Elvenbane

"There," Shana said, finishing Liana's claws. "That should be enough, really. It's useless to tip every arrow in the fort with dragon-claw, it really doesn't do anything more against humans than ordinary steel would."

"So what are you doing, might I ask?" Keoke said absently, then transformed to a halfblood shape, teetering for a moment before he caught his two-legged balance. Liana followed his example, more slowly.

Shana swept the nail-clippings carefully into a basket for the wizards acting as fletchers. "We're giving the arrows to our three or four best marksmen, and every time one of the elves comes within range, he gets targeted. It's making them nervous, at the least."

"After seeing what happened to that flunky of Dyran's, I should think it would," Liana replied, peering out one of the window-slits. "That was not a pretty way to die. Shana, the storm is beginning to break up. I think the elves are getting control back."

Shana stifled a groan. "It had to happen sooner or later, I guess. I was just hoping it would be later. I wonder what they're going to do next."

She found out in very short order, as Shadow came flying up the stairs, all out of breath. "It's Dyran." He panted, as the unmistakable sounds of combat came from the walls. "He's started another attack. Only this time...this time he's got a lot of unarmed slaves, kids mostly, and he's herding them in front of the fighters, like a shield. We have to hit them to get to his fighters."

Shana's gorge rose, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. "Does Valyn know?" she asked, knowing that the young elven lord's reaction was going to be worse than hers.

"He was on the walls," Shadow said pityingly.

Shana shook her head; she felt sorry for him, but feeling sorry wasn't going to make the army outside their gates go away. Nor was being too incapacitated by the horror of the situation to fight back.

"Anyway, they want you out there," Shadow said, dismissing his cousin even as Shana had. "Father Dragon, that is. Me, too. And the rest of the dragons. He thinks we ought to see if we can figure out some way of getting around the slaves, or getting them out of the way first."

"Right," she said, without wasting another thought on Valyn. "Let's move."

The Kin shifted to halfblood shape, and followed Shadow out to the walls. It was easy to spot Father Dragon; he was the center of a little swarm of activity, as messengers came and went from all parts of the walls.

Shana thought he looked terribly strained, with a kind of haunted expression, especially around the eyes.

Recalling some of the entries in his journals, she suddenly knew why. This wasn't the first time Dyran had used this particular ploy.

And the last time, the wizards hadn't been able to save the slaves either.

"I don't know," he was saying to Denelor as the little group approached, lines of strain around his mouth. "None of our weapons can get to them without killing children. If the Kin shifted, we could fly in and use our shocking ability..."

Denelor shook his head emphatically. "No, no, we need to keep your existence secret as long as possible. Besides, that would put you within range of the elves' magic. Dyran hasn't used some of the worst weapons he has, but that's because they have no effect on stone. On flesh and blood, even protected by scale, it may well be a different story."

"What are we worried about?" Shana wanted to know. "They can fire all the arrows they want, and they aren't going to do us any damage behind all this stone."

"It's getting up to the walls we're worried about," Parth Agon replied absently. "It's that they could get close enough to get ladders up on the walls, or put siege engines to work on them."

"What about getting rid of the ladders and engines?" Shana suggested. "After all, we can all call fire. That should buy us some time."

Father Dragon's face cleared as both Denelor and Parth nodded. "That should buy us quite a bit of time," he said. "Possibly enough to get the rain started again. Can you gentlemen organize that?"

"Immediately," Denelor replied. Parth was already on his way, stopping to talk to each of the wizards on the wall in turn. Denelor hurried below. As Shana shaded her eyes to peer out over the walls, wisps of smoke began rising where the siege equipment stood. Slaves rushed to put the fires out, but with relatively few pieces of siege equipment, and many wizards, several were able to concentrate on each piece. Before long, the fires were burning with fierce flames and thick, black smoke.

"Thank you, little one," Father Dragon said quietly. Shana turned to him with surprise.

He was looking at the rising flames but clearly not watching them. "This...brings back many memories. Most, not pleasant. I feared that history would repeat itself here...so many dead..."

