by E. E. Knight
Mentioning that he was considering a journey was out, at least after that speech. When Scabia got an emotional updraft under her, she could peck and scratch at all around her until the sun disappeared and the stars turned circles.
“How are the hatchlings?” he asked.
“So quick! They have excellent memories and are serious even in play. Not at all what I’d expect from that ninny.”
Scabia was still under the impression that NaStirath, Aethleethia’s mate, had sired the clutch.
“They say hatchlings often resemble the sire’s sires,” the Copper said.
“Perhaps, Tyr RuGaard,” she said. Then she switched to mindspeech. He hardly understood one word in three, but it was something about Wistala being of better quality than first impressions allowed.
For Scabia to use mindspeech with him, even unsuccessfully, was a high compliment. It was possible only between dragons of natural affinity who’d long grown accustomed to each other’s minds or between mother dragons and their hatchlings.
The Copper warmed at the compliment, even from Scabia. He’d known so few others in life who genuinely liked him. Most dragons, even unusually bright ones like DharSii, saw only his injuries and deformities. There was something deep and dark in most dragons that hated weakness, clumsiness, deformity of any kind. It had served him to advantage in the snakepit of the Lavadome, where the contempt of the other ruling dragons kept him safe from suspicion as he grew up and made him an agreeable choice for Tyr—such a wreck of a dragon would never grow popular or powerful.
The warmth turned to bile. He’d won the intimacy of a vainglorious old recluse. Some achievement. He made a few excuses about wanting to soak his sore wing in the hot springs and left her as soon as he decently could.
DharSii spent another day away and returned at night. Again he assured the Copper of Wistala’s health and safety. The hunting was just exceptionally good on the south slopes of the Sadda-Vale; as proof he brought in a big, wide-horned, hairy creature called a yilak. Wistala had stayed behind to keep an eye on the herd. It was a wild descendant of a beast of burden that the blighters had used in their days of power and glory, large enough for each dragon to have a satisfying haunch, plenty of flank-meat for the hatchlings, and the organs could go to the blighters, who had dozens of recipes for what they considered to be the delicacies of yilak brain, heart, and digestive organs.
Wistala thought it likely that if the dragons watched over the herd, killed or drove off the predators, they might take up residence in the south passes and see a good deal of natural increase. They were tough creatures, able to withstand a winter on the slopes. It would add some variety to their diet and if they could capture a few, the blighters could put them to work.
The Copper enjoyed his haunch, so much so that he followed it up with a double helping of gravel. Already, new scale was beginning to bud up under the worst patches of the white-rot stuff, and the diseased scale was beginning to drop off in twos and threes. The blighters didn’t even bother to collect scale with white-rot to trade, though he’d been told they ground up the healthy bits and put it into weapons and tools to strengthen the metals.
But that was for the future to reveal. After the yilak feast, DharSii ordered up more wine and drew the Copper aside.
“I’ve given it some thought and I think I have a solution that will allow you to fly.” He said no more until his blighters could be called, and they went to work.
“Solution” wasn’t the word the Copper would have chosen; it was more of a second-least-worst outcome, the worst being not able to fly at all. DharSii put in a locking mechanism so his wing could be either open or shut, and taught the Copper how to alter the configuration by means of a heavy pin and a pair of metal bands with hooks.
When the wing was locked open, he could fly, but the joint didn’t work, and it was fatiguing to make the adjustments with this wing that the natural joint, and Rayg’s flexible arrangement, allowed. But it did stay open and support his weight in the air. When closed, the wing didn’t settle quite right against his side. It looked like he was trying to shade his limbs on that side with his wing or keep a wound exposed to air, but it was not particularily fatiguing to do so. The Copper did discover, though, that his shoulder was unusually sore after the test flight. He was terribly out of condition, and asking his muscles to fly in a different manner than they’d done his whole life.
But the feel of air under his belly and his neck and tail making the hundreds of adjustments of muscle and scale they did while in the air on his brief flight made him feel that the soreness had been purchased in a fair transaction.
