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They came to a cavern, wide and low. Stalactite-stalagmites joined to make columns between floor and ceiling, though they had been carved to make grotesque faces, or figures in tortured poses. Hanging upside down from the ceiling or squatting on the floor beneath were carvings of blighters driving or tormenting the other forms. Flat and polished panels had been formed in the middle of some of the vertical tableaux, writing like claw-scorings told tales of the glory of Uldam.
A rattling filled the cavern, like rocks being shaken in an iron drum. It came from NooMoahk. The old dragon lay curled a little above him on a circular dais in the center of the cavern, already asleep. Rather than steps as humans and dwarves used, the surface went up to a platform marked in a series of foothold notches. The dais had curved stonework, tapering like giant dragon claws, projecting up and out from the platform. They must have been carved from the rock of the dais, for they were strong enough to bear the weight of NooMoahk, who slept against them like a snake resting against tree branches.
A crystalline statue, worked with silver, gold, and gems, stood in the center, bathing NooMoahk with cold light. Auron had seen enough artifacts of the hominids to know that it was some kind of artistry, but what it was supposed to depict, he could not say. The crystal leaned out and bulged at the top, cut into thousands upon thousands of facets. There was a faint white glow from within, refracted by the crystal into a blue-white shape that changed and danced as Auron circled the giant gem.
Hieba pointed at the crystal. “Pretty!” she exclaimed.
Auron swung his head up and down. From some angles, it looked as if a form with two arms and two legs writhed within, limbs disappearing and reappearing as he shifted his gaze. But if he took two more steps, it turned into a starburst of light. Two more steps, and the starburst shattered into a thousand slivers. The heart of the stone never presented the same image twice. He wondered if this was all that remained of NooMoahk’s hoard.
He broke away from the stone and walked around to the edges of the cavern. Hieba protested for a moment, but her eyes turned to take in new sights. There were galleries and filled-in passageways. He saw chests and shelves against one side, a dim glow from the cavern roof revealed iron-bound books and scroll tubes. Another wall looked to be some kind of honeycomb with the cells filled in with masonry. A trickle of water, but just a trickle, fell into a pool at another end. Then there was the end of the cavern where they came in. There must have been battles by the chute, the carven stalactites were broken and the walls blackened from dragonfire. Melted metal had sunk into cracks in the cavern floor and hardened.
Hieba jumped off him and rooted in his saddlebags for a blanket. “Cold,” she explained, wrapping herself up and hugging his back tight. If they were to have a home in the mountain, Auron decided to make it nearer the entrance, where he could have a fire for her.
Given space and a permanent home, Hieba turned out to be something of a packrat. Odd shapes, vivid colors, and interesting textures collected in the form of broken bricks, agate stones, and bark accumulated in the room they shared within the ruined city. It was built into the wall of the cave: rock face formed their rear wall, and could be gotten to only by ascending the staggered staircases of the building next to them, then traversing a broken bridge. He placed a sapling trunk across the gap in the span and drew it in after them each night. Auron took a lesson from the dwarves and had his hold reachable only by this circuitous route. If the blighters came prowling, he could meet them at the broken bridge or grab Hieba and climb down the far wall.
There was a sort of a porch at the front of the room formed by the roof of the larger home below. It was thickly coated with soil, though whether in the old city it meant that the porch served as a garden, or simply that over the long years detritus accumulated, Auron could not tell. He stood there with Hieba and tried to picture the city in its glory with both the cavern roof and floor occupied.
He worried about the blighters because he stole their offerings to NooMoahk. The elder dragon didn’t seem to miss them; he sniffed the empty fountain at the center of the outer city now and then as he passed in and out, not knowing that many of the sacrificial goats and birds ended up in Auron’s hideout. When Auron went back to the cavern to speak with the dragon, the subject never came up. But the blighters set about their offerings with ceremonial bells and gongs, and howling responsorials as the animals were slaughtered. After that kind of effort, if the blighters found that the flesh was going into stomachs other than those the demigod had intended, there would probably be trouble.
Auron continually planned to set out westward with Hieba, to get her among her kind, but the circumstances never seemed quite right. There were too many blighters coming and going, or NooMoahk was in the mood to tell stories and hear them in return, or Hieba had lamed herself leaping from a broken wall. Her giggles when he chased her through the ruins, or wide-eyed awe when he lit a pile of tinder by spitting on it, or pony rides seemed a more profitable way to spend his time. And then it was winter, though it was a mild one on this side of the mountains, and Auron looked at it as another reason not to travel.
