“Oh.” Her head sagged, deflated. “All I could think of was that you’d be hungry.”
“I was. Thank you.” He sat down on his haunches, wondering what to say next. Well, better get it out of the way at once.
“We’re leaving tomorrow.”
Her head shot up, her eyes wide. “Is it because of what she said, your sister? About the elves, and your wizard friends?”
“She didn’t have any reason to lie, and plenty of reasons to tell the truth. We have to assume that’s what she did,” he replied. “We have to get back—Shana has to settle things with the wizards in case the elves do mount an attack, and Lorryn and Rena both think they have a plan to disrupt the situation in the elven lords’ ranks. But we haven’t much time.”
“So you’re leaving.” She looked as if she’d bitten into something bitter. “I promised to help you escape, but it doesn’t look as if you need me now.”
Was that all that was troubling her? “We need you more than ever,” he told her. “With your help, if you let Shana ride you, we can fly at something close to our normal speed. Without you, Kalamadea and I will have to make double-trips.”
She looked into his eyes. “You’re asking me to—to show myself.”
He nodded. “Dora, you have to, sooner or later, or else just go home. And what would be the point of that? I’ll be telling my Lair about yours. Some of our dragons are going to go looking for yours. And you’ll be telling your Lair about all the other Lairs up here! Eventually our Kin are going to meet, whether or not you show yourself to my friends.”
But she looked troubled. “Our laws have always said never to show ourselves to two-leggers as we are.”
He snorted. “My two-leggers already know what we are, and Myre certainly took the matter of the Iron People out of both of our hands! As my two-legger friends say, ‘the horse has been stolen, so what’s the point of locking the barn?’ You won’t be accomplishing anything.”
She sighed. “I said I wanted to help you——-”
“But not necessarily my friends?” he asked shrewdly.
She nodded. “I can’t help it,” she confessed. “It’s hard to think of them as people.”
“You have to start somewhere,” he told her softly, “or you end up like the elves, who don’t count anyone who hasn’t got full elven blood as ‘people.’ Or like Myre, who sees anything that isn’t a dragon as rightful prey. Can’t you see that?”
“I wouldn’t want to be like them.” Her skin shuddered, and she looked away. “Especially not your sister.”
“Then help us, Dora,” he said, weariness creeping into his voice. He wasn’t as good at this persuasion thing as Shana. He really wished he had Lorryn’s gift for it. “Not me, help us.”
She still didn’t look at him. “I have to think about it,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“All right.” He sighed, but what else could he say? He certainly couldn’t coerce her, and he didn’t want to use a different kind of coercion on her by telling her how very, very much he liked her…
So instead, he stretched weary and aching muscles, and prepared to take flight again, back to the tent, and some well-earned sleep. “Thank you for everything that you have done, Dora; I really appreciate it,” he told her as he stretched out his wings. “Just remember; we take off a little past dawn tomorrow.”
“I’ll—remember,” she said slowly, making no move to take to the air herself, keeping her wings furled against her sides. “Good night, Keman.”
“Good night, Dora.” He forced himself not to add anything. She had to make up her mind by herself. Instead, he launched himself into the dark, star-spangled sky, and made a slow, weary flight back to the tents of the clan. From this height, the lights from their lanterns looked as if stars had dropped down out of the sky to arrange themselves in concentric rings on the plain.
This might be the last time he’d see it, too. From here on, they moved into unknown territory. Lorryn, Mero, and Rena would not be the only ones going into elven lands. Someone would have to set up shops to “sell” the silver-plated iron jewelry. It would be very dangerous for wizards to even attempt such a thing.
But shifted dragons, now… there was a possibility.
There was another possibility as well, something he hadn’t bothered telling to Shana, because he didn’t want to get her hopes up. But with Myre out of the way, his way was clear to return to the old Lair and recruit more of the Kin. In fact, there was nothing stopping him from going to other Lairs. That would free the original rebels, as many of them as were willing, to shift into two-legger forms to run those “jewelry shops,” because there would be other recruits to take their places at the Citadel to help the wizards defend themselves. It wouldn’t matter if they shifted to the forms of human slaves; only slaves ran shops anyway. And certainly none of the elven lords would be looking for trouble among the fat and contented merchanter-slaves!
That, he had decided, would be his responsibility, as soon as he was free to pursue it—which would be as soon as they reached the Citadel.
Already he felt the stirrings of impatience. He wanted to be at the job; he had the sensation of time pressing in on them from all directions, the feeling that he was only now beginning a race that had started without him.
Perhaps he had. Perhaps they all had.
No matter. They were in it now. They had no choice but to run this race full-out, and hope that they could finish it.
Dawn came much, much too soon for Keman; despite eating to beyond satiation, and sleeping as only a thoroughly bloated dragon could sleep, no matter what form he took, Keman felt as if he would have been a lot happier with a great deal more sleep.
Two or three weeks’ worth, as a start.
He politely refused breakfast, and went out to the cleared space that Diric had arranged for them so that they would not frighten the cattle as he and Myre had with their shifts and appearance yesterday. He’d been told they nearly started a stampede… and one was only prevented because all of the warriors were out near the herds playing their war games. Certainly Jamal had not anticipated that, and yet it had been the one action he had taken that had a positive outcome yesterday.
He had half-expected a circle of curious onlookers, but there was no one there, and it wasn’t because the Iron People weren’t used to getting up at dawn.
They’re afraid. I can’t really blame them.
That was probably just as well. He planned to take his shift slowly, and that could be very unnerving to two-leggers at the best of times. At the worst—well, he’d seen one or two of Shana’s friends grow rather green, and sometimes lose whatever they had in their stomachs.
Queasiness was not generally a draconic problem, unless one was very ill. He still had a hard time understanding creatures that were so quick to lose what they’d eaten. It seemed a very counterproductive trait.
When he completed his shift, he began stretching his muscles, slowly, as his mother, Alara, had taught him to do before he undertook anything that was going to be physically taxing. And this flight would be physically taxing, there was no doubt of that. Besides his burden of Shana and Mero, he would be carrying bundles of heavy iron jewelry, gathered last night by Kala from all the women she could persuade to give it up. Kalamadea would be doing the same, though his riding-burden would be Lorryn and Rena, and he could carry far, far more than Keman.
It was just too bad that no one had ever learned the trick of shifting the mass of something other than himself into the Out, as a dragon did when he had to shift to a smaller, lighter form. Perhaps it simply couldn’t be done. It would have been useful, though.
The rising sun gilded the grass, and a light breeze blew up out of the South. His shadow reached to the tents and mingled with their shadows. He stretched each limb separately, several times, warming up the muscles and making them more flexible with each stretch. As he began the series of integrated stretches that would finish his warm-up, some of the Iron People began bringing the bundles of jewelry and supplies he and Kalamadea would be carrying. He watched them out of the corner of his eye and tried not to chuckle. They were very funny, really. They eased up to the edge of the area with one eye on him and the other on where they were going. They tried to look comfortable, casual, but they generally failed utterly. They would always drop the bundle as soon as it was humanly possible, and scuttle away as if they had heard he’d refused breakfast and were afraid that he intended to break his fast with one of them.