"Only if we're too stupid not to learn from the past," she said fiercely. "We won't let that happen, not any of us, not even Parth Agon. Haven't you seen what he's been doing? When a personal quarrel breaks out, he's right there. If it can't be patched up...and so far, he's been able to do that...he sees that the people involved are separated and given someone to watch them so they don't stir up trouble. All the water and food is being purified before we use it, so they can't sneak a plague in on us. And we are all working together."

Father Dragon turned a little, and smiled at her. "So you are."

"What we need is someone who knows warfare," she pointed out. "That's you. That's why we need you and made you the leader." Then she grinned a little. "Besides, old Parth himself said that no one was going to argue with a leader who had teeth as big as he was tall!"

Father Dragon actually chuckled a little. "An astute observation. Well then, I suppose I had better do my part. I doubt there is anyone here who knows more about Lord Dyran...and he is our most implacable enemy..."

He turned his eyes back towards the enemy army, but Shana saw that the expression of strain he wore had been replaced by one of thought...and the set of his jaw argued his renewed determination that this conflict not end as the last had.

There was pain there, still, from those old memories. But pain could be dealt with. And now he had decided to do so.

She smiled, and trotted off to join one of the others fighting to keep a battering ram ablaze.

Valyn wiped his mouth with the back of a trembling hand and staggered away from the jakes. His first reaction, on seeing the helpless, weeping children herded before the fighters in a human shield, had been horror. The second, as they tried to turn and run, and as the fighters behind them slaughtered those who would not cooperate in their own peril, was to be suddenly, violently, sick.

Valyn had hunted all his life, but he had never seen another thinking creature die. He had never seen the violent death of another adult until this conflict, much less that of a child.

He'd run from the walls to the safety and shelter of the fortress, and once there, had succumbed to his own weakness.

Outside, muffled by several thicknesses of stone, the sounds of the conflict continued, and increased as the elven lords regained control over the weather and cleared away the storm that had hampered them.

He leaned his back and head against the cold stone wall, wrapped his arms around himself, and shook...because he alone, of all the people here, truly knew his father. This atrocity was only the beginning.

He'd seen this before...there was even an elven term for it, the strange fixation on some object or cause that came after living centuries. Shi maladia. He'd known that Dyran had fallen into that fixation when the others had described his father's changed behavior. Dyran was not sane, as the halfbloods knew the meaning of the term.

He was sane enough by elven standards, but he had no balance when something triggered the malady, and no sense of proportion. There would be worse to follow, horror piled atop horror, until, even if they were in a position to win the fight, the wizards would surrender. And then, no matter what terms Dyran agreed to, he would violate them, and kill them all as remorselessly as the dragons killed a deer for dinner. Shana kept talking about achieving a truce, he thought in despair, but there wasn't anything that would hold Dyran to truce terms. He simply didn't care. The others might hold to a sworn truce, even Cheynar. But not Father. Not now.

Valyn had seen his father twice in a mood like this...both times when he had run into unexpected opposition. Once, in the process of getting an ally onto the Council, and once when negotiating an alliance marriage for himself. In both cases, he had not given up on the task until the opposition was not only eliminated, but buried. In the second case, where the girl herself had pulled the unexpected maneuver of running off with someone else, he had not rested until both the girl and her lover were dead.

No one had suspected anything at the time. Elves did not connive in the deaths of other elves...and both deaths were accepted as tragic accidents... but Valyn wondered. There had been unsettling signs...and just before each "accident," his father had trained and sent away a particular "bodyguard." A bodyguard who had returned after the accidents, to be retired.

Human life was hardly worth commenting on to an elven lord. Halfbloods were less than vermin. And there was no vow strong enough to hold Dyran to a treaty with either. He would see that they were all utterly destroyed.

Unless Dyran was somehow stopped.

Unless he could be calmed, broken out of the obsessive-compulsive cycle, and convinced that he, personally, would lose too much by continuing the fight. Unless he could be brought out of his... state... to a point where he was able to think rationally again.

There was perhaps one person valuable enough to him to convince him to give up the fight as futile. One person he would not slay out of hand.

