by E. E. Knight
“Odd, too, that they don’t appear to communicate, socialize. I’m not even sure how they mate, or if they do.”
“They plant a young in a corpse, something big and meaty. I saw a young one once, in a piece of a whale,” Wistala said. She’d cleaned out the troll’s cave after disposing of the troll. Bad business, killing young, but she’d regretted the necessity, not the result. Without the troll, the lands around Mossbell were prospering.
“What’s in its hands?” DharSii sniffed. “My jewel, you didn’t tell me you were wounded.”
“I wasn’t. A bruise or—”
“This is dragon-scale in its claws. Look, there’s another at that mouth-vent orifice. Green.”
“Green? The only other female here is Aethleethia. You don’t suppose—”
“Aethleethia hunt trolls? Not even if our hatchlings were starving. Oh, I’m sorry—”
They had an agreement not to speak of the hatchlings as theirs. Too much pain in that. Better to pretend, like the rest of the Sadda-Vale, that Aethleethia had laid the eggs.
Not that there weren’t still issues with their upbringing.
DharSii and AuRon had almost come to blows about having the hatchlings fight. Male hatchlings instinctively turned on one another as soon as they came out of the egg in a struggle for dominance of the clutch. AuRon and RuGaard had killed their red sibling together before turning on each other. AuRon won that contest. RuGaard survived despite crippling injuries. The rivalry echoed to this day. DharSii believed the tradition, being based on instinct, was part of a dragon’s natural heritage and should be respected.
Finally her brother RuGaard, crippled in his front sii since the hatchling duel with AuRon, pleaded with Aethleethia and her mate, NaStirath. NaStirath was a silly dragon who treated everything as a joke and had no opinion, though Wistala would always be grateful to Aethleethia, who’d been taking counsel from DharSii all her life, for defying him on this issue.
“The more hatchlings, the better for us,” she’d said.
Giving up her eggs to Aethleethia rankled. Wistala would have liked nothing better than to care for her own hatchlings, but her position, and her brothers’as refugees from the Dragon Empire in the Sadda-Vale, demanded that she accept the bitter bargain.
Scabia, with some eggs around her in the great round emptiness at Vesshall at last, could not care less how Wistala spent her time once the eggs came. She could spend all the time she liked with DharSii, even though publicly she was NaStirath’s mate.
She even suspected that she and DharSii could appear openly as mates, but the suspicion wasn’t strong enough for her to engage in what a human might call “rocking the boat.” Too much depended on Scabia’s goodwill toward her and her brothers.
“So if it didn’t come from you, who does this scale belong to?”
“Let’s find out,” Wistala said. “We followed the troll-tracks in one direction, I think we may go in the other equally easily.”
“Happily. The sooner we leave this smell behind, the sooner my neck will recover.”
“Poor little drake. Good thing you’re so taut. Being stiff-necked about everything was good training.”
“Ha-hem,” DharSii grunted.
The trail gave out halfway up the mountain.
“Now what?” Wistala asked.
DharSii answered her by inflating his lungs and bellowing. His bellow was loud enough that she tracked echoes even from the other side of the lake.
“That may even bring RuGaard running,” Wistala said.
A faint cry answered.
They found the troll-cave, a little quarter-moon cut in the rock. DharSii made it through easily enough, but Wistala had to twist to fit. She had always been a muscular dragon-dame, stronger than either of her brothers.
They found the source of the green scale. She was a dragon familiar to Wistala, her own sister removed by mating through RuGaard. Incredibly, it was Yefkoa of the Lavadome, one of the fastest dragonelles Wistala had ever known. She’d pledged herself hearts-and-spirit to the Firemaids and fought in battle after battle.
Wistala couldn’t imagine what kind of catastrophe would take Yefkoa from her sworn sisters. Now she knew: Yefkoa lay pinned by a great boulder across her neck, trapping her on her side in the cave.
Wistala put her spine under the rock, ready to carefully shift it off her former commander in the Firemaids, when DharSii grunted and pointed with his tail.
