“You’re scratching the floors!” she bellowed at the blighter workmen, picking up their tools and placing them back in wooden trays with long handles. One of the blighters loosed his urine in fear, poor devil.
“Am I the only one who cares for this last vestige of Silverhigh?” Scabia asked the ceiling, which was as close as she came to reprimanding the Copper.
“I should have been watching them, Scabia,” the Copper said. “We are poor guests, I’m afraid. Your hospitality should make us grow more grateful over time rather than careless of it.”
He’d learned a diplomatic tongue in the Lavadome, dealing with the egos of powerful dragons and dragonelles. With his tail, he both sheltered the blighters and nudged them toward one of the servant-cracks leading down to their quarters. He’d smelled fire on Scabia’s breath and was afraid she would burn them, scorched floors or no.
“Nonsense,” Scabia said. “It’s good to have some dragons about. My nephew is always coming and going, which leaves me nothing for conversation but Aethleethia and NaStirath. My daughter, though I’ve raised her to be a respectable dragon-dame, is in possession of more appetite than wit, and I don’t care for NaStirath’s jokes.”
Mentioning that he was considering a journey was out, at least after that speech. When Scabia got an emotional updraft under her, she could peck and scratch at all around her until the sun disappeared and the stars turned circles.
“How are the hatchlings?” he asked.
“So quick! They have excellent memories and are serious even in play. Not at all what I’d expect from that ninny.”
Scabia was still under the impression that NaStirath, Aethleethia’s mate, had sired the clutch.
“They say hatchlings often resemble the sire’s sires,” the Copper said.
“Perhaps, Tyr RuGaard,” she said. Then she switched to mindspeech. He hardly understood one word in three, but it was something about Wistala being of better quality than first impressions allowed.
For Scabia to use mindspeech with him, even unsuccessfully, was a high compliment. It was possible only between dragons of natural affinity who’d long grown accustomed to each other’s minds or between mother dragons and their hatchlings.
The Copper warmed at the compliment, even from Scabia. He’d known so few others in life who genuinely liked him. Most dragons, even unusually bright ones like DharSii, saw only his injuries and deformities. There was something deep and dark in most dragons that hated weakness, clumsiness, deformity of any kind. It had served him to advantage in the snakepit of the Lavadome, where the contempt of the other ruling dragons kept him safe from suspicion as he grew up and made him an agreeable choice for Tyr—such a wreck of a dragon would never grow popular or powerful.
The warmth turned to bile. He’d won the intimacy of a vainglorious old recluse. Some achievement. He made a few excuses about wanting to soak his sore wing in the hot springs and left her as soon as he decently could.
DharSii spent another day away and returned at night. Again he assured the Copper of Wistala’s health and safety. The hunting was just exceptionally good on the south slopes of the Sadda-Vale; as proof he brought in a big, wide-horned, hairy creature called a yilak. Wistala had stayed behind to keep an eye on the herd. It was a wild descendant of a beast of burden that the blighters had used in their days of power and glory, large enough for each dragon to have a satisfying haunch, plenty of flank-meat for the hatchlings, and the organs could go to the blighters, who had dozens of recipes for what they considered to be the delicacies of yilak brain, heart, and digestive organs.
Wistala thought it likely that if the dragons watched over the herd, killed or drove off the predators, they might take up residence in the south passes and see a good deal of natural increase. They were tough creatures, able to withstand a winter on the slopes. It would add some variety to their diet and if they could capture a few, the blighters could put them to work.
The Copper enjoyed his haunch, so much so that he followed it up with a double helping of gravel. Already, new scale was beginning to bud up under the worst patches of the white-rot stuff, and the diseased scale was beginning to drop off in twos and threes. The blighters didn’t even bother to collect scale with white-rot to trade, though he’d been told they ground up the healthy bits and put it into weapons and tools to strengthen the metals.
But that was for the future to reveal. After the yilak feast, DharSii ordered up more wine and drew the Copper aside.
“I’ve given it some thought and I think I have a solution that will allow you to fly.” He said no more until his blighters could be called, and they went to work.
“Solution” wasn’t the word the Copper would have chosen; it was more of a second-least-worst outcome, the worst being not able to fly at all. DharSii put in a locking mechanism so his wing could be either open or shut, and taught the Copper how to alter the configuration by means of a heavy pin and a pair of metal bands with hooks.
When the wing was locked open, he could fly, but the joint didn’t work, and it was fatiguing to make the adjustments with this wing that the natural joint, and Rayg’s flexible arrangement, allowed. But it did stay open and support his weight in the air. When closed, the wing didn’t settle quite right against his side. It looked like he was trying to shade his limbs on that side with his wing or keep a wound exposed to air, but it was not particularily fatiguing to do so. The Copper did discover, though, that his shoulder was unusually sore after the test flight. He was terribly out of condition, and asking his muscles to fly in a different manner than they’d done his whole life.
But the feel of air under his belly and his neck and tail making the hundreds of adjustments of muscle and scale they did while in the air on his brief flight made him feel that the soreness had been purchased in a fair transaction.
He decided to trust Wistala’s incognito mate. “I need a change of conversation, DharSii.”
“I am sympathetic to the inclination,” DharSii said.
At dinner that night the Copper decided to make his move.
“I’m terribly out of condition,” he said. “I was swimming the other day.”
“I thought your odor had improved,” NaStirath said.
“I could hardly climb out of the water.”
“The heat,” Aethleethia said, tossing her hatchlings another shred of meat. They promptly fell on it and the big one, CuDasthene, ripped it away from the others so they were left with only a mouthful. “It relaxes one so. I must nap through the afternoon if I spend the morning bathing.”