Or so I tell myself, Valyn thought. He pushed away from the stone wall, no longer shaking, but quite thoroughly determined.

A few days ago, he had made a tentative plan, and to secure it, he'd had Shadow steal a particular beryl out of Dyran's tent. The elven lord, preoccupied as he was with the larger threats, had taken no thought to the fact that locked cabinets were not enough to stop a determined wizard. Especially one who knew exactly where a small valuable might be. Valyn felt for the stone in his pocket and found it, warm from the heat of his body. This was one of Dyran's talismanic stones, gems in which he stored some of his own power against a time of depletion. More than that, it was one of the first of those stones, a gem he had worked with for centuries, and attuned to him as few other things were. With this in Valyn's possession, anything Dyran tried should be fed right back to him.

So if Dyran tried to strike him, his father would feel it too, Valyn thought, as he made up his mind, and went down to the ground floor in search of Zed. That should be enough to make Dyran think. And he might be able to use it to control his father, at least a little. It was at least worth trying.

Zed was with another of the young dragons (in halfblood form), both of them working furiously to make the last of the claw-tips into finished arrows. Zed had just finished setting the last of the claw-scraps into an arrow-point when Valyn found him.

"Zed?" Valyn said diffidently. "Can you do me a favor? It's a big one..."

"I think so," Zed replied, putting the last of the arrowheads on the pile beside the young dragon-fletcher...who was taking green, crooked, virtually useless branches, rolling them between his hands, and transforming them into perfectly straight, smooth, arrow-shafts, then molding a slot for the arrowhead, slipping the arrowhead into place, and passing the result on to another wizard-child for binding and feathering. Zed stood up, wincing a little as cramped muscles protested his movement.

"What do you need, Valyn?" the wizard asked, tucking his long hair in back of his ears with a gesture that seemed to be habitual. Valyn beckoned him to follow, and once they were in a secluded corner, out of earshot, turned to face him.

"First of all," the elven lord said quietly, "I think you should know that I'm not a halfblood."

"You're not?" Zed said in surprise. "But..."

"I'm full-elven," Valyn confessed. Then, while Zed was still recovering from that revelation, he added, "Dyran's my father. I'm his heir."

Swiftly Valyn explained the reasoning that brought him to seek out Zed. "You know all the exits and entrances to this place. I have to get out...once I make it to the camp, the fact that I'm elven should keep me safe enough until I can get to my father."

"Then what?" Zed asked.

"Then I try and talk to him," Valyn said, a lot more calmly and confidently than he felt.

Zed scratched his head. "What if he doesn't want to talk? What are you going to do then? Just walk out? I don't know, Valyn; I don't think he's likely to let you."

"I...think he's likely to underestimate me, Zed." Valyn wondered how much to tell the young wizard. "I've got something of his that should give me an edge with him. I think I can neutralize him. If I can't talk reason to him."

Zed stared at Valyn for a long time before replying. "So tell me, just for curiosity's sake: If Dyran pulled out all the tricks, brought the walls down, and found you here, what would he do to you?"

"Probably kill me," Valyn replied as nonchalantly as he could.

"And if Dyran manages to bring in all the elven lords on the Council?"

"He'll be able to pull out every bit of power all the High Lords can muster, stored and internal, and tumble the walls."

"And...how likely is that?" Zed asked carefully.

"More so with every day," Valyn told him honestly. "The longer this goes on, the greater a menace we seem, the more likely it is. They can afford to keep throwing fighters at you until the last of them can climb the walls on the bodies piled underneath. They can wear you down with magic, then pull something unexpected. They can block your thieving, and starve you out."

Zed chewed on his lower lip for a moment, and seemed to come to a decision. "Come on," he said. "Let me show you the back way out."

The "back way" was a tiny trapdoor letting out on a shaft that in turn led to a tunnel that came out somewhere on the valley bottom. Presumably behind the enemy lines. The shaft was a sheer, circular drop of several stories, too wide for someone to brace himself against and inch upwards. Valyn made a light and floated it down to the bottom, and it seemed very far indeed. The only way to use the shaft was to climb down a rope...and there was one, just inside the door, attached to a ring sunken into the stone. Valyn looked at the drop, and at the rope, and sighed.

