by E. E. Knight
In any case, rage had driven the Protector out of his senses. He was coming at AuRon like a crazed woodpecker, swinging in from whichever angle with no thought to altitude, wind, or AuRon’s suppleness of wing and body.
If he hadn’t been called to more important duties, he might have enjoyed toying with the enraged dragon. It was like playing dodge with a tortoise.
Each time Fusspot came at him, AuRon flapped hard and ascended. No scaled dragon could match him in a climb; thanks to the lightness of his frame, he was faster and could rise at a steeper angle.
“I’m no more of a threat to you than you are to me.”
“Is that a challenge? I eat challenge and pass victory,” Fusspot bellowed. AuRon decided that he wasn’t necessarily stupid, just young and inexperienced. The Protector had finally figured out that in a fight you could use the prevailing wind to help you pick up altitude.
AuRon supposed that if he let himself laugh at such speeches, he might lose his wind. Good thing he was in training; had he had to do these steep climbs back in the Sadda-Vale, he might have grown winded.
He wondered at such a character winning a Protectorate. Perhaps the Dragon Empire was already cracking with decay. Such was the way of things. What dragons of ability and skill built, their legacies took for granted and mismanaged. It happened with hominids as well, even disciplined and tradition-bound dwarfs.
Just to vary the contest, AuRon closed his wings and fell. Fusspot turned hard and moved to intercept. AuRon worked his wingtips and adjusted his glide path to stay out of reach.
Fusspot saw his chance, sped up to match AuRon’s fall, and spat the contents of his firebladder.
The fool! What dragon didn’t know that you vented fire only when flying slow and level or in backing into a climb?
The droplets of burning liquid spread in the air and the dragon plunged headlong into his own flame.
He emerged from the cloud of black and orange with fire coating his face. His bellow of anger turned into a shriek of pain.
Fusspot rolled over, griff extended and wings beating at the flame on his face, and plunged toward the earth. For one bad moment AuRon thought he would meet his death impaled on the trees, but he must have sensed the ground approaching somehow, for he turned legs-down at the last second.
Still, he hit hard.
AuRon alighted near him, and saw Fusspot rubbing his face in the dirt. He was a sooty black to the shoulders.
“I’m blinded, I’m blinded!” Fusspot screamed.
AuRon threw his weight on the burned dragon’s neck and craned around to check his face. He’d caught it worst around the lips and nose and his eyes were screwed shut against the pain. He would learn a good lesson from the pain, but AuRon didn’t envy him it.
Fusspot forced one eye open with his claw and threw his weight around, trying to lash back with his tail, but AuRon kept him pinned at the neck.
“Your eyes are just a little scorched about the lids. You’ll heal in a day or two, once the water-lids relax and retract.”
AuRon ended up fetching Istach, after a panic attack from Fusspot that AuRon was going to abandon him to starve in the wilderness. By the time they returned, the copper dragon was squinting his way about the woods where he’d crashed.
For some reason, Fusspot made AuRon feel better about his brother than he had in years. Maybe it was meeting a similar-looking dragon, stupid and prickly. Suddenly it seemed that his brother had more good qualities than bad—provided one could forget the family history.
AuRon left Istach unhappily nursing the dragon Protector of Old Uldam and returned to the mine he’d spotted before being attacked.
It was decrepit and hadn’t been disturbed in some time, judging from the brush on the ground and the fallen leaves. AuRon was about to resign himself to further searching the river when he noticed that the brush and leaves about the old mine opening weren’t from the hillside. Nothing like them grew here, only in the lowlands off the ridges.
Someone had been scattering gathered vegetation to hide a trail and hadn’t noticed the change in plant life as they moved up the ridge to the mine. With eager fanning of his wings, AuRon blew aside the scattered detritus and found unmistakable signs of drag-marks. He sniffed about—death, certainly—and there was a green scale. Ants were stripping it of the fresh meat at its root.
