Elvenblood (27 page)

Much as he hated to admit it, Jamal was probably right. If Magic-Metal and Mind-Wall had held the demons until now, it should keep holding them.

"I believe I will speak with them myself," he told his acolyte. 'Tomorrow, while we are on the march. See to it."

Haja bowed slightly. "There should be no difficulty," he replied.

Diric smiled slightly. "And see to it that Jamal does not hear of it," he added. "At least not until after the fact."

Haja's eyes widened just a trifle, and so did his smile. The acolyte had been trying to warn Diric for many moons now that Jamal was
too
clever,
too
ambitious, and Diric had apparently dismissed his warnings. In actuality, Diric
had
given them some thought, but he had not yet been convinced that Jamal was a real hazard.

"Yes," he said softly, as Haja nodded imperceptibly in Jamal's direction. "I believe that our War Chief may be harboring other thoughts—thoughts that the First Smith might not approve of. The time may be coming when actions should be taken. I will meditate upon the subject."

Haja nodded.

"In the meantime," Diric concluded, sitting back on his own cushions with an air of relaxation he in no way felt, "you might go a-scouting yourself, and see if there are other demons where these sprung from—or perhaps a sign of our ancient allies, the Com People. This would be Priestly business, of course. It would be better if the War Chief were not to hear of things wherein he has no lawful concern."

"Such as the questioning of demons?" Haja asked, with a smile. "And the scouting for Corn People? After all, demons are rightly the business of the Priests, and the Corn People are only legend, which is
also
the business of the Priests."

"Exactly so," Diric told him. "Exactly so."

Myre circled above the wooded hills, too high in the sky for anyone below to see her
real
shape, and fumed as she circled. No sign, not one single sign, of Lorryn and Rena—and she had only herself to blame that they had eluded her. She was the one who had suggested escaping by water.

When the boat lurched forward so unexpectedly and threw her out, she had been so stunned by the shock and the impact that she didn't even react to save herself until it was well out of sight. Then, and only then, did the shouts and arrows of the elves on the bank awaken her to the fact that she was in a certain amount of danger, as the current carried her downstream.

She reacted immediately; she took a deep breath, dove under the water to escape the arrows falling around her, and shifted once she was there into the form of a huge whisker-fish. Once safely in a form that could breathe water rather than air, she set out in hot pursuit with great, driving thrusts of her tail.

But that boat had been much faster than any fish that ever swam. She didn't catch up to it for more than a day, and by the time she found it, a bare hour ahead of an elven pursuit party, it was drifting and empty. There was no sign of where it might have gone ashore—if there ever had been, the rain had wiped such traces out completely.

She made a guess, then, and took to the skies. But that had not been a particularly clever move, either.

She was used to the barren, scrub-covered hills around the Lairs, not these hills with trees so thick, you could not see the ground beneath them! Why, even a dragon in his proper form could skulk for furlongs beneath these trees and never fear being spotted from above!

Still she circled, for days, hoping for a stroke of luck, the betraying smoke from a campfire, a single track of a shod foot in the mud of a stream bank. But every sign proved to be made either by lone hunters, or by more searchers sent to recapture Lorryn and his sister, and her temper frayed and snapped a dozen times over. She managed to assuage some of her rage in hunting—
alicorn
s were particularly thick here, and it was
almost
as satisfactory to break their necks as it would have been to snap the neck of that fool, Lorryn—

In desperation, although she was certain that the two soft, pampered creatures could not possibly have gotten beyond the immediate vicinity of the river, she increased her range. She saw nothing, nothing whatsoever, except for a group of ragged humans making their way along the river in crude boats. Whatever they were, those humans were
not
wizards, and Myre doubted that either Rena or Lorryn would even have attempted contact with them.

Assuming the humans themselves permitted such contact. If they were wild humans, uncollared, then they certainly must fear the elves. Neither child was woods-wise enough to hide an approach from feral humans who were used to living in these forsaken forests. It was far more likely that these humans would evade the two runaways before Lorryn and his sister even guessed they were there.

