by E. E. Knight
“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.”
AuRon was used to the saddle by now—though he resolved none but Naf could ride him—and they took off again.
“And the south. Our source of sustenance and of trouble. We love the Ghioz for their plentiful food, barges full of grain and feed they send from their southlands, but it has always come at a price of arrogance, or domination. They outnumber us and frequently outwit us; more than one Dairussan has borrowed from their ample coffers to find that it must be paid back through Ghioz tax collectors and market law. They think of us as upright blighters in need of direction and management.”
“You should be honored to be thought of as blighter by such as they. I would rather freeze in that pass with you than pass a holiday with the Ghioz, from what I’ve seen of them. Always trying to get others to do their dirty work.”
“They’re slavers, one way or another. Now they’ve got that great white dragon and his mate as their dragon lords, when others aren’t coming and going to keep an eye on those two. I’m—ho, what’s this, AuRon? Name a specter and he appears.”
Naf pointed to what AuRon’s sharp eyes had already picked out—a green dragon flying up from the south.
“I don’t recognize her,” AuRon said.
“Is there danger?”
AuRon judged the green, trying to close distance. She didn’t move through the air with the slow, steady beats of an experienced flier, he suspected she spent most of her time on the ground.
“I should think not. She flies like a dragon born for swimming.”
“She’s coming straight for us.”
“Let your fears go like a loose scale. I can outfly anything with scale,” AuRon said, getting height advantage, just in case. “Though I don’t want to take you too high. Your nose will bleed or you’ll freeze.”
The lumbering dragonelle waggled in the air as she approached, showing her belly. AuRon guessed she wanted to talk, the gesture struck him as funny or playful, though he didn’t know what the signals might mean to these dragons of the Lavadome.
He circled her, she c
ircled him.
“I believe that’s one of the Ghioz Protectors,” Naf said. “She visited our dragon.”
AuRon came up alongside her. “Happy to meet a new dragon,” she called. “Might we alight and talk? My name is Imfamnia, my mate is the Protector of Ghioz.”
And so it was that AuRon met the former Queen of the Lavadome, Imfamnia, called the Jade Queen, and now an exile.
They alighted on a rocky hilltop, sending hares fleeing for their lives.
“I am AuRon. I’m carrying my friend, King Naf of the Dairuss.”
The dragon-dame tipped her head to the King. “Very pleased,” she said, in stilted Parl.
She had too much paint on her by half for AuRon. A health-tonic-selling dwarf’s trade wagon looked subdued compared to the purples and reds and golds about her eyes, griff, nostrils, and ear-buds.
“NiVom is feeling unwell this morning, otherwise he would have been up in this delightful air,” she panted, sucking in a good deal of it.
“The white?” AuRon asked. “I met him in the war against the Red Queen. Where he changed sides.”
“To the nation of his birth, who’d cast him out before your brother took power. He never wanted to make war on them, and reverted to where his true loyalty lay at the first opportunity.”
Naf hopped off the saddle chair and stretched his back.
“It’s getting late, AuRon,” Naf said. “We’ll want to find a place to overnight.”
Imfamnia cocked her head, puzzled. “Perhaps I misunderstood, but did that man just order you to rest for the night?”
“He hasn’t flown before, and I’ve no wish to tax him.”
“Curious. Well, pleased to meet you, AuRon. I hope we shall be good friends. I know we will. There’s a terrible shortage of new anecdotes at our feasts these days, in Ghioz we’re cut off from most of Lavadome society. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m not exactly welcome there.”
“You didn’t fly all this way to tell me this.”
She tucked her shaking wings in to her sides a little tighter. “We heard a rumor that you were to be our new neighbor.”
“Neighbor?”
“Fellow dragon lord. Protector of Dairuss.”
AuRon shifted his gaze to Naf. “That would be up to him.”
“Up to—a human?”
“King Naf is lord in Dairuss. I wouldn’t presume to tell him how to arrange his affairs.”
The dragon dame bent her neck without moving her head. Some might interpret it as a bow, others as a twitch. “I’m pleased,” she said, in that halting Parl. She shifted back to Drakine: “You know, AuRon, if he’s fatigued, a little dragon blood would help revive him. Does wonders for older human males. Might even help with the brittle hair.”
“Dragon blood?” AuRon asked.
“It’s all the rage with certain allies of ours. Sometimes, at banquets, NiVom and I are quite drained.”
AuRon looked over her perfectly formed lines. “You don’t look like you’ve ever shed a drop of blood in your life.”
Imfamnia chuckled. AuRon still wasn’t sure he liked laughing dragons. Silliness wasn’t befitting of dragonkind.
“I’ve never claimed to be a fighting dragon. There are more pleasant things to do with one’s life. You’re mated, aren’t you? Too bad. With so little scale you must be quite an experience.”
AuRon stilled his griff. Mating, perhaps the single most important decision a dragon could ever make, reduced to an experience . Less and less he was liking this dragon-dame.
“I’m sure I don’t have your experience to judge,” he said.
“I’m sure you don’t. But that’s easily remedied.” She brushed him along the side with her wing.
He’d never encountered anything quite like her. She appealed in a way that was hard to define, a less dragonlike attitude could hardly be imagined. She behaved more like a blighter who’d had too much rice wine or an elvish jester.
“You didn’t fly after us to joke.”
