by E. E. Knight
Rethothanna’s overlarge eyes widened, and the Copper wondered if they’d pop out. “You’re of the line. It’s an Imperial banquet. You must be at your place.”
“Er…”
“Don’t pollute your locution! Say something worthwhile or be silent.”
The Copper settled on silence, so fixed was he on the vast whites of her eyes as she looked him over.
“But not looking like that. Yam, go get every scale polisher and claw shaper in the hill. Open your mouth, drake. Well! Those teeth aren’t bad. There’s many a drake who’d be proud of a set like that. A little oil and they’ll gleam admirably; maybe they’ll divert attention from that eye. Eyegrit, are those bat bites? Where do you live?” He heard Harf take a few steps back. The shifting head turned on him. “Yes, you, thrall, you’d better cower. I’ve half a mind to eat you. Who taught you to use scouring salt on a dragon’s scale?”
“All scale clean! All them clean!” Harf said, covering his head with his forelimbs.
“Yam, have you died and rooted?”
The elf hurried off into the passage.
“Now, let’s have what passes for poetry from NeStirrath again. While they’re getting you cleaned up I’ll see if I can’t make something of his word butchery. His stanzas might be ranked enemies, the way he scatters them….”
Rethothanna kept Yam busy filling gaps in her scale with similarly colored green scales, which required much working with wire, attaching them to their neighbors so they’d stay in place.
The Copper had a thrall at each quarter, and one rather young, small, deft-handed female human working his face and teeth. First she trimmed the edged of his face scale with shears, then a file; then she went to work with a brush and something that smelled a little like paint. She poured dust though a straw into the crevices in his scale, then dusted his face with a glittery mixture that smelled of metals.
“Don’t skimp on the oliban and bay leaf,” Rethothanna said as a thrall painted the trailing corners of her nostrils, making them look even longer and more elegant. Red powder around her eyes set the deep green of her face off admirably, and gave her eyes life and fire.
The girl nodded and bent for a long, heavy wooden box topped by a broad handle. She came up with a pair of silver bottles with golden tops, and applied fragrant oils to his crest.
“Dragon-ward behind his griff. If he rattles them, I want the dragons to know it.”
The girl nodded and dabbed something into the folds of the skin behind his griff. It smelled like hot iron and blood to the Copper.
“His teeth now,” Rethothanna said.
The girl smeared a clear oil on his teeth. The Copper didn’t like the taste and pulled back his lips a little to keep it from getting in his mouth.
“Exactly,” Rethothanna said. He’d never heard her use such a satisfied tone before. “Your mother taught you well, girl.”
The girl tipped her head down a little.
“Bring a mirror-plate. Our young drake finally looks worthy of the Imperial line.”
Two thralls held up a polished sheet of bronze. He looked into it. The odd sense of depth to the reflection gave him a moment of dizziness, soon overcome as he adjusted to the idea of his reflection. It was like seeing your image in the water, but tinted with the colors of a coal fire.
His scale had a depth and polish and glitter. She’d shaped the displaced scale at the gouged side of his face so as to minimize the scarring, and added a pewter-colored powder to the crevices in his crest that emphasized the strong, smooth ridges.
So it was a proud young drake who followed Rethothanna over to the Black Rock and up to the Tyr’s Gardens.
The Copper had never seen such a gathering, or imagined there could be anything so splendid. It must have been dark outside, for the peak of the dome was a plate of midnight. This, however, made the fiery streams of lava running along the exterior of the dome all the brighter and more colorful.
Female dragons with fringes painted and smooth ribbons wound about their necks in fascinating knotwork, males with vivid red or blue lines painted on their wings—Rethothanna said it was a form of display of laudi, recognized by the Tyr himself and worn for all to see—drakes and drakka playing and singing and mirroring.
At the middle of the Gardens an open oval free of plants served as the center of the party. A little lower than much of the terraced garden, it was paved with shields and helmets and breastplates, trophies taken in battle and presented to the Tyr. At the center of the open area was a long masonry trench shaped like a drawn bow. At the notch of the bow lay the Tyr and his mate, on a low rise of wood and cushioning that gave them a commanding view. Where bow would give way to string, stairways led down to the kitchens. The most splendid of the dragons reclined at the bow. The string was reserved for the younger drakes and drakka.