"I didn't say it was easy," Zed told him. "I just said it was the back door. You could always ask one of the better mages to transport you into the camp."

"No thank you," Valyn replied, as he rigged the rope around his waist for rappelling. "I need to get in quietly; I don't want to announce myself."

He leaned backwards over the long drop and tested the rope. It seemed firm enough.

"I'll wait for you to get down," Zed said quietly. "I have to pull the rope up when you're done." Unspoken was the obvious: He would not need the rope to return. He would either be a prisoner, or he would be the go-between in a truce negotiation.

Valyn glanced down one more time. It was a very long drop, and the stone was slick with damp.

"Well, I guess I'd better get this over with," he said. And, at the strange and worried look Zed gave him, he added, "Don't worry, I intend to be the winner in this. In fact, I intend to split a bottle of victory wine with you!"

He smiled at Zed, and stepped backwards off the edge.

The filth and misery of the camp were unbelievable. The stench alone was enough to make Valyn's stomach churn. And the plight of Dyran's slaves almost made him turn and run.

Here, among the fighters that were supposed to be earning his victory, Dyran's single-minded obsession with wiping out his enemy, the halfbloods, was even more evident.

The camp looked as if disaster had already struck, and there was no one left to set things right afterwards. No one was setting up the tents that had been knocked down by the storm. No one was cleaning the flooded jakes-pits, which had overflowed into the camp. Wounded fighters had dragged themselves into camp, but no one was tending them. Warriors too sick to fight or wounded previously lay in what little shelter they or friends had managed to contrive before Dyran ordered the current attack. Many of the wounded and ill were dying, some were already dead. No one took the bodies away.

Valyn held a handkerchief over his nose and pretended an aloof indifference to the misery around him. He picked his way through the wreckage of the camp, studiously ignoring anything not in his immediate path. No elven lord would have cared that humans were lying and dying in their own filth...except that if they were dying here, they were obviously not dying there, out on the front lines, "where they belonged.

Valyn wondered momentarily where the support crews for the fighters were, then decided, given the attrition rate on the walls, the support crews had probably been thrown into armor and out onto the field with the rest.

Dyran's tent was easy to spot; it was one of the few still standing, intact, and untouched by the storm. It had been pitched at the top of the slope opposite the wizards' fortress, standing level with the stone edifice, a gold-and-scarlet pavilion that had made an irresistible target. Not that it mattered; nothing the wizards or the dragons had thrown at it had touched it. Valyn could hardly believe his luck when he was able to stroll right up the stony slope to it without being stopped by anyone who knew him. It occurred to him at that point that perhaps the halfbloods had missed an excellent chance to assassinate Dyran...all anyone would have had to do was to put on an illusion of fullblood...

No, that wouldn't work; there was probably an illusion-dispelling barrier at the edge of the camp. Father might be obsessed, but he wasn't stupid.

There were two guards at the tent entrance. Both of them Valyn recognized, and he braced himself. One of them knew him.

"Master Valyn?" he said-He was calm. Not surprised to see the Lord's son. Not as if the guard knew something... Hmm. It must not be general knowledge that the heir had "vanished."

"I'll just wait for my father inside, if I may," he replied, just as calmly, as if he strolled across a battlefield every day to see his father.

"Certainly, Master Valyn," the human replied promptly, and held open the tent-flap for him.

Valyn ducked inside; when his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he was somehow not surprised to discover that the tent was furnished as sparsely as the manor was sybaritic.

There was nothing to distract Dyran from his obsession. Out here, he was the Warrior, the Champion of the Clans.

The tent was divided into two sections by a screen; private quarters, and public. In the public area were the portable desk and chair, a map table, stands for arms and armor, and chests for documents. In the private area was a bed, another chair, trunks of clothing, two storage cabinets, and nothing else.

Valyn just had time to take that much in, when footsteps outside the tent heralded the arrival of someone else.

