Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire

by E. E. Knight

  When the new messenger arrived, he gave orders to the Grand Commander of the Aerial Host to send as many of the Heavy Wing as he could back to Ghioz. He could suspend operations on the Sunstruck Sea for now.

  Waste, waste, and more waste. If they were lucky, they’d lose only supplies. If they weren’t, the supports and auxiliaries with the Aerial Host would be captured. But the political threat must be dealt with, and quickly. If he’d learned anything in his years in the Lavadome, it was that each Tyr lay atop a heap of duties and challenges, an ever-shifting mound of old bones, new enemies, traditions, and, most important, rivals.

  A Tyr needed support atop such treacherous ground. He would have to consult Rayg.

  The trip to the Lavadome was tiresome. It seemed everyone was still shocked by the massacre at the feast in Ghioz. NiVom dropped a hint or two that it may have been a very deep plot by certain interlopers who once thought they were fit to rule the Lavadome and the Upper World.

  Before seeing Rayg, he paid a quick call on Regalia, the titular ruler of the Lavadome. He needed to console her on the loss of her brother. He was enormously satisfied to find her keeping to her quarters and the throne hall empty.

  She refused to see him, which worried him for a moment. Maybe he should ask Rayg to fix something else . . . but best to consult with Imfamnia before making such a step. She could become so touchy, even in areas traditionally left to male dragons.

  NiVom found Rayg in his workshop, fiddling with hunks of crystal again. A belt that smelled vaguely of dwarf lay discarded on the floor. It had been carefully cut out to extract the gem, not that a mere knife was likely to do a gem of that size any harm.

  Someday, Rayg had confidently told him, he would puzzle out all the bits and pieces of the sun-shard and use the power that Rayg maintained was stored in the bowels of the dome to create an invincible fortress for dragons.

  NiVom didn’t like the idea of a thrall, no matter how long he’d been in the family or who he belonged to, wielding such a weapon. It would have to be quietly “put away” for his own safety. Surely Rayg could see that.

  Rayg was a legacy of RuGaard. He had somehow fallen in among some dwarfs as a youth and been trained in their workshops. He had an astounding mind, quite out of the norm for hominids—one might almost say dragonlike.

  He’d grown old in service to the Empire, lost—or forgot—his family in his search for secrets. He was something of an authority on the crystal structure of the Lavadome. He owned a few precious samples of it, keeping them around him in his laboratory.

  NiVom had once calculated that it would take him a year and a half to identify every tool, piece of equipment, and obscure-language book in Rayg’s laboratory.

  Sadly, Rayg had designed it with his own convenience in mind, not a dragon’s. It was hexagonal in shape, with five floors, each open on the one below, with gradual increases in floor height. At the top was a dome-observatory, with a painted star field that could be rolled and shifted to match the sky at any time. Delicate numbers and gears allowed one to re-create star positions at any date. It was in great demand with the few dragons who took an interest in astrology.

  The six walls beneath that were his library. Thanks to the high windows looking out on the Lavadome, that level of the laboratory had the best light. For his comfort, Rayg had installed a chair, a bed, and even a rope-and-canvas hammock such as sailors use. When he wasn’t working, he could usually be found sleeping on that level.

  The level below held curiosities that engaged his intellectual interest. Odd skulls, unidentified teeth, freakishly thick or thin dragon-scale, cross sections of a crab—there was no telling what might be out of the shelves and cabinets and put on a table where it might be examined.

  The level below that one held raw materials for his inventions. Ropes, cables, wood, bits of metal, chains of different size, and a few tools for the shaping and manufacture of some of the same. He didn’t do serious blacksmithing in his lab; for that he and a few thrall assistants carried his specialized tools down to the base of Imperial Rock.

  At the bottom was the workshop. This was where he spent most of his time, and constantly hovered between utter disarray and impossible chaos. There were piles of paper on the floor and plates of rotting, dust-covered food atop the cabinets. These attracted rats who’d found their way into the Lavadome—and the Imperial Rock’s kitchens—but Rayg didn’t mind. He set traps and took them alive for use as experimental subjects. After the experiments were over, they were reexamined.

