Natasach opened an eye.
“Did you enjoy your walk?” she thought to him.
“I met Wistala. It seems she has a problem she believes I can help her solve. It involves my friend, King Naf in Dairuss. She asks me to fly there and engage in a little diplomacy on her behalf.”
He decided not to tell her about the possibility of a Protectorship.
Natasatch’s scale lifted in excitment. “So what did you say?” “I said nothing. I wanted to get your opinion first. You see, it would probably mean several years away from our island, and I know how much you enjoy the winters there.”
“Oh AuRon, don’t tease. What will you do, my love?”
“Do my best to resolve the issue, I suppose. I can’t leave Naf at the mercy of these unscrupulous, greedy dragons. Will you accompany me there?”
“Silly. Nothing would please me better. I’m happy to see more of the world, especially with you.”
Chapter 4
D
airuss and the City of the Golden Dome had grown since last AuRon had seen it. It rivaled even Hypat in size, though probably not in population; there were still many fields where sheep grazed within the city proper.
AuRon took the precaution of first visiting the guardpost in the high pass of the Red Mountains, once Naf ’s station, and sending word by Dairuss messenger that AuRon the Gray had returned with mate and offspring to visit and consult with King Naf.
The men of the guard watched from their tower slits. Mysterious clanks and clatters echoed from within—were they pushing furniture to barricade the door, setting out fire buckets, or preparing war machines to fire harpoons?
He assuaged his anxiety by telling Istach stories of how he and Naf met, back when he was just a lowly sword-for-hire guarding dwarven gold. How he raised Hieba up from a little girl stolen from a ravaged trade caravan to Queen, and how Naf ’s people had been the first to fight back against the Ghioz empire.
So when word returned, flashed by a great mirror atop the Golden Dome, that AuRon was to land in the Dome’s gardens, AuRon half sighed in relief.
They alighted in a meadow filled with white-painted decorative stones. From the air, or the top of the dome, they made patters that AuRon recognized as human astrological signs.
“Hello, AuRon. I’m glad to meet your family at last,” Naf said from behind.
AuRon had been watching the elaborate, fountain-flanked steps leading up to the onion-shaped, gold-painted dome. Instead, he’d come out of a ordinary stone dwelling, not much more than a cottage, really.
“You aren’t in the old palace residence?” AuRon asked.
“Ach, no. Everything is such a walk in that place. I like my pipe, my water, and my hearth all within reach of a good solid chair, and these days a long hike to bed is not my favorite way to end a day.”
“AuRon! You haven’t changed a bit,” Hieba said. She was still beautiful, only careworn.
AuRon introduced Natasatch and Istach.
Naf ’s forehead bore a fringe of white—a sign of aging in a human. What had been gray before was now white, making the remaining darker hair toward the back look all deeper in color, as though it were steadying itself for the final desperate battle from the white encroachment at the temples and forelock. Hieba’s eyes had lost much of their sparkle. They’d seemed to have fallen back into dark sockets, but were steady and alert and the teeth she showed in her mouth were still in order, even if they’d gone a bit yellowish brown.
“It’s from all the bitterbean I’ve been drinking,” she said, when AuRon asked about it, since he couldn’t discuss the condition of her scale and had no idea what human standards applied to the night-black hair bound in elaborate cording of three colors. “The taste is so familiar, I must have had it as a child, before you found me.”
“Some of the Ghioz trade routes are still intact,” Naf said. “They’re not bad fellows, once you yank the whips out of their hands and don’t curse their dead Queen—to their faces, anyway.”
Naf wore the coats of state of his people. The Dairuss kings of old, evidently, did not go for flashy apparel, perhaps befitting a simple people who grazed a dozen different animals depending on ground—Dairuss was everything from high-mountain passes to rolling, well-watered hills near the great river. While it had never been a rich land in gold or gems, they’d fallen from the heights they’d once, briefly, known when they’d overthrown the evil wizard Anklemere who’d ruled an empire vaster than even the Hypatians had known in their glory.
“And Nissa,” AuRon asked, dredging up the name from his memory.
“Nissa means ‘morning dove’ in my language. Our nickname for her. Now she only answers to the Ghioz court name the Red Queen gave her, Desthenae.”