Still, perhaps she should take a closer look at them. She circled again, noting those same humans putting in at a point along the bank. No sign of alarm there; not a chance they had encountered the fugitives.

She ground her teeth together in fruitless rage.

She might as well admit it. She had lost them. And with them had gone her chance for her own captive wizard. She had been so certain that she was in complete control of the escape that she had not anticipated that Lorryn might do something unexpected, and now, thanks to that carelessness, she had lost them.

She happened to look down at just that moment—and even to an idle eye, it was obvious that the little party of humans had suddenly and inexplicably doubled.

Now what was this?

Her rage evaporated, and she sharpened her gaze, focusing in on the group below. No—the humans had not multiplied. They had been joined by another group, much better clad—

Myre's wingbeats faltered for a moment, as she caught sight of forms much like Shana's. Pointed ears—but dark complexions and hair in more colors than pale blond. These were no humans—these were
wizards I
She had found the missing wizards!

And where the wizards were—so were the renegade dragons.

Quickly she spiraled up, until she reached a space above the clouds, so high that the air was thin and hard to breathe, and ice crystals formed on the tips of her wings.

Now what? She knew where the wizards were—surely, surely she could use that somehow, couldn't she?

She needed information. And she needed to get it without a chance that she might be caught by Keman or any of the others.

In short, she needed a plan.

And this time she had better not underestimate anyone or anything. This time her plan must be perfect. And for a perfect plan, she needed information.

But information was easy to gather, so long as she stayed away from her fellow dragons. She could shift into any one of hundreds of shapes to spy on the wizards, anything from a human child to a rock formation. So long as no
dragon
saw her, she should be safe from detection.

Well, her first shape should be something with a good nose—and inedible. All those creatures living together should be easy to scent, but she didn't want to find herself the target of some hunter's arrows while she searched for them!

Her mind made up, she folded her wings and dove for a secluded vale just out of sight of that riverside landing.

The alicorns reached the summit of yet another hill; they had phenomenal endurance, and even with Rena and Lorryn on their backs, they were able to make twice the speed of any horse she'd ever ridden. They had a kind of ground-devouring fast walk that they could keep up all day if they had to. They needed to stop two or three times each day for food and water, and then it was no more than the equivalent of an equine snack.

Of course, what they were eating was not grass alone, but whatever they could catch that lived in the grass as well. They were
fast
, they caught and ate mice and voles as easily as any house cat.

At night they would disappear for several hours, coming back with traces of blood around their mouths. At least they came back—and didn't consider Lorryn and Rena to be good prey.

Rena had been revolted. Lorryn had been fascinated. He told her that it was very likely that the
reason
why the alicorns were able to keep up that fast pace was that they were eating meat. "Meat is a more concentrated food than grass," he told her. "If they weren't eating meat, I expect they wouldn't be able to go on any longer or faster than one of our horses."

Rena had already decided that she was no longer interested in having a tame alicorn.

Meanwhile,
she
was not possessed of the same level of endurance as Lorryn or the
alicorn
s. They wanted to be off at sunrise—which meant rising before sunrise just so
they
could manage a bite to eat—and didn't stop for the night until sunset. Nothing in Rena's life had ever prepared her for this kind of endurance test. She fell asleep exhausted and sore, and woke very little rested. She had long since given up any interest in the passing countryside, even though they'd had more than one narrow escape from hostile animals and potentially hostile hunters. Now all she could do was cling to the back of her
alicorn
and use her own little magics to keep it tame. All she really wanted to do was find the wizards, so at last she could rest.

Rest! Oh, if only she could! Her entire world had narrowed to the need for rest. Every muscle ached, and her eyes burned with fatigue; there was a dull headache right behind her eyes, and if Lord Gildor had appeared at that moment with an offer of a bed and a warm meal in exchange for a wedding, she would probably have wedded him then and there.

