Elvenbane

'I wasn't seen, and I wasn't close enough to be seen,' he replied crossly. 'I'm not an infant. I've hunted before...'

'But you've never been the quarry,' the girl interrupted. 'How far behind us are they?'

'Not by much,' he muttered uneasily. 'But I covered our trail. He'll never read it through what I laid down.'

'But he'll read the fact that someone muddled it with magic,' she retorted. 'I just hope he won't find it again for a while.' She looked up at the leaden sky, and rain dripped down her face from the continual drizzle. 'And I hope this stuff takes care of any other kind of trail we leave.' Then, without another word, she shoved a dripping branch aside and turned down a game trail that was heading mostly north. Valyn hesitated a moment, then followed her, Shadow right on his heels, Keman bringing up the rear, his feet shape-shifted into deer hooves to confuse their tracks. And hopefully, their trackers.

He had wanted to protest that they needed to rest...but that was two sets of hunters they'd eluded now, and he wasn't sure how many more might be out here. Neither, evidently, was Shana.

This was not just for hunting children. Cheynar would never have committed more than one party for that. This was for wizard hunting...Cheynar knew, or guessed, that the children hadn't escaped on their own. And if he assumed there were wizards in their full powers out here...

Valyn's blood ran cold. There would be no quarter, and no escape, if Cheynar could help it.

Cheynar already disliked humans; where wizards were concerned, 'hatred' was not an adequate term for what the elven lord felt. And as for what he'd do when he caught them...

Valyn tried to move a little faster.

Shana closed her eyes and thought of the harsh, scorching heat of the desert sun, of the soothing warmth of her bed at the Citadel, trying to conjure up a little of that to ease her wretchedness now. She failed completely.

They huddled together in soggy misery under the meager shelter provided by a fallen tree and a lean-to of pine boughs. All of them except Keman, that is; he had shape-shifted to something very like a small dragon, while Valyn had watched in fascination. Shana was used to seeing him shift; Valyn and Shadow had only seen it once...and at the time, they had been too overcome by shock to think about the mechanics of shape-changing. Neither of them had realized that Keman's 'clothing' was part of him until he reabsorbed it this second time, just before the shift itself. They had gawked while she had gathered material for a shelter, and for a little bit her resentment at being the only one working had been enough to keep her warm.

Now Keman lay along the top of the log, watching for predators, keeping a mental eye out for their pursuers, perfectly comfortable, with his metabolism adjusted for the cold, and the rain sliding off his scales. And the three of them huddled together on the ground beneath him.

Wistfully, Shana wished for the same power. As the last into the shelter, she had gotten her clothing completely soaked; she shivered despite the nearness of the other two. In fact, she was too miserable to appreciate Valyn's proximity. She rubbed a nose that felt numb, and coughed, an ominous tickle in the back of her throat heralding more misery to come.

Mero sneezed, and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

'Are you all right?' Valyn asked his cousin anxiously. Shana suppressed another cough and a glower. But her annoyance rapidly melted beneath her general misery, and she had to fight back tears of self-pity. She didn't want to give way now. She had spent a great deal of time and effort on appearing tough and capable. There was no point in destroying all that work by resorting to weakness and leaking tears...

Even though she really wanted to break down and cry right at the moment; she was freezing and wretched and she had the feeling she was about to come down with something awful...and Valyn was worried because his stupid cousin had sneezed once.

'I think I'm getting another cold,' Mero replied in a gluey voice; and under other circumstances Shana might have felt some sympathy for him, for he sounded as if he felt just as awful as she did.

'Shana...' Valyn said without turning (mostly because he couldn't; they were wedged in so tightly that none of them could move). 'Shana, can't we do better than this? We can't afford for Mero to get sick, not now, not with Cheynar practically on top of us.'

That again. As if she wasn't fully aware of it every waking moment and most sleeping, with a feeling of claws and fangs closing in and ready to rend her in pieces if she once closed her eyes. Fear was such a constant presence at her shoulder that she tasted the metallic flavor of it in her food, and her heart raced every time she heard a noise she couldn't readily identify. The equal fear in Valyn's voice was not enough to mollify her...he wasn't thinking of anyone but Mere, he wasn't even paying any attention to the fact that she was sick, too.

'No,' she said shortly, her temper finally shattering and falling to bits. 'No, we can't. This is the best I could do. Everything I've learned has had to do with attack and defense. I'm sorry, but nobody ever taught me how to conjure up shelter out of nothing.'

She would have said more, but a coughing fit interrupted her, and Valyn craned his head around to look over his shoulder at her, his expression of annoyance turning to concern.

'Are you all right?' he asked. She shook her head, and shivered even harder as a trickle of cold water ran through the pine boughs and down the back of her neck. Despite her determination to show no weakness, to her complete mortification, she did start leaking tears out of the corners of her eyes.

Maybe they'll look like rain, she thought hopelessly. 'I'm probably coming down with the same thing,' she said around the lump in her throat. 'And I don't think the weather is going to break for a while.' Now she couldn't keep resentment out of her voice. 'You elves are to blame for that...every time you muck around with the weather patterns somewhere, it throws something else off. This place has no business turning into a rain forest, but that's what's going on, and we're stuck in the middle of it.' Valyn looked startled at her sudden outburst; she recollected herself, and softened her voice, putting an effort into sounding a little less accusatory. 'At least Cheynar's not going to get around very fast in this mess.'

She managed a tremulous smile, and got the tears stopped. Valyn frowned as she coughed again, her chest tightening painfully.

'We can't afford to have you sick either,' he pointed out, gently. 'Cheynar's not that far behind us. If you're sick, who's going to hunt, find the camps, and guide us through this place?'

'I don't think anybody's going to have a choice,' she retorted. 'And if I could magic up a big house with warm beds and hot drinks, don't you think I would?'

The thought started another tear down her cheek...its path was the only part of her that felt warm.

Valyn's jaw clenched, and he stared at her closely. 'You look awful,' he said. 'And my guess is that Shadow's fevered. You're both going to be ill before nightfall.'

And just what am I supposed to do about it? She retorted in thought. And what difference is it going to make?

Apparently it made some difference to Valyn. 'That's it,' he said decisively. 'We don't have a choice, we need to get out of here and back to someplace civilized.'

'Right,' she replied, with an edge of sarcasm to her voice. The rain increased marginally; just enough to send another cold spill down through the branches onto the back of her neck. 'I'll just stroll up to Lord Dyran's door and ask him if he'll please take us all in. After all, he should be overjoyed to see us; his renegade son, two halfblood wizards and a dragon.'

To her surprise, Valyn half smiled. 'That's not exactly what I had in mind,' he said, his sweetly reasonable tone setting her teeth on edge. 'But it is close. There's an old saying about the best place to hide being in the enemy's territory. So...let's try it.'

'You mean...double back on Cheynar and try to hide with the slaves on his estate or something?' she asked, aghast. 'We'd never get away with it!'

He shook his head. 'That's a little too much of enemy territory...and besides, Cheynar has too many experts in detecting wizards. I think we ought to drop in on a friend of mine. The estate is within flying distance for Keman. If we went by night, he could ferry us one at a time without being seen. She's just the kind that's likely to take us in and hide us, just for the sheer thrill of harboring fugitives.'