Dragon Strike

by E. E. Knight

  “I must ask you the same question. Can the Upper World trust dragonkind? If I am to go to Hypatia, do I know that you’re offering an alliance of equals? Hypatia demands that even kings obey laws. I want to be able to promise aid, not obedience.”

  Nilrasha extended and settled her griff. Perhaps the Queen was not used to being questioned so closely.

  “What kind of forces may I promise?” Wistala asked.

  “So you will do it?”

  “I am a Firemaid and will obey. Not that it matters, but I think it’s a wise path the Tyr chooses. Dragons will thrive only if they learn flexibility in their relations with the hominids. It can’t all be wars, thrall-taking, and ‘Upholds.’ ”

  “The Firemaids will be with you. Perhaps a score of dragonelles and threescore drakka.”

  “But the drakka cannot fly, and it is a long way to Hypatia.”

  “You haven’t been long a Firemaid. Thanks to our experience with the new Aerial Host, we’ve learned the best way to fix some light straps punched through your fringe. The drakka grip the straps. It’s not altogether different from hatchlings riding atop their mother’s back. As long as they stay flat, flight is still possible. It’s actually easier to carry two rather than one, for better balance.”

  Wistala thought of her desperate trip carrying dwarven wounded and messages from the doomed column, lost in the barbarian north so long ago.

  “I’m no warrior.”

  “We will send Ayafeeia with you. She’s our best. Do not worry. She is sensible. I spoke to her over my first meal. She will act as your maidmother when she sees fit, but will leave the Hypatians to you.”

  “Suppose I fail?”

  “We will come to the surface in any case. Otherwise we will sicken and die.”

  Wistala had heard about the kern. But something else crossed her mind. She found herself liking the Queen.

  “You love my brother.”

  “Yes. He’s different.”

  Wistala watched her breathe. “True.” She wondered if she should talk about the murder of her parents, expand upon a few details left out of the conversation at the assembly. No, no reason. Her brother had changed, it seemed.

  She had too. She no longer wanted to claw his eyes out.

  “May I ask one more question, my Queen?”

  “Oh, you may ask. But there are questions I choose not to answer, sometimes.”

  “Why did you bring this to me? Does my brother fear my reaction?”

  “Fear? No. But I frequently sound dragons as to his ideas. That way you can later be asked and assigned in court with proper pomp and ceremony.”

  “Perhaps matters of state in the Lavadome are more complex than they appear,” Wistala said.

  “You’ll do well to support the Tyr, Wistala, and do your best for us. Like it or not, ever since that scene in the assembly, you’re thought of as being in the Imperial Line, and a relative of RuGaard’s. If the Tyr falls, you will too. Speaking of which, rank has its privileges. Take a roasting hog back to your sisters when you leave.”

  Wistala uttered a few more pleasantries and found Takea, who was wearing a fluffy rabbit’s foot hooked in her griff. Together they managed to drag a whole hog back to their hill.

  Wistala asked Takea what she’d occupied herself with during the audience, and the drakka described a visit to the Aerial Host to hear stories.

  “And the rabbit’s foot?”

  “From a thrall boy, Zathan, the son of one of the Free Thralls in the Aerial Host. You know they raise many rare rabbits in the host caves? Not just for meat. They grow long hair that the riders stitch into their jerkins to keep them warm aloft. I promised to let him ride me one day, and he took a loose scale and I took his rabbit’s foot. We’ll keep the tokens until my wings come.”

  Wistala left the Lavadome with more than a score of dragonelles and twice that in Firemaids. The Tyr, at a ceremony full of all the pomp and pageantry Nilrasha had promised, insisted that they take a few bats along as he wished them good fortune on the surface.

  The Firemaids chuckled. The Tyr and his bats.

  Blighters banging giant drums shook Imperial Rock as they offered to endure hardships and death in the Upper World.

  He wished them farewell, calling them the first explorers of a new history for dragonkind, representing the rehatching of their species—as dragons emerged from protective egg, so to would they leave the dark.

