by E. E. Knight
At that, there was a murmur from some of the King’s retinue at the sides of his thick-beamed, tin-roofed hall. Wistala thought the style of the architecture so striking in the manner it echoed the mountains that she considered flying north at once to see if the roof on her eventual resort might be restyled in the manner of King Arbus’s palace.
“If we do not join?” he asked.
“I’ll make no threat. The world around you is changing. You can remain apart from it, in your fastness and isolation and independence, tending those throwbacks to another age you ride and harness into pulling your wagons. You’ll lose sons and daughter to the cities that will grow and thrive and ring the Inland Ocean again like a jeweled necklace.”
King Arbus laughed. “I see you’re still a fortune-teller.”
Wistala breathed easier. When the men of Fount Brass laughed, all was well.
“There’s no need to put a dragon in these hills, King Arbus. Only give your word that you and your heirs will offer food and shelter to a tired messenger, and reaffirm the old bonds to the Hypatian Directory, and you’ll have title not just here in your city, but throughout the Grand Alliance. You’ll be welcome in a dozen courts, even deep in the Lavadome, and not just be limited to your own. What say you, King?”
“I thank you for not salting your tongue with threats. I am moved by the truth in your eyes. I suspect you are a dragon Fount Brass can trust. Prove your words with deeds, though, Wistala. I provisionally—provisionally, mind!—accept. If all goes well for three years, we shall call it an Alliance. There! I have given. Will you give as well?”
“In the name of the Lavadome, as Queen-Consort, I accept.”
Wistala wondered who she should report the change in Fount Brass to first. The Lavadome or the Hypatian Directory? The Directory dealt more frequently with the men of Fount Brass, but she held a more important position in the Lavadome as Queen-Consort.
In either case, she allowed herself a short prrum of satisfaction at crossing the very last item off of Nilrasha’s list of issues to which she should devote mind and talent.
Save the unwritten one. Of a conspiracy against the Tyr she knew next to nothing. There were complaints and gossip, but unless her brother and Nilrasha had become unhinged, there was no danger in complaints and gossip.
Wistala decided to return to the Lavadome with the news of Fount Brass. Her brother, glad to have another triumph to celebrate, ordered a feast held in her honor for the new Protectorate—even if it was a provisional one.
“There’ll be nothing provisional about the provisions,” the Copper said.
NoSohoth saw to it that the banquet pit atop Imperial Rock was decorated with wind chimes, a gift from the King of Fount Brass.
The old silver dragon assigned Wistala the honor of the first position at the feast, so that fresh platters from the kitchen passed under her nose as they were brought up.
So many members of the Imperial Line and the principal hills attended that the dragons had to take turns around the feasting pit. By tradition, the younger ate first and the older ate longer.
Thanks to new Hypatian trade there were entertainments to delight the dragons beyond the usual songs. Trade with the Hypatians had brought fireworks from across half a world. Rayg had arranged them on a series of wooden platforms, starting off with fountains of light and having them grow into colorful missiles that almost touched the top of the Lavadome.
“Exquisite,” Wistala said to her brother, thumping her tail with the others. “Who is that human controlling the display?”
“Have you never met him? That’s Rayg, my engineering adviser.”
Wistala hadn’t thought of the name in so long it took her brain a moment to make the connection.
“Rayg . . . Raygnar?”
“I believe so. He was raised and taught by dwarfs, I believe.”
“Rayg. Trained by dwarfs?” Wistala asked, shocked. This was Lada’s child! What was he doing in the Lavadome? For him to have come so far, she had no idea the Wheel of Fire dwarfs traveled so far in the Lower World. The last she’d ever learned of him was that he’d disappeared into the Lower World after King Fangbreaker’s death in the barbarian victory over the Wheel of Fire dwarfs—an assault and a regicide in which she’d played no small part.
“How did he ever come here?”