Well, maybe not. But she would have been willing to entertain the notion.

"Interesting," Lorryn muttered out loud, as his beast reached the top of the ridge first.

"What's interesting?" Rena asked, dully.
She
couldn't imagine anything interesting out here. They'd traveled through a pass in the mountains to come out amid a range of forested hills several days ago. The hills were bisected by a wide river, which the alicorns had followed for a few days. She'd had hope that they were about to reach whatever goal their tiny minds had set—since she didn't see any way that they could cross a river that must have been wide enough to have swallowed Lord Tylar's manor, gardens, and all without a splash. But yesterday the alicorns had plunged into the stream without any warning at all and had swum across it while she clung on to her mount's mane with one hand and her bundle of belongings with the other, terrified that she would lose her grip on one or the other.

She'd swallowed water more than once, and her chest still hurt. She hadn't said anything to Lorryn, though, for fear he'd decide to abandon the alicorns and continue the trek on foot.
He
was thriving on the hard pace, and she didn't want him to think that she was holding him back. His surprise and approval of everything she'd done so far was so sweet—and she couldn't bear to do without it again. It was the one sliver of triumph in the midst of the grueling journey.

"Well, I think I know what the alicorns are doing, where they're going," he replied, as he studied the ground ahead of them. "We're headed down into a great plain, and I've been seeing what I think are alicorn tracks all along. When we topped this ridge, I
thought
I saw
alicorn
s out there in the grass, all heading south. I think our mounts are migrating."

"What?" she said, surprise breaking her out of her weary apathy for a moment. "Like birds?"

"Exactly like birds," he replied. "I think I know what's going on in their tiny little minds. I've been
trying
to sense their thoughts, but I couldn't make anything of them until just now. You know that they're predators sometimes—"

"Yes," she replied, holding back a shudder.

"I think that they're predators during the winter when there isn't much to graze on, combined grazers and predators during this migration, and then become grazers all summer. I think that while they're grazers, they form up into big herds, but
only
then. That would be so they can find mates and protect their young." He sounded very pleased with himself. "That would be why our hunters scarcely ever see them in the summer and never with young—and why when we hunt them in the winter, they're solitary. They act like predators in the winter, then in the summer, act like grazers to choose mates and bear and raise young."

"Well," she replied, as she thought about that from the standpoint of the fact that she
knew
they'd been created from other animals by some long-ago High Lord, "the High Lords wanted something that could feed itself in all situations, so I suppose that makes sense. But what does that have to do with us?'

Lorryn turned back to look at her, bracing himself with one hand on the stallion's rump. "Not much, except that we're going to have to abandon these two before they reach a big herd. I don't think the herd would tolerate us, and I don't think you can gentle an entire herd of the beasts."

She thought once again of the blood on her mare's muzzle, and shivered. "No, I don't think I can either. But what about the wizards?"

"Well, I've been thinking about that," he replied. "Once we crossed that river, I daresay we're beyond
any
holding the elven lords ever claimed. If we don't find any sign of habitation, we can turn back to the river and follow it for a while. I can start listening for thoughts, which ought to give us a clue where they are. And we can both watch for dragons."

"I've been watching for dragons," she replied truthfully. "And I haven't seen any."

"I haven't sensed any thoughts but beasts' since the river either." He studied her from his seat on the
alicorn
's back. "I also think I ought to put an illusion of full humanity on both of us. Just in case."

She covertly stretched aching muscles, and gave him the same close regard. "I think you might be right," she replied thoughtfully. "You look a little
too
elven."

"Plus, we're out where we might well run into free humans," he reminded her. "I've read a lot of history from the first Wizard War and before. I know of several groups who were supposed to be out here, at least back as far as the histories go—the grel-riders and the Corn People. The last thing I want to do is frighten anyone. Or—well, neither the riders or the Corn People have any reason to think of elves as anything but enemies. I would rather they didn't shoot at us before asking questions."