Elvenbane by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online

imperiled to a place where
they
would be the masters. It was somewhat ironic that the Kin had been gifted with a Gate and thought only of escape, where the elves who had constructed it thought only of conquest. Father Dragon, who had studied the elvenkind the longest of any dragon, speculated that the peril the elves had found themselves in was a peril caused by their own actions. Alara had never yet seen nor heard anything to disprove that, and many things seemed in accord with that theory. The elvenkind occasionally spoke in Council of Clan Wars, the destruction of vast stretches of land, of strife by magic “until the rocks ran like water,” and the overwhelming need to prevent another such conflict. There were no evidences of any warfare on a scale that vast here; conflict between Clans or individuals was kept within acceptable bounds.
    So perhaps they warred until their own home-world was destroyed. Or perhaps they were the losers in a conflict that would permit the survival of no one but the winners. Another reason to keep our existence from them…
    Only the humans were native; whatever level of culture they had achieved before the arrival of the elves was long lost by the time the Kin appeared. By then, the elves had firmly imposed their order on the world about them, with the elves as undisputed masters and the humans as subject slaves.
    And that, of course, was a situation creating fertile ground for mischief…
    She was drifting again. She became annoyed at herself. She had managed the other three shifts easily enough. She had been able to keep her mind on her element. What was wrong with her now?
    She started to stretch; remembered,
again
, that she couldn’t and decided irritably that the problem was the simple one of boredom. As the eagle, she had learned entirely new things about flying and wind and air-currents; feathers behaved in a manner altogether unlike membranous wings. As the delphin, she’d had a whole new world to explore; it had been very hard to leave that form and journey onwards. Even as the cedar, there had been a forest full of life around her, and she had been able to move, at least to a limited extent.
    Here, in the desert, there was nothing but herself and the magical energies of the spring.
    Maybe if she did something instead of sitting there—like a—a stone!
    Alara had not seen even fifty of this world’s summers—as the Kin of her Lair went, she was very young. Some said too young, especially for the position of shaman. Some said too headstrong,
too
contrary, never mind that the shaman was
supposed to
be the dissenting voice.
    She broke custom too often for comfort. She broke it in taking the rank so young; she broke it whenever it seemed to her that “custom” was just an excuse for not wanting to change. They listened to her, but they thought she was reckless, headstrong. And maybe they were right. But maybe
she
was right, and the Kin were letting this soft world lure them into a long dream in the sun.
    At least they still listened to her.
    So far. She wondered how far she could push them. They couldn’t unmake her, but they could ignore her.
    If the others knew of her forays into elven lands, though, they’d have been outraged. Not that taking elven form and brewing trouble wasn’t a standard game for the Kin—tricks of that kind
were fine
if you were an ordinary dragon.
    But that a shaman would so risk herself would have horrified the rest of the Lair.
    That was part of the problem right there; the Kin were only taking
acceptable
risks. Ever since Shoro had been hurt, no one wanted to take high risks anymore.
    That was why no one had come here in so long; they didn’t want to risk being seen, however unlikely that was. And they didn’t want to risk playing with energy this powerful; it might lash back at them.
    Which was why no one else wanted to be FireRunner, except another shaman. Father Dragon said that the Kin used to compete for the privilege, but now, if there