by E. E. Knight
The princedoms were full of such stories—not really histories, not really legends, but something in between.
“The librarians should really catalog them. There must be hundreds of these little tales.”
“I fear we’ll hear all of them before we find Nissa, or anyone with real authority to do something.”
Outside a city that was fragrant with peppers and more exotic spices and flowers, so much so it was almost dragonlike, they finally received news of her.
“Ah, yes, the Hidden Widow,” said a spice-trader with a good knowledge of Parl who’d been sent out to talk to them. “She was once of the Ghioz court. She resides in the country at the Peacock Palace.”
He supplied them with directions, though they’d spotted the building from the air.
The Peacock Palace had a ragged beauty to it. The jungle had encroached across the old walls that ringed the great house, filling fields with vines and grasses. The white—what else?—house stood besieged by green, three floors of balconies, verandas, and shaded walkways so that the air might run free while the sun and rain were kept out. It smelled to AuRon of chrysanthemum, which was growing in profusion in old pools.
He heard a plate fall and break from somewhere within the house as they approached, landing outside the gates and climbing carefully into the grounds.
A dark woman with two neat pleats of gray appeared on a balcony just above the main door. She wore a simple sleeveless dress with a black fabric belt wrapped and knotted about her waist. She reminded AuRon of both Naf—with her height and grave bearing—and Hieba—with her large eyes, elegant chin, and thick hair—so that it pained him to look at her. Just a little.
Wistala called greetings in Parl, but the woman just smiled and spread her hands as though helpless.
“Were you once known as Nissa?” AuRon asked, in the language of the Dairuss. He’d learned a little of it from Naf and more when he’d served in Dairuss.
She looked shocked and answered similarly: “That is the name my father and mother gave me, yes. I have not heard it spoken in a long time, dragon.”
“Your flowers are beautiful,” Wistala said in the same tongue, though with difficulty.
“They keep the bugs away.”
You know the tongue of the Dairuss? he thought to her.
It is similar enough to Hypatian that I can get by, she returned.
“Are you also the person they call the Hidden Widow in the city?” he asked.
“I am a widow. I keep within my home,” she replied. “There are rumors I am much wealthier than our own Prince Samikan and the rumors attract thieves like flies coming to spoiled meat.”
“I’m sorry to hear you are widowed. I will carry the message back to your mother, if you like. Your father has died. He was a good friend of mine.”
“He told me many stories of a gray dragon. I take it you are AuRon,” she said.
“This is my sister, Wistala.”
“I, too, am sorry you lost your husband,” Wistala said.
Nissa clasped her hands in front of her. “No need for regret. It was a marriage of political power. The Red Queen got her mated pairs of Rocs, a trainer, and his apprentice, and in this poor province an impoverished family gained a connection with the high of Ghioz and a dowry large enough to restore the family fortunes.”
“We came all this way to find someone in the princedoms of importance who would listen to us. The Dragon Empire is preparing for war with your people.”
“Once I might have been deemed important,” Nissa said. “In the days when the Red Queen ruled in Ghioz and the princedoms were eager for her good regard. Since Ghioz fell, I’m little more than a foreign oddity. I tutor students in the Hypatian tongue these days. I’ve almost forgotten my own, but they are similar enough—”
She stopped, then started again. “I would invite you in, but I don’t believe you’d even fit in the entrance hall. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you to remain outside. I don’t know what food I have that would satisfy a dragon appetite. We do have some cooking lard. My father said you needed animal fats for your fire.”
“We will manage,” AuRon said.
They ended up eating together in Nissa’s back garden. There were stones planted and mortared together between the trees, and the jungle had not yet succeeded in breaking the stones up. Her servants never left the house, so she had to bring them a meager meal of fat and soup-bones herself. Every now and then AuRon caught a glimpse of a face watching them. She sketched out her life as a young girl, part hostage and part student, in the Queen’s palace. Though Ghioz had fallen, she wasn’t sure that the Red Queen had fallen with it. When pressed, she told this story as the day birds quieted—a pair of peacocks retreated up a tree—and the night birds began to speak:
“The Red Queen told me a story once. She was an enchantress of the Ironriders and lived in a hut woven out of living trees, elves who’d returned to tree-hood and been enslaved to her will. It walked about their lands. She said wherever it went the weather turned bad, so it was almost impossible to find.
