He nodded, and sat down beside Kala, Diric's wife. After several days of living with these people, he had begun to accustom himself to their idea of beauty, and he could see that she had been a great beauty when she was young, and was still quite attractive now. She still moved with a precise and studied grace, and when she smiled, she glowed. If her figure had spread with age, if gray had crept into her coarse black curls, it hardly mattered. Her eyes were the loveliest that Keman had ever seen on a human or even an elven lord; a beautiful, deep brown, as wide and guileless as a doe's.
"This will not take long, now that I have the trick of it," she told him—and a few moments later, after skillful probing with her tools, the lock gave a click and the collar came off in her hands.
He rubbed his neck reflexively with one hand, and picked up the stylus in the other, grateful now that his mother had taught him reading and writing as the elves practiced it. These Iron People still had no idea what he was—and he was not about to give that particular secret away!
And the sooner he got some maps into this clay, the sooner he would be out of here, free to meet Dora for a flight and a hunt.
It took a little longer than he had really wanted—it proved to be much more difficult than he had thought it would be to translate what he remembered from the air and the roads into scratches of the right relative length in the clay. By the time he had filled the four clay tablets with maps of the territory between here and Lord Tylar's estate, it was fully dark.
"This is very rough," he warned, as Diric placed the last of the tablets into the hands of one of his under-Priests. 'There was a lot of detail I had to leave out because of the scale we were working in."
"Then you will have to return to give me that detail, will you not?" Diric replied, logically. "Indeed, you and Shana and the other two should all be here to give me that detail. It will mean many, many meetings, I would think."
"Oh," he replied, feeling very, very stupid for not seeing that very thing. "Of course. We want to have many, many more meetings, right?"
"As many as it takes," Kala replied, and held out the hated collar. "Here you are, slip this on and push it closed; you will hear it click as if it has locked, but it cannot lock now, it can only latch." She showed him a tiny stud on the underside of the collar. "You push this, and it will release, and you can take it off."
"Thank you," he said, fervently, and slipped the collar back on. He tested her work by closing it, then opening it again, immediately, and smiled with relief when it came open exactly as she had promised.
She only raised an eyebrow at that, but made no comment other than, "You must promise to take those with you; I would not want faulty collars in among the rest. If all you say is true, and if Jamal has his way with his dreams of conquest, we may well need true collars in the future."
"Thank you again," he replied to both of them, and slipped out of the tent door, onto the platform, into the cool breeze that always followed the setting of the sun.
He scampered down the stairs, then stopped by the tent to see Shana, but Kalamadea reported that she and Mero were with Lorryn. "I shall join them shortly," the elder dragon added. "And what of you?"
"Ah—I want to hunt," he said truthfully. Kalamadea nodded.
"See to it that you go well beyond the herds before you shift, then," he only said, "and take the collar with you. We do not want it to be found without you inside it. Not yet, anyway."
Keman promised, and escaped while he still could.
Dora was waiting for him where she had promised, at the edge of the herds. He was both pleased and relieved at that; she could so easily have taken the chance of the day to make her own escape and he would never have seen her again.
:.-Something happened,: he told her as soon as he was near enough to recognize her among the other cattle. :Diric is on our side, and his wife is fixing our collars so that we can take them off!:
Surprise and delight colored her thoughts. :But—that means we can fly together! You can escape!:
:Not without my friends,: he replied immediately, and perhaps a touch more sternly than he had intended.
She ducked her head in shamefaced apology. :I am sorry, Keman. I—I forgot about them. It is hard to think of them when I do not know them.:
The shame in her thoughts made him feel bad. :I'm sorry I snapped at you; it's been a very hard day,: he apologized. :And I haven't hunted since we were caught; I suspect I'm pretty sharp-set by now! My temper is none too certain when I'm hungry.:
-:Then let's go, quickly—: she urged, and he was happy enough to slip his collar, shift into the form of a young bull, pick up the despised circlet of iron in his mouth, and join her in making her way to the edge of the herds. She had done this before; he hadn't, so he followed her lead, moving when she moved, stopping when she stopped.
She waited at the edge of the herd for a very long time, or at least it seemed that way to him. The metallic taste of the collar in his mouth was distinctly unpleasant, and he had to keep his head down as if he were grazing to keep it from showing. It was very heavy, too; it made his jaws ache to hold it this way. Finally she moved out into the grasses, slipping like a huge shadow as clouds crossed over the face of the moon. He followed, his body knowing how to keep his bulky form from making any noise as they moved away from the herd at a rapidly increasing pace.
Soon they were running, but they were too far from the herd for the herdsmen to see, and if a scout or a herdsman heard them, he would probably assume they were some other beast running free, and not two of the cattle. Cattle and other herd beasts wanted to stay together, most of the time. They were uneasy when they were separated from others. Only a cow about to calve would wander off by herself, and no cow about to calve would be running at a bovine gallop.
