Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire

by E. E. Knight

  She was even starting to like DharSii again. Before Wistala visited, briefly, all those years ago, she grudged him his trips into the world outside the Sadda-Vale. Now she realized he was just trying to avoid becoming another dusty statue, issuing the same words to the world as though they were engraved beneath their claws like aphorisms. Had he not become intrigued by her—an odd object for affection, she was so muscular as to be ungainly, and her wings never managed to fold up in the neat, tight, attractive manner of a high-blooded female—they never would have had the hatchlings.

  Even the idea of setting her home against the power of RuGaard’s former dragons excited her. She’d exercised unlimited (well, limited by good manners and tradition) power in the fogs of the Sadda-Vale for too long. Having an outside power to defy and subvert added spice to her life.

  Ultimately, the dragons in this Empire would come around to her way of thinking. The lessons of Silverhigh had been forgotten everywhere but in the Sadda-Vale. If she could only speak with one of the better-bred dragons. They could sit down and talk over fish and fowl. Perhaps a sturgeon, suitably fried with breading and a brace of Vale hares. Even the most arrogant or silly dragon came around to her thinking with sufficient discourse—look at NaStirath and DharSii. Dragons must retreat to the most inaccessible corners of the earth and live with as little disturbance to the outside world as possible. If the hominids come, let them come exhausted by long marches in bad weather across bleak lands, hungry and covered in boils and bug-bites. Then let them taste fire and go back to remind future generations of the pain that crossing dragons brings.

  This NiVom and Imfamnia might think they were atop a pyramid of domination, controlling the Hypatians, who drew enmity and discontent away from their dragons the way vinegar and soaping fats drew flies away from your feast, but all they were doing was going soft and offering their bellies to those below. The dragons of Silverhigh thought themselves clever beyond hominid ken, too, but they still woke too late to the throat-cutting party gathering about their beds.

  No one but stupid NaStirath knew of the emissary who’d come from Tyr NiVom within a few months of the Exiles’ arrival, all those years ago. Before Wistala’s hatchlings, before the death of that stolid yet beautiful avian bodyguard of the former Tyr.

  She and the Empire dragon met on a rocky outcropping overlooking the crossed pylons outside the Vesshall. She arranged it so he squatted facing both her ancient hall and the sun, though the Sadda-Vale’s usual overcast interfered with that element of her tactics. The emissary had blustered and threatened that they turn the Exiles out to starve in the far north, or face the wrath of all of dragonkind . . .

  All dragonkind. Were all dragonkind gathered, they could probably learn most of each other’s names and histories in a few days.

  Scabia had the blighters carry off the welcoming food, drink, and ore she’d offered to the emissary. Orders given to me under my own roof mean that you must be on your way back to your Tyr. My contempt for these demands I’ll have you to carry back shouldn’t prove too heavy a burden. I decide who enjoys hospitality in my own home.

  As long as it is your home, the emissary had replied.

  I heard this dialogue in one of the dwarfish epics, didn’t I? Now I’m supposed to ask ‘Is that a threat?’ and you reply that you were stating a fact or making a promise or some other coolly superior remark . I am most displeased. I am famous for not seeking trouble in the world beyond this mountain ring. But if trouble comes storming in, know this: The Sadda-Vale is the last fragment of the glory that was Silverhigh. Break a glass vase and you will learn. The beauty is gone, but the fragments are more dangerous than they look. You will not be harmed if you leave now and do not alight again until you are beyond the mountains. This audience is at an end.

  The memory of the conversation still thrilled her. Too bad her mate was dead—after seeing the emissary snort and turn wing, she felt so invigorated she would have given the old eleven-horn several turns in the clouds.

  It did a dragon good to get the blood up now and again. No wonder that Wistala was fertile. Perhaps she’d coddled Aethleethia too much over the years. Well, that was fish heads down the kitchen chute.

  In any case, if that silly messenger was a sample of the leadership style of this new empire, there’s no wonder that it’s already falling apart. Perhaps more Exiles would show up. Perhaps even brooding females. There were caves all over the eastern slopes facing the lake—you had to watch out for trolls, but they could be hunted out of the mountains.

