by E. E. Knight
“We give no cause to the Ironriders or the wildhairs or the blighter bands on the steppe to feel aggrieved, and the trolls on the outer slopes of these mountains keep other hominids from the so-called civilized lands at bay. I don’t look for trouble in the wider world, and the wider world comes for no trouble here. Am I making myself understood?”
“Perfectly,” Wistala said. In different circumstances, would she have become Scabia?
“Oh, I don’t care for this sort of talk,” Aethleethia said. “Now let us have a pleasant game to aid the digestion. Wistala, how are you at add-a-couplet? We have a poem about dancing gems that is quite without a decent end.”
Wistala woke to the sound of dragon claws on the floor below her loft. She came instantly awake, but it was only Scabia, with NaStirath fidgeting behind.
There was a little light, but just a little, coming in from the ceiling hole.
“Good morning, Wistala,” Scabia said. “I came to say that I regret some of my words from last night—no, don’t apologize.”
Wistala wasn’t about to. “You’re most kind,” she said, which was true, to a point. She’d been foolish to seek an alliance with other dragons.
“I’m really here to ask you if you wish to stay, to live with us,” Scabia said.
“It is quite the most marvelous home cave,” Wistala said, watching blighters clean up dragon waste about the pool.
“We would like you to be uzhin,” NaStirath said.
“Wistala, I am like my uzhin DharSii in that I’ve no patience for disguise. My beloved daughter is the best of dragons but barren, and I would have hatchlings in this cave again.”
Wistala stiffened.
“Don’t look alarmed, I’m not asking for you to take wing on a mating flight now,” Scabia said. “Nor even call any male here your lord. NaStirath is a fine dragon and would sire strong hatchlings. You would have a home and honor and, yes, even precious metals here for the rest of your moons if you would leave a few clutches for Aethleethia to sing over and raise as her own. Don’t look so shocked—it was not an uncommon practice in ancient Silverhigh. You’re obviously healthy; I’ve never seen such thick scale on a maiden before, more like that of your grandsire AuRye, who was always stuffing himself with well-armored dwarves and golden hilts from broken battle-axes. I will condescend to say that such a famous line will improve the blood around here.”
Scabia cast a pointed glance back at NaStirath.
She’d always meant to keep her promise to Father; in fact, she’d dreamed of a clutch of restless eggs last night for some reason, but this, this—“Unnatural,” she said. “It would be unnatural.”
“No more unnatural than a dragon wearing hominid jewelry and a carrying harness,” Scabia said. “Were you born with that icon on your fringe, perhaps? Or growing up among hominids, as I suspect you did. Tell me I guess wrongly.”
“I . . . ,” Wistala said, groping for words. “I didn’t come here to find a mate.”
“Is it a song you want?” NaStirath put in. “I know one or two:
“There once flew a maiden of AnFant
Whose mind was as pure as her vent
But when—”
“You’re not helping your cause, NaStirath,” Scabia said, again employing the juvenile—deservedly so, Wistala thought.
Scabia turned those faintly pink eyes back on her. “Now, dear, we shall have breakfast soon. Let’s have you join us for a few more meals and we’ll speak no more of this while you recover from your fatigues and hurts. Get to know my darling Aethleethia, and I’m sure you’ll come to feel, as I do—”
“I must go,” Wistala said, hopping from her loft and running for the exit. Grand, Vesshall was, but it was also hollow. Hollow of honor, hollow of feeling, hollow of—
She almost bowled DharSii over as she sprang out the tunnel mouth, leaped from the ledge, and spread her wings beneath the stone canopy that suddenly seemed as dreadful as the thorn garden below. He began to say something, but Wistala didn’t hear the words in her eagerness to get away, flying south as fast as she could.
Chapter 24
Is this a joke?” Ragwrist said.
Wistala sat with him in the equestrian theater, a riding arena outside Hypat, where his riders practiced during winter camp.
