by E. E. Knight
That night she wept, truly wept, for herself. A very undragonlike response to difficulty. Mother would tell her to hide her tears and think of a way to improvise a solution.
She fell into an exhausted sleep, but felt better and more clearheaded for the crying jag. Now that the frustration was out she could think again.
Later, she had the most extraordinary dreams. DharSii figured in them, and her blood ran hot and quick at the events. Except his griff kept poking her just beneath her right neck heart.
Waking, she came eye-to-face with a snaggletoothed horror. It was like a bat, but vastly overgrown and with a faintly scaly snout.
It licked bloody lips with a long tongue.
Impossibly, the nightmare spoke. “I’ll let ’em know,” it whispered in good Drakine. “Thanks for the sup, gentledragon. I was perishing for a taste. Good thing you reek of blood ’n dung; never would have found you otherways.”
The horror of this thing!—wretched claw-winged thing!—clinging to her neck overcame her. She let out a startled gasp and it sailed off into the tunnel dark, silent as a passing cloud.
“Now what?” one of the demen asked.
“I—I had a bad dream,” she said, more than half wondering if it was true. No, she smelled her own blood.
“Quit worrying at the bands,” the deman said. “I’m sick of wasting good whiz and ferment washing out your wounds. Serves you right if you get a hot throb and croak off.”
She passed through two feeding cycles of next to no rations. The demen fought when one tried to cut off some of her tail to eat.
The wound in her neck healed so quickly and so clean she wondered if she’d dreamed the whole conversation with the bat-creature. Perhaps it was a craze brought on by thirst. She’d never been so thirsty in her life—thoughts of water tormented every waking moment.
By obeying every order in an instant and affecting a servile wheedle, “learned my lesson and learned it well, sirs,” she received an extra bucket of water. She’d just drained the second bucket when an ominous clatter broke out. First one, then another, then another rod echoed, a quick, steady tap.
“It’s dragons come!” one guard said to another.
“Get the skewer,” the one in charge said.
Wistala’s hearts raced. She resolved, if she saw the other end of this, to die before anyone chained her like some wretched dog again.
They ran toward her with that great twist-headed spear.
She didn’t let them plant it. In agonizing pain, she swatted the point down with her wing as they approached. Her injured wing gave way afresh, the pain of the old injury back and redoubled.
But the force of the blow knocked it out of their hands. She managed to roll over part of it, a sloppy move more than half accidental.
The demen dragged and dragged, trying to extract it.
“Get the cursed machine!” one yelped. “Spark her off it, for dark’s sake.”
More delay. She felt blows of signal rods but didn’t care. Delay! Delay! Delay!
One of them took to rapping and she felt the zap of the magical lightning before she heard it. She jumped.
They dragged their spear free.
She heard a faint whoosh of flame being loosed and thought she saw shadows dance far off down the tunnel.
The blade poked into her side, just above her mainheart.
“Hold! My fellow shes are coming,” Wistala said in their tongue, wishing she knew the deman word for surrender. “A fresh-killed dragon, and I expect I’ll spurt a bit as you ram that thing home. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple of demen reeking of dragonblood. I wonder what they’ll do?”
Their big frog eyes widened still further. “Oh, bury it,” the biggest of the guards said. “We kill a prisoner and they’ll hunt us to the bottom hole.”
“Aye—Firemaids avenge their own,” his friend agreed.
This time Wistala was happy to be taken as a Firemaid and she made no effort to dissuade them.
“No, kill her,” one of the demen at the contraption said. “One less dragon, and we can hide and then come back and eat up for once on her body.”
“Liver as big as a boat,” one said, saliva dripping.
She saw Paskinix himself leaping up the tunnel, rapping the wall each time he landed.
“Rally, rally, all rally,” he called. “Don’t kill the prisoner. We need her to negotiate. But for your mother teat’s sake, rally!”
“Rally? With what?” a guard asked.
“Our bluff’s been called,” the one at the lightning-fork agreed. “Escape!”
Paskinix began to stagger, exhausted. Fire behind silhouetted his spines.
