Good men. She was glad that she had bought them from Lord Kyndreth, once she'd learned they were not only foresters, but had been trained to serve as war-scouts. They were efficient, unobtrusive, quiet—they already knew how to work together as a team, and they didn't need constant supervision.
And they already knew their reward could be very great indeed if they served her well. She'd given them a taste of it. There was a time for the lash, and a time for the velvet glove, and when you needed someone's utmost effort in a skill, the velvet glove was the only sensible choice.
Besides, they weren't bad looking, any of them, although they were craggy and rough-hewn—and they were a pleasant change from her usual pretty toys.
So despite being chilled and damp, she bestowed praise all around and made sure Kartar was well-provisioned as well as well-fed before he set off to join his fellow tracker to keep watch over Aelmarkin's camp. Dusk lingered for a long time out here, and Kartar had a clear trail to follow. He'd be in place by dark.
In spite of her dislike for this whole situation, things were becoming interesting. Definitely interesting. She smiled again as she accepted a plate of slightly-charred meat from one of the slaves and retired with it into the privacy of her tiny tent. She might never forgive Kyrtian if it turned out he had led her out here on some idiotic wild-goose chase, but if he hadn't—
If he hadn't, this might prove to be the best opportunity for upsetting the balance of power among the Great Lords that had come along in a while.
And there was always one other possibility she could pursue—one which, given the circumstances, could provide a lot of satisfaction even if this was a wild-goose chase.
If Aelmarkin hadn't told her where he was going and what he was up to, he probably hadn't told anyone else. Except possibly Cheynar, and then it wouldn't have been much. Everyone knew these were dangerous forests. Her forest-trackers had been trained for war. His hadn't. And no one knew that she was in these hills as well.
So if he and his men just—disappeared—no one would be surprised, nor was it likely that anyone would come looking for him once Cheynar reported where he'd gone.
She wouldn't win her bet—but she wouldn't lose it, either. And it just might be worth violating every law and compact the Great Lords had sworn just to see his face when she slit his throat.
This was the darkest forest Kyrtian had ever had the misfortune of camping in. He found himself wondering as he kept half of his concentration on the conversation around the fire, and the other half on the sounds out in the woods beyond the camp, if the overcast skies here ever lifted. Surely they had to at some point... it couldn't rain all the time. Could it?
And yet, there hadn't been so much as an hour since they'd entered the place when it hadn't at least misted. And it was a good thing that he and his men weren't depending on that old saw of finding north by looking for moss on a tree trunk, because moss grew everywhere, thick as a carpet in most places. If ever there was a spot meant by nature for ambushes, this was it. So far they'd managed to avoid any more of those invisible whatever-they-weres, but the very nature of the gloom-laden landscape had his whole group edgy.
The snap of a twig brought Kyrtian and everyone in his camp to instant alertness. The whistle of a skylark came out of the darkness, and they all relaxed again. A moment later, Shana and a young male wizard walked into the circle of light cast by the fire, the omnipresent mist sparkling like gems on the edges of their hoods.
"I don't know how you do that—getting past my sentries," Kyrtian complained good-naturedly. "I hope no one else can."
"Only humans that have their special magic, dragons, and Wizards," Shana told him, grinning, as she settled down on a bit of log that one of the men rolled to the fire for her. "Speaking of which—this is my foster-brother, Keman."
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Kyrtian said politely, but warily. "So, you're another wizard, then—"
"Ah, actually, I'm not," the young man said diffidently, with a glance at the Elvenbane. "Shana thinks it's time you were— ah—"
"If you're going to trust us, we have to give you a reason," Shana said briskly. "I've already talked this over with the other leaders, and they think it's time for you to be entrusted with the biggest secret we have."
"Which—would be what, exactly?" Kyrtian replied, wishing she would just get straight to whatever she was going to say.
"First, just indulge me and do whatever it is that you normally do to dispel an illusion or a glamor. Keman isn't exactly what he seems," Shana said, and there was a certain—tone in her voice that made him look at her with suspicion for a moment. Just what was she up to, anyway? Was this "foster brother" of hers fully Elven—or perhaps human? No, if he was
human, there would be no need for all this secrecy and fiddling about.