He decided to trust Wistala’s incognito mate. “I need a change of conversation, DharSii.”
“I am sympathetic to the inclination,” DharSii said.
At dinner that night the Copper decided to make his move.
“I’m terribly out of condition,” he said. “I was swimming the other day.”
“I thought your odor had improved,” NaStirath said.
“I could hardly climb out of the water.”
“The heat,” Aethleethia said, tossing her hatchlings another shred of meat. They promptly fell on it and the big one, CuDasthene, ripped it away from the others so they were left with only a mouthful. “It relaxes one so. I must nap through the afternoon if I spend the morning bathing.”
“I would have liked to see this hall full of dragons,” the Copper said.
Scabia sighed. “Full? Not even I have ever seen it full, but once, when I was not much older than these fireless squirmers here, there were enough dragons so that they seemed one continuous wall of scale about me. Safe—I can’t remember when I felt so safe.”
“Perhaps we should invite some other dragons here,” the Copper said.
“What, for a party?” NaStirath asked.
“No, to stay with us.”
Scabia picked a bone from her teeth, snapped it, and used the sharp end to clean her teeth. “There are no others. None worth having.”
“You have said that many times before,” DharSii said. “Since then, Wistala joined us, with her two brothers. They’re worth having.”
NaStirath chuckled low in his throat. “Well, I think we can both agree she is, anyway.”
“NaStirath, you really are tiresome,” his mate said.
“I’ve heard of some dragons at a tower on the Inland Ocean.”
“I know them,” DharSii said. “You can hardly call them dragons anymore. They’ve been serving men for three generations now. The first were allies. Their children were paid subservients. This generation—you can hardly call them servants. The next generation will be slaves. Well-fed, carefully groomed and cleaned slaves, but still slaves.”
“All the more reason—,” the Copper began.
“Crusades! Tyr RuGaard, do you know why this hall is so empty? Dragons with fancy ideas about altering the world. The world is what it is, we are what we are, and the less we try to alter the course of the world, the better we’ll do.”
“I was only thinking out loud,” the Copper said. “Please forgive me if I’ve brought back painful memories.” He hated playing the supplicant. But then, wasn’t that his rightful place? He was living on charity in another’s home.
“You are used to the company of dozens, or hundreds,” Aethleethia said. “With us, it is always the same three or four faces. Why shouldn’t you go visit some new dragons?”
“Be prepared for disappointment,” DharSii said.
“I would like the exercise—and the challenge,” the Copper said.
“If you go, I fear you will never return,” Scabia said. “Something in my hearts’ beating tells me this.”
“Perhaps I should remain,” the Copper said. “Your wisdom seems worth listening to. The idea of a long flight was an idle fancy, perhaps.”
“My fantasies are a good deal more idle,” NaStirath said.
Scabia nodded, tossed away the bone toothpick. A blighter rushed to retrieve it.
“I am old and cautious, Tyr RuGaard,” Scabia said. “Perhaps a challenge would do you good. You’ve been gloomy for years. The prospect of action seems to be bringing you out of it.”
Perhaps not.
“You do know, RuGaard, that some of the dragons—I think I heard you called them hag-riders—who took over the Lavadome in your predecessor’s reign, were trained there? It is an old outpost of the Wizard of the Isle of Ice. It’s the last stronghold of the Dragonriders.”
“If it’s the last, they may welcome another dragon about the place. Are there any other objections?” the Copper asked.
The dragons were all silent. “Then I think I will visit this dragon tower.”
He spent a week in practice flights. First, he stayed over the water. The rising heat from the lake helped him with air currents. After two days of that, and heartier eating each night, he felt well enough to circle the interior of the Sadda-Vale.
He kept his eyes scanning for Wistala. He thought he smelled her at the southern end on the air, but the trail led nowhere.
Once, at night, he tried following DharSii, but the striped dragon flew hard and well, faster than he could fly with his patched-together and mostly frozen joint. DharSii flew into the thick night mists and disappeared.
