“I’ve been . . . disappointed—with mating once. I’ve no wish to take a second.”
Imfamnia touched her snout to Natasatch’s. “Taking a second mate is the best decision I ever made. The great NiVom is such a fine dragon. So many good qualities. So quick-witted. Who would have imagined him using a decorative throw to stop poisoned crossbow bolts?”
AuRon heard Natasatch shift her hind legs about.
Don’t squirm, dear, you always squirm when you’re trying to come up with a half-truth.
“I don’t understand half his conversation,” Natasatch finally said. “He’s such an intelligent dragon. I wish . . . I wish he’d make allowances for dragons who do not have the benefit of education.”
Infamnia laughed. It was an unnatural sound for a dragon to make at normal times and the racket sent nervous chills up AuRon’s spine—a dragonelle choking or having a fit might make that yakking sound. Typically dragons kept amusement to themselves with a private
prrum,
what a human might call a
chuckle.
Only dragons who’d been much among humans imitated their laughs. Imfamnia’s sounded like a dying hominid caught in her throat. “Oh, I just sing songs to myself when he gets going. I caught him rolling various sorts of balls and plates off the Gold Palace roof once. He was breaking some relics dating back to the blighter charioteers, or so the Red Queen’s elvish historian claimed. Said he was experimenting with shapes that might allow riders to travel dragon-back with easier passage of wind. Speaking of wind-passage, NoSohoth said that if you lacked a vigorous young escort, he’d be happy to sit next to you at dinner. The old lecher. I always thought Tighlia had him snipped.”
“Me?” Wistala said. “Why would he be interested in me? He’s rich enough to buy and sell my province ten times over.”
“That’s just what I was wondering. If he reveals the answer, I’ll be most grateful if you’ll tell me before you tell anyone else.... I would like to enjoy your confidence. Have you ever wondered why I’ve visited you so often, my dear?” Imfamnia asked.
“The duties of a Queen are constant. Don’t you go around to all the upholds?”
“Duties?” That dreadful laugh came again, only briefer this time. “I’d much rather be looking at what the artisans in Hypat have developed this year in fringe extensions, or enjoying some sun-dried saltwater fish. I have attendants for duties. No, you’re an important connection for me, Natasatch. That family of your mate’s—they’re a strange bunch, certainly, but the fates seem to have picked out certain dragons to survive anything.”
“I wish the fates had selected more dragons today.”
“I agree. Still, it is a historic day. So much for the bloodline of Tyr Fehazathant,” Imfamnia said. “NiVom, curse him, wants the bodies removed by barge. Something about the Ghioz stealing trophies to turn into icons to their old Red Queen. Such loyalty is touching. I wonder if anyone will ever fashion a fetish dedicated to me.”
“Why would NiVom need the bodies?”
“You know these scientific types. Ever pickling brains and grinding teeth into suspensions. Dragon-blood is mixed with preservative and bottled in beeswax. Among the humans of the Aerial Host, it’s said it can bring a man frozen and with altitude sickness back to life. I expect he’ll dump them, probably in the Star Tunnel. No Ghioz-man would dare go down there to pry out a few dragon-teeth.”
“What is the Star Tunnel?”
“Oh, you missed that part of the wars, didn’t you? Before your time. Wistala was muchly involved in it. I don’t know much of it, either, save that it was the last refuge of the independent demen. The Firemaids finally drove them from the place. I believe it’s some vast underground garden, not as great as the Lavadome, of course, but important enough in its own way. The chasm is located in those disputed grounds between Ghioz and your daughter’s blighter uphold in Old Uldam.”
Natasatch was never overly interested in geography, but AuRon, on the other side of his barrier, wondered why the bodies had to take such a journey. Didn’t the Lavadome dragons have ceremonies for honoring their dead?