AuRon felt a moment of pity for the poor dragonelle it had belonged to. The scale was cut and ground and given a dusting of silver; some female had dressed expensively for the party, perhaps to please her mate or to impress a new one. But she’d ended up as dead as a fallen sparrow, for a dusting of silver didn’t help scale keep out blades, and the reason it grew long and jagged at the edge was to better link with the scale around it and wound jaws trying to rip out flesh.
There had been a time when he envied scale, but no amount of armor protected one from foolishness.
Steeling himself against carelessness and with every sense alive to shadow, smell, and echo, AuRon descended into the mine.
Chapter 7
If NiVom and Imfamnia expected the news of the massacre at the Grand Feast to arouse the dragons of the Lower World, they were greatly mistaken.
Instead, as near as Wistala could determine it, a sense of doom settled over the Lavadome, as though this bloodshed was just the first patter of rain in what would soon be a torrent. Of course, every dragon in the Lavadome was listless and dispirited, with the steady succession of “bleedings” so that the duty could be paid.
There was some halfhearted talk at Imperial Rock, she was told, especially among the Skotl, that it was time to settle accounts with the “pirates” infesting the jungles around the Sunstruck Sea. For pirates, the men of the princedoms of the Sunstruck Sea had a substantial kingdom, with so many inhabitants that even their rulers couldn’t count them. The dealers in thralls flicked their tongues and griff at the thought of the slave trade, should the princedoms be humbled.
Perhaps the subdued reaction had more to do with the change in the dragons of the Lavadome. It had been vastly altered since she’d last been there.
When she’d last seen it, there were still seven contentious hills of dragons, the largest being Imperial Rock, with the Tyr’s relations, a clan that went back to the end of the civil wars when Tyr Fehazathant and Queen Tighlia took over. There were parties of hatchlings engaged in play hunts and combats, feasts, bathing parties at the river ring just outside the Lavadome, young mated couples flying about, plus the herds of livestock, the clay pits filled with kern, and the thrall quarters. Everything felt a bit more spacious, the dragons said, now that so many were in the Upper World engaged in duties in one Protectorate or another.
Now the Lavadome seemed so empty it echoed. There were still vestiges of the three clans occupying their family hills. Most of the Skotl were in the Aerial Host or acting as palace guards in the Protectorate, the Wyrr were, and many Ankelenes had established themselves in the libraries and museums of Hypatia.
Of course many had died at the feast, but most of them were dragons of the Upper World. According to the Firemaids, the feast day celebrating the victory in Ghioz was an event that dragons who remembered the Tyrship of Wistala’s brother used to celebrate his memory. Factions against NiVom and Imfamnia met on that day and used the meal as an excuse to organize and increase their numbers.
So it seemed the slaughter had served its purpose after all. It eliminated a good many dragons of an opposing faction and served as a warning to others.
Everyone looked tired and underfed. Wistala and Yefkoa, entering the Lower World, had seen vast pens of livestock waiting to be driven into the Lower World. They’d passed over a “drain drop” near Ghioz, where hundreds of pigs waited to be driven onto a cart floating in a rocky pool like a vast well. Yefkoa had explained that the water came by canal from the river. Then when the canal was shut, the draining water would gently lower the raft to a main artery in the Lower World, where the swine could be put on a barge. Meanwhile the canal
filled another reservoir that would be opened to raise the raft again. It was an extraordinarily clever device dating back to the dwarfish kingdom that had once ruled in Ghioz.
She’d seen chests of salt, barrels of biscuits and root vegetables, brined this and dried that and smoked the other all passing into the Lower World, and very little of it seemed to find its way to the Lavadome. Either someone was getting monstrously rich diverting the flow, like the water-elevator developer, or there was a large population of dragons in the Lower World somewhere other than at the Lavadome.
“The tunneling thralls eat a lot. I know that,” Yefkoa had said. “Whole nations have been enslaved and driven underground. They always need to be replaced. They sicken and die after a few years, even if they get fresh fruits and vegetables, as the Ankelenes demand.”
As for the listlessness of the dragons she’d seen, Yefkoa had an answer for that as well. Each dragon had a “duty,” in either coin or blood, that was collected at every change in seasons, as gauged by the sun. The Tyr’s Demen Legion carried out the collections, filling cask after cask with dragon-blood—a Firemaid told her it was mixed with wine to preserve it—and sending them off to one trade-port or another.