  “Rise, and rise with you the hopes of dragonkind,” the Tyr said.

  The flying straps were well designed. They didn’t interfere with wing movement, and allowed the drakka to hang on to either side of the fringe—the nerveless tissue was pierced by wooden handles to help them hang on—and they rode easily enough out of the wind.

  Their flight northwest to Hypatia began in confusion. A few members of the Aerial Host guided them for three horizons, then returned with a warning to keep well west of the horsedowns.

  Luckily Ayafeeia knew what the horsedowns were.

  Wistala did not know these lands, and the Lavadome’s maps were old and inaccurate. She had to trust to hope that they would reach the southern provinces, where she’d traveled with Ragwrist’s circus a score or more years ago.

  At least the hunting was good. The savannah, broken by empty seasonal watercourses in what looked to be the dying part of the year, had herds of antelope and half-horse following the rains north. A few primitive bands of blighters and humans followed the herds, skirmishing with each other as they went.

  Of course the Firemaids wanted to gossip about old wounds between her and their Tyr. She admitted only that both she and her brother had been greatly altered by their experiences.

  Luckily, the herds were moving in the right direction.

  Sooner or later, the stars must turn familiar, if she just flew north long enough so that the flying dragon of the southern skies disappeared and the bowing dragon rose.

  They passed into rich grasslands and she recognized the distant spine of the southern tips of the Red Mountains. And with that she was back in familiar lands, the southern provinces of Hypatia. She’d once searched this far south looking for dragons, but had decided that the empty plains beyond didn’t look promising. Perhaps, had she just gone south as long as land held, she would have come to the range holding the Lavadome—though only griffaran showed themselves above the dragon mountains.

  She took her Firemaids to the coast of the Inland Ocean, and they dined on fresh fish, crabs, and sea turtles. They passed over the ruins of the old elven sea-city—she’d seen Krakenoor in its glory, sadly, before the race war of the dragon-riders that she’d missed while hunting AuRon in the east.

  When they reached the coastal marshes she knew they were less than three horizons from Hypat. The marshes had been settled and then abandoned long ago, but roads and paths still crisscrossed the wet mass.

  There was food and game to be found, if you didn’t mind crayfish, smelly water-rats, and raccoons.

  She’d once been told that the gods smiled on the foundations of Hypat.

  She knew the air on this part of the coast well. Ragwrist’s circus rested here, so that old talent could be paid off in changing-house funds and new talent hired and trained from those drawn to the marble city from across half a world.

  From above, the city reminded her of a jawbone of some big herbivore. The long, toothy side hugged the river creeping into the Green Tidetwist of the Inland Ocean, with the great thick bulge of the city on somewhat higher ground overlooking some marshes that provided nutritious mud for the city’s gardens—even the most impoverished resident could scratch a living hauling wet mud—

  By some trick of river, ocean, wind, and sun the city saw sunshine almost every day of the year—bright, cool sun that burned off the fogs that rolled in off the Inland Ocean and into the famous vineyards. A half-day flight to the north and you cursed the fogs and the cold wet that bypassed your skin entirely and settled in around your bones; a half-day flight to the south and the air
was humid and the black-bark forests smelled like rot filled with rain-slicked squirrels and torpid turtles. Only the ants hurried anywhere.

  But the pocket of dry air and sun surrounding Hypat seemed ordered by nature herself; she’d decided that whoever dwelt along these brief horizons should enjoy cool nights and afternoon sunshine just warm enough for napping. Wistala had been told they paid for it with wild storms roaring in off the Inland Ocean at the equinoxes, but even those were brief.

  Her first duty would be to pay a call on the librarians at the keeper’s school. Though Hypat was not as great a center as the giant archive at Thallia, the librarians there would be better acquainted with whatever trials faced Hypatia, for they educated the sons and daughters of the prominent families and advised the directors.

  She wished she’d paid more attention to her old mentor Rainfall when he spoke of the Hypatian Directory.

