Free Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce

There are other tales, of
course, such as the one that claims they vanish in plain sight and reappear in
another part of the forest, which is clearly false—isn't it?"
     
    Daine,
politely waiting for him to finish, realized that he had. "Zek says they
don't vanish. They freeze. The way their fur is colored, they seem part of the
tree. Or they zip around to the far side of the trunk and keep it between them
and whoever is watching. And yes, they have just one marriage. Zek used to live
with his wife and their three children before they were trapped."
     
    Lindhall
shook his head. "Wild things should remain in the wild. Down this
corridor."
     
    They
now entered the heart of the palace, where throne rooms, reception halls, and
waiting rooms were located. Lindhall stopped before a large double door that
bore a brass nameplate: The Hall of Bones, The handles on each flap were very
large bones of some kind. Daine and Zek touched one with curious fingers.
     
    "What
do you know of fossils?" the mage asked,
     
    "They're
creatures and plants that lived so long ago no mortals remember them. There are
some in the royal museum—shells, batlike creatures, fishes and such. Numair
says there are others, skeletons of huge beasts called dinosaurs, but no one
has found any in the Eastern Lands yet,"
     
    "Quite
true" replied Lindhall. He spoke a word in a language she didn't know, and
both door flaps swung inward. Daine squeaked; Zek darted under her hair.
Peering at them from the shadows was a wry large skull. Three horns sprang from
the bony face: a short one, near the end of its nose, and two longer ones that
pointed forward over the eyes,
     
    "Oh,
you beautiful thing," the girl whispered, and went up to it, hardly
believing what she saw. She only came as high as one of the large eye sockets.
"What is it?" With trembling fingers she touched the beaklike plate
of bone that seemed to be the creature s upper lip.
     
    Lindhall
clapped. Overhead, throughout that immense hall, light-globes began to glow.
"One of the horn-faced lizards. We call them lizards because they resemble
lizards more than other creatures, but they didn't act like our modern reptiles
do." Daine blinked up at Lindhall, who smiled. "This one is a great
three-horn. All the horn-faced lizards had some type of facial protrusions. The
three-horns and one-horns also had a simple or ornate bone frill behind the
skull. This fellow was the largest of his family—the others varied from
eighteen to twenty feet in length."
     
    She saw
a massive, curved fan of bone behind the long horns. "Neck armor?"
she asked. The hand with which she touched the skull itched,
     
    "Apparently."
     
    "And
they weren't lizards?"
     
    "No.
The appearance was reptilian, but most were quite agile, and less vulnerable to
changes in temperature than modern lizards are. They seem to have behaved more
like birds than lizards. We know so much thanks to those seers who are able to
look back in time. The real world has little use for them, but in a university
they are in great demand."
     
    "Nobility—"
A slave had appeared in the doorway. Lindhall went to speak to him.
     
    Slowly
enough that at first Daine thought she imagined it, the skull turned to train a
single eye socket on her. The girl stared at it, appalled. She had missed that
flare of white light in the flicker of the overhead globes. "Hold
still," she hissed, flapping her hands at it. "Quit moving!"
     
    The
head cocked slightly to one side, as if to ask why she made such an odd
request. Carefully the dinosaur raised a bony foot and wriggled its three toes.
     
    "Daine,
are you all right here?" asked LindkaU. "There's something I must
tend to/*
     
    "I'll
be fine," she replied, not taking her eyes from the skeleton. She watched
it for some time after the mage left, but the bones' period of movement was
over.
     
    That
was fun, Zek remarked. Why were you angry with it? Touch some more of them.
     
    Dead
should stay dead, she replied silently