The demen had changed, too. They were taller now, longer, with thicker skin and plate grown lumpy and craggy, like certain kinds of crustaceans. They had fishy, lifeless eyes shaded under heavy head-plates and they smelled like a plugged drain. Some of the more traveled dragons called them “the lobsters” because most of them were bright red about the carapace, with leading ranks adding gold paint to their plates to distinguish them from their soldiery.
They’d taken over many of the Firemaid duties in posts where thralls had to be worked. Dragon overseers could be begged and pleaded with, but demen were as merciless as ants.
That was the subject of her meetings with what remained of the Firemaids, at the old egg-refuge that dated back to the height of the civil war. Even NiVom and Imfamnia’s dreaded messenger-gargoyles didn’t dare enter it, for the Firemaids killed anyone but their own here. With Ayafeeia dead in Ghioz, much of her original purpose in coming to the Lavadome was lost. Ayafeeia had requested her presence, but had died before she could reveal her purpose. Ayafeeia, who’d grown up among the plots and plans of the Imperial Family, made a habit of not revealing her mind until the very last moment, and even then to only a trusted circle.
Wistala suspected it had to do with the dwindling and physical deterioration of the dragons in the Lavadome.
“We know she kept a few notes in her ears,” Yefkoa said. “I’ve seen her slip bone-cases for scrolls in there. That would be a clue.”
“Or compromising evidence,” another Firemaid said.
DharSii had once told Wistala a story of a dwarf philosopher who said that a frog plunged into hot water would leap out, but if you heated the water slowly, he would happily sit until boiled alive. Tallwillow, the famous elvish recipe collector and food historian, said that was balderdash, but it’s a sound philosophical point. If change comes slowly enough, even change for the worse, it meets less resistance than if it comes as a sudden shift.
She’d arrived in the Lavadome on the settled day of mourning for the dead. It was easy for her to disguise herself—she merely put on a good deal of face paint and hung black fabric from head and wings. DharSii himself wouldn’t recognize her unless they touched noses and he saw her eyes through the mourning wrap.
She’d been expecting a long procession of murdered bodies, each followed by the family mourners and thralls. Nothing of the sort happened, just small memorial fires of burning scented oils or braziers where family members could lay something that reminded them of the one they were mourning—say, a favorite preparation of fish or a piece of fabric the color of the dead dragon’s scale—and quietly watch it burn away.
Only one body had passed through the Lavadome, perhaps as effigy for the rest. SiHazathant, the male twin, had been borne in state to Imperial Rock at the center of the Lavadome. For the rest, some curious relatives had come to sniff, and perhaps remove valuable earrings and scale decor.
Wistala pulled aside a shaven-headed Imperial Family thrall who trailed in the wake of the procession. He had a heavy canvas sack slung over his shoulder and his job was to pick up any of SiHazathant’s scale that accidentally fell off.
“I thought there were dozens killed,” she said to him. “Where are the other bodies?”
“They were put in a big tunnel closer to Ghioz,” a human thrall said. “Only place that would let them lay out properly.”
Wistala believed him. Or she believed that he thought what he told her was the truth. Somehow the thralls passed word around before even dragons could fly with the news, it seemed.
Wistala thought it important enough to find out where the bodies had gone that she bade her sisters in the Firemaids farewell.
“I go in search of the bodies from the feast massacre. Ayafeeia’s, of course, is my main interest, but I am curious if the bodies bear some mark that would illuminate the true culprits.”
“You’ll have a job getting in,” a Third-Oath said.
“Why all this digging?” a younger dragonelle with an anxiously flicking tongue asked. “The old demen hold at the Star Tunnel has space equal to what’s been planned, and more. But it’s off-limits.”
“Off-limits?” Wistala asked. “What, to dragons?”
“Even the Firemaids.”
“That’s curious. What are the demen up to there, I wonder?”
