It’ll make a fortune for Lord Berenel,” Kel agreed, “and if it makes a fortune for him, that means easy living for us!”

Berenel believed that a contented human was a profitable human—
unlike some
, Kel reflected. When his bondlings did well, they were rewarded with luxury. Lord Berenel’s people gave short shrift to troublemakers, and actively looked to increase their Lord’s profits.

Ardan’s eyes glazed over with anticipation. “Wine,” he murmured. “Quarters in the Big House. Fine food, fine drink, pick o’ the’ concubines—”

“All that and more, my friend,” Kel agreed affably, slapping his second on the back. He mentally congratulated himself for finding a man with both the ability to command and no ambition whatsoever. Ardan’s dreams and tastes were simple: a life of relative luxury, and the leisure to pursue his hobby of becoming an expert on vintages. And since he towered a good head over any other man in the caravan, and could use both fists and the knife he carried with speed and skill, no one ever gainsaid him. A man whose muscles matched his height, his canny brown eyes promised peace to those who kept it, and trouble for those who didn’t. He favored unobtrusive robes of pale gray over his crimson tunic, unlike the chief trader’s flamboyant dragon-scarlet, and his choice of clothing reflected his preferred life-style.

“Lord Berenel’s a generous lord, and he believes in sharing good fortune,” Kel continued. “If we can find out where this came from, he’ll do more than give us pick of the concubines—he’ll retire us. No more caravans, and easy living for the rest of our lives! Think of that! The worst we’ll have to sweat is when we stand at stud!”

“No more caravans—no more sandstorms!” Ardan grinned, his teeth showing white in his black beard. “That last one was enough for me! Demon’s eyes! I thought we was gonna lose the whole pack-train! If I never see ‘nother storm like that, it’ll be too damn soon.”

“Got that right.” Kel folded the tunic carefully, admiring how easily it compacted into a tiny package. He listened a moment at the door of the tent, then lifted the entrance flap and discovered that the drugged water had finally put the wild girl to sleep. He motioned Ardan to follow him inside.

He moved several bundles to one side, and stowed the tunic away in the secret bottom of one of his pack-baskets. “Remember where that is, in case something happens to me,” he told Ardan, who nodded. “That has to go to the Lord, no matter what.”

“No fear of that,” Ardan replied with another grin. “But I’ll be watchin’ yer back, in case some ‘un gets ideas.”

Making him my second was the smartest thing I ever did
. “Good man,” Kel said, slapped Ardan companion-ably on the shoulder, and went back to the entrance, calling out to one of the boys for food and water. He had no fear he’d wake the girl now; he’d put enough black poppy in that water to knock out a pack-grel.

“Take a seat, old man,” he said, gesturing to one of the piles of cushions. “The girl’s good till sundown at the least. I’ve no mind to have to tend a wild thing if it wants to run, nor damage good, sound merchandise; I figure on keeping her well muddled until we reach Anjes.”

“Kel—I don’t s’ppose there’s any chance that girl could have been planted, is there?” Ardan said, with a sudden frown, as one of the ‘prentices, a thin, nervous boy, brushed aside the canvas flap, bringing a skin of water fresh from the pool, bread, and goat-cheese. “The Lord has a powerful lot of enemies. And it’s kind of odd, finding that girl out here, alone, claimin’ she’s lost.”

Kel bit off a mouthful of bread and considered the idea. No matter what the others thought, Ardan was anything but stupid, and that was just the kind of twisted trap one of the other lords might think up…

He stood up, strolled over to the girl, and looked down at her, thoughtfully. She looked nothing like the instrument of a plot; tangled in the pillows and silk covers, she looked even younger than he supposed she was. His guess was that her age was maybe fourteen; she looked eleven at most, with her face slack with sleep.

He noted her work-worn hands, the tough, sinewy muscles, the scratches and scars and half-healed cuts. Her bare feet were as tough as boot-leather. And there was a fair amount of abrasion on her arms and the back of her neck and legs—signs that she, too, had been caught in the storm.

