The snap of a twig brought Kyrtian and everyone in his camp to instant alertness. The whistle of a skylark came out of the darkness, and they all relaxed again. A moment later, Shana and a young male wizard walked into the circle of light cast by the fire, the omnipresent mist sparkling like gems on the edges of their hoods.
"I don't know how you do that—getting past my sentries," Kyrtian complained good-naturedly. "I hope no one else can."
"Only humans that have their special magic, dragons, and Wizards," Shana told him, grinning, as she settled down on a bit of log that one of the men rolled to the fire for her. "Speaking of which—this is my foster-brother, Keman."
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Kyrtian said po¬litely, but warily. "So, you're another wizard, then—"
"Ah, actually, I'm not," the young man said diffidently, with a glance at the Elvenbane. "Shana thinks it's time you were— ah—"
"If you're going to trust us, we have to give you a reason," Shana said briskly. "I've already talked this over with the other leaders, and they think it's time for you to be entrusted with the biggest secret we have."
"Which—would be what, exactly?" Kyrtian replied, wishing she would just get straight to whatever she was going to say.
"First, just indulge me and do whatever it is that you nor¬mally do to dispel an illusion or a glamor. Keman isn't exactly what he seems," Shana said, and there was a certain—tone in her voice that made him look at her with suspicion for a mo¬ment. Just what was she up to, anyway? Was this "foster brother" of hers fully Elven—or perhaps human? No, if he was
human, there would be no need for all this secrecy and fiddling about.
But it was obvious that he wasn't going to get any further in¬formation out of the woman unless he did as she asked, so, with a sigh, he gathered threads of magic and wove them into a net, casting it over the two of them, just for good measure. He might as well see if the Elvenbane herself was under a glamor.
Nothing happened. The two of them remained exactly as they had been when they walked into the firelight.
Now Kyrtian was puzzled. Had the magic been countered? It couldn't have been deflected; he'd have seen that. Could they have absorbed it, then negated it? But how? "Are you carrying something new that works like iron?" he asked. "Or have you—"
He never got a chance to finish his question, because in the next moment, the young man who had been standing at the fire¬side, looking altogether as normal as it was possible for a wizard to look, suddenly began to ... change. He didn't writhe, exactly, but he blurred and twisted in a way that induced a really violent case of dizziness and nausea. It felt as if something was wrench¬ing Kyrtian's eyes out of their sockets and stirring up his guts at the same time, and Kyrtian clapped his hand over his mouth and turned away. He wasn't alone; the rest of his men were doing the same thing, their complexions in varying shades of green.
What in the name of—
As soon as he turned his eyes away his symptoms subsided, and he looked up, glaring at Lashana, angry accusations on his lips.
Which died, as he continued to look up—and up—and up— into the jewel-like and surprisingly mild eyes of a very large, sapphire-blue dragon.
At least, he thought it was a dragon. He couldn't think of anything else it could be. It was huge, scaled, winged, fanged and taloned. There weren't many other creatures that fit that description.
As he stared, he heard the men behind him reacting to the presence of the creature. One was praying in the ancient lan¬guage of the humans, one was cursing with remarkable fluency,
and he distinctly heard the thud of a third dropping to the ground, presumably having fainted dead away.
Not that Kyrtian blamed him in the least.
"You can cast all the illusion-breaking spells you like, but dragons can look like anything they care to and you won't know it. The dragons are shape-changers, you see," he heard the Elvenbane say, quite cheerfully, but it was as if he heard her in the far distance. His mind was still too involved with the im¬possibility of what he had just witnessed, and the sheer pres¬ence of the dragon itself. "That's our biggest secret, and that gives us undetectable spies among you Elvenlords. The drag¬ons can go anywhere and be anything or anybody, and you can never tell that they're there, because they're not taking on illu¬sions, they're taking on the real form of whatever they imitate. They've been spying on your people—oh, forever. From the moment the Elvenlords arrived here, the Eldest say."
"Oh," Kyrtian said, faintly. "I suppose—dragons must have been in my camp, then?"
