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“Auron! Auron . . . look.”
He followed her gaze up. A dra—Father! Father was flying in from the southwest. He came down in two great loops, prey carried in each sii.
Auron dashed across the field for the stone projection. He’d turn himself yellow as the sun if he could, if it would just get Father to look down.
The dragon’s eyes were elsewhere. He disappeared behind the shoulder of the mountain. Auron got up to the outcropping, just enough to read Father’s mind: he was exhausted from long flight, burdened with food. Auron tried to broadcast danger with every thought in his brain, but by the time he reached the perch, all he could see was Father’s tail disappearing into a cave shaped like the half-moon.
A cascade of broken rock stood below the cave mouth, as if the mountain had vomited its innards from that aperture. Remnants of what Auron guessed to be battlements stood all around. The ruins stood like teeth around the edges of the mouth, broken teeth shattered by some blow years ago. Leveled walls, fallen towers, and debris-filled ditches were overgrown with grass and lichen; mountain creepers hung their tresses to curtain the cave.
Auron waited at the prominence. He couldn’t feel Father’s mind anymore. Wistala climbed up on the slab with him, so she just poked her head over the edge.
“Father didn’t see me,” he told her.
Wistala gulped anxiously.
A terrible roar came from the cave. Even louder was the thought projection from Father . . .
Betrayed! The Wheel of Fire! Auron got a flash of mind-pictures, dwarves and some kind of cliff-hugging buildings at the edge of a mountain lake.
Sounds of battle echoed from the cave. Auron caught the faint flash of light from within. Dragon fire! Auron felt his heart beat with excitement at the thought of dwarves roasting in dragon fire.
“Ku! Ku! Kuuuuu!” echoed dwarf voices.
Father reappeared at the cave mouth, his face a black mass of soot, flames still licking from the sides of his mouth. He held his near foreleg tight to his body, where blood poured from his forejoint. Spears stuck from his neck in a gory collar. Father spread his wings. Auron saw a dwarf somehow clinging to his back, knees locked on Father’s armored spinal ridge, hacking at the base of the dragon’s neck with a crimson-painted ax. Father reared up on his hind legs, smashing the dwarf into a smear on the cavern roof.
Wistala couldn’t watch. She threw herself off the prominence and into the meadow, crying.
A horn sounded.
Father’s mind was a iron wall of pain. Before he could flap his wings, bundles of grass flipped up; Auron saw spears and bows in the hands of pale-skinned elves with camouflaged shields. Arrows and spears sang as they tore through the air, some burning as they flew. Others above the cave popped up to empty baskets on Father, round glass globules that glittered in the setting sun as they fell.
“Above you!” Auron trumpeted, putting every ounce of wind from his long lungs into the shout. His voice cracked in his first dragon roar.
As Father twisted to look up, many of the weapons from below struck his scales. The globules hit him and shattered, and smoke came from where they struck. Auron felt the pain so clearly that he rolled into a ball.
But Father flew. He flapped to the sky under a rain of spears and turned north.
The elves who didn’t watch the fleeing dragon turned to look at Auron.
Chapter 7
The elves sang to each other, clear-voiced notes echoing between wood and ruin. Mother had imprinted him with some tongues, but he did not know elven song-calls. Auron made a decision as he caught a last glint of Father’s scales before he disappeared into the clouds.
“Wistala, lie flat. The elves are coming; I’m going to make myself seen to them. They’ll chase me for a while, maybe a long while. You’re going to have to go north alone.”
“What?”
Auron could hear hoofbeats from the woods below them. “No time!” he thought. “Go north. I think Father is going to the city of the Wheel of Fire dwarves. It’s built into the side of a mountain, next to a lake.” Auron did his best to send the mind-picture he got from Father. “It’s not far, an hour or two’s flight for him, two days’ journey for you. Don’t go anywhere near the cave—it’s crawling with elves. Can you?”
“Blades and raids, let’s fly. I want us to be with each other, no matter what.”
“One of us has to make it, Wistala. You hunt better than I. You have a chance of making it alone in the wilderness.”
“I don’t know the way!” she thought, despair clouding her mind and making her words hard to read.
“Follow the mountains north. You can’t miss this lake—it’s on this side of the mountains and very big.”
Auron craned his neck over the outcropping one last time, looking at the elves in the ruins. A few were running toward his overlook, carrying spears and bundles. More hoofbeats came from the forest, and he saw bareback elves leaping their horses up the slope toward their meadow. He touched his nose to Wistala’s, shoving his sister into a crevice with his body.