“No. Flying is wearisome. My mate and I thought we would invite you to our residence. Surely with two lands sharing a long border and a longer history, we have matters to discuss, so that the thralls don’t become restive and take matters into their own bloody little hands. Cooler dragon heads should be called in to resolve things, don’t you agree?”
“How did you learn I was to be sent to Dairuss?”
“You’re new to the Grand Alliance. News travels faster than wings. Especially in matters of mating, dueling, or politics.”
“Again, matters I know little of and care of less. I’m already mated, I’ve had my share of duels and won’t seek another, and as for politics, I don’t know enough to have an opinion.”
Imfamnia made a noise that was half laugh, half prrum. “An admirable disinterest. To tell you the truth, sometimes I have difficulty distinguishing them myself. What is your mate’s name again?”
“Natasatch.”
“Please send her my regards. Should your King Naf there decide to accept you as Protector, I hope we’ll see you in our resort soon. The change of company would be most welcome.”
“Hail and farewell, King Naf,” she added, switching back to Parl. “I hope the next time I visit your city, no one shoots arrows at me.”
“Enjoy the rest of your tour, AuRon. It shouldn’t take long, unless you enjoy counting sheep.”
With that, she trotted away and launched herself into the sky.
They rested in one of the towns near the Ghioz border, in a broken-down old castle overlooking a village nestled along the Ghioz road through the hills.
Naf told him a story about the defense of the castle against the Ghioz, long before he was born. Dairuss had lost, of course, but they resisted gallantly while they could.
He wondered what difference it made in the long run. Sometimes you just had to give up trying to fly if the winds were too strong. He hoped Naf wasn’t nerving himself for another gallant-but-futile resistance to the Hypatians and his brother’s empire.
Naf wandered into town cloaked. He liked to go among his people disguised, it seemed, and returned with two plucked turkeys and some bread and wine. After eating, AuRon curled up in the foundation of a collapsed tower and slept.
The beautiful and slightly silly Imfamnia invaded his dreams.
They were up with the larks the next morning. Naf settled himself rather stiffly into the saddle chair. “Old bones don’t take quickly to new tricks.”
They flew back northward on the Dairuss side of the Red Mountains.
“And at last, the west. Hypatia. We bled plenty for them when they were bowing and scraping to the Wizard Anklemere and we were the only men west of the great desert who wouldn’t submit. We won our freedom then—only to lose it shortly after to the Ghioz. It appears my land is fated to remain free for only brief periods in between conquerors. Now, with the Tyr’s dragons at their backs, they’re haughty and demanding.”
“Are you worried about the dragons?” AuRon asked.
“Oh, they send smooth talkers over, to tell us all the advantages of joining your Tyr’s ‘Grand Alliance.’ Safety”—he spat. “Security”—he spat again. “Order psht! Those words go like chains about the wrist. Only they’re worse; you can’t see the manacles until they’ve bound you hand and foot like a pig to slaughter.”
If Naf went on much longer about his brother’s Dragon Empire his shepherds below might think it raining.
“I know what will happen,” Naf said. “The Hypatians will create some pretext to reclaim us, and we won’t dare resist with dozens of dragons ready to sweep over our poor lands.”
AuRon knew what it was like to be the weakest of a team of rivals. He’d always thought that the more the hominids fought each other, the better off dragons were—fewer two-legged warriors to go after his kind.
Hard to think of a good-hearted fellow like Naf being ground up in a war, though.
“It’s a good land, AuRon. The elven refugees have settled and set
up craft houses and theaters and schools and hospitals. We have dwarfs coming to and fro from the Diadem, setting up mines and wells and trading posts. You ever tried dwarf-drink, AuRon? Most refreshing, like beer that doesn’t give you a headache, just the burps. We even have some Ghioz who don’t care for their new Dragon Lords setting up households, and say what you want about the Ghioz, they know how to organize and smooth and build. They’re doing very well as stonemasons and bricklayers. We could be as great a people as we ever were.”
He didn’t like the idea of flinging himself into the rivalries and politics of the Lavadome, but if it would help Naf . . . He gulped and took the plunge: “I promise you, my friend, if you’ll join the Grand Alliance, with me as your Protector, I’ll do my best to truly protect your lands. My sister, who’s now serving as Queen Consort to the Tyr, she wants the Alliance to benefit both.”
“I’ve met her,” Naf said. “She speaks superbly. But she’s just one voice. For every dragon like her, there’s at least one SoRolatan.”
They traveled over central Dairuss on their way back to the City of the Golden Dome, and Naf had him stop in some marshy country.
“This is a famous holdout of robbers and partisans fighting against our conquerers. Many a king has removed his throne to these swamps.”
AuRon had perfected his swamp-feeding technique in the jungles south of NooMoahk’s old cave. (Ah, if he’d only known about the trouble that crystal could cause—he would never have willed it to the blighters when he quit that old library-cavern.) You simply plunge your jaws into the swamp vegetation, suck up a mouthful of roots, stems, leaves, and petals, then hoist your head high in the air and drain the water down your throat. Any number of fish, frogs, crustaceans, worms, bugs, and leeches would then cascade down your throat. Then you’d simply spit out the greenstuff. Not the most tasty meal—stagnant water always made one’s belches reminiscent of sewage—but it filled one with water that could be quickly processed and the food digested quickly without a jumble of bones and joints clogging the gut.
“A man could get gut-sick on such water,” Naf said.