Mercedes Lackey - Elvenblood

She caught the twinkle in his eye as he said that. "And if they don't ask politely, we can decide we're too tired, hmm? Oh, Denelor, if you weren't on my side, I'd be worried!"

Denelor shrugged, but he had a wry grin.

"We dragons have a solution, too," Keman said shyly. "There are minerals, gems in these hills. Gold, we think. We can bring those things up, shape-shift into elven form, and go into one of the elven cities to trade for things we all need, if you cannot bring them from the Citadel. Cloth and tools would be the best, we thought—foodstuffs, seeds for planting perhaps."

Denelor brightened at that. "Oh, now, that would be excellent!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing a little in the stone of the kitchen-chamber-to-be. "That solves a problem of continuing supply. Much as I hate to admit it, Shana, I don't think that there are many of us who would know an edible forest plant from an inedible one, and one cannot live on nothing but meat without getting sick."

"I was afraid you'd say that," she replied with resignation. "Oh well." She took a moment to order her thoughts. "In the short term, the best I can do is get my circle together and start bringing things over from the old Citadel, then," she decided aloud. "If the elves didn't loot the place, there was a lot of stored food there that was too bulky to take with us in the evacuation. That would be flour, tubers, other vegetables—"

"Don't forget blankets," Denelor reminded her. "You will gain a great number of friends if you bring blankets in quickly. Stone is cold to sleep on."

"What about the sheep?" she asked slyly. "That's wool for future blankets, mutton for future meals—I can bring them in alive now, you know, and there are a couple of the human children that can perfectly well tend a flock of sheep. They do reproduce themselves, you know."

He grimaced involuntarily and she giggled. "Oh," he sighed, "I suppose you must, after all. But—"

"Don't worry, Master Denelor," she told him with a chuckle. "They'll be much too valuable in this situation to start slaughtering. You won't be forced to eat mutton any time soon."

"Thank goodness for that," he muttered as she moved off down a side corridor, trailed by Keman, to find Zed, the first of her "circle" of young wizards. "Now—may the powers grant that we do not find ourselves in a position where even old mutton would be a feast."

Working together, the young wizards were able to find and fetch a fair number of articles that very day—and as Denelor had requested, the first object brought by magic from the old Citadel was a huge kitchen kettle, and the last, a pile of blankets from the storeroom. The latter were snatched up greedily by the "old whiners," Caellach Gwain predictably among the first Shana noted that there wasn't a single word of thanks from any of them, but she kept silent about it, in part because she was too tired to make an issue of the slight.

And the next day, fortified by a good breakfast of oat porridge made in the very same kettle they had brought in first, from the oats they had brought in as the last task, she and her group started in all over again. Those who were the very best at scrying examined rooms they were familiar with, in order to identify what was there and whether or not it might be useful.

They confined their attempts, at first, to objects that would not be harmed too much if they were clumsy with their magic, and which were not too heavy. That had been Shana's plan. She reasoned that until they knew their limits, it was better to bring in a few things at a time than to overstrain themselves trying to "lift" too much. Their first targets were therefore the kitchen and the storerooms, and they systematically looted both of everything that was still there, unbroken, or unspoiled by vermin.

The elves, it seemed, hadn't found the old Citadel after all—although they certainly would have if the wizards had remained there rather than fleeing. That was a cheerful discovery; it meant that virtually everything was still there, in tact, and that eventually everyone in this new Citadel would have his belongings back.

Although she still didn't understand this preoccupation with possessions that the older wizards showed, Keman and the other dragons seemed to understand. They couldn't explain it to her, though, and after several tries, gave up.

"Let me just put it this way," Kalamadea told her, finally, with surprising patience. "The older the wizard, the more likely he is to want, desperately, all his familiar things—and the more likely he is to be less troublesome if he has them around him. He's like an old dragon curled up with his hoard. Don't try to understand why, just accept it, and use the fact."

She nodded, with a wry shrug. It would be a small price to pay for peace, she supposed, even though this "price" represented quite a bit of effort on the part of her and her friends, effort for which they would probably not even receive thanks. And it was very, very tempting to put the "whiners" on the very end of the list—

But if she did that, they could and would accuse her of playing favorites, and while they were waiting, they would be whining even more, and probably causing more trouble.

"Storerooms first, though," she told the dragon fiercely. "Things we can all use before personal possessions! Denelor agrees with me on that."

Kalamadea just shrugged. "It is your magic and that of your friends," he replied, and backed out of the bare little cave she had taken for her home. Kalamadea's and Keman's were both nearby, and she suspected that Kalamadea had been the one who had smoothed the walls and the ceiling, built in the sanitary facilities and the fireplace. It looked vaguely familiar—very near to the room he had once occupied in the warren of caves in the old Citadel, in fact.

But at the moment it held only a bundle of reeds and the two blankets she was using as a bed, and her scant pack.

A bed would have been nice… and she had to admit that the old wizards weren't entirely wrong about longing for some of the old comforts of their previous lives.

Extra clothing would be nice, too, she reflected wistfully.

All that she had now had served her over rough country for the better part of two seasons, and it was much the worse for wear. She had often thought about piecing together another dragonskin tunic from skin the others had shed; such a tunic would have held up to briars and rainstorms with equal ease. She'd never had time enough, though. Maybe now she would.

Still, first things first. There were plenty of storerooms to empty, as they honed their skills at magically transporting a variety of objects longer distances than any of them had ever dared to try before this.

None of them would even have dreamed of trying, if Shana, in her apprentice days, had not made an experiment with a tiny cache of gemstones, to see if any of them could be used to increase her power and range. She had discovered that, yes, they could, and had begun teaching the use of stones to her peers, when a group of human children with the human wizard-powers on one of the elven estates was about to be eliminated. She had insisted on leading a rescue to save them—thus being the one to meet with Valyn and his halfblood cousin, Mero, as they made their own escape from Valyn's father. And that fateful meeting had carried with it the seeds of the destruction of the old ways of hide-and-conceal of the wizards of the Citadel.

Within two weeks, Denelor had the kitchen, bath, and laundry functioning, with human children employed in all three, as well as some of the older wizards—none of whom qualified as "whiners"—who were not fit for heavy labor. By that time, Shana and her crew had begun looting the private quarters of the senior wizards themselves.

Favoritism or not—the first ones they ransacked were their own and Denelor's, though they kept very quiet about it, transporting the belongings directly to the appropriate rooms rather than bringing them into the central chamber they were all starting to call the "Great Hall." After that, though, they stifled their irritation and started on the whiners' things, beginning with Caellach Gwain.