For a moment the Copper’s eyes were tricked, and he thought platters of food slid by magic from dragon to dragon. He spotted thralls bearing vast platters on their heads. They rose heavy-laden from the stairs and circulated, always in the same direction to avoid collisions in the narrow trench. The roast chunks of meat went around the circuit, and emptied as the dragons reached down with jaws and plucked the tidbits. Sometimes instead of platters they bore a long pole in a sort of harness-and-cup, and from cross-braces at the top of the pole dangled whole roasted joints from hooks. These seldom even made it to the drakes and drakka.
At the very center of the dining plaza was a sandy pit. According to Rethothanna, new hatchlings of the Imperial line would be exhibited there so all could see them, but there were none at the moment.
“Any guests the Tyr wishes to particularly honor get seated to his left, so they have first choice of the dishes,” Rethothanna explained.
Rethothanna didn’t mix—she wasn’t of the Imperial line—but instead waited to be called by NoSohoth, in his usual role of organizer. His gleaming silver shone especially bright tonight.
A scream and a clatter. The Copper’s attention went to the far end of the bow, near where the thralls entered and exited the kitchen.
“Drop him, Simevolant,” the Tyr said across the sandpit.
The golden drake ceased dragging a thrall up out of the trench. “But his platter was empty and I’m hungry.”
“An empty platter’s not his fault. A thrall’s a thrall, but you can’t eat them for no reason at all. Let him go, now.”
Simevolant released the man. The thrall was so frightened he scuttled for the exit without picking up his platter. The other food bearers continued circling. He noticed they quickened their step at Simevolant’s end, sometimes bumping into one another.
“That’s done it, worm,” Tighlia said, looking pointedly at Simevolant. “Their tiny brains can’t hold more than one thought, and now they’re more concerned with being eaten than keeping step.”
“Let’s have some drumming,” the Tyr said. “Where are those clever blighters with the kettledrums?”
NoSohoth extended a black-tipped wing toward a grove, and a trio of blighters came forward, two bearing pairs of vast, leather-topped drums and a third with a hollow polished log. They went to work on their instruments, filling the gardens with rhythmic pounding. The Copper liked the sound so much he couldn’t help swaying and stamping his feet.
“Mind the step, now, fellows; no one’s been eaten,” the Tyr said to the thralls passing under his nose. “That’s more like it. Steady on and I’ll order a barrel of sweet ferments up for you after the meal.”
SiDrakkon, sitting to his sister’s right, hardly ate at all, and worked at the edge of an embedded shield with his claws, prying up the rim.
“SiDrakkon looks unhappy,” the Copper said to Rethothanna.
“He’s always in a temper. Pay him no mind. Stuck between the ambitions of his sister and the directions of her mate. He’s the Tyr’s eyes and voice in the Lavadome, and he’s not an energetic dragon. Doesn’t like parties, either. Speaking of which, how is your first Imperial banquet?”
Th
e Copper looked around. “It’s the most splendid thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It occurs to me that I’ll have to hear your lifesong at some point. You’re the first outsider to seek the Lavadome in…oh, a generation’s time. Of course, we don’t advertise our presence. Even with such allies as we have on the surface, we have to keep our home secret.”
The Copper would have liked to hear more from her, for he was curious about the Upper World and its dangers, but the drummers had exhausted themselves, and NoSohoth waved her over.
“My turn. May the Air Spirit carry my voice well,” she said. She stepped forward, and all eyes turned in their direction as NoSohoth announced: “Cry hear and hear, for we’ll have poetry now. A new work on the late feuds of the founders of the Lavadome by Imperial memoriam. Hear Rethothanna.”
Simevolant scanned the crowd, found the Copper. “I say, cousin, what are you doing there, lurking in the blade-bushes? Come and find your place at the banquet.”
The Copper stepped forward, and Simevolant made room for him, nudging a drakka aside.
“Hear me, Spirits; hear me, Ages; hear me, dragons great and small, for I tell a tale of the founding of a new Silverhigh….”
