by E. E. Knight
“Why would NiVom need the bodies?”
“You know these scientific types. Ever pickling brains and grinding teeth into suspensions. Dragon-blood is mixed with preservative and bottled in beeswax. Among the humans of the Aerial Host, it’s said it can bring a man frozen and with altitude sickness back to life. I expect he’ll dump them, probably in the Star Tunnel. No Ghioz-man would dare go down there to pry out a few dragon-teeth.”
“What is the Star Tunnel?”
“Oh, you missed that part of the wars, didn’t you? Before your time. Wistala was muchly involved in it. I don’t know much of it, either, save that it was the last refuge of the independent demen. The Firemaids finally drove them from the place. I believe it’s some vast underground garden, not as great as the Lavadome, of course, but important enough in its own way. The chasm is located in those disputed grounds between Ghioz and your daughter’s blighter uphold in Old Uldam.”
Natasatch was never overly interested in geography, but AuRon, on the other side of his barrier, wondered why the bodies had to take such a journey. Didn’t the Lavadome dragons have ceremonies for honoring their dead?
Too much had gone wrong today for it all to be bad luck. How could such a mass of men from the Sunstruck Sea travel such a distance without being detected? It seemed that the Ghioz cosmetician had warned him that some plot was in the offing, yet he must have been the only dragon who listened, for there was only the smallest of guards around the feast-grounds. But why would NiVom and Infamnia want to kill enemies, especially in so unsure a fashion? The men might not kill enough, or might poison far too many with their wretched blades.
He owed the dead an answer.
Chapter 4
The morning clouds in the Sadda-Vale hung low, meeting the mists rising from the lake like ghostly dancers.
Wistala forced herself to have an appetite. She stomped dark teardrops of shelled creatures drawn from the lake by the blighter servants and picked up the mucousy flesh with her tongue. The blighters sank wooden beams by the garbage pool, and every few months drew up the creatures who’d anchored themselves to the accommodating timber.
She surveyed her reflection. The diet of the Sadda-Vale and infrequent sunshine had lightened the coloring of her scale progressively. She looked like young straw, so yellow the green had almost disappeared. She was wider of hip and longer of tail since her first clutch, and her fringe had grown out to a luxurious length. From the neck down there was no question that she was a different dragon, physically.
With a little paint, her face could be changed. According to Yefkoa, hardly a female in the Empire went about without scale painted. The richer ones decorated further with gemstones, the more daring added bits of feather, silks, or netting.
She’d fought, again, with DharSii last night about answering the Firemaids’ call. Neither of them had slept well in the vast old perch room, though each pretended to slumber to avoid further words. Wistala kept the eye DharSii couldn’t see on the weather through the circle in the roof that admitted light, air, and the usual condensation. Sometime in the early dawn she decided to leave with Yefkoa, who was testing her wings in the warm currents of the lake in the more wholesome waters nearer the springs.
Wistala lifted a crab-pot with her tail, found it only partially full, chewed it with an effort, and took another to keep it company. In her mood, the frantic pinches of the crabs and the effort to pop a few rivets and bend tin were welcome. It wouldn’t hurt to have some metals in her diet, just in case. Scale tended to drop on a long flight and the old habits of scrounging metals from her hatchling days. Scabia would be aggravated—crabs in garlocque-vinegar were her delight—and the blighter blacksmiths would need to make new cages.
“Scabia will be displeased,” DharSii’s voice said from behind, echoing her thoughts.
She startled despite herself. For a mature male dragon, he could be eerily silent when he wished, almost as quiet as her scaleless brother.
“Worried about being turned out of the Vale?” she asked.
“I’m not worried; annoyance is good for her. Expressing displeasure is her only regular exercise.” DharSii flicked a dropped rotten potato into the pool where it belonged.
Wistala didn’t like Scabia, and Scabia’s grudging kindness in allowing her exiled family safe harbor in the Sadda-Vale heightened the dislike.
DharSii’s color was up around his neck-hearts. She knew him well enough now to know that was the chink in his invincible aplomb. Eyes, wings, tail, claws, griff, and teeth would never betray his mood, but his capillaries let him down.
