by E. E. Knight
Under barbed whips of the demen, the trolls lifted his wet cage and carried him up the tunnel leading into the Lavadome. It was the tunnel he’d used the first time he’d entered the Lavadome. Fitting that he should use it for his last trip.
Cramped and cold from the long, soggy journey, he accepted his fate. So be it. If NiVom expected him to beg, polish his conquerors saa claws with spittled tongue, call on old memories of their time together in the Drakwatch, he’d be disappointed. He would just ask that Nilrasha be spared.
He revived enough to revisit the Lavadome as they carried him through its orange-lit expanse. Where there’d been pens and laboriously built-up potato and onion patches, muddy masses that looked like cattle-wades remained. One of the signaling towers he’d had built—the one on Skotl hill, a rock column with a lantern and mirror atop so a signal could be flashed to other hills or the observation post on Imperial Rock—had collapsed into a pile of rubble with ugly, thorny dwarfhook thriving and expanding through the cracks.
The gentle rocking and the warmth of finally being out of the cold of the river overwhelmed him. Despite a firm conviction of being carried to his death by trolls, he fell soundly asleep.
He awoke in a dark chamber. A few moments of snuffling around in the dark convinced him he was in one of the cells in a rocky outcropping adjacent to Imperial Rock, where some fragments of the forming monolith fell and piled up in a broken imitation of the colossal growth towering above.
The rocks had been re-dug and rearranged into holding pens for dragons awaiting the Tyr’s justice. No bars as in hominid cell doors; dragon-flame could burn wood and weaken iron. No, extremely heavy slabs were dragged over the tops of the cell-pits with a boulder or two thrown in for good measure. Air came in through the uneven seal between slab and cell-pit, and there was a cistern for drinking and washing if you wished.
His cistern was dry and smelled as though it hadn’t seen water in a year.
In his time as Tyr these cells had been used only rarely. Only the worst class of dragon, or those deranged by illness or injury, were put here while their fate was considered and decided. Most dragons waited quietly at the home-cave for the Tyr’s decision, if they’d committed some breach of the peace.
Nothing to do but wait. If he was very lucky, one of the Lavadome’s smaller bats might find him. . . .
Odd that NiVom never came to triumph over him. He was the sort of dragon who, when he’d beaten you, offered you the courtesy of a visit as though to seal his triumph by looking down his snout at you. All very affably, of course, with intelligent conversation about where the loser had misstepped.
The trolls took him to the base of Imperial Rock and down into the old dueling pit beneath.
It was a strange sort of structure, sort of a darker lavadome-within-the-Lavadome. When Imperial Rock had been formed, something had pushed up against the bottom of the rock, leaving a domed chamber. An air channel led up from it to the main open staircase winding up through the whole length of the rock. Some time before records were kept, it had been discovered, hollowed-out further, shaped, and then filled with sand. Three rows of shelves where dragons could recline ringed the sandy pit in the center.
The Copper had done away with dueling when he became Tyr. Ever the smaller and handicapped by his injuries, he had never been treated well by duels. He preferred to use the chamber to address larger groups of dragons than could meet before the throne, but still in more privacy than in the gardens atop Imperial Rock.
The place looked dusty and there were old crates and barrels stored on the shelves where dragons once reclined and listened or spoke. Old banners, somewhat mildewed, ringed the walls—they were trophies of poorer quality from battles that weren’t good enough for the throne room but still worth keeping as reminders of victories. Now the banners, like his victories, were disintegrating.
Rayg and Imfamnia stood in the old Tyr’s shelf looking out over the dueling pit. Rayg, with an old human’s run-wild hairiness, managed to look more vital than the emaciated dragon-dame. When he’d known her growing up, she was a beautiful, vital dragon, sleek and well fed, all swooping lines made for the smooth passage of wing. Now she looked thin—you could actually see hip joints and where the ribs ended, all angles and sharp edges. The overindulged, mocking gaze that held you until, embarrassed, you looked away had been replaced by brief, pointed glances at those all around and in the shadows, as if she expected an assassin’s lunge from the old banners hung around the walls. The years of exile must have sharpened her, like a broken decorative sword cut down and sharpened into a stabbing dagger.