A horrible sort of leech clung to Yefkoa’s torn-away skin. It was a newborn troll, or at least that’s what Wistala guessed it was. It resembled a full-grown troll about as much as a tadpole resembled a frog. It looked to be in the process of burrowing under her skin.
“What do we do?” Wistala asked.
“Get it out, please,” Yefkoa said. “I think the troll put it there, I thought it was eating me at first. I can feel it moving.”
“Grip it with your teeth, Wistala,” DharSii said.
She did so. Yefkoa screamed in pain.
“It’s tearing into me. Biting!”
“This is going to hurt. Prepare yourself,” DharSii said, extending his sharpest and most delicate sii.
Wistala had to close the eye facing him. She heard more cries from Yefkoa and the splatter of dragon-blood striking the floor of the cavern.
“If I die, there’s a message—” Yefkoa said.
“Go’ eh,” DharSii said through locked teeth. Go ahead.
She heard him spit something out and opened the eye facing him. The troll-tadpole lay on the floor, giving a residual twitch now and then.
“And I thought the smell was bad! I shall never get this out of my mouth,” DharSii said, spitting torfs of flame in an effort to burn out the taste. “They taste like no other flesh.”
“Better in your mouth than my hide,” Yefkoa managed.
“I’d rather eat poison ants,” DharSii said. He kept extending and retracting his tongue. The flapping tongue reminded Wistala of a dirty rug being shaken out by a blighter.
Wistala shifted the rock.
“Thank you,” Yefkoa groaned, able to raise her head.
“Wistala, find some dwarfsbeard for this,” DharSii said. “I believe I saw some on the downed tree where we first saw the troll-tracks. Who knows what kind of filth this thing left in the wound.”
“In a moment. What do you need to tell us, Yefkoa? Why did you come here? What’s happened to the Firemaids?”
“Lavadome. Tearing itself . . . apart. Firemaids . . . broken up. Ayafeeia begs your help . . . and attendance,” Yefkoa managed to say.
Had she gone mad from the pain?
“We can talk later,” DharSii said. “Let’s see to the wound.”
Wistala squeezed herself out of the troll-cave and flew downslope.
She, who as Queen-Consort had once directed the defense of the Lavadome against an invasion, who had held the Red Mountain pass with a handful of Firemaids against the Ironrider hordes, now waged campaigns against trolls and hurried to find dwarfsbeard to patch a painful but minor wound.
The terrible methodology of war, the chaos and life-and-death decision making, the ceremonies over the dead and the praise to the heroic living . . .
She didn’t miss any of it one bit.
She would so much rather be trading philosophy with DharSii after a good dinner, or watching birds go about their clockwork routines, or trying her voice at poetry.
Alighting at the fallen tree, she searched for the ropy mass of dwarfsbeard. Yes, there it was, a thick tangle of hair run wild on an ancient dwarf. When broken and pulled apart, the thick white glue, like a thicker and stickier dandelion milk, acted on wounds, both cleaning them and speeding healing.
Unlike on her long-ago errands with her father to gather dwarfsbeard, now she simply broke off the rooted end of the trunk, thick with water that was pooling and rotting out the wood, and flew back, holding the piece of tree tight under her chest. They could pluck it off the stump at leisure.
She returne
d and found Yefkoa unconscious.
“Just as well,” DharSii said. “With that skin missing and torn, it must be painful. She won’t have an easy recovery.”
“I doubt she’ll be able to move,” Wistala said. “We’ll have to fly some blighters up here to tend to her wounds and sew her up again.”
“She endangered her life to bring us this news,” DharSii said. “A brave dragonelle. Yefkoa. She’s an important dragonelle, I believe.”
“A member of the Firemaids. Ayafeeia’s personal messenger, I believe.”
“Strange of her to ask for you, then, if there’s war building,” DharSii said. “She’s breaking the Tyr’s law. That could be used against her.”
“No, she’s too popular. Ayafeeia has an irreproachable reputation for fairness. The new Tyr and his Queen would be fools to go against her.”
“Oooh, glad that’s over,” a new, high-pitched voice squeaked.
DharSii and Wistala turned and sniffed.
