“He goes back to Tyr Fehazathant’s days,” AuHazathant said. “I don’t know his clan background. He once commanded the Aerial Host. I was told he murdered the Tyr’s heir. He fled, but I don’t think he was ever formally convicted of the crime. If he did do it, he’s triply clever.”
Varatheela decided to probe. “I was told Queen Tighlia poisoned him.”
“I’d heard SiMevolant did him in.”
Varatheela yawned. “I’m too tired for gossipy history. Shall we be quiet now?”
“I wouldn’t mind a nice piece of sailfin this night,” AuHazathant said. “Any of you had it, mates? It’s so red you’d mistake it for beef. Mouthwatering.”
Varatheela felt her mouth go wet at the thought.
“So, we’re bringing in RuGaard. That’s the urgency,” she said.
The youngest, a silver named AgLaberarn said, “Wouldn’t you know. Politics. Politics always is triply urgent to those who give the orders. Not like a little raid by pirates or anything. No, that’s hardly worth the flight.”
“I don’t recall anyone getting bled by demen when he was Tyr. Except in fighting them,” AuHazathant said.
“That’s enough of that, AuHazathant, or you’ll be in my report to NiVom,” CuSarrath said without opening his eyes, though his nostrils had flared in irritation. That shocked them back into silence.
Varatheela tried to ignore her empty belly and go to sleep. But it occurred to her that the Isle of Ice and the cave she’d been born in was but a long, fast flight west into the Inland Ocean. She knew every hole, the coves with the biggest crabs, and where sheep retreated in a snowstorm. It wouldn’t be difficult for her to disappear, if she were determined to leave. One dragonelle more or less wouldn’t make a difference to the Lights, not with so many frightened Firemaids trying to find a posting now that their leader was dead.
Chapter 13
A
sunless dawn slowly revealed the landscape draped by clouds. To AuRon, the air smelled like thunder. Not surprising at this time of year—the Inland Ocean saw long, slow storms in the fall and fast-moving thunderheads in the spring.
Still, thunder made him anxious. He would rather have been underground sleeping.
Instead, he was sheltering in the lee of the dragon tower and the rocky ridge of the peninsula it sat upon, listening to the report of a scouting run, and wondering if Shadowcatch remembered him for well or ill.
The scout had made a dangerous flight. She’d flown between piney tree trunks, below the tops of the tallest green spires, to approach the dragon camp at Quarryness—a trick few dragons could manage—and returned in a single night after an Aerial Host scout had been spotted following the Old North Road and the seashore.
Also present were old Hermethea of the dragon tower, who came along because a few females could sometimes prevent quarrels from rising to violence, DharSii, and his siblings. Shadowcatch had begged to be given a one-day head start, saying he would swim all the way to Quarryness, but the Copper refused.
“I’ll find you, one way or another, my Tyr, even if I have to wade across a lake of dwarfs,” Shadowcatch said.
The fast-flying dragon, who suffered to bear a rider on her back to watch her tail and act as a second pair of eyes, double-checking her observations, returned and reported to the Copper.
“They rested at Roadsend. At dawn they flew back to Quarryness,” the scout said.
“Where they’ll wait. The question is, what they’ll do when they’re through with waiting,” the Copper said. “Will they come north or return south?”
“Numbers?” DharSii asked. “Have other members of the Host joined them?”
“Twenty-two. Riderless dragons,” the human said, consulting a bit of slate with some chalk marks on it. “One gray. Rest various.”
“Red in charge, I think, many, many
laudi
,” the dragonelle added.
Laudi
, or wing-legends, were given to Empire dragons who’d triumphed in battle to distinguish them. The dyes ranged from colorful to muted, depending on the dragon’s taste, but whatever the color the decorations were a sign of a battle-tested dragon.
“The gray will be a messenger,” DharSii said. “They’re no good in battle—excuse me, AuRon—they’re
thought
to be no good in battle, but their speed is unmatched.”