“Meet the new exemplar of your tired, fractious species,” Rayg said.
The red dragon was newly fledged, though his wings drooped and dragged along behind him like a gown on a female hominid of the Directory. He was a rather dull silver, with a stupid half-smile on his face.
“Wave to the old-kind, SuSunuth,” Rayg said. The red held up a sii. Its claws had been removed, only sawn-off-looking digits remained. They were red and raw, as though they’d been chewed at.
“Three operations,” Rayg said. “Simple enough for a blighter to do. Clip two tendons at the base of each wing, take out the front and rear claws and cauterize, and then—most important—a minor operation, drilling into the skull just behind each eye along the horizontal to the base of the crest. It renders the dragon docile and cooperative. The only harm this dragon is capable of doing is by accident. I’m still working on removing the glands to ignite the firebladder oil. I haven’t quite managed that yet. The roof of a dragon mouth seems prone to infection—tinker with it and it goes dry and then black rot sets in and it reaches the brain in a flash. I keep losing hatchlings that way. Perhaps I should try permanently tapping the firebladder, hmmm?”
AuRon wished he could tap Rayg’s brain with a piece of bamboo. right to the base of the skull, and then see what secrets leaked out.
All my fault, AuRon, his brother thought to him. Rayg’s been too long chained in the dark. First by dwarfs, then by dragons. No wonder he cracked.
“Are you going to let him do this, Imfamnia?” the Copper asked. “You, a fellow dragon?”
“But I’m not a dragon, blockhead. I may look like Imfamnia, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve been practiced into speaking like her, but she’s long gone. I’m just making use of the very serviceable body. I’m the Red Queen. Didn’t I once tell you, AuRon, that I was too busy to die?”
“Infamnia—when?”
“Shortly after she met up with NiVom. I’ve been engineering their return to power ever since. She came to me through the attentions of my society—we can be found here and there, traveling with entertainments and telling fortunes.”
“Let’s not waste time on speeches, Queen of Hosts,” Rayg said. “The important point is that a dragon in this condition is rendered harmless, but is still thick with blood and flesh. Even thicker, as the brain operation renders it rather listless, so it tends to put on flesh rather than burn it off. One day, every palace in the east will have one, fed and bled for vitality draughts for rich princes. They’ll go out rendered incapable of breeding, of course. I don’t want competition. The Lavadome will be home to only the remaining dragons capable of having offspring, once we clear out a few odds and ends.”
“You might find the odds and ends tougher to clear out than you think,” the Copper said.
“What will you send up to deal with Scabia?” AuRon asked. “Hatchlings in the Sadda-Vale are rolling your assassins’ skulls across the Vesshall to knock over wooden pins.”
“Even the Sadda-Vale isn’t remote enough, AuRon. The trolls will clear it out eventually.”
“I think it shall be my summer palace,” Imfamnia said. AuRon had trouble thinking of a hominid spirit—soul, whatever one wished to call it—in the body of a dragon. No wonder she’d lost weight—probably still had a hominid’s appetite.
The sand smelled like the place had been used to store rotten potatoes. Vermin had the run o
f it, judging from the slightly sweet, dead-mouse smell coming from the piles of crates. Like much else in the Lavadome these days, the old dueling pit was half empty and going decrepit. He looked up and the glint of a bat eye peering at him from the darkness of a crack in the ceiling twinkled back like a star.
In his time, they’d held public debates in this space. Now the only squabbles settled were by bats looking to take a more comfortable perch.
“Whoever wins gets to have their mate live,” Rayg said.
“A little battie told me you two have never much liked each other,” Imfamnia added.
Trolls, answering a hooted call blatted out from a short brassy horn Rayg carried, brought in Nilrasha and Natasatch. They were muzzled and hobbled, back left saa to front right sii.
