Elvenbane

There was a sand-and-wind-worn hollow beneath the wall of one of the ruins, a place where the sun wasn't touching even though it was directly overhead. Shana tried to go into trance to check for snakes or scorpions, but was so tired and so dizzy she finally gave up.

Instead she poked around inside with one of the leg-bones of the skeleton, and when she stirred up no more than a single flat desert toad, rolled herself into the shade and shelter, and promptly went to sleep.

Chapter 10

KEMAN BRISTLED WITH resentment and stared at Keoke until the Elder dropped his eyes. Keoke's crest was already flat, and Keman didn't intend to give in to him one tiny bit, no matter how hopeless his cause. If he could make Keoke and his mother feel horribly guilty, he would. 'Rovy tried to hurt me real bad, and you know it,' the youngster said angrily, his voice full of undisguised contempt. 'He's been hurting everybody younger or smaller than him and you know that, too. And you let him. Then, when Shana gave him what was coming to him, you punish her and let him get away without even getting yelled at! Is that fair?'

'Lashana was not of the Kin, Keman,' the Elder said, looking steadfastly over Keman's shoulder. Keman figured it was to avoid looking into his eyes.

I hope you feel rotten, he thought angrily at the elder dragon. I hope you feel awful. I hope you have nightmares about Shana for the rest of your life.

'But I am, and she was just defending me!' he insisted. 'If she'd been one of my loupers and she'd bitten Rovy when he was hurting me, would you have punished her?'

'It's different,' Keoke said lamely. 'You're too young to understand, Keman, but it's different...'

'Why?' Keman interrupted. 'Because she's a two-legger? Why should it be different? Mother raised her like one of us, with the same code of honor, and she lived up to it and Rovy didn't! It's not fair, and you know it!'

'Keman!' his mother said sharply, with enough force that he turned away from Keoke to look at her. 'You're still young, and Keoke is an Elder. This situation is very complicated. There is more at stake here than just Shana's welfare.'

That was what she said aloud, but she added, mind-to-mind, :If you keep up this insolence, I'm going to have to do something neither of us will appreciate. I can't explain it all to you now. Someday you'll understand.:

Keman ducked his head between his aching shoulder blades, his spinal crest flat in submission, but muttered rebelliously, 'It's not fair. You know it's not fair. And nothing you can say is going to make it fair.'

The adults exchanged a glance that he had no trouble reading. Exasperation, shared guilt, impatience, 'well- you-know-children-he'll-learn-better.' He slunk away, back to his cavelet, his stomach churning with anger.

Right now all he wanted was Rovy's throat in his claws. Rovy was ultimately the one responsible for this, him and his stupid mother. It wasn't fair. They should never have done that to Shana. She didn't know anything about the two-leggers; Mother had never told her. All she knew was the language and the writing. And now they'd thrown her out there and she was going to get hurt. Keman was positive of that.

He wanted to claw something, bite something, scream his rage from the top of the mountains. He'd already staged one temper-tantrum when he had asked where Shana was and his mother had had to tell him what had happened to her. That had gotten him nowhere. He'd thought he could get some justice if he forced one of the Elders to see what had been done to him. So he'd insisted on seeing Keoke as soon as he could stand without hurting too much, and this was all the result he'd gotten out of that interview.

He'd intended to show Keoke how wrong he'd been, how Shana had been the hero, and Rovy the villain. Then when Keoke capitulated he would demand that the Elder go find Shana and bring her back. He never got any farther than insisting on how unfair it all had been. Keoke refused to admit that his decision had been in error, on the grounds that Shana was not of the Kin. 'Unfair' simply didn't apply to her, nor did honor or the Law, and that was the end of it.

He wasn't going to get anywhere with his mother, either, that much was certain. She backed Keoke; he didn't know why, but it was plain she had no intention of helping him or Shana.

So if anyone was going to save Shana, it was going to have to be him, all alone.

Do what you think is right, had been Father Dragon's first advice to him about Shana. Well, he knew what was right. If she was going to get thrown off in the desert somewhere, it was only right that he share her exile. After all, she was there because of him.

Except that right now he couldn't fly... which was going to make some serious problems with mobility.

He could fix that problem, he thought angrily, hugging his own little secret to himself. And Mother didn't know he could. She thought he was going to be lying around in bed for at least a week.

He eased himself down into his bed, seething with defiance. I'll show her. I'll show them all.

He arranged his aching limbs carefully, and put himself into the shape-shifting meditation. A common place enough state of mind; he practiced it several times each day. Except that this time he wasn't going to shift anything, he was going to fix it.

Of all the forms he knew, he was most familiar with his own body, naturally enough. He had to be; he had to know what he was shifting out of in order to know what to change. Like all dragons proficient in shape-shifting, he knew exactly how each muscle should look, work, and feel. So in order to heal the damage Rovy had done to him, it was only a matter of taking the damaged muscles and shifting them until they were whole again.

Only...

He had figured this out when he realized that the most proficient dragons never stayed injured for very long. He'd had no idea the actual practice would hurt so much. After all, shape-changing didn't hurt at all.

Within heartbeats his shoulder muscles burned as if he'd poured molten rock on them; his wing muscles twitched wildly and sent stabs of lightninglike pain down his back each time they did. He quit immediately, and tried to figure out what he was doing wrong.

Nothing, he realized finally. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just making real changes to things, making himself heal faster. And everything hurt because all the nerves were alive, and hurting the way they would if he was healing, only faster.

He started again, hoping it would be better.

It wasn't.

At least a dozen times he was ready to give up, and let nature heal his injuries in its own time...but each time he did, he saw Shana, bravely standing up to Rovy and telling him off, while the bully ducked and screamed as her rocks hit him.

Shame overcame him; she was somewhere out in the desert, with no shelter, and no water, and no friends to help her. This was nothing. And if he didn't get himself in flying condition soon, she might die.

He went right back to his healing.

Suddenly, after what seemed like days, the pain stopped.

His eyes flew open, and he flexed his arms and wings wonderingly. They worked perfectly; no pain, and not even a trace of stiffness. He couldn't see his own back, but the skin wasn't pulling as if it had been scarred. He had