Mercedes Lackey - Elvenbane

"Then he stuck just his head out and looked all around," Shana continued. "Anything that was new he sat and watched to see if it was going to move at all. That was us; we didn't move, so he must have figured we weren't going to." She thought for a moment, watching the bright spots of sunlight on the white stone of the gazebo making negative-lace patterns. "Probably a hunter would have gotten tired of waiting and taken a chance on jumping on him once he got his whole head out of the burrow."

"But if we had moved, he could have been right down the burrow before we could blink," Keman finished, lifting his head from his foreclaws.

"Do you see why he is so hard to catch?" Alara asked. "Even though he is not a terribly intelligent beast?"

Keman nodded; Shana pursed her lips in thought.

"He's not very smart," she said at last, "but he's really careful and he's fast. That makes up for smart, I guess."

"It can," Alara acknowledged. "And the adult ground squirrel you've seen is a survivor...for every adult, there are ten little ones who never learned to be careful enough and became prey for other animals. You should both watch this particular squirrel, and see how he uses his speed and agility to protect himself...and try to think of ways in which his behavior could become a trap. Keman, you must learn how to imitate that behavior and avoid the traps; Shana, you must learn how he thinks so that you will be able to sense his tiny thoughts and become one with him."

This time both Keman and Shana nodded. In order to learn to hear the squirrel's mind, she was going to have to learn to think like him. She hadn't known that.

"Now, you've had your lessons in languages, and you've had your lesson with the ground squirrel," Alara said, smiling indulgently on both of them. "Can either of you think of any questions for me, before I go scry for storms?"

Shana recalled, belatedly, the elven children's book she was supposed to have read. "Why aren't there any human books?" Shana asked. "I know as much human as elven, so why aren't there any books?"

A shadow passed behind her foster mother's eyes. "It is said that the elven lords did not want their slaves to learn to read or write," Alara told her, her smile fading. "They felt that if their slaves could only pass things on by word of mouth, there was less chance of rebellion. So there are no books written in the human tongue, and in fact, it is also said that tongue died out. Most humans spoke a mixture of elven and human, and many spoke only pure elven."

"Are there books from the Kin?" Keman wanted to know. "I've seen the carvings, but do we have real books?"

"Yes," Alara told him. "A few, and all handwritten, done when the writers were in other forms. And most of them were written by shamans. I'll show you the written language later, when you've mastered written elven."

Spoken human, elven-human, elven and Kin . Shana sighed. It seemed like an awful lot to learn. But if she was going to go out into the world like Foster Mother did, she'd need to know all of them. Keman was learning all of them too, and he was older than she was. She wondered what a human looked like, or an elven lord...were they like the Kin, only smaller, or maybe different colored?

She looked up from her musing to see that Alara was watching her thoughtfully. With a start of guilt, she wondered if Alara knew she hadn't done her reading lesson yet. Shana nodded, trying to hide her guilt. I'd better think of an excuse before she asks me ...

But Alara did not ask if Shana had finished her lessons. Instead, she said, "That will be all for today. We'll concentrate more on languages tomorrow. But in the meantime, both of you study the little ground squirrel, and bring what you learn to me tonight after dinner."

Shana escaped the confines of the gazebo with a feeling of reprieve.

Alara watched her foster daughter scamper away across the hard-baked ground and experienced mingled emotions: pride, and guilt. The child grew more attractive with every passing day...a lithe, lean girt, surefooted and athletic, a remarkable combination of frailty and toughness. Her fine-textured skin had darkened to a warm brown from constant exposure to the sun, and her bright green eyes sparkled with humor more often than not. From her elven father, she inherited delicate bones and a beautifully sculpted face with high cheekbones and a determined chin. From her mother, she took her dark, deep-auburn hair that shone in the sun like old copper. Her little tunics of patchwork dragon-skin gleamed against her sun-gilded limbs as if she wore a corselette of enameled metalwork.

She had become indispensable to Alara, and even those of the Kin most opposed to her presence agreed grudgingly that she was both attractive and useful. With her small size and clever hands, there were many things she could do that the Kin could not, unless they shifted...and fully half of the Kin in this Lair preferred not to shift to anything as small as a human child.

That accounted for the pride.

Though there were those Shana would rather not have done anything for, Alara could usually convince her to do so to keep the peace. She was stubborn, but not stupid. She knew very well that there were still those of the Kin who felt she had no place here...though she did not know why.

And that accounted for the guilt.

Alara knew she should tell the child... and she couldn't bring herself to. But if she didn't, Shana was going to find out on her own. And then what was Alara going to tell her?

There was no doubt in Alara's mind that the child was as bright as any of the Kin. If Shana had been born a dragon, Alara would have had no hesitation in officially training the girl as a shaman. As things stood, however, all Alara could do was to teach her fosterling alongside Keman, and see where Shana's inclinations led her. One thing was certain; the child's mental abilities were already impressive. And when Shana came into her full halfblood powers at puberty, Alara was not prepared to wager much on any individual coming against her.

Sometimes Alara wished she could trade Shana for Myre. This was one of those times, she thought, as she slid out of the gazebo and into the glaring sunlight, her belly-scales rasping a little on the stone steps. Alara was so exasperated with her second offspring that she hardly knew what to do with the child. Myre was lazy, self-centered...nothing moved her but her own interests. She lied constantly, and was surprised when her mother caught her. But worst of all, she was stupid. She did things without thinking. Myre should have been born a human; she'd have made a perfect concubine. And Shana should have been born into the Kin.

And that only brought Alara full circle back to her original worry, and the shadow of the mountain above her seemed to fall on her thoughts as well as her body. How was she to tell Shana that the girl wasn't a dragon?

Alara paused at the foot of the mountain behind her gazebo, and made certain the scrying-crystal in the pouch- around her neck was secure. She tucked her wings in close to her body, took just enough time to lengthen and strengthen her claws, and began the climb, setting her claws into the first of hundreds of tiny cracks she would use to climb to the top.

It was a trek she had made any number of times in the past. Some of the shamans preferred to scry deep in the hearts of their lairs, surrounded by countless crystals, and buried in the silence of the caves. But Alara found it easier to read the paths of the air as high up in the sky as possible, with the wind on her skin and the sun warming her and filling her with energy.

She moved up the rocky side of the mountain as easily as one of Keman's lizards climbing a wall. And why not? She had learned to climb like this by studying them. Like the lizards, she could climb near-vertical surfaces, so long as there were cracks and crevices she could wedge her claws into.