“Married at eleven, to one of the Princes of the Sunstruck Sea,” Hieba said. “Not our doing, some Ghioz title in charge of her sold her maidenhood and absconded when the Queen’s rule collapsed. We’re just grateful this Prince made her a wife, instead of a concubine, as the men in those parts are wont to do.”
“Those white-turbaned fellows?” AuRon asked. He’d fought them once, to defend his blighter allies in the mountains of Old Uldam.
“It’s a fractious land,” Naf said. “For the most part they keep quarrels among themselves.”
“I hardly know the world outside our island,” Natasatch said, in her shaky Parl. Istach corrected her pronunciation.
“Hieba made an unofficial journey to see her,” Naf said. “She’s, well, even influenced her husband to prefer us to the old Ghioz states in matters of trade routes. Their caravans offload here now, rather than in Ghioz.”
“I’ll be happy to fly you down there,” Natasatch said. “I’m learning that I enjoy travel.”
“Very kind of you—lady . . .” Naf said, searching for a title.
AuRon harrumphed. “We don’t have any sort of rank you need to refer to. Though we have come to talk to you about this business with the Grand Alliance.”
“It’s a pleasant day,” Naf said. “Perhaps it would be easier for us all to talk outside. I’ll have some chairs brought.”
Once they settled in, Hieba and Naf seated with a few of their court in attendance, AuRon and his family facing them, and some roast mutton long since gone down dragon gullets.
“I’m here to convince you to rejoin the Grand Alliance,” AuRon said.
“That fat SoRolatan was almost as bad as the Ghioz,” Hieba said. “He’d pluck cattle right out of a field or dip his neck right into a net full of fish. He threatened to burn down the dome if we didn’t bring him more coin.”
“Did he protect you from anything?” AuRon asked.
“Biting insects, I suppose,” Naf said. “They avoided his reek.”
“Your kingdom is in an odd predicament,” AuRon said. “I understand it fell into the Grand Alliance rather than joining.”
“I would have your counsel,” Naf said. “Perhaps fresh dragon eyes can perceive that which is puzzlement and dilemma.”
“Counsel? My eyes won’t help you much in political murk,” AuRon said.
“Then let’s escape it. Come, AuRon, I’ll fly, if you’ll humble yourself to bear a human on your proud and unconquered back. Like Tindairuss and NooMoahk of old, eh?”
They brought out sewn-together sheepskins rigged with stirrups and horn. “It’s a saddle for an elephant, if you must know. They’re used down in the logging camps to the south.”
AuRon’s mouth watered at the memory of elephant. Chewy, but one could dine for days.
It took some time for Naf ’s saddlemaster, or whatever his title was, to adjust the straps so they fit snug on a dragon. Naf eventually put on a heavy cloak and climbed on.
“Keep your scarf about you,” Hieba said, rechecking his stirrups. “It’s cold, flying on dragon-back.”
“Ah, AuRon,” Naf laughed, “you’re wider than the hunting horses a king rides for pleasure. It’s like sitting atop a flat old plowhorse.”
“Be sure not to tip him,” Natasatch said. “That would be a terrible beginning to our diplomacy.”
“He’s tougher than he looks,” AuRon said. “Ready? Don’t be alarmed, I flap the most taking off.”
With that, AuRon launched himself into the air. Naf kicked him hard in the throat as his heels sought purchase, hanging on for dear life.
“What direction first?” AuRon asked.
“North,” Naf said.
AuRon swung toward the blue green of the Falngese river. “Here, to the north, is where we first met. Wallander’s an ally of ours, of sorts. The traveling towers don’t cross the lands since the Ironriders waged war on the lands west, but there is still trade. The silk and dye chain of trading posts bring their pack trains here, and a good deal of the Sunstruck Sea trade finds its way here as well. Your dwarf friends rely on us as allies in case of trouble, and there’s always trouble when the Ironriders are your neighbors.
As if to prove his point, AuRon saw galloping figures on the far side of the river.
“Yah-ha, what’s this?” Naf said. “AuRon, by the riverbank, the long sandbar with the trees.”
AuRon descended, willing to take a closer look.
