Dragon Rule

by E. E. Knight

  “I’m no more looking forward to this than you are,” NaStirath said. “I live here on Scabia’s charity as well, you know. Though mine comes in dearer coin, being mated to her insipid daughter.”

  Wistala let loose a deep breath. It won’t be so bad. A battle is worse, and you’ve survived many of those. A brief embrace, a fall—

  That’s an idea. Don’t open your wings again.

  No, my brothers need a refuge.

  “Look,” NaStirath said. “This is all a joke. Think of it as a joke. I assure you, it’ll be over soon enough, and we’ll all be laughing.”

  Wistala wasn’t so sure about laughter anymore. Perhaps her parents had a reason for giving it up when they went into the wild.

  So this was to be her mating flight. Taking off from a wind-swept plaza into a cloudy spring sky over the Sadda-Vale, on a day as cold as DharSii’s heart and as gray as her brother.

  She spread her wings and took off, tempted to fly, fly hard east until either her heart burst or she crashed in exhaustion.

  But no, she wouldn’t do that.

  “Well, if you’re going to follow, follow,” she said, taking off.

  NaStirath launched his bulk into the sky behind her. He was a goodly-sized dragon, one of the very few larger than her in length and wingspan.

  Might as well make NaStirath work a little harder for it, Wistala thought.

  She fought to gain altitude. NaStirath shrunk to a madly flapping miniature behind, bellowing something about giving up on a joke going far enough.

  No, the joke hadn’t gone nearly far enough. Or high enough. She put her whole body into getting a few more beats out of her wings, willing her heavy frame to rise. Muscles toughened by the ground-armor responded.

  NaStirath gained his second wind. She heard him coming up behind. What would his blundering grasp be like?

  They’d gone high enough. Surely even NaStirath could manage the job with this distance to fall.

  She felt a nip at her tail.

  That idiot is too much.

  She turned her head to give him a taste of flame in his face.

  DharSii!

  How had he followed her here, in the clouds, and where between the Four Spirits was NaStirath?

  She swooped, glided, and DharSii fell in beside her.

  “What is this? Don’t tell me you’re going to fight NaStirath for me, or convince me to flee with you.”

  “Neither,” DharSii said.

  “So what is this?”

  “Didn’t NaStirath tell you? It’s a joke. We’re playing it on Scabia.”

  “But what about the mating with NaStirath and her precious next generation?”

  DharSii twitched a griff at her. “Oh, she’ll get her eggs. I’ll see to that, if it takes a generation’s trying.”

  His wing close around hers. Wistala shivered with excitement at the touch. For the first time in an age, it seemed, she felt like laughing.

  Drakine Glossary

  Drakine

  FOUA: A product of the firebladder. When mixed with the liquid fats stored within and then exposed to oxygen, it ignites into oily flame.

  GRIFF: The armored fans descending from the forehead and jaw that cover sensitive ear holes and throat pulse points in battle.

  GRIFF-TCHK: a instant, an immeasurably short amount of time.

  LAUDI: Brave and glorious deeds in a dragon’s life that make it into the lifesong.

  PRRUM: The low thrumming sound a dragon makes when it is pleased or particularly content.

  SAA: The rear legs of a dragon. The three rear true-toes are able to grip, but the fighting spur is little more than decoration.

  SII: The front legs of a dragon. The claws are shorter and the fighting spur on the rear leg is closer to the other digits and is opposable. The digits are more elegantly formed for manipulation.

  TORF: A small gob from the firebladder, used to provide a few moments of illumination.

  Hypatian

  VESK: A Hypatian mark of distance based on the amount of distance light infantry can cover in an hour: about three-and-a-half miles.

