The most important of the supplies had been brought to the Citadel, and certainly by winter their stocks would be adequate to hold them for a while. Collen would be returning with the fruits of his trading in a few weeks, and that would further supplement their stores. Some judicious experimentation was going on in the way of finding edible forest plants, by following the tracks of wild boar and bringing back samples of everything the boar ate. Shana was not particularly needed as leader or as figurehead for any of that, and if she was out there looking for allies or possible danger, no one could say she was shirking her duties. Shana left the new Citadel with something of the sense that she was fleeing into freedom; she had been all too aware of the oppressive weight of responsibility on her shoulders, responsibility she had never wanted and was only too glad to leave behind her in the caves.
So now the four of them were far from the stronghold, past the point where the forests faded into prairie, in the grass-covered foothills with nary a tree for miles. Keman and Kalamadea, rather than assuming their halfblood forms, were in their own skins; though riding dragon-back was uncomfortable, it was easier than walking for leagues and leagues under a hot sun—and it was much easier to spot things from the air. Terrain like this was ideal for aerial scouting, for nothing escaped the sharp eyes of the dragons, and there was nothing in the way of cover to hide beneath in the land below them. Game was plentiful enough here: herds of wild horses, of other grazing animals, even of alicorns. The dragons had no trouble feeding themselves, and resolved to tell the others from their Lair about the abundance of game here.
Their search thus far, however, had turned up nothing other than those herds of grazers. There hadn't been so much as a single human herdsman or signs of one since they left the hills.
They were all four lounging next to a tiny spring-fed pool at midday, taking a rest Shana and Mero were disinclined to fly in the heat of the day; there was no way to keep a hat on one's head while flying, and the sun's rays reached a punishing strength by about noon. The dragons loved the heat, and were only too happy to provide shade for the two halfbloods while they spread their wings and soaked up sun, basking contentedly.
The pool watered a small stand of scrub willow; judging from the number of tracks in the mud, it played host to a vast array of animal life in the course of a day and night. A tiny stream threaded away from the pool, into the grass, its path marked by more scrub brush as it snaked off in the general direction of the far-distant river. The waist-high grass all around them was full of insects that chirped and droned, and thronged with tiny birds that flitted from stem to stem and happily ate those insects. Shana watched one of them, balanced on a long stem of something that bent and waved beneath his light weight, singing his declaration of territory to any invading males.
A hot breeze rose up, making the grass stems bend, carrying the scent of drying grass and the damp-earth smell from the pool toward Shana. "You know, there is one thing I've wondered ever since I found that one horrid, heavy old chronicle about the elven invasion," Shana said—not to Mero, but to Kalamadea. "The one that was about as thick as your leg, Kalamadea. I'm sure you probably saw it; reading it was the best cure for insomnia I ever encountered."
"Hmm? The one by Laranz the Insufferable?" Father Dragon said lazily, his eyes closed to mere slits as he absorbed the sun and heat He kept his size close to that of Keman for this trip, but his natural size was far larger, and if he had taken it now, he could have provided shade for a small army. Dragons grew as they aged, and Father Dragon was the oldest dragon Shana had ever seen or heard of. He had meddled, shifted into halfblood form, in the first Wizard War, and he had not been young then. Shana had found his personal journals in the old Citadel after the wizards rescued her from an elven auction block and guaranteed discovery of her elven breeding. They formed part of the reason why she was here right now.
"Who were the grel-riders? And how in the world did they manage to keep the elves from conquering them when they had no trouble eliminating just about everyone else?"
"You've seen grels, of course," Kalamadea said, after a long pause. "At least, you've seen the desert-grels, the ones that the traders ride."
Shana nodded; the caravan of traders that had captured her when she was first exiled from the Lairs had ridden grels, and used them as pack-beasts.
"Well, the originals of those grels are about as different as—as an alicorn and a goat," Kalamadea told her. "The elves took some liberties with them. The original grels are just as ugly, but not as tall, and can't go without water for quite as long. The grel-riders used them as mounts for controlling their herds; they started out as nomadic cattle herders, but when the elves began their conquests, they withdrew from the civilized lands altogether. They didn't even trade with other humans in or around elven territories anymore. They just went away, as far away as they could."
"That makes sense," Shana said, after thinking about that. "In their place, I'd have done the same. The way those elves use illusion, you'd never know if the trader you were dealing with was human or one of them, spying on you. The best way to eliminate spies from outside is to eliminate all contact from the outside."
Kalamadea gave her a lazy grin, full of teeth. "You're thinking," he said with approval. "Well, the grel-riders originally used only their grels for herd-riding and for packing, but when the grels turned out to be useless for fighting, they developed a special kind of cattle they used for warfare. They called them war-bulls; roughly twice the size of a horse, with long, wicked horns. The grel-riders taught them to use those horns in combat, and even an alicorn couldn't kill a war-bull."
"But that can't be the reason why the elves couldn't conquer them," Shana persisted.
Kalamadea nodded slightly. "The real reason was probably fairly simple, but Laranz would hardly have wanted to admit that. They were nomadic, after all, which meant they had no cities for the elves to attack. The elven lords didn't fare well when they lacked a large, specific target, and as far as I know, the grel-riders simply rode away when they got tired of fighting the elves. General consensus is that they went south. That is all I know about them."
"Huh." Shana plucked a grass stem to nibble on, and settled herself a little more comfortably in Kalamadea's shade, leaning up against the dragon's scaly flank. His hide felt cool under her hand, probably because he was absorbing the energy of the sun and storing it deep inside. Dragons could do that; it supplemented the energy they got from their food, which was probably the only reason they didn't eat the countryside bare of game.
The grel-riders intrigued her. The chronicle had hinted that the grel-riders had some sort of protection against elven magic, but hadn't offered any details. Given the writer's pomposity, that was possibly because he didn't know any details, and would never have admitted that. Still, no matter what Kalamadea thought, it seemed to her that anyone who pretended to the title of 'Truth-Seeker" (as the chronicler had) would not have mentioned arcane protection unless he had some reason to.
"You don't think we're likely to meet up with these grel-riders, do you?" Mero asked, slowly, as if he were following Shana's thought.
Shana favored him with a lifted eyebrow. "Why do you think I chose this direction in the first place?" she replied. "Collen knows the river, and the people who live near it, and he didn't know about any grel-riders, so that left south." She waved her stem at the rolling plains. "It would take people who were nomadic riders to live here, I think. It's a bit difficult to hide out here, and if there were any numbers of settled people, the elves would find them and eliminate them. I want to find the grel-riders. Kalamadea, I hate to contradict you, but I think you might be wrong about why the elves couldn't conquer them. I really think they know something we don't."