Elvenbane

hands.

A man she recalled only too well entered the room; a tall, blond man with cruel eyes. The guards seemed to know him, too; their conversation ceased, and they backed slowly away from him. Shana's host froze in place, but it wasn't the young boy that this nightmare out of Shana's past wanted...

He scanned the room coldly...and his gaze alighted on the girl. He pointed.

'That one,' he said, smiling thinly. 'I'll take that one.'

One of the guards made as if to protest, but a single glance from the blond one's eyes stopped him; the guard shrugged, and turned away. One of the other guards made his way through the rest of the waiting slaves, seized the girl by the arm, and hauled her to her feet. He would not look at her; he simply pulled her back across the room, and shoved her into the blond man's arms.

The girl looked up into her captor's face, and something she saw or sensed there made her blanch.

The blond man laughed...and as Shana watched in numb horror, drew on an odd, studded glove, and slapped the girl across the face with it, knocking her to the ground. As the girl fell back, Shana saw that her face was cut in a series of shallow, parallel lines, from which blood was welling.

The man looked about at the rest of the slaves. 'Someone here is a troublemaker,' he announced indifferently. 'This is what happens to slaves who make trouble.'

Then he hauled the girl to her feet, and began to beat her, starting with her face...

Just like Meg...

Shana fled her host's mind, vowing through her tears as she did, that this would be the last time she ever stood by and watched the elven lords or their henchmen torture and murder again. One day...soon...she would have the power herself to deal with them.

And the wizards already did.

Shana wanted to scream in frustration. She had requested this private interview with her teacher, and it was going badly; much, much worse than she had ever thought it could. She clenched her hands on the arms of her chair, and tried again.

'We have to do something,' she said carefully. 'I told you what it's like out there; I told you that I think the elves are too busy going at each other's throats to even notice us, if we keep our interference small. But people...good people...are being murdered every day, master! We can't just sit here and let it continue!'

Denelor shook his head. 'It's just not possible, Shana,' he said. 'We simply can't do anything. The humans will have to get along the best they can, just as they've always done. If they want freedom, they'll have to learn to fight for themselves.'

Right. The slaves should fight for themselves, when they were collared and conditioned against even thinking for themselves! 'But why aren't we doing anything?' Shana cried rebelliously. 'There are more of us than there ever were, except before the Wizard War! We don't have to have another war, but we could at least be doing something, instead of hiding like frightened mice!'

Denelor colored a little, and looked away. 'Shana...you just can't understand. The situation is a great deal more complicated than you realize. There are too many factors involved. What good would we do if we helped a handful of halfbloods...or humans...and got ourselves uncovered in the process? How would you like it if the elves discovered the Citadel? Where would you go? Back to the desert?'

'Why should they find the Citadel? It didn't happen before,' Shana pointed out, her hands still clamped on the arms of her chair, as she tossed her hair angrily. 'And that was in the middle of the Wizard War, when the elves knew what we were and what we could do! Not even Dyran knows we exist, you know that! Why should it happen now? Our ranks are closer than they've ever been, because no one wants to chance another split like the one that lost the war! What reason do you have for thinking something like that would happen?'

'Because...because it could,' Denelor faltered. 'The Citadel isn't invisible, you know. We can be discovered, if the elves know what to look for. And it's doubly likely to happen if we start aiding humans.'

'I don't see why...' Shana began.

He interrupted her. 'Do you think that they are all going to welcome us with open arms, greet freedom with gratitude? If you do, you're living in a dreamworld, my child.'

He sat back in his chair, his confidence restored, and Shana sensed that her advantage was slipping.

'Let me enlighten you. Most of the humans out there don't even call themselves'slaves' because they don't think of themselves as slaves. The elven lords have them conditioned to obey...and to think of their fellow humans as the enemy, the rivals. It isn't the elven lords they really worry about...it's the overseer, who is quite likely to be human, and the fellow working next to them. Fully half of them have never seen one of the lords, and don't particularly care if they never do. All they care about is getting that overseer's job... and his privileges. They're only interested in the immediate future.'

He actually smirked, and Shana flushed in frustration.

'That's the difference between us and them, child,' he said fatuously. 'They can't see beyond their noses to the vast horizon. And if we threaten to take away the little privileges they've worked so hard for, and give them only this dubious freedom in return, they won't thank us for it. To them, it'll be freedom...to starve, to shiver in the cold, to lose the promise of a steady meal and guaranteed shelter, with guaranteed rewards if they are good and do what they are told. That is who would betray us, those same humans you want us to help...because we wouldn't be giving anything to them that they want, or need. We would be the enemy, because we threaten their way of life.'

And was that what he kept telling himself, Shana thought, a bit contemptuously. She didn't have a great deal of use for humans...but they weren't the problem. The elves were. The elves were the ones who gave the orders; the humans only obeyed. And she could not understand why the wizards were cowering behind the protections of the Citadel...as she had said, like so many frightened mice. There was no reason why they couldn't be helping the humans covertly...or saving a lot more of the halfblood babies and youngsters than they were now. Most of the halfblood children resulted from encounters with accidentally fertile concubines or with breeders, and most of those were eliminated as soon as they were born. It wouldn't take much work to start substituting wizards for midwives, and the illusion of a dead baby for the reality of a live one.

She had approached her teacher about doing something with purpose in the world outside the cavern; actively helping the halfbloods out there...and intervening on behalf of the humans with wizard-powers as well. She remembered what had happened in the slave pens all too clearly, particularly on long, sleepless nights.

Denelor had seemed sympathetic enough during discussions with his apprentices, but she had discovered during the course of this conversation that he was like all the rest of the senior wizards. So long as what he did would not put him at risk, he would act. The moment there was the slightest chance that any action would alert the elven lords to the reemergence of the wizards...and thus threaten his comfortable life...he would sit back and do nothing.

Just like the humans he thought of so contemptuously.

But he was not the worst of his kind here...

Denelor finished his lecture, and looked at her expectantly. She shook her head, and gave it one more try. 'It's not right, master,' she said stubbornly, hoping that one last appeal might turn him to consider her argument. 'It's just not right. We have power; doesn't that mean we have responsibility, too? Isn't that what you've been telling us? The greater the power, the more the responsibility? Who are we responsible to, if not to those who are helpless?'

'Our responsibility is first to ourselves, Shana,' he replied, after a moment of hesitation. 'We can't do anything if we're under siege by the elves. Think of all the halfbloods we'd be unable to help, if the lords knew we existed.'

Think of all the ones you don't help now, because you're afraid to, she replied, but only in her mind, and under the tightest of shields.

'We do what we can, but we have to be here to do it,' he said, with an air of finality. 'I know it's hard to