There was some mystery here. DharSii would never harm Wistala—of that he was certain—nor would he betray the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. So it wasn’t treachery.
The Copper, with his years in the Lavadome, was used to considering any phenomenon as a threat. Were they keeping some secret from Scabia? Perhaps Wistala was ready for another clutch of eggs and they were hiding her from Scabia. But why wouldn’t she welcome more hatchlings? Now that her daughter had her eggs . . . No, it could not be that. Though Wistala was a dragonelle of strange ideas. Perhaps she’d want her hatchlings to be free of Scabia’s ideas.
What were they hiding, and from whom?
He felt his body waking to the activity and his mind—he was feeling again. Even the pain of his exile, from the knowledge that he’d sworn to be permanently separated from the one of his kind who’d always loved him without reserve, could be felt and reckoned with. Pain taught. Pain strengthened.
It was during one of his training flights—he fought his way to the highest altitude he could stand, where it was much easier to ride the wind—that he at last marked Wistala returning to Scabia’s hall.
He dipped his wings and descended side-to-side in a series of sweeping motions. He didn’t have the flexibility or the trust in the wing joint to do a true dive.
On his last swoop he passed just above and behind Wistala. His shadow flicked across her back. She turned and dove, closing her vulnerable wings and lashed up with her tail. It caught him across the neck, and he saw some of his loose scale fall glittering in the sun.
Then, evidently recognizing him, she opened her wings again and circled around behind. With three powerful beats—Wistala was one of the strongest females he’d ever known—she was beside him.
“Brother,” she called. “I’m so sorry!”
“Let’s land, by the bathing rocks there.” He gestured with his good sii.
They alighted and Wistala brought her head close to his.
“Just a little weak scale is all. You’re hardly bleeding.”
“Your tail felt like a thunderbolt. I’m glad my neck isn’t broken.”
“I said I was sorry. I’m not used to you flying. DharSii told me he’d worked on your joint.”
“Impolite of me to come down on you from behind. I should have called, but my wind isn’t what it was. I’m out of condition.”
“An aerial chase is a good way to get yourself back in training, I suppose. You should just warn the chasee. I thought I was in for a fight and I reacted by instinct.”
“If it were an aerial combat, I wouldn’t last long,” the Copper said. “My fire isn’t reliable, I can only make wide turns and can’t dive at all, and I’m slow.”
“All the more reason to remain safely here. Your scale is dreadful, you know. You should improve your diet and wait a season.”
“If it is so safe here, why did you startle so?”
She shifted her saa back and forth and her tail tucked down. Like DharSii, Wistala wasn’t much of a liar, and when she fought down the truth it showed in her feet. “Old habits only slumber. They do not die, brother.”
“I make for the dragon tower. DharSii said you’d been there.”
“Briefly, while searching for others of our kind, before I arrived here. It is not a place to inspire much hope for the future of our race. The dragons there are saddle-bred.”
“So DharSii says.”
“I can’t imagine what you intend to accomplish.”
“A change of scenery and some fresh conversation, at the very least. I just hope the dragons there have not joined the Empire. I would hate to break the terms of my exile.”
“You are now of the Sadda-Vale, and therefore my responsibility,” Scabia said. “I shall give you something you may find useful in your journey.”
She extended a wing toward the blighter runs and four came forward, each bearing an ornate silver object about the size of a dragon-egg on a carrying-canvas held between them.
DharSii and the others craned their necks to see what Scabia’s servants had produced. Her daughter let out an appreciative breath. “So lovely!”
The Copper couldn’t make out what it was, other than some kind of decor. He’d been expecting, perhaps, a harness or similar bearing-frame such as the fliers of the Aerial Host put across their backs for carrying dried meats and honeycomb.
Wistala figured out what it was for first. “May I put it on?”
“I did not send for these just so you could admire them,” Scabia said.
She lowered her head and the blighters set it over her eyes.