Simevolant ignored her preamble and snatched a plump sausage linked into the shape of a curly-tailed dog off a platter. “Now, how are things in the lower levels? I so seldom get down your way. Is the strength of the Drakwatch still keeping the Imperial Resort from falling?”
The drakka around Simevolant fluttered their eyelids and griff at his joke.
“Little has changed since your last visit,” the Copper said. He’d rather listen to Rethothanna than chatter and joke.
“I’ve traveled with the Drakwatch. Muddy, tiring business. Wars and body pieces. Have you made it out of the training caverns yet?”
“No,” the Copper said.
“You won’t lack for learning. But nothing teaches like experience. Even up here, you’d be amazed at what a young drake can experience.” He tapped the drakka next to him on the nose.
The Copper tried to close an ear to his yammering, but Simevolant kept asking questions. How many thralls were being brought across the river, the size of the herds driven underground from the surface provinces, improvements to dwelling space in the Skotl Hill…
The Copper caught only bits of Rethothanna’s performance. It dealt with the Tyr’s vision for a new Silverhigh here in this deep fastness, and told how he rose to preeminence after a series of duels and feuds between Skotl, Anklene, and Wyrr lines that divided the dragons of the Lavadome, uniting them through a rigid hierarchy where even the lowest dragons at least commanded numerous thralls. Thus, “Each dragon a lord, each dragonelle a queen.”
The Copper wondered what it was like to be one of even the lesser lords around the banquet, so important that your deeds were sung by others. They must be proud dragons indeed. And what dragonelle would not be pleased to be a queen?
But there were queens and there were Queens. Rethothanna dropped in a few lines of praise for Tighlia’s beauty, “a flower of the Skotl line, plucked and placed as high as any Wyrr for all to admire.”
Simevolant brought up a fragrant quantity of gas at that, loudly enough that Rethothanna had to pause until he was finished.
“I do beg your pardon,” Simevolant said. “Go on. I’m a dragon turned to stone by the power of your words.”
During kern, a thick, yellowish paste full of smashed vegetables that aided the digestion, Rethothanna finished with FeHazathant’s victory at the duel of Black Rock, after which the “iron-willed, steel-limbed” dragon assumed the old Anklene title of Tyr, borne by the dragon who ruled and commanded his fellows in the old, half-forgotten Age of the Sorcerer, when Anklemere ruled.
“They wallow too much in the past, that generation,” Simevolant said. “Refighting old wars. What’s going to come after the Tyr dies? That’s what concerns me. I’ve no ambition whatsoever, but there are plenty who do. Dragons can be ruthless in getting what they want.”
The dragons spat torf-sized gobs of flame into the water troughs placed here and there among them, and Rethothanna bowed to the crackle and hiss of water turned instantly to steam.
“Excellent,” Tyr said, casting flame into the sandpit at the center of the banquet. “So polished, and all the grim business of bodies and broken eggs left out. I don’t like brave deeds tarnished, you know. Come, Rethothanna, take first position there and eat your fill.”
A dragon, wings thick with red laudi, moved over, and with some shoving and squashing the dragons rearranged themselves around the banquet.
The Tyr thumped his tail. “Now I have an announcement. Our Uphold in Bant has suffered some serious reverses of late. The humans and blighter tribes there are set upon and need our assistance. I’m sending a dragon up to set things right.”
“Bant. Oh, how tiresome,” Simevolant said. “Humans. They can’t stand to see the moon change without starting some new feud.”
The Copper would have liked to ask what the moon was, but he kept his tongue.
“I don’t need to tell anyone at this table how important Bant is to our food supply. I’ve decided that SiDrakkon shall go and help our Upholder in Bant, ummm—”
“NiThonius,” Tighlia supplied.
SiDrakkon glowered, going even more purple about the cheeks. He reared his head back, but the Copper saw his sister quickly put her head across his neck and whisper something in his ear.
“He’s not even of the Imperial line, Tyr,” Tighlia said. “My brother is only to ‘help’ him?”
“NiThonius is a wise dragon. The Bant are a raucous crowd, argumentative as crows and headstrong as boars. He knows how to handle them.”
“I wonder who is handling whom. Two more like him in the Upholds and we’ll be skeletons down here. Food is short enough.”