“The Ironriders feared her, but the very desperate and the very reckless would go to her. Seeking aid. The wretched, she would dismiss or dispose of. If they had wealth or power, she would promise to double it, which she did, but once they had their crowns and gold, she used her aid in their rise against them and they became her slaves, crowns bowing to her and gold washing into her treasury.
“When the Ghioz rose, they fought a war against the Ironriders in Dairuss. The Ghoiz had their own wizards, disciples of Anklemere of old, and the Ghioz managed to burn her walking, living hut of woven trees, and the Ghioz believed the old witch dead.
“She had a new version of herself born in Ghioz, though, and this time her rise was even faster—doing services for the rich and powerful and in turn taking what they gained and more.
“I’ll tell you something else. I remember little of my early life, my being brought here, and my marriage. I lived as though in a waking dream—I don’t know if dragons dream, but you often move about as though someone else is controlling your actions.
“Then one day I woke up. My husband had died on a trip and I found myself in a palace, with servants and wealth and a parade of people coming to seek my advice and assistance each morning. I didn’t begin to know how to get this merchant’s wife to love him again, or that young prince a ship that could weather any storm.”
“You believe the Red Queen was acting through you?” AuRon asked.
“I was presented to her when I was very young. She questioned me closely and had me play with a crystal ball. I remember how bright it was. Nothing changed after that. It wasn’t until my betrothal to Prince Dalparta that I began to have stranger and stranger dreams and then one day the dream didn’t end. I felt no fear—I felt nothing, to tell the truth. It just seemed a very long, very vivid dream. For some reason she gave up on me.”
“When was this?”
“While I was still young. I had not seen my eighteenth year then. Arranged marriages happen young in this land. It must have been twenty years ago or more.”
“About the time Ghioz fell,” AuRon said.
“So,” Wistala said, “the Red Queen was repeating her trick in the princedoms, it seems, but events in Ghioz intervened and she was destroyed.”
“You said you found a tree growing versions of herself?” Nissa asked.
“Yes, but not the way an apple tree produces apples, where they all grow at once. There were ‘fruits’ all at different stages of development, if you follow. I burned it and the creatures it was producing.”
Nissa took a deep breath. “My late husband had a younger brother who became a high minister of the Lion Order. They’re an old caste of warriors who call up their own militias and horse-levies when war requires. I could send him a message, but the last news I had of him, he was already involved in a war with the dragons over some islands farther south. They and their men are burning all the ships they can find.”
“Men flying with them?” Wistala asked.
“He said nothing of their tactics, only that there’d been losses of ships.”
“That would be NiVom’s Aerial Host, I expect,” AuRon said.
“I take it no dragons who could be convinced to fight on your side live here,” Wistala said.
“I’ve heard of none. There is a story of a dragon who lives with the blighters in the mountains to the north. He was so huge and furious, he destroyed an entire army underneath his impenetrable skin.”
AuRon snorted. His skin had been penetrated several times in that fight. But legends tend to treat facts as seeds—what eventually grows is what counts.
“We could make them think some dragons are fighting on your side.”
“It might slow them down. Give the princedoms time to organize.”
“They’ll need that. It takes forever to get them to agree on anything, from what I’m told by my brother-in-law.”
They bade farewell that night, lest they eat the poor widow out of house and home by noon the next day. AuRon promised to give Hieba news and Nissa promised to use what remained of her funds to visit Dairuss, if the Dragon Empire ever ceased its rampage.
They hurried south along the coast and soon found signs of war. Wrecked and burned ships could be seen in the surf or pulled up on the shore. They also found a dead, half-eaten whale rolling in the surf, with unmistakable arrow-shaped dragon-bites taken out of its fatty skin.
