[Age of Fire 05] - Dragon Rule

by E. E. Knight - (ebook by Undead)

  The cave moss still glowed green, and the bats were, if anything, more numerous. She’d forgotten how small natural bats were. The oversized dragon-blood-sucking monstrosities of the Lavadome needed a different name.

  Luckily, scavengers—both hominid and on four legs—had long since cleared away the last scrap of bone and scale.

  “What are we looking for?” Wistala asked.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. A piece of the puzzle. I know it’s small enough for a hominid to carry easily. Aklemere called it his ‘perspicacitor’.”

  “I’ve never heard that word before. Is it a name?”

  “You might interpret it as device that extends sight or brings understanding. It worked with the larger piece, the sun-shard, as the blighters called it.”

  Wistala remembered the cave being so much larger. Why, the egg shelf wasn’t even a tail-length off the floor, yet she remembered it as a clifflike precipice.

  “It would help more to know what it looks like than what it’s called.”

  “Round or oval, and clear as glass when not in use. It may have been hollow, I don’t know—he wrote of images forming within. If it were hollow, it could be much larger.”

  “With facets, you mean?”

  “I believe so, since he states it was of the same material as the sun-shard. The only reference I’ve read describes it as round or oval and clear.”

  Wistala couldn’t remember anything like that in the egg cave. Father had given her and Jizara very small gemstones to play with.

  “I only had a quick glimpse of Father’s hoard. I’m sure whatever was in here, the dwarfs took.”

  “Show me, please”

  She pointed out the once-secret shaft. The boulder concealing it had been long since removed. He searched the little cave off it, then dropped a torf of flame to see how far down the shaft went.

  “It’s not too deep. I’ll check it out.”

  Wistala waited, her memories keeping her company, while DharSii plunged and sputtered and made noises that sounded as though he were rolling in mud. He came back up covered in black goo and stinking, glowing faintly from patches of cave moss….

  “That was unpleasant. Nothing at the bottom but some bits of what I think was a saddle and some bones, well covered in muck and cave moss.”

  “DharSii, if you do find what you believe to be the final piece in your puzzle, what do you intend to do with it?”

  “It depends on what the secret turns out to be. Perhaps it’s a weapon of some kind, but I doubt it. Anklemere wrote that, having tamed the dragons, there were no more enemies to fear. He often wrote that he had all this power, but was trapped in a cage no mind, no matter how acute, could open. The sun-shard and the Lavadome and his perspicacitor were his ‘key to the cage.’ I’m learning to despise metaphor.”

  Wistala had a hard lump in her gut telling her she’d forgotten something important. She called up every memory of her time as a hatchling in the cave, even mind pictures passed down from her parents. Nothing.

  “Were there any other secret spots, perhaps something very inaccessible?”

  “The pool? That’s where RuGaard used to come in and out. No! The tunnel, I remember the tunnel where Mother had us escape.”

  She felt her throat close up as she remembered Mother’s last, desperate call—Climb, hatchlings, climb!

  Wistala climbed onto the egg shelf and sure enough, the recess that hid the tunnel was still there, marked only by some water flow. Father would never have been able to get his horned head inside, but he might have been able to feel his way around with snout and tongue. She could use her eyes.

  She searched the little chimney.

  “Here is a sign, on this loose rock. I think if I put a little light in here you may just be able to make it out.” She spat a torf of fire on the opposite wall, where it burned, throwing an orange light on the scrapings.

  DharSii maneuvered his head as she pointed with her tail. “Yes! The Star of Silverhigh.”

  It was a simple design, a little unevenly done. Five sii marks, evenly spaced out, coming together at the center. It reminded Wistala of the Wrimere’s old “Circle of Man” emblem, save that it wasn’t enclosed in a circle, and there was just the slightest curve to the claw slashes, a little like the Wheel of Fire’s standard. Perhaps both the Wheel of Fire emblem and Wrimere’s had been modeled on the Silverhigh Star.

  “Well done, Wistala,” DharSii said. “That’s about the right size.”