The Copper wondered at that, with thralls sweating and groaning under the weight of the platters that flowed around the banquet. But perhaps exceptions were made for banquets.
“I want full powers,” SiDrakkon said. “As the Tyr’s representative. Three good, battle-tested dragons. And three sissa of the Drakwatch to support.”
“I don’t want another surface war,” Tyr said. “The hominids lose ten thousand and we lose ten, and they have a fresh ten thousand before ten eggs are even laid.”
“Let me manage things or find another dragon,” SiDrakkon roared. The whole table went quiet.
Tyr stood.
Thralls hurried to throw more sticks of incense in the braziers, and a thick, sweet odor fell over the banquet.
The Tyr glared at his mate’s brother. “Fair enough,” he said in a steady voice. “Best to speak softly, with a fearsome host behind the words. You pick the dragons. As to the Drakwatch, I want Nivom leading the three siisa. He’s impressed me. I understand he’s quite driven the demen away from the caves bordering the far shores.”
Tighlia looked sharply at her mate as soon as he mentioned Nivom.
The Tyr got a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ll give him a stripe for that when he gets his wings. Blue will look well against that white of his.”
He blinked, and looked around the banquet table. “We’ll need an Imperial messenger to report progress. Simevolant, you haven’t been off Black Rock these three years.”
Simevolant tucked his head against his shoulder for a moment. “Tyr, I’m touched, really, with this expression of the Imperial confidence. But I’ve got a notion—send Rugaard, here. He’s never even been to the Upholds. The experience will do him good.”
“Rugaard?” Tyr said, looking at the Copper as though he’d never seen him before. “Wasn’t he killed at…Oh, yes, of course. The egg saver.”
Simevolant offered one of those smiles that made the Copper’s scale bristle. “Yes, the eternally budding flower of the Drakwatch training caves. Is he not a marvelous young drake? Stand, Rugaard, for you are looking fine tonight, and let the assembly see the future of the Imperial line, adopted by th
e Tyr himself. I don’t believe he’s attended a banquet before, and he needs an introduction anyway.”
The Copper rose, shifted uncomfortably, and did his best to open his bad eye. He didn’t want to be exhibited thus, but Simevolant had such a musical way of putting things, you followed his words this way and that the way you did a good blood trail.
“The Drakwatch calls him ‘Batty,’ I understand,” SiDrakkon said. “He keeps bats as pets.”
The drakka twitched their noses and fluttered their eyelids. They were laughing at him. No matter how polished his scale, or even his edging—
“Burn it, Sime; you’re always wriggling out of things,” the Tyr said. “You chatter your way through life like a drakka. I won’t have it.”
“Stand up for yourself, cousin,” Simevolant said out of the side of his mouth. “You want to stay in those drippy holes forever?”
The Copper found his voice. “I’d be grateful for the opportunity, Tyr.”
“That’s a norther’s vocalization if I’ve ever heard one,” a dragon opposite the Copper at the banquet said. “How did he ever come to the dome?”
Tyr’s tail tapped in thought. “Never been to the Upper World?”
“No, Tyr.”
“Well, Bant’s as good a place as any to get sunstruck. NoSohoth, get his shoulder line painted, won’t you?”
“Congratulations, Rugaard,” Simevolant said. “Keep out of the way of most of the arrows. Remember to put a little dwarf’s-beard on your wounds.”
The rest of the banquet passed in a blur. He met the dragons and dragonelles, drakes and drakka of the Imperial line. A trio of drakka, who he later found out were directly grand-daughtered to Tyr, twitched their noses as they greeted him and perfunctorily laid their necks across his, pressed on by their mother, a rather pinched-looking, tight-scaled creature named Ibidio. Two were sleek, beautiful specimens, the third rather thin and sickly, but they were polite enough under the urging of their mother. Her mate, AgGriffopse, the champion of the Tyr’s first—and only—clutch before he lost his first mate, had been badly wounded fighting dwarves and died of his injuries within a year. Many sad tales were sung of AgGriffopse, and the Copper was glad of a chance to meet some of his titular relations at last. AgGriffopse and Ibidio’s daughters were gracious enough to greet him as a brother, and his hearts beat hard at their touch as they crossed necks.