A huge leathery bat emerged from behind Yefkoa’s ear like a groundhog coming out of its hole.
“Beggin’ your pardon, your worship. M’name’s Larb, one of Tyr RuGaard’s faithful servants. Oooh, I’m chilled. No bat was ever meant to fly so high. I’m frozen from ear-tip to fantail. I’m not askin’ too much by supposin’ you could—”
“Don’t listen to him,” the exhausted dragonelle said, opening a bloodshot eye. “He’s one of your brother’s dragon-blooded bats.”
“Then he can leave off begging us and go to work on your wound,” Wistala said. “No opening up a fresh vein while you’re in there, either, you little flying rat, or I’ll toast you with some mushrooms.”
“No need for threats, now,” Larb said, scuttling behind Yefkoa’s crest for cover. “I’ll lick the wound clean, I will. It’s just that I’m so stiff and sore from the cold of the airs.”
The bat scooted across Yefkoa’s flank and buried its nose in the wound, licking and snipping ragged flesh with sharp little snaggleteeth.
Bat saliva, Wistala had learned, brought a pleasant numbness to minor wounds.
“We’ll need to close that up as soon as possible, dwarfsbeard or no,” DharSii said. “Perhaps, Yefkoa, you can make it out into the light. Fresh air and what passes for sunlight around here will help keep it clean until we can get you stitched up. I know instinct is to retreat to a cave to lick your wounds, but in the interests of hygiene—”
“My love,” Wistala interrupted. “Your turn to run for help. Go back to the hall and get some blighters who can stitch wounds, won’t you?”
“Of course,” DharSii said. “I shall return with help before the sun peaks.”
He exited and Wistala listened to the fading beats of his wings before returning to Yefkoa. She nosed more dwarfsbeard into the trail left by the cleaning bat.
Yefkoa winced as the bat incautiously planted a wing on raw muscle beneath torn-away skin. The bat’s tongue quickened, dabbing up blood and bits of ragged flesh.
“What brought you such a distance, through cold and winter storm and danger?” Wistala asked, both curious and eager to divert her relative-by-mating from the bat’s not-so-tender ministrations.
Yefkoa managed to raise her head. “Another civil war’s begun. Struggle for power between NiVom and Imfamnia against the twins. Skotl kills wyrr. Assassin hominids kill Protectors in their resorts. It will be the death of all of us.”
It all sounded dreadfully familiar.
More war, more deaths, more pain. RuGaard would be in agony of the fate of poor Nilrasha. And AuRon, on his way to one of his secret meetings with Natasatch—what was he flying into?
All that could wait. Once more, she had duty to attend. It wouldn’t do to have Yefkoa fly all this way just to die on their doorstep.
Chapter 2
The Copper dragon, formerly Tyr of Two Worlds Upper and Lower, Protector of the Three Lines of Drag-onhood, Grand Commander of the Aerial Host, Patron and Solace to the Firemaids, Lord of the Imperial Rock, and Guardian of Clutch, Hatchling, and Youth, probed a loose tooth with his tongue.
The bad tooth had occupied him of late. If it weren’t for the annoying, dull ache, he would have welcomed its irritation.
The proper course to take with a rotting tooth was to rip it out. A sudden, sharp pain and the task was done. If Miki were still alive he could have done it in a moment with his viselike beak. You’d taste blood for a day or so and then wait for a new tooth to grow in. Plenty more in the mouth, after all. Hardly miss it. But the Copper, deep in his funk, preferred to take his time with the pain.
The ache of the tooth ate up other, older aches. His loneliness for his mate, Nilrasha, held hostage against his continued good behavior, for example. Or the nagging doubts about his decisions the last few weeks when he’d occupied Imperial Rock in the Lavadome. That, too, nagged at him, before the sore tooth’s preoccupative power revealed itself.
Miki’s absence bothered him more than he let on. The old bird had been his last reminder of the formalities and honors of being Tyr. Now that what he’d always thought of as traditional nonsense was gone, he found himself missing it more than he would have believed possible, sitting upon his throne in the Lavadome.
