Never mind that Lady Moth was clearly the Wizards' friend, that Lorryn's own mother and sister were fullbloods. This was different. This was consorting with the Great Lords' chosen general. She could try to explain until her face was blue, but if Caellach Gwain broke the news at an inopportune time, well—
:That's my worst fear, because there are some of the youngsters who think that there was a second burst of transportation noise right after you and Keman left.: She sensed Lorryn's worry, and she more than agreed with it.
:Fire and Rain!: she swore angrily. :That would be just like him, wouldn 't it!: Even through her anger, she tried to think if she'd detected anything since she'd arrived. :He might be here. He might not. If he came in far enough from us, I wouldn't have heard the arrival. :
:Look, I'm going to do two things, and the first is that I'm going to turn his room into an iron cage,: Lorryn told her. :And when he tries to transport back in—he'll get a shock. Zed tried it with a rock, and what happens is that you bounce back to where you came from.:
:With a demon of a headache, I can only hope,: she said sourly. :He'll try to go to another part of the Citadel, of course—:
-.Maybe, maybe not. Because the next thing I'm going to do is start planting iron wedges all over the Citadel except in designated 'magic rooms,' and those will be brand new ones that Father Dragon is going to carve out for us.: He sounded—well, rather pleased with himself for coming up with a plan so quickly, and she didn't blame him.
:Zed can pour simple wedges for us easily enough, can't he?: she asked.
:With no problem at all; he's already pouring them, the children are planting them, and Father Dragon has the first magic room carved out. I've been wanting to do this for a while, anyway. It's one more defense against the Elvenlords, even if it is a nuisance for us to confine doing magic to those special rooms.: He sighed. :Still, it'll be worth it, and we can have the whole Citadel protected by tomorrow. Caellach Gwain will have no way of knowing where the safe rooms to transport to are or what they look like. So to get back here, he 'II have to apport to somewhere he knows.:
Her anger faded as she considered that. .7 don't think he's set foot outside the caves more than a dozen times since we arrived. There can't be that many places where he can apport back.:
-.And I can have all of them watched by people we trust. That leaves only the old Citadel for him.: Lorryn sounded absolutely smug when he said that, and she didn't blame him.
:He can go live there and rot for all I care,: she said maliciously. Maybe the Great Lords will decide that our fictitious Wizards live there. That would serve him right, if they find him sitting there like an old toad in a hole.:
.-Well, just keep alert for any sign of him, love,: Lorryn cautioned. :He's a twisty old beast. I'm not sure I can think of every way he could think of to cause us harm.:
.7 will,: she promised, and gave him a wordless, loving farewell that she hoped remained untainted with her anger at Caellach Gwain.
"Well, that's not good," Keman muttered up at her, shaking the rain from his mane. He had, of course, been listening in.
"No, it's not. Should we tell Kyrtian?" She was of two minds on the subject. It wasn't as if Kyrtian didn't already have enough on his hands—and it wasn't as if his men weren't perfectly capable of catching one old man who was anything but woods-wise if he was spying on them.
Unless, of course, he was using the transportation spell to get him away each time it looked as if he was going to get caught.
But she hadn't heard the distinctive "noise" associated with that spell!
"I wouldn't," Keman replied after a moment. "It's not his business. It's wizard business. Let Lorryn take care of things at the Citadel; you and I will just have to be very vigilant from now on."
"I hope an ambush beast gets him," she grumbled.
Keman shook his head. "I wouldn't wish that fate even on Caellach Gwain. And you shouldn't, either."
"Well—maybe not an ambush beast. But I wouldn't mind seeing him treed by an alicorn," she relented.
"Nor would I, foster sister," Keman replied. "Maybe we'll have the privilege. And maybe he'll just get into trouble he can't get out of, all on his own, without our ill-wishing him. That would be best of all."
"I suppose it would," she sighed, and left it at that.
31
Dusk—and Shana looked up through the gloom and the drizzle at the mountain of rubble marking the site that Keman swore hid a major cave-complex.
Well, if it did, the original cave-mouth must have been bigger than anything Shana had ever imagined, much less seen. It looked from this perspective as if half the side of the mountain had come down over the years, and it wasn't a small mountain. Steep, though; very steep, covered with trees and brush that clung to the slope with vegetative stubbornness, and probably kept the rest of the mountain from losing its outer skin.
The most recent fall had been quite recent indeed, and had added bulk to the pile on the left-hand side. There were trees, large trees, crushed under all that rock, with the remains of dead leaves still clinging to the branches.
Mage-lights hovered over the pile as Kyrtian's men looked on apprehensively. Keman—back to human-form—and Kyrt-ian climbed the rock-pile to the single opening that Keman had discovered near the top of the mound.
"Is he going to be safe?" one of the men asked dubiously, as Keman offered Kyrtian a hand-up over a tricky bit. Shana was dead-certain that he wasn't worried about Keman.
"Keman's a dragon," she reminded him. "They don't know rock, they live rock. Keman feels where each pebble is rubbing and might be loose. He'll know if something is going to slip before the rock knows."
"You'd better be right," Lynder muttered darkly. "I climb—I explore caves all the time—and I wouldn't go up there without spending weeks checking my path."
"You're not a dragon," she retorted, and turned her own attention to the base of the pile. There, in a place where rock had been melted and reformed to stabilize the area (the indisputable mark of dragon stone-shaping), was where Keman had found the strange piece of metal. Shana examined the spot on her hands and knees with her own little mage-light, and in a few moments, there was no doubt in her mind that what he had found was not a random bit of something that might have been dropped by a curious Elvenlord long ago. There was more of the stuff under that original rock-fall. As she brought her pinpoint light in close to the ground, she saw a thin edge of something squashed along the boundary of rock-pile and dirt that didn't look anything like the fractured edge of a rock. What it did look like was another sheet of metal. Just what was under that pile of rock?
Just what is inside this cave? That's what I should be asking....
She looked back up again. At that moment, Keman turned and waved back down at her. They must have found the entrance. A mage-light left the formation and swung purposefully towards the two figures up on the pile, then vanished, seemingly into the rocks. There was some activity up there, as the two bent over something. A moment later, the first figure followed the light into the tumbled rocks. Keman remained bent over while Kyrtian's men fidgeted restlessly, then eventually started back down the pile. Clearly Kyrtian had gone down inside the cave by rope, and Keman had remained just long enough to see that he was safely down.