Elvenborn

'And the more confused the Old Lords are, the more likely that they'll be alarmed—I see where you're going with this.' Mero chuckled unexpectedly, and hugged her. 'You're right, Rena, you're right! I'll try and reach Shana and explain all this and see if she falls in with the plan. I'll keep trying until I reach her.'

'And I'll wipe their memories back to their capture,' she said happily, secure now that her plan would work exactly as she had hoped.

In a few days, the dragons arrived—but quietly, without fan­fare, in the guise of Wizards. Rena had never seen Alara in that form; Shana's foster-mother had chosen to resemble a very sturdy woman of indeterminate age, with high cheekbones and hair of deep brown. Kalamadea, of course, wore the guise with which the Iron People were already familiar, and when he and she walked into the camp at dawn, Diric and the other leaders of the group welcomed him—though the welcome was tem­pered with the memory of the last time they had seen him, in his real shape of a huge, blue-black dragon.

'We've come to carry off your inconvenient guests,' Father Dragon said genially, beaming as if he'd had the greatest of treats bestowed upon him. No matter that the last time anyone of the Iron People had seen him, it was as a dragon; he behaved so normally, and looked so harmless, so inoffensive, that it was hard for anyone to think of the menacing dragon with those guileless green eyes peering at them out of a sea of wrinkles. Father Dragon played the part of an eccentric little old man to perfection, and soon had Diric chatting with him like the old friend he was. With Diric acting so normally, the rest of his people relaxed as well.

'And what have you done with Myre?' he asked, at last.

'We gave her over to the keeping of the Corn People for

now; they do not trust her in the least, for I told them only that she had nearly betrayed us and her own people to the Demons.' Diric looked smug, and Rena had to smile. That was at least partly true, after all! 'They give her field tasks to do, and no food if she will not work. She has quickly learned the value of carrying out what she is told to do.'

'Obviously, you aren't concerned about her escaping?' Alara made that a question; she couldn't quite control the pain she felt at this position her second-born found herself in, but Diric misinterpreted it.

'Oh, no, lady! If she wishes to run off, we will let her! She is not so great a help to us that we would miss her, and she cannot remove the collar that keeps her looking as one of the Demons' slaves. She cannot go back to the Demons, so—the Wizards, we, the Corn People and the Traders all know of her treachery and would not remove it.' He smiled. 'If she wishes to wander the plains, alone and unaided, in preference to remaining with the Corn Folk where she has food and shelter, well, let her sa­vor her freedom.'

Alara sighed, but said nothing; Kalamadea covered her si­lence with chatter. Rena gave her a look of sympathy; for all that Myre had been a miserably thankless child, Myre was her daughter. It must have torn poor Alara's heart to have to side with one child—or children, counting Shana as Alara's foster- daughter—against another.

'We'll wait until dark to take them, so we don't distress your people unduly,' Kalamadea was saying quietly, as the other El­ders of the tribe made their cautious greetings, lost interest, and went back to their usual tasks.

'That is well,' Diric said judiciously, then brightened. 'But you must also see the progress my Kala has made upon your other need! And you must see the new jewels my lady-smiths have made! Come!'

Rena and Mero spent the rest of the day in the company of Diric and the two dragons. Diric must have shown them every jewelry forge in the camp, and although Alara did not once ask to see her wayward daughter, Rena had to wonder if Diric was

trying to distract the dragon to keep her from making that very request.

At last—at long last, for even Rena was beginning to tire of watching jewelers at work, a task she normally found fascinat­ing—the sun set, and darkness fell.

She left then, to see to the two she now considered 'her' charges. She found them insensible, so thoroughly drugged that not even a hearty shaking could wake them. Nothing less would do; obviously they couldn't ride out of here as she and Mero had done, a-dragonback. They would have to be carried.

She and four of the younger Iron Priests bundled the uncon­scious Elves into the same kind of swaddlings that the Iron Peo­ple used for their infants, only adult-sized, complete with a rigid board very like a cradle-board. The swaddlings would prevent them from moving, the board would ensure that they wouldn't bend in the middle; now they could be put in a net sling, to be carried in dragon-claws back to the Citadel.

Once packaged up like a pair of parcels for delivery, the Iron Priests each took an end and unceremoniously carried the mo­tionless bundles out into the darkness.

Rena followed behind, as the young Priests in their peculiar cloth headresses and leather aprons carried the bundles as far as the open grasslands outside of the camp, put them down in the waiting nets, and hurried off. They didn't look back and Rena didn't blame them; if she herself hadn't spent so much time with Keman in all of his forms, she would have been nervous around the dragons.

And Kalamadea and Alara would be back from feeding at any moment....

The sudden 'wind' that came up all around her, the thunder of unseen wings overhead, warned her that they were here.

Silvered by the moonlight, casting black shadows that stretched across the frantically-waving grasses in front of them, they backwinged in beside their charges. Rena stepped back in­voluntarily; she had somehow forgotten how big the fully adult dragons were in their true forms. Father Dragon usually re­duced his, to fit in with the others, and to be able to use the lairs inside the Citadel—but dragons never stopped growing en-

tirely, and he easily dwarfed Alara, and Alara was twice the size of her son, Keman.

They were like forces of nature, too big, too powerful to re­ally comprehend; she put her hands out in an unconscious ges­ture of warding. She might not even have been there for all the notice that they took Of her.

They had eaten well among the herds, and they had a long way to go, all of it this very night, before the two Elves woke. There was no time for farewells, and in her heart, Rena couldn't blame Alara for wanting to be gone from the place where her youngest languished in her prison of iron collar and human flesh.

Instead, each paused on the ground only long enough to seize a net and hook it into claws as long as Rena's arm. Then, with a leap for the sky and a tremendous booming of wings, they were off.

In moments, they were only dark shadows, beating slow wings against the silver moon. Then, gone.

Rena strained her eyes, but couldn't see them—and jumped when Mero touched her arm.

'Well,' he said quietly, 'it's out of our hands now. You've given Shana a tremendous weapon, my love, and now it's up to her to make the best use of it. You've done your part; you can relax.'

Only when he said that did she realize that she could. And that Mero had said that she had, at last, given Shana material help unaided by anyone. She glowed with pleasure at the mere thought, and laughed a little.

'I suppose I can, can't I?' she replied, and turned so that his arm went around her shoulders. 'Well, then—' she continued, playfully, feeling strong and emboldened by her success, 'Don't you have some—ah—courting to catch up on?'

For a moment he stared at her, as if unsure of how to react. 'I do?' he said, a little stupidly.

—then he grinned, broadly. 'I suppose I do,' he said with far more sense ...

... then proceeded to make a very good start on all that catching-up.

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