Lashana let out a peal of laughter. "My good Lord Kyrtian, dragons were guarding your tent. And neither you nor your good Sargeant Gel had any notion!"
"Actually," the dragon said, with a note of apology in his deep voice, "I was one of them. Sorry. Hate to eavesdrop and all that, but we really didn't have much choice. We had to know what you were, you understand. Suddenly you were doing all sorts of efficient things against the Young Lords, and we calcu¬lated that you'd be coming after us, next."
Kyrtian wasn't entirely certain how the dragon was speak¬ing; the voice seemed to rumble up out of the depths of that massive torso, and the mouth opened and closed, but the dragon didn't have anything like lips, and he couldn't figure out how it could shape words with that mouth....
"At any rate, this is our biggest secret, and now you know it," Lashana continued. "So—well, you can see that we trust you."
"Ah ... yes." Carefully, very carefully, Kyrtian felt blindly for the piece of log he'd been sitting on and lowered himself down onto it. "I... can see that."
The dragon lowered his head until his eyes were level with
Kyrtian's face. "You can do us as much harm, knowing this, as we could ever do to you, you know," the creature said, quietly.
"Forgive me," Kyrtian managed, finally gathering some of his wits about him, "If at this moment—with a mouth big enough to swallow me whole not an arm's-length away from me—I find that a little difficult to believe."
The dragon suddenly reared up, and for a moment, Kyrtian was certain that they were all going to be swallowed up—
But then an enormous, rumbling laugh started somewhere deep inside the dragon, bubbled up through the long, long throat, and emerged from the upturned snout as a trumpeting hoot.
It should have terrified him—and his men—further still. It was a completely alien sound, something that could have meant the thing was about to attack them. But somehow, it wasn't frightening at all, somehow, in the depths of Kyrtian's mind where the basest of instincts gibbered in terror and tried to crouch as small as possible so as not to be noticed by this mon¬ster, it translated as exactly what it was—the laughter of a fel¬low creature who meant no harm at all. And that primitive part of him stopped gibbering, and relaxed....
"Look aside, Lord Kyrtian," the dragon said, when he'd fi¬nally done laughing. "I think I'd best come—back down to your level."
He didn't need urging, not after his previous experience.
When Keman looked again like an ordinary wizard, poor Resso had been revived, and they were all seated around the fire, Kyrtian contemplated the wizard-dragon from across the flames as Lashana and the foresters discussed which of several possible caves they ought to penetrate first. He couldn't help himself; he couldn't reconcile the apparent size of the wizard with the obvious size of the dragon he'd become. The puzzle ate at him; he couldn't explain it, couldn't rationalize it, and when he couldn't find an explanation for something, he had the bad habit (and he knew it was a bad habit) of worrying at it to the exclusion of everything else.
Finally the dragon himself leveled a stare across the flames and said, "What, exactly, is bothering you, Lord Kyrtian?" in a tone of irritation mixed with amusement.
"Where did it come from?" Kyrtian blurted, as conversation ceased among the others. "I mean, you're no larger than Resso right now, and you're not exactly having that log splitting under you from your weight—but when you were—" he waved his hands wildly "—that wasn't air, that was mass—well, look at the imprints you left! So where did it come from? And where did it go?"
Keman shrugged. "Elsewhere, Kyrtian," he said. "That's all I can tell you. We call it, 'shifting into the Out.' We move the real bulk of ourselves to and from the Out, but—well, we don't know what the Out is. It's here, but it's somewhere else—"
"But when you know what to look for, a dragon casts a sort of—shadow—when he's in another form," Lashana put in. "It's not the kind of shadow you get from light falling on you, but it's there, and when you've learned how to see it and look for it, you can always tell whether something is a dragon or not."
Kyrtian could only shake his head, more puzzled by the ex¬planation than by not having one. But at least that obsessive part of his mind had it to turn inside out and examine while he set most of his attention to work on more important things. "Never mind," he said, after a moment. "What in the name of the Ancestors are those—invisible horrors that lie in wait for you on deer trails? And what can we do about them?"