Hieba never tired of “visits.” She was losing her baby fat, gaining height, and steadily waxing muscular. She took to climbing down the chute to NooMoahk’s cave herself, with Auron beneath, anxious that she would slip. NooMoahk wasn’t awake when underground often, but when he was, he was entertaining to listen to. Unless the subject was his own eventual death.
“Dwarves and blighters burn their dead; humans bury them. Elves turn into treelike growths that live on for thousands of years, gradually going silent. When a dragon dies, his skull adorns some stinking emperor’s threshold or a wizard’s library,” NooMoahk said, for the third time in Auron’s memory. Hieba swung from the projecting rocks of his platform, amusing herself by hanging from wrists, ankles, or a combination like a monkey in a tree.
“If it’s found,” Auron said, for NooMoahk’s black grumblings made for long silences between him and Hieba when they returned to their attic. “The blighters don’t go anywhere the sun doesn’t touch in the cavern. They must think a strong spirit lurks here. Super—superstition may keep grave-robbers away. What do the elves do when the tree version dies?” Auron said, trying to change the subject.
This time he succeeded. “Forest fires take many. The elves then take the ashes and mix them into clay. The elves have a legend that they were formed from a clay pit. Their creator made them through sculpting clay by a riverbank. They then fire and glaze them before they are put in crypts. Good a way as any, I suppose, and if there’s anything to their legend, this creator was a master. I’ve never seen a warty elf.”
Auron saw an opening to NooMoahk’s mind. “I’ve seen an ugly elf. Scarred from battle.”
“So have I, come to think of it. Though they were honorable scars, from a fight where the odds in number and weight were against her, to hear her tell it. Could she tell stories! And could she sing! Hazeleyes was her name, it seems to me. As full of questions as you are, Auron. Wanted to know everything about dragons.”
“Did she learn ‘everything’?”
“She learned the most important thing. Not to fear us, but to leave us. Dragons don’t hunt hominids unless there’s nothing else to be had: there’s easier prey out there, though blighters breed so fast, we used to eat them like I take fish from the pool. Not many creatures kill for fun; food supplies are too vital to waste in purposeless killing. Blighters do, and they taught the trick to the other two- leggers. Wool-brained barbarians, the lot.”
“Why did this Hazeleye—Hazeleyes ask so many questions?”
“The hominids fare poorly with mind-pictures. They keep tales by writing and drawing. Haven’t you seen writing? Fascinating, I’ve got tomes full of it.”
“Yes. So this Hazeleye was recording dragon stories?”
“More than stories. How we are born, when we die. How we choose mates. I talked to her because I miss the days before I grew old. When flying was joy, instead of burning torment. When my friend Tindairuss rode atop my back with bow and javelin, in silver armor trimmed with polished black to match my scales. We used to get on better with the lesser races, Auron. Back then, they took the loss of a few cattle as the price paid for a dragon keeping order in the land and the blighters at bay. With the blighters driven away, as they are now, they’ve decided they can get along without us. Now we’re hunted, hunted as blighters, after all we’ve done for them.”
“Did this elf learn any secrets? Perhaps she was a spy, sent to discover ways to better kill dragons. Probe our weaknesses.”
“Weaknesses?” NooMoahk snorted. “Bah. I’ve heard that venting. ‘Every worm has a weak spot,’ and so on. Auron, dragons are the acme of all the creatures between the Sun and the Moon. Don’t let legends tell you otherwise. Dragons are all individuals, some better, some worse, and while every now and then there are those that survive into drakehood or beyond defected, each dragon doesn’t necessarily have a failing. Look at you. To some you’re one big ‘weak spot,’ being scaleless, but you seem to do well enough. It’s just stories the hominids have come up with to nerve themselves to kill us.”
“Then is it our love of precious metals?”
“Is what?”
“The defect of dragons. What enemies could use against us. The thing that could be our downfall?”
“What are you talking about, Auron? I’m tired.”
Auron felt his fire bladder convulse with frustration. “I heard you were wise; that you had discovered some weakness in dragons. There are fewer and fewer in the world. Everyone has told me so, from my own parents to a dwarf I’ve met. I thought perhaps this elf tricked something out of you, and assassins were using it against us.”