  That’s what disgusted NiVom about visiting Rayg, more than his abominable personal hygiene. The bits of exploded rat scattered about the place brought the contents of his stomach up to just touching the back of his throat where he could taste it.

  His First Thrall laid down the magnifying lens he’d been using on the circular crystal. “NiVom. Good to see you.”

  Rayg had long since given up on the formalities when addressing his dragon superiors. He guessed, correctly enough, that he was too valuable to eat, or even to punish for something as prosaic as bad manners.

  “Troubles, Tyr? Are the new lower-drag saddles falling off?”

  “Nothing like that. I need your opinion on a political matter.”

  “A political matter? How fascinating.”

  “Your old friend RuGaard is back. Not back in the Lavadome, but he’s returned to the Empire. On foot, it seems.”

  “Wing joint. He can’t fly without it. I built him a pulley-based replacement back when he was Upholder of Anaea. It’s probably broken.”

  “I’m not sorry to hear that an invention of yours failed, for once.”

  “I wouldn’t call a score’s worth of years of wear and tear before breaking a failure. Quite the opposite.”

  “That’s not why I’ve come to see you. Do you know of . . . of any way to put a large group of dragons, outside, to sleep or something, quickly?”

  “Just sleep?” Rayg said. “Suppose one or two die?”

  “That’s an acceptable risk.”

  “For how long?”

  “Just a few moments would be enough. You see, some of the Host have joined him. I believe we could talk sense into them, in time. Also, I want RuGaard taken alive. I’ve no intention to make a martyr of him or his mate. I’d like everyone to see how wretched he is before he gets tossed into the darkest hole in the Lower World.”

  “Why do you hate him so? He’s not a bad sort. Very decent to me, in my youth. Though he never did get around to granting me my freedom.”

  “I was an exile, too. Had he remained faithful to our friendship and Tyr Fehazathant, I should have become Tyr after Tighlia died. She arranged for my exile. I should have known he wanted the title for himself.”

  “He never gave me that impression,” Rayg said. “I had the feeling he would rather have been anything but Tyr. No ambition, you see, except perhaps for a quiet life in the country somewhere. I imagine that if you offered him his mate and that, you’d never hear from him again.”

  “No, I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Rayg,” NiVom said. “Once you get a whiff of the real power of the Lavadome, it’s impossible to think about much else.”

  He let the toe-tapping Rayg get back to his crystal studies and left Imperial Rock, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. The coppery sorcerer was after something. NiVom had more than half a mind to order the execution of Nilrasha. The only reason they’d kept her alive this long was as a hostage to his good behavior. He’d violated that trust—never mind the little skirmish at the Isle of Ice, his orders on the matter had been greatly exceeded. He’d been punished enough for it by having to deal with Ouistrela as one of his Protectors, of an island that had contributed exactly three boatloads of salted cod the whole time it had been a part of the Empire . . .

  No question, this was a setback. With a break in the action, the princedoms would have their chance to get organized. Perhaps he should have pressed them for a settlement while he had the advantage. But negotiating with the princedo
ms was like building a statue out of sand, as soon as you had one side formed up and began to work on the other, it all slid into the same heap you started with.

  The key, of course, was completion of his plan for the Lower World. He hoped he’d live to see it: an underground system of tunnels, waterways, mines, and exits that would allow dragons to appear in any of his major provinces by surprise. He was fortunate in finding the old Anklemere works linking so many natural passages—the wizard had expanded something the dwarfs had begun in the Red Mountains in ages past, making use of the two mighty underground rivers, one flowing north and the other south, at heights and intensities that varied with hemispheric seasons. Back then it was the center of the hominid resistance against Silverhigh and a way for rebels to get about without being observed from the air.

  Once it was complete, food and coin tribute would go beneath the earth immediately in the province where it was collected and be put on dwarf-rails, not transported across a quarter of the known world, subject to weather, theft, bandit raids, and misdirection. Whole armies of dragons or demen could move in secrecy. Only dwarfs could hope to stop them, and there wasn’t a dwarf army left in the world worth mentioning. Thralls of all ages were working themselves to death by the dozens each day to complete new tunnels and expand old ones under the practiced lashes of the demen.