He turned, his hand on the screen, just in time to face his father coming in through the door of the tent.

Dyran froze as the tent-flap fell back into place behind him.

"Hello, Father," Valyn said quietly.

Dyran stared, as if he hardly recognized who it was that had greeted him. Then slowly, he pulled off his gloves, one at a time, and threw them aside. He was dressed in elaborately chased golden armor, over which was a scarlet surcoat bearing his device. He wore a sword, but no helmet, his hair confined in a braid running down his back. After a moment, he took two steps forward, and folded his arms over his chest.

"I know exactly where you've been, Valyn," he said, with no expression whatsoever. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you've come to your senses about these vermin."

"I was hoping that you would say that you have come to some kind of similar decision about my friends, Father," Valyn replied, mimicking his father's posture. "I had hoped you would realize that this vendetta of yours is futile. We didn't begin this..."

Dyran's expression...or lack of it...did not change; only his eyes. There was a dangerous light in them, like smoldering embers...

Like the light in the eyes of a one-horn about to charge.

"Is that all you have to say?" Dyran said, very softly, very gently. "Have you chosen to side against your own kind, and with these animals?"

"They aren't animals. There don't have to be sides," Valyn said. "There doesn't have to be a conflict...especially not between us..."

While he was speaking, the light in Dyran's eyes grew brighter, and he took two steps nearer to his son, until he stood within touching distance.

"No," Dyran whispered. "There won't be a conflict between us." The light in his eyes flared. "I bred one son. I can breed another."

Valyn had less than a heartbeat's warning...but it was enough.

As his father tried to blast him where he stood, with the full force of his considerable magic power, Valyn leapt forward.

He seized Dyran by the arms as the blow struck him, the beryl closed tightly in his hand, and clasped him in a deadly embrace, as the power backlashed against both of them...

The fortress rocked down to its foundations with the force of the explosion. Then the Shockwave hit, knocking them all off their feet, despite the fact that most of them were sheltered and protected behind the stone bulwarks on the top of the walls.

Shana climbed back to her feet and stared aghast at the elven camp.

The entire top of the next peak, where Dyran's tent had stood, was gone. A cloud of smoke still rose from where it had been, and there were fires all down the mountainside, started in the dry brush by flaming debris. More debris started to rain down on them, falling into the area between the walls and the inner building, and down on the fighters below the walls.

"Demonspawn..." said Zed in a choked voice. "Valyn..."

Somewhere, something deep inside her cried out in anguish. Something else demanded to know what Valyn was doing out there. But the rest of her noted that, down on the battlefield below the walls, chaos reigned. The fighters had been knocked off their feet, the attack had come to a standstill, and confusion had struck the elven commanders.

"Get the others," she snapped. "And the dragons! It's time to attack them!"

"But..." Zed protested. "Valyn..."

"Later," she barked at him, promising that same "later" to herself. "Go!"

And as he left her alone on the walls, she gave herself one moment of that "later."

Valyn, you stupid...oh, Valyn...Helpless tears streaked her cheeks as she watched the smoke-cloud rising and dispersing.

But when the others joined her for the final assault, there were no tears visible on her dry cheeks.

Before nightfall, Lord Berenel himself came out with a truce flag. Shana did not go out to meet him; she left the negotiations in the hands of Kalamadea (in his wizard guise), old Parth Agon and Denelor. Instead, she found a quiet, dark corner of the fortress, curled up in a blanket with her face to the wall, and waited for the tears to come.

Nothing. Only a terrible ache, and worse recriminations. It was her fault, she thought numbly, she made him feel so useless, and she didn't even try to find him something he could do. She just shoved him out of the way. It was all her fault...

Footsteps, and a voice out of the dark. "Shana? I could use a friendly shoulder."

She looked up, and caught Mero's hand by guess, pulling him down beside her. There he held her, and she held him against her shoulder, while he sobbed out his own recriminations.

Then, finally, her own tears came, and they wept together.