Even the great Falngese sometimes ran shallow, and a barge had caught itself on a sandbar. Its crew had been trying to move it back into the main channel by means of a small boat, lines, and anchors.
The problem was the boat was stranded on the far side of the river, not yet to Wallander and in the open country of the plains.
Ironrider lands.
More and more Ironriders galloped up to the riverbank, like hyenas gathering at a lion’s kill.
AuRon’s battle blood wasn’t up. Nothing particularly vexed him about the scuffle below, just humans robbing one another. For every fishing ship he’d seen coming to the rescue of another in distress, he’d seen two stealing each other’s pot-markers, or cutting a rival’s nets away. “Naf, I’m not some kind of war-horse. I’m not even a scaled dragon. One lucky bowman—”
“Drop flame on them. Anything to frighten them away!”
“That I can do. But you’ll owe me a hearty meal, my friend.”
If it was to be done, it might as well be done well. Where had he heard that? His brother? He must be getting mazy from too much change of altitude, if he was quoting his brother.
AuRon read the wind in the grass before deciding on a direction for the attack.
Mind made up, he swooped in low, making as much noise as he could. The horses reacted as horses usually did: They danced and shied and the arrows drawn went well off mark.
He loosed his flame in the shallow waters at the riverbank. Billowing clouds of steam erupted, and a small grass fire sizzled.
“The King! The King!” the crew shouted as AuRon passed overhead.
“I’ll dislodge them. Hang on,” AuRon said.
With a wary glance at the bank, where the Ironrider raiders had discovered that the prize wasn’t worth a possible scorching and were scattering to parts east, he landed. Gripping the barge’s stern with his
sii,
he found purchase in the sandy river-bottom and shoved, then swam, the boat back out into the main channel.
“You should get one of those monster herbivores the dwarfs use for this,” AuRon grunted.
Naf waved to the cheering men.
Ah well
, AuRon thought,
the king always gets the credit. Or the blame
.
With that he took off again, and they followed the course of the Falngese river.
AuRon had overflowed it before, but he’d never seen this much traffic on it, from little fishing boats to bigger, grain-filled barges.
“Hypatia is growing rich again,” Naf explained. “They’re buying, and when there are buyers there are sellers jostling each other to be first to their markets.”
AuRon shrugged. He didn’t care one way or another if the Hypatians grew rich or how much grain they bought. He did fear for what a rich and powerful neighbor might intend for Naf and his people. It could be like the Ghioz all over again—Naf ’s poor country was at an important gap in the mountains.
“This is the east. We claim this length of the Falngese river, but by long tradition it’s a free-flow. I can claim no part of the commerce that doesn’t come into or leave my shores. The Ghioz abide by the tradition as well—for now. Beyond the river are the forests of the old provinces, now claimed by both us and the Ghioz (who, under this Grand Alliance, aren’t all that different from the old), and beyond that are the mountains where you and Hieba lived with the blighters. The mountains are thick with blighters and their herds and they are settling here, there and here again before you know it. Do they grow on rocks?”
“I read a study in NooMoahk’s old library,” AuRon said. “In times of war and stress blighters will produce more male children. In times of peace, more females are born. Back when I lived there, I advised them to stay out of wars and battles; it seems they still do. Wifeing years and knifing years, the Fireblades used to call such intervals.”
“I fear they will see some knifing years. There are the usual disputes about grazing lands and stolen livestock between my roving foresters camps and the blighter settlers and the Ghioz.”
“Or your settlers and the roving blighters, as a blighter-chief might have it. But don’t worry too much about border disputes here; I may be able to help you with this. There may be some old fireblades who remember me.”
Naf needed a rest out of the saddle and they broke their journey at a village. After a moment of terror and slammed shutters as AuRon passed over, once he landed and Naf called out for his people to come help their weary old king dismount, they forgot their fear and children seemed to be peering at him out of every doorway and windowsill. Naf bought some bread for himself and two fat hams for his mount, and they stretched out for some of the afternoon before mounting again.
“To think, to be able to travel from one end of my kingdom to the other in a day,” Naf said. “Dairuss is not big by any means, but even riding hard with fresh horses at every station it takes a messenger more than a day to go from north to south.”