“Well,” he said, after a moment of study, “she’s scratched up, callused, with a skin like a field hand. From the look of her,
she’s
been through that storm. And nobody could’ve known we were gonna find this place—I mean, I knew it was on the map, but that don’t mean water’s gonna be where the map says.”

“Lord could’ve drove us with that storm,” Ardan countered. “Girl could
be
a field hand. Tunic could have a glamorie on it.”

“True enough. But I got a test for that, remember?” Kel returned to the pack-basket that held his prize, and extracted it again. He pulled a silk-wrapped bundle out of his belt-pouch, and carefully unwrapped it, revealing a pendant wrought of an odd, dull metal of a greenish cast, centered with a black stone. He applied the stone to the tunic, taking care not to touch it with his bare fingers.

“There, see?” he said triumphantly, when the stone remained a glossy black, and the tunic remained unchanged. “If there was any glamorie around, this’d take care of it.”

Ardan nodded thoughtfully. “Girl don’t act like anythin’ but wild, I’ll give you that. All things considered, I’d be willin’ to lay down money that she’s a wild ‘un, an’ you know I don’t bet on nothin’ but a sure thing. I gotta think of these things, Kel, it’s m’job.”

“And I’m right glad you do it.” Kel stowed the tunic back in hiding, and the pendant in his belt-pouch. “So, if you’ll bet she’s wild, then I’ll take that as good as trade-gold. Now, tell me something, what do you think of the girl? Will she be worth selling, you think?”

Ardan cocked his head a little to one side. “Huh. I think so. Once we find out where she got the stuff—if she knows, if she ain’t too feebleminded to remember. Some of these wild ‘uns, their memory ain’t too good.” Ardan scratched his side through his tunic, and ate a piece of cheese. “You get bondlings what’s escaped, or some of them rogues, runnin’ around wild—half the time they starve, or eat bugs or somethin’. They have any kids, they get brought up the same, they have problems thinkin’ about anythin’ that ain’t got somethin’t’ do with food.”

“Don’t imagine eating bugs does much for their brains,” Kel agreed. “Brains don’t matter much, though, not in a girl. Don’t need brains to make a bed, nor to lie in it, eh?” He laughed, and Ardan joined him. “You’re a good judge of flesh, Ardan, what else do you think?”

“Well, since you’re askin’ my opinion, I’d say she’s no beauty, but she’ll fetch a fair price.” Ardan craned his neck up a little to get a better look at the sleeping girl. “That red hair’s nice; too bad she cut it so damn short. ‘Nother thing you might bark her for is fighter. Don’t need brains to be in the arena, either, just a healthy sense ‘f wantin’ t’ stay alive an’ some good reactions. And these wild ones, they make good fighters if you catch ‘em young ‘nough.”

“Now that’s a thought,” Kel said, pleased. Too bad he couldn’t just sell her and pocket all the money—but somebody’d snitch, sure as the sun rose. Lord Berenel was all right, but no way was he going to put up with that. He’d have Kel’s hide on his wall if Kel cheated him.

But sell her and keep part, especially if he could get a good price—that was something else. Berenel didn’t mind a little skimming, now and again, especially on a pure windfall…

Ardan rose to his feet and joined Kel in looking down at the sleeping girl. As Ardan had said, she was no beauty, but she wasn’t ugly either. Attractive, Kel decided. That pretty much described her. Dark red hair in tangled curls covering her ears down to her shoulders, sun-bronzed skin, decent figure. Good face; arching brows and high cheekbones, with a pointed little chin that made her look like a vixen-fox.

Attractive, healthy, and tough. She ought to bring a decent price; more than a decent price if he could parlay the fact that she was wild into an asset, as Ardan had suggested.

Sometimes Ardan came up with the best ideas out of nowhere.

“Not bad,” Ardan said, after a moment of long study. “Y’know, you put her in a short little leather tunic t’ show off them long legs, grow her hair more, put her out in the arena, she’d make a good novelty. ‘Specially if it turns out she can fight. I think we oughta have them auctioneers bark her that way.”

Ardan’s judgments on trade, though seldom offered, were never wrong. Kel nodded, and made up his mind to share the profit-skim equally with his second.

