Mercedes Lackey - Elvenbane

"Well...she's not precisely a friend." He flushed, and Shana got an odd feeling that there was more about this "friend" than he would ever tell anyone. "But...well...I can almost promise Triana won't turn us in to the rest. She's not what I'd call a conformist, and she doesn't treat her humans the way most everyone else does. She's not exactly in good graces with any of the elders...the only reason they don't come and confiscate the estate is because she never meddles in politics."

She wasn't a conformist? Which probably meant she did things she shouldn't. Ah ! That might explain the flush. Shana's mouth twitched involuntarily, and she fought down a surge of jealousy.

Valyn paused, as if searching for the right words. "Let me see if I can make this clear to you. The elders opposed her becoming the head of the Clan so much that she's never forgiven them, and she hates the Council as much as they are contemptuous of her." He paused again to think. "I don't know exactly how she's going to react to seeing halfbloods, but I do know this much; she socializes with her humans, everyone in her personal household is young, and I've never seen her mistreat or condition a slave. Yet most of them are fanatically devoted to her, at least the ones I've seen."

"She sounds too good to be true," Shana said dryly. The ones you've seen...one wonders about the ones you haven't seen .

Valyn coughed and flushed again. "I have to admit that I've also never seen her really bestir herself for anyone or anything except her own pleasure. The truth is that she spends most of her time thinking up pastimes. And her parties are...ah...notorious. I've...been to a few. The reputation doesn't even begin to cover the reality."

That told her all she needed to know. She didn't think she was going to like this Triana much. But she didn't see what other choice they had. Shana clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached, and tried to think of an innocuous question instead of one of the dozen she wanted to ask.

Shadow raised his head from his arms. "So how are we going to get there, again? I must have missed it. And how are we going to get past Cheynar and his merry band?" Mero asked thickly.

"I think Keman can fly us over one at a time," Valyn said. "He might be able to take all of us at once, if I dare to take the chance of Cheynar detecting my magic and make us all much lighter temporarily."

"Absolutely not," Shana vetoed immediately. "Cheynar doesn't actually know for certain that you're with us, and I don't see any reason to let him find out." She thought for a moment, though with the pounding headache behind her cheekbones it was growing increasingly hard to do so. "There is something I would like to do, though, before we get there. I want arrow-shafts for those claw-trimmings of Keman's. Just in case this friend turns out to be less than friendly."

Valyn shuddered at the reminder of those claw-trimmings; she felt him shaking, though he tried to conceal it. She didn't much blame him; when she'd wistfully said one day that she wished she had some of the elf-shot the chronicles had mentioned, Keman had offered the tips from his claws. Valyn had been skeptical of the efficacy of those claw-bits, until an accidental scratch with one of the points inflamed immediately and sent him into a state of shock that kept them bound to one spot for days. That was what had enabled Cheynar to catch up with them.

Though the claw-tips seemed ill-omened to Valyn, Shana was convinced they'd prove an important weapon against the elves, and she had no intention of giving them up.

:Tell the young elven lord that I can fly two of you in tonight, and you and I can probably come in by dawn if we stay above the clouds.: Keman sounded perfectly confident, which relieved Shana. She had not been certain if he could carry one of them and still fly.

:You weigh no more than a large two-horn, or a small deer, little sister,: he chuckled. : I think I can manage.:

She relayed the information to Valyn, who sighed with relief equal to hers. "Then it'll be all right," he said.

Mero said something inaudible, sneezed, and tried again. "Valyn ought to go first," he said thickly.

"But you're sick..." Valyn began.

"And you're elven," Mero retorted. "And she knows you. Her servants won't dare interfere with you, and you can get us explained." He sneezed again, and Shana had to stifle a coughing spasm. Mero smiled weakly, and said, in what was probably an attempt at a joke, "If she won't take us in, just kill me, all right? It'd be better than being sick out here in the mud."

Shana lost her fight to control her coughs, and her body shook with the violence of the fit. When she finished, she croaked, "He's right. But there's an alternative."

"What's that?" Valyn asked anxiously.

"The desert," she told them. "Keman and I can live there, and if we can, so can you."

"If we can get across country. If we can get across my father's land without him sensing I'm there," Valyn replied gloomily. "If we can avoid him and his hunters."

His gloom communicated itself to her, and she snapped, "Well, it's better than no plan at all!"

He made no reply to her outburst, but then she really didn't expect one. She just huddled back against the trunk of the tree, tried to arrange herself so that the least number of drips hit her, and settled down to wait until sunset.

It seemed to be the longest wait in her life.

Valyn clung to the spinal crest of the dragon and tried not to look down. He'd done so once, and had nearly lost his grip and what little he had in his stomach.

While clouds blanketed the sky, they were low-lying clouds, and Keman had quickly climbed above them, even with the added burden of Valyn on his back. The moon shone brightly down on the mounds of white below as they climbed and headed southwards to elven lands; the full was a day or two away, and it was particularly bright up here in the clear air. It wasn't so bad while they flew above the wilderlands; the cloudscape below didn't look real, and Valyn could convince himself that it was all a very skillfully wrought illusion. But when they reached Cheynar's lands and beyond, the cloud-cover finally broke, and Valyn had made that fatal error of looking down...

He finally kept his eyes tightly closed, and hoped he wouldn't disgrace himself too badly.

He had thought that Keman would have him sit over the dragon's shoulders, just behind the neck and in front of the wings...but instead, Keman had him position himself behind the wings and just in front of the hindquarters: He saw why, now...the muscles of the forequarters were constantly in motion, and he might well have gotten unbalanced or even tossed off by a sudden movement...while here, the muscles scarcely moved at all.

Which was just as well, because there was no way for him to strap himself on. No saddle, no straps, nothing but his own legs and the stiff spines in front of him.

His legs were clamped to the dragon's torso as tightly as he could manage. He had the feeling that when he reached the ground, his legs were going to ache for a week.

Triana's lands were west of Cheynar's, west and a little south. There was a swamp between her lands and the wilderness that bordered Cheynar's...a swamp that not even Keman had wanted to venture into. Then to the south was Dyran's land, and the desert that bordered his property and Lord Berenel's. And to the west...beyond the desert...

Dragon lands. Real dragons. I'm riding a real dragon... sort of . He thought for a moment about all the children's tales he'd been brought up on, the stories of dragons and the stories of taming one to ride.

And he thought about how his arms and legs already ached from holding on, and how one of the flattened spines of Keman's crest was digging into...