  Draconic Personae

  AETHLEETHIA—Daughter of Scabia

  AUSURATH—AuRon and Natasatch’s red offspring

  AYAFEEIA—Leader of the Firemaids, daughter of Ibidio

  BAMELPHISTRAN—Assistant to the Aerial Host, later leader

  CUREMOM—Ankelene with idea for selling dragon parts

  FEHAZATHANT—Former Tyr, now dead

  IBIDIO—Elderly female dragon, mate to AgGriffopse, Tyr FeHazathant’s only male offspring

  ISTACH—Striped daughter of AuRon and Natasatch

  HALAFLORA—Tyr RuGaard’s first mate, now dead

  NASTIRATH—A dragon of the Sadda-Vale. A very silly dragon indeed.

  NATASATCH—AuRon’s mate

  VARATHEELA—AuRon’s daughter

  NOFAROUK—A dragon of the Tyr’s court

  NOFHYRITICUS—Gray Protector of Hypatia

  OUISTRELA—Cantankerous old female on the Isle of Ice

  REGALIA—Green twin

  SCABIA—Ruler of the Sadda-Vale

  SIDRAKKON—Former Tyr, successor to Tyr FeHazathant, now dead

  SIHAZATHANT—Red twin

  SIMEVOLANT—Former Tyr, successor to Tyr SiDrakkon, now dead

  SOROLATAN—Former Protector of Dairuss

  YEFKOA—A swift-flying Firemaid

  About the Author

  E. E. Knight graduated from Northern Illinois University with a double major in history and political science, then made his way through a number of jobs that had nothing to do with history or political science. He resides in Chicago. For more information on the author and his worlds, E. E. Knight invites you to visit his Web site at vampjac.com.

  Read on for an excerpt from the stunning

  conclusion to the

  Age of Fire

  series by E. E. KNIGHT

  Dragon Fate

  Available soon from Roc in trade paperback.

  Wistala, newly mated dragon-dame, might have been living an idle, romantic dream, save that she was eyesore from searching mountainside crevices and frostbitten about the nostrils.

  She was out hunting trolls with her secret mate DharSii in the chill air among the peaks of the Sadda-Vale. They’d been up before the sun.

  There were things she’d rather be doing with her mate, of course. Swimming in the steaming pools at the north end of the Sadda-Vale, for a start, rather than fighting winds that threatened to freeze her blood. The remote fastness of the Sadda-Vale, resting like a twisted skeleton on the vast plains east of the Red Mountains, had a pleasant microclimate in the snake-track vale between two short mountain chains, a gift of the mild volcanic activity in the area—along with an occasional earthquake.

  Ancient ruins filled with highly stylized artwork, much of it featuring dragons, their prey, and cowering hominids, still waited to be explored. Their were secrets to be discovered in abandoned old tunnels and sub-chambers, icons to be discerned in high corners, ancient relics of dragon history.

  DharSii, a powerful yet thoughtful dragon whose scale color reminded her of the tigers she’d seen in jungles to the south, had some interesting theories about the old structures of the Sadda-Vale and she wanted to hear them again, this time while looking at the art and iconography that had inspired such ideas. Wistala had developed her taste for pedantry while doing what her fellow librarians called “outwork.” She’d seen hints here and there of an ancient golden age of dragons and DharSii shared her interest in that time.

  When conversation became too dull among their fellow dragons of the Sadda-Vale, they liked to escape mentally to other times and places. Those were her favorite hours, as they broke down the last few bones of dinner and swallowed after-feast ores laboriously cracked out of the slate-fields. Sometimes the conversations went on until the next morning and they revived themselves by taking a swim in the steamy waters of the pools beneath Vesshall.

  Instead
, this particular morning they flew parallel to the western spine of mountains sheltering the vale. The mountains, like old, worn-down teeth, were full of crags, holes, and pockets. The peaks and ridges caught the wind and sang mournful tunes to unheeding clouds and fog. Above them, bitter winds blew hard and cold enough to freeze ones eyes open in the winter. On the other side of the clouds, she knew, the stars at night were brilliantly clear with spectacular fireworks of shimmering, flame-colored lights dancing on the horizon like maddened rainbows—if you could brave the chill. But in their shelter, the heated waters of the Sadda-Vale created pools of warmth and the omnipresent clouds and fogs.

