LITMIR.BIZ

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those; they might be needed, one day, when deposits near Leveanliren’s Lair were worked out. It would have been better if the deposits near home had been purer ores, and better still if they had been salts as these were; dragons needed substantial quantities of metal in their diets – the closer to pure, the better – for the growth of claws, horns, and scales.

      Shed skin carried the old scales with it – she supposed one could eat one’s old skin, but that seemed so barbaric, somehow.

      This ruin was perilously close to one of the elven trade routes, but it should be possible to mine the deposits with scouts in the air.

      Alara’s thoughts darkened as she scanned the trade route for elven minds, or the blankness that meant collared slaves and bondsmen. So far the Kin had been both lucky and careful. Elvenkind did not know that they truly existed. And the Elders were right and Father Dragon was wrong, she thought. They must never learn that dragons existed. One at a time, even with magic to aid them, the elves were no match for one of the Kin … but if elves came upon the Kin in force …

      If she had not been stone, the spines on her neck would have risen. She remembered all too clearly her encounters with elves, moments when they had caught her on the ground, in draconic shape. Only shifting quickly into elven form, and presenting the effect as an illusion, had saved her.

      Sightings in the air presented no problem; in fact, that was something of a game with the younger dragons – they would find a remote spot with only a single elven observer, and shift briefly into dragon-shape, then land when they knew they had been spotted. Once on the ground, they would shift again; into some animal, or into elven form. When the observer came looking for the dragon, the ‘elf’ he encountered would deny having seen any such thing.

      Only once had a dragon made the mistake of shifting into human form for an encounter.

      Alara felt herself starting to shift back, her anger overcoming her control of her form.

      Shoronuralasea would never walk without a limp after that encounter, but there was one less elf in the world.

      A few such inescapable confrontations had taught dragons that the elves, for all their power, were vulnerable in curious ways. The alkali of the water the dragons preferred was secreted into poison sacs in their claws – and the merest scratch from a dragon’s talon, even unvenomed, was enough to send an elf into a shock-reaction.

      And if she had to, she thought grimly, yet with an odd satisfaction, let one of them get within touching distance or between her wings, and there would be nothing left to question.

      That led to thoughts of impatience. She welcomed and wanted this child, but there were so many things she dared not do – size-shifting was not encouraged during most of pregnancy, and for good reaosn. To shift size meant that one would have to shift a great deal of mass into the Out, and such a shift could have dire consequences to a developing child. Alara missed the freedom to take whatever shape she pleased. But most of all, Alara missed the Thunder Dances, when all the dragons called in a lightning storm and flew among the clouds at the height of it.

      Dragons sometimes died in a Thunder Dance, dashed to the ground by a sudden, unexpected downdraft. Or met with disaster as wingbones broke or membranes tore, leaving them to flail helplessly, falling to their deaths. Occasionally one of their fellow dancers would notice the plight, or hear the mental screams for help, and wing in to the doomed one’s side in time to save him, but that didn’t happen too often.

      But the risk was part of the attraction after all.

      Alara thought back to her last Thunder Dance with a longing so intense she would have shivered in any other form, and a deep and abiding hunger. And she had been the FireRunner, the position of most honor and most danger –

       Rising and falling, the plaything of the winds, steering through them by yielding to them –

      That showed mastery of the air, more than any gymnastics in gentle thermals ever could.

      Calling the lightning to herself as it leapt from cloud to cloud, letting it run over her skin and arc up into the thunderheads above, every scale, every spine outlined in white fire –

      And a single momentary lapse of concentration would let the lightning flow through her instead of over her impervious skin, paralyzing her or even killing her.

      Casting lightnings of her own, from wingtip to wingtip, or from wingtip to cloud –

      Most dragons could arc while on the ground; only the ones with skill hard-won from years of practice could arc and fly. That Alara could even arc to another point was a measure of her skill, skill that had won her a most desirable mate after the last Dance.

      If she had possessed lips, she would have licked them at the memory of Reolahaii, shaman of Waviina’s Lair. Long, lithe, lean – in color a dusky gold beneath the rainbow iridescence of his scales – a mind as swift as the lightning and a wit as sharp as his claws; in short, he was a combination Alara found irresistible. He was the FireRunner now, for both their Lairs, until the little one was born and she could resume her full duties. Double duty – twice the danger, for Running in so many Thunder Dances, but twice the thrill as well. And, unless circumstances threw them together again, it was unlikely they would meet except at Dances, much less become permanent mates. Neither his Lair nor hers would be willing to do without their shaman. The duties of the shaman were too time-consuming for either of them to make the three-day flight between the two Lairs very often. She permitted herself a moment of self-pity. A shaman’s life was not her own.

      But Alara was not of the temper to wallow in self-pity for long. Duties, yes, she mused, but pleasures as well. Best of all was being the FireRunner –

      There was nothing like it; choosing the fiercest of the weather patterns, forcing the lightning to hold back until the breaking point –

      Then calling it, a hundred killer bolts at once, and streaking down out of the sky with the fire a spine’s length away from her tail, diving, falling like a stone out of the heavens and down, into a narrow cleft just wide enough for her to drop through it, lined on all sides with carefully placed jewels, gems that the lightning would tune and charge …

      Gems winking, a rainbow of stars set in the walls, the rock itself a breath away from her wings, the air actually splitting with her passage, and the fires of heaven chasing her down into the earth – while the gems in her wake blazed until the cleft behind was alight with a hundred colors of glory –

      Until at the last minute she would break through into the cavern beneath, spread her wings with a thunder of her own, and snap-roll out of the way as the last of the lightning discharged itself into the floor of the cavern, fusing the rock and sand at the contact point, and stray discharges crackled over her as she landed …

      She started to sigh; then, when she couldn’t, recalled her form and purpose for being here. She was supposed to be contemplating Fire. Earth-fire. She didn’t think lightning counted.

      She stretched her earth-senses again, sending them resolutely downward. She hoped she was doing it right. She wasn’t a shaman when she carried Keman. And all Father Dragon would tell her when she had left on this pilgrimage was: ‘Do what you feel is right.’ She still felt more than a little disgruntled by his apparent lack of cooperation. She knew it was part of a shaman’s work to give no direct answers, but she thought it was carrying things a bit too far to play the same game with another shaman!

      And she could almost hear Father Dragon saying ‘Oh, no it isn’t …’

      There were times when this business of being contrary got on her nerves, and she was the one being contrary!

      But that was what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to keep the Kin awake; supposed to see that they didn’t become too complacent and look for easy answers. Or frivolous ones …

      Easy answers and complacency were very much a danger among the Kin. Ever since they had come to this world, there had been very little to challenge them.

      Alara herself

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