  NiVom spent a few pleasant moments imagining the paired worlds, Upper and Lower, locked in an eternal, dragon-directed embrace. His name would live forever, loom larger in draconic imagination than the greatness of Silverhigh, even if his body couldn’t.

  He rather hoped the name of his mate would be forgotten.

  As a young dragonelle of the Imperial Family in the Lavadome, Imfamnia’d been one of the silliest young dragonelles it was ever his unpleasant duty to meet. Attractive enough and healthy, certainly, but there were plenty of healthy dragonelles to catch his eye among the hills and rock of the Lavadome, and many of them were pleasingly formed as well.

  No, it wasn’t until he was wandering, hiding from the Lavadome, in exile near the site of his aerial raid triumph in Bant that he met her again. She’d been hunting in an almost comic fashion, setting brush fires and then devouring whatever rushed out to escape the flames, not knowing that the nutrition lost from the fats in the firebladder would never be replaced by the lean little rodents and small birds she was snapping up.

  What was attractive in the teeming Lavadome became a vision, a creation of the Four Spirits to grant him succor in the wilderness. He fell hopelessly in love with her. Her own deprivations had erased much of the callowness of her youth and taught her the value of a silent tongue. He pursued her with every elaborate courtesy he remembered from the Lavadome: presents, poetry and songs in her honor, gifts of fowl and fish, and blighter wirework that passed for jewelry in Bant.

  She was very fond of jewelry. He always associated it with the change in her.

  It was after he’d given her a crystalline bauble, the same one AuRon had worn into the Lavadome, bringing the Red Queen’s peace offer, that she’d grown more assertive. He’d tried the jewel himself first, of course, to make sure there wasn’t any danger. All it did was sharpen up the senses and clarify the thoughts. Both of which Imfamnia needed—desperately.

  He found her lounging in her modest bath. It was nothing compared to the epic pools of steaming water that SiMevolant had been so fond of. This was more of a dipping pool in a tile room, where thralls could easily work you over with bristle brushes and polishing cloths, depending what the scale needed, lubricated by warm water.

  He dismissed the thralls. They always did gossip.

  “I suppose you’ve heard RuGaard is in Hypatia,” NiVom said.

  “I’ve heard little but,” Imfamnia said. “What will we do about it?”

  “I’m tempted to wait until he’s at the base of Nilrasha’s refuge and then drop her on him. She’s heavy enough to kill whoever she falls upon.”

  “You always were direct,” Imfamnia said.

  She touched her snout to his. She’d scented herself with something intoxicating, probably some distillation of hominid female musk. “I’m famished,” he said. “I’ve been flying too much lately. I think we both need to spend a few secluded days figuring out what to do about him. Dine in, two servants only, hours of undisturbed sleep—”

  She brushed him gently across the neck with her wingtips.

  “And a deep pool for mating purposes,” he continued. “Seeing you wet and glistening gives me an appetite for you. Too bad SiMevolant’s old baths are defunct.”

  “So what do we do about RuGaard?” Imfamnia asked, redirecting his thoughts.

  “I’ve ordered the whole Aerial Host to Hypatia. Between them and the Hypatians, they’ll make short work of him.”

  “That’s like sending arrows to enemy archers,” Imfamnia said, looking at her scale and then glaring at him as if to ask: What, do you expect me to nibble the rough edges myself? “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “He’s a serious threat. I’ve heard his rule spoken of as in better days.... And that, after all I’ve done for the Lavadome and Empire.”

  “Well done, my love. All the scoundrels are either dead or fled, and it sounds as though RuGaard has finally gone mad and will take a number of disloyal dragons down with him. We should capture him, decorate him for helping us sniff out traitors, then remove his head.”

  NiVom nuzzled her. She was more for flattery than praise, so he glowed when it came. “My one fear is that he’ll run back north three times as fast as he’s marching south. Yes, the Host will encircle him, and that’ll be the end of it. We can get on to more important matters, like acquiring prawn-farms on the Sunstruck Sea. I do enjoy a big, fat prawn in butter.”