“I hardly remember,” the Copper said. “Some traveling dwarfs we captured, I believe. He’s smarter than any of our Ankelenes. He designed and built my wing joint. Dwarf-training, I suppose, but he’s built things not even a dwarf could create. I keep meaning to free him, but there always seems to be one more task for him to do.”
One more trip to make. She’d have to find time somehow to go north and tell Rayg’s mother that he still lived. Not only lived, but had grown into brilliant manhood.
But nevertheless, he was little more than a slave.
So when her brother asked her for a private chat in his baths after the feast, she happily accepted.
“It’s much reduced from SiDrakkon’s day. At one time his bath took up most of the upper level of this end of the Imperial Rock.”
“I’ve heard stories from the Firemaids about all the human women he kept.”
“Not my weakness,” the Copper said.
Thralls brought in stones heated in the cooking fires until they created an optical illusion of waves above them. The thralls dropped the stones into shallow pools of water, which instantly boiled and filled the bath with steam.
The heat raised her scale and the water beaded up on skin and scale, washing her delighfully clean from nose to tailtip. She felt as though a dwarf ’s weight in dirt ran off her and into the sluices.
“You’ve never been in the Tyr’s bath before, have you?”
“It’s pleasant,” Wistala said. “Why doesn’t the Queen have her own?”
“The Queen, or Queen-Consort, can use this one whenever she likes,” the Copper said.
“I shall. Nilrasha never said how much flying would be involved in being Queen-Consort.”
“Her experiences predate the Grand Alliance,” the Copper said.
“Of course.”
“I think my Protectors are cheating me,” the Copper said.
Wistala sighed. She’d much rather brief him on the campaign to get the bandits off the oliban trade routes. Or new hatchlings. Or the promotions in the Firemaids, and who had taken what oaths.
No, he had to talk about the Protectorates—and how much gold was coming in.
She prepared her usual speech about how dragons should work out a system where they’re paid for the services they provide—keeping bandits off the roads and brigands out of the hills, and flying messages. The problem was the role of “Protector” wasn’t codified in Hypatian law.
Her brother had kept the costs, duties, and responsibilities of a Protector vague for a reason.
“Everyone takes a little bit off the tributes we are supposed to be given to keep scale healthy,” the Copper said.
Wistala was distracted by motion caught in the corner of her eye.
The Copper continued: “I think that the men—gaaagk!”
Wistala felt a hard jerk under her jaw. Strangulation—her vision blurred.
A winged shape, smaller than a griffaran, fluttered under her neck and she felt new pressure on her throat.
Her brother had managed to get a griff open—the one on the side where his eye was damaged tended to hang half open or move about on its own, adding to the lopsided look of his features.
He extended his wings and used them to deflect other fliers circling his throat with lengths of chain.
Wistala felt the pressure subside and took a desperate breath. Her brother pulled a length of chain away from her throat with his tail—he couldn’t reach his own but he could get at hers.
Wistala pulled back—hard—and heard a high, metallic ting! as a link parted. Now with the fighting blood running hot in her veins, she lunged and snapped at one of the fliers. She caught it
across the back and shook it like a dog killing a rat, flinging it into a corner and going after another.
Leathery flaps covered her eyes. She whipped her neck up hard and heard a satisfying splat as she crushed it against the wet ceiling.
Blinking the sting of the creature’s blood from her eyes, she saw her brother still fighting the chains around his throat.
For the first time Wistala had a clear look at their tormentors. They were batlike creatures, furless with thick, spiny skin. Evilly smiling jaws bristled with teeth and wide red eyes shone under cavernous ears. A thick mat of hair remained on the head, trailing down between the eyes to an upturned nose.
The legs, short but powerful, ended in quadruple claws. Long arms trailed veined webbing; the wings extended down the sides of their bodies to the knee joint.
“Pah!” one screamed at her brother, spitting a green globule at his good eye. He lifted his chin and managed to catch it on the griff, where it sizzled briefly.
Wistala spat back. Her fire ran across the ceiling of the bath, dropped to a pool, and spread atop it like a flaming leaf, adding to the steam. The creature vanished in the fire, its flaming body plummeted.
