She’d had a glimpse into his mind during the last session of Parliament, and she had been shocked and disturbed and intrigued, so much so that she conjured up the images again and again as she lay dreaming in her cave. Lysira was the first dragon to arrive in the immense cavern in which the Parliament of Dragons was held. Anora arrived shortly thereafter.
Embarrassed by her eagerness and abashed at being alone in the presence of this august and revered elder, Lysira kept her thoughts carefully neutral in tone. She paid her respects to the Minister, dipping her head and raising her wings, then wondered uneasily what she was supposed to do now. Was she expected to make conversation until the others arrived? Lysira could think of a great many things she wanted to discuss, but all of them involved Draconas, and she was shy about bringing him up.
Lysira made one or two half-hearted attempts to speak to the elder dragon. Lysira’s colors were all pastel and muted, however, and Anora, preoccupied by her own raging thoughts, never noticed the wisps of spring green and rose pink that trailed from Lysira’s mind.
Anora settled herself at the front of the cavern. She glanced only once in the direction of the young female, and that glance was filled with sorrow, as though she foresaw some terrible fate about to befall the young dragon. The strange look from Anora made Lysira even more uncomfortable, and she was thankful when the elder dragon wrapped her tail around her feet and shut her eyes, a sign that she was not to be disturbed. Lysira retreated into the darkest part of the cavern and tried to blend it with the stalagmites.
Finally the other dragons began arriving and Lysira was forced to leave her shadows and greet them. The dragons were ill at ease and nervous, their colors shifting and blurring. Of late, they had come to dread these meetings of Parliament, for the news they were given just got progressively worse. All of them looked to Anora as they spiraled down through the fathomless darkness on barely moving wings. The sight of her, clenched tightly around herself, did nothing to reassure them. Alarm flew between the assembled dragons with such rapidity that Lysira swore she could almost hear the thoughts whir through the darkness like bat wings.
Lysira dipped her head and raised her wings to each dragon in turn. She did not join in their mental conversations, however. Young dragons are, for the most part, to be seen and not heard, unless specifically invited to share their colors. Lysira might possibly have received an invitation from some of the young males; she had an impression of thoughts drifting her direction. She was distracted, however, listening for the arrival of one dragon; listening for the sound of human footfalls.
Once the last dragon had arrived, Anora came out of her dark musings and called the Parliament to order, and still Draconas did not come.
Lysira took her place among the assembled heads of the houses of Dragonkind and opened her mind to Anora’s thoughts.
“I am sorry to have brought you here on such short notice,” said Anora, her colors vibrant and trembling, as from some long-suppressed emotion. “But I have urgent news to impart to you, as well as a warning and ... a confession.”
“We cannot proceed. We are missing a member. Where is Draconas?” snapped Malfiesto.
Malfiesto was old and crotchety and bad-tempered, and Lysira usually found him intensely annoying. Now her heart warmed toward him. She cast the elder male a glance of gratitude that brought beautiful memories of youth to the old dragon’s mind, momentarily causing him to forget what he’d been talking about. He recalled soon enough, however.
“He is late again,” Malfiesto continued. “I say we issue a formal reprimand—”
“I am not sure where Draconas is,” said Anora, and this was true enough. “I did not inform him of the meeting. I do not want him here.”
The assembled dragons went silent, their colors quivering. Lysira felt her own colors go bounding off the walls of the cavern, and she had to seize them and keep fast hold of them, not to betray her feelings of fear and disappointment to the others.
“He hasn’t got himself killed, has he?” asked Litard, a male dragon, in casual tones.
“No,” Anora answered. “I do not believe he is dead.”
Lysira’s relief was heartfelt, if short-lived.
“I believe that he has gone rogue. Silence!” Anora blared, her colors red and blazing. “Silence, all of you, and listen to me. We don’t have much time and there is a great deal that needs to be decided. Not since the Dragon Wars have we faced such a crisis. Our lives and, what is more important, the lives of our young”—here she looked again at Lysira, with that inexplicable sadness—”are in the most dire peril.”