When the tears were gone, they talked, sharing memories of Valyn. Mero had more of those, of course, and finally he just talked, while Shana listened. He spoke about how deeply Valyn felt...and how little he could show of that. And how useless he must have felt these past days, as she and Shadow did everything, while Valyn was unable to do anything productive.

I never knew him, she thought, as the stories revealed things that left her surprised, and sometimes chagrined. I thought I did, but all I saw was...what I wanted to see, I guess. Then she wept again, without knowing why.

Then came a long moment of shared silence. It was broken, not by either of them, but by the "noise" of a transportation-spell somewhere nearby.

Shana immediately jumped to her feet, fearing treachery, and with Mero right beside her, ran for the stairs, making a light as she ran. The fortress seemed mostly deserted, and their footsteps echoed hollowly in the circular stairway. She was met halfway down the stairs by Zed.

"It's all right," he told them, and then paused, panting for breath. "Lord Berenel sent for a Council representative. They're going to sign a treaty. Everybody's out there..."

:We didn't want to disturb you,: he said silently. :I figured hearing Lord Asrevil's arrival would bring you if you wanted to come.:

He looked diffidently from her face to Mero's and back, and she smiled weakly. "It's all right," she said. "We're coming."

"Good," he replied, with evident relief. "We really need you now."

She nodded, and started back down the stairs, conscious of the fact that both Mero and Zed followed behind her, and feeling as if that gap between them was a distance of more than a couple of steps...

We really need you now...

How much did they need her, she wondered. And how much did they need the visible Elvenbane?

Where was there a place in all this for just Shana?

"So, how long do we have before we have to leave?" Shana asked Denelor, as the elven lord vanished again, his relief all too evident.

Denelor consulted the treaty. "Technically, six months. Personally, though, I would just as soon be so deep into the wilderness that the elves won't know where to start looking for me long before that six months is over. You, however, had better disappear in the next couple of days. They really do hate you, you know."

Shana shrugged tiredly. "They have to have somebody to blame, and I'm the obvious target."

"I never thought our Prophecy would hit so near to home, Shana," Alara said regretfully. She and the other dragons were in their halfblood forms, so as not to tip their hands to the elven negotiators.

Zed cocked his head to one side. "Did it ever occur to you that it might have been a true prophecy you were spreading?" he asked. "I mean, look at it...Shana matches it to the letter."

Shana's blood ran cold for a moment. "Pure coincidence," she said hastily. "Any of us could have matched it. I just happened to be the most conspicuous."

But the others looked at her oddly, and she felt the distance widening between them.

So, I'm being exiled again. "I'll just go act as a scout," she offered quickly, "since I have to be out of here. I'll go north for a bit, then head west and see what I can find." She forced a smile. "Good thing we can speak in thoughts. That will make it easier for me to report to you. And of all of us, I'm the best suited to scouting things out."

"I'll go with you," Keman volunteered quickly.

"And I," said Alara and Father Dragon simultaneously.

When she looked at them askance, Father Dragon laughed. "We, too, are exiles, little daughter," he told her lightly, as if he found it all very amusing. "Some of the Kin objected quite strenuously to our helping you. So, for the second time in my life, I lead a band of rebels into a new home."

"But..." she began. He shushed her.

"We will enjoy it," he said. "The Kin do not thrive on a life with no challenges."

:I'd like to go too, if you'll have me.: That thought-voice was unexpected, and she turned to stare at Mero, who shrugged. :If I go with you. I won't have time to brood. I think I can be useful. Besides...it would be awfully lonely without you.:

She nodded acceptance, slowly. "I'd like to have you, Mero," she replied. "Thank you." :It would be awfully lonely not to have you along.

He smiled shyly, and she was surprised at how good that smile made her feel.

"Well, we'll start in the morning then, shall we?" Father Dragon said.

She looked from one to another of them...and suddenly, no longer felt as if she were being exiled a second time.

Not an outcast; a forerunner. That's not so bad a thing to be. And my friends and family will be with me.

"And we'll be behind you, counting on you," Denelor said softly, as if he had read her thoughts. Perhaps he had.

"In the morning," she agreed, as Mero nodded. "In the morning we open up a whole new world."