[Age of Fire 05] - Dragon Rule Read online

  Wistala thought the collection a macabre one. Some of the Firemaids kept a trophy of a broken sword or shield or an old helm to commemorate a battle, but pieces of the enemies bodies?

  At least there were no dragon heads. None that Queen Nilrasha wanted to put into the tableau, anyway.

  “You spoke of exercise. Climbing down here and looking at these remnants are my exercise. The mental exercise is as important as the physical. I’m reminded that we have enemies who will stop at nothing. You would do well to keep that in mind as well, sister.”

  As if reading her thoughts, the Queen continued: “I could have put dragon bones in this collection as well. We had a mad young renegade try to knock my mate out of the sky during the war with the demen. While I admit it’s a strange collection, I’ve no desire to outrage my fellow dragons. Just assassins on their way up. I like to think I’m doing a service. Perhaps some took the warning to heart, and turned back rather than climbing all the way to their deaths.”

  She stared Wistala straight in the eyes. “You’ll need to keep your wits about you, Wistala, if you go into the Lavadome with a plot in your heart. Don’t do that. Be like water, or the wind. Just follow the path of least resistance to the bottom of it.”

  “If I do learn anything, what do I do?”

  The Queen righted a wind-toppled corpse with her tail and tamped it firmly into place. Wistala heard old bones break. “That depends on the names of the dragons involved. It may be too widespread to uncover. Too powerful to resist. Your only chance for survival may depend on you joining. Not as play, you understand—to really join it. I’ll try and understand. Save my mate if you can.”

  “Yes, my Queen.”

  “Now, on to more immediate concerns. There’s one other worry on my mind. An unnecessary war is about to start. Dairuss, once a province of Ghioz, has kicked out its Protector, a self-important dragon named SoRolatan. He spends all his time chasing dragonelles a third his age or eating. Fat lout. You’d think the jade-chasing would keep him trim. A few of the sly young wings lead him on, as he’s quite wealthy, though if you ask me, they’re better off without him. But the Dairussan king sent him home. He’s a fellow named Naf, older, one of our principal allies in the fight against Ghioz. He claims he won’t have any dragon back. There’s no provision for members of the Grand Alliance to leave, so you’ll need to smooth things over somehow before it comes to fire. Now, let’s finish this climb and hunt. I hear you’re quite the famous hunter, sister.”

  A conspiracy to discover and a civil war to prevent. Here she thought being Queen meant licking new hatchlings and presiding over feasts.

  Chapter 3

  The sun hadn’t visited the Isle of Ice in scores of days, it seemed.

  Of course winter always came early this far north. Once it became truly cold, the inhabitants could look forward to long stretches of clear daylight, for the sun only set for a few hours over the winter solstice.

  AuRon the Gray had settled on this island to be cut off from the world and its mad hatreds. Man against dragon, dragon against dwarf, elf against man and dragon… it was a long and bloody list of enmities. Just in his brief lifetime of a few decades he’d seen new ones form, hot and fast, and others burn down into charred lumps like dry wood. But even so, as much as he enjoyed the quiet of this remote, hard-to-reach island, come the winter storms the feeling of being cut off intensified, for you could hardly see your own tail when the snow was blowing.

  “My love,” Natasatch said to AuRon. She was his mate and mother to his four now-fledged offspring and sometimes she chided and nudged him as though he still had bits of egg clinging to his skin. “You must attend the ceremony.”

  AuRon didn’t like the pomp and pageantry of his Copper brother’s cursed Dragon Empire. He’d seen it born in bloodshed, even if he grudgingly granted its success in allowing dragons to live openly above ground in safety. Trumpets and banners and dragon roars, with those blowing and roaring the loudest the ones farthest from the fighting.

  “It wouldn’t hurt for you to mix a bit more with the Lavadome dragons. Even your brother sent us a bullock with his compliments. A fine fat beast it was and that messenger had to carry it all the way out of the south. This old enmity deserves to be laid to rest. The Tyr’s put it behind him.”

