Dragon Rule

by E. E. Knight

  Nilrasha clacked her teeth to cut her off. “Fifth, you analyze rather than emote. Half the dragons I know would be cursing the dwarfs and barbarians and already have a war going. You talk like an Ankelene sage but display like a Skotl and persevere like a Wyrr. I hope you’ll take no insult at the comparisons.”

  “I’m flattered you think so much of me.”

  “When you held the Red Mountain pass against Ironriders and Roc-riders alike I knew you were a dragon who could set her backbone and stick.”

  Blood in the snow. Wistala didn’t care for those memories. Battles terrified her beyond words and she still dreamt of young Takea, dying in that dreadful pass.

  “What about my duties as a Protector?” Wistala asked. Mossbell was in good hands, but who knows what kind of greedy fool might replace her.

  “I’ll find a substitute. Or I’ll take it on myself, and just send and receive a few messages a year so your more ambitious fellow protectors don’t get ideas. Now let’s not look so disheartened; it won’t be forever. Besides, I have another need.” She lowered her voice, but Wistala couldn’t imagine who might overhear, save blighter servants she presumably trusted. “What I’m about to tell you is a great secret. By your oath as a Firemaid, do you promise to keep it?”

  “I shall.”

  “Your brother will not be Tyr much longer. Once RuGaard has a successor in place, he’d like to lay down his duties. I know the Ankelenes call him power-mad and other worse names, but nothing is farther from the truth. He’s carrying out the honors and duties given him, honors and duties he didn’t seek, whatever the whisperers might say.”

  She looked at her battle trophies. “Too many Tyrs have died atop the Imperial Rock. Right now the one thing we don’t have a tradition for is the peaceful transfer of power and responsibility. Can you believe, these Hypatians are more organized about such things than dragons! Short-lived, scatterbrained little mammals arranging their affairs better than, well, their betters. He’d like to learn that one practice from the humans and change that tradition to a happier one—a solemn ceremony where he turns over the responsibilities of rank to another with sense and energy.”

  Nilrasha shifted her weight with a lunge and Wistala heard the snap-crack of her tail strike the floor.

  “I told you not to listen,” she roared at her hindquarters, where a blighter hopped on one foot and long arm, cradling the other foot in her hand. Wistala smelled blood. “Oh, I am sorry, Obday, I didn’t mean to strike you, just startle. Go get it braced and bandaged and have some soup.”

  The servant hobbled off toward a curtained partition and disappeared.

  “I still don’t understand why you’re afraid,” Wistala asked.

  “There’s a plot against my mate’s life. I feel it in my bones.”

  “A plot? As in . . . as in murder?”

  If the suggestion bothered Nilrasha, she showed no sign of it. “Come, let us watch the sunset.”

  Wistala followed her out to the entrance. The sun blazed orange red as it sank, making Wistala think of DharSii, the odd tiger-striped dragon she’d met thrice, each time under unfortunate circumstances.

  “I’m not one of these brilliant dragons, Wistala,” Nilrasha said. “Everyone is always a move ahead of me in their little games. I’m not that great a fighter, either—if I were, I’d still have wings rather than stumps.”

  She waggled them again, then continued. “What I do have, though, is luck. Luck and an instinct for when to move. I’ve lived quietly here for years, doing the best I can to be an absent Queen through messengers and the good offices of court dragons like NoSohoth and HeBellereth. Word has come to me through a variety of sources that something is reaching sii and saa for my mate’s throat. For all that he’s suspicious of hominids, he’s entirely too trusting of dragons, especially those close to him.

  “I’m going to tell you something, Wistala, about one time when I had the instinct to be in the right place at the right time and I didn’t act.”

  Nilrasha watched the sun turn red. “Your brother had a mate before me, a very frail dragonelle, one of FeHazathant’s line, daughter of Ibidio and AgGriffopse, one of the best dragons who ever flew in the Lavadome. My mate was an upholder at the time, in an important but remote province called Anaea. I was on hand the night she ate an enormous meal and choked on a bone.

  “Some people say I choked her. Well, I might as well have. I don’t know if you’ve had this lesson in the Firemaids, Wistala, but in my day we learned how to help a choking dragon. You pierce the weak spot in the windpipe just above the breastbone with a reed, a pair of arrows, anything you can find. It opens the lungs to the air and you can still breathe, after a fashion.

  “I had the presence of mind to grab a horn off the wall, the brass tubing would have served admirably to feed her air once I punched it through her throat, but then I froze, unable to act. I think part of me, the part that wanted to be mated to your courageous brother, wished she would die. I stood there, watching her choke, seeing the pleading fear in her eyes, and I knew what I had to do. But I stood there, rooted. Then she collapsed and quit breathing, and too late I tried to intervene. I dropped the horn and went to her side. I thrust my sii down her throat and tried to take out the bone in a panic, and your brother finally appeared in answer to a human thrall’s signal.

  “I’ve always regretted those moments when I stood there, doing nothing. As usual, I was lucky enough to be at the right place and the right time, and as usual, the world came down on top of me, just like in that attack in Bant.”

  Wistala respected Nilrasha, but had never felt warm toward her. For the first time, she found herself in sympathy with her queen.

  “I tried to save my wounded father,” Wistala said. “He had—terrible injuries. From war machines, weighted dragon harpoons.I brought him water and food. Later I looked for coin and metals to help his scales heal. I found some in an old ruin, but I ate most of them on the way home. I couldn’t help myself. Even worse, men followed my trail, and the hunters found him. I led them right to his refuge.”