  DhaSii dipped lower, seeing something on the slope.

  Just a shadow. He led her higher again, so their hunt might be concealed by the clouds.

  Her brother AuRon should be with them. He was a skilled stalker. His scaleless skin, though vulnerable in battle and badly scarred because of it, shifted from color to color according to where he stood even to the point of imitating shadows and striations in the rock face. But as soon as winter had broken above the Sadda-Vale and flight over the plains of the Ironriders became possible without fighting blizzards, he’d gone aloft to travel south to visit his mate. Natasatch, mother of his hatchlings now serving a new Tyr of the Dragon Empire, acted as “protector” for one of the Empire’s provinces. Which really meant humans fed, housed, and offered coin to AuRon’s mate.

  AuRon, who’d incautiously drunk too much of Scabia’s brandy-wine, once slurred something about “political necessities” separating him from his mate.

  Her brother AuRon had to be cautious on these visits and use every camouflage of wit and skin. An exile and in danger of death ever moment he was with his mate, AuRon’s ability to become invisible at will, and many friends in the Protectorate of Dairuss, where he knew the king and queen from old, allowed him brief visits.

  But Wistala feared that every time she saw him depart, it would be the last.

  She returned her wandering mind to the hunt.

  The air this morning had a hopeful, alive smell. Fresh winds blew from the south, bringing the smell of the coming spring.

  She noticed a herd of goats, tight together rather than grazing, the dominant males alert and watchful, all looking in the same direction and sniffing the breeze. Had they clustered at the sight of DharSii and Wistala? It seemed unlikely, goats rarely searched the clouds unless a shadow passed over them and there were thick, steely clouds today. Hardly a day went by without mists and drizzle as warm, wet, rising air met the cooler streams above.

  Good for the grasses the herbivores loved, but the patches of fog and wandering walls of drizzle also gave concealment for prowling trolls. You had to get lucky to see one in the open, they could squeeze themselves into crevices that seemed hardly thicker than a tail-tip at the sound of a dragon’s leathery wings.

  No, the goats were alarmed by something else. Had they caught the scent of a troll?

  Her other brother, the copper-colored RuGaard, formerly Tyr of the Dragon Empire and Worlds Upper and Lower, wouldn’t be of much use on a hunt. Thin and listless, hardly eating, drinking, or caring for his scale, he lived a lightless existence at Scabia’s hall, hearing without really listening to her old tales of the great dragon civilization of Silverhigh from ages ago. The only time he showed any sort of animation these days was when AuRon brought news of his own mate, Nilrasha, a virtual prisoner in a tower of rock thanks to the stumps she had instead of wings and a guard of watchful griffaran.

  Or when Scabia told some old tale of desperate vengeance. Then he grew attentive and his griff twitched as he stared at Scabia through lidded eyes.

  RuGaard frightened her at such times. She could almost feel the violence in his thoughts.

  Thank the spirits she had the comforting presence of DharSii beside her at such times. Caught between the quiet, reserved AuRon, creepy in his ability to disappear into the scenery and his own thoughts, and RuGaard’s gloomy brooding, she needed a companion to provide mental, and a bit of exhilarating physical, escape.

  There were flowers in green meadows the colder altitudes just above the ground that could support trees. Spring had come at last.

  Spring. Her hatchlings would be above ground this spring.

  Wait, not her hatchlings. They counted Aethleethia as their mother, even if they could barely comprehend a mind-picture from the lazy ninny.

  The offering of her hatchlings had been Scabia’s price for giving the exiles from the Dragon Empire refuge at Vesshall in the Sadda-Vale. Her daughter Aethleethia was unable to have eggs of her own and both were eager for hatchlings in their hall. Almost as soon as she laid them—the other dragons thought their father was Aethleethia’s mate NaStirath, a foolish dragon of proud lineage, had mated with Wistala to produce the eggs—she’d lost her clutch.