Striking with her wing, she brought down another. It tried to right itself on the slippery floor but she stomped down hard with a sii.
Just as suddenly as they’d come, they were gone, leaving hooked chains behind. And the bodies of their comrades.
She helped her brother out of the choking chain.
“We’ll need someone to extract these fishhook things,” Wistala said.
“Thank you,” the Copper managed.
Once the alarmed Griffaran Guard, Shadowcatch, and some servant thralls had attended to them, they ordered a thorough search of Imperial Rock for the rest of the assassins.
Their wounds were frightful—the hooks had left holes under the scale. They easily could have lost one or both neck-hearts in the struggle.
“How did they get into the Imperial Rock?”
“Flew—they’re dark, we don’t have a permanent guard circling in the air. The Drakwatch and Firemaids guard the entrances and lower passages. I expect they just flew in quietly and entered through someone’s balcony.”
“They must know their way around well.”
“Perhaps they explored,” Wistala said. “Late, when all are asleep.”
“I suppose they could have been mistaken for one of my bats. But not up close. These are out of the ordinary.”
“They must have been hidden by someone in the Imperial Rock. Fed, watered, washed out—until we were together and alone.”
“Perhaps they just attacked me to keep me from defending you,” Wistala said.
“Then why aren’t there three chains—or four? No, they brought two sets of hooked chains. Enough for two dragons. Someone must have seen us go off to the baths together and called them in.”
“I see being Queen is not all feasts and viewing hatchlings,” Wistala said.
“We’d better see about these wounds,” the Copper said. “Some of my own bats can take care of them.”
Wistala didn’t care for her brother’s method of treating wounds—washed out with bat spit, ragged flesh snipped away by sharp little teeth, all to the tune of cooing and animal slurping sounds in between “ ’ere, under tha’ scale” and “oh, this bit’s good, wha’s next?” But she had to admire the pleasant numbness and the clean scars.
At last, she had evidence of a conspiracy. But nothing on who might have sent the extraordinarily malformed bat creatures to kill them in the first place.
Chapter 9
NiVom was up to something. The Copper could smell it on him.
His Protector of Ghioz had invited him to enjoy a few days of sunlight in the Upper World “observing a show of Grand Alliance strength designed to enhance our prestige and intimidate possible rivals on our eastern borders,” or so the Firemaiden messenger told him.
After the usual courtly pleasantries and cheers welcoming him—and a small contingent of the Griffaran Guard and of course Shadowcatch 00 welcomed him to the only Protectorate that could begin to rival Hypatia—NiVom had some thralls pull away a canvas covering to show him a map worthy of the Lavadome map room itself.
Instead of a map, he’d constructed a model using sand and paint and some sort of adhesive—sugary egg yolks, the Copper suspected. It wasn’t quite up to the standards of the the map room in the Lavadome—rescaled to show the extent of the Grand Alliance, and it seemed, if NiVom would have his way, soon needing another improvement—but it showed the topography from the air in impressive detail, with blighter settlements dotting the Bissonian Scarpes like tiny black beetles. In fact, the blighter positions were beetle carapaces, now that he looked closely.
“Ghioz has long wanted these mountains. They are rich in precious metals and ores.”
“But this is the heart of the old Blighter Empire,” the Copper said. “Something about the age of wheels and chariots. I don’t remember the history, but wouldn’t they have mined these mountains out long ago?”
“After a fashion. But the dwarfs have a method of mining using water forced through nozzles. It scrapes away the mountainside like you cleaning your scale of dirt with your tongue. Valleys thought long since cleared of gold have been richly harvested of fresh nuggets, according to the dwarfs.”
Shadowcatch ground his teeth in impatience behind. The black dragon had no interest in technical talk.
“I wonder,” the Copper said, after a moment’s thought. “I’ve looked at the map. It’s a vast stretch of mountains, and far from Ghioz. How will you possibly manage it?”
