What that “important work” was, Shana had yet to learn. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they might be working on ways to defend the Citadel or keep the magics practiced within it cloaked. She herself had seen no evidence of that, however, nor had anyone else she’d spoken to. Unfortunately for all, it was most likely that the “important work” consisted of arranging their personal quarters to their liking, and trying to bully the dragons into making changes and additions before those changes were scheduled.
Caellach himself had treated Shana to a lecture on the duty of an apprentice to her masters, and a tirade on how an apprentice who had single-handedly brought about the wreckage of her masters’ lives should be grateful they still permitted her to walk among them. Shana decided then and there that she had much more important work to do than fetching things as well—seeing if there were any more wild humans to the south. After all, it stood to reason that the plains could support any number of groups of “nomadic herdsmen,” and one of those groups might retain knowledge of human magic from the times before the elves arrived. The elves didn’t own the world, though they might think they did, and what they knew about it was probably only a fraction of what there was to know.
Shana had another reason for her expedition, though it was one she kept to herself. Realistically speaking, even though Collen’s traders had been friendly, there was no law saying that the next batch of humans that stumbled on the Citadel might not be hostile. According to the old chronicles, humans had warred with other humans long before the elves came here. Fullblood humans might consider the halfblood wizards to be as bad or worse than the elves themselves.
Her absence would give the circle a clever excuse not to accede to Caellach Gwain’s more unreasonable demands if they didn’t feel like it. If she—the most powerful of the lot—wasn’t there, they would “naturally” be very limited in what they could bring. Caellach had already gotten far more than his share of their time and effort. If they told him that getting the particular trinket he had his heart set on would mean that he and the rest of the wizards would be enjoying a dinner of oat porridge instead of nice fresh game—and that they would be certain to let everyone know why there was oat porridge on the table that night—he would probably go away.
And if the old whiners didn’t like that answer, there was no way they could refute it, since they hadn’t bothered to learn the limitations of the new ways of using magic. What was even more delightful, it was not a situation they could win by addressing that ignorance; if they learned the new ways, they would obviously be capable of doing their own retrievals. Denelor had promised that was how he would deal with the situation, and even Parth Agon, who had grown heartily tired of their demands, had agreed to back him up. The Chief Wizard had changed a great deal in the days past, and in Shana’s opinion, it was all for the better. She frankly had not expected it; she had really thought he would become more like Caellach and not more like Denelor. Having him on her side instead of opposing her had made her situation marginally more comfortable.
“I will tell them that since they have proven that they are ready to learn new magics, they must, of course, practice them diligently,” Parth had said without cracking a smile. “As the Chief and most senior, of course, I have the obligation to set such an assignment on those who are my junior. And how better to practice than by retrieving their own gear?”
The rest of the circle had greeted the solution with sighs of relief, and everyone, even old Denelor, had been amused by the thought of Caellach Gwain begging one of them to teach him the use of stones.
The most important of the supplies had been brought to the Citadel, and certainly by winter their stocks would be adequate to hold them for a while. Collen would be returning with the fruits of his trading in a few weeks, and that would further supplement their stores. Some judicious experimentation was going on in the way of finding edible forest plants, by following the tracks of wild boar and bringing back samples of everything the boar ate. Shana was not particularly needed as leader or as figurehead for any of that, and if she was out there looking for allies or possible danger, no one could say she was shirking her duties. Shana left the new Citadel with something of the sense that she was fleeing into freedom; she had been all too aware of the oppressive weight of responsibility on her shoulders, responsibility she had never wanted and was only too glad to leave behind her in the caves.
So now the four of them were far from the stronghold, past the point where the forests faded into prairie, in the grass-covered foothills with nary a tree for miles. Keman and Kalamadea, rather than assuming their halfblood forms, were in their own skins; though riding dragon-back was uncomfortable, it was easier than walking for leagues and leagues under a hot sun—and it was much easier to spot things from the air. Terrain like this was ideal for aerial scouting, for nothing escaped the sharp eyes of the dragons, and there was nothing in the way of cover to hide beneath in the land below them. Game was plentiful enough here: herds of wild horses, of other grazing animals, even of alicorns. The dragons had no trouble feeding themselves, and resolved to tell the others from their Lair about the abundance of game here.
Their search thus far, however, had turned up nothing other than those herds of grazers. There hadn’t been so much as a single human herdsman or signs of one since they left the hills.
They were all four lounging next to a tiny spring-fed pool at midday, taking a rest Shana and Mero were disinclined to fly in the heat of the day; there was no way to keep a hat on one’s head while flying, and the sun’s rays reached a punishing strength by about noon. The dragons loved the heat, and were only too happy to provide shade for the two halfbloods while they spread their wings and soaked up sun, basking contentedly.
The pool watered a small stand of scrub willow; judging from the number of tracks in the mud, it played host to a vast array of animal life in the course of a day and night. A tiny stream threaded away from the pool, into the grass, its path marked by more scrub brush as it snaked off in the general direction of the far-distant river. The waist-high grass all around them was full of insects that chirped and droned, and thronged with tiny birds that flitted from stem to stem and happily ate those insects. Shana watched one of them, balanced on a long stem of something that bent and waved beneath his light weight, singing his declaration of territory to any invading males.
A hot breeze rose up, making the grass stems bend, carrying the scent of drying grass and the damp-earth smell from the pool toward Shana. “You know, there is one thing I’ve wondered ever since I found that one horrid, heavy old chronicle about the elven invasion,” Shana said—not to Mero, but to Kalamadea. “The one that was about as thick as your leg, Kalamadea. I’m sure you probably saw it; reading it was the best cure for insomnia I ever encountered.”
“Hmm? The one by Laranz the Insufferable?” Father Dragon said lazily, his eyes closed to mere slits as he absorbed the sun and heat He kept his size close to that of Keman for this trip, but his natural size was far larger, and if he had taken it now, he could have provided shade for a small army. Dragons grew as they aged, and Father Dragon was the oldest dragon Shana had ever seen or heard of. He had meddled, shifted into halfblood form, in the first Wizard War, and he had not been young then. Shana had found his personal journals in the old Citadel after the wizards rescued her from an elven auction block and guaranteed discovery of her elven breeding. They formed part of the reason why she was here right now.
“Who were the grel-riders? And how in the world did they manage to keep the elves from conquering them when they had no trouble eliminating just about everyone else?”
“You’ve seen grels, of course,” Kalamadea said, after a long pause. “At least, you’ve seen the desert-grels, the ones that the traders ride.”
Shana nodded; the caravan of traders that had captured her when she was first exiled from the Lairs had ridden grels, and used them as pack-beasts.