  NiVom ordered a meal. Imfamnia ordered her favorite dessert, iced cream. “A double helping. No, a triple. In case NiVom wants some.”

  “Yes, my Queen,” the old Ghiozian croaked.

  They made small talk over dinner. He was worried enough about RuGaard’s challenge that the taste of the food was spoiled, and subsequently his appetite. He called for more water.

  His dinner wasn’t sitting well. He burped, and it put a nasty, numbing stickiness in his mouth. His heartsbeats increased.

  “I feel dreadful,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Imfamnia countered. She sniffed his breath and her eyes narrowed. “You’re never very careful about what you eat. I think the cooks could put carrion in front of you and you’d have it with wine.

  Breathing with difficulty, he staggered toward her.

  “You’ve outlived your usefulness, dragon. It’s time I took charge of things,” she said.

  “What—how?” he managed.

  “It’s the same poison we used on those louts at the feast. I scooped out the marrow in those bones and loaded it in.”

  He lost the rest of her conversation to confusion and darkness. Along with everything else.

  Chapter 15

  The Aerial Host’s temporary riverbank camp in Dairuss was flanked by reeds and bulrushes along a sandbar where supplies were to be landed. But the supplies never appeared. Only a fishing boat or two arrived, filled with men who moved on as quickly as wind and current allowed. The dragons and men had little to do but forage, look up- and downriver in the hope of a supply barge, and attract flies.

  Three days of idleness and confusion about their provision reduced AuSurath the Red’s forty dragons and riders to something more like an irritated gang than like the stronger half of the Aerial Host.

  He swelled with pride every time he considered that he captained these dragons and their riders, probably the most powerful fighting force under the sun. Even the Tyr’s Demen Legion wouldn’t stand a chance against it, aboveground or below.

  Which made lounging in the summer sun, waiting for a new set of orders, all the more frustrating.

  Something had rattled NiVom. That was the only explanation that made sense to AuSurath the Red. Indecision was bad
for morale from top to bottom. The flight lines sensed confusion at the top and it made them nervous. The officers had the frustration of seeing plans cast aside and replaced by last-moment improvisation—then when the improvisation didn’t work out, they were blamed for inadequate planning and leadership.

  This sort of confusion weakened the dragons and their riders and left them vulnerable. They would have accepted delays and disorder had they only camped a horizon or two into Ironrider territory across the river. Empty bellies were expected on a campaign, almost as a planned incentive to make them edgy and in a fighting mood.

  He’d been proud of them until now. The campaign against the princedoms of the Sunstruck Sea proceeded well, with only two casualties, and those were just wounds to dragons who would return to duty. This despite the fierceness of the Heavy Wing of the Aerial Host’s zeal to avenge their losses from the Fallen Queen’s Feast in Ghioz. They’d grown expert at tower-baiting, waiting for the southerners to launch their missiles, then dropping or bouncing boulders in to wreck the fortifications. Courier after courier returned to the Sun King’s palace at Ghioz bearing the choicest of the valuables sniffed up from gardens and wells, while the rest went down hungry gullets to replace arrow-loosened scale.

  Yes, he could be rightfully proud of the job they were doing on the turban-wearing humans.

  Then new orders came from NiVom, bearing his seal. They were to disengage as soon as practicable with an eye toward preserving the campaign camps, or within two full days of receiving the orders, whichever came first, and fly immediately to the Iwensi Gap, where the Falnges River flowed down to Hypat through the Red Mountains. There they’d be supplied by barges while they reorganized with the remainder of the Aerial Host for a campaign in northern Hypatia.

  They retreated from the campaign, covering the ground forces that had to walk and take rivercraft for as long as they could, then turning northwest for Dairuss. They flew with minimal rest and no food, and made the landing along the riverbank after three very hard days of flight. The weather was idyllic, wonderful summer weather and at just enough of an altitude to allow for pleasantly cool nights, and the dragons recovered their strength with but one day of rest, aided by baths and great draughts of river water from the clean center channel.