The Copper sidestepped, circling to his right to keep his injured limb away from AuRon. For an instant, AuRon’s posture seemed to be the same as when he was on the egg shelf at their hatching: Charge, charge and push him over. . . .
His brother made no move to grapple, though his tail lashed angrily. Tail—AuRon noticed that his brother, at the longest extent of the lash, briefly pointed at the high perch where Imfamnia rested with Rayg beside her, beyond their wall of troll-flesh.
Me above, you below, came the mindspeech. Just like on the egg shelf.
No. The trolls will have us.
They’ll have us anyway. Eventually. Rayg is the key. He directs the trolls somehow. If he can be distracted . . .
AuRon made a feint, snapped where the Copper’s throat had been a moment before. That would impress the watchers in the stands—a good bite always did. The problem was, as Father pointed out all those years ago, a dragon’s mouth isn’t powerful enough to kill anything but smaller, hominid-sized quarry. When fighting something your own size, you let the saa, with their thick claws, do the ripping and killing.
The Copper charged in return, rearing up and raining blows on him. AuRon backed up, blocking with griff and his wings. The Copper backed up, let out a snarl to get the blood up, and sprang forward in two great bounds.
On the third he leaped for AuRon’s back. AuRon had to find it in his hearts to trust his brother not to dig in and sever his spine at the neck. He braced himself.
Instead of landing with claws digging in, the Copper gathered himself for another bound off AuRon’s back between his wings. AuRon threw his body up with all his might, giving what leverage he could to the Copper’s leap, before turning himself.
He watched the Copper extend, striving to reach the shelf holding Rayg and Imfamnia.
The wizard and the self-proclaimed Queen of the Hosts recoiled in fear. The Copper landed just short of their shelf, his sii extended and holding on, keeping him from falling back into the fighting pit.
Had he only been able to spread both wings—
A troll reached up and grabbed his brother by the tail. They fell together, messily, into the sand.
AuRon rushed to his brother’s aid, ignoring the shrieks of Imfamnia—something about Rayg hiding behind her, as always—and Rayg’s frantic hooting amplified through a speaking tube.
He tore into a troll with frustrated fury. An elf would appreciate the irony of dying next to his brother, after all the years and all the distance they’d traveled separately. But every dragon meets his end, death being even more certain than the rising of the sun, and if this was to be his, so be it. He didn’t care to live to see what sort of world Rayg and Imfamnia would fashion, full of declawed, flightless dragons.
Remarkably, he brought down the troll that he’d been fighting. It continually raised its head to hear Rayg’s frantic hoots, and AuRon managed to get a saa up and popped it off its stalk like a grapefruit loosed from a tree.
The troll picked itself up and charged off in a frantic search for its sense-organ cluster.
His brother was beneath another troll. Both were bloody, but his brother seemed to be getting the worst of it.
He moved to help, but one of the trolls from the balcony bounded down and landed squarely on his back. He heard a bone in his wing snap.
We tried. Proud to be teamed up with you, brother. We should have tried this sooner, the Copper thought to him.
AuRon heard the reed-cutting sound of cartilage snapping in the troll’s grip, and his brother’s head dropped. The troll released its grip when the Copper’s eyes ceased whirling and bulging and went glassy-still. A mechanical death rattle escaped his brother and no breath followed.
The troll placed his hand on the Copper’s chest, felt around, then turned away, kicking sand upon the corpse with those ridiculous back limbs.
“It appears you win again, AuRon,” Rayg said. “Though by default. Your amazing string of luck in single combat—”
With a screech Nilrasha ran forward.
“Wait, you won’t be harmed!” Rayg called. “That was just—”
She threw herself upon the huge troll, back legs tight against her side after the leap. She pedaled frantically with them, removing the troll’s scaly skin in bloody strips. The troll let out a gibbering hoot and then the blood quit spraying as it collapsed.
“You may depart, Natasatch,” Imfamnia said. “I think you’ll find it an easy glide to the surface.”