  She wondered how she’d manage to pass the word south that there was room for a few more in the Vesshall. Of course, they had to be the right sort. If this NiVom and Imfamnia were clever, they might send a few trusty infiltrators. She would have to question closely and watch closer still.

  It had been so long since anyone challenged her for dominance of the Sadda-Vale that she hardly knew how to take it—whether to be insulted that all her efforts here could just be cast aside because of a political feud or complimented that they thought her a potential rival rather than a half-forgotten curiosity.

  True, the Sadda-Vale would never support the number of dragons that the Empire to the south could. There were only so many fish even in so long and deep a lake, sheep reproduced only so fast, and it wouldn’t do to starve the blighters on millet and dried dragon-waste ground into chicken-feed. Worse, the only metals were the poor ores that DharSii blasted out of the scraggy rocks. The Sadda-Vale was meant to be a pleasant resort for a few months in summer, really, not a breeding ground for dragons.

  Scabia, in her younger days, had made a habit of going for either a flight or a swim every morning before eating. The combination of hunger and exercise clarified her thoughts. As she aged, the flights and swims became now-and-again endeavors, though sometimes she had bursts of energy and restarted the habit for a season. Lately, if she was feeling particularly well, she’d rouse herself enough to float around in one of the warmer corners of the spring-fed lake.

  This morning, some weeks after Wistala had departed and with DharSii off cracking rock and gathering ore for the week, she roused herself early—even before the hatchlings were clamoring for food—and eased herself down to the lake. Her joints didn’t care for the sudden activity so soon after waking and she heard a scale or two clatter to the stone floor as she left her sleeping perch. The sun rose early in the northern summer and the sky was already a brilliant daylight blue.

  She plunged into the warm swirls and drank steam through her nostrils as she paddled about. She even snapped at a fish who was hungrily exploring the lake-bottom mud she’d churned up.

  Exercise done, she shivered as she climbed back to the decorated entrance with its old dwarfish designs.

  Once she was back in the shadows of the entrance hall, Larb appeared, fluttering just above her head.

  “You’ve been exercising, am I right, yer ladyship? You’re looking fit and trim, that’s a fact. Me, I think I’m coming down with something.” He let loose a trio of tiny but significant coughs. “A dab of dragon-blood is just what I need to get my head hanging the right way down.”

  “You are a ghastly-looking little thing, Larb. Were you accidentally boiled in your youth or does all your kind look that way?”

  “It’s jes’ me benighted upbringing, too long underground with no fresh insects or cattle. Oh, the hunger I knew then! The hunger I know now!”

  Disgusting. Presumptuous. Yet there was something disarming about a creature that she might swallow whole and send fluttering down her gullet asking to draw blood for a meal.

  “What sort of diseases are you carrying in that snaggle-toothed mouth of yours, I wonder?” she asked. Everyone knew bats transmitted deadly illnesses, though opinions on just how they did it—curses, spellcraft, a poison that worked on the balance of spiritual elements in a dragon, some sort of infinitesimal parasite that leaped from bat to dragon—varied depending on the expert consulted.

  “Diseases. Oh, no no no, yer la
dyship. Look, do I fly in circles. Am I off balance? Do I pant, or stare? It’s only sleeping in the cold that does me any harm.”

  “Oh, I suppose so. Take it from the base of my ear. Don’t bother licking first to numb it—I find that more unpleasant than the nip.”

  Scabia tried not to twitch at the nip. Self-control is everything. Control your self, control your world.

  Still, she twitched.

  Larb suckled and lapped, then loosed a burp so minuscule she found it cute. Her twisted and bent old fringe rippled. A prrum forced its way up her throat in response. What was happening to her of late? She was turning into a simpering dragonelle. Cute! Her mind must be going. That was it. Perhaps she’d go noisily mad. That would be a lot more fun for all concerned than waiting for the gray curtain of senility to fall. She wondered if she’d just fly off into the north, raving.