“I wonder who this red is,” the Copper said. “If it’s Cu-Vallahall, he was a young dragon from my day who never liked having a rider, but he’s levelheaded. One Skotl, one Wyrr parent.”
“What’s Roadsend?” AuRon asked. He didn’t know much about the Hypatian northlands, not having roamed them since he traveled with Blackhard’s pack as an unwinged drake. “The end of the Old North Road?”
“No, it goes well beyond that; it’s just not kept in any real repair,” Wistala said. “Roadsend is the last Imperial Post in the old system. To the south, the road is reasonably safe. It’s barbarian country beyond.”
“What are they doing?” the Copper asked the scout and her rider.
“Usual doings,” the human said in decent Drakine. “Eat much. Drink much. Bellow much, for more eat and drink.”
“I wonder if this is just a rest?” Wistala asked. “Might they go looking for AuRon at the Isle of Ice, or me at the Sadda-Vale?”
“They came to get me,” the Copper said. “It’s up to me to talk to them.”
“If their orders are just to kill you, they’ll do it,” DharSii said. “They won’t let you get five words out.”
“They might listen to me,” the Copper said. “I’ll come along. If they’ve been given orders to assassinate a dragon trying to parley, well—they can do it and try to live with themselves. It’ll mean the Empire I grew up in truly is dead.”
Wistala brought her head close to DharSii and stared levelly into his eyes. AuRon wondered what mindspeech was passing between them.
“Where my brothers go, I’ll be by their side,” Wistala said to the rest.
“What are your intentions?” DharSii asked.
“To join my mate,” the Copper said. “That’s all. This isn’t politics.”
“Everything is politics in the Empire,” Wistala said.
“I hope they’ll be satisfied with taking us back to the Tyr,” AuRon said. “What would they do? Would there be a trial of some sort?”
“Countless potential rebellions have been ended with a quick set of hangings at some crossroad,” DharSii said. “Let’s send a rider south with a message asking for a one-to-one meeting.”
“No,” the Copper said. “I think we should make a show of force. NiVom needs to know if he wants to fight for control of the dragon tower, it’ll cost him a hefty piece of his Aerial Host.”
They took turns leading the way south, flying in a line formation. The wind was blowing strong from that direction, bringing the storm, and while the fierceness of the air made it easy to stay aloft, covering horizons in a southward lap proved exhausting in the moist, windy air.
They worked out a system, suggested by the Copper, where the front flier simply concentrated on beating the air to death. The next in the slanted line enjoyed the slipstream and made sure of navigation, and the last watched for opposing fliers, from above, below, behind—the Aerial Host trained in coming out of the sun, or using cloud banks for a stealthy approach, or “grounding” briefly to let opponents fly past before rising to the attack.
The Copper could fly in the lead only briefly before he complained of pain in his injured wing. Wistala, stalwart as always, took over for him and forged ahead into the headwinds.
No matter what his role on the flight, AuRon found his mind wandering.
He could not decide if her long association with DharSii had changed his sister. He himself admired the dragon, but DharSii always preserved an air of isolation about him, as though he were perched at the peak of a mountain, no matter what the location and company. DharSii clearly cared for Wistala, but AuRon suspected that the dragon either had an agenda of his own or had suffered so many disappointments in life that he kept a reserve against further failure.
AuRon could sympathize. His youth had been shattered in a single, brutal day when the home cave was invaded by mercenaries seeking young dragons who could be broken to the saddle. Later, he’d lost NooMoahk, the ancient black dragon who’d served as a surrogate father. He’d poured out the whole of his life into his mate and their life on the Isle of Ice, but the glitter and society of the Dragon Empire had seduced her away more easily than he could have imagined.
Still, he sensed further calamities on the horizon, much like the coming thunderstorm. It pressed on him. The massacre at the Feast was just the start of something much worse for his kind. But whom could he get to listen?