  Had he? AuRon wondered. Or was it some elaborate treachery?

  Of course, if his brother really wanted to do away with him, he had the power. He could put forty or more fighting dragons in the air over the Isle of Ice if he wanted. He might escape two, five even, but forty?

  No. Still, just because his brother had the power to end their old feud and chose not to use it, it didn’t mean he had to like him, or his empire or Grand Alliance or whatever he was calling it lately.

  “It will be a celebration of magnificence. It’s not every day a new Queen is announced. Well, Queen-Consort, they call it. And your sister no less! Plenty of coin to eat. The Hypatians own the seas again, south of the neck. It’s a chance to mix. Besides, the last two winters have been dreadful here. I’m not sure I feel up to facing another, the island could do with a couple less appetites to feed. Your wolves may like the howling wind and blowing snow driving bighorns into the valleys, but I don’t.”

  Natasatch had spent too many years chained in a dark cave. She loved going hither and yon on social calls and sometimes was away for weeks when she visited Queen Nilrasha in her refuge to hear the news.

  He couldn’t deny his mate the pleasure of company, or seeing their newly fledged son promoted into the Aerial Host. Besides, there’d be little enough to eat besides fish on the Isle of Ice if it was another hard winter, and the blighters complained if he went after their seals and such. Maybe that was the reason for his foul mood lately, not enough variety in the diet. He was still growing, after all.

  Youth. He was still a young dragon, even if the knowledge that there was now a generation behind him made him feel old at times. Some dragons went on and on, in and out through whole nations of men.

  Perhaps Natasatch was right. This mania of his to be isolated, remote, out of the affairs of the hominids—lurking in a cave listening to groaning glaciers between flights to warn off deep-water fishing boats or treasure hunters chasing legends of an entirely imaginary “wizard’s trove” on the Isle of Ice wasn’t much of a life. Besides, he owed it to his mate that she might see some of the world. He’d traveled all those years she’d been chained in a cave.

  Don’t be a blockhead, gray dragon. The outside world isn’t that bad.

  “It will be a long flight,” he said, giving her both a warning and a chance to bow out gracefully.

  She fluffed her wings with a leathery crackle. “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Oh, very well. Let’s enjoy ourselves. But Natasatch, try to keep out of the business of my brother’s alliance. I don’t want us joining any factions.”

  “Factions? Us? No, my love, you’re quite right that we should keep out of politics. I just want us to be sociable with our relatives to the south. It never hurts to have friends for when we desire a change of scenery, and I do so want to be able to congratulate AuSurath in person.”

  “To tell the truth, I’m curious to see how he looks, now that he has wings. I always thought he rather resembled my father.”

  Natasatch looked downcast for a moment. She hadn’t known her parents at all before being snatched away to the Isle of Ice. “Very well. Shall we bring Istach?”

  “She has young wings,” AuRon said. “The exercise would do her good.”

  “My lord is wise,” Natasatch said. Her tone was light, and the wording was the one she used when she teased him for dispensing what she called “the wisdom of the obvious.”

  He snorted. “You’re right, my love. You mated a dragon with delusions of sagacity.”

  Istach, their striped daughter, was a bit of an odd-hatchling out. Always had been. Quiet and thoughtful, she stuck close by her home cave, learning the tongues of blighters and wolves and sea m
ammals. She brought home game almost every day. It was unusual for a dragon her age to dote on her parents so, but again, she was an odd-hatchling.

  Her sister Varatheela was a Firemaiden and took after her mother in her desire to enjoy the social struggles with other dragons. He doubted he’d see her; from what he understood, the Firemaids and younger Firemaidens spent most of their time guarding the beating heart of the Dragon Empire, the Lavadome, running or flying messages, or learning about the lands under their Tyr’s subtle control.

  At least that’s how Wistala explained it to him when he asked her advice about Varatheela joining. But Varatheela was a full-fledged dragon now, and able to shape her own destiny.

  It was a longish flight to Hypatia. AuRon, being scaleless, could make it in three hard days, but Natasatch and Istach were weighed down by scale and inexperience in distance flying.