Too much had gone wrong today for it all to be bad luck. How could such a mass of men from the Sunstruck Sea travel such a distance without being detected? It seemed that the Ghioz cosmetician had warned him that some plot was in the offing, yet he must have been the only dragon who listened, for there was only the smallest of guards around the feast-grounds. But why would NiVom and Infamnia want to kill enemies, especially in so unsure a fashion? The men might not kill enough, or might poison far too many with their wretched blades.
He owed the dead an answer.
Chapter 4
T
he morning clouds in the Sadda-Vale hung low, meeting the mists rising from the lake like ghostly dancers.
Wistala forced herself to have an appetite. She stomped dark teardrops of shelled creatures drawn from the lake by the blighter servants and picked up the mucousy flesh with her tongue. The blighters sank wooden beams by the garbage pool, and every few months drew up the creatures who’d anchored themselves to the accommodating timber.
She surveyed her reflection. The diet of the Sadda-Vale and infrequent sunshine had lightened the coloring of her scale progressively. She looked like young straw, so yellow the green had almost disappeared. She was wider of hip and longer of tail since her first clutch, and her fringe had grown out to a luxurious length. From the neck down there was no question that she was a different dragon, physically.
With a little paint, her face could be changed. According to Yefkoa, hardly a female in the Empire went about without scale painted. The richer ones decorated further with gemstones, the more daring added bits of feather, silks, or netting.
She’d fought, again, with DharSii last night about answering the Firemaids’ call. Neither of them had slept well in the vast old perch room, though each pretended to slumber to avoid further words. Wistala kept the eye DharSii couldn’t see on the weather through the circle in the roof that admitted light, air, and the usual condensation. Sometime in the early dawn she decided to leave with Yefkoa, who was testing her wings in the warm currents of the lake in the more wholesome waters nearer the springs.
Wistala lifted a crab-pot with her tail, found it only partially full, chewed it with an effort, and took another to keep it company. In her mood, the frantic pinches of the crabs and the effort to pop a few rivets and bend tin were welcome. It wouldn’t hurt to have some metals in her diet, just in case. Scale tended to drop on a long flight and the old habits of scrounging metals from her hatchling days. Scabia would be aggravated—crabs in
garlocque
-vinegar were her delight—and the blighter blacksmiths would need to make new cages.
“Scabia will be displeased,” DharSii’s voice said from behind, echoing her thoughts.
She startled despite herself. For a mature male dragon, he could be eerily silent when he wished, almost as quiet as her scaleless brother.
“Worried about being turned out of the Vale?” she asked.
“I’m not worried; annoyance is good for her. Expressing displeasure is her only regular exercise.” DharSii flicked a dropped rotten potato into the pool where it belonged.
Wistala didn’t like Scabia, and Scabia’s grudging kindness in allowing her exiled family safe harbor in the Sadda-Vale heightened the dislike.
DharSii’s color was up around his neck-hearts. She knew him well enough now to know that was the chink in his invincible aplomb. Eyes, wings, tail, claws,
griff
, and teeth would never betray his mood, but his capillaries let him down.
“Are you still determined to carry out this foolishness, bouncing off south like a broken chariot wheel?”
“I told you last night, the only way you’ll stop me is to break my wings. Care to try?”
“Sticking your nose into Lavadome politics might mean they gets lopped off, high up, where your fringe meets your head. I couldn’t bear that.”
Curse him!
She would have covered twoscore horizons just on nervous friction.
“Ha-hem,”
he harrumphed, falling into his old habit of clearing his throat as he made up his mind what to say, or to cover for keeping his tongue still. “I’ve met exactly one sensible, cultured, and lively dragonelle in my whole life. Can’t the world sort itself out for once? Who knows how many crises have passed in our score of years here, yet the sun still rises and the snows still come and go. We’ve had so many meetings and good-byes, I’ve resolved never to have another.”
“Ha-hem,”
she harrumphed back at him, which was her only option other than twining her neck as tightly around his as she could. But if she began the embrace, she and Yefkoa would probably remain in the Sadda-Vale until their joint-scales grew brittle and dropped with age.