“Are you still determined to carry out this foolishness, bouncing off south like a broken chariot wheel?”
“I told you last night, the only way you’ll stop me is to break my wings. Care to try?”
“Sticking your nose into Lavadome politics might mean they gets lopped off, high up, where your fringe meets your head. I couldn’t bear that.”
Curse him! She would have covered twoscore horizons just on nervous friction.
“Ha-hem,” he harrumphed, falling into his old habit of clearing his throat as he made up his mind what to say, or to cover for keeping his tongue still. “I’ve met exactly one sensible, cultured, and lively dragonelle in my whole life. Can’t the world sort itself out for once? Who knows how many crises have passed in our score of years here, yet the sun still rises and the snows still come and go. We’ve had so many meetings and good-byes, I’ve resolved never to have another.”
“Ha-hem,” she harrumphed back at him, which was her only option other than twining her neck as tightly around his as she could. But if she began the embrace, she and Yefkoa would probably remain in the Sadda-Vale until their joint-scales grew brittle and dropped with age.
“Take this advice,” DharSii said. “Ask permission of someone to enter the Empire. It’s a thin bit of scale, but it may serve to confuse the issue enough for you to. I’m an old hand at exile.”
“Yet you yourself returned.”
“My sympathy for the Lavadome had not quite run out. But with the dragons gorging themselves on the world like Silverhigh of old, I’m content to leave them to their fate.”
Sometimes he could be as cold-blooded as a lizard. The dragons of the Empire might not be worth a blighter’s cuss, but what of the generation still dreaming in their eggs? What gorging had they done?
“I’m not,” Wistala said. “We owe something to the generations not yet born, even if their grandsires are fools.”
“A fair point. Would it be unfair for me to mention the new generation here? They may need you someday.”
“Having you with me will better my chances of returning to them,” Wistala said. “Will you not come with me?”
“I have my own phantoms to chase. While you are away, I’ll indulge myself in a little exploration.”
“More history of the Lavadome?” she asked.
“There are some missing pieces to the Lavadome’s story I’d like to find. I’ve indulged myself too long here. For the first time in my life, I’ve enjoyed the companionship at the Sadda-Vale. I mean you, of course. And your brothers. They’re each stimulating. So alike in their resourcefulness despite their disadvantages. Still, I can’t bear the thought of listening to Scabia without you others around.”
“I wish you luck, then. I will—miss you.”
“One last warning. There have always been powers who want to use dragons, alive or dead, for the strange substances that course through our blood. Our magic, if you’ll forgive the word. Long ago, Anklemere was attempting something with dragons—what, I do not know—and I fear his plans; perhaps even his mind, if you want to look at it that way, lives on. The Dragon Empire may think they rule sky, ground, and tunnel, but my vitals tell me they are being used like puppets. Who or what has the other end of the strings I cannot say.”
Yefkoa had behaved oddly at the Sadda-Vale once she was well enough to meet the other dragons. She bowed low before Scabia, as Wistala had coached h
er to do, and complimented her on everything from the taste of the sturgeon pulled from the lake to the intricate carvings in the passages.
“You just don’t see workmanship like this except in Imperial Rock in the Lavadome,” Yefkoa said. “Who made it? Dwarfs?”
“There are some dwarfish makers’-marks, but also blighter and human,” Scabia said, dropping out of her usual formal speech in an unusual condescension. “You can tell the difference in the details. The dwarfs will make a support look like rope, or piping, whereas the blighters will be more organic and men imitate leaves and vines of nature, as most of their artisans were probably trained by elves in the days of Silverhigh.”
Most strange of all was Yefkoa’s praise of the Copper. Wistala had forgotten over the years in exile how her brother had been loved by some of those he used to rule. Yefkoa spoke of him in tones of gratitude and awe, and was deeply disappointed that he was away. Wistala knew in a vague sort of way that he’d done some favor or other for her in her youth—had he given her a place in the Firemaids despite her slight frame and thin scale? Well, in any case, here was another dragon who loved her brother deeply. Wistala, when she looked at him, saw only a collection of injuries and an expression that verged on half-witted thanks to the eye injury she’d given him after their parents were murdered. She’d ceased to hate him long ago, but still wondered at the respect such a limping, undersized wretch seemed to inspire in others.