“I would have liked to see this hall full of dragons,” the Copper said.
Scabia sighed. “Full? Not even I have ever seen it full, but once, when I was not much older than these fireless squirmers here, there were enough dragons so that they seemed one continuous wall of scale about me. Safe—I can’t remember when I felt so safe.”
“Perhaps we should invite some other dragons here,” the Copper said.
“What, for a party?” NaStirath asked.
“No, to stay with us.”
Scabia picked a bone from her teeth, snapped it, and used the sharp end to clean her teeth. “There are no others. None worth having.”
“You have said that many times before,” DharSii said. “Since then, Wistala joined us, with her two brothers. They’re worth having.”
NaStirath chuckled low in his throat. “Well, I think we can both agree she is, anyway.”
“NaStirath, you really are tiresome,” his mate said.
“I’ve heard of some dragons at a tower on the Inland Ocean.”
“I know them,” DharSii said. “You can hardly call them dragons anymore. They’ve been serving men for three generations now. The first were allies. Their children were paid subservients. This generation—you can hardly call them servants. The next generation will be slaves. Well-fed, carefully groomed and cleaned slaves, but still slaves.”
“All the more reason—,” the Copper began.
“Crusades! Tyr RuGaard, do you know why this hall is so empty? Dragons with fancy ideas about altering the world. The world is what it is, we are what we are, and the less we try to alter the course of the world, the better we’ll do.”
“I was only thinking out loud,” the Copper said. “Please forgive me if I’ve brought back painful memories.” He hated playing the supplicant. But then, wasn’t that his rightful place? He was living on charity in another’s home.
“You are used to the company of dozens, or hundreds,” Aethleethia said. “With us, it is always the same three or four faces. Why shouldn’t you go visit some new dragons?”
“Be prepared for disappointment,” DharSii said.
“I would like the exercise—and the challenge,” the Copper said.
“If you go, I fear you will never return,” Scabia said. “Something in my hearts’ beating tells me this.”
“Perhaps I should remain,” the Copper said. “Your wisdom seems worth listening to. The idea of a long flight was an idle fancy, perhaps.”
“My fantasies are a good deal more idle,” NaStirath said.
Scabia nodded, tossed away the bone toothpick. A blighter rushed to retrieve it.
Had he overplayed the gambit?
“I am old and cautious, Tyr RuGaard,” Scabia said. “Perhaps a challenge would do you good. You’ve been gloomy for years. The prospect of action seems to be bringing you out of it.”
Perhaps not.
“You do know, RuGaard, that some of the dragons—I think I heard you called them hag-riders—who took over the Lavadome in your predecessor’s reign, were trained there? It is an old outpost of the Wizard of the Isle of Ice. It’s the last stronghold of the Dragonriders.”
“If it’s the last, they may welcome another dragon about the place. Are there any other objections?” the Copper asked.
The dragons were all silent. “Then I think I will visit this dragon tower.”
He spent a week in practice flights. First, he stayed over the water. The rising heat from the lake helped him with air currents. After two days of that, and heartier eating each night, he felt well enough to circle the interior of the Sadda-Vale.
He kept his eyes scanning for Wistala. He thought he smelled her at the southern end on the air, but the trail led nowhere.
Once, at night, he tried following DharSii, but the striped dragon flew hard and well, faster than he could fly with his patched-together and mostly frozen joint. DharSii flew into the thick night mists and disappeared.
There was some mystery here. DharSii would never harm Wistala—of that he was certain—nor would he betray the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. So it wasn’t treachery.
The Copper, with his years in the Lavadome, was used to considering any phenomenon as a threat. Were they keeping some secret from Scabia? Perhaps Wistala was ready for another clutch of eggs and they were hiding her from Scabia. But why wouldn’t she welcome more hatchlings? Now that her daughter had her eggs . . . No, it could not be that. Though Wistala was a dragonelle of strange ideas. Perhaps she’d want her hatchlings to be free of Scabia’s ideas.
What were they hiding, and from whom?
He felt his body waking to the activity and his mind—he was feeling again. Even the pain of his exile, from the knowledge that he’d sworn to be permanently separated from the one of his kind who’d always loved him without reserve, could be felt and reckoned with. Pain taught. Pain strengthened.
It was during one of his training flights—he fought his way to the highest altitude he could stand, where it was much easier to ride the wind—that he at last marked Wistala returning to Scabia’s hall.
He dipped his wings and descended side-to-side in a series of sweeping motions. He didn’t have the flexibility or the trust in the wing joint to do a true dive.
On his last swoop he passed just above and behind Wistala. His shadow flicked across her back. She turned and dove, closing her vulnerable wings and lashed up with her tail. It caught him across the neck, and he saw some of his loose scale fall glittering in the sun.
Then, evidently recognizing him, she opened her wings again and circled around behind. With three powerful beats—Wistala was one of the strongest females he’d ever known—she was beside him.
“Brother,” she called. “I’m so sorry!”
“Let’s land, by the bathing rocks there.” He gestured with his good
sii
.
They alighted and Wistala brought her head close to his.
“Just a little weak scale is all. You’re hardly bleeding.”
“Your tail felt like a thunderbolt. I’m glad my neck isn’t broken.”
“I said I was sorry. I’m not used to you flying. DharSii told me he’d worked on your joint.”
“Impolite of me to come down on you from behind. I should have called, but my wind isn’t what it was. I’m out of condition.”
“An aerial chase is a good way to get yourself back in training, I suppose. You should just warn the chasee. I thought I was in for a fight and I reacted by instinct.”