Lashana and Keman exchanged a look and a nod, and the planning moved into more practical spheres.
Caellach Gwain was beside himself with rage.
He'd followed Lashana to this benighted forest once he'd scryed out her location and once she'd abandoned it, trusting to distance and preoccupation to keep her from noticing the "noise" of his arrival. Of course, just as he apported into the spot, the wretched trees delivered a load of water from their dis¬turbed branches, creating the effect of a localized downpour for a moment or two, which was certainly enough to drench him from head to toe. Since he hadn't taken the precaution of wear¬ing a waterproof cape, never thinking that Lashana would drop herself into the middle of a rainstorm, he was hardly prepared for such a reception.
His temper wasn't improved when he followed the clear trail that she and whoever she'd brought with her had left. It led through underbrush just thick enough to be a nuisance, catch¬ing in his soggy robes and snarling his hair. And it was dark, plague take it all! If he hadn't kindled a mage-light, he wouldn't be able to see where he was going!
Fortunately, he'd been on the alert for the thoughts of others, because he managed to detect the sentries before they got a glimpse of his light, and douse it. And he was able to avoid them the same way, though his command of thought-sensing wasn't the equal of someone who'd wasted his time honing it to a fine pitch. Still—he knew human thoughts when he sensed them. So what was Lashana up to? Had she found yet another group of wild humans to bring to the new Citadel, using up more precious resources that should have gone to support Wiz¬ards and not useless mouths?
He spotted a fire, then, and belatedly caution took over. He would far rather have scryed out what was going on, but that would have required light—so instead, he crept on hands and knees, with every bone creaking in protest, until he was close enough to see most of the figures there, if not hear what they were saying.
Sure enough, it looked like another plaguey lot of mere hu¬mans!
But then, the one that had his back to Caellach turned his head, and Caellach froze.
An Elvenlord!
And there, chatting away with him, just as bold as could be—Lashana and Keman.
He very nearly rushed out from beneath his covering bush and accosted them then and there. As it was, sheer rage held him frozen in place.
How dare she! Traitor! Unnatural, ungrateful wretched girl!
He wanted to throttle her, there and then. He wanted to blast her into a hundred thousand bits. After everything she had done to the Wizards, who had taken her in, taught her, sheltered her—
He just sat and shook for a long time, while she, oblivious, chattered on as if she was old friends with them all.
He didn't know how long it was that he sat, encompassed by anger so hot it burned away every vestige of thought. But fi¬nally, it ebbed, and when it did—
Unholy glee flooded in, replacing the anger with savage joy.
He had her now. Finally, finally, he had her! Let her try to deny this! When the others heard about it, they'd throw her into a prison she could never escape from!
He had to get back, though, before he could lay any charges. And to do that, he had to get far enough away from here that the noise of the transportation spell wouldn't be noticed.
And he mustn't get caught. Not now, not when victory was so close he could taste it.
He opened his mind as he never had before, paying obsessive attention to the whereabouts of all of the sentry-slaves. When he moved, he did so only when he knew that they were nowhere near, and the sounds of his movement would not reach them. He literally felt his way along the path that had brought him here, moving loose twigs out of the way so that he wouldn't step on them and betray himself. At least now the sodden nature of this forest worked for him rather than against him; thick moss apparently covered every surface, and the fallen leaves he encountered were too wet to crackle.
When he was finally far enough away that he felt safe in do¬ing so, he kindled a mage-light once again, got to his feet, and shoved his way along the first clear path he spotted. He didn't particularly care where he was going—and it really didn't mat¬ter. He could get back to the Citadel from practically anywhere; what really mattered now was that he get away from here.
The further he got, the brighter he made his light; at first, as the light itself frightened nocturnal animals out of his path, he was afraid that the disturbances they made would betray him, or draw in something like an alicorn that could be a real danger to him. But the further away he got, the less wildlife he saw, until at last there didn't seem to be anything at all along the path but himself.
They must have hunted it all out on the way here, he thought vaguely, most of his attention on what he was going to say when he got back to the Citadel. He recalled some vague admo-