  To give themselves energy for the flight they feasted three days on a dead whale AuRon found beached on one of the tiny islands surrounding theirs. The gulls hadn’t torn it up too badly. There was still plenty of juicy fat and it was too cold for flies. Then they spent a day in short conditioning flights cleared their digestive systems, and accustomed themselves to the air. They flapped off to the south the next day, as the weather promised fair.

  Though he’d steeled himself against the departure, AuRon couldn’t help but leave his island with regret, the pain all the sharper for Natasatch’s eagerness to leave.

  To think, when his hatchlings were first above ground, his worry was overpopulation on the Isle of Ice and running out of sheep or goats in consequence. Now most of the dragons were gone, eager for the gold and glory of his brother’s glittering new empire. Save old Ouistrela. Too cantankerous for dragon society, always hungry, she rained contempt on the young dragonelles who flew north with messages. The Firemaid who brought the message from the Tyr, letting him know about the victory against the men on the western side of the Inland Ocean and his son’s promotion into the Aerial Host, had had her tail shortened by a mouthful for taking a sheep without permission to refresh herself.

  He had paid Ouistrela a visit to bid her goodbye and heard the story about how she’d seen off the “trained dog of a dragonelle” with noise and teeth, the one resource of the Isle of Ice’s old Ouistrela made free with. He’d brought her some of his pitifully small hoard in return for keeping an eye on the cave and not causing his wolves too much grief.

  “Some price for my services. If you’re gone longer than a year, I’ll go looking for the rest,” she said.

  The trio traveled with the wind; with winter coming it was blowing hard out of the north, their flight alternately serious and playful. Istach had the energy of a newly fledged dragon and enjoyed swooping around her parents and experimenting with surfing the air currents created by their hard-beating wings in their wake. AuRon, unhindered by scale, could outfly any dragon he’d ever met without sucking wind much deeper than he did on the ground, and continually asked his mate and daughter if they wanted to float and rest. Natasatch responded, as a proud dragon-dame should, by flapping harder and forcing him to catch up.

  Istach simply took over the lead position, so her parents might suffer a little less drag by riding in her wake.

  From the air, AuRon always thought Hypat, capital city of the Hypatian Empire, looked like a white vase dropped on a coral-strewn shore and shattered. From a beautiful core bits of it were scattered in all directions; even the toothlike sails in the great sand-choked estuary of the Falnges River might be mistaken for broken pieces of a greater structure.

  Whoever had first laid out the city had thought the design through, with a star of broad avenues running out toward the old city walls and riverfront. The heart of the city held several magnificent buildings and pillars.

  In human fashion, something well begun was finished badly. The wide avenues were choked with barrows and carts and wooden shacks and some of the graceful buildings had fallen into disrepair—though AuRon noticed sets of scaffolding and canvas marking where restorations had begun. The city’s lovely gardens, run wild and crawling with livestock on his last visit, were still in disorder, but the worst of the overgrowth had been cleared and there were no longer pools of distressingly fouled water. Outside the old walls a jumble had built up, beautiful homes and buildings looking out on the sea, and a rats’ nest of tightly packed dwellings growing around the docks and wharfs like barnacles.

  Hypat was thriving again, if in a messy and disordered fashion.

  A fast-flying dragonelle rose to greet them. Istach swooped down to interpose herself between the stranger and her parents.

  “Welcome, AuRon of the Isle of Ice, on behalf of the Tyr of Worlds Upper and Lower and Keeper of the Grand Alliance. Welcome, AuRon’s family.”

  The lack of reflective scale did make him recognizable, even from a distance. He’d been quietly called a “plucked griffaran” by some wit in the throne room of his brother’s rocky home in the Lavadome according to his hatchlings. He bore the moniker without challenge. He’d learned long ago that words couldn’t pierce your skin.

  Natasatch panted out a response and asked about a place to stop and take refreshment. The dragonelle offered to guide them in.

  AuRon only half-paid attention as they descended toward the outskirts of Hypat, capital city of the Hypatian realm.