Poor old bird. He wished he’d saved the feathers, instead of giving them to the hatchlings as playthings and decor. He’d burned the body for fear that the blighter thralls—servants, as they were known in the Sadda-Vale, of vast appetite—would dig it up and eat it, stringy flesh and all.
He reclined on the floor in the wettest corner of the Great Rotunda, a vast round room, the heart of Vesshall Palace, filled with elegantly-shaped dragon perches protruding from the walls like exploring claws. A circular portal to the sky admitted light, fresh air, and, of course, water.
A drainage channel ran to a discreet grate in the wall and he idly cleaned it with the tip of his tail. The blighters who lived in the Sadda-Vale and acted as servants to the dragons in exchange for protection of their flocks and families swept dirt and refuse from the meals into the channel, where it was carried away to an underground pig wallow. Faint swinish sounds echoed up from the chute behind the grate.
In this, his chosen spot, the drips drowned out the chatter of hatchlings and the inanities being exchanged between Scabia the White, the ancient dragon-dame who’d given them refuge in the Sadda-Vale, and her daughter Aethleethia. Aethleethia was a well-bred female, perhaps a little on the slight side, especially when compared with his muscular sister, but something of a drip. Perhaps, having been badgered and nudged by the domineering Scabia her entire life, she never had a chance to develop much of a personality.
The other dragon of the Sadda-Vale, Aethleethia’s mate, NaStirath, would have been much admired back in the Lavadome, where the Copper had grown up and eventually ruled. NaStirath had golden scale and a sense of humor that was alternately biting and clownish. Even the tiniest court needed a jester, the Copper supposed.
He could climb up onto one of the comfortable, dragon-contoured perches and get out of the wet, but that seemed such a bother. Besides, anytime he reclined on one of them, he started thinking how comfortable the design and how a few such perches scattered around Imperial Rock would add to everyone’s enjoyment of the gardens and view, and then he remembered that the gardens, and the view, now belonged to another Tyr.
The hatchlings started chasing around the center of the Grand Court, pouncing and rolling, and he decided to go deeper before one of them scurried behind his flank for protection and they started teasing him about his scale again or asking him when the wheels on his wing would be repaired so they could watch the artificial joint in action.
He ambled down to the blighter alley, still poking at the troublesome tooth with his tongue.
Everyone in the Sadda-Vale recognized his step. He had a hopping, three-legged gait, thanks to an old injury in his hatching-duel that left him with the right sii crippled. The saa just behind it was somewhat overmuscled to compensate, adding to his corkscrew balance. H
is mate, Nilrasha, had used healing arts she’d learned in her youth as a Firemaid to massage and stretch it back to some sort of utility, but without her constant attention it had lapsed into near-uselessness again, and he kept it close to his breast.
Once he’d directed armies of three races. Now he had to content himself with the duties of a few dozen lazy blighters.
The other dragons didn’t bother with blighter alley, but the Copper had taken it up as a project to occupy his mind when he and his siblings arrived a few years back. Once, he suspected, it had been a winery or apothecary or some other sort of workspace that required a good deal of sorting and cubbyholing.
The blighters had taken up the long, tall-spot in the deep tunnel and put wooden walls, platforms, and ceilings into the honeycomblike walls. It suited blighters to live on top of and across from each other. They were always shouting across the tunnel to their neighbors opposite or swinging up and down the ladders to visit.
Even so deep in the earth, blighter alley was warm and comfortable. Three pipes the thickness of his forearm ran, spaced out, from floor to ceiling, placed in such a manner that they weren’t too difficult to keep clear of when passing down the alley. That stiff-necked striped dragon DharSii kept the lines in repair. They led from natural hot springs beneath up to the kitchens, where they fed out into great copper sheets and pans for the dragons’ food preparation. Scabia was fond of her meats grill-cooked and dripping with juicy sauces and gravies.
Condensation running from the pipes and leaking steam emptied, rather cleverly, he had to admit, into cisterns, so the blighters always had access to clean, warmed water. There was therefore no excuse for the scraps and ventings and waste heaped in the gutters.