  The keeper’s school lay to the south of the city, on grounds ringed by homes piled atop each other on the remains of a rock-slide. Connected gardens and courtyards formed green squiggles between the homes. Colorful awnings shaded rooftops or the street fronts.

  Her descent and landing caused a stir. Everyone from fire wardens to fruit vendors fought their way through the streets to get a view over the library walls.

  After identifying herself, she waited in the garden behind the school. She listened to the clatter of shutters being opened and passed time by counting young faces in the windows.

  The head librarian himself came to speak to her. He knew her by sight. She’d met him years ago but couldn’t remember his face. According to him, half the city was anxious about war with Ghioz. They’d taken two thanedoms in the southern reaches of the Red Mountains and demanded gold from four others so that a new set of trading posts might be built for the benefit of both empires.

  There was much talk of war ruining the spring rites and the traditional revelries of blessing the new plantings.

  He summoned two officials of the Directory—optimates, in the Hypatian tongue, but where they ranked in the complex hierarchy of the Directory Wistala couldn’t remember. There were twenty-seven different titles. They had long names that would do a dragon credit and wore a variety of robes and decorative sashes. The stouter one, Ansab, walked so that his belly rode high—just under his chin, it seemed to Wistala—and the other, called Paffle, was aged and always rubbing his hands in anxiety.

  When they learned she was ranked as a librarian they gave her brief tips of the head, so she guessed they stood somewhere above librarians.

  “A half-council is already in session and the agenda is full,” stamped Ansab.

  “But she is an ambassador.”

  “Ah, but not from an acknowledged state! Remember what happened when that churl arrived claiming to represent the Moon King of Gaiyai!”

  “Pleasant fellow,” Paffle said. “Well spoken. Always made me laugh.”

  “Ate in half the Directory’s houses and borrowed money from the other half, then fsssst!” Ansab’s meaty arm shot out and up.

  “I’ve no intention of committing a fsssst,” Wistala said.

  “Oh, no no no!” Paffle said, shrinking like a worm caught in the sun. “We never meant to suggest—well. I do apologize, librarian. Oh, dear.”

  “Perhaps in twomonth,” Ansab said. “There’s a meeting of the Directory. You can get on the agenda for that, though I warn you, a quarter-Directory’s decision can only be ratified by a meeting of the full Directory, and you can’t imagine how busy those are.”

  “Are you at war or aren’t you? I come to offer help,” said Wistala.

  “Oh, dear! Another warmonger,” Paffle groaned, scabbing at the sides of his head as though to protect his ears from an unpleasant noise. “The Directory is divided already.”

  “It’s all a matter of commerce. Once the question of use of the Falnges is settled, matters will calm down,” Ansab said.

  “But suppose they aren’t settled?”

  “Doom, doom, doom,” the librarian put in. “It’s been foretold every generation. Those dragon-riders, for example. Supposed to burn the city to the foundation. Every refugee coming in had a worse story. But they never came. I always said there was never anything to those stories, but people would rather alarm themselves. It settled itself down and the doomsayers found a new object of anxiety.”

  “May I speak to the Directory or not?” Wistala asked, eyeing the cording stitched about Ansab’s robe. He had silver and gold rope-work decorating his cloak.

  “Oh, of course you may speak,” Ansab said. “As a Hypatian citizen and a librarian you have every right to speak to the Directory. I’ll have you on the agenda in no more than sixmonth.”

  “I thought you said two?”

  “That’s for an uncredentialed ambassador. Sixmonth is as a Hypatian librarian. If she still is a librarian,” he added, eyeing the head librarian. “I don’t know what librarian policies are for dividing allegiance. We optimates ensure that affairs of Directory are run smoothly and fairly, and such matters fall outside our province.”

  “Good. I need an expert to explain all this to my Tyr,” Wistala said. She reached out and picked Ansab up by his robes. “I’m taking you because you show some fat on you,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “I’m afraid that thin one will perish in the cold at the higher altitudes.”

