Elvenbane

followed by a cry of mind-sent anguish.

Keman! Even in a wordless mental shriek, she felt his personality. Even as she recognized him, she heard him scream again in pain...this time in a very vocal shriek that rang across the hills.

The group of startled youngsters below her 'popped' back into dragon-form as they lost their concentration, but Shana had no thoughts or energy to waste on them. She was up and running across the ridge as fast as her paltry two legs would carry her.

At first, all she could see as she topped the ridge was Rovylern at the bottom of the cut below, wings mantling, tail lashing, neck curled as he looked down at something. Then she realized what he was looking down at, as another shriek come up from underneath him and echoed from the rocks. Rovy had Keman pinned beneath him, foreclaws clamped in the thin and sensitive skin where Keman's forelegs and wings joined the body. Shana had to block the waves of pain coming from him; she couldn't imagine how anyone could feel that agony and choose to ignore it.

'Say it, lizard!' Rovy hissed down at his victim, his eyes narrowed in satisfaction, spinal crest high, teeth bared in a feral grin of pleasure. 'Say it! Call me Master! Say, TU do anything you want, Great

Rovylern!' Do it, or I'll make you think I've just been playing with you!'

'Go stuff your tail up your...' The rest of the insult was drowned in a howl of pain as Rovy tightened his clawhold. Keman had no intention of surrendering and submitting to Rovy, but those intentions couldn't last much longer.

I'll kill him! I'll peel his scales off! Shana couldn't even frame coherent thoughts after the first glimpse...anger boiled up in her, and everything narrowed to her target.

A terrible, molten pressure rose in her chest, her eyes misted with a red haze, and she heard herself growling like an enraged louper.

Keman screamed, and the power exploded from her. Three rocks the size of her head erupted from the ground beside her where they lay half-buried, and launched themselves at the bully, hurtling down at him in the blink of an eye.

Shana maintained just enough sanity and control that they did not target his head; instead, all three thudded into Rovy's midsection below the spine and just past the ribs.

They caught him off-balance when they hit him, hurling him off Keman's back with the force of their blows, knocking the breath out of him.

He landed on his side, flailing wildly, and barely able to squeak. He beat the air with his free wing as Keman scrambled to his feet, and Shana slid down the side of the ridge in a shower of sand and stones to land beside her foster brother.

She was still white-hot with anger, and the bloody marks of Rovy's talons on Keman's hide did nothing to assuage that anger. Rovy clambered to his feet, staring at both of them in blank astonishment, too surprised even to move.

But Shana was not too surprised to act. She had only begun her assault. Everything Rovy had done to her or Keman burned in her memory, and she was quite prepared to take revenge for all of it.

'Bully!' she shouted, using her power to throw fist-sized rocks at his head, so he had to duck and dance to avoid them. 'Coward! Fewmet! You're a throwback, Rovy! You're nothing but a big, dumb lizard! Pea-brain! Sneak! Sparrow-heart! Rat-face! Tail-chaser!'

Rovy's antics as he danced about trying to avoid the hail of flying rocks were truly amazing. But Shana was faster than he was. Finally he didn't duck quickly enough, and one of the stones caught him right above the eye, making him howl with pain.

'You like that?' Shana screamed, hurling a dozen stones at once, as Rovy backed up against the hillside and she followed, giving him no chance to escape. 'I've got more where that came from! Try picking on someone your own size, Rovy, you fewmet! You big bully, I'll show you how it feels to get picked on! I'll beat you black and purple! I'll...'

'Shana!'

Shana had been concentrating so hard on Rovy that she had ignored everything else, and the voice seemed to come out of nowhere, startling her so that the last few rocks dropped in midflight. A large claw clamped down on Shana's shoulder...too large to be Keman's.

Broken out of her fit of rage, she looked up, into Alara's frightened face.

But behind Alara every dragon in the Lair was either winging in or scrambling over the ridge.

Foremost of those was Lori, Rovy's mother, who landed beside her abused offspring and covered him protectively with her wings, craning her head around with the most vicious expression on her face that Shana had ever seen. Her eyes were wide with rage, her spinal crest bristling, and her teeth bared clear to the back of her jaw.

'There, you see!' she shrilled at the top of her lungs.

'You see! I told you all, and you wouldn't listen! That thing is dangerous, it's rabid, it can't be trusted!'

'Now wait just a moment, Lori,' Keoke began, interposing his body between her and Shana, when it looked as if she was about to lunge for the girl.

'No!' she screamed, her eyes red with a rage as great as Shana's had been. 'No more waiting! It's too dangerous to live! Kill it! Kill it now!'

Chapter 9

THERE WAS ONLY one place in the Lair large enough to hold a Lair meeting: the huge cavern from which all the rest branched. It was full now, nearly a hundred of the Kin crowding the floor or perched on rock outcroppings or formations around the walls and rising from the floor itself. The convoluted cavern blazed with multicolored radiance, some from the magic lights kindled by the adept of the Kin, the rest reflecting in prismatic brilliance through the thousands of crystals mounted in the upper walls and ceiling.

The cavern throbbed with the cacophony of voices; the Kin that did not have an opinion on this subject were few indeed. The echoes doubled and trebled the voices, making it that much harder to hear. Alara held her peace and her temper, and let the others finish shouting themselves out. Right now there was no reasoning with the most fanatic and frightened of the Kin. Most of them had had no idea up until this moment that Shana was anything other than an exotic pet. The girl's abilities, especially the magnitude of those abilities, had come as a tremendous shock.

Of the rest, those who had known what Shana was were divided and vocal. Lori, for one, had been screaming at the top of her lungs since the Lair meeting began; Alara had hopes that she was beginning to wear even on the tempers of her supporters.

Surely by now she must be getting hoarse, at least.

Alara spared a pitying thought for poor Shana, confined in a dead-end cavelet at the end of the main cavern, with a stone too large for her to lift blocking the entrance. They had left her alone and in the dark, and only Alara and Keoke's presence had kept Lori from tearing her apart on the spot. Keoke had taken advantage of his position as most senior dragon present to order the confinement, pointing out that the boulder they used to stop up the entrance to the cavelet was too large for even Father Dragon to move.

That left the others thinking it was too large for Shana to lift, especially given the size of the rocks the halfblood had used on Rovy. Alara wasn't so sure. The entire altercation with Rovylern bespoke control to her, not unthinking violence.