  A piece of her thrilled at the compliment. Another part wondered that he only truly became animated when something of interest to him could be found. Whenever DharSii looked at her he just stared at her as though she were an unusual boulder formation.

  She nosed around. “Yes, this stone moves. I’ll pull it out, I think I can get my tongue awoun’ yeeth…”

  The stone moved. She spat it out.

  “Yes! Got it.”

  “Is there anything in there?” DharSii asked.

  “No,” Wistala said, her wings and tail sagging. “It’s empty. Wait, there’s a little bit of—I don’t know, moss like dried seaweed in the bottom.”

  She removed her head from the hole, with something like a brown string clamped in her nostril, and spat out the stone and the remainder out on the egg-shelf.

  “That might be—”

  “Elf hair,” Wistala said. Though the leaves were long-shriveled, there was no mistaking elf hair. “I don’t remember elves attacking. There were some outside the cave.”

  AuRon had been caught by elves soon after they saw Father return. He’d said—

  “Wait! Hazeleye!” Wistala said. “She was an expert on dragons, spent many years in NooMoahk’s cave. I met her. She was very old and frail. I expect she’s dead now. Perhaps it’s her hair. I always wondered why someone who apparently loved dragons would go along with murder and enslavement.”

  DharSii drooped. “Another wasted trip,” he muttered. “How many just this year?”

  “The question is, was the hair an accident, or a token that she’d searched here?” Wistala continued. “Elves often leave a strand of hair as a signal to others. Rainfall used to mark his honeycombs he’d checked, or garden beds he’d planted, or the oldest sack of horse grain with his hair once it began to come back.”

  She picked the stone up and put it back. That was how Mother and Father had left it; that’s how the egg cave would remain. Except for a little bit of stained stone, that star was the only evidence that her family had ever lived in this cave.

  It was a good cave. Water and light and air and well out of seasonal changes of temperature. It could be improved, of course.

  “What does the Star of Silverhigh signify?” she asked DharSii, to get his mind off another dead end.

  “One point for each of the gifts of the Four Spirits,” DharSii said. “And a fifth point for the mysterious gift. Our ability to change what we touch.”

  “How do you mean?”

  DharSii wandered around the cave, inspecting. She supposed he was just being thorough. “No member of another race comes away from an encounter with a dragon unchanged. Some hate us forever, others want nothing more than to be around us, observe us, be protected by us, even if it means a lifetime of shoveling up waste and hauling it to the nearest dung heap.

  “Of course, I’m sure you’ve noted the effect of dragon-blood and heard of the strange powers of our dead bones and teeth and so on.”

  “Yes. When I was in the east I almost ended up as part of someone’s medicine supply. Aren’t most of those legends, though?” Wistala said.

  “Not all. The Tyr himself has been feeding bats dragon-blood for decades. His original strain of rather overlarge, greedy cave-bats has grown into an entirely different species of quasi-bat. NiVom in Ghioz, who’s been breeding with more care toward developing certain traits, has created gargoyles almost as large as old Anklemere used to keep.”

  “I should pay a visit to Ghioz and see what he’s up to,” Wistala said to he
rself.

  DharSii continued: “We must use that gift wisely, our power to change what we touch. The problem is, destruction is too easy. It has a terrible beauty. A burning tower falls and in one glorious moment, we forget all the effort and care it took to lay the stones for a tower that will even stand up straight.”

  “Where did we get that gift, I wonder?” Wistala asked.

  “Some old songs say the sun gave it to us, so pleased was she with our ability to tame the blighters. Others say the moon snuck it in to ruin us, for once a creature has tasted dragon-blood and enjoyed the benefits, the desire grows in them for more. Around Hypatia much of that lore has been forgotten, but it still exists in the east. That’s why there are practically no dragons there, though they figure so strongly into their culture.”

  He finished his circuit in silence. Wistala waited, lost in memories. “Did anyone else return to the cave?” he finally asked.

  “My brother,” Wistala said. “I met him here. I gave him that droopy eye, too. Father, too. We tried to warn him but we were too small. He couldn’t hear us. He left again, fighting.”