“Save the machine!” the one at the sparking two-tipped spear called.
“Save your lives, you breedslime,” the big guard said. “Find a hole tight and dark!”
They rushed off, pushing and pulling their wheeled contraption, dragging the great spear.
“Cowards,” Paskinix called.
Wistala knocked him off his feet with a painful sweep of her wing.
He folded himself into a squat, facing the wall as before.
“Always figured I’d be finished in my sleep from one of my sons, not some stinking dragon.”
Wistala saw green scale reflecting firelight. Two wingless drakka raced forward and began sniffing around at trails, and a third leaped on Paskinix, who made no move to resist. His spines hardly twitched as she settled her saa-claws against his gut.
A fledged female, not much older than Wistala but with a much smaller fringe, surveyed the scene. She saw other heads behind and heard faint, frantic taps here and there in the distance.
“Flame and fame, you’re in wretched shape,” the dragonelle said in oddly accented Drakine. The grotesque bat rode her head, hanging about her griff like some kind of leathery, hairy collar. Wistala noticed her wings were striped with purple, yellow, and white. “Half starved and broke-winged. Best have a meal right away, so you’ve the strength to get out of these damp holes.”
“He did not kill me when he had the chance,” Wistala said. “I will not kill him.”
Paskinix turned wide eyes at her.
“I’m hungry,” the one on him said.
“No,” Wistala said. “Please, let him live.”
“Good work, Takea,” the painted stranger said. “That’s the way to hold down a prisoner.”
In fairness, he hadn’t resisted, Wistala thought, but the drakka seemed pleased. Her undersized fringe rose.
“Thank you, from nose-tip to tail,” Wistala said. “My name is Wistala Irelianova.”
“And I am Ayafeeia, ranking Firemaid,” the painted rescuer said.
“Thank you, Ayafeeia.”
“She’s of the Imperial Line, matekin to the Tyr himself, or have you forgotten?” the drakka atop Paskinix added.
“I never knew to begin with,” Wistala said. “Must I bow?”
The youngster half dropped her griff. “It would—”
“Not be necessary. In fact, I will bow to you, as you’re a visitor, and I’m grateful for your help in capturing this villain.” She looked at the youngster. “Takea, since he’s your prisoner, take charge of him.”
The young dragonelle narrowed her eyes in thought. “Deman, put that bucket on your head and take hold of my tail. If the bucket comes off or you let go of my tail, I’ll gut you.”
Paskinix’s spines rippled but fell again.
“I wish you’d let him go,” Wistala said. “He spared me once.”
“He didn’t spare you any food, by the look of your ribs.”
“His warriors starved too,” Wistala said, not quite believing she was defending her tormentor.
“Have you ever seen quicksilver poured out on glass?” Ayafeeia said as the youngster led her captive off, the bucket rattling against his neck plates. “I did as a youngster in the Anklene hill. This one’s just as quiet and twice as slippery.” A dragonelle followed the pair at a nod from Ayafeeia.
“Don’t worry about him; whatever he gets it’s less than he deserves, the old egg-thief. Let’s get you out of those chains, stranger, cleaned up, and see about that wing. Would you care for some toasted deman leg? There’s a lot of it about this morning. Stringy, but that’s war.”
They walked what felt like a terribly long distance, though the more rational part of Wistala’s brain knew it to be but a short journey. It just felt doubly far because they climbed two steep rises and her wing pained her with every step, despite the soft hominid-made hemp-lines the drakka had fixed to it to support it. That horrible bat creature or one like it flapped back and forth, scouting ahead and checking behind.
“It’s that exhausted I am,” it complained.
“You’ll get your sup,” Ayafeeia said. “Just get us back to the Star Tunnel.”
Wistala shuddered. It was one thing for a beast like that to creep up on you and bite, quite another to offer your own neck. Ayafeeia was made of stern scale inside as well as out.