“They migrated nearer to us. The demen live beyond the river ring, guarding the borders to the Lavadome. If you can call those brutes ‘demen’ anymore. The only one who goes there is Rayg, sometimes with NiVom and Imfamnia.”
Wistala wanted to speak with Rayg. If anyone could give her an honest opinion about the cracks appearing in the Dragon Empire, it was their “First Thrall.”
Flying to the top of Imperial Rock was still forbidden, so she went in the entrance for dragon-petitioners. It was crowded with dragons lining up to express their sorrow at the death of SiHazathant, so it was easy for her to disappear into the crowd. When a young drake page came in to announce five more names of those who’d won an audience with SiHazathant’s sister, she nipped out down the low thrall passage that led to the kitchens.
She knew Imperial Rock well. Once in the kitchens, she grabbed a couple of tonguefuls of meat-broth and a stew joint—odds and ends the cooking thralls wouldn’t report her for stealing, but it explained the presence of a dragonelle—then headed for one of the older passages up. Skulls of vanquished opponents still grinned down at her from the tunnels.
Up she climbed. Imperial Rock was empty enough to echo. She heard some noise down at the end where the training wing of the Aerial Host still resided, dragons and dragonelles freshly winged were encouraged to at least do a year in the Host so they could say that they’d faced death, as was expected of any dragon who wished for position and title.
For a human, Rayg had done extraordinarily well on both. He’d never quite won his freedom, for one reason or another, but there were many dragons with less wealth and influence than this particular thrall.
Rayg had built himself a niche that made him virtually irreplaceable. He possessed a rare mind, able to synthesize different facts under the sciences of different disciplines. He was part inventor, part sorcerer, part repairman. He’d designed the original wing joint that kept her brother functional, one way or another, across years of use. According to the Firemaids, he had a long backlog of projects, from better saddles for the dragon-riding men of the Aerial Host to a new mill for grinding grains and corns into better stock feed. The twins had surrendered much of the top of Imperial Rock to his workshops, laboratories, and libraries, and he seldom descended from an observatory he’d built at one end of the rock, sticking out and up from the narrow, arrowhead end of Imperial Rock like a broken mast on a ship.
“Don’t stand under it,” a thrall carrying water for the gardens warned. “
He likes to drop stuff out his window to test new weapons for the Aerial Host. If you hear a whistle, you have about three seconds before a loud bang. Hug ground.”
Two demen of the Tyr’s Legion stood outside his timber-and-iron door, warmed by their dwarf-beard cloaks trimmed with luxurious silken human yellow-hair scalp. They held long pole-arms crossed before it.
A door. How very human.
“Old friend, here to see the First Thrall.”
One of the demen stepped aside to give her access to a pulley. She pulled and a faint jangling sounded from within.
A scraggly-haired head appeared, leaned out over a balcony above, and then a hand made an intricate wave.
The demen parted their pole-arms and she heard something that sounded like a steel ball rolled across planking. The door opened of its own volition; no door-thrall worked it.
He called her up stairs wide enough for a dragon to an open room above. It took up the whole of the tower. She saw level after level above that with circular balconies overlooking the floor where she stood, sniffing the smells of dusty paper and hot lamps. She couldn’t see much of the very top of the tower, but she thought she saw a star chart with astrological symbols, rather like the one she’d slept under in the old dwarf fortress of the Wheel of Fire.
Rayg descended a stair. He was a little slow in his movements, but otherwise looked vigorous enough. His countenance was a strange mix of old and young: bright eyes and teeth in a deeply lined, careworn face.
There was a good deal of seating in this room, and a pair of big woven mats, slightly chewed up by scale, that would serve to keep a reclining dragon from losing body heat through the stone floor.
Rayg went over to a pair of matching leather-topped desks—built and paneled in the dwarf-style with many drawers and bins and such for storage—and sat on the cleaner of the two.
“Ahh, Wistala, my dear mother’s old friend. How is the old girl?”
“A venerable low churchwoman, when last I heard,” Wistala said. “I’ve been cut off from Hypatia for some years. I’m surprised you haven’t asked me about R—Well, my poor old brother.”