Elvenbane

As spring approached, she took to spending all her free time 'watching' through the eyes of others, mostly elves, even as she had spent all her time last fall in roaming the corridors of the Citadel. Her goal was the same: knowledge. Now she knew pretty much what the old wizards could do, and she was on her way to duplicating a number of those powers. What she didn't know was what elven lords were capable of. She wanted...no, needed,...to know, both to know what she might have to counter one day, and to determine what she might be able to duplicate herself. And here were teachers, all the teachers she could ask for. She began learning by observation.

Not even the senior wizards knew some of the tricks she was picking up from the elven mages...or if they did, they hadn't shown any of them to their pupils. And fully as important as magic...at least to Shana's mind...she was learning how the elven lords thought.

Which turned out to be a great deal like the way the senior wizards thought...

Shana told herself to be patient; she was the only member of the group accustomed to thinking of gems in terms of being power-sources. Blond, shaggy-headed Kyle frowned, and stared at the carnelian in his hand. She 'heard' him fumbling around, trying to use the stone, and getting nowhere, as if he were trying to cut wood with a hammer.

He looked up at her, and shook the hair out of his eyes. 'But what if I'm not getting any more power with this thing?' he asked petulantly.

Shana sighed, and dark Elly rolled her eyes and shrugged. Elly, several years younger than Kyle, had already mastered the basics, and was working on finesse.

Shana decided to let her explain. Maybe he'd pay attention to someone he knew. 'Lens-shaped stones focus, Kyle,' Elly said slowly and carefully. 'It's the crystals that increase power. You're using a cabochon-cut stone; you could push from now'till next spring and still have the same amount of power going in as coming out of there. That stone is going to concentrate the power to a little point...'

Someone pounded on the wooden door of the room Shana and her little circle were using as a meeting place. All conversation stopped dead, and Shana started guiltily; and she wasn't the only one to jump. Not that they were doing anything wrong, but none of the senior wizards actually knew anything about these meetings. They weren't forbidden...but if the senior wizards knew about them, they might be.

Operating on the principle that what the authorities didn't know about, they couldn't forbid, Shana had taken great care to see that they didn't learn about the lessons in the first place. She didn't see any reason why she should share the new knowledge she had been gaining with people who weren't going to use it...or at least, weren't going to use it for anything useful.

So the meetings were held in one of the empty rooms in the maze of corridors winding deeply into the living rock of the Citadel. And the only people who knew which room it was were her fellow apprentices...and Zed.

'Shana!' It was Zed's voice, muffled by the door, but recognizable. 'Shana, it's me! I've got something to tell you! It's important!'

Shana jumped to her feet and hurled the door open quickly. Zed slipped inside as soon as she had it open a crack, and shut it behind him. 'Listen,' he said, looking around at all of them with a peculiarly intense expression on his face. 'Do you people really intend to start doing something about what's going on out there, instead of sitting on your thumbs? Or are you all talk and no action?'

'Why?' Shana demanded, a stir of excitement and anticipation prickling the back of her neck.

'Because I just found out that one of Lord Treves's overseers is going to cull about a dozen kids, that's why,' Zed said, anger creeping into his voice, a fleeting expression of outrage moving across his face like a shadow. 'And the mud-clods in charge around here won't do one damn thing to stop them!'

Kyle blanched; he'd very nearly been 'culled' himself, and only escaped when his mother smuggled him out and left him in the woods. 'W-why not?' he stammered. 'Th-they've intervened on Treves's land before! Wh-what's stopping them?'

Zed leaned back against the door, and crossed his arms, all trace of his earlier emotion gone, as if it had never been. 'Because,' he drawled, 'this time the kids are all full-human. They've got the human magic, that's why they're being culled. Master Parth doesn't see any reason to help mere humans, especially not when the overseers already have all the uncollared kids locked up, and we'd have to actually break them out.'

'Master Parth is...not the only answer around here,' Shana said flatly, cold anger settling just under her breastbone. 'And yes, I'm ready to do something.' She looked around her, challenge in her gaze. 'What about the rest of you?'

'You can count me in,' Kyle said immediately, though he was still pale, and looked more than a little frightened.

'And me,' Elly added, an eye-blink after him.

There was no dissension, and no hesitation; the rest followed Shana's lead in agreeing to help within a heartbeat of one another.

'Fine,' Zed said with satisfaction and approval. He pushed away from the door and joined them. The rest of the apprentices looked up at him expectantly. 'Here's what's going to happen. The overseers don't actually know which kids have the wizard-powers, so they rounded up every uncollared child in the area and they're going to be testing them tomorrow. I know who they are, and the kids all know who they are. And if we work fast, and together, we should be able to get them out of the pen before the overseers find out which ones are the kids they really want. So, first off, have any of you ever seen the holding pen at Treves's manor?'

Kyle had, as Shana knew. Kyle had most certainly seen it; he'd been in it before he was taken by his mother to be left for the wizards to find.

Kyle didn't hesitate; he grabbed a stick of charcoal and a bit of scrap paper and began drawing a map for the others. Within moments they were huddled together over the drawing, proposing and discarding plans.

Shana turned back to Zed, to see that he was grinning from ear to ear.

'You planned this, didn't you?' she said accusingly, whispering so that the others wouldn't overhear. 'You did...I know you did...'

'Not this, exactly,' he admitted, 'but I knew something like this would come up. I'm getting tired of Faith's attitude about full-humans. I've been tired of the way he won't interfere in any situation that looks the tiniest bit risky, and I've felt that way for a long time. And after I saw how you were shaping up, I was hoping you were going to put some spine into some of the 'prentices so we could have a group to work with. One or two couldn't make much difference...but a group this big can.'

'I tried to put some spine into some of the masters,' she said sourly, 'but it didn't work.'

Zed's only reply was a snort. Then he leaned over the shoulders of the huddled 'prentices, and studied Kyle's sketched map.

'All right...' he said, and they quieted down so quickly that Shana was consumed with envy. 'This is what I'd do...'

The fire crackled, and scented candles burned all over the room, imparting a warm light no mage-made glow could duplicate. Parth Agon sipped his stolen wine, and frowned at the goblet. Not because of the bouquet of the wine...that was fine. It was something else entirely that left a sour taste in his mouth.

The new 'prentice, Shana, to be precise.

He turned the goblet in his hands, watching the play of light over the matte metal surface without really seeing it. Shana was a problem, and was likely to become a greater one.

Somehow, some way, she had learned to shield her mind even from him. Somehow she had acquired the power to keep that shielding intact against all of his efforts to penetrate it. That was cause enough for alarm. Parth had gotten and held his power by knowing exactly what the others were thinking at all times. Shana represented a disturbing blank spot in his knowledge.

Furthermore, she had begun teaching a carefully chosen circle of her peers how to accomplish exactly the same thing. The blank spot was spreading. He was not pleased. And that was by no means all...

She was a bad influence, he brooded, holding his goblet in both hands as he slumped in his chair. She was asking questions the masters would rather not answer...and that he would just as soon she didn't ask. Why the wizards were remaining in hiding, for instance; never interfering except when there was no chance they could be