She did seem a dragonelle to be admired. The four female dragons she led, and perhaps twelve drakka—they moved about so much and smelled so similar, thanks, she guessed, to identical diets, that she wasn’t sure she wasn’t counting the same ones twice—deferred to her orders instantly. Odd to see dragons, evidently not related in any way, acting as obediently as hatchlings under the watchful eye of their mother. Perhaps more so—hatchlings liked to test their mother’s limits and act up as soon as that great watchful eye closed.
Could the discipline be this Tyr’s doing, or was it just that they loved Ayafeeia as some sort of surrogate mother?
They drove Paskinix mercilessly. He couldn’t walk long without his support, and when he flagged they spat a torf of flame onto his back. He bore the pain with grunts and gasps, but no cries, and reeked of burned flesh.
Wistala wished she’d had more experience with dragons. The only ones she knew at all were those of the Sadda-Vale, and—
DharSii again. Put him out of your mind.
Oh, if only she’d made more of an effort to find out about those Ghioz dragons. Perhaps if she’d gone to them, talked, the whole fight could have been avoided.
Of course there was the disturbing possibility that these “Firemaids” were allied with the Ghioz through their Tyr. What if she had dropped off the spit only to land in the fire?
They came to a chute requiring a short climb and Ayafeeia, listening to Wistala’s breathing and pulse, called a rest.
“But we’re practically under the Star Tunnel,” a dragonelle demurred. It was the first resistance to Ayafeeia that Wistala had seen.
Ayafeeia listened to Wistala’s breathing. “The stranger needs a rest before we climb. Besides, I smell water, and it seems to me there was a trickle here.”
“It’s that thirsty am I, too!” the bat creature croaked.
One of the energetic young drakka found the trickle and Ayafeeia let Wistala drink first. Wistala noted that all around the trickle there were cracks and holes where the water drained off—above, in the walls, below. Cave moss, an odd pinkish kind, gave it an eerie glow. Wistala felt doubly bad, considering what she was contemplating.
Ayafeeia kept Paskinix away from the cracks, and had water brought to him, using the bucket he wore.
They started up the chute. Wistala positioned herself so she climbed just behind the straining Takea, who was dragging Paskinix up like a fisherman with a catch on the line.
“Remember what I said about being your ambassador,” she murmured to Paskinix in his own tongue.
“I do,” the deman-king whispered back. “Ye shall always have my gratitude and friendship, and that of my people, if ye get me out from under yon little witch’s burns and claws.”
“Slipping!” Wistala screamed, giving Takea’s tail a good bash with her head. Paskinix leaped on her neck and wrapped those long, thin legs about her, and they dropped together. They bounced off the dragonelle behind them.
Wistala was careful to let her tail absorb most of the impact of the short drop. But there was no need to let everyone know that.
“Wing! Auuuuu!” she shrieked, loudly enough to deafen a dragon.
Paskinix scrabbled off in the direction of the trickle’s faint glow.
Two of the drakka slipped down to aid her, but she rolled and thrashed about so they looked at her rather than seeking Paskinix. By the time a dragonelle climbed down, he was gone.
“After him!” Takea cried.
“He’s slipped,” Ayafeeia said. “He’s worse than an eel.”
Takea glared at Wistala. “You helped him. You let him go.”
“None of that until we’re back in the Star Tunnel,” Ayafeeia said.
Wistala, with many a moan of pain that needed little acting of the kind she’d seen displayed in Ragwrist’s circus, made the climb once more.
At the end of the climb she had to pant long and hard before she could take in the wonder surrounding her.
She could see why it was called the Star Tunnel. It was a vast, vaguely triangular passage, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Little serrations of light, like long stars, dotted its peak.
Lower down, the stone was smoothed, cut in a fashion that reminded Wistala of a tree chipped and shaved by an ax, only in segments the size of a dinner platter. She wondered what sort of tool had the power to do that to stone. And what sort of arm had driven the tool.
“That’s the surface, a good hundred dragonlengths above,” Ayafeeia said. She stuck close to Wistala on the climb and offered kind words the whole way.