  “If it was a treasure of your parents, he might have carried it away,” DharSii said.

  “You don’t know our father,” Wistala said. “He was in a rage. I don’t think he had the presence of mind to look at anything except the bodies of Mother and my sister.”

  “Still, there’s a small chance.”

  “Very well,” Wistala said. “I’ll take you to where he died.”

  She left the cave with small regret and tumultuous feelings. It would be a good place for eggs, if she could ever banish her memories. Once they reached the surface, she guided DharSii north.

  The promontory with the old blighter altar was very much as Wistala remembered it, except the obelisk stones with their cryptic old runes no longer loomed quite so high. She re-experienced the ache brought on by the long, long climb down to the rushing white water turning its near-loop around the outcropping in her trips to get water for Father—she even smelled the rank rot of the old driftwood tossed up by floods with dwarfs-beard growing on it.

  “This may have been a dragon-throne,” DharSii said.

  Wistala didn’t know what he was talking about, but rather than ask DharSii to explain yet again she just cocked her head.

  “Before the founding of Silverhigh, after the dragons had tamed the blighters, they worshiped us. Again, I suspect your parents knew something of the Star Order if he chose this as a place to land and die.”

  “He had a little help with the dying,” Wistala said. “I led hunters right to him. Unwittingly.”

  “Did he ever mention anything about a crystal?”

  “No. Never. I’m sure of it. I hardly knew what the word meant until I saw the crystal ball—wait. Intanta. She had a ball. She claimed it was part of the old sun-shard. Why didn’t I remember—Oh, I’m a fool!”

  DharSii stared hard at her. “You’re many things, Wistala, but you’re not a fool.”

  “This Intanta traveled with a circus, it belongs to a dwarf named Brok now—she and her gang of humans never mixed much with the rest. They were—shady, I suppose you would call them. I think they cheated people and stole. But she had this crystal. It was most strange. It helped a woman—Rayg’s mother, in fact—with the nausea she suffered while carrying child. It also comforted her during birth.”

  “I wonder if Rayg knows more than he’s saying. He’s studying the sun-shard,” DharSii said.

  “I hardly know him,” Wistala said. “I doubt Lada would even recognize him. She’s old now, too, worn down with work as a priestess.”

  “Then this Intanta is surely dead. Do you suppose the crystal is still with the circus?”

  “Intanta’s people had left when last I met the circus. Her granddaughter, Iatella, inherited it, I believe. She read my fortune with it when she was just a little girl. She told me AuRon was still alive when I thought him dead.”

  “I wonder how it ended up in the hands of that human? You say they were a strange tribe?”

  “I always had the feeling they traveled with the circus, rather than as part of it. They dressed oddly, even for humans. Lots of metallic pieces on their clothing. They sewed layers of coins onto bandannas and belts and such.”

  “Like they were imitating dragon-scale?”

  “Perhaps, I thought they just wanted them to rattle together when they walked.”

  “Just as Silverhigh still has its loyalists who still keep the faith, so too are the men who served it and later rebelled, passing their traditions on. It appears,” DharSii said. “I have a new quarry to hunt. Thank you, Wistala, you’ve given me hope.”

  “I should return to the Lavadome. I have promises to keep.”

  “And oaths that must never be broken,” DharSii said, a touch of fire in his voice. “We part for now, Wistala. If you think of anything else, or learn more from Rayg, you can leave a message with Scabia at the Sadda-Vale. Coin is no doubt growing short and I must return with more.”

  He gave a brief bow to the altar Father had lain bleeding on, spread his wings, and launched himself off the precipice Wistala had fallen down all those years ago. Dogs with teeth locked into her tearing at her flesh. DharSii caught an updraft, turned, and swooped over her, gently running the end of his tail down her fringe. With that, he was gone once again.

  BOOK THREE

  Charity

  “The only succor a dragon gives freely is death.”

  —From Hazeleye’s notes on dragons

  Chapter 15

  Wistala slept in the luxury of the Tyr’s chamber. Her brother was away; she felt she deserved the rich bed of the finest damasks, so tightly woven to the cushioning they were guaranteed not to catch on scale.