But it was obvious that he wasn't going to get any further information out of the woman unless he did as she asked, so, with a sigh, he gathered threads of magic and wove them into a net, casting it over the two of them, just for good measure. He might as well see if the Elvenbane herself was under a glamor.
Nothing happened. The two of them remained exactly as they had been when they walked into the firelight.
Now Kyrtian was puzzled. Had the magic been countered? It couldn't have been deflected; he'd have seen that. Could they have absorbed it, then negated it? But how? "Are you carrying something new that works like iron?" he asked. "Or have you—"
He never got a chance to finish his question, because in the next moment, the young man who had been standing at the fireside, looking altogether as normal as it was possible for a wizard to look, suddenly began to ... change. He didn't writhe, exactly, but he blurred and twisted in a way that induced a really violent case of dizziness and nausea. It felt as if something was wrenching Kyrtian's eyes out of their sockets and stirring up his guts at the same time, and Kyrtian clapped his hand over his mouth and turned away. He wasn't alone; the rest of his men were doing the same thing, their complexions in varying shades of green.
What in the name of—
As soon as he turned his eyes away his symptoms subsided, and he looked up, glaring at Lashana, angry accusations on his lips.
Which died, as he continued to look up—and up—and up— into the jewel-like and surprisingly mild eyes of a very large, sapphire-blue dragon.
At least, he thought it was a dragon. He couldn't think of anything else it could be. It was huge, scaled, winged, fanged and taloned. There weren't many other creatures that fit that description.
As he stared, he heard the men behind him reacting to the presence of the creature. One was praying in the ancient language of the humans, one was cursing with remarkable fluency,
and he distinctly heard the thud of a third dropping to the ground, presumably having fainted dead away.
Not that Kyrtian blamed him in the least.
"You can cast all the illusion-breaking spells you like, but dragons can look like anything they care to and you won't know it. The dragons are shape-changers, you see," he heard the Elvenbane say, quite cheerfully, but it was as if he heard her in the far distance. His mind was still too involved with the impossibility of what he had just witnessed, and the sheer presence of the dragon itself. "That's our biggest secret, and that gives us undetectable spies among you Elvenlords. The dragons can go anywhere and be anything or anybody, and you can never tell that they're there, because they're not taking on illusions, they're taking on the real form of whatever they imitate. They've been spying on your people—oh, forever. From the moment the Elvenlords arrived here, the Eldest say."
"Oh," Kyrtian said, faintly. "I suppose—dragons must have been in my camp, then?"
Lashana let out a peal of laughter. "My good Lord Kyrtian, dragons were guarding your tent. And neither you nor your good Sargeant Gel had any notion!"
"Actually," the dragon said, with a note of apology in his deep voice, "I was one of them. Sorry. Hate to eavesdrop and all that, but we really didn't have much choice. We had to know what you were, you understand. Suddenly you were doing all sorts of efficient things against the Young Lords, and we calculated that you'd be coming after us, next."
Kyrtian wasn't entirely certain how the dragon was speaking; the voice seemed to rumble up out of the depths of that massive torso, and the mouth opened and closed, but the dragon didn't have anything like lips, and he couldn't figure out how it could shape words with that mouth....
"At any rate, this is our biggest secret, and now you know it," Lashana continued. "So—well, you can see that we trust you."
"Ah ... yes." Carefully, very carefully, Kyrtian felt blindly for the piece of log he'd been sitting on and lowered himself down onto it. "I... can see that."
The dragon lowered his head until his eyes were level with
Kyrtian's face. "You can do us as much harm, knowing this, as we could ever do to you, you know," the creature said, quietly.
"Forgive me," Kyrtian managed, finally gathering some of his wits about him, "If at this moment—with a mouth big enough to swallow me whole not an arm's-length away from me—I find that a little difficult to believe."
The dragon suddenly reared up, and for a moment, Kyrtian was certain that they were all going to be swallowed up—
But then an enormous, rumbling laugh started somewhere deep inside the dragon, bubbled up through the long, long throat, and emerged from the upturned snout as a trumpeting hoot.