“The Aerial Host seeks to refill their firebladders with whale-fat,” AuRon said, as they bobbed in the warm salt water beside the body.
AuRon and Wistala marked a pair of ridden dragons wheeling high together and AuRon and Wistala landed.
“My guess is that’s a patrol over their camp.”
“Do you suppose they’re there? Sleeping?”
“It’s midday, but anything’s possible,” AuRon said.
“Keep hidden. I’ll go in fast and draw off the guards. If there aren’t any other dragons, I’ll attack. If there are, I’ll fly north as fast as I can. Stay down if I’m pursued and meet me later at Nissa’s palace.”
They took water and walked forward toward the camp, resting their wings for the coming exertion and keeping hidden under tall palms. The dragons on guard continued to wheel above.
AuRon tore across the sky. The guards flew down to intercept. He executed a neat cornering swoop, loosing his flame on the boats pulled up onto the sand. It spread widely, thanks to the force of his turn. The salt-dried wood roared into flame at once.
Lightened by the contents of his firebladder, AuRon climbed to meet the diving guards. Wistala saw projectiles launched by the riders flash across the sky. Her brother dodged them like a writhing snake, flipping on his back and changing directions again in a tighter turn than the heavier guards could match.
One managed to lash out and just tear a mouthful of trailing wing.
AuRon straightened, loose skin on the right wing flapping, and put on speed in his fastest climb. His pursuers followed.
Wistala launched herself into the air, but kept low, just touching the tops of the palm trees with her wingtips. The dragons and their riders either failed to see her or kept their attention on AuRon, chasing him south.
The camp of the Aerial Host was on a wide coastal island, separated from the land by an inlet, save for a narrow, bare neck attaching it to the mainland and curving like a claw around the lagoon. A ridge of slightly higher ground thick with palms ran up the center of the island. There were stone rings here and there, old foundations for huts, Wistala imagined.
AuRon had taken care of the boats, but there were still nets. The fishermen responsible for feeding the Aerial Host were venturing out to throw seawater on their burning ships when Wistala roared out of the jungle and onto the beach, setting their draped nets alight upon their supports.
Then she turned on the supplies drawn high onto the dunes out of the tide’s reach.
She smashed barrels and casks, tore open grain bags and set them alight, and hurled anything iron she could find out into the surf. Canvas and cordage, saddle-leather and spare bowstrings, she swept it all into a great pile and set it alight.
She felt a sharp pinch in her flank and looked down to see two crossbow bolts wedged in her saa, and a third piercing the slack skin at her shoulder above the wing joint. She heard a pop and saw a hole appear in her fringe as a bolt passed through.
The warriors were brave to shoot at her, but not brave enough to shorten the distance sufficiently so their bolts could get through her scale.
“If you’re going to shoot at a dragon, kill it with the first volley,” she shouted to them, hugging the ground as she scuttled forward through the patchy grass of the dunes. “All you’ve done is rouse my ire.”
Wistala didn’t care for roaring out threats. Male dragons usually were noisy while they fought, but females went about their bloody business quickly and quietly. If she could destroy these men, though, the others of the camp might decide that it would be better to scuttle away and live another day than to die without their usual dragon allies.
She dragon-dashed forward, and the crossbow men decided to race each other in the hope that the slowest would delay her as she devoured him. Wistala spat a few torfs of flame after them, all that was left in her firebladder, then left the wreckage and began a low, palm-top-hugging flight back north.
AuRon suddenly appeared above.
“I outlasted them,” he called. “The Aerial Host shouldn’t leave their camp guarded by two old dragons forced to spend their day in the air, circling. They flagged at once and turned back east.”
“Or they went for reinforcements,” Wistala said.
They flew first northwest and then north, changing direction by an eighth of a turn every hour or so to confuse any observers on the ground, until they fell, exhausted, into a patch of thick, high grass and bamboo adjacent to a swamp. The wet marsh beneath felt like batting-stuffed cushions to their weary muscles and aching joints.
