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“Excuse me,” said Daine, wanting to answer the initial question. The dragons continued to argue about legal issues. Red tinted the scales of most present; lightning, in sheets or threads, danced over more than a few. “Excuse me!”
“Try again,” murmured Numair. Black fire glimmered around the hand he placed on the nape of her neck.
She took a deep breath. “EXCUSE ME!” she cried. Her voice, amplified by the mage’s spell, thundered in the bowl of the arena. Daine winced, and used a quieter tone. “All we want is to go home—that’s it. We don’t like being here any more than you want us. So, if you could take us back to the mortal realms, we’re quits.”
—No one asked you.— Jewelclaw did more than sit up. He stepped onto the ramp and began to walk down toward them. Balls and rails of lightning raced around his hide as it turned a deep crimson, the color of dragon rage. —You humans. How could we have allowed you to continue to exist, with your murderous hearts, your waste, and your noise? It’s time to scour the mortal realms clean. We can start with you.—
“You dare.” Numair took his hand from Daine’s back. Suddenly it was hard for the girl to breathe. She stepped away from him and the sudden bloom of his power.
—Do you think we fear you, mortal?— the black-and-white dragon asked as he stepped onto the ramp behind Jewelclaw. —No human can face down a dragon!—
A burst of wind threw Daine back. Moonwind had vanished from her station, to reappear on the beaten earth of the floor.
Numair handed Jelly to Scamp, ignoring the darking’s unhappy cries, and advanced on Moonwind. With each deliberate step that he took, fresh power shivered the air around him, as if he gathered magic like a cloak.
Daine gave Leaf to Grizzle and unlaced her over-large shirt, looking at the pair of smaller dragons on the ramp. Her skin was clammy and tingling with fear, her knees weak. She wished passionately that she knew more about dragons. Swiftly she reviewed forms she could take: A big one might slow her down, make her an easy target. A falcon’s claws and beak could make an impression, and she would be fast.
—There are mortals who may battle us on an equal footing.— The speaker was a lean, knobby dragon who sat in the lowest tier. He did not bother to rise on his haunches. His green, red, blue, and yellow scales were pale, as if coated in dust. The two on the ramp halted; even Moonwind looked at him. —Not many, but some. Your coterie has chosen to ignore that which does not add to your over-weening selfishness in regard to which species have importance, and which ones do not. . . . Or are you merely stupid? I never could decide which it was, though perhaps I should have.—
—You do not understand the matter, Ancestor Rainbow!— snapped the black-and-white dragon.
Pale eyes swept over Daine as the elderly dragon looked in the direction of Jewelclaw and his companion. Seeing no pupils, she realized that Rainbow was blind.
—Do I not?— he asked, voice mild. —Well, you are entitled to your opinions, Riverwind, however foolish they may be. I too am entitled to my opinion, which is, that I grow weary of your bad manners. Leave the Dragonmeet.—
The black-and-white dragon reared. He clawed at the air with his forepaws, screeching so high and so loudly that Daine felt a pressure like thumbs in her ears. His screech dwindled rapidly, as did he, until he vanished from sight.
For a long, still moment, there was no sound in the arena.
Daine was taking a deep breath when all of the dragons spoke at once, mind voices blending into a wordless roar in her mind.
She heard one voice clearly: Jewelclaw’s. —The humans are mine!— He trotted down the ramp. Moonwind raised a forepaw and unfurled her immense wings. Numair faced her, the air rippling and bending visibly where it touched him.
Daine jumped, taking goshawk shape as her feet left the ground. Her clothes dropped, empty. With a screech, she sped toward Jewelclaw.
—Enough,— said the crackling mind voice that had spoken to Daine and Numair near the bridge. Jewelclaw froze in his tracks.
—When did my personal invitation to guests of my clan become a matter for every wing and claw in the Dragonlands to discuss, and interfere with?— What Daine had thought was a huge pile of blue stones uncoiled, and walked leisurely to the amphitheater floor. Diamondflame—Grandsire—was a dragon over eighty feet in length from nostrils to rump. While she could see larger dragons, none had a presence that made the air hum as he approached Moonwind and Numair.
Daine kept a wary eye on Jewelclaw as she drifted overhead. Diamondflame’s scales were a shiny blue so dark as to be nearly black, picked out with flecks of gold and violet. A golden crest rose from his broad forehead and swept down to his shoulders, lending him a stern, crowned aspect. His large, indigo eyes glittered with intelligence.