She had their attention, now. Their complete attention. Litard, for once, ceased grooming his flashy green scales and exclaimed loudly in astonishment. Mantas, his colors murky as always, was silent, unmoving, waiting for events to unfold. Jinat, who always seemed to bear some unknown sorrow, nodded gloomily as though he’d foreseen this all along. Arat grinned. He disliked humans and he disliked Draconas. Malfiesto’s eyes narrowed.
Draconas came from the noble house ruled by Malfiesto, though you could not have told it, given that the elder dragon was never pleased by anything Draconas did. Lysira saw that Malfiesto was more concerned by this news than he let on. He didn’t roar or rage, as she might have expected. He had gone extremely still and quiet.
The seven other rulers of the noble houses were females. Dyx-tra the Silver was near the age of Anora and Maristara. Dyxtra had known both dragons in their youth and, according to her, had not been shocked by Maristara’s actions in seizing and enslaving a nation of humans. Dyxtra had never seen the need for a walker and always refused to take part in the spell-casting that created the supreme illusion. She snorted, as though this was only to be expected.
Reyal was a middle-aged dragon who, far different from most dragons, thought very highly of her powers of creativity and conversation, and was always inflicting her dreams on others. She did not like humans either, having once caught a human intruder in her cave once when her children were still in the egg, as the saying went. The human had never come near the baby dragons, but Reyal had been outraged and to this day would go on and on about it, if encouraged.
Alisha was also middle-aged, but far different from Reyal, being serious, grave, introspective. Alisha never spoke during a session, never demanded the Speaker’s Rod, never asked a question. She listened intently and took in everything, giving no indication of her thoughts.
Nionan liked humans. She had wanted to be a walker in her youth, but had not been chosen, and it was rumored, though no one knew for certain, that she used her illusions to lure humans to her cave for the pleasure of observing them. She was, like Malfiesto, regarding Anora with grim suspicion.
The last of the rulers, Shrireth, looked half asleep. But then, she always looked that way. She was said to have a violent temper, though Lysira found that hard to credit.
“All of you know that the rogue dragon, Maristara, seized the human kingdom of Seth many hundred years ago,” Anora was saying. “She has been ruling the humans secretly in the guise of a human, and she and her male consort, a lesser dragon known as Grald, experimented with the breeding of humans, mingling their blood with the blood of dragons. You all know that they produced humans who have dragon-magic in their blood. You know, for Draconas informed you at the last meeting, that he had discovered a city known as Dragonkeep, where Grald and Maristara were holding these humans, a city kept hidden from both humans and dragons by supreme illusions.
“And you know, for, again, Draconas told you, that Grald and Maristara have a spy in Parliament who is feeding them information. Thus they were prepared to repulse the dragons when they attacked Seth to try to free the humans. Thus Grald knew our secret plans for the human female, Melisande. The information the spy gave him provided Grald with the opportunity to breed with this human, a union that produced a son.”
The dragons did not stir. Not a tail twitched. Not a wing rustled. The rocks in the cavern were not so still as the ass
embled members of Parliament.
“I am going to reveal the identity of the betrayer,” Anora began.
“Draconas!” The name hissed in the minds of the assembled dragons.
Anora shook her head.
“You,” said Malfiesto, and he spoke aloud, something dragons rarely do.
Lysira didn’t believe him, any more than she had believed the others about Draconas. The idea was ludicrous, and she almost laughed until she saw Anora’s eyes, saw the shadow of conscious guilt, pierced by glinting defiance.
“You are right,” Anora replied. “I betrayed our plans to Maristara and Grald. I—reluctantly—sanctioned the killing of Brayard and his son, Braun. You condemn me now, I know that. But hear my reasons and then you will thank me.”
“Never!” Lysira let go her rage in an explosion of anger and grief. Braun had been her brother, Brayard her father. “You admit to murder—”
“Silence, young one,” ordered Anora sternly. “Be silent and listen.”