  Tyr of Worlds. His brother did enjoy his titles.

  “I’m bid to tell you your sister Wistala, soon to be formally named Queen-Constort, invites you to reside with her at the circus campground,” the dragonelle said. “I will guide you to a safe landing,” the dragonelle continued. Natasatch beat her wings vigorously and lazily performed a few acrobatics, showing she was a match for any young thing who’d only been in the air a year.

  It was easy to determine where his brother was residing. Bright-colored creatures, half feather and half skin, sunned and preened over a sort of open clamshell of masonry, wood, and canvas near the great round building where the Hypatian Directory met. Near both, the layout of an impressive palace was growing in what AuRon remembered as a pile of rubble and wreckage along the inner walls left over from the invasion of the Red Queen’s Ironrider horsemen.

  Such magnificent works. AuRon wondered if it was all to succor a twisted little dragon’s vanity.

  Other dragons were enjoying themselves in the rough waters off a rocky point that flanked the city from the seaside, swimming, fishing, or taking the sun on their own private perches. A few humans watched, and little boys dashed across sand and surf to collect dropped dragonscale. Older servants brought the playful dragons platters of food and roast meats suspended from poles born by two stout servers.

  Empire had its privileges, he supposed.

  “Brother, welcome,” Wistala said as they alighted outside a brightly painted wall. Images of animals and performers decorated the walls of the circus. It was much as AuRon had remembered it from when he stayed briefly before, but now a flag fluttered above, green and white with a dragon’s profile on it. Below the flags, angled masts, a cross between ship’s timbers and lifting cranes, held up canvas to shade the seats. “Nat-asatch, you are most welcome. I’m glad you could come. And young Istach. Your sister is doing well as a Firemaid, though I don’t expect she’ll take the Second Oath. She’s beginning to display a bit in front of the young dragons, so we will lose her to mating one day, I suspect. Your young dragons are both fine examples of dragonkind.”

  “Thank you for news of the offspring,” Natasatch said. “We’re so cut off in the north.”

  A crowd gathered but kept a respectful distance. Wistala sidestepped and gestured with her neck and tail. “Perhaps we should retreat within the gates. There’ll be beggars here any moment, asking for loose scale.”

  They proceeded into the circus arena. Piles of sawdust and matting showed that several dragons were staying for the duration of the celebration.

  “Sister,” AuRon said. “I am told you are taking an important new role soon.”
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  “Formally, yes. Informally, I’m already helping the Tyr.”

  “Rounding up slaves for the Lavadome?”

  “Nothing so distressing, AuRon. My duties are mostly to represent the Tyr at minor functions when he’s busy elsewhere. But sometimes problems are brought to me when it is thought that NoSohoth or our brother will refuse aid. I wish I had a mouthful of gold to offer, but it flows out as quickly as it flows in. I have some copper scraps, however.”

  His mate and Istach gratefully swallowed a few battered remains of cooking pots. With so many dragons about AuRon wondered what even these odds and ends had cost his sister.

  Natasatch asked Wistala about arrangements for the celebration, who would be there with whom, whether there were any important humans she should greet or defer to, what kinds of dishes might be served—“all the flying put me in good appetite, and I’ve long been hungry for society.”

  Her life wasn’t yours. Try to understand.

  Did he expect his mate to always trail along in his wake, dutifully waiting for the next clutch of eggs? No, if she was as hungry for company as she was for precious metals, he could put up with a few cheers for his brother. He might even have done something to deserve them.

  Wistala assigned them a thrall to help them with her traveling household, and made her excuses. Already she reminded AuRon of one of these smooth-talking dragons of her brother’s court. What had his sister grown up to be? Not another preening decoration, he hoped.

  At least Natasatch wasn’t vain. The dragons of his brother’s empire accumulated small armies of human retainers and servants. Every scale polished, filed, and aligned, claws smoothed and sharpened, teeth picked as clean as a corpse in the desert he’d crossed in his unfledged youth with the girl Hieba.