—I understand your grief for your grandson, Moonwind, but only to a point. With no law passed by the Dragonmeet, I am entirely within my rights to welcome my grandchild’s guardians to my home. It should not matter if they are human, dragons, or dragonflies. They are my guests, and no business of the Dragonmeet!—
—Ancestor Rainbow, I demand a ruling,— hissed the pearl-scaled dragon. —Humans in the Dragonlands are no matter of personal choice, as Diamondflame has said, but of the will of the Dragonmeet. I vote to dump them into the Sea of Sand and let them cook.—
—Will the Dragonmeet now tell each dragon what guest to have, what to read, when to have children?— Diamondflame wanted to know. —I am within my rights, the ones granted to me and to every dragon by the Golden Dragonmeet, to accept the visit of the guardians of my grandchild, without certain meddlers getting involved.—
—Now he calls ‘meddlers’ those who wish only to see drag-onkind return to power in all the realms!— cried Jewelclaw. —Have you old and conservative ones turned to wyverns and salamanders?—
—Humans or no humans, I must say that I have not heard such insolence from the young in the last thousand years as I have heard today,— said the one called Rainbow. Slowly he lowered himself from his grassy seat and walked over to Diamondflame. —I will judge now.— He sat on his haunches and rose up, many-colored scales tightening over his knobby, fragile-looking skeleton. Slowly, as gracefully as a dancer, he stretched out enormous, nearly transparent, bat wings. The sun glinted off the silvery bones within them, and painted glowing light over the old dragon.
—I ordain as Rainbow Windheart, Governor of the Dragonmeet, oldest of the Firefolk, with a hundred centuries under my wings. By the Compact of the Godwars and the vote of the Golden Dragonmeet, I speak for all of us, until the day comes that I am taken back to Mother Flame.—
Settling a bit, he turned those blind eyes on the blue-green dragon. —Out of my sight, Jewelclaw. If I see you before a century has passed, I shall not be so kind again as I am right now.— Heat passed under Daine’s tail feathers on its way from Rainbow to the younger dragon. Jewelclaw dodged the bolt with a snarl and jumped into flight, lunging at the girl-goshawk.
Something—not Jewelclaw—clutched her tightly. She felt squeezed, as if she had turned to icing in a past
ry cook’s tube. A strangled cry burst from her lips; she could feel herself dropping as her eyes went dark.
When she opened them again, she lay on the ground, fully dressed, staring at the sky.
—The only way dragons can live together is to vow to keep their muzzles out of one another’s private lives.— The mind voice was Rainbow’s; he sounded close by. —When we wrote our laws at the Golden Dragonmeet, we made sure of that. When I spoke in my office as governor, they could not argue, under the laws of that same meet.—
Two ink-blot heads stretched into her vision, one over her left eye, one over her right. Leaf squeaked, “Awake now!”
The next faces Daine saw were those of Grizzle and Scamp. Over their heads, within a heartbeat’s time, she saw Numair, his dark eyes worried. Behind him, the great blue dragon peered down at her.
“What happened?” she asked, blinking.
Scamp moved out of the way. Into the space she had filled in Daine’s vision came the muzzle and blind eyes of Rainbow. His mind voice sounding like wind-tossed leaves, he said, —Forgive my lack of precision in grabbing you out of harm’s way, Godborn. I allowed Jewelclaw to upset me. What you felt was dragon magic, nothing more.—
“I’m glad it was nothing more.” Daine felt oddly peaceful. “Think how upsetting it might be to get squeezed from a shape—like milk from a teat—by something big.”
“Is she all right?” Numair asked the blue dragon, worried. “Not—damaged?”
—She seems well enough now,— was Diamondflame’s reply.
“You don’t know her as I do. She’s never this philosophical about surprises.”
Reaching out, the blind dragon pulled Daine into a sitting position, his grip gentle. “My bones are all wobbly,” she confided to him in a whisper. Looking around, she saw that many of the adult dragons had left. “Where’d everybody go?”
—Where they would have been if Moonwind and her Separatists had not chosen to meddle in business that was not theirs,— said Diamondflame. —They have gone home. Ancestor Rainbow ruled that your visit, concerned as it was with returning to my grandchild, was a matter for my clan alone.—
