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It could not come too soon for Auron. Even dead bats were becoming scarce.
With the renewed air came water, first dripping, then trickling, then cascading in torrents from the melt above to some unknown reservoir below. Auron did not mind the wet; it rolled off his hide as easily as it ran down stone. He drank from the accumulated pools, smelling and tasting the world above through the liquid conductor.
At the touch of the water, the dead lichen gave way, leaving little patches of growth. The bats started their nightly ventures, returning to the cave to leave a shower of fresh, ammonia-smelling fertilizer for the moss.
The life returning to the cave affected even Mother. She still had a listless, pinched look to her, but sniffed the air coming down from above with some of her old energy.
“Soon we’ll be in the Upper World, little gems. Meat and heat, no more dead bats for you.”
“Father will have an easier time hunting?” Wistala, his smaller sister, asked.
“Yes, but we won’t see much of him. He will be flying far and wide, to make sure other dragons do not encroach upon us. Besides, the appetites of a family of dragons soon exhaust an area. Overhunt a forest one year, and you will starve the next.”
“What is the Upper World like? Dangerous?” Auron asked.
“Big and beautiful. There’s life everywhere, all singing different songs to the four Great Spirits. You could fly your whole life and see only a part of it. Now you just have the music of the melt on its way through our cave. In the Upper World you will hear rain fall from the sky, wind in the trees and on the grasslands, the crash of the ocean probing the land for weakness. Lightning will light up a place she wants her lover Thunder to visit. And far above, the Sun and Moon travel in silence, listening to the music.
“There is danger there, yes, but remember, you, too, are dangerous. In all the world there is nothing more dangerous than a wary dragon. What is a dragon’s most deadly weapon?”
“His fire!” Auron ejaculated.
“Strength?” Jizara asked.
“The senses,” Wistala said after a moment’s thought.
“All right, in a way, but not right enough,” Mother said. “It is the dragon’s cunning, which guides all the other weapons. To know when to fight and when to run, to fool the strong into thinking you are stronger than they, to fool the weak into thinking you are weaker and encourage them to rashness. Let your prey think you are harmless, give those hunting you the impression you are going one place, and then be where they do not expect you.”
All very well, Auron thought. I will be running all the time, to save my scaleless skin. My sisters will have less to fear in the Upper World than I.
“You think your skin is a weakness, Auron?” Mother asked.
Auron looked up at Mother. She sniffed at him, her head cocked affectionately. He could not lie; she read his mind as easily as his expression.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Jizara, climb that stalagmite, would you?”
Jizara, obedient as always, moved to the wide base of a large stone prominence.
“Now listen, Auron.”
Jizara began to climb, and Auron heard her scales rasp against the stone.
“Climb the wall, Auron. Keep your claws sheathed, use the strength in your sii.”
The wall was a harder proposition than the stalagmite, but using his neck as well as his tail, he managed to reach the cavern roof. He hung upside down, hugging the stone.
Mother raised her head to stare levelly into his eyes. “Auron, you did not make a sound doing that, apart from your breathing. Was that a weakness or a strength?”
“What good is it?”
“There will be times when you will not want to be heard. If I were an elf venturing into this cave, all sharp eyes and ears, I would not hear you climb up there to hide, nor would I see you in the shadows. You reflect no light—your coloring lets you blend perfectly. By the time the elf got close enough to see you, it would be too late.”
Auron felt flush with achievement. Even Father could not lurk in this manner. “I understand, Mother.”
“But will any dragonelles want a mating flight with Auron, Mother?” Wistala asked. “He hardly looks a dragon. More like a lizard.”
“Keep a civil tongue, Tala,” Mother scolded. “My mother was a dragonelle who had her choice, yet she chose my gray father. There is more to a dragon than the shine of his scales.”