  She, DharSii, and NaStirath had conspired to hide the truth that DharSii was the true sire. Though one of the males did bear stripes as dark as DharSii’s, the suspicious Scabia had been placated when Wistala pointed out that her brother AuRon was also a striped dragon.

  No matter who they counted as mother, the three males and two females would be ravenous, and if they were to have anything besides the bony fish or carapace-creatures and snails of the lake to eat, she and DharSii would have to find and kill the trolls that had been raiding sheep, goats, and caribou from the mountain slopes and patches of forest in the valleys.

  DharSii and Wistala had discovered the remains of troll-eaten game on one of their flights to get some privacy from the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. A troll could easily eat as much as a dragon, and according to DharSii if the food supply was truly superlative, it would reproduce.

  Scabia’s blighter servants had been frantically breeding cattle, sheep, and goats and releasing them into pasture ever since the Wistala and her exiled companions arrived. There was ample game for a whole family of trolls, though the solitary trolls didn’t form anything that might be recognized as family.

  So now they were on the hunt for what might be called the most dangerous vermin in the world.

  Wistala liked a hunt. She liked it doubly well with a dragon she loved and admired. She’d long since learned she could admire something without loving it, or love someone without admiring them, the combination of the two went to her head like wine. DharSii—“Quick-Claw” in the dragon-vernacular—when on the hunt spoke and acted quickly and efficiently, with none of the stupid roaring and stomping a typical male dragon, NaStirath, say, indulged in upon spotting the prey.

  “Troll tracks,” DharSii said, waggling his wings.

  She followed him down to a felled tree on a steep slope. She had to dig her claws into the earth deep to keep from sliding.

  A long, muddy skid-mark stood on the lower side of the fallen tree, the mosses and mushrooms devouring it were smashed and smeared where the troll had placed a foot, and it had slipped on the soggy mud beneath, sliding a short way on the slope. They could see broken branches on another tree a short distance downslope where it had arrested it’s slide.

  Wistala sniffed.

  “Scat, too,” she said. She followed the bad air to a mound of troll droppings, though the less said about it the better for all concerned. For all their strength of torso and limb, a troll’s digestive system was rather haphazard, sometimes expelling food barely absorbed. This mass of skin, bones, and hair was disgustingly fresh and hardly touched by insects yet, a beetle or two crawled about on the waste waving their antennae as though celebrating their good fortune.

  “Looks like its making northeast, toward our herds,” DharSii said, counting the widely spaced tracks heading down the slope. “This is fresh enough that I’ll hazard it’s still climbing that ridge.”

  Almost a long mountain in itself, the ridge DharSii spoke of was cut by deep ledges, almost like colossal steps, running at an angle down toward the central lake of the Sadda-Vale, where its bulk forced one of the lake’s many bends. On the other side of the ridge wer
e herds of winter-thinned cattle, hungrily exploring meadows springing up in the path of snow retreating to higher altitudes, along with the usual sheep and goats.

  “I’ll try and follow the tracks, stalking or flying low,” DharSii said. “You get up into the cloud-cover, so you can just see the surface. If it knows it’s being followed it will make a dash for cover, we may be able to corner it. I know that ridge well, there aren’t many caves but there are fissures it will use.”

  If DharSii had a fault, it was arrogance. If there was a risk to be run, he assumed he’d be the better at facing it. Gallant, but vexing for a dragon-dame who enjoyed a challenging hunt.

  “Why shouldn’t I follow the trail? Green scale will give me an advantage in low flight, if the troll’s climbed the ridge already and looking behind and below.”

  “I know this troll. This track is familiar. Long-fingers, I call him. I’ve tried for him several times, and he’s tried for me almost as many. I know his tricks, you don’t, and he’s nearly had me even so. One of us must put and end to the other sooner or later. He’ll be expecting me to be hunting alone, and he may take a risk that will draw him into the open. Then you may strike.”