She reacted immediately; she took a deep breath, dove under the water to escape the arrows falling around her, and shifted once she was there into the form of a huge whisker-fish. Once safely in a form that could breathe water rather than air, she set out in hot pursuit with great, driving thrusts of her tail.
But that boat had been much faster than any fish that ever swam. She didn't catch up to it for more than a day, and by the time she found it, a bare hour ahead of an elven pursuit party, it was drifting and empty. There was no sign of where it might have gone ashore—if there ever had been, the rain had wiped such traces out completely.
She made a guess, then, and took to the skies. But that had not been a particularly clever move, either.
She was used to the barren, scrub-covered hills around the Lairs, not these hills with trees so thick, you could not see the ground beneath them! Why, even a dragon in his proper form could skulk for furlongs beneath these trees and never fear being spotted from above!
Still she circled, for days, hoping for a stroke of luck, the betraying smoke from a campfire, a single track of a shod foot in the mud of a stream bank. But every sign proved to be made either by lone hunters, or by more searchers sent to recapture Lorryn and his sister, and her temper frayed and snapped a dozen times over. She managed to assuage some of her rage in hunting—alicorns were particularly thick here, and it was almost as satisfactory to break their necks as it would have been to snap the neck of that fool, Lorryn—
In desperation, although she was certain that the two soft, pampered creatures could not possibly have gotten beyond the immediate vicinity of the river, she increased her range. She saw nothing, nothing whatsoever, except for a group of ragged humans making their way along the river in crude boats. Whatever they were, those humans were not wizards, and Myre doubted that either Rena or Lorryn would even have attempted contact with them.
Assuming the humans themselves permitted such contact. If they were wild humans, uncollared, then they certainly must fear the elves. Neither child was woods-wise enough to hide an approach from feral humans who were used to living in these forsaken forests. It was far more likely that these humans would evade the two runaways before Lorryn and his sister even guessed they were there.
Still, perhaps she should take a closer look at them. She circled again, noting those same humans putting in at a point along the bank. No sign of alarm there; not a chance they had encountered the fugitives.
She ground her teeth together in fruitless rage.
She might as well admit it. She had lost them. And with them had gone her chance for her own captive wizard. She had been so certain that she was in complete control of the escape that she had not anticipated that Lorryn might do something unexpected, and now, thanks to that carelessness, she had lost them.
She happened to look down at just that moment—and even to an idle eye, it was obvious that the little party of humans had suddenly and inexplicably doubled.
Now what was this?
Her rage evaporated, and she sharpened her gaze, focusing in on the group below. No—the humans had not multiplied. They had been joined by another group, much better clad—
Myre's wingbeats faltered for a moment, as she caught sight of forms much like Shana's. Pointed ears—but dark complexions and hair in more colors than pale blond. These were no humans—these were wizards I She had found the missing wizards!
And where the wizards were—so were the renegade dragons.
Quickly she spiraled up, until she reached a space above the clouds, so high that the air was thin and hard to breathe, and ice crystals formed on the tips of her wings.
Now what? She knew where the wizards were—surely, surely she could use that somehow, couldn't she?
She needed information. And she needed to get it without a chance that she might be caught by Keman or any of the others.
In short, she needed a plan.
And this time she had better not underestimate anyone or anything. This time her plan must be perfect. And for a perfect plan, she needed information.
But information was easy to gather, so long as she stayed away from her fellow dragons. She could shift into any one of hundreds of shapes to spy on the wizards, anything from a human child to a rock formation. So long as no dragon saw her, she should be safe from detection.
Well, her first shape should be something with a good nose—and inedible. All those creatures living together should be easy to scent, but she didn't want to find herself the target of some hunter's arrows while she searched for them!
Her mind made up, she folded her wings and dove for a secluded vale just out of sight of that riverside landing.
The alicorns reached the summit of yet another hill; they had phenomenal endurance, and even with Rena and Lorryn on their backs, they were able to make twice the speed of any horse she'd ever ridden. They had a kind of ground-devouring fast walk that they could keep up all day if they had to. They needed to stop two or three times each day for food and water, and then it was no more than the equivalent of an equine snack.
Of course, what they were eating was not grass alone, but whatever they could catch that lived in the grass as well. They were fast, they caught and ate mice and voles as easily as any house cat.
At night they would disappear for several hours, coming back with traces of blood around their mouths. At least they came back—and didn't consider Lorryn and Rena to be good prey.
Rena had been revolted. Lorryn had been fascinated. He told her that it was very likely that the reason why the alicorns were able to keep up that fast pace was that they were eating meat. "Meat is a more concentrated food than grass," he told her. "If they weren't eating meat, I expect they wouldn't be able to go on any longer or faster than one of our horses."
Rena had already decided that she was no longer interested in having a tame alicorn.
Meanwhile, she was not possessed of the same level of endurance as Lorryn or the alicorns. They wanted to be off at sunrise—which meant rising before sunrise just so they could manage a bite to eat—and didn't stop for the night until sunset. Nothing in Rena's life had ever prepared her for this kind of endurance test. She fell asleep exhausted and sore, and woke very little rested. She had long since given up any interest in the passing countryside, even though they'd had more than one narrow escape from hostile animals and potentially hostile hunters. Now all she could do was cling to the back of her alicorn and use her own little magics to keep it tame. All she really wanted to do was find the wizards, so at last she could rest.
Rest! Oh, if only she could! Her entire world had narrowed to the need for rest. Every muscle ached, and her eyes burned with fatigue; there was a dull headache right behind her eyes, and if Lord Gildor had appeared at that moment with an offer of a bed and a warm meal in exchange for a wedding, she would probably have wedded him then and there.
Well, maybe not. But she would have been willing to entertain the notion.
"Interesting," Lorryn muttered out loud, as his beast reached the top of the ridge first.
"What's interesting?" Rena asked, dully. She couldn't imagine anything interesting out here. They'd traveled through a pass in the mountains to come out amid a range of forested hills several days ago. The hills were bisected by a wide river, which the alicorns had followed for a few days. She'd had hope that they were about to reach whatever goal their tiny minds had set—since she didn't see any way that they could cross a river that must have been wide enough to have swallowed Lord Tylar's manor, gardens, and all without a splash. But yesterday the alicorns had plunged into the stream without any warning at all and had swum across it while she clung on to her mount's mane with one hand and her bundle of belongings with the other, terrified that she would lose her grip on one or the other.