Perhaps he was cracking up. Was he committing a spectacular, public suicide and bringing his siblings along for the trip?
No, Wistala truly wanted to avoid a second Fall of Silverhigh. She feared a human/dragon war that would probably destroy both races. His brother just wanted to spend his remaining years in peace with his mate. Passions of his abdication had cooled, the Empire had grown in security, and it was reasonable to assume that NiVom and his mate would no longer see AuRon as a threat to their power.
In the Copper’s mind, one of two things would happen as a result of his arriving in Quarryness.
What would
not
happen would be the dragons of the Aerial Host flying him back to NiVom and Imfamnia’s palace in Ghioz for their last, triumphant audience before packing him off in chains to whichever dungeon they’d selected for him to inhabit until they found the time and reason to murder him. They couldn’t force him to fly there, and if they couldn’t force him to fly they couldn’t force him to walk, either. If they chose to drag him, his body would fall to pieces before he arrived at the outskirts of Hypat.
What would happen? Either he would be allowed to proceed south to claim his mate, or he’d be killed.
Either might secure Nilrasha’s future. With him dead, she would no longer be a threat to NiVom and Imfamnia and they would leave her alone. They might be tempted to kill her, but her position and condition were known in the Empire. For NiVom and Imfamnia to kill a flightless dragonelle, and a widow at that, would incite opinion against them. Even the worst Tyrs evoked nostalgia when they were deceased and no longer part of the Lavadome’s political life.
If he was allowed to complete the march, word would pass through the Empire like flame. Those who disliked NiVom and Imfamnia would secretly support his march even as they watched and waited for a reaction. They might even work up the courage to join him. Their courtiers and lickvents in Ghioz might talk NiVom and Imfamnia into a rashness.
The chance to confront them in front of witnesses might even be worth his life. But would he spend his last breath cursing NiVom, or calling for Nilrasha?
The dragons of the Light Wing ringed the open common in front of what Wistala identified as the Hypatian hall. It wouldn’t have been hard to guess which building was the Hypatian hall even without her—it was both the tallest and broadest structure in the town.
They weren’t expecting him to bring other dragons, it seemed, for a ripple of activity ran through the waiting dragons. He counted twelve winged dragons—at least that he could see.
They alighted on the town common. Northerners were clustered in every doorway and window, watching events but ready to run to safety if flame began to fly.
The Copper, used to Hypatian grandeur, had a hard time believing he had landed in Hypatia. Even Juutfod, clinging to its steep incline beneath the cliffs on its zigzag streets and heavy wharves, seemed more built-up and cosmopolitan. This was a thatch-roofed village with a few big wooden halls and a single massive stone building. Were it not for the Hypatian hall, he would have mistaken it for the seat of some barbarian warlord.
DharSii took the role of interlocutor again and opened the negotiations. Wistala and AuRon flanked him. Hermethea watched the other direction.
“Well?” CuSarrath asked. “Have you come to face justice?”
“We come to keep dragon from killing dragon,” Wistala said, stepping forward and putting herself in the empty ground between the lines of dragons.
“None need die,” CuSarrath said. “I’m just ordered to bring the parole-breaking dragon who was adopted under the name RuGaard back to NiVom to face the Tyr’s justice. RuGaard or war against the might of the Empire, what will it be, dragons of the north?”
“I’d like to tell my side of the parole-breaking, as you call it,” the Copper said.
“He will do nothing of the kind,” CuSarrath said, stepping forward. “RuGaard, in the name of the Tyr and the Empire—
glaack!
”
This last was in response to Wistala leaping upon him and encircling his neck with hers. Wistala was the strongest dragonelle he’d ever known, probably stronger than most dragons, and CuSarrath had been watching DharSii as he came forward.
“We are not going to harm him,” DharSii bellowed. “On my hatchlings’ sheltering eggs, I will keep this oath. Hear Tyr RuGaard out and judge for yourselves.”