And the bad news? Shana asked, knowing from the tiny quirk of Shadow's mouth as he tossed his long hair out of his eyes that it was likely to be more humorous than truly bad.
The bad news is that the only place he could bring it up into was that group of caves you wanted for your own lair, Mero told her, the quirk turning into a grin that displayed a strong set of fine, white teeth. Sorry about that; it's now all underwater. Very cold water, I might add.
She groaned, but only halfheartedly. The complex of caves she and the other three had found here was vast enough that there were plenty of other choices for everyone, and still the caves would not be more than a tenth occupied, dragons, wizards, former human slaves, and all. And even though it was a great deal closer to the elves than Shana really liked, it was well outside the borders of any lands the elves actually held under control.
If it hadn't been for the dragons, though, the caves would have been a very poor choice for a new home. Wizards though the halfbloods were, they could not bring water where there was none, nor could they shape rock with anything other than physical tools and their hands. Their magics were of illusion, of attack and defense, of the ability to move objects or people, and very occasionally, of the ability to create something. If they had been searching for a new home without the dragons, they would have had to build everything on their own, and unmodified caves made for damp and often hazardous dwellings. And everyone agreed that the new Citadel should have an internal water source, for obvious reasons.
After centuries of living in the comfort of the Citadel the first wizards built, they were not prepared to use either their hands or tools, 1 expect, Shana reflected, and not for the first rime. Before she turned their world upside down, the wizards had lived a life of relative luxury and indolence. Anything they needed, they had used their magic to steal from the elves. The Citadel was already built, and built to last—they had not even bothered to keep it repaired, and when something happened to make one room or suite of rooms uninhabitable, the wizard in question simply moved. There were dozens, hundreds, of rooms unused and unoccupied since the Wizard War. For those tedious little chores of cooking and cleaning, there were always the apprentices, halfblooded children spirited away by wizard-agents before they could be discovered and killed by their fathers and masters. That was the price of becoming a wizard: to pay for one's apprenticeship by being the servant of an acknowledged wizard until the rest of the brotherhood accepted that you had mastered your powers. There were always plenty of apprentices; Denelor, Shana's own master, hadn't lifted a finger to clean his own quarters, even, for decades.
It hadn't always been that way; when the wizards first banded together, there had only been the experienced and the inexperienced —there were no apprentices in service to masters. They had all worked side by side to create the Citadel in the first place, and then to engineer the revolt against the elven lords and free themselves and the human slaves.
Well, I certainly took can of that. Shana could not help but feel a certain grim satisfaction; for all that she really liked old Denelor, she had not much cared for playing servant to him, and there were plenty of other wizards who had taken shameless advantage of their situation. Now they would all be working side by side again, like it or not. The few humans—former slaves—that were with them now were mostly children, and even the hardest-hearted wizard would not put a child to that kind of work. Only an elven lord would be that cruel, to force little ones less than ten years old into the hard manual labor of an adult.
No, the caves would have been fit only for use as temporary shelter at best, if it hadn't been for the dragons.
The dragons not only could shape rock with their magic, they enjoyed it. Keman had appointed himself to the search for water as soon as one of the older wizards had objected to that lack; the others would mold and shape the place to the liking of each individual and to their own uses now. The wizards themselves could devote their efforts to finding supplies of food, to furnishing their own quarters, and to working out a way to acquire the things they used to steal from the elves. In a few months, they would have a new headquarters that was better than the old Citadel. Certainly it would be more defensible.
I like this place, Keman said simply, as he dropped down beside the other three. Shana followed his gaze, over the rolling hills covered with mixed grasslands and forest, and nodded. So far as she or any of the others had been able to tell, there were no signs that anyone had ever lived here before. If there were any of the monsters that lurked near elven-held lands, they were few, and kept in hiding. The elves were probably operating under the assumption that the wizards had found a place to build a settlement by now, but they couldn't know where it was, exactly, and with luck, the wizards would be able to keep it that way. Hadn't they kept the existence of the Citadel a secret for centuries? The Citadel had been surrounded by elven holdings, too! Surely they would be able to keep this place from being found out, at least for a while.
I like this place, too, Mero said unexpectedly. I just wish we could get rid of about half the blockheads we had to drag along with us. A little less complaining and a little more work would get things done a lot faster.
Shana made a sour face. I know what you mean, she replied. If I hear one more graybeard whine about the old days and how much better everything was, I may pack up and leave again. I can do just fine in the woods; I'd like to see any of them manage to find me, too!
Then let them do without their leader for a while and see where it gets them. See if any of them can figure out how to keep everyone fed and all, when they don't even know how to hunt!
Don't tempt me to join you, Mero replied. I may not be used to dragging around in the wilderness, but camping out in snow and rain is preferable to listening to them complain about the tiniest inconvenience! They could be dead instead of building a new home, and that would be a whole lot more inconvenient than anything they're having to do without right now! He shook his head. I'll never understand them, I guess. Look at everything you've done—you broke the siege, you made it possible for them to fight the elves to a standstill, you helped drive the bargain that kept the fullbloods from following us—we all four scouted for months and months to find this place—so what's their problem? Can't they be content?
Shana shrugged; she didn't understand it either. She was used to living in far more primitive circumstances than this would be—in fact, for the first fourteen years of her life, she hadn't once had cooked food, for the dragons that cared for her ate everything raw, and she had done the same. But Mero, poor Valyn's halfblood cousin, had been used to the soft life of the special servant of an elven lord, and had adapted to scouting and roughing it just fine. Why couldn't those whining wizards do the same? For Fire's sake, if they were so deprived, why didn't they just use their magic to re-create everything they'd left behind?
Because they'd have to cooperate, pool their power together, and use the trick I learned with gemstones to concentrate it, that's why. They will never cooperate with each other as long as each is so jealous of his own power, and they'll never admit 1 might have learned something useful
It was Kalamadea that answered them both. I believe the source of their discontent may only be because we are no longer in immediate peril, he said thoughtfully, scratching his chin with one finger. Once the danger was past, the old, inflexible ones stopped recalling that it was Shana who was their chief aid against the elves, started to recall that it was Shana who brought the elves down on them in the first place, and remembered all the comforts that she has therefore deprived them of. It seems logical for them to think of Shana as the author of their misery, rather than the elven overlords.