Lysira wasn’t going to be silent. She was going to bellow her rage until the walls of the cavern split asunder. She was going to fly at Anora and attack her with claw and tooth and thunderous magic. She was . . .
“Calm,” came colors, blue and soothing as the cold waters of a plunge into a lake. “Keep calm and do as the Minister says. Listen.”
“Draconas!” Lysira trembled inside, trembled with the force of her emotions, grief and fury vying with pleasure and confusion at reading his thoughts. “But she killed Braun—”
“Hush!” Draconas warned. “Give no sign that I am with you. Let my mind merge with yours. Keep your colors gray. I need to hear what Anora tells the Parliament, and she must not know I am listening.”
Lysira obeyed, her mind in such turmoil that, while not exactly gray, her colors were so muddied that even she could not tell quite what she was thinking.
“I know this is a shock for you, Lysira,” Anora was saying. “And I was truly, truly grieved that I had to do what I did. Please, listen to what I have to say in my defense.”
Lysira gave an abrupt nod of her head. The other dragons would think she was barely able to control herself for her fury, and that was almost true, for anger bubbled inside her. But the ugly acid was mixed with a sweet warmth, knowing Draconas was so close to her and that he trusted her and was depending on her. Lysira dug her claws into the rock floor of the cave and waited to hear Anora.
“For thousands upon thousands of years,” the Minister began, “we have watched humans evolve, grow, and develop. We have not interfered with their progress. Indeed, we passed strict laws to prevent such interference. To help enforce those laws and to keep a watchful eye upon this fragile species, we asked one of our own to sacrifice himself, to take on human form and live and walk among them. We watched over the humans, protected them, nurtured them—all without their knowledge.
“Occasionally there would be interaction between us—a young hot-blood would forget himself and carry off a few cattle or set fire to a barn—but such incidents were few and, I must admit, tended to benefit us more than harm us. For centuries, humans have feared us, held us in awe. Humans have long told stories of how their heroes attacked and even killed dragons, but those tales are just that—tales, myths, legends. No human was capable of slaying one of us.”
Anora’s colors grew dark and grieving. “But that is about to change.”
“What are you saying?” Malfiesto demanded, scoffing. “That humans now have the power to kill dragons? Preposterous!”
“Once it was preposterous,” said Anora gravely. “Not anymore. When a human first picked up a stick, we envisioned the spear. When a human flung a rock, we foresaw the catapult. When a human dug iron out of the ground, we saw the sword in his hand. Such puny weapons could never be a threat to us and so we did not concern ourselves with them. We slept in our caves and wove our dreams of tranquillity and peace. But these dreams have been shattered by the cannon’s blast.”
“Bah!” Malfiesto scoffed. “That puffed-up piece of ironmongery. Humans do more damage to themselves than to any of us.”
“That is true now,” Anora agreed. “And maybe it will be true a hundred years from now But, inevitably, such weapons will be a threat. As we saw the spear from the stick, so I foresee a terrible human weapon that will have the capability of blowing apart a mountain, of slaughtering us while we sleep, of destroying the nests of our young, no matter how well they are hidden.”
Images of fiery death flared in Anora’s mind, images of caves that required hundreds of years of patient carving blown apart in an instant. Images of labyrinthine passages sliding down crumbling mountainsides. Images of eggs smashed and the young dragons crushed beneath tons of rock.
“For the first time in our long history,” said Anora, “I see the possibility of our extinction. And it will be at the hands of humans.”
“Is this true, Draconas?” Lysira cried in silent dismay. “Do humans have such power?”
His colors were dark for long moments and fear gripped Lysira’s heart, for she knew the answer before she saw it in his mind.
“They do not have such power now. But soon.”
7
THE DRAGONS WERE EITHER SHOCKED AND OUTRAGED AT ANORA’S words or shocked and disbelieving. Their thoughts flew about the cavern, spattering the walls and each other with the colors of fire and blood, almost as if one of the explosive devices had landed in their midst. Anora did not try to call for order. No one would have seen her colors in the storm of emotion roaring about the cavern.