  “You will pop like a tick if you keep that up,” she said.

  The bat glanced up. “Ohh, yer ladyship. If only you knew what a service—” His ears twitched around wildly, then pointed straight ahead, following his nose up. “Mmmph? Oook, yer ladyship. I hears awful wings—beware! Beware!”

  Three ugly collections of feather and beak fell out of the shadows above, wings spreading as taloned claws slashed down. Had Larb not seen them, too, she would have thought her mind truly had gone—these fliers were nightmares described and manifested into living flesh. Thick-skinned and covered in a mix of feathers and sharp quills with a massive black beak hanging down almost to their pockmarked chests, they were more like a mix of creatures than any avian she’d ever seen.

  Larb shot off into the darkness with a high-pitched squeak.

  Being nipped was the luckiest thing to happen to her since the Exiles arrived. The pain had set her on edge, just enough so that her griff descended at Larb’s shout.

  Talons raked off her griff. She felt agony across her back as one of the creatures ripped its way down her spine, leaving a trail of torn-loose scale and blood. It clamped just below her ribs and began to dig.

  She smothered it with her wing and flipped onto her back, rolling and crushing. The creature gave one desperate heave as its hollow bones snapped.

  The third, wheeling above while the other two drew her attention, saw its chance. It dropped like a missile and hit her in midthroat. She felt a sense of strong pressure but no pain, and when it rose again, dripping blood and scale from its claws, she realized her throat was ripped open.

  But she was a tough old dragon-dame. Even her neck had thickened and grown fatty with her years, and though he’d opened her windpipe enough so that she could hear air rasping and feel blood running down her throat, he hadn’t managed to get to any of the great blood vessels, else her neck-hearts would already be seizing up.

  Not knowing the extent of the damage to her neck, she didn’t dare use her firebladder. While it probably wouldn’t ignite in her throat, as the agent for turning fuoa into fire was generated by a gland in her jaw, she might choke on the viscous liquid.

  Odd that she could assess her own chances of mortality so closely with her throat ripped open.

  The one that had raked its claws on her griff going after her neck-hearts swooped again, trying for her eyes this time. She continued her roll and whipped her neck around. The rainlike patter of blood from her throat echoed in the tunnel, but she managed to head-butt the gruesome bird hard enough to knock it into the tunnel wall. It struck just above the beak and dropped lifelessly.

  The one who’d opened her throat grabbed at the back of her neck and reached down with its plow-sized beak, ready to finish the job of severing her midneck. Everything in the tunnel was going bright and fuzzy.

  Now she was down, her limbs numb and useless. The creature had to climb along her neck and shift its grip.

  A hail of rocks struck it, breaking and bloodying the creature, throwing it off her. Then DharSii was at her side, panting and shielding her with outspread wings.

  She vaguely heard her name shouted again and again. Why would DharSii be waking her instead of the blighters? She refused to wake, and passed into unconsciousness.

  When she did wake, she was still lying in the entrance passage. Her throat was held shut by the gripping claws of that bat—er, Larb. DharSii was at work with his snout and sii while Aethleethia and NaStirath looked on, fearful and anxious.

  “Her eyes are shifting around,” NaStirath said. “Is that good?”

  “Yes, very,” DharSii said. “It’s when they go still and dry and staring that you have to worry.”

  Scabia gradually put together the idea that DharSii was sewing her together with a sharp, curved bone needle and the sort of twine they used on cooking fowl in the kitchens.

  She tried to speak, but he held her still, and she fell back into unconsciousness from the effort.

  When she woke again, only DharSii was nestled beside her. She’d been tucked against one wall of the passage where she’d been attacked so it was less likely that she’d roll. Odd, she’d dreamed that she had drifted on silent wings all through her home, looking for something.

  On the other side of the passage was what was left of those nightmare birds. The young dragons were poking through them.

  “You picked—a good time—to return,” she managed.

  DharSii scooped a sii-full of snow out of a tin tub. “Melt this in your mouth and let it go down slowly.”