Ah, a headdress. The Copper wondered if it was some ancient standard of Scabia’s family. He bowed his head in Scabia’s direction as well. The old dragon-dame purred in pleasure. She enjoyed ceremony so, whether it was a call to dinner, a hatchling viewing, or a leave-taking.
“It tingles,” Wistala said.
Indeed it did, when first put upon him. The Copper had the uncomfortable sensation of a static charge passing through his head somewhere behind his eyes.
“These are relics of Silverhigh. There are more—sadly there are more relics of Silverhigh these days than dragons—but do take care of them. I will accept breakage only if they save those thick skulls of yours from a splitting by an axe.”
Scabia spoke of Silverhigh so often that the Copper sometimes wondered if she didn’t live half her existence within the confines of her imagination, longing for that perfect past. He was no philosopher like Wistala, nor a cynic like AuRon, nor even a dragon always hewing close to the possible and practical like DharSii, and, while he enjoyed the stories of the lost glories of Silverhigh, he doubted it had been quite so perfect an age. The contentious nature of dragons—even with peace and plenty—forbade it.
“It’ll take more of a disguise than this,” Wistala mindspoke. Her words and feelings came across so strongly that the Copper jumped as if she’d stuck her snout in his ear. He’d never heard mindspeech of this intensity.
Scabia’s eyelid flicked. “I see they still work. Those are mindspeech amplifiers. The dragons of Silverhigh, provided they were capable of it to each other, could communicate over great distances. I myself have never had such an affinity of mind with another dragon that they worked for me, even with my dear old mate, earth harbor his bones. But I thought you might find them useful in your journeys.”
“Do they work?” DharSii asked, looking at Wistala. “I thought their magic was long dead. I never enjoyed so much as an intuition over one.”
“You are like me, DharSii,” Scabia said. “A dragon of singular mind.” She turned back to the Copper and Wistala. “In any case, if you are going to venture out into the
world, Tyr RuGaard, it may be useful to have this connection.”
The Copper had tried to discourage Scabia from using his former title, and succeeded in everyday conversation, but his leave-taking had brought the habit back. He’d been Tyr long enough to know that gifts rarely came without the expectation of something in return.
“Your kindness, in great matters and small, cannot ever be repaid. Perhaps I can return with some trifle unobtainable in the Sadda-Vale, to return this favor?”
“I learned long ago to reconcile my wants with my needs. For myself, nothing. But I won’t live forever. I would like more hatchlings around this place. There may be other dragons who, for honest and admirable reasons, would rather not live in the new world those down south are building. If you find any young and vigorous mated pairs, they are welcome here. Feel free to bring home a mate yourself, Tyr RuGaard.”
“My present mate still lives.”
“Don’t throw your life away trying to get her back. I may not be wearing the work of ancient Silverhigh, but I know what is on your mind. You are lonely, but she is hostage to your exile. Were you, by some miracle, to retrieve her, it would bring war to the Sadda-Vale.”
So that was it. The gift wasn’t so he could communicate with Wistala; it was so she could spy on him in his activities. He wondered how many of his thoughts Wistala could read.
“Why this hostility, RuGaard?” Wistala communicated. “Are you worried I’ll give away your plans?”
Fine. She couldn’t perceive his thoughts, precisely, but she could sense his mind. He sensed some conflict in her as well. Wistala was building toward a decision of some kind.
“As I said, I need change and exercise,” the Copper said. “I will get both without starting a war.”
He exchanged bows with each of the dragons of the Sadda-Vale. With Scabia he was careful to bow lower than her, with his sister they touched noses at the bottom of the bow, with DharSii the pair kept their snouts carefully in alignment, each conceding nothing to the other. NaStirath did an elaborate sweep with his neck and bade the winds and weather to be his servants, and Aethleethia wished him a fair journey and a quick return and didn’t mean a word of it as she nudged her hatchlings forward. They were shaping up as likely young drakes, but apart from endless lessons on how to interact with the blighter servants, they were spoiled rotten. Each could use a few years in the Drakwatch or the Firemaids under stern guidance, the Copper thought.