Finally Dora stopped, in a small valley cut by a meandering stream. .-Here,: she said, her flanks heaving with exertion, and the sweat of her run thick in his nostrils. If he'd been in draconic form, he wouldn't have been able to resist that scent—she'd have been his dinner, not his dinner companion!
:.-Here, it's safe enough to shift,: she repeated, and be dropped the heavy iron ring, only glad that he'd been able to keep hold of it all this time. His intention had been to watch her as she shifted, then to shift himself; hunger overcame his intentions as soon as the ring left his mouth, and he shifted into his real shape more swiftly than he ever remembered doing before.
When his sight cleared and sharpened, the first thing he saw was a young and delicately made female of his own kind, looking up at him with awe and delight. He returned the look with interest, elated that she was a dragon of his own kind, if not his own Kin.
Easy enough to sharpen his night-sight, now that he could shift without even thinking about it There was enough moonlight for him to make out colors, and Dora was particularly beautiful in that regard. Her main color was a soft violet, with a dusting of gold over every scale; her crest and her neck and spine ridges were that same gold over a deep purple. Most females were larger than males, but Dora was exactly the same size that be was, and if she hadn't been holding her head and long, graceful neck lower than his, she'd be looking him straight in the eyes.
The eyes were beautiful, too, a sparkling gold that matched her crest. She was stunning—and he felt altogether stunned. He knew he had never seen a female as lovely as she, never in all of his life!
"My goodness," she blurted, still looking up at him. "You didn't tell me you were handsome."
"Well, you didn't tell me that you were beautiful," he replied, as gallantly as he could while still feeling stunned.
She giggled, and coyly bobbed her head, glancing at him out of one eye in the most charming manner imaginable.
"You must be faint with hunger to say something like that," she replied, breathlessly. "Come on, we'll hunt together."
She turned and launched herself into the air, as graceful as she was beautiful, and what could he do but quickly clasp the iron ring around his wrist and follow?
It didn't take them long to find game—the plains near the Iron People were virtually empty, but that meant that the game that was usually roaming there had been driven out of its usual pastures, into territory where the displaced animals were interlopers. The newcomers didn't know where cover was, where it was safe to rest, and they were under constant threat from the animals whose territory was "rightfully" here. In time, they'd settle down, but just now they were easy prey. The carnivores of the plains were taking ruthless advantage of their vulnerability, and so would Keman and Dora.
They each managed to bring down some sort of plains deer, showing off, he lifted his into the air to set it down next to hers so that they could feast together.
Once the edge was off his hunger, he kept giving her sidelong glances as he ate. More than once he caught her doing the same. Every time he looked at her, he got a strange, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach; like hitting a pocket of air turbulence, but more pleasurable. Every time she looked at him, he felt as if he'd called lightning to chase him.
She had eaten last night; she was quickly sated, and nudged the remains of her deer over to him when she was through. He accepted the gift with gratitude; he was starving, and no "fluttery feelings" were going to interfere with his hunger.
"So what exactly happened?" she asked, preening the blood from her claws delicately. "You said that last night Diric suddenly came over to your side."
Between bites he explained it all to her, right up until the moment that he'd left Diric with the maps. She listened carefully, nodding from time to time, and occasionally asking a question. Those questions showed that she knew more about these people than even Kalamadea, and that she'd personally observed quite a bit more about the important individuals among them in the time she'd been spying on them.
"Jamal is dangerous," she said flatly when he was done. "The problem is, he is also clever, intelligent, and very charismatic. If he is clever and charismatic enough, he could very well convince his people to attack these elves of yours. If he is even more clever, he will find someone or something to attack that will allow, him a victory and some impressive booty, then before anyone can react properly, he'll turn the Clan around and take them back down to the Homelands."
"Then what?" Keman asked, a little bewildered. "What would that gain him except for a few trinkets? Even if he looted all of Lord Tylar's estate, the gain would be next to nothing divided up among all these people."
"But if he didn't divide it?" she countered. "If he kept it all in one big pile? It would look very impressive. It would awaken hunger for more in not only this Clan, but every other Clan he showed it to."
"O-o-oh," Keman said then, seeing exactly what she was getting at. "Then, once everyone wants some of the loot, he makes himself the leader of all the Clans, and comes right back up here."
She nodded. "I don't know if these elves of yours could beat him; if they are clever, they probably could. But I do know that with that many people coming up here looking for loot, the Clans are going to run into your friends unless they can pull themselves into that mountain of theirs and shut all entrances for a year."
He considered that. "They might be able to. The rest of my Lair could certainly make it very unpleasant for Iron People trespassing near the mountain."
"But here is the other thing," she continued. "Even if Jamal suffers enough defeats that he decides to put the Clans in retreat, he'll still be their leader. Once he reaches the Homelands again, he'll start looking for something else to conquer—and sooner or later, he'll find my Folk."
Keman shivered. He remembered Kalamadea telling Shana, quite calmly, that the iron weapons the warriors carried could and would kill both dragons before they could shift. And magic or no magic, dragons in the sky were still vulnerable to powerful bows. "We have to stop him."