“No. Whatever fate my beloved and the father of my hatchlings faces, I share it with him.”
“As for the loser’s mate, you may go, too.” Rayg let out a corkscrew call and the trolls pawed back from Nilrasha. “We’ll see that the former Tyr’s body is properly—”
“No,” she snarled at the trolls, covering her mate’s body with her own.
Nilrasha, bleeding, wormed beneath her mate and with a heave of her back legs, lifted him across her back.
“Kill her!” Imfamnia shouted. “Rayg, you fool, have the trolls take her head.”
“They’re not going anywhere,” Rayg said.
Leaving a bright trail of commingled blood, Nilrasha pulled the limp body of her mate toward the exit, clutching it across the back with her stumps of wings.
“Are you mad?” Imfamnia asked.
Rayg shrugged. “He was good to me. What I am now is because of him, more than anything. I’d hoped he’d triumph over his brother.”
“I’ll deal with them myself, then,” she said, gathering herself for a leap.
Nilrasha raised her bloodied head. “You do that, Jade Queen. Oh, for that chance. If my last grapple is with you, I die exalted.” She spat out the stump of a broken tooth, leaving a trail of bloody slime hanging from her maw. She set her sii atop her mate’s body, ready to leave a ring of blood around it. “Well?”
Imfamnia paused. “Perhaps . . . not. Oh, crawl into a hole and die together. The world spins on and we shall ride it.”
She continued her crawl, made it past AuRon.
Was he imagining things, or did his brother’s good eye give a tiny wink?
Wistala thought it would be a battle for the history books, just because NoSohoth fought in it.
The ungainly old dragon panted through the air but must have been in some kind of training, because he managed to fly down the spine of the Red Mountains without collapsing or lagging behind.
It appeared he was capable of fury after all. “Betray me, will you? You pup!” This and much more issued forth from him, even in his exhausted slumbers between flights.
On the journey, DharSii did what he could to get them ready for battle. He divided his younger and more fit fliers from the older, lumbering dragons. Then each of those groups was divided into pairs. The front dragon would fly toward the destination, the one behind his wing keeping up and keeping watch on the lead. It was an old system dating back to DharSii’s days in the Lavadome as a very young dragon. How it would fare against the fancier evolutions of the Aerial Host—if much was left of it—these days remained to be seen.
They avoided Ghioz on the way, and stopped at Nilrasha’s needle to free her, but she’d been removed, along with her griffaran guard. Some local eagles said that before th
e last quarter moon—three weeks or so by a dwarfish calendar—a party of dragons and big, broad-shouldered beasts the eagles didn’t recognize came and took her away, the whole team of them carrying her off through the air in a net the way loads were swung up into a big ship.
Wistala quizzed them closely. It sounded as though the flying trolls had left the Star Tunnel and were ready to do NiVom and Imfamnia’s bidding.
Their enemy rose out of mountain to meet them. NiVom must have had word of their coming.
“A fight in the open air will be better,” DharSii said. “Room to maneuver against those trolls. They don’t look fast.”
“That’s a swarm of griffaran,” Wistala said. “Black as the pit. I prefer the old sort.”
“Don’t judge yet,” DharSii said. Wistala waited for him to elaborate, but he gave orders for the fast dragons to gain altitude and the slower ones to make for the Lavadome.
All at once the fight was upon them. The trolls and griffaran grew from distant dots to sets of claws and wings swooping through the air in an instant, it seemed. A griffaran raked a dragon—one of the Hypat contingent—across the flank and a red mist appeared and fell, spreading into nothingness. The crippled dragon plunged.
Another went down, one of the dragon tower contingent who’d flown south for the glory of battle. His flame gouted up in frustration. A troll smashed another dragon across the back with a massive fist and it folded horribly backward under the blow. Wistala plunged toward the troll, determined to destroy it. She loosed her fire but too soon, as the troll closed a wing and fell off fast to its left, avoiding the flame’s path. She managed to catch part of its wing with her tail nevertheless.