“Maybe it is for the best that Paskinix got away,” she said. “If we’d torn him to the bits he deserves, it would just make what’s left of the demen resentful. As it is, they’re beaten and they know it. The last thing they need is a martyred king to put a spark back into them. They’re an awful hominid, the worst in a way. Either groveling at your feet or clawing at your throat.”
“So what is intended for me?” Wistala asked.
“It’s my duty to take you to the Tyr. We lost two drakka fighting our way to you—we thought you were a captured Firemaid, and we’ve lost a few down these dark holes—and the Tyr will want a report.”
“His mate will hear how the stranger helped Paskinix escape,” Takea said.
“I can find a watch-perch for you,” Ayafeeia said, rounding her head on the youngster. “You can use that voice calling out to let us know you still breathe.”
Wistala learned she liked the smell of other dragons around her. It was comforting, almost like being against Mother’s belly again. She wanted to stretch, really stretch out in some dry cave and have a sleep.
“Don’t worry about the Tyr. He’s a good sort,” Ayafeeia said. “Not much to look at—I shouldn’t say it but I will. A little stupid-looking, with that bad eye of his, but sound instincts when he speaks that make you forget how he looks. Oh, and be sure to bow to his mate and compliment her. She’s the watchdog of his reign.”
Another of the dragonelles cocked her head at Ayafeeia. Ayafeeia snapped her griff, not so much a warning for a coming fight as an expression of confidence in speaking as she chose. “Now, let’s get back to our thralls and see about properly bracing that wing. I’ve set three claw-score broken wings and I know: you’ll get air under you again. It looks much worse than it really is. I’d take a break over a cut ligament anytime.”
Chapter 8
AuRon knew the way to the northern territories of Ghioz, as he’d crossed it once before. He’d last seen his former human ward, Hieba, and her mate, the laughing warrior Naf, there some three years ago, plus a season.
He made a brief visit to the dwarves of the Chartered Company. They fed him in one of their high halls, its opulence much reduced and obviously rebuilt after damage in dragon-attack during the wizard’s wars. The dwarves told stale stories and grumbled much about a Ghioz “embargo”—whatever that was—and gave him one piece of interesting news: they had acquired a messenger-dragon. Scarfang was a forme
r fighter for the Wizard of the Isle of Ice who’d come to the dwarves’ doorstep to visit where a dragon-friend of his had fallen in the battle. Finding the residents willing to let enmity be carried off down the river, the dragon inquired if the dwarves had knowledge of his comrade’s fate. The dwarves had no good news—they’d finished the wounded dragon—but since all seemed amenable despite the effusion of blood on both sides, the dwarves hired him as a flying courier.
AuRon had never met Scarfang, but he congratulated the dwarves on their new line of business. Which just gave them an excuse to talk about the collapse of their trade routes east. The Ghioz had formed some kind of alliance with the Ironriders and only Ghioz caravans now traded between the rich kingdoms of the Great East and Hypatia and the Dry South.
“More wealth buys them more allies which buys them still more wealth,” one of the partners grumbled.
AuRon left the dwarves to their complaining and flew south.
First he went to the pass where he’d last met Naf and Hieba.
The pass had changed a little. What had once been a precarious trail hugging the side of the mountain was now a road, more or less, allowing wagons to use the pass rather than the foot traffic it had seen before. He wondered if the iron road of the dwarves had quit bringing cargo from one side of the Red Mountains to the other.
The lonely tower at the top of the pass, with its ready signal pyre dry under stout canvas, looked much the same.
He remembered some effort at a flower bed, probably a touch of Hieba’s. A new stable covered the ground where the flowers had been, and much more besides—what looked like a storeroom set into the side of the mountain and a war machine ready to hurl missiles down the road toward Hypatia.
The tower was now flanked by a wall blocking the new road, and it looked as though lumber and iron had been gathered in preparation for installing a gate. Small subsidiary watch-posts, one higher on the slope and one lower, looked like stony shepherds’ huts in positions chosen more for the view than comfort.
He circled the tower for some time, using the same long, slow, descending loops as he had over that little village with Wistala’s Inn, as he liked to characterize it.