They were too tired to eat much, save for a few lizards, beetles, snails, and leeches tongued up from the marshy water.
“I smell pig,” Wistala said. “Let’s sleep for an hour, then try driving them.”
“I’m too tired to sleep,” AuRon said, exhausted. A dragonfly with a wingspan like a sparrow hawk swooped by, gobbling up a cloud of insects and alternately exploring and being driven away by acidic dragon-scent, and AuRon lazily snapped it down.
“Then you can keep watch, if you like.”
“We’ve declared ourselves open enemies of the Empire,” AuRon said, panting. “A gray dragon with a twice-snipped tail won’t be hard to identify, or a long, broad green.”
“Worried that Natasatch or your offspring will suffer?”
“Imfamnia likes Natasatch, for some reason. The two in the Aerial Host will be fine. It’s my daughter in Uldam I fear for.”
“She’s clever and unconventional,” Wistala said, fading. “I shouldn’t worry.”
She fell into a deep, rasping sleep and AuRon laid his neck and tail across her. His color-shifting skin ran with thin stripes and green streamers like the bamboo all around. He slowly relaxed, keeping one eye on the sky until night fell.
They both woke slowly and stretched aching bodies. They hunted under a moisture-furred moon. AuRon managed to drive the pigs Wistala had smelled toward her and she brought a big male down with a pounce. Its skin was a disgusting mass of ticks and leeches, but the flesh was tasty.
“Quite a feast for setting out to war,” AuRon said.
“I like honesty,” Wistala said. “They would have killed us quietly, if they could. Now they’ll have to be noisy about it. Questions might be asked. Why we, after the massacre at the Ghioz feast, suddenly oppose NiVom. Odd, though. We’re both now set against something we love. You with your mate, me with poor old Hypatia.”
“Poor old Hypatia is corrupt, thanks to the dragons,” AuRon said.
“We can’t fight t
hem here.”
“Obviously. We’re only two.”
“Then back to the Sadda-Vale? It’s advantageous ground. Those fogs would work to our advantage.”
“Even if we could get Scabia and the rest in the air, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Our brother is up to something. While I slept, I wore my dragonhelm. He’s in a deep plot—I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a little like being sure the sun is moving. When is our brother not up to something?”
“I have a sense that’s he’s in difficulty and there are dragons involved. A tall tower on a jagged peninsula overlooking water.”
“Dragons and a tall tower, eh? He’s in Juutfod.”
“Do you know it?”
“A little. It’s the last remnant of our family’s old enemy, the Circle of Man and the wizard who needed hatchlings so bad he hired the Dragonblade and the Wheel of Fire to hunt for them.”
“I thought that story was long since ended. You took care of the wizard, I avenged our family name upon the dwarfs, and our brother killed the Dragonblade.”
“The story continues as long as we live,” AuRon said.
Wistala stretched her wings. “I can manage more flying now, I think. Let’s continue the tale.”
Chapter 10
Scabia the White had more than the usual Sadda-Vale burdens on her mind. The Outside World, which she’d done her best to avoid and ignore, had intruded on her precious hall.
She welcomed her troubles in a way. In the long years of just her daughter and her insipid but well-formed mate eating a long march of similar meals, over conversation as unvarying as the drips through the hole in the great rotunda of Vesshall, they might as well have been three statues frozen in time and space with a group of blighters polishing them and keeping vermin from moving into cracks and crevices.
The arrival of the Exiles, as she styled them, had forced the statues to move. There were hatchlings now—she still thought of them as hatchlings, half in wonder at the word, despite their breathing their first fire and showing thin skin where their wings were coming in. Her senses, exposed to new smells of dragonkind, new voices entering her ears, woke up as if from a dream. Colors struck her as brighter and the smells of the blighters roasting sheep made her as hungry as a dragonelle after her first flight. The Sadda-Vale seemed to be blossoming.