The bat Larb outdid Yefkoa in his praise of Scabia. He declared he’d never imagined such a Queen of snows—she was simply the most breathtaking female dragon in the world. He waxed on about the vastness of the Vesshall, his echolocation quite inadequate. This went on for a full shift of moonlight. Scabia reacted to the bat’s obsequious patter in a way Wistala had never imagined. She let loose with a prrum and invited the bat to eat his fill, complimenting him on his Drakine.
After dinner, when Scabia was amusing herself by telling stories to the youths, Wistala and Yefkoa looked over an old map of the Red Mountains.
“Where shall we reenter the Empire?” Wistala asked.
“East of the mountains would be best,” Yefkoa opined. “The climate is harsher and fewer dragons choose to settle there. Wallander is a possibility. It is on the Falnges.”
“Just above the old works of the dwarfs,” Wistala said. “I know it.”
“The Chartered Company, yes. It used to belong to them. Now it’s just another poor province. An entry there would attract little notice; there may not even be a dragon there to supervise. Probably some Hypatian hireling. It makes Dairuss seem like the Lavadome—a little riverbank squat with a few docks doing some trade with the Ironriders.”
They said their farewells and thanks to Scabia the next day. Larb the bat had been invited to stay as Scabia’s messenger, in the hope that Tyr RuGaard would return and he could go back into “the family service,” as he styled it.
Wistala said she would accompany Yefkoa to the borders of the Empire. Which was perfectly true. She would also accompany Yefkoa all the way to the Lavadome, if need be. She owed her life to Ayafeeia.
She added that she was grateful for the old dragonhelms of Silverhigh. She’d check on RuGaard on the way back.
With a wish of fair spring weather from Scabia, they departed together.
Two more contrasting females in flight could scarcely be imagined. Wistala, heavy and muscular, with an enormous wingspan, set off in a steady series of lifting beats and glides. Yefkoa, slight and narrower of wing, flapped as steadily as a duck migrating.
The frosted plains of the north, visited only by migratory herds and the men and beasts that hunted them, gave way to the low, rolling hills of the Ironrider lands.
Spring had advanced so many horizons to the south and the Ironrider lands were at their most beautiful. Sunflowers were opening and the fields were filled with wildflowers. The ground-birds were already out with this year’s offspring, lines of pheasants and quail poked around the tough bushes clinging to the highlands, and in the lower, damper parts ducks abounded.
Had Wistala been traveling for pleasure, rather than with dispatch, she would have gone south along the coastline of the Inland Ocean. She had friends in the Hypatian north, and it would be nice to see how the descendants of Yari-tab were getting along at the Green Dragon Inn in the old village where she’d grown up under the protection of Rainfall, the old elf gentleman who kept the great bridge and highway in repair. Perhaps she would find time to visit one of the Hypatian Libraries and meet students seeking to become sages and experts—she still held the title of “Librarian” for collecting some of the works of NooMoahk the Black in her hunt for AuRon.
But Yefkoa was on a mission and could not afford to lose days in that manner.
The plains held their own interest for her. She’d never traveled this route south before, though she had taken shorter flights out of the Sadda-Vale to keep herself in training, hunt, and take a break from Scabia’s conversation.
Wistala had explored the lands of the nomadic Ironriders decades ago in her hunt for AuRon and she wondered if the changes she marked now were some seasonal variation or a sign of plague or catastrophe. Before, she’d observed masses of the Ironriders in movement, flowing on their horses like a brown stain across the landscape, with shaggy and woolly herds surrounding the mass of riding and trudging mankind.
This time, the herds were reduced to a few poor animals closely watched by children just outside tents and huts set up out of the wind in some hard-to-find notch in the earth.
The shining armor, the bright, proud pennants, the songs from the tall riders in their woolly, tower-shaped hats—all gone, apparently. Once these warriors had grown such long and cultivated mustaches coated in shining, perfumed fats that they could be seen from the air; now the men were shaggy and unkempt.
