Elvenblood

they used to steal from the elves. In a few months, they would have a new headquarters that was better than the old Citadel. Certainly it would be more defensible.

'I like this place,' Keman said simply, as he dropped down beside the other three. Shana followed his gaze, over the rolling hills covered with mixed grasslands and forest, and nodded. So far as she or any of the others had been able to tell, there were no signs that anyone had ever lived here before. If there were any of the monsters that lurked near elven-held lands, they were few, and kept in hiding. The elves were probably operating under the assumption that the wizards had found a place to build a settlement by now, but they couldn't know where it was, exactly, and with luck, the wizards would be able to keep it that way. Hadn't they kept the existence of the Citadel a secret for centuries? The Citadel had been surrounded by elven holdings, too! Surely they would be able to keep this place from being found out, at least for a while.

'I like this place, too,' Mero said unexpectedly. 'I just wish we could get rid of about half the blockheads we had to drag along with us. A little less complaining and a little more work would get things done a lot faster.'

Shana made a sour face. 'I know what you mean,' she replied. 'If I hear one more graybeard whine about the old days and how much better everything was, I may pack up and leave again. I can do just fine in the woods; I'd like to see any of them manage to find me, too!'

Then let them do without their 'leader' for a while and see where it gets them. See if any of them can figure out how to keep everyone fed and all, when they don't even know how to hunt!

'Don't tempt me to join you,' Mero replied. 'I may not be used to dragging around in the wilderness, but camping out in snow and rain is preferable to listening to them complain about the tiniest inconvenience! They could be dead instead of building a new home, and that would be a whole lot more inconvenient than anything they're having to do without right now!' He shook his head. 'I'll never understand them, I guess. Look at everything you've done—you broke the siege, you made it possible for them to fight the elves to a standstill, you helped drive the bargain that kept the fullbloods from following us—we all four scouted for months and months to find this place—so what's their problem? Can't they be content?'

Shana shrugged; she didn't understand it either. She was used to living in far more primitive circumstances than this would be—in fact, for the first fourteen years of her life, she hadn't once had cooked food, for the dragons that cared for her ate everything raw, and she had done the same. But Mero, poor Valyn's halfblood cousin, had been used to the soft life of the special servant of an elven lord, and had adapted to scouting and roughing it just fine. Why couldn't those whining wizards do the same? For Fire's sake, if they were so deprived, why didn't they just use their magic to re-create everything they'd left behind?

Because they'd have to cooperate, pool their power together, and use the trick I learned with gemstones to concentrate it, that's why. They will never cooperate with each other as long as each is so jealous of his own power, and they'll never admit 1 might have learned something useful

It was Kalamadea that answered them both. 'I believe the source of their discontent may only be because we are no longer in immediate peril,' he said thoughtfully, scratching his chin with one finger. 'Once the danger was past, the old, inflexible ones stopped recalling that it was Shana who was their chief aid against the elves, started to recall that it was Shana who brought the elves down on them in the first place, and remembered all the comforts that she has therefore deprived them of. It seems logical for them to think of Shana as the author of their misery, rather than the elven overlords.'

Mero snorted. 'All the more reason for you to take me with you if you decide to leave these complainers behind. They might decide that if you're not around, they should blame me!'

Shana laughed, and patted her friend on the shoulder. 'It's a bargain,' she told him lightly. 'If I bolt, I'll take you with me.'

Keman rolled his eyes upwards. 'If you bolt, you'd better not forget to tell us!' he exclaimed. 'We dragons are only here because of you, little two-legger, and there's no reason to stay if you leave! You think we want to have to listen to them whining without you to keep them off our backs?'

'I can't imagine why anyone would,' Shana told her foster brother. 'Not for more than a heartbeat, anyway.'

Caellach Gwain surveyed the cave that would be his home for what was left of his life, and seethed with resentment. The dragon that had 'prepared' it for him had smoothed the floor and walls, it was true, had drilled a ventilating shaft right to the surface, and it was no longer as dank as it had been. He'd been promised that later another dragon would return, and shape a little cubicle into a bath and 'necessary,' and another into a fireplace and chimney. The dragons swore that there would be no trouble in creating a real sanitation arrangement, nor a good heat source.

But it was still a cave, with his few belongings heaped pathetically in one corner, and nothing was going to make it into anything but a cave. It was not his comfortable suite of four real rooms with real walls, floor, and ceiling of warm wood, in the old Citadel. There was no furniture, and there would be none until someone learned how to make it. No bed, no tables, no chairs—no rugs, no fireplace, no cushions, no blankets…

No one to clean for me or cook for me, and everything topsy-turvy, with brats that should still be apprentices playing at being our leaders, and people who should be leaders forced to take their orders. Caellach grimaced angrily. And if it hadn't been for those same brats, I would be sitting in my favorite chair with a nice cup of tea right now, or perhaps a glass of mulled, spiced wine. His mouth watered with longing.

He had not forgotten that this Shana creature was the reason they had all been forced to flee the Citadel in the first place, and he was not about to let anyone else forget it, either. If she hadn't rashly used the old transportation spell to bring her and her three idiot friends straight to the Citadel the moment she thought they might be in a trifle of danger, the elves would never have known that it and the wizards in it even existed. Things would still be the way they always had been, the way they should be.

Comfortable, safe, and secure.

They kept telling him, whenever he tried to insist on his rights and get his apprentices back to their appropriate work, that 'things were different now' and he would have to see to himself. He didn't see why things should be any different, especially not now. Wasn't it the duty of the young to see to the welfare of their elders? Hadn't it always been that way? And the elders paid for that with their wisdom and experience, which was only right.

But apparently that wasn't the way this new order operated. 'Anyone who is able-bodied will have to take care of himself,' he'd been told, rudely. 'We'll get you started, but you'll have to make your own quarters after they're roughed in, and you'll have to see to your own needs.

The nerve of them, he seethed. That had to have been on that Shana's orders! She had never liked him, because he'd put her in her proper place more than once. He'd be willing to bet that her own master Denelor wasn't doing without the services of his apprentices!

And just what was he supposed to do to make this into something livable, anyway? He couldn't steal what he wanted from the elves, the way he had in the old days; that was part of the bad bargain that Shana had made to get the elves to agree to leave them alone. Anyway, the moment I did, they'd know where we are now. That would be stupid, even by that brat's standards. Was he supposed to go cut down trees and build his own bed, chests, chairs? Was he supposed to weave his own blankets? Were they all mad?

Of course, they're all mad, he told himself, grinding his teeth. They wouldn't have done this if they weren't mad. They wouldn't have fought the elves in the first place, they'd have rendered that Shana creature unconscious and left her for the elves to find. They had no reason to suppose there was more than one halfblood, after all. She should have willingly sacrificed herself to save the rest of us! It was her duty! Not dragging us into a war we didn't plan on and never wanted! Not turning our whole way of life upside down just because she thinks she's better than her elders!

He felt a flush of anger crawling up his face, and forced himself to calm down.

It won't be this way forever, he promised himself. It may not even stay this way for long. The other senior wizards have been listening, lately, when I've tried to show them reason. There are probably a lot of them looking at holes in the stone and thinking now that I was right. Shana brought all this on us; there's no reason for us to listen and obey when Shana and those dragons start upsetting the proper order.

There was every reason for the older and wiser wizards to start returning things to the proper order. They were no longer under a state of siege, nor were they trudging through the wilderness. It was time to set things right again.

And if Parth Agon would not take care of the task, Caellach Gwain was just the man to see that things did