  Nilrasha rubbed griff with her. “Thank you for that confession. But at least you tried from the first to save your father’s life. Poor little Halaflora, who’d never said a cross word to even a waste-barrow thrall, died while I stood there like a rooted elf.”

  “Even when you do try, sometimes fate is too much for you,” Wistala said.

  The sun was half-gone now, and mostly obscured by horizon-hugging clouds. The sky above it had turned purple. Queen Nilrasha emptied her lungs. “So, what is your answer.”

  Could there be a plot against her brother? Would it be worse if it failed, or if it succeeded? In the Firemaids she’d heard terrible stories about the dragon civil wars, where the clans even made unhatched eggs the target of their vengeance. “I can try. But in trying, I may bring disaster.”

  “You must have faith in my mate. Don’t listen to the whisperers—me excepted, of course. He just needs time to see Hypatia grow used to living and working with dragons.”

  “If there’s a plot against Tyr RuGaard . . . how would I learn of it?”

  “Some dragons have a natural gift for sniffing out secrets and finding weaknesses. It’s quiet up here. I have visitors. Most of them are important Hypatians, or Hypatians who want to be important. They come here to seek my help, an intervention from the Tyr. They’re always awestruck, at first, and tell me about the only other time they met a dragon. I’ve heard an elf named Ragwrist used to have one traveling with his circus; it seems she told fortunes and somehow worked her way into the Wheel of Fire. She humbled a dwarf-king’s fortress that entire armies hadn’t managed to breach.”

  “I’ve heard that story too,” Wistala said. “I think storytellers look for ways to improve on the truth.”

  Nilrasha cocked her head and flexed her stumps again, as though brushing off imaginary birds perched on her fringe.

  “A dragon who can bring down a dwarvish fortress so mighty that no army coul
d take it might find herself in another conspiracy, wouldn’t you agree, sister?” Nilrasha looked at her sharply.

  Was Nilrasha testing her to see if she was already involved?

  “We’ll talk more in the morning. Would you like my thralls to clean your scale before you retire?”

  Wistala enjoyed their services that evening. She wanted to think, and strangely enough, having the Queen’s servants cleaning and polishing claws, teeth, and scale gave her strange powers of concentration in their busywork. When they were done she fell into a deep, post-flight sleep and dreamed of moss-covered ruins filled with stalking cats and furtive rats.

  They breakfasted on freshwater fish hauled up to the Queen’s eyrie in a woven basket on a line.

  “You’ll not mind if we climb down so I can show you something? After, there’s good hunting in those woods, if your taste runs to wild goats or small deer.”

  Wistala agreed. The Queen had the good manners to ask if she’d changed her mind about serving as Queen-Consort.

  Wistala had assured her that she had not, but had more doubts than ever about how well she’d fit the role. “I’m no social dragon. I learned my manners from an elf.”

  “That’s the great thing about being Queen. Blunder away. Your manners are never laughed at, at least to your face. Perhaps you’ll introduce a few new traditions,” Nilrasha said, giving an unsettling laugh.

  Wistala’s family hadn’t been laughing dragons, though she’d learned humor in Rainfall’s gentle school.

  They began their descent and Wistala found it exhausting, despite the chisled-out holds for sii, tail, and saa. She hadn’t had to cling vertically in years.

  “I see now how you stay so fit,” Wistala said. “Hanging on for your hearts’ dear life is good exercise.”

  Nilrasha held on with her tail as she negotiated a difficult overhang. “Better than flying in many ways—the constant strain of unusual angles brings a muscular warmth and a healthy fatigue that much faster.”

  They circled the pillarlike mountain of stone in the long climb down. Not even a goat would call it a path, but it was a series of sii-holds.

  “Do visitors come up in that same basket that brought the fish?” Wistala asked, watching a wary blight cling tightly to the knot-and-handle as the basket descended.

  “If they’re invited, yes.”

  “What if they’re not invited.”

  “They find their own way up. And a much faster way down. So far, my luck has held. As you are about to see, sister.”

  Nilrasha took her to a sort of dimple in an outcropping from the mountain, out of the wind and big enough for a mother dragon to use as an egg shelf.

  “I used to use this to rest during my climbs,” Nilrasha said. “You’re breathing hard. Perhaps we can catch our wind among some more of my trophies.”

  The shelf didn’t hold eggs, or captured banners and broken swords and helmets. The shallow rocky well held bones, some with bits of desiccated flesh still on. Skulls of at least two kinds of hominids, broken blades, pieces of rope and chain and broken dragonscale, even bits of demen back-carapace lay in a jumble. It smelled of rats, though how rats could live halfway up a mountainside Wistala had to wonder.

  They smelled of sun-bleached death, a crisp dry odor like shed snakeskins. Wistala saw that the pieces had been arranged as though they were at a human dinner party, with shields and sagging packs serving as furniture. The display showed a grim sort of humor, skulls sat on shield-platters staring back at their own bodies and weapons were substituted for missing limbs. “Who are they? Were they, I mean.”

  “They were assassins,” Nilrasha said. “There have been several attempts on the Tyr’s life. But many more on my own. Certain members of the Imperial Line think that if I were out of the way, RuGaard will mate again. What some dragons will do to become Queen. Also, there’s old Ibidio’s faction, who think I outright murdered poor Halaflora. I’ve saved a souvenir or two of each assassin.”

  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.