“But what can we do to stop the humans?” Lysira asked Draconas.
“Humans are not ours to stop,” he returned.
Lysira bristled at his tone. “I don’t know how you can be so flippant—”
“Careful,” Draconas warned. “She’s watching you.”
The tumult was dying down. Lysira saw Anora’s gaze fixed upon the young female. Small tendrils of thought coiled toward her. Lysira made her own mind a flutter of confusion; not difficult, with so many conflicting emotions flapping about like birds tangled in a net. Lysira had the impression that Anora was asking for her forgiveness and her understanding. Lysira could not grant that, not yet. She hunkered down and avoided the elder dragon’s thoughts.
Anora brought the meeting back to order.
“I made plans—” she began.
“Without consulting us!” Malfiesto thundered.
“I couldn’t,” Anora returned, blazing up. “Because of Draconas.”
“The Walker? It seems to me he would be central to any plans you made regarding humans.”
“The walkers were sent to live among humans in order to provide us with information about them, their habits, their way of life, and so forth. Walkers proved quite useful in this regard. I have noticed, however, that the longer they live among humans, the more human the walkers become. They begin to empathize with the humans. They lose their detachment, become emotionally involved. Usually we are able to catch walkers before they do harm to us. We remove the walker from his or her position and assign another. It is what I should have done with Draconas.”
Anora sighed deeply. “But he was the best walker we’ve ever created. He maintained his detachment, or so I thought. I wonder now if he was lying all this time—lying to me. Lying to himself.” She waved it away with a claw. “That is all past. What’s done is done, as the humans say.”
“So you foresee that humans are going to cannonade us into extinction,” Malfiesto said caustically. “Forgive me if I fail to understand how breeding humans with dragons and thereby giving them even more power is supposed to save us.”
“I will explain. It all began with Brayard.”
As she spoke, Anora deliberately kept her gaze away from Lysira, who steeled herself to listen and be silent.
“Through Grald’s bungling, Brayard learned about the smuggling of male babies out of Seth. He suspected the existence of a city such as Dragonkeep, although I do not think he ev
er found it. He told me what he knew and insisted that I bring up the matter before the Parliament. If I would not, he said that he would. That could not be allowed to happen. The revelation that we had been breeding humans to use dragon-magic would have caused an uproar among all dragonkind.”
The dragons muttered, their colors black and tinged with fire.
“Hear me out!” Anora demanded, and she waited until they settled down. “He would have brought our plans to ruin. For the sake of the many, he had to be sacrificed. And so he was. No one was ever supposed to find out. Grald killed Brayard and made the murder look like an accident—as if the dragon had lost way his way in a storm and crashed into a mountain.
“All would have been well, but that Brayard’s son, Braun, was the inquisitive sort. He did not believe that his father could have been so reckless. Prior to his death, Brayard assured me that he had not spoken to anyone regarding his suspicions. I now know that he must have mentioned at least some of what he suspected to his son. How much, I’m not sure, but at least enough to cause Braun to fly to Seth, with some scheme of trying to warn the humans about what was happening.
“The women of Seth, skilled in the use of dragon-magic, very nearly killed Braun. He managed to escape, and he returned and told his tale to anyone who would listen. He wanted to stir up trouble, believing that the truth about the murder of his father would then float to the surface. You know what happened. Draconas was sent to try to ‘deal’ with Maristara. He was to take a human male—a king of his people—to Seth to meet the Mistress of Dragons and persuade her to leave Seth.
“From that point on, nothing went right. Grald lost his nerve and sent out his magic-wielding monks to destroy Draconas. These lunatics did far more harm to us than they did to Draconas, for they alerted him to the fact that humans had been given dragon-magic. Maristara did not abandon the worn-out human body as swiftly as she should have, with the lamentable result that two humans as well as Draconas stumbled upon Maristara’s secret of body switching.
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