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“Yiy!” he shouted, jumping back against the little wall at the edge of the cliff.
“Careful, or you’ll learn about dragon fire the hot way,” AuRon said.
“No offense, skyking,” one of the soldiers said, stepping in front of his startled officer.
“As long as you keep your hands to yourselves, there will be none.”
“Dragons are much on our mind,” the older one said. “There’s war on the other sides of these mountains. There are dragons in it, dozens of them, or so I’ve heard.”
“I’ve food on my mind, not rumor.”
Evfan intervened. “Getting acquainted can wait. Open a cask of pork and a cask of beef for our guest. Flying’s hard work, judging from the birds and their appetites.”
“And dragons get irascible when they’re hungry,” Hieba said, stepping under AuRon’s chin and rubbing the soft spot under his long jaw.
Food and snowmelt put AuRon into a better mood, though the heavily salted meat made his head throb. He slept in a tight ball in the corner between the mountainside and the cliff-clinging castle, out of most of the wind. His rest was disturbed by two runners that came up the long trail down to the city, but they only had messages to be passed farther into the mountain passes. The wiry men rather reminded AuRon of Blackhard’s wolves; they had the same cautious eyes and fleshless frames.
“Say nothing of the dragon, if you value your allotments,” Evfan said, seeing them out the door to the path down the farther side of the mountain. “It’s a matter for the Silver Guard, by the queen’s order.”
AuRon settled back down and dozed until dawn. The sight of the sun coming up over the flat lands to the east, dyeing the morning mists of the Falnges orange. AuRon forgot his concerns and took in the sunrise. Existence was a long march from despair to despair, but there were spots of beauty along the way.
He wished for a mate and hatchlings to whom he could pass the picture.
Hieba and Evfan appeared, she at the castle door and he on the parapet above.
“There are people on the trail,” Evfan said. “Three. Could be the commander. He’d get that far if he was outside the high wall before dawn, as is his way.”
AuRon uncurled himself, stretched from nose to tail-tip, and followed Hieba to the cliff wall. He looked at the long path snaking down the mountainside, and saw three hominids on the ascent. After his search of the valley and the plain, Evfan joined them at the wall.
“The big one could be Naf,” AuRon said.
“I hope so. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. It took that long to find you.”
The three inched up the path, at this distance looking like ants ascending a difficult twig. Two helped a third along.
“It is Naf, no question,” AuRon said. “Another man in a hunter’s cape, and a third, cloaked. The cloaked one is shorter than the other two, perhaps a woman. Whoever she is, she’s not used to mountain climbing.”
“By the seven prophets, I hope it’s not the queen,” Evfan said. “We’ve got nothing fit to serve her. Salted meat, biscuit, and dried fish for the queen? Soldier’s wine?”
“The queen doesn’t dare step outside her gardens without escort,” Hieba said. “It’s not the queen, or any other Ghioz. They’d have us come down to them. They are Ghioz, after all.”
“Scabbard your tongue, Hieba,” Evfan said, veering from his worries about the contents of his larder. “That sort of talk might get you a bad name, and you’re to be the wife of the Commander of the Silver Guard.”
“Since when is there an edict against truth?”
“There’s private truth and public truth, girl.”
The humans lapsed into welcome silence, allowing AuRon to watch the climbers. When they grew close enough to wave, Hieba jumped down the path like a running deer.
“To be that young again,” Evfan mused to himself.
AuRon saw Hieba run into Naf’s arms. He felt a spasm in his fire bladder; gladness at Hieba’s joy folded under a crest of jealousy. Naf would take Hieba away again, leaving him lonelier than before.
Naf still wore the silver circled about his long hair. He had filled out since AuRon had last seen him as a desert-lean bandit: his neck was thick with muscle and the lines around his mouth and eyes deep with age and cares. AuRon could no more judge human beauty than he could talk to the stars, but Naf’s face still looked as though it was put together from two different halves. The cloaked figure squatted and rested while the lovers embraced, and the third, the man in the hunting cloak, scratched a red beard and looked out on the vista of city, river and plain.
The four continued up the mountain, Naf and Hieba holding hands as they picked along the trail. They covered the short distance left easily, except for the cloaked figure, who paused at the edge of the outlook. AuRon could hear wheezy breathing from beneath the cowl.
AuRon sniffed, but smelled only thick man-scent and traces of charcoal on the cloak.
