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NooMoahk shifted his bulk around, tripping on the expanse of limp wing at his side. He faced Auron as if the drake were a foe. “I’ve been challenged for my hold many times, at least long ago, but never by one so young. There’s fire in me yet, and you’ve still got bits of shell on your skin, hatchling.”
“You don’t understand me. I don’t come to challenge you.”
“Then you should have better manners than to trespass and disturb me in my meal.”
“I . . . I need your help.”
NooMoahk’s eyes darkened. “Explain yourself. If this is some trick—”
“No trick. I’ve come from the other side of the Red Mountains to find you. I’ve been orphaned by assassins and chained by elves. I seek the wisdom of my kind. I know there’s much my parents would have taught me had they lived,” Auron said.
“If you’ve come to tell me a tale that ends, ‘The world is a hard place,’ I know that one already.”
“When’s the last time you had to defend your hold, sir?” Auron asked.
“When you get to be my age, time slips away. Perhaps five hundred years? A dragon flying from the north, he was. The southern dragons have been hunted out long ago.”
“That’s the problem of our people. We’re disappearing, NooMoahk.”
“What ‘our people’ are those? Are you of my lineage? What were your parents’ names?”
“AuRel, Clutchwinner of AuRye and Epata. My mother’s father was EmLar, a gray like me.”
“You are a gray, there’s no question of that. EmLar, EmLar, I had a grandson named EmFell. I never learned the fate of him. You say you’re from the Inland Ocean?”
“The mountains east of it, yes,” Auron said, thinking it best not to say that Mother had never mentioned a grandsire named EmFell. Was that the same as lying?
“Well, on the chance that you are a distant relative, I’ll allow your presence. Temporarily. Perhaps you can make yourself useful.”
“Thank you,” Auron said, wondering what the last might portend.
“It’ll be good to have someone to talk to. I will admit I’ve taken in my share of stray hominids just to have someone to talk to, though there’ve been those that took advantage of my generosity to engage in thievery. Had to eat them—my hospitality extends only so far.”
“We wouldn’t think of stealing from you, sir.”
“We?”
Auron turned to the woods. “Hieba, come see,” he said in their shared language.
The girl peeped from behind a tree trunk.
“A drake traveling with a human child? What is she, an offering?”
“Not at all, sir. A foundling, like me. She would have died in the desert if I hadn’t carried her here.”
“Word of advice for you, young drake. Don’t mix with hominids. Even the dwarves don’t live one-tenth of a dragon span. If they don’t betray you to their kind, they grow old and die just when you’re getting to understand them. Don’t share your hearts with one.”
“I’m keeping her until I can find some of her kind. Are there other humans within an easy journey?”
“I should think not. What spoils of war I’ve taken in the past I’ve turned over to the blighters. Their swords, purchased at no small cost to my hide, keep the other races away.”
“It must be a wise policy. I’ve never heard of a dragon as old as you. They say you go back to the forming of dragons.”
“Forming of dragons?” NooMoahk said, yawning to show yellow-and-brown teeth. “Ancient I am, but not that ancient. No, when I came out of the egg, the world was much as it is now. Men used flint then, before they learned the smelting secrets of the dwarves. Not so many elf babies were stillborn, and forests of ancient rooted elves sang around every waterfall and mountain lake. The blighter kingdoms of Uldam and Gomrotha ruled the axis of the world; they drove the other hominids like hares before their chariots. I can vouch that the mountains haven’t changed, though I’ve seen ice floes melt from the plains to the north. Forests came to take their place and then left again in the dry dustcloud years. Braaack. Excuse me, I’m not much used to speech, and I’ve got a belly full of fish.”
NooMoahk lay his head across his back, tucking his nose behind his flank like a goose sleeping with its head under a wing. Auron backed away and brushed a friendly tongue over Hieba’s face.
“Danger maybe-so?”
