Free Elvenbane by Andre Norton Page B

mind; speaking mind-to-mind across vast distances, reading the thoughts of others, seeing things at a far distance, or in the past or future, or manipulating and moving things without the use of their hands. Elves had magic as the dragons understood the concept, for dragons had the magic of shape-shifting and a few other, minor abilities. Those who became shamans tended to have the ability to read thoughts, but not to the extent that talented humans or halfbloods could.
    But the children of mixed blood had both human and elven magics, and the human mental gifts tended to amplify their abilities as magicians.
    “Wizards,” the elves called the halfbloods, and attempted to use them in their own never-ending feuds with each other. But the wizards were not helpless creatures like the human slaves, and used their own magic to win free of their masters.
    Right then the elven lords should have welcomed the wizards into their own ranks
, Alara thought cynically.
That’s what I’d have done. There’s nothing like a life of luxury to make thoughts of revolution melt away like snow in the sun.
    But the elves didn’t; instead, they panicked, and tried to destroy their halfblooded offspring.
    So the Wizard War began, with the wizards ranged on one side, and the elven lords and their slave armies on the other.
    The dragons entered the world before the Wizard War and the defeat and destruction of the wizards, but for the most part were too busy with their own establishment to pay much attention to the goings-on across the desert. Later, they became aware of at least some of what had happened through faulty, faltering, human word-of-mouth and through elven history, and through the memory of those few of the Kin who
did
pay attention to the elves’ troubles—most notably, Father Dragon.
    As a result of that War, halfbreeds were hated and feared, and if by accident a human woman were bearing an elven lord’s child, she and the child would be put to death as soon as it was known.
    Alara wasn’t sure where the Prophecy came from, if it had been created by the Kin or was something one of the Kin picked up and decided to use, but it certainly kept the elves nervous…
    And by now, between the disappearance of his “bride,” the reemergence of the Prophecy among his slaves, and the Great Kite appearing as an omen of disaster, Lord Rathekrel was probably paralyzed with rage. That had been several months ago, long enough for word to spread among the other elven lords and give them time to complete plans of their own for him. And meanwhile, a dozen of the other power brokers were undoubtedly jockeying for position, hoping he’d fall.
    It was about time for a Council session. If he was thrown out of his Council seat for incompetence, that would upset the balance of power. The elves would all be too busy trying to find a compromise candidate to pay any attention to what went on out on the borders, which should make it safer to hunt this way for a while, and those rumors that Rathekrel had seen dragons were going to be completely discredited—
    Which was what she would tell the others if they ever found out what she was doing. But she would have done it all anyway. Elves deserved to have trouble visited on them, the hateful creatures.
    Still, none of this had anything to do with the meditation she was
supposed
to be doing. In fact, she’d actually been distracted enough that she had shifted form a little, allowing her tail to move a claw-length. She gave herself a mental shake, and tried to settle down again.
    But something had entered the immediate vicinity, something that was not a dragon. She felt its—
her
—presence.
    She abandoned all thought of mischief, and all pretense at meditation, as a human female staggered from behind the wall and fell against her side.
    Alara shifted back quickly, all but a very thin veneer of her surface. She still
looked
like a rock, but now she had eyes and ears, and she employed both cautiously.
    The