She’d come south in easy stages, keeping to the west side of the Red Mountains and not raiding livestock. She slept only on the loneliest hilltops, and drank snow she melted with her foua, with an eye to avoiding the barbarians. In this way she made a long and ultimately fruitless search of the Red Mountains, even passing into the southlands and the borders of the Empire of the Ghioz, without meeting another of her kind, finding nothing but bats and bears and a horrid troll or two in likely caves. If any dragons did lurk there still, they were being quiet about it.
I am but one, and my enemies can’t be numbered. I shall have to improvise. Perhaps the Dragonblade and the dwarves have a weakness only one familiar with their habits could exploit. Cunning is required, treachery even. What would Prymelete do?
“It would be a terrible risk,” Ragwrist said after she outlined what she wanted him to do. They’d gone to some trouble to find a place where they could talk quietly. The new apprentice fortune-teller, Intanta’s great-granddaughter Iatella, had been hanging about getting an eyeful of Wistala and peering at her through the crystal shard. Though she was a skinny little girl, Wistala didn’t like being overheard, even by someone almost small enough to be gulped down in one swallow.
“I know. If the dwarves suspect me, they will kill me at once. And they know how to do it. I’ve seen the proof.”
Ragwrist did not ask her to elaborate.
“No, I don’t mean that. This Fangbreaker fellow is offering me so much money for you, I can retire to an estate and sell the circus to pay for the finest velvet cushions for my sore feet and sit-upon. I am afraid to trust myself. Especially since if your plot does not come off, I shall have made a powerful and implacable enemy.”
“You may always plead ignorance and desperation brought by poverty,” Wistala said. “You’ve had ample practice.”
“You’re getting as cynical as Brok. Where is the kindly green giant I once knew?”
“Still freezing her tailvent shut in the north, perhaps. Ah, I shall trust you. Perhaps my fate can balance out your desire to become a landlord like your brother.”
“Canny of you to mention him. But remember, elves have no particular feeling for their siblings, and evoking his memory awakes in me no desire to help avenge him. All I want to do is forget that unpleasant night.”
“Odd that you would send money to Lada to help her get Rayg back, then. Yes, I’ve been to the Green Dragon Inn and heard the latest from Forstrel. He’s raising bees for Lessup’s honey-mead now, near an old cave I sometimes use, and complained much of the share Hammar demands from all production. He also told me that you paid out of your pocket to fix some of the damaged houses. And that you raked the old ferry-bell out of the ruins and kept it.”
“Rumor, rumor, rumor. I’m interested only in facts and expenses and how much I might get from the dwarves for you.”
“I shall ask you to drive a harder bargain than you know. I want several conditions on the sale, all in the interest of my health, of course. Is Brok still with you?”
“Of course.”
“I need him to forge a very stout collar for me, something that even a troll couldn’t break.”
“What, so that the dwarves may better chain you? Suppose you wish to break away and escape?”
“I didn’t say that I wanted to break it. I just want to be able to open it.”
Wistala stood in her new collar at the Ba-drink landing, a tiny escort of circus folk with her.
They’d set up a tent around her, specially sewn for the purpose, purple and patterned with powerful symbols, for she came to the Wheel of Fire dwarves not as an abject slave, but a great treasure, one to be guarded and protected and honored.
Wistala lis
tened to the spring melt pouring over the dam spill and waited.
The collar itself was a thick ring of steel, leathered at the inside and edges, with two forged-steel loops, one at the top and one at the bottom, for the attachment of chains, though only the tiniest wisp of azure blue silk bound her to a silver peg in the floor. There was no latch or spot for a key, and if you ran your hands around the inside only hardened leather met your fingers. Only Wistala knew where, if you opened the stitching, you could insert a claw point and open the lock, which then left only a false weld to break before the collar fell away.
At last she heard the creak of oars in their locks, and shouts and orders and calls of dwarf voices.
“King Fangbreaker comes. Sound the trumpets! Beat the drums!”
If you’re patient enough, and keep still out of sight and smell, the prey will feed itself right to you. . . .