Wistala tipped her wings and banked, closing up on Yefkoa, who fell in behind the vastly larger Wistala, riding the air off her wing.
“Aren’t these the lands of the Ironriders?” Wistala asked.
“You would know better than I,” Yefkoa said. “I believe so.”
“Are they off fighting somewhere?”
“The Ironriders? No. The Hypatians took—oh, you don’t know about the great raids.”
“No.”
“It was mostly the Aerial Host with Hypatian troops. They hunted down the Ironrider bands, fought the warriors and made thralls of the rest. They’re mostly gone, but some dwarfish slavers still hunt the area. They bring the thralls to Wallander and sell them to us.”
That struck Wistala as nasty work. She could understand making slaves of a vanquished army—part of the chance one took in setting out on war—but to hunt hominids like wild animals solely to enslave them . . . that led to what? An empty land reverting to wildness. No trade, no camps full of song and the shrieks of children at play.
“How far until Wallander, Yefkoa? These steppes are depressing me.”
“We should reach it tomorrow, I think. The ground is more broken now as we approach the river. I understand your dislike for this country. It makes me feel like the only presence in the world, too. Or that someone is watching me.”
Wistala had no love for the Ironriders—she’d won some distinction among the Firemaids and the Tyr’s dragons fighting them, as a matter of fact. But she couldn’t help feeling that some continent-spanning wrong had been committed and that sooner or later the crime would demand atonement.
The crickets in Wallander were happy in the balmy spring evening. Yefkoa and Wistala had their wings partly spread out, carefully massaging hot muscles, cleaning wing skin, and flexing and contracting tender tendons to distinguish injury from exhaustion.
It felt good to be with a female close to her own mind. Scabia was so busy playing elder dragon-dame and head of household that one could never feel friendship, only condescension, and Aethleethia’s mind ran on a very few well-worn tracks.
“Why this hunger for slaves?” she asked Yefkoa.
; “We go through thralls like chickens these days,” Yefkoa said. “Remember when there were herds and flocks in the Lavadome? Now the pens are filled with thralls, waiting and being examined for work, or breeding stock, or even training to support the Aerial Host. The old and sick are simply eaten, and most of the rest are worked until they drop, then slaughtered for food.”
“Life is cheap in the Empire these days. NiVom’s doing, or the twins?”
“NiVom has plans to enlarge the living space and passages in the Lower World. He has an army of demen now and he plans to have them move below the earth at speed, so they can appear in any city of the Empire without warning. In the end, I think he means Lower to rule Upper. So we’re all eating more worn-out thralls than we ever have.”
“Seems inefficient. Pigs put on flesh more quickly and easily,” Wistala said.
“Pigs can’t tunnel. There are vast works in process, under Hypatia and the other Protectorates. Any dragon who wishes to be thought a Someone needs a resort, above- and belowground.”
“What do they do in these resorts?”
“Stuff themselves and hold parties for each other and try to attract some rich hero of the Aerial Host. Even the Hypatians, who’ve benefited from the Empire’s extension the most, now are grudging about feeding. Hardly a drakka goes into the Firemaids anymore; they want a position in one of the Protectorates where they can sunbathe and send thralls out into the markets for paint and dye. Most of the young males fight to get into the Aerial Host, for the glory and the plunder. The Drakwatch is also withering down to little more than a cadre of impoverished or outcast families, supervising thralls in their work.”
Yefkoa was an unusually attractive dragon, if you liked the slim-framed type. “Why haven’t you found a place in the Empire? Taken a mate from the Aerial Host and joined the painted set?”
“No mates for me. I was once betrothed to a fat old gasper who already had more mates than he knew what to do with. After my parents agreed to my mating him he took me to survey his hill and almost as soon as we were out of sight he pinned me, wanting to mate then and there, out in the rocks like a couple of herdthralls. He was too fat to fly and too lazy to swim for mating, I imagine.” She shuddered at the memory. “Tyr RuGaard took pity on me and put me into the Firemaids.”