“As you know, my Tyr, I’ve never been afraid of hard work,” NiVom said.
“Why a war? Ghioz must be rich in goods it can trade.”
“We’re still rebuilding after the conquest.”
“You’ve had years, NiVom. Let me guess. Imfamnia is spending all the tribute on parties, baubles, and gold paint.”
“No, if you must know, we’ve been working on this.”
With that he called to his linemen, who ran to their places at drag ropes and hauled off, their taskmasters counting the step.
There was a groan, the high bowstring twang of lines parting, and the sailcloth covering of the mountain’s face fell away.
The Copper looked across the valley, into his own reflection. NiVom had chosen their vantage well. He wondered how the people in the city below felt, under the unblinking stare of a monumental dragon.
You wouldn’t call it lifelike, but it was eerily accurate. Except they’d given him two normal eyes—perhaps modeled off of NiVom. It did look rather like him about the eyes.
“Of course, it’ll go green eventually,” NiVom said. “Copper only looks this way for a few years, unless the tarnish is removed.”
“I’ve no words.”
“A thank-you in artistic tribute, for forgetting old grievances and remembering old friendships. Imfamnia herself corrected the model to better match your appearance.”
While he was glad of a chance to praise NiVom, he refused to do the same to his mate. She’d be tolerated, nothing more, until she died a natural death. A natural death that couldn’t come a moment too soon for the Copper.
Just behind the vanguard of scouts, the Copper marked some unusually big soldiers. Ghioz men tended to be small and wiry; these were great hulks.
“Who are they?”
“That’s the Grand Guard,” NiVom said. “Five hundred blighters of third generation, raised on dragon-blood. Those are dragon-scale on their shield, too, mine and Imfamnia’s. A project the Red Queen started and I completed. She called them the Queen’s Terrors, but that’s a bit too battlefield-poetry for me.”
“With whose blood?” the Copper asked, astonished at his own mental calculations.
“Mine. It was taxing. But blighters thrive on dragon-blood even better than your demen. And they breed more quickly, allowing for culling and development of promising lines.”
; The Copper thought about the grim business of “culling.” Well, there could be no feast without a few bullocks slaughtered.
The expedition snaked through the landscape, an ever-unfolding pavement of bobbing heads, reminding the Copper of a slow-motion King Gran. The power in its coils was latent until they wrapped around you.
NiVom appeared to be displaying to his Tyr just how soundly he could manage an expedition into enemy territory. From the air he pointed out prescouted campsites, chosen for defensible ground and access to firewood and water, and rivers where canoes laden with supplies were crawling in procession so that the expedition might always have three days’ worth of food ready for the eating.
“I doubt even old SiDrakkon could find fault with your preparations and execution,” the Copper said, referring to their perpetually gloomy and irascible commander on the expedition into Bant that they’d served together back in their days of Drakwatch service.
NiVom bowed at the compliment.
“But will the blighters give battle?” the Copper asked.
“I venting-well hope so. All this flying for nothing but a march,” Shadowcatch said. Tchhk tchhk tchhk, added his teeth.
NiVom ignored the outburst. “They’ll do what blighters always do. Divide. Some will take to the mountain passes, and they can be dealt with later. Some will throw in with us and look for the Ghioz order to set them above their fellows. Some will grudgingly accept our presence and sneak sand into the corn and flower baskets when they can. A few tribes will band together and give us one good fight. Were they all to unite, of course, that might give us difficulty, but blighters never seem to manage that.”
“The same might be said about dragons,” the Copper said.
“At other times, of course,” NiVom said.
“Let’s hope so.”
There was something about an army on the march, perhaps all the orchestrated chaos, like an improvised song, that set the Copper’s hearts to beating quickly. He had a weakness for this sort of thing, he had to admit. It was so much more invigorating than dull sessions with NoSohoth in the Audience Chamber. Being out under the sky with an army, especially one as disciplined and well-directed as this was wonderful.