Something took off with a whistling whoosh and exploded far overhead, Wistala guessed it to be a firework. A thundering tattoo broke out on the drums, it sounded like boulders coming down the mountains, and the trumpets pealed so high and clear, it was like sunshine had been turned to music.
Wistala, hearts hammering, waited for the audience.
The tent flap opened, letting in a little fresh air that Wistala welcomed, as Ragwrist was having incense burned to abate the dragon- smell for the honored guests.
“Winged, as you see. And a little grown, a little more appetite at mealtimes, but the same Oracle,” Ragwrist said as he ushered three dwarves in. Wistala saw prostrate dwarves outside, who looked as though they’d been felled or struck by sleeping spells.
Wistala noted the changes in him even as the mighty dwarf looked her over.
Gobold Fangbreaker wore a silver mask now, emblazoned with a four-pointed star, two slits for his eyes and two more beneath flanking the ridges of the star, whose shining points extended beyond the dull plate of the mask. Below, his beard had swirling designs of gold and silver dust worked into it, and a golden cord bound it into a tuft at the bottom from which hung a piece of glass Wistala guessed to be a magnifier. He was somewhat thinner but still broadly built, in a cuirass of silver and leather cushioning, oddly like her own steel collar in its padding, only with more elaborate flourish down the centerline, evocative of spear heads. King Fangbreaker now wore purple caping at back and throat and sash.
The most obvious difference, though, was the absence of his right leg. An inverted half skull—Wistala guessed it to be a hominid’s, though she knew not what branch had such strangely long fangs and a ridge at the temples that almost resembled horns—capped the missing limb at the knee. Projecting out of this and running to the floor was a rod of white crystal, like lighting frozen into immobility. A mundane steel-shod horse hoof at the base gave him some stability on the ground.
He still wore the helm capped with dragon fangs, only now overlarge horn-tips projected from its sides, gilded and filigreed.
Evidently the crown of Masmodon still eluded him.
Behind King Fangbreaker stood two more dwarves, one bearing a tall banner he had to dip somewhat to fit in the tent. It was the old ruby-tipped staff Fangbreaker had carried before, only now grown and with a crossbar added at the top to support a small purple banner, and the ruby was the perch of a stern-looking brass eagle. The other dwarf lugged chests and bags tied on either side of a steel shoulder pole.
Wistala dipped her snout until it almost touched the ground. “I see changes in you, Gobold Fangbreaker. Did my oracle come true, or have you come for my head and claws?”
Why, why, why did you say that? It sounds like a challenge—
“Hmpf,” King Fangbreaker said. “I come to do this, though there are many who will swear, when the tale is told, that it is an impossibility.”
He approached her and threw his strong arms about her neck, and patted her three times with his right hand hard enough to make her scales clatter.
“Yes!” King Fangbreaker said. “So happy am I that I embrace you like a sister! For no sister ever gave brother such encouragement as you gave me. You set my heart afire as though you had spat flame into it! And look!” He cast his arms wide and lifted his purple robes. “Results speak louder than any words.”
He spun on his horse hoof, then stepped over to Ragwrist. “Elf, let us settle the accounting. Name your price, and if it’s her weight in silver, I’ll melt every plate and goblet on both sides of the Titan bridge to meet it.” He turned back to Wistala. “I do not come to buy you, Oracle, but to free you. I would not have one who has done such service choking in the wake of gargant flatus.” He extracted a knife from his sleeve with such speed that it almost looked as though it had grown there and moved to cut the blue silken cord.
“No, I beg you, mighty king,” Wistala said. “That twist could be broke at the slightest pull. I would keep it as a souvenir of happy journeys under the kindest of masters.”
“I’ve never known a dwarf to begin negotiations at such a disadvantage as saying ‘name your price,’ ” Ragwrist said. “I’m quite befuddled. But if that is the case, the negotiations shall be brief. I seek only assurances as to her treatment.”