  Also, there was less of a chance that a messenger would seek her here instead of the Queen’s chamber. Nilrasha was a fine dragon, but she had garish tastes; there were far too many skins and interesting bone sculptures of various animals and hominids for Wistala to relax. It was like trying to sleep in an abattoir.

  Exhausted from travel, from revived grief in visiting the deathscapes of her parents, and from calls to her attention from NoSohoth so frequent that they invaded her dreams.

  The Firemaids and Drakwatch are having a mock battle beneath the griffaran columns you must judge, my Queen. CoTathanagar wishes an audience, he has heard there must be a second messenger for NoFhyriticus in Hypatia and is wondering if the position has been filled yet. There are three new hatchlings in Wyrr Hill you must view. The Tyr’s Demen Legion is appointing a new captain and the dwarfs are attaching the Lavadome from the river ring…

  Dwarfs? Attacking from the river ring?

  She opened an eye. Strange roars and calls had broken out from the Audience Chamber.

  She rolled out of bed and became tangled in the curtains—curse them, some chamber-thrall must have drawn them; they were open when she’d settled down. She staggered out into the passageway leading to the Audience Chamber, dragging purple material.

  Still shaking the cobwebs from her head, she entered the Audience Chamber on the Tyr’s platform, a little above the confused throng of thralls, messenger bats, griffaran, and dragons.

  NoSohoth came through the other door as she entered, looking his usual prim self, every black-tipped scale in place. Did that dragon ever sleep? Or did he just have the ability to instantly transform into wide-awake and arranged.

  “I’ve a Firemaid messenger for you, my Queen,” NoSohoth said.

  Wistala knew her features, but her name escaped her at the moment. She was a young Firemaid, supervising the Firemaidens in their first real duties. Wingless Firemaidens typically had the easiest posts in which to learn their duties, at the entrances to the Lavadome. The occasional escaping thrall was the biggest challenge they ever had to face.

  “Dwarfs—they came up the Nor’flow. Already across… the river ring….” she panted.

  “Dwarfs!” several in the assembly gasped.
/>   “Wheel of… Wheel of Fire! I remember… their flag from the… pass. Where Takea… fell.”

  Wistala fought with the remains of her brother’s curtains. A long way to come for the Wheel of Fire. Even overland, it would be a hard trip. They’d come underground, where three dimensions had to be negotiated and obstacles couldn’t just be hacked away. They must have used the river.

  “Where do we meet them?” NoSohoth asked.

  It suddenly occurred to Wistala that as leader of the Fire-maids and as Queen-Consort she must direct the defense. Battles were dreadful, detestable things, but how much more dreadful was defeat?

  The responsibility fell on her like a net. She was oathed as a Firemaid to protect the hatchlings of the Lavadome and as Queen-Consort to be at the forefront in defending the dragon-realm. Master your emotions, Wistala! she heard Rainfall say. Confidence flows downhill like water.

  They might have an hour, especially if there was fighting in the tunnels leading from the river ring. There was always a Firemaid or two on guard at the tunnels. If they could hold the tunnel mouths, the Lavadome would be secure.

  Even if the dwarfs made it to the tunnel mouths, the Lavadome was huge. It would be hours before they could reach Imperial Rock on foot, even trotting.

  Only dragons could make it there that quickly.

  “Send word to all the hills—evacuate, back to Imperial Rock. Leave home and hoard to the enemy, we must unite here and win or be cut to pieces in parts,” she told NoSohoth.

  She sent another dragon to alert the Drakwatch, some thralls to drive cattle into Imperial Rock in case the dwarfs besieged it, and a drake to Ankelene Hill to warn them to shut and bar the mighty portals at the entrance to their hill.

  SiHazathant and Regalia arrived together, as always. No sense separating them.

  “You two, go to the Aerial Host. I know most of it is in the Upper World, but there are a few sick, and HeBellereth is somewhere. He just gave a report yesterday. Send whatever they can to the river ring holes on the north side, try to hold the dwarfs there.”