  “Wha—Put me down!” Ansab squawked. “Help! Paffle!”

  Wistala thought he smelled like a wet chicken.

  “Oh, dear,” Paffle said. “If you’re going to carry someone off, couldn’t you just grab an arbiter? They’re more accustomed to travel.”

  “Paffle!”

  Wistala gave her wings an experimental beat and Ansab screamed. “Don’t worry. It’s just four or five hard days to the Lavadome. You won’t lose too many toes.”

  “L-Lavadome?” Ansab asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that was a myth,” the head librarian said.

  “No, it’s where the Tyr lives,” Wistala said. “He always has room on his agenda. I just hope he’s in a good mood when I have to explain why threescore dragons wasted their time coming to save your miserable hide.”

  “Are there really demen with whips?” Paffle asked, looking livelier than he had the whole conversation. “Hold your temper, Ansab, old fellow. A full court bow would be best. You’ll be the laughing-stock of the baths if you’re all striped from the lash.”

  “Shut up, you old fool,” Ansab shouted. “We’ll put you on this afternoon’s agenda. Just put me down!”

  “Thank you,” Wistala said. “I doubt that fine robe would have held you the whole way.”

  Ansab plucked at a bit of torn cording. “It’s ruined as is.”

  “Oh, that was wonderful,” Paffle said. “I’ll buy you a new robe, and count the price cheap in return for the entertainment.”

  “Your librarians should have better manners,” Ansab said, glowering at the head librarian.

  “She is a dragon, optimate. She’s something of a librarian-at-large. It’s Thallia’s doing, anyway. They just use naming a dragon among their staff as a way to raise funds. Never fails to impress the patrons when they read out her account of the Wheel of Fire-Varvar war. I hope I do not give offense, Wistala.”

  “I labored hard over that account,” Wistala said. “I’m glad it’s of some use.”

  They brought Wistala up the high road, which ran through the city between the old gates and the Ziggurat. A sort of mobile crowd followed, being dribbled away from and added to as they passed up the elevated road.

  It was a pleasant walk. The high road ran two or three humans high most of the way and was flanked by columns with statues of the great figures of Hypatia. Wistala saw bearded dwarves with modest visors partly shielding their faces, elves with victory garlands growing in their hair, and men. There was even a blighter carrying a hammer and chisel.

  “Doklahk, a celebrated stonemason,” the head librarian said as he walked
next to her, following the optimates. Evidently his duties at the library school weighed lightly enough so he could come to the Directory and watch events.

  She wondered if Rainfall’s grandsire was among the statues.

  Flanking the high road were two streams of flowing water. Smaller channels and even pipes diverted the flow off among the rooftops to other quarters of the city.

  “Hypat is a city of baths and gardens,” Paffle said, puffing even on such a slight incline. “You need a good deal of water for either.”

  “Water!” Ansab said. “Any beaver can claim the same level of civilization. Lamps are the glory of Hypatia. Two thousand public lamps, twice that about private domiciles, and a whaling fleet to keep them lit.”

  “They’re both wrong,” the head librarian whispered. “Courts where citizens can get a fair hearing and criminals a fair punishment—that’s our glory. The Ghioz, whom all seem to praise for their vigor in war and commerce, know only the rich man’s law, where wealth and justice are one.”

  Laborers lounged outside the water-house that somehow fed the streams lining the high road and others descending from the Temple Hill. They circled north around the hill and came to a round building of vaguely bluish marble, columned outside and in, with dozens of stairways. Vendors and idlers and messengers lounged, sold, or hurried as their duties required.

  They passed up the stairs. The only armed men she’d seen, guards in purple, white, and gold, stood on pedestals overlooking the stairs and shifted doubtfully as she approached. The guards looked to Ansab and Paffle for guidance and relaxed when they smiled and announced her as a citizen and dignitary. She didn’t blame them. Their spears appeared more ceremonial than functional, and their great square shields had so much artwork on them she doubted they could be easily braced in battle.