“Treatment!” King Fangbreaker said. “She may go where she likes. But if she will reside with the Wheel of Fire, she’ll want for nothing as long as I have voice to call for it to be brought to her. I would ask only her counsel in return.”
“Let us adjourn to my tent, if you will accept my hospitality, great king,” Ragwrist said. “It would be unseemly to name a price before the object of the negotiations, methinks.”
“Elves and their protocols. Of course, Circusmaster, of course, but I am tempted to simply behead all present and free the dragon.”
“My king, no!” Wistala said.
King Fangbreaker laughed. “I joke, of course. Let’s get this over with, Ragwrist. It’s too nice a day for tents and incense.”
The party left, and Wistala sagged. Her spine had been tightening, her body closing on itself like a telescope all through the audience, yet she could not account for her fear.
“Shall I read your fortune?” a tiny voice squeaked.
Wistala looked down to see Iatella crouching between brazier and piles of pillows, cradling Intanta’s old, saucer-shaped crystal in her lap as though it were a very fat doll. The girl was on the fire-keeping staff and had come along to work the camp kitchen and get road experience.
“Certainly. Practice away,” Wistala said.
The little girl stood before her gravely, then knelt, all seriousness as is the manner of hominid children when hard at play. She drew designs around the crystal, then found something wrong with its placement, and inclined it a little so it faced her better.
“I see tragedy in your life,” Iatella said.
This was no great secret to anyone with knowledge of Ragwrist’s circus, but it showed the girl had some skill, for you always wanted to start out on firm footing.
“Wonderful,” Wistala said. “I’m most impressed.”
“Elves, dwarves, men—you have seen a good part of the Hypatian Empire,” Iatella went on, pulling at her lip in thought.
“Amazing,” Wistala said.
“Birds, too,” she added. “Birds and death.”
How . . . Where was she going with this?
“I see you. Something in shadow, a dragon with a scarred face the color of an old soup-pot. And one of many colors, turned white as snow. You thought him dead when he turned white.”
How was this possible. Auron? How on earth could she know about Auron, or that morning on the mountainside she thought him frozen to death?
“Oh,” she said, and her voice was no longer that of a little girl, but something older and croakier than even Intanta. “A terrible reckoning. Three dragons, opposition, and the fate of worlds in the balance.”
And then she screamed, such a scream that it seemed to shoot right through Wistala’s body, the tent, the soil itself, and fainted.
A circus dwarf, one of Bro
k’s staff, and a pair of the Wheel of Fire dwarves rushed into the tent.
“What happened?” the circus dwarf asked, after a dwarvish expostulation from the others.
“We were playing a game. I coughed,” Wistala said. “I think it frightened her.”
They patted Iatella on the cheek, and her eyes fluttered open. She claimed no memory of what caused her to faint, and picked up her crystal and fled.
Ragwrist entered next, and the same questions were asked and answered. The dwarves wandered back out, leaving her and Ragwrist alone. “No matter. The bargain was easily struck. You have been ‘freed’ by the generosity of King Fangbreaker, Wistala,” he said, untying the azure band of silk.
“Dare I ask the price?”
“I kept it low, saying that his good opinion would one day be worth more to me than any gold, and he looked pleased, though I think sometimes dwarves wear those masks as much to hide their emotions when bargaining as to keep out the light. I or others may visit you at any time, though the dwarves, as always, hold the right to decide who will be admitted to their city, and you are free to fly as you will. But I wonder. He told me to strike off your collar, by the way. All that effort wasted.”
“Ragwrist, you are good to run this risk,” Wistala said, quietly.
“Ha!” he said, patting her shoulder, and her scales were happy to have a memory to replace the embrace of King Fangbreaker. “You still hold Mossbell’s lands, should true Hypatian law ever be reestablished across Whitewater. It’s the land I’ve got my eye on. So having let you know my true motive, will you take this last opportunity to turn back? This is no arguing council of dwarves. If Fangbreaker senses a threat, he will deal with you . . . harshly.”