  The snow and cold water as it melted was soothing on her throat. It gave her a brief flash of energy before she relaxed and went limp again. She gave a gentle nod.

  “Don’t move your head too much,” DharSii advised. “How do you feel?”

  “Ghastly. What vomit of the Four Spirits were those things, DharSii?”

  “My guess would be griffaran. The proportion is about right; they’re just overlarge and this skin of theirs . . .”

  Larb fluttered over from the bodies, where he’d been nibbling at an eyeball. “Hisshonor’s right, yer ladyship, that’s exactly what they are. Griffaran of the Rock, that’s what.”

  “Nonsense,” Scabia said. “They look nothing like steadfast old Miki, colorful until his dying day.”

  “Griffaran of the Rock?” DharSii asked. “The griffaran guard the Tyr, and they certainly don’t consider Imperial Rock home.”

  “That’s all changed—sorry to counter-dict your lordship,” Larb said. “That wizard, Rayg, he’s been giving griffaran dragon-blood and breeding those that react best to it. Trying to make a better Tyr’s bodyguard, he is.”

  Scabia took as deep a breath as she dared, holding her throat carefully still. “You returned just in time, DharSii. I’m grateful to you again. How did you knock the last one off my neck?”

  “I had a mouthful of ore. I just gathered it and exhaled as hard as I could.”

  “More snow, please,” she said, tiring.

  “You have a lot of blood to make up. I’ll have the blighters bring you some stew. The boiled potatoes are as soft as a cloud and far more filling.”

  With a massive act of will, she rose to her feet and made it back to her perch in the great hall, waving the hatchlings away. They were piping their concern, but she was too tired to speak. Or even climb into her perch. She reared up, but her head began to swim before she could place sii on her rest. She slumped into the fading light in the center of the vast chamber. “Try again tomorrow,” she said in a dozy voice. She was unconscious before anyone came up with a reply.

  When she awoke, Larb and a couple of blighters were beside her, listening to her breathing.

  DharSii hid a yawn and dropped off his temporary perch. She blinked, looked around, and asked where the rest of the dragons were. Aethleethia had taken the youths out to explore the lake, and according to DharSii, NaStirath was actually flying guard duty above.

  “Sure he wasn’t just fishing, now?” Scabia said, thinking DharSii must be mistaken.

  “I told him that if the Lavadome could get three of those bastardized griffaran up here, they could proba
bly get thirty. That shocked him into silence.”

  “I’m relieved something can shock him,” Scabia said.

  “If they come,” Scabia said, “get everyone into the water-reservoir, the slow well beneath the kitchens. I’ve never told anyone this, but there is a tunnel down there. It comes out in the stones under the old wharf on the lake. You have to hold your breath, but it’s not a long swim.”

  She remembered her manners. She needed to thank Larb. “It was a fortunate day for me when you arrived, Larb. To think, I’ve always thought of bats as vermin. Larb, why ever did you make such a long journey in a dragonelle’s ear? You might easily have died at that altitude, in the cold.”

  “Oh, an ear’s a warm little place, long as the wind’s not shooting down it, yer ladyship. Truth is, I was looking for the old Tyr. We bats, we’re getting exterminated right out of a home. I came to ask Tyr RuGaard to come back and set matters to right. We understand an occasional housecleaning, and sometimes a dragon rolls over in his sleep and crushes a bat or two. Most normal thing in the world. But they’re hunting us down and burning us out. We! We saved ’em from the Dragonblade, not so many generations back, and this is the thanks we get.”

  “I’m glad you came. You’ll always have a home here, and as long as blood runs through my veins.”

  “Oh, yer ladyship, yer too kind to me-umps and my family.”

  “No family! I’ll not have my daughter’s hatchlings slipping around on guano. Hear me, Larb, as soon as cousins and friends appear, my cooks will be asking their grandmothers for bat recipes.”

  NaStirath returned with Aethleethia and the hatchlings, along with a party of blighters pushing barrows.