“Take this advice,” DharSii said. “Ask permission of someone to enter the Empire. It’s a thin bit of scale, but it may serve to confuse the issue enough for you to. I’m an old hand at exile.”
“Yet you yourself returned.”
“My sympathy for the Lavadome had not quite run out. But with the dragons gorging themselves on the world like Silverhigh of old, I’m content to leave them to their fate.”
Sometimes he could be as cold-blooded as a lizard. The dragons of the Empire might not be worth a blighter’s cuss, but what of the generation still dreaming in their eggs? What gorging had they done?
“I’m not,” Wistala said. “We owe something to the generations not yet born, even if their grandsires are fools.”
“A fair point. Would it be unfair for me to mention the new generation here? They may need you someday.”
“Having you with me will better my chances of returning to them,” Wistala said. “Will you not come with me?”
“I have my own phantoms to chase. While you are away, I’ll indulge myself in a little exploration.”
“More history of the Lavadome?” she asked.
“There are some missing pieces to the Lavadome’s story I’d like to find. I’ve indulged myself too long here. For the first time in my life, I’ve enjoyed the companionship at the Sadda-Vale. I mean you, of course. And your brothers. They’re each stimulating. So alike in their resourcefulness despite their disadvantages. Still, I can’t bear the thought of listening to Scabia without you others around.”
“I wish you luck, then. I will—miss you.”
“One last warning. There have always been powers who want to use dragons, alive or dead, for the strange substances that course through our blood. Our magic, if you’ll forgive the word. Long ago, Anklemere was attempting something with dragons—what, I do not know—and I fear his plans; perhaps even his mind, if you want to look at it that way, lives on. The Dragon Empire may think they rule sky, ground, and tunnel, but my vitals tell me they are being used like puppets. Who or what has the other end of the strings I cannot say.”
Yefkoa had behaved oddly at the Sadda-Vale once she was well enough to meet the other dragons. She bowed low before Scabia, as Wistala had coached her to do, and complimented her on everything from the taste of the sturgeon pulled from the lake to the intricate carvings in the passages.
“You just don’t see workmanship like this except in Imperial Rock in the Lavadome,” Yefkoa said. “Who made it? Dwarfs?”
“There are some dwarfish makers’-marks, but also blighter and human,” Scabia said, dropping out of her usual formal speech in an unusual condescension. “You can tell the difference in the details. The dwarfs will make a support look like rope, or piping, whereas the blighters will be more organic and men imitate leaves and vines of nature, as most of their artisans were probably trained by elves in the days of Silverhigh.”
Most strange of all was Yefkoa’s praise of the Copper. Wistala had forgotten over the years in exile how her brother had been loved by some of those he used to rule. Yefkoa spoke of him in tones of gratitude and awe, and was deeply disappointed that he was away. Wistala knew in a vague sort of way that he’d done some favor or other for her in her youth—had he given her a place in the Firemaids despite her slight frame and thin scale? Well, in any case, here was another dragon who loved her brother deeply. Wistala, when she looked at him, saw only a collection of injuries and an expression that verged on half-witted thanks to the eye injury she’d given him after their parents were murdered. She’d ceased to hate him long ago, but still wondered at the respect such a limping, undersized wretch seemed to inspire in others.
The bat Larb outdid Yefkoa in his praise of Scabia. He declared he’d never imagined such a Queen of snows—she was simply the most breathtaking female dragon in the world. He waxed on about the vastness of the Vesshall, his echolocation quite inadequate. This went on for a full shift of moonlight. Scabia reacted to the bat’s obsequious patter in a way Wistala had never imagined. She let loose with a
prrum
and invited the bat to eat his fill, complimenting him on his Drakine.
After dinner, when Scabia was amusing herself by telling stories to the youths, Wistala and Yefkoa looked over an old map of the Red Mountains.
“Where shall we reenter the Empire?” Wistala asked.