“You think there’s any harm in keeping her sleepy’till we get to the city?” he asked.

Ardan shook his head. “Naw. We can’t waste time with a kid tryin’ t’ fight us. We ain’t set up f r the slave trade. I’sped if we keep tellin’ her that we’re friends, we’re takin’ her somewhere safe, an’ keep feedin’ her poppy, we’ll be better off.”

“We’re about—three days from Lord Dyran’s land—a bit more than a week from the city. Think there’ll be a problem with keeping her on the poppy that long?” Kel had some experience with poppy addiction; his current supply came from a drover who’d been tied to the stuff. He’d gotten so out of control when Kel took it away from him that Ardan had to kill him.

A waste, but there it was. Demons only knew where he’d gotten it, or got the addiction in the first place.

“Week, two weeks, that won’t be a problem. Make it easier to try and get sense from her, about where that skin came from, too.” Ardan knew more about drugs and their effects than Kel; he doubled as the caravan’s rough herb-healer and bonesetter. Kel was living proof that he knew his business. Ardan had patched up more than a few little gashes of his.

“Then I think we’ve got ourselves a nice little piece of property, eh?” Kel grinned at the bigger man, and Ardan grinned back.

They both returned to the comfort of their cushions, Kel feeling very much at ease with the world. He sipped at the cool water, admiring the purity of it, and the sweetness. On caravan neither he nor Ardan ever touched a single drop of spirit, nor took any drug they didn’t absolutely have to have—like poppy after a serious wound. He’d always felt that a leader could never be anything less than at his absolute peak of alertness. Ardan not only agreed with Kel, he followed his leader’s example, even when he plainly longed to try a glass of some new vintage or other.

“So,” he asked, reaching for a piece of bread, “still think that sandstorms are all bad?” He laughed at his own joke, passing the big man another chunk of bread for himself.

Ardan chuckled. “Not if they blow a bit of sand like
that
our way,” he replied. “In fact, if they’d do that more often, I could come to like them!”

Keman hid in the ruined tower, and watched the humans from behind its meager protection. He had never been terribly good at reading thoughts, even the thoughts of one of the Kin, but these humans were all possessed of something that kept him from gleaning even the most rudimentary information from their minds. He remembered his mother saying something about “collars”—and since they all seemed to be wearing metal or leather collars around their necks, it seemed safe to assume
these
collars were responsible. He cowered in the shadow and tried to make himself shadow-colored, pressing his belly to the sand as he concentrated on overhearing their words, since he could not eavesdrop on their thoughts.

He feared the absolute worst from them; their everyday chatter could easily be covering up darker intentions. He’d already lost sight of Shana; they’d lured her into their tent, and presumably they had put one of their collars on her as well, since he couldn’t even read
her
thoughts.

His stomach was rolling like a wind-weed, and every muscle in his body ached with tension. He wanted to dive right in and rescue her from their clutches—but he couldn’t; he didn’t know where she was exactly, or whether she was all right. And there was no way to just swoop down out of the sky and carry her off. For one thing, he wasn’t sure he could. He’d never tried to fly carrying her before. For another, he wasn’t sure how he’d extract her from that tent.

So the question was, how was he to get near her?

He couldn’t appear as a dragon; that was forbidden. He couldn’t take one-horn form; they’d shoot him on sight with one of the powerful little bows he saw several of them carrying. In fact, any four-footed creature of any size would probably be greeted with a flight of arrows.

If they didn’t think he was a danger, they’d probably think he was dinner.

He couldn’t try to slip in as a human, either, in a group this small, they all knew each other, and a stranger would automatically be thought of as an enemy.
Especially
with the men of a trade-caravan.

He had to join them, somehow. He had to be something they’d want, but something that was not a threat.

He rubbed his dry eyes with his knuckle and sighed. It was nearly sundown, and he’d been out in the heat most of the day. Being this close to water and unable to go take a drink was sheer torment. He watched with raw